CineRik

The Debt is a film of two halves. Director Assaf Bernstein interweaves two different periods in the lives of his protagonists. In the first thread he charts them as young Mossad agents in 1965, pursuing the ‘Doctor of Birkenau’, a surgeon named Max Rainer (Edgar Selge) whose savage medical experiments on the Jews at Aushwitz earned him a place in infamy. The second part follows the impact of a report, thirty years later, of a senile man announcing to the world that was in fact the man reported killed by the young agents. Unfortunately the jump forward in time leads to a step back for the film and this uneven production misses the mark.The film opens with three young, and in some cases wounded, faces peering bleakly out of the shadows. As the light of day strikes them, they step out of a plane to a rapturous heroes welcome, faces contorting with plastered on smiles. The audience is then carried through to 1995 and a party to celebrate the publishing of a book by one of the agents, Rachel (Gila Almagor and Neta Garty), telling the tale of their hunt for Rainer, a hunt which ended in his death. The smile on Rachel’s face seems as false as the one she wielded on the gangplank of the plane thirty years previously. A book signing follows, but a note leads her outside and to the news that The Surgeon may not be dead. Without the knowledge of the Israeli government, the three agents being their hunt once again.

Running in parallel is the story of their first attempt at capturing Rainer. This section contains some of the very strongest scenes in the film. In order to sneak him out of Germany to face trial (a process which echoes the renditions being undertaken by the US government at this time) a carefully timed plan is hatched. With Rachel posing as a woman with difficulties becoming pregnant, she visits Rainer, now working as a gynaecologist , to forward their plot. As the movie skips backward and forward in time, the two groups of agents close in on their target and the audience steps closer to the truth.

The scenes with the young Mossad agents are far and away superior to the majority of those which occur later in their lives. Whilst the 1965 thread focuses on the interactions between the agents, their disagreements and their shared plight, the 1995 section often features Rachel working alone. This shift from character study to thriller comes at the expense of the film. Whilst Gila Almagor’s performance is very good, without other characters to play off the story sags. The second part is also missing The Doctor himself. In all the scenes where he and the young agents interact he sets the screen alight. Once his cover has been blown, his openness about the things he has done, his lack of remorse, is truly terrifying. He seems utterly at peace with his deeds and that makes him as terrifying Lecter or Bates could ever be. In particular the scenes where he has Rachel in the gynaecologists stirrups, his clinical manner and detachment coupled with the utterly vulnerable position that she must submit to in front of this killer, are outstanding. Clarice Starling would have been weeping. Finally, the revelations about the initial mission push the audience away from the characters later in their lives. Whilst their interactions keep the young characters interesting, by the end of the film I simply didn’t care about their older incarnations.

With such wonderful moments it is unfortunate that the rest of film simply does not stand up. As soon as Rainer steps off the screen the fire goes out. From a promising start with fascinating characters, it descends into a trudge towards the inevitable conclusion.

It sounded as though Santa Barbara had been hit with a sudden cold epidemic, such were the sniffs and snuffles that greeted the end of Noodle, the third Israeli film that I’ve caught at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Much like fellow Israeli comedy The Band’s Visit, this touching, low key film from director Ayelet Menahemi, hits all the right notes. It’s has no deeply profound statement to make, but this refreshing, entertaining film was just what I needed on the final day of the festival.Miri (Mili Avital), a flight attendant, pastes a smile on her face for her work, but it quickly slips the moment she leaves the airport. Twice widowed by war, she shares her home with her sister (Anat Waxman), herself separated from her husband, but their relationship is strained. Their lives are upturned when Miri’s Chinese cleaner receives a phone call which causes her to fly into a panic. Gesticulating wildly, the only words of English (their loosely shared language) are ‘one hour, one hour’ and with that she leaves the sisters with her six year old son. One hour turns into several, which turns into a night. The woman’s phone drops out of service and Miri is left with a small child that she cannot communicate with, a sister she doesn’t want to communicate with and her sister’s husband, whom she seems too comfortable communicating