PIFF Odds and Ends
I finished the Portland International Film Festival yesterday with David Gordon Green's "All the Real Girls". Green made his film debut in 2000 with the lush, atmospheric and meditative "George Washington". While that film flowed freely between imagery and narrative, "All the Real Girls" is more structured, but shares the same dreamy quality. Paul (Paul Schneider) has a reputation in a small North Carolina mill town for loving and leaving every girl he comes in contact with. Then he meets Noel (Zooey Deschanel), his best friend's 18 year old sister, fresh from boarding school. They fall in love, but not without painful problems to resolve. Paul, who wants this relationship to be about more than sex, cautiously spends time with Noel, letting romance blossom, while Noel (a virgin) feels an onslaught of biological need to be physical with Paul, despite their idealistic leanings towards romance. The film plays out slowly and deliberately, just like their relationship should, and Green has a good ear for how they awkwardly express their feelings towards eachother. It is not because of their economic and social background that the inhabitants of "All the Real Girls" struggle with being descriptive in speech; in fact their natural and plain conversations betray their awareness of large issues in life that are difficult to explain even with big words. "All the Real Girls" came as close as any film I've seen towards capturing the feeling of intense young love, including the terror of knowing how much it will hurt if it ends. It has been said that it is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Paul says that he wishes Noel had never existed at one point. Another character replies that he knows that is not true, and Paul will just have to take his word for it. Truer words were never spoken.
***
Very briefly, I'd like to recommend a few of the movies I watched at PIFF. Some are more accessible than others (both materially and artistically), but recommended nonetheless.
Man on the Train -- This might be my favorite overall. I'm sure it will be available on DVD, not so sure about widespread thatrical release. The characterizations and performances here are top-notch, which elevates the material to beautifully whimsical levels. Leconte is in top form, using colors and music to paint his story elegantly. What begins almost in the form of a western (stranger gets off a train in a small town with a bag full of guns) evolves into a story of friendship, and transcends that into a philosophical rumination. Lovely movie.
Dazzling -- I'll admit that I have a weakness for films that explore love-as-happiness transcending the solipsism and lonliness of our lives. "Dazzling" is just such an example. Its non-linear construction encourages the viewer to make connections, rather than simply follow the story. Unlike other movies where the only question is whether boy gets girl, Dazzling asks for our participation and provides no answers, particularly the question of whether our destinies are supernaturally orchestrated in some way (see my longer review for details).
Japon -- Definitely the most challenging and mysterious film I saw at PIFF. As I promised before, I will provide my review and interpretation of the film, as I think it can only be interpreted, nothing more. (See finished review below)
Russian Ark -- A technical marvel, and a one-of-a-kind experience. Plays as a nostolgic tribute to a more civilized time. As a traveller observes, Europeans are "democrats who mourn the monarchy". That pretty much sums it up.
Monday Morning -- A factory worker lives by unending routine, working in a factory every day, coming home to an indifferent family. One day he leaves his French village on a whim and travels on a journey, ending up in Venice. Dialogue is spare and utilitarian, but a few truths are brought to the surface in this comedy of Homeric travel and familial roles in the otherwise lonely void of life. A running gag is that all the male characters constantly drink and smoke. If you enjoy these vices as well, you might find yourself, as I did, jonesing for cigs and wine throughout the two-hour running time.
All the Real Girls -- See my review above. Such an authentic and natural portrayal of young love, it really resonates with anyone who has been there.
***
The following is the review I started after watching "Japon". I have edited and finished it, but left it mostly in it's original, visceral and personal form.
During the course of a particularly restless night, I was suddenly awoken by a feeling of disorientation unlike any I had felt before. I felt disconnected from identity, like a brain floating in space. Sure, I knew I was awake and made of flesh and blood, but I did not know who or where I was. I had no memory, only sentience. Gradually my identity, my very life, came back to me but it had been a fearful experience. My restlessness was no doubt the product of unceasing mental activity, focused and meditative on the subject and mood of a film I had watched earlier in the evening, "Japón". During the film, I grappled with it's meaning, having begun the experience in high anticipation. By the end, I was left emotionally cold. In fact, it was essentially devoid of emotion. The only way I could describe it, as I filed out of the theatre, was existential. Thats still an adequate description, but there was more to it than that. Frustrated by it's obliqueness, I read other reviews to get a fresh perspective. As I read, I became more interested in the iedas that had been on screen, yet out of my range of perception. I read that it was both "visceral" and "philosophical". I liked that. I opted to call "Japon" both "bold" and "existential". It's themes were undoubtedly life and death, but presented in voyeuristic raw form. Of course, other reviewers attacked it for its length, its pacing, for being pretentious. Realizing that critics either loved it or attacked it, I decided that you could not simply like it or dislike it: there was no right or wrong interpretation of what was on screen, only the interpretation itself. Thats what I have chosen to do. I want to talk about the movie itself, and then give my interpretation of it. Perhaps I've given it a compliment already, by describing the film as absolutely* unintreperatable.
*I use the definition of 'absolute' as a value, not as an intensive.
Review
What frustrated me about "Japon" was that it was uninterpretable. I had high expectations walking in from the synopsis, but I did not know what to expect. The facts are these: "Japon" is the debut feature from Carlos Reygadas, and runner-up for the Camera d'Or at Cannes. There has been considerable buzz about the movie from the art-house crowd. The title has nothing to do with what happens in the film; there is no direct reference to anything Japanese, but I believe the choice of title is correct: any title that attempted to explain the movie would have failed. The film begins with a sequence on a Mexican highway that is an obvious homage to Tarkovsky's "Solaris" (Reygadas' visual style is certainly influenced by the Russian auteur). A man in his 50's or 60's (Alejandro Ferretis), lame-footed with a cane, has decided to travel away from the city to commit suicide. He asks a small boy who is helping his grandfather hunt birds the way to a remote canyon village. This long sequence occurs about ten minutes before the title card even appears. What follows is a slow chronicle of the suicidal painter receiving boarding at the home of an old widow named Ascen (Magdelena Flores). Their friendship grows as the man (referred to as El Hombre in the credits) learns that Ascen is being cheated out of her home by an unscrupulous nephew who wants the stones her barn is made of. El Hombre loses motivation to kill himself, and finds a new will to live by helping Ascen keep her home. His reinvigoration eventually manifests itself as sexual desire, and he makes a proposition of "intercourse" to Ascen, leading to an awkward coupling of the two main characters. Throughout "Japon" are images of death and life: the beak of a recently decapitated bird's head moves on the ground; horses mate in an long, unrestrained sequence, El Hombre collapses next to the bloated corpse of a dead horse while the camera encircles them, pulling further and further away as the canyon walls seem to stretch towards infinity. The tones are bleached-out and grainy, but respect the harsh natural landscape. The camera has no definite role in the film: there are long, contemplative takes of the world about El Hombre and candid voyeuristic POV shots. At one point, as the drunken workers who are dismantling Ascen's barn take a break, one of them directly refers to the film crew that is present. All this leads up to a virtuoso final shot, where the camera glides forward along railroad tracks, all the while spinning around and revealing mysterious evidence of a horrendous tractor accident, giving glimpses of bodies and smoldering wreckage and the stones of Ascen's barn, finally stopping on one last piece of information that is both inevitable and ambiguous. Most of the movie is appropriately scored with well selected classical music that accentuates the images on-screen. There is little more I can say about "Japon"--it has to be experienced firsthand. The film is certainly not designed for all audiences, and was never intended that way. But if you are patient and open-minded, you too can walk away with an interpretation of your own.