My first movie on Sunday was Hold Me Tight, Let Me Go, a documentary about a school for troubled children. C and I were running a little behind schedule, so we got to our seats a touch late, but I'm really glad we made an effort to get there - it was a really involving film, and I enjoyed seeing the teachers deal with the spitting and swearing, getting the kids to trust them and helping them work out why they felt the way they did, and how to deal with it. It was really nice to get glimpses of the parents too, and seeing the teachers talking to and interacting with them.
There were many moments that stick in my mind. One was a kid who found it really hard to sit still, and was really excited to be having lunch with his mum; but he had a printed list of questions (that he'd obviously worked out beforehand) that he wanted to ask her, mostly about his Dad (who she had separated from some time ago, and had lost contact with). He would attack the potatoes, peas and crumbed chicken cutlets for a couple of seconds, and then carefully read out his question, while his little sister clambered around on the seat next to him, and his Mum listened carefully, and seemed to think before answering. Another was a teacher's conference about a second boy, where one of the teachers was describing his home life - his youngest brother had cancer, he was a middle child, and his father had admitted to not liking him very much. We saw them dealing with his problems, and the careful, tentative way he interacted with his father; and we saw him after a weekend with his parents, where they had a book to write down all the good things he did, and his joy at earning a CD player for his room - him grinning while playing "Bright Sunshiny Day" is the image the film went out on.
One weird thing that we noticed was that they looked in detail at about four kids, but they were all boys, and there were definitely girls at the school. However, it may simply be a matter of who they were able to get permission to film.
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I knew I'd seen The Red Balloon a long, long time ago, but I didn't really remember anything about it. Watching it as an adult who has now visited Paris (albeit very briefly), it was an odd mix of familiar and strange. I think it still works well as a kid's film, although I suspect that there are some messages there that wouldn't get into a kid's film today - for example, the end sequence would probably have to be changed in case children tried to emulate it. And someone would probably insist for someone in the gang of kids who terrorise the kid to have a change of heart, to act as a role model for kinds who are in gangs. Maybe there would be an anti-drug message slipped in there as well; though given it's a story about a red balloon that follows people around, maybe not. Anyway, I could easily imagine showing it to a kid today.
On the other hand, I might think carefully before showing a kid The White Mane. I'm pretty sure that the footage will end up as nightmare fuel for some of the kiddies in the audience, since they showed the titular horse fighting for supremacy with another horse for several minutes - viciously kicking and biting, with blood from the bites visible on the flanks. Or the boy riding his horse, chasing a rabbit, and then getting off and chasing it on foot; people saw it as play, and went "ooh!" when the boy nearly fell on the rabbit getting off his horse, which meant there was an audible emotional clunk when we cut to him roasting the rabbit over an open fire. And the ending was really interesting, since the narration basically said that the horse and boy swam off to a land where men and horses can be friends; but watching as an adult, you know that what they mean is, they're both swept out to sea, drown, and die. It's weird to imagine watching the movie when you were too young to understand that, and then re-watching it again later and having this movie change from a nice ending to a downer.
There were lots of cool things in the film - the toddler who was very nervous when offered a turtle to play with, and then we see crawling over the turtle and obviously having the time of their lives; or when big brother is hammering a nail with a rock, so the toddler decides they'll do it too, or carrying a load of hay and grass twice their size to feed the horse. And there were many other glimpses of life that you wouldn't see in a kid's film, like the pet flamingo (which are freaky-looking birds) or seeing the bones of the fish that the kid eats. And both the kid and the horse had emo hair! :) But I would be a bit more hesitant about showing this film to a preschooler... which maybe means that I'm buying into the idea of coddling kids, too.
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The next movie was Persepolis, which was definitely not a kid's movie, for all that it was animated. Based on the graphic novels, it was very good indeed, with an excellent use of "Eye of the Tiger" during the main character's battle with depression. There were lots of really good little moments, especially in the parts where we see her as a little girl; in retrospect, it reminds me of Kate Beaton's comics with her younger self. A really interesting look at life inside Iran, particularly at a time when some elements within the US so obviously want to go to war with it.
