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From the first frame Silent Light wraps you in warm, naturalistic cinematography. The opening ten minutes prepare the viewer for the type of intense mise-en-scene that the film will bring. The screen opens to blackness and the sound of crickets. Stars slowly trickle onto the screen as the camera pans the sky. The image settles on the horizon as the sun begins to rise behind two silhouetted trees. The natural sounds of this lush plain turn the serene landscape into a tormented portrait of the land, and ultimately of the characters within the film.
Cows begin to moo, and birds chirp frantically, all off screen. Suddenly the mooing begins to sound painful, as though the cows are screaming. The sound continues through the cut as you see the family in their kitchen heads bowed in prayer. They sit silently as the retching sound of the cows, the sereneness of the birds are crickets are joined by the incessant ticking of the clock on the wall. Johan (Cornelio Wall), the father of the family, raises his head after many minutes of silent prayer and says “Amen.” Thus begins Reygadas (Japon, Battle in Heaven) beautiful opus. A simplistic, yet incredibly nuanced meditation on redemption and family, reminiscent of Tarkovsky or the great family dramas of Bergman.
The story tracks the internal life of Johan, a married Mennonite man, with seven children. Johan has fallen in love with another woman, Marianne (Maria Pankratz), and is tormented because he believes that God wants him to be with Marianne, but he fears the consequences of leaving his wife, Esther (Miriam Toews), and children.
Reygadas worked for months in an attempt to get actual Mennonites from the Mexican community to play the roles in this film, continuing his tradition of using only non-actors. Traditionally Mennonites believe that a photographic reproduction of people is immoral. In the end he was able to use a cast entirely comprised of people from the Mennonite community and shot the film in their village.
With shots that last for up to ten minutes, unedited, the film takes it’s time throughout the nearly two and half hours of running time. The cinematography creates the perfect tone for the story. The tortoise paced tracking shots that define almost every scene often reveal more about the tormented nature of the characters than the dialogue ever does. The visual themes and tropes dominate the screen with their nuance, making the film an esoteric experience in cinematic art. A notion that Reygadas does not deny as he has frequently cited his belief that cinema should not be literature, or story, but something else, just cinema.
The result is a beautiful lyrical film. Reygadas best film to date. As usual he pulls engaging, heart-felt performances from these non-actors. Especially impressive is Wall who plays the enduringly confused Johan. There is an endearing subtlety in his ability to oscillate from the divided and simple man of the opening scene to the man who drives his pickup in circles around a friend while belting a Mexican love song out of his window. His great performance is part of what makes this film pull together into the gripping film that it is. Silent Light has more than earned every accolade heaped upon it, and Carlos Reygadas has again proved that he is a filmmaker to watch, while further separating himself from the rest of Mexican cinema.
Does anyone here use the Netflix community features? I've been using them a bit more recently and I'm curious if anyone else has been utilizing the community features they've started offering, or if most of you are ignoring them...or maybe you don't use Netflix...
Issue 5 of InDigest is up and online. So listen up best of the net. Maybe the first four weren't good enough for your hotsy totsy awards, but, oh, is Issue 5 something special. In the new issue we've got a gallery of sculpture from Alonso Sierralta, new poetry from Meggie Elder, and new fiction from New Yorkian Meakin Armstrong. We've added a new column called Is That Cowardly? where Jess Grover takes a look at new poetry. Also there are new columns from Bedside Stacks and Dorkolopogous.
Our big news, aside from the new issue, is we went clothes shopping and now we've got a whole new look. And damn we look good. Look at us.
With the Chinese economy in boom times it seems as though there has been an influx of quality independent film exports coming from the thriving country. Chinese filmmakers are fearlessly tackling difficult issues within the often turbulent and troublesome codes imposed by the communist government of China. Throughout 2007 it seemed that despite the barrage of Chinese films hitting English language countries the biggest news coming from the Chinese cinemas was frequently surrounding the film censors: their decision to cut out the scenes with Chow Yun Fat from the third installment of the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, their decision to not allow Rush Hour 3 be one of their few cinematic imports despite the immense popularity of Jackie Chan, and most recently their decision to not allow The Forbidden Kingdom in Chinese theaters, despite it being filmed in China and the appeal of it being Jackie Chan and Jet Li’s first film together.
Aside from all of this to do over the Chinese censors, and the difficulty Hong Kong directors are having filming in mainland China, a new filmmaker has popped up and is sure to be one of the stars of a new generation of Chinese filmmakers. Yu Li is quickly becoming one of China’s most intriguing and artful filmmaker. Making headlines this past year as she went through a “painful” process to get her most recent film exported to the Berlin International Film Festival. Lost in Beijing, was a beautiful piece of art, winning awards at festivals all over the world (read the review here).
