by Stryder Simms | Feb 22, 2016 | Films of Our Enemies
My initial reaction to “Sequestro Express” was revulsion. I came away with a sense of dead-end dread. After it was over, I had to go search the web for something positive about poor Venezuela. And it wasn’t difficult, especially considering their abundant rainfall feeding the rivers Orinoco and Negro.
The geographic region of Venezuela is the seventh most bio-diverse on earth. What a mother lode of security against uncertain times that is. It’s a gift that keeps on giving. Long after resources run out here, they will flow in earth’s seventh richest realm.
Another somewhat less well-known gem is that the state-run gas monopoly practically gives energy away to the citizens of that country. To fill your gas tank in Caracas costs nickels and dimes. I learned this from listening to the director’s commentary track ( included with some supplemental material found on the “Sequestro Express” DVD). Not that I support the expansion of carbon economies, but for the natural resources be treated as if they belong to everyone sounds fair to me.
Likewise, everyone acknowledges Venezuelans are a country renowned for their physical beauty. This is owed to a particularly richly diverse racial fusion. Caucasian bloodlines make up only about forty percent of its population, suggesting pure white, if there ever was such a thing, is hardly attractive by itself.
A brief Wikipedia investigation turned up another nugget. There exists this bizarre meteorological phenomenon, in a land of eternal storm, at the mouth of a river where it flows into a lake. Nowhere else on the planet, supposedly, does lightening strike so consistently than in this place. Titanic storms resound through the clouds and pound the ground, day in and out , for weeks on end. It must be one of the modern wonders. Who can imagine a more shocking plot of land? So now we have something completely different that we can zoom out to for perspective, to maintain an appreciation of that distant country, whose political ideologies clash so much with the US.
Allow me to digress momentarily. I’d like to hit pause and praise the people that help purvey rare and fine films to the public. These are the somewhat invisible agents in the supply chain such as distributors, projectionists, video storeowners and festival programmers. They deserve a fair share of credit for the education we’ve received from watching fine films.
I picked up “Sequestro Express” at Video Library, Santa Fe’s last picture show, where one can still rent movies on VHS, DVD, and Blu-Ray. Its proprietress, Lisa Harris has helped elevate the minds of her fellow humans with her curatorial savvy for over 35 years.
Thanks to her impeccable taste in foreign films, we have spent all summer looking at cinematic masterpieces from Muslims. Last year we were treated to seven great ones from one Soviet socialist. Another while back we watched thirteen of the finest Sci-Fi movies of all time. I rented most of them from Lisa Harris. Thanks Lisa for the many fine movie-watching experiences Video Library has helped provide.
Getting back to our movie, the three main obsessions in “Sequestro Express” are crime, cocaine, and Caracas. At least on the surface, this seemed like just one more gangster film not able to hold my interest. If you’ve read my posts, you know my threshold for brutality is low. Images of violence toward women are particularly not my taste. Even though I know it is cooked up just for the camera, it still won’t digest.
The scenario in this movie was so disturbing I had to turn it off after ten minutes. It made me afraid this hideous crime that’s recently taken hold in some low latitude metropolis thousands of miles to the south of here might actually be coming to a neighborhood near me real soon. Despite this, I was determined to feature a Venezuelan title this month in this series on films of our enemies, and there turned out to be so precious few from that northernmost South American nation, I eventually slid this one back in to the player and gave it another glance.
We will continue with Venezuela’s “Sequestro Express,” in the next post…
by Stryder Simms | Jan 12, 2016 | Films of Our Enemies
I’ve been feeling a need for a change of hemispheres for the next installment in this series on films of our enemies. This batch of dispatches has not been easy to write. It’s my intention not to offend anyone, but things discussed here can be taken for ways other than those intended. Even making the choice of which films are chosen for the series presents a challenge.
Who are our enemies? Terrorists are, we are taught, but terrorists come from all countries and cultures. I’m reviewing films from places that are our enemies in the eyes of the State. So I’m not the one picking sides, my government is. When I analyze films of our enemies, I’m looking for similarities more than differences. The message reinforced by all of them, as far as I’m concerned, is why can’t we be friends?
No matter where filmmakers aim their lens, the overwhelming impression is that people are people everywhere. For instance, why do we consider the thugs in this film our enemies? They appear on one hand as a potent threat, but the story invites us to look beneath appearances, so that we might even take pity on this gang of bloody Caracaqueños, sighting common enemies instead.