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C then headed home, and I headed into The Counterfeiters, a film about a Jewish master counterfeiter who was recruited along with a group of other concentration camp prisoners to create bogus Allied currency, initially to flood their economies, but later simply to support the German war effort. They looked at the ethics of working with the Germans to survive, whether a single person's conscience should be allowed to condemn four others to certain death, and how people deal with being treated (relatively) well when they know that their family is being starved and killed by the people they're working for.
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And then it was time for Ashes of Time Redux, a very beautiful Asian epic, made slightly confusing by the fact that they changed narrators several times (and I didn't pick it up until some time during the second swap), and because two of the main leads had quite similar faces. (So did two of the minor characters, but that turned out to be because they were the same person with a split personality.)
Beautiful, rich colours and great shots, slightly confusing fight sequences, a convoluted storyline (plus several storyline-lets), and several tragic love stories (plus at least one happy one).
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The next day was Monday, first day of C's holidays, and a beautiful blue sky; we caught the bus in, and watched No End In Sight, a documentary about how the Bush administration managed the aftermath of the Iraq war. The number of steps that were disastrous, and that they were advised were disastrous, and should have been obvious were disastrous, almost beggars belief. Choosing to ignore the number of people that the army says that they'd need to keep the peace and establish a government in Iraq, simply because they "can't imagine" that you'd need more people to do that than to win the initial war? Throwing out all Ba'ath party members, so that basically all public servants no longer have jobs, or hopes of getting jobs? Disbanding the army, automatically putting huge numbers of armed, trained, unemployed and pissed-off men in the streets for the militias to sweep up? Fail to declare martial law after the war, so that all the goodwill is frittered away and looting and lawlessness become the norm? Make the administration of Iraq a treat to be doled out to new graduates whose parents are players in the Bush political machine, keeping them there for nine months and shipping them back just as they're starting to learn to job? Etc, etc, etc...
One of the people involved in the initial, hastily assembled team (who was fired for being "too difficult to get along with" by the new Rumsfeld appointee) said that the original group had joked that there were 500 ways to get the reconstruction wrong, and only two or three to get it right; but that they hadn't imagined that they'd try all 500 wrong ways first.
A really good documentary; but in many ways, a very depressing one.
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We wandered over to the Film Archive, and chatted about the film; then C wandered off into the glorious sunshine, and I went in and saw Huloo, who is a Chinese immigrant, Tai Chi master, fisheries expert, and generally interesting character. I think that one of the most interesting things about this film was that he wasn't that big a figure - he'd done seminal work in the field of dating eels by their osteoliths, and developed several technical innovations in the art of net design, and sailed a Chinese junk to America, just missing out on getting to compete in a certain famous yacht race, and was probably the first person to teach Tai Chi in NZ; but they were all achievements on a human level, and that, I think, was what I found interesting.
I think I would have liked a little more context about what was happening in the world around him. For example, how the experience he and his family had as Asian immigrants to Christchurch that early compared to other immigrant families, or more information about how fishing research worked in NZ, or... actually, none of that was necessary for the portrait of the man, but maybe I would have liked their picture of the man to be more of a window into the world he lived in. But maybe talking about the documentary that it isn't, and wasn't intended to be, isn't that helpful.
All in all, I liked it, but wouldn't call it essential viewing.
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Barefoot Cinema: The Art And Life of Cinematographer Alun Bollinger, at that same venue, was next. Another documentary about the life of a New Zealander, this one famous for being the backbone of many classic Kiwi films by being the one who actually set up and/or captured the images. However, while I liked the stuff about the films he has been involved with, one of the nicest things about this film was how they showed his family, from the extensive interviews where his wife turned up (both with him, and alone; they had only known each other three days when they married!), to the serious discussion of the suicide of one of their sons. It felt quite a privilege to meet "Al-Bol and Hel-Bol", and he seems a genuinely nice man.
