The next day started with Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. I ended up slipping in about 30 seconds late, but that didn't seem to hurt. I know that Jenni was reluctant to go to another serial killer movie, but I'm not sure that's what I'd call this; it felt more like a fable. A fairly gruesome fairytale, if you will. A boy is born is the fish markets with a magic sense of smell, but his mother is killed for abandoning him... and then death follows him in all his interactions. He becomes obsessed with preserving smells; in particular, preserving the scent of a young woman who he accidentally kills (or rather, the scent of young woman-ness).
I liked the movie; it did most of the right things, including using voiceovers well. (I wonder whether voiceovers work better in these sort of movies, where people tend to be archetypes rather than characters.) I'd watch it again, even though the end was a bit upsetting. (Not wrong, just upsetting... poor Alan Rickman's character!)
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Then it was off to the documentary that Jenni had already seen and recommended, My Kid Could Paint That. This was about the 4 year-old who was being a touted as a genius modern painter; the documentary maker started to film when everyone thought that everything was above-board, and had been filming for about six months when 60 Minutes accused the little girl (Marla) of being a fraud, and saying that the father (who maintains throughout the film that he simply prepares the canvas and the paint) at the very least actively coaches her, and may in fact "touch up" the paintings, or even do them from scratch.
After watching the documentary, what appeared to be going on? (Taking into account, as the filmmaker himself pointed out, that editing can have a profound effect on the story we see.) Well, the gallery owner came across as being prepared to do whatever it took to get money, and as having a real chip on his shoulder about "modern art". The mother appeared to be pretty much completely honest, and a bit unhappy about all the pressure and fame, even before the unpleasantness began. And the father... at a best guess, did help a bit in terms of direction, even if he never put brush to canvas; but he painted himself into a corner (ho ho) by denying that he did anything at all, and now is unable to back down.
The film-maker took questions afterwards, and was very frank about how much his choice about what footage to use would have influenced how we saw this story, and this family. It was something he agonized about, he said; but he ended up having to make choices based on what he felt was representative, and then live with those choices. I also asked the "does it matter" question, and he felt quite strongly that it did, because with a modern art piece you are buying a process and a story as much as a physical piece of canvas; and even with traditional art, buying a "Goldie" by the chap who is living in Foxton when you're told you're buying a piece of NZ history is fraud.
I thought that this was a really interesting documentary about a really cute kid. I'd happily watch it again.
* * *
The Unpolished was a film about a girl whose family give her no boundaries (her father is a drug dealer, her mother kind of drifts, they both sleep around), and she tries to seek ways and places to fit in. She wanders into people's houses and steals pictures so she can put herself into normal family scenes; she lies about her life, about how she's the daughter of a diplomat; she does her best get into the local school, at first by just coming in, sitting down, and hoping no-one will comment.
This was an interesting film, in that it felt all over the place -- scenes often didn't end where you'd expect them to, and events that you might expect to have big consequences just didn't. For example, you see some of the layabouts throw the girl in the pool, and you don't hear her break the surface or breathing; you cut to her mother, getting up, looking slightly concerned, and you think oh ho, this is will be the "Save the girl from drowning, people get yelled at" scene. But nope, they just cut away, and look, there's the girl, and she seems fine.
I ended up liking this film, but I probably wouldn't watch it again.
* * *
Then it was off to the Film Archive to see the doco Comrades In Dreams. I really, really enjoyed this film, though I'm not sure I could tell you why; I was smiling for pretty much all of it, even though there were other emotions too -- compassion for the American theatre owner who was doing three or four jobs so she wouldn't have to sit and think about how lonely she is, for example. Or when the North Koreans start crying when they remember the death of their Glorious Leader... I'm not sure exactly what I felt then.
Or there was the surprise when the owner of the traveling Indian cinema, when he declared that marrying for love was worse than stabbing 100 people to death in his village.
Actually, I was kind of surprised that the Indian culture seemed the most alien to me. The North Korean cinema (which we saw clips from) is a bit heavy-handed and message-heavy, but it had a leavening of humour, and I found it easy to relate to the theater-owner's life-stories. The Indian cinema, on the other hand... well, for instance, they can't show any Western films like Titanic, because, it was explained, the villagers wouldn't understand it -- they only wanted stories they know, in settings they know, so they can go home and tell the story to their family. But the situation was completely different in Burkina Faso, where the street vendor talked about how much she empathised with Rose, and her total commitment.
There are lots of stuff that I'd like to mention -- the North Korean film with the kimchi scientist, the chat that the Burkina Faso theater owners had with their wives under the tree, the wierd moments while the Indian guy discussed what things he wanted his family to look for in a woman, the American owner rollerblading, the Koreans talking about how the female theater operator got the guy together with his wife, and how she met her husband. But I can rant about that stuff in person.
I really liked this documentary a lot, and wish the makers, and all those featured in it, all the best.
* * *
I think the reason I didn't really enjoy The Night of the Sunflowers was because I went in expecting a very different film. For some reason, I had this idea in my brain that it would be a horror, and in those films, the good guy and bad guy are pretty distinct -- you've got the good guys, who act as anchors to the camera, and have bad things happen to them; and you've got bad guys, who are gradually revealed. That was not this movie -- instead, you find out how horrible most people can be, given the right circumstances.
The story is told as a series of sections, each with its own title -- "The Competent Authorities", or "The Old Guard"; the focal character changes in each section, but it's generally someone we've met, or at least seen, in a previous section; while each section is a slice of linear time, a new section generally jumped back in time to give us context and information about the person we're following. This was used to build tension a number of times to good effect -- you knew that a certain event was about to happen, or was happening elsewhere, and you were waiting for the section to catch up so you could see what happened next.
Looking back, it was a well-made film -- I just wasn't in the right mood to see it.
Posted by svend at August 16, 2007 10:23 PM