The film seems to have satisfied most people I’ve spoken to but for me it hit some very particular touch points. Movie fetishes, if you will: winter snowscapes, trains, pipe-smoking, themes of loneliness and connection, lengthy stretches of dialogue-free plot and a metric ton of oddball humour. In fact, the movie reminded me a little of some sort of time-displaced sequel to The General which featured Buster Keaton as a character who loved his train as much as his girl. Baard Owe as Odd Horton would seem to be the Keaton character 40 years later, still in love with his trains but now sadly alone. One of the gentle touches of the film is the reluctance to provide any history for the man: whether he is a life-long bachelor, a divorced senior or a widower is unclear. I suspect it’s the first one.
A description of O’Horten doesn’t really do it any justice: a Norwegian train engineer is forced into retirement. In the days that follow, he wanders without purpose through a variety of strange situations and characters. (The film delivers exactly what you can glimpse in the trailer here.) The principle delight of the film is Odd Horten himself, a man of few words who carries himself with class regardless of the situations he finds himself (even when forced to wear women’s shoes). And if there’s a theme among all of the films I’ve seen this weekend, it’s the director’s willingness to let stretches of the film play without dialogue, trusting the audience and letting the visuals tell the story. This movie is a classic example of that.
A virtually perfect cinematic experience and one of those Festival discoveries that could never happen in a multiplex.
***
Hunger ~ Shell shock. I think I might have just walked out of one of the best film of 2008. There’s still plenty of great stuff to come (I hope) but it seems unlikely to me at this moment that anything will approach the level of challenge in Hunger, which is virtually unlike
anything I’ve seen before (when was the last time you could say that?). This is the debut of Steve McQueen, a British artist who doesn’t seem to worry about the trappings of traditional film making. In fact, it wasn’t until the Q&A after the film that it even occurred to me that this is a biopic.Nevertheless, a biopic it is, chronicling the jail-time abuse and ultimate hunger strike of Irish political figure, Bobby Sands. This sounds like bleak subject matter, and it is, but McQueen’s film surprises by getting under the skin (literally) of the Bobby Sands experience and creating a film that maximizes every available tool in the cinema toolbox. Image and sound are obviously key to this, but even more surprising is how McQueen manages to taps our imaginations with touch and smell (particular in the first half).
More exciting and the principle reason that I left my brains on the floor of the Scotiabank theatre, is the bravery and invention in the film. Here’s a movie in which the first and third acts are virtually dialogue-free and when it’s time to introduce dialogue, McQueen lets a 20-minute or so discussion unfold naturally in real time from almost one camera position. One long take with two dazzling actors. The sequence is hypnotic in a way that reminded me of Cuaran’s single-shot sequences in Children of Men, even without the visual flare. Michael Fassbinder, as Bobby Sands, is a revelation.
This movie deserves a lot more thought and discussion which will most certainly come in time. In the meantime, this is a film that I expect will hit the art-houses in a big, big way in the months to come and should be at the top of most top-10 lists at the end of the year. An unbelievable atomic bomb of a movie.
[Worth mentioning: Danny Boyle was sitting behind me during this screening and could be heard to say, “Screw this punk!! Who does he think he is? I made Trainspotting for chrissakes!! Trainspotting!!!)
***
Nick & Nora’s Infinite Playlist ~ Nick & Nora didn’t work for me. I’m at a loss to explain exactly why; the individual pieces were charming enough and I’m a big fan of both Michael Cera and Kat Dennings. Nevertheless, the pieces didn’t stick together and I just couldn’t fall in with what was happening.
Crap, maybe I’m just getting old. (Hey you kids! Get off my lawn!!)
***
Vinyan ~ Never have I seen an audience take so long to begin their weak applause at the end of a film. Or seen a group of people move so quickly to get out of the theatre before a Q&A.
The next time someone tells you that there’s nothing more precious than the sound of children laughing, introduce them to a copy of Vinyan. I braced myself for this one. I sort of expected the worst kind of ride. The subject matter surrounds the search for a lost child, swept up by the 2006 tsunami but believed by his mother to be alive. Not fun stuff for a parent to watch but it turns out that I even underestimated the horror. The journey into the jungle that the parents undergo would send Klaus Kinski running in terror. Heart of Darkness, indeed.
What’s remarkable about the film, and I would be reluctant to recommend it to anyone but the hard-core, is that unlike most thrillers, this one starts at the bottom and digs through the basement floor. The story begins 6 months after the child has already been lost and the parents are already ragged with grief. The opening scenes, tracking a tour guide willing to navigate, are already tough to sit through before the movie even begins to ratchet up the anxiety. When it does, the downward spiral is so extreme and so terrible that the final scenes of the movie seem altogether dislodged from reality. Nightmare reality. This would be an easy film to market as an out-and-out horror film, but I don’t think it’s horror in a traditional sense.
The movie unfolds like a punch in the face. Leaving the theatre, I overheard a group of people actually remarking that they covered their ears and eyes for stretches. After all, the film is shot as though with a found camera, ugly and muddy throughout, following characters so greasy that it’s a wonder their clothes don’t slide off. The aural assault is even more extreme. The director forgoes traditional soundtrack music for what must be hard feedback; the electronic pops and screams would make Aphex Twin uncomfortable. This screeching soundtrack pops up throughout the film and just contributes to the torture, and at moments the film feels a bit like a death-metal album, overwhelming the brain with information and distress.
And that’s that.
Now who, after reading this, wouldn’t be excited to watch the film? Like I said – recommended for the hard-core only.
***
The Sky Crawlers ~ I go into most anime expecting the same sort of experience: visual spectacle with empty (or impenetrable) plotting. The Sky Crawlers is no exception. Populated with a handful of dazzling aerial battles, groovy CG tech and some genuinely masterful character animation, the film unfortunately hangs on a story that is half-explained, illogical and uninspired. My best approximation of the film is this: an ongoing war is engaged over Europe between companies contracted to fight (for what I’m not sure). The pilots in the war are eternally youthful (which is tough to distinguish in anime-style) and cannot be killed unless in combat. The leap from real-world logic is never really fleshed out apart from a nod to some genetic engineering and as a result, it’s tough to identify the rules of what’s happening here. Worse still, all of the mechanics of the story depend on buying into the tedious existence and emptiness of the characters which is frankly half-baked.
Not really recommended unless you love brief but spectacular CG-infused dog-fights. And if you like those, you’d be better off sticking with Battlestar Galactica.
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