This week Yu Li’s 2005 film, Dam Street, is getting a formal DVD release in the US and Britain through First Run Features and the Global Film Initiative. Anyone who saw Lost in Beijing won’t be disappointed in Dam Street. The film is the story of a young girl, living in 1980s China, under strict moral codes that bind the community. She becomes pregnant and is subsequently thrown out of school. With her family (just her mother and herself) ostracized from the community, she is forced to give up the child, which she is later told died during birth. Ten years later she is working as a singer in a local song and dance troupe that is trying to perform traditional Chinese songs (which meet considerable resistance as most patrons seem to prefer more contemporary “popular” music). She meets a ten-year-old boy who falls in love with her and tries to protect her from the critical eyes of the community.
Dam Street is a bold film. Beautifully rendered with sweeping cinematography and lush colors, much in the style of Zhang Yimou. The film begs the question of where community ends and the individual begins. By sexualizing the acts of Yun (Liu Yi), the main character, she begins to pry into the roots of the moral code enforced by the government and accepted by the community. It tears Yun apart, yet she internalizes her torment, and takes on others pain as well. She finds it within her, throughout the film, to do what is best for that abstract concept of community – which she never fully realizes the benefits of. All the while maintaining an oddly western sense of independence, in which she refuses to marry or to penalize others who unknowingly helped her through her youth, despite the ultimate pain it brings to her. This quiet meditation on sexuality and community crosses borders, becomes important on separate plains. It provides insight into the turbulent changes rocking Chinese culture and seems to ask more human questions about the responsibility of the individual to the community on inverted terms. It is provocative, shocking, and, despite it’s oddness, painfully real.
Yu Li’s films have grabbed me over and over. Well, I guess only three times, since she’s only made three narrative features. Nonetheless, she is a filmmaker to watch. One who is testing the limits of what can be made in the mainland, utilizing non-actors to create a sense of realism that harkens back to Italy in the 40s and 50s (up until Lost in Beijing, which includes many stars of the Chinese cinema). Yu Li is making powerful, personal films, in a way that makes you realize that the personal film of the 60s and 70s in America has all but disappeared on these terms.
Recently reviewed this new documentary on growing up in China and the struggles that the new economy and social structure has brought to peoples lives. You can read it here. I'll actually have some reviews up here shortly, [insert generic excuse as to why I don't do things when I say I will here].
I recently did a review of both War Made Easy & Steep.
War Made Easy is a new documentary based on the Norman Solomon's book of the same name. The documentary focuses not on just the Iraq War and what is happening in the Middle East right now, but more directly on Presidential rhetoric of war. How the White House has rehashed the same rhetoric over and over since Vietnam to garner the support of the nation for war. It also takes that analysis into how that forces the media to take the side of the government, how providing a "round" analysis of the pre-war stages becomes perceived as un-patriotic rather than actually providing facts, and how in those moment we are lead to believe providing good journalism involves interviewing military officials, but that is part of the pentagon plan for controlling the information the public gets. If the media believes that the only source is the military, and they are obviously pro-war, then the government can take control of the media, in a matter of speaking
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On a recent trip to the MoMA4 I had the chance to see a variety of wonderful short film works (this has nothing to do with film in Minnesota, but I’m rolling with it). As anyone who reads the blog will know I find Jeremy Blake’s work very interesting and I had the chance to see Angel Dust in person, which is entrancing and odd, with it’s digital reproduction of futuristic ski lodge.
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Trailer of the Day:
Step Brothers, the new comedy from director Adam McKay (Anchorman) starring Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly, written by McKay and Ferrell. I assume there is next to no plot here, but that's not why anyone goes to see Ferrell or Reilly, so it will probably be as expected
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On the heels of No Country for Old Men’s big sweep at the Oscars I thought I would take a moment to note the rising popularity of the McCarthy adaptation. What McCarthy adaptations you ask? There has only been All the Pretty Horses and No Country. But with the success of No Country for Old Men, and McCarthy Pulitzer this past year his novels have become production gold.
I’m slightly opposed to this trend, I’m a fan of McCarthy’s work, let’s skip objectivity, I’m a fan and don’t want to have these novels ruined, or worse yet, bastardized. The track record provides little insight into whether or not these adaptations can work. All the Pretty Horses (until recently) was his most commercially successful work, the Billy Bob Thorton movie adaptation was less than successful. No Country for Old Men was arguably one of his weakest novels; it tended towards a little bit more simplistic structure and never quite comes together the way, say, Blood Meridian or The Road ever do. Which, oddly, lent itself to a much better screen adaptation. The Coen Brothers found the heart of the novel, the impotence of Sheriff Bell, and used that as the focal point of the adaptation (thus the much debated final scene of the film
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