As the saying goes, keep your friends close and your foes closer. I was not up to date on which countries in this great, bulging planet my country’s most pissed at, so I scooped up a few low hanging statistics. There are other ways to distinguish a snake from a hiss, but “enemies of America” is something anyone could search the Internet for a list, so that’s what I did.
It goes without saying Russia and Iran are foreign countries that make American kids nervous. That Mexico is considered an enemy threat, I would not have guessed. One of our most trusted trading partners is a nemesis? The place where millions of us vacation every year, we have reason to fear? What more complicated world could there be?
Before my research, I thought surely Venezuela abided higher up the list of terrorist threats, at least, ever since the reign of Hugo Chavez. But, since he’s been out of office for a few years now, Venezuela is pretty far down, as far as risk to the US goes, according to the latest list.
Nonetheless, it makes sense to review “Sequestro Express,” in terms of criminal trends that pose potential threats to the U.S. Latin America has been more thoroughly integrated over the past several hundred years, in our culture, than the Muslim orient ever was. Religious extremists aside, what’s to stop extortionists and racketeers from places like Caracas from working their way up here, if their precious cocaine trade were to disappear.
Caracas is been ranked the world’s most violent place. A hundred violent deaths a day is not uncommon. By contrast, Chicago just recently set an extreme trend with 50- some in one particular weekend. Does that make the average Venezuelan my enemy? I doubt it. The worst character in this sordid drama could be part of a barbarian invasion or just some unlucky bloke acting out his frustration while coming under increasing economic strangulation. One of the things that shocked me in this film is the way the nihilism of the urban youth in capitalist America seems so exaggerated against the backdrop of socialist Venezuela.
The majority of drugs that leave Columbia are consumed in Venezuela. I learned that on the director’s commentary track as well. Things began to deteriorate there with an epic demand for narcotics in the US began to swell. Nevertheless, like gas, cocaine is not a high profit trade on the streets down there. Both cost about a twentieth what it does here. so kidnapping is where the money is. It’s like nab or be nabbed down there, I guess. Now, watch this movie and ask how does someone stuck in that economy steer clear of that mess?
The film’s outlook is so bleak, in terms of where the story begins and ends, I think escaping through one’s art was the best alternative director Jonathan Jakubowicz would able to come up with. Of course, not everyone can do what he did.
It’s such a human trait to undertake drastic measures when pressed. I’m composing this series to prove that the majority of us act for the common good, naturally, whenever we’re inspired to do our best. Each one of these films, in its own way, has proposed that decent folks, under too much stress, on the other hand, can be turned into kooks, leaving wreck and ruin behind to the rest.
Films like this place the sicknesses of society under a magnifying glass. Subjects reviewed on Open Channel Content are chosen to alert and inspire individual to invent remedies for whatever ills become exposed in filming these stories.
by Stryder Simms | Dec 24, 2015 | Films of Our Enemies
“a thing is a thing, not what is said of the thing” Quote on Riggin Thomsen’s dressing room mirror.
The quote above was fished out of the opening frames from this month’s flick. It announces the evening’s match up, ordinary reality vs. fame. Through that lens we’ll catch a glimpse of what the main character is aiming at and perspective for his transformation in the end. The subtitle of the movie is “The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance.” The question we must divine for ourselves is, whose ignorance? His, hers, or ours?
Forging onward in this series called “Films of Our Enemies,” we rack focus on a recent hit by a Hispanic that lots of us consider hip. But even if his films don’t meet your test, or if to equate ticket sales, with love, is too much of a stretch, his list of top awards alone shall amply attest, Antonio G. Iñaratu has made six outstanding features and each one exceeds the last.
I don’t know if he’s a US citizen now, or if Iñarratu’s work permit must constantly be renewed. He’s made movies here more than anywhere else, but Z Films, of which he is the founder, happens to be one of that country’s largest motion picture companies. As a result, cultural enrichment and monetary benefit are being appreciated on both sides of the border.
He was born, raised and made his name in Mexico City, yet we love this man and he loves us. His films have grossed over a quarter billion in the U.S. Are we going to resent this Mexicano working in our country when what he is creating such a win/win? Just as importantly, his artistry enjoys worldwide renown. Most importantly, while there has been all this talk of erecting a wall between us, Iñarratu’s work piles up reason-upon-reason to leave it down.
Iñarratu’s not some special case, no, not even close. We could dedicate years to extolling the virtues of Mexican artists and crafts persons working in el Norte since we became its host. And their native ancestors made huge strides for all of us here before we arrived. While we watch this current, 21st century work of cinematic fine art, let’s be open to how Iñarratu’s craft makes us appreciate the entire collective soul and history of Latin America as part of what we call home.
