SIFF - 6/10/2006

Films Today: 3
Running Total: 30

Had some schedule changes today, but it was all for the best it seems. First went to the Chuck Chaplin classic The Gold Rush. Most of my silent comedy time has been spent on Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, this was only the second Chaplin I’ve seen and I didn’t like it as much as The Circus which I saw at SIFF last year. It still had that heart that is lacking in Keaton and Lloyd, but The Circus is heartbreaking and this doesn’t have the same emotional center (although the scenes where Chaplin is left forgotten on New Year’s Eve are pretty sad.) Still there’s some good gags here, especially in the early going. I should note that this version is the 1942 re-release which added a voiceover speaking various lines and intertitles. This was kind of annoying frankly, and it is quite possible I would have enjoyed the original more. I still need to spend some time going through all the Chaplin as I’m sure I would enjoy it, and if they keep showing one at every SIFF I should be caught up by the year 2080 or something.

I was supposed to see Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man next, but instead chose to see Distant Journey, a rare Czech Holocaust film from 1950. I’m glad I did too because this was a pretty fascinating film. It centers around a Jewish woman who marries a gentile man, and their struggles trying (and ultimately failing) to keep their family, friends, and marriage together as more and more Jews are taken away to the concentration camps. Occasionally to stress the events going on in the world around them, the characters are shrunk down to a corner of the screen as newsreel footage plays behind them (including some scenes which are apparently from Triumph Of The Will) which was effective and cool. Frankly the whole style of the film was totally ahead of its time, with a great deal of warped expressionistic scenes and shots, culminating in a heavily stylized and somewhat surreal sequence involving the cleaning of a train full of typhus victims crosscut with a woman beating on a piano with a hammer. All other sounds completely dropped out of the soundtrack and the gongs of the strings are synchronized perfectly with the editing, cutting back and forth between survivors poking their heads out and eventually celebrating in the square, and this woman throwing everything she has into ringing out their freedom. It was a spectacular scene, especially considering this was 1950. I’m very glad I went to see this. It’s on a Facets DVD and well worth checking out. Odd note: I was just looking at imdb and it seems that some portion of this film is included in A Clockwork Orange. I can’t remember where that would be, assumedly in the horror shown to Alex as his eyes are forced open? It’s been too long since I’ve seen Clockwork (a movie I actively dislike) so if anyone can illuminate it would be appreciated.

Finally there was Perhaps Love, an enjoyable Hong Kong musical movie-within-a-movie following a director and his male and female leads. They are embroiled in a love triangle whose permutations are reflected in the movie they are filming, and as the two meet a series of unexpected circumstances play out which made the movie feel really fresh and intriguing. I totally thought I had it pegged at the middle and I was pleasantly surprised at the ways in which the script proved me wrong, in particular the ending which could have been completely trite and is instead subtle and real. Also interesting thematically are the parallels you can draw between the director character and many of his Hong Kong contemporaries in the real world. Early the onscreen director Nie Wen has to face questions from the media about his decision to produce a big budget mainstream picture. “Is this the end of Nie Wen the auteur?” they ask. Will Nie Wen leave Hong Kong and go to Hollywood with the actress who he made a star? It’s hard not to think of modern Hong Kong directors like John Woo and now Wong Kar-Wai when faced with such lines.

Many of the sequences in Perhaps Love are somewhat reminiscent of Moulin Rouge! in that they involve a modern music styles, except they are not as irritating because a) it’s original music done well b) the story actually makes sense and c) there are less of them. If anything Perhaps Love owes as much to the classic Hollywood musicals like Singin’ In The Rain as it does to the work of Baz Luhrmann. This doesn’t even mention the STUNNING cinematography from Peter Pau (The Promise, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) and my hero Christopher Doyle. Definitely worth checking out if the above description doesn’t immediately turn you off. I had a discussion with someone the next day who just couldn’t get past the concept of a musical in Cantonese and if that’s you then don’t go. Should get a release somewhere down the road.
Finally I had tickets to see loudQUIETloud: A Film About The Pixies but I just wasn’t in the mood, which is too bad because from what I hear it was very good. Instead I went home and watched Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind on DVD. Has any movie in the last … well … ever … had a more perfect and lovely ending than that one? I swear it just slays me every time. It’s too bad Science Of Sleep doesn’t finish so strong (SPOILER!)

Tomorrow: NOIR! MORE NOIR! EVEN MORE NOIR!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 21st, 2006 at 8:03 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.