Previous PSFF reviews.
Today was again a three movie day. I started with “Midnight’s Children (#17). At 148 minutes it is Salman Rushdie’s adaptation of his picaresque chronicle of the early days of modern India – from 1947 to 1974. The best thing about the movie is that now I don’t have to read the book. Rushdie’s sense of irony and humor, his use of language – is a real pleasure. All the colors, chaos and magic of India is in the film – but I find his novels easier listened to or seen on the screen than read. The children born around midnight of 1947 all have special powers and can be summoned – and it is this part of the text that I find annoying – I am not sure why Rushdie needs magic to convey his critical idea – it makes the book/story more like a fairytale – whereas otherwise it would have just a touch of magical realism. If you like Rushdie, you will like this movie.
Film #18 was a police procedural cum romance, of sorts, “I, Anna”. The film becomes a touch confusing, because of constant flashbacks, which are repeated and expanded through out the film – so that at the end, it is not clear whether Anna’s relationship with the daughter is a flashback to earlier times or whether the critical incident in the movie is very recent. We start out with our attractive grandmother Anna going on a speed dating experience, where men talk about their great achievements and the women pretend to be interested. In the bathroom, a more jaded practitioner of the genre advises Anna that a way to a man’s heart is through felatio, and that is probably why her husband left her. We come back to all this several time as the plot unfolds. Next we have a dead man, and the inspector on the way to the scene of the crime, encounters Anna looking for her umbrella in the elevator. The policeman becomes attracted and eventually ends with Anna on the next speed date. As we go along, the crime, the killer and the relationship with all the connected parties we have been introduced to becomes revealed. A B-movie par excellence.
FIlm #19 was a debut, 6 years in the making, of a very attractive female graduate of NYU Film school “Una Noche” – filmed in Havana – a story of a brother and a sister and their friend – as they decide to build a raft and make their way to Miami. Life in heavily policed Havana is well shown – according to Cuban travelers in the audience. The raft eventually leaves Havana, but does not get very far. Well told story, beautifully filmed, with street selections playing all the principle roles. The film has won several prizes and our three actors, invited to the Tribecca Film Festival, never made it past Miami and our now living in Las Vegas – so they did make it out. There have been a couple of other films about leaving Cuba, that the Cuban government has permitted – not clear why, since the film, especially this one, does not flatter them – but on the other hand the escape attempts are shown as dangerous and unsuccessful. If you are interested in life in Cuba then this is is very good movie.
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I regret to confess that today I was derelict in my film watching duties and I saw only two. This mishap was cause partly by the application of the second law of festival film viewing – never watch two two hour Russian films one after another.
Thus the fifteenth film was a 110 minute directorial debut and American premiere of a Russian film “The Daughter”. In a bleak Siberian town, where drinking seems to be the main recreation lives a nice widower with a sixteen year old daughter of the title and her four year old brother. There is also an Orthodox church with its priest, his wife and son and as the movie starts his daughter’s body was just found by the river – it turns out teen-age girls are being murdered with some regularity – no rape or robbery involved – just a single blow. All of the dead girls were a bit drunk at the time of their death. The last girl to be killed, is a bit crazy and slightly promiscuous Masha who is a new girl in town and who tries to lead our daughter astray. As it turns the, the priest whose daughter was killed knows who did it, because he confessed, but being that he is a man of god and all confessions are confidential, it would be too much to ask this priest to stop the killing of young girls, by telling police who the murderer is. Fortunately someone overhears an argument between the priest and the killer and the case is solved – with disastrous social and personal consequences for the daughter and her brother. The theatre was filled to the brim, most likely because a reference to Dostoyevski appeared in the blurb about the movie. The Dostoyevski question asked several times was, why does God permit terrible things to happen to children – if you can answer this question with a semblance of logic, I will consider converting to your religion. Happily, the priest steps up to the plate in the end and accepts care of the impacted children, saving from a terrible fate in a Russian institution.
The second movie (16th) was going to be Russian/Latvian (127 min) “In the Fog” – a WWII movie. However, as I was standing in line, an Israeli director from the San Francisco Jewish Film festival told me that the movie was very slow and hard. Hard good – slow bad. Anyway that is when I remembered the second law and changed my venue.
So the 16th movie turned out to be a Norwegian/German spy movie “Two lives”. It turns out that during the dark Quisling nights, Norwegian woman and German soldiers produced about 25,000 children. Because the arian/nordic combo was so appealing to the master race, some of the children were taken back to Germany and ended up in orphanages – which were mostly in GDR. As the children turned older, they were recruited by the Stasi or Stasi took their identity, and send them back to Norway, and when they became Norwegian born citizens of that country, their travel was unrestricted and they could spy wherever there was a need for that service. Our particular spy faked being a daughter of Liv Ullman, married and had a daughter and a grandchild – she stayed in Norway for cinematic convenience. With the collapse of that wall – things started coming out with the assistance of a public interest lawyer, who else, and our spy had to confess the truth to her family after first trying a cover up. That did not end well – and that is the film in a nutshell – a bit confusing, but well worth seeing on a rainy day, when there is nothing on the TV and you don’t feel like dancing. Tomorrow I promise three movies.