We can’t just suddenly say to the Mexican people, ok, we’ve absorbed your artists, cuisine, sportsman, musicians, etc. Now, go away and leave us alone. There are things we couldn’t imagine living without that Mexico has bestowed on our country. Not just material things, I mean great veins of common sense, abundance of agreeable natures and motherloads of mindful routines, some kind of sweat equity that is handed down by people living in one place for generations.
People are the source of those riches. If you push away those people, the culture they left behind will disintegrate. It won’t be the same. Flavors will soon loose their taste. The thing will be lost that attracted us in the first place.
In his fifth film, “Birdman,” Iñarratu’s stature as a storyteller attains new heights, thanks to a gifted group of players and an infectiously out-of-the-box-office approach. It’s a dark comedy about art and fame paraded as a legit stage product (concealed in a hit screenplay). It’s a comic book hitched to a literary work, too, by the way. With its gag-on-gag pile-up, kinesthetic camera eye and impeccable, hectic pace, conventions of the “madcap” genre are fulfilled to the last frame, where they are, finally, literally, tossed out the window.
The director may be jabbing at the beast that made him millions, but mainly he takes aim at the flaws in all of us that breed and feast on fame. Witness that much and more, in this thundering, bounding, stalking, single-take fable of a down and out clown’s reincarnation, from dying blockbuster idol to avant-guardian angel, during the opening of a nerve-fraying Broadway debut.
From the opening cards, Antonio Sanchez’s shimmery, pressurized drum track becomes something reminiscent of the accompaniment to a high wire act. And that’s no accident. Almost everything about this production feels like a wildly timed stunt.
By the way, if you become intrigued as I did, with drummer Sanchez, dial in “Migration” (2007) combining Sanchez’s skills with the likes of Chick Corea, Pat Metheny, Chris Potter and Christian McBride. He’s also done a bit of touring with the film, supplying the drum work live, in house. He’ll be bringing it at the Rafael Film Center on February 18, 2017. An experience not to be missed if you ever get the chance.
Back to the film, Sandoval makes maximum use of his kit to accompany Riggin Thomsen’s passage from epiphany to catastrophe and back in three acts. What better sound could back this acrobatic panic attack than a drummer, solo riffing, to the camera’s hyper-vigilant track?
This was a clever choice, pairing a single musical instrument with the single take stunt like this, providing combustive thrust to all the rest. Syncopations somehow help nail down the moment. Something seems to be constantly whipped into foment. The storyline turns on dime-after-dime, hilariously, as plot twist after plot twist, like so many gags, are set up on one beat and smacked home the next.
Extended talk sequences seem anything but long, covered as they are, like prizefights, bounding with camera feats and authentic fist-a-cuffs, both hand-held and locked-down, goosing it constantly with inventive pans, radical trucking shots, impossible push-throughs, soaring crane moves; all sorts of acrobatic treats for the eyes, punctuated by that irregular, punchy rumble, crash, addictive smack bam boom in the ears. This film is crammed with virtuoso cinematic stunts and tour de force slights of lens.
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CONTINUES NEXT MONTH
by Stryder Simms | Nov 26, 2015 | Films of Our Enemies
Any clip of film, or video, captured with hand-held cameras, or body-mount is, first and foremost, the document of the operator’s physical grace. In the movie “Birdman” an artist by the name of Chris Harhoff wore the Steadicam. His physical fitness, plus his brain’s command of eye, hand and foot, motored by his heaving, spirit-fueled frame, is built in to this entire film. By the way, did you realize it is that comic book hero Birdman that originates at the source of our omniscient point-of-view? The director and DP determined this to be the way to tell this tory most effectively. The most effective way was certainly not the easiest, in this case. Everyone involved pushed it to the max to pull off the real-time feel that “Birdman,” manages to put across.
It may be hard for us to imagine how skillfully the director and actors worked with the technicians, behind-the-scenes, to have their interactions weave in such fluid choreography. The finished product makes it look so easy. The action is made up of one single, seamlessly spun, high-charged, ever-shifting, travelling dialog sequence; from taboo romance, up on the roof of the theater, to the revolving door of actors constantly entering and exiting its stage and backstage, to the, hungover cheek-to-concrete reality-check, doggin’ Riggin Thomson in the street at the dawn of opening night day.
