SIFF - 5/28/05

Films Today: 3
Running Total: 8

Started off today bright and early with a nice long wait in the rain for the start of the Secret Festival. There was a nice surprise in store though, free Sundance Channel umbrellas! Always useful in Seattle. Speaking of rain, why the hell isn’t The Wayward Cloud in this festival? It premiered at Toronto last year and played several other fests including Chicago. Is it just too old and not fresh enough? I would think that Tsai Ming-Liang is high profile enough at this point that I’d get a chance to see his new films on the big screen in a city as large as Seattle. Apparently not since by all reports there is little chance of it getting distributed. Shame on you SIFF programmers (yes I know its been available on region 3 DVD forever at Scarecrow but that didn’t stop them from showing 2046 last year did it?)

Secret Fest started off with a bang, the first North American screening by a director everyone reading this has heard of. The film was very good too, I predict it will get a lot of buzz when it formally premieres. A very different direction than this director’s last couple films. The programmer for Secret Fest promised another big treat next week, come on *************! Already this is looking much more promising than last year.

Next up was Au Bonheur Des Dames, an early French silent from director Jules Duvivier who is most well known for Pepe Le Moko. The person who introduced the film, whose identity escapes me, favorably compared the montage style to Eisenstein and Dovzhenko, which might be a little over the top but is not completely unwarranted. There are some truly excellent sequences, and as a whole this feels far more modern than the 1930 copyright would indicate. The story is really straight out of modern headlines - orphaned girl goes to stay with uncle, uncle runs local tailor’s shop, uncle is being pushed out of business by large department store across the street. Take it from there to a reasonably logical conclusion, or so I thought. Heading into the final reel I thought I had this movie pegged, especially in the climactic sequence which plays out like so many French classics. Then in the final scene Au Bonheur throws a total curveball which is so shocking I thought it might be a joke. In some ways it was totally refreshing, because the ending I pictured (which I’m sure everyone in the audience pictured) would have been sort of the classic liberal statement on this modern dilemna. Note that this is not a political comment, just that it was nice to be so surprised. The film was accompanied by a live organ player who did a very good job, along with a woman who sang some songs in a couple of scenes. This worked very well, it really added to the experience. She also read the French subtitles which helped for those of us ugly americans who don’t speak any other languages. Good fun.

Wordplay. I’m not quite sure where to begin. You’ve got to understand something. Over the last decade or so I have been closely involved in the pinball enthusiast community, and in many ways these people are like an extended family. I consider many of them my closest friends, despite the fact that we only see each other once or twice a year at conferences or tournaments. There is a hotel in Rosemont, IL where the largest annual pinball gathering (Pinball Expo) is held every year, and whenever I walk in there its the best feeling. I am going to see my friends, I’m going to completely forget the world for a weekend and immerse myself in something I love, both competitively and not. Groups of people get together for non-pinball activites as well (poker tournaments, Whirlyball, etc) throughout the weekend. I met my current girlfriend through this network. I was employed in the industry for several years. I have met very very few people in this hobby who I would describe as anything less than “totally awesome.” Some of the happiest and saddest memories I have revolve around pinball. This has been an enormous part of my life for a very long time.

Wordplay is the first time I have ever seen that part of myself expressed in basically any media at all. The people in Wordplay make and love crossword puzzles, but they are not freaks or weirdos. They are just a bunch of normal guys (and girls) doing something they love deeply. They care about each other, but also they want to win. There is a sequence where the camera is covering the camraderie and fun in the break between day 1 and day 2 of the national crossword tournament, a montage set to a cover of “Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place)” by Talking Heads and it was just so perfect. Wandering through the hotel hallways, moving through groups of people enjoying their time together. Home is where I want to be, but I guess I’m already there.

Admittedly, connecting with something so personally will color my judgment to a certain extent. As another disclaimer, I should note that I have known Trip Payne and Brian Dominy for a while since they also attend the yearly world pinball championships. Brian is actually an old school pinball guy going way way back. However aside from anything else the doc is extremely well made. The graphic designer in particular should be commended for finding a variety of unique and interesting ways to express the experience of doing a crossword as well as communicating the process of the final round to such an extent that you may as well have been there. The digital video even looks decent.

The interviews are consistently entertaining and enlightening and often riotously funny. During Jon Stewart’s segments the audience was laughing so much I missed some of the lines. There is also a fascinating set of clips with Merl Reagle showing the process through which a crossword puzzle is created. How to start it, the problems you encounter and avoid, it was very enlightening. One thing that made it such a perfect parallell to pinball for me is that the people who make the puzzles are as into it as the people solving them (and in many cases they cross both lines.) This is a far cry from many hobbyist industries where the makers are far removed from the fans.

Wordplay is not a film about crossword puzzles or a film about a tournament or a film like Cinemania which invites you to point and stare. It is a film about people. Whether you find crossword puzzles interesting or not I can attest that they perfectly captured these people and at least some of what inspires them and moves them and brings them together. What more could you possibly hope for a documentary to acheive? What subject matter could possibly be more important?

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 1st, 2006 at 12:07 pm and is filed under Movies, SIFF 2006. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.