To go off on a slight tangent - looking at their early life in a commune, it made me think about how un-counter-culture I am. If I had been a young man at that time, I would probably have been doing the same thing I did in real life, and been at university. (I'm not sure what I would have ended up studying, though - if my father was still an optometrist, I guess that's what I would have studied, though I'd probably still have done psychology, and something nice and impractical, like anthropology.) Anyone have thoughts about what the 70s version of you would be doing?
This was a good documentary about someone who seems a good man, and I felt I learned quite a bit about NZ cinema, too.
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My next film was O'Horten. A Norwegian train driver, Od Horton, has to retire, and ends up wandering around at a loose end, having... adventures might not be the right word for being accidentally locked in a public bath and ending up having to go home in a pair of red high-heel boots because your shoes have gone missing.
Actually, I'm not sure there's a one-word summary for that.
The film ambles along at a leisurely pace, and there are plenty of incidents that are more to do with illustrating life going on around him, than to advance the "plot", such as it is. There is one very nice sequence where rain has made the roads slippery with ice. Horton is clinging to a pole, and a man on a fallen motorcycle slides calmly down the sloping road in front of him. A man crosses the street with a fish tied like a handbag (at the head and the tail), and explains that his wife has sent him out for salmon, since they have guests for dinner. He recrosses the street, and a bald man with glasses in a black business suit slides past sitting down with his briefcase, as if this is how he commutes home every day; he glowers briefly at Horton for no particular reason.
Now that I write it, it sounds much more Lynchian that it actually was; please remove any unintended undertones of menace, since they weren't there in the original. :)
I can say with some confidence that my sister Ellen will like this movie, since a Citroen DS features prominently; however, the owner does describe it as "a toad", which may put her off.
There was definitely something interesting being said about age, and what you do with yourself when all the routines that define your life are taken away (because of health, or retirement), and about regret. I was pleased to find out I can apparently recognise Burgen, though "hilly, raining and Norwegian" was a fairly big give-away. And the main actor was superlative, and I might see if I can find other things he's been in.
I learned several things from this movie. One is that 67 year old Norwegian train drivers would be the greatest cat-burglars in the world, if they could only avoid lighting pipes in the middle of airfields or attracting the attention of small boys with drum-kits. The second is that driving with someone who likes to pull their hat over their eyes is dangerous, because you may end up having to look after a large dog and steal some skis. And thirdly, sometimes you have to do things that are scary.
Oh, and that this is a good movie.
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As I was coming out of the movie, I bumped into Ellen's friend Mia, and had a bit of a chat with her; it was really weird to see her, since I've seen her in a number of movies, and I knew she now lives in Auckland. Ellen, if you read this, you better make sure you see her soon, since she has a surprise for you! :)
I then went into Jar City, where I was joined by the lovely Jenni. She had seen O'Horton previously, so we compared notes; she likes it, too.
Jar City is essentially a police procedural concerning a murder, which turns out to have sprung from other, previously concealed crimes. As the tangled web unravels, and we begin to see how all the piece fit, we also get to see a cynical, canny detective agonize over his daughter's problems, that only she can fix.
I really liked the banter between the police, and the way that it turned out that the central mystery sprang from the sort of accidental revelation that an in-depth study of the genetics of a population can bring to light. This is one of the reasons that genetic counselling is such a tricky business - what if a routine genetic test shows up an infidelity? Or if the data can yield up that information, if one goes looking?
Again, I learned many things from this movie, such as the fact that Norwegian roads apparently make the sound of a rich male choir whenever you drive cross-country on them, and that the best way to find a historical rape victim if you're a police detective is to go up to the front door and, without introducing yourself or mentioning that you're from the police, asking the little old lady who answers, "Have you ever been raped?"
The booklet write-up mentioned something like "CSI on a shoestring budget", and I can see that - going to the archives meant talking to a person who came back with a bunch of paper files, and at the scene of the crime evidence was going into plain paper pages instead of fancy clear plastic ziplocks. And in the end, they crack the case with legwork more than labwork, which is probably more true to life than the CSI depiction of the world.
I liked this film. I'm not sure I'll buy it on DVD, but I'd happily watch it again.