Riggin Thomson’s saga offers some comic relief for my own mid-life disonance. For dudes past fifty, this film’s main character achieves close to universal resonance. Boomers, most of us having physically peaked by this age, are doing some heavy reevaluating during our fifth and sixth decades. Here, this prima donna-past-his-prime’s life suddenly doesn’t look so different from mine. Poor Riggin. I have felt the same way as he, in front of my own reflection. Or, when he is shamed for not having a presence on Twitter.
Essentially, the movie allows us to eavesdrop, for three days, on the same lines of sight of this Birdman comicbook action character, who is following around this famous actor, Riggin Thomson, harassing him into making Birdman 4. Meanwhile, Riggin tries to rehabilitate himself as an artist by writing, directing and starring in a Broadway hit, adapted from a very serious piece of American lit. As it goes with pop media driven notoriety, the line between the man and the creature he’s impersonating is blurring.
But, to analyze all the themes that echo and fugue throughout “Birdman” would take a good many servings. Hither, brews a controversy over what constitutes art and who’s its authority. Yonder, weaves a crisis between preoccupied father and wounded daughter. Coincidentally, there is relevant comparisons to be made pertaining to our current quantum shift in politics. Fame was something Riggin Thomson uses to leverage a legitimate career in the American theater. Ironically, it turns out, the same trick gets entertainers into to politics.
I’m drawn back, once again, to that conspicuous phrase on Riggin’s dressing room mirror. A thing is a thing, not what is said of the thing. That almost identical quote spoken of in the previous post is attributed to the author JL Borges, “we may mention or allude to a thing but not express it.” His English translation of “Labyrinths” provides a cameo in “Birdman.” Ed Norton’s character clutches a copy while browning his skin under a tanning lamp. It’s the same book that the actor protects himself with, like a shield, against Riggin Thomson’s indignant slaps after a particularly bad rehearsal mishap. Among the many other conclusions one could draw from finding Borges embedded in Innaratu’s comic opus, we are confronted with two dazzling latin american intellects. And there are so many to chose from. Whether it be La Cucaracha, Carlos Santana, Montezuma or La Guadalupana, most of us whites in the United States, consciously or otherwise, have admired someone from Latin America. It’s an historic love affair, we share with the browner nations. You need proof? We like the Mexican so much so that we artificially tan our skin in imitation.
Iñarratu spins an ornately plotted web, like Borges did in his “Labyrinths”. For example La Escritura del Dios, is a six page short in “Labyrinths” that zooms out so fast, the end renders what went before as almost incidental. The ending of “Birdman – The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance,” seems to give us the same slip, when Riggin, instead of being pulled back into his life by his sudden, unimaginable success, is drawn beak-first, out the window, to the sky where, we assume, by following his daughter’s gaze, we’re tracking some newborn bird, trying out his new wings. His daughter chuckles, as the last scrap of dialog in the fade-to-black firmament of this film’s finale. It sounds positively carefree.
by studioxadmin | Sep 16, 2015 | Seven Greatest Films Ever Made
When the image become so loaded, so ravishing and mysterious that you can no longer remember the one that immediately preceded it, then you are probably watching a movie by the next director featured in our series.
From Dryer to Von Trier, bookends of Danish film history, we pan east across the map. The equivalent to any other filmmaker that ever lived, Andrei Tarkovsky has been on my mind the entire time we’ve focused on the Danes. I did some catching up on Von Trier’s and Dryer’s films last winter and can’t help now but speculate on ways that Lars has emulated Andrei and how Carl Theodore informs both.
There are several more films by the Danes that will likely be pulled in to this series. I left off, in the last post, with the latest film by Von Trier who seemed to be employing the very material his story was fashioned to criticize. This makes us somewhat confused as to its intent. Whether or not he intends to do so with his latest double-bill, he provokes enough outrage for some of his audience to question his taste. Ironic how the scenes in his film that people condemn the most, by description at least, are less heinous than the majority of films by say, Martin Scorsese. From “Raging Bull” to “Casino,” we we’ve complimented that master for his vividly portrayed, ruthless protagonists, all of them misogynists.
One could argue misogyny is one of Scorsese’s key preoccupations. Throughout more than half of his prodigious output, he depicts the brutalization of women with unflinching detail. Anyone might argue this point, saying it is not his camera but a certain subspecies of male human being that provides the imagery; his camera just records it. That doesn’t matter to Lars Von Trier. What does is the fact that, while Marty’s martyrs are mostly married to their oppressors and resisting valiantly against the odds, Lars’s leading lady in “Nymp()maniac Vol II” is lusting for the lash and therefore, in league with her violator. Doesn’t that make Von Trier’s (2014) opus, at least in principle, less violent than the domestic bullying of Scorsese’s American gangsters? I’ll move on from this now until someone comes forth with a response. And now for our feature presentation.
It’s relatively easy to study Tarkovsky’s film output. He made two shorts, a documentary and seven fictions. He directed a few stage gigs as well. His father was a poet, as was Bertollucci’s, coincidentally. Tarkovsky, the younger, authored a book as well, “Sculpting in Time (1986) expounding his theories of art and cinema. He died young, like another filmmaking prodigy, Jean Vigo. Vigo was a favorite influence of Tarkovsky’s. Their names are frequently mentioned together. Vigo’s career was even shorter. Besides abbreviated lives, making poetry with cinema is their common bond.
I was introduced to Tarkovsky’s work only about a half dozen years ago with “The Mirror” a Kino Video release on DVD. His fourth film, I’ve watched it more than all the rest. At first viewing, the narrative line seems to be all over the place. As I’ve gotten to know it better, I find it quite intuitive to follow, but the burning forest house in the beginning and the wind-swirled, milk and lace finale leave such lasting impressions, its hard to remember what else happens. Every one of Tarkovsky’s films contains virtuoso passages; surreal, metaphysical dreamscapes designed to repeatedly reset our attention to a state of awe.
“The Mirror” has been labeled Tarkovsky’s most personal film. Some have called it the most beautiful ever made. It incorporates his theories about sculpting time. At the mid-point of the film we are treated to some fascinating documentary footage that seems rather remotely related from what is spliced on either side of it. Clips from a tactical balloon demonstration over an aviation field somewhere inside Russia may seem befuddling at first, especially since it is found footage inserted abruptly after a rather comical passage in which the boy’s Spanish uncle reenacts the climax of a famous bullfight. But what better collision of images would illustrate the sinister alchemy that converts the wonder of childhood memories into the wounds of war? Witness all that military personnel gazing skyward, looking like a yard full of children at play.
In each of his films Tarkovsky leaves amble room in his story for audience interpretation. None more so than this film. Lapses in chronology, character and location occur throughout “The Mirror.” Events unfold in such deliberate dislocation they are not easily committed to memory. He’s not a storyteller in the classic sense. The director was fascinated with capturing eternity and the evanescent in single cinematic moment. For him that is stuff just waiting to be carved out of time, preserved and repeatedly played as a virtual present in our future.
At the same time, he often builds up the his most vivid sequences with themes and elements borrowed from previous virtuoso passages. It’s interesting to think of Tarkovsky’s work like a progression of symphonic compositions. He uses dripping water like Mozart uses woodwinds. He was in no hurry either. He’s known for extremely long takes that require everyone involved to think carefully about before hand and rewards the patient, alert viewers in his audience.
Case in point, in the opening scene of “The Mirror” a powerful wind blows through a field starting in the background and rolls like a wave over the grassy field into the foreground, connecting the man and woman elementally. It’s a ravishing moment, brimming with passion and possibility.. The couple stand about fifty yards apart. The man turns around and looks at the woman acknowledging the wonder of such a sign, coming from nature at such a moment. The woman is trapped in the past and doesn’t acknowledge a thing. The wind, however, will not be denied and asserts its presence like a spiritual entity, throughout the rest of the film.
Let us pause and expose the layers of preparation that were put in place in order to achieve that stunning effect. It might have required a whole array of wind machines set next to each other, just off camera, turned on and off in impeccable succession to make that wind look like nature’s work. We’re talking about a synchronized dance between camera, crew, tools, actors, the director and nature. How many in the audience are aware of this well-oiled mechanism while it is happening? Nearly none I’d guess. It was quite an challange, no doubt, but Tarkovsky lets us take it for granted.
There is a prologue to “The Mirror,” a mock television documentary featuring a soviet hypnotherapist curing a young boy of a bad stutter. If “The Mirror” is about memory, and the first frame sums up the entire film in a flash, then how does a speech impediment resemble toxic memories and how does the filmmaker perform the service of a hypnotherapist.
Almost any filmmaker could relate to hypnotism with regard to the art of filmmaking. It’s obviously on Tarkovsky’s mind. He challenges an audiences limitations, time and again, commanding our attention with enigmatic set ups, then exciting our subconscious with a subtly mutating, profoundly transforming sequence of images. These are often achieved in one long, slow take that makes a single statement, standing our expectations on end, then inside out, stopping the world, confronting us with timelessness just long enough for an unforgettable brush with transcendence…
To be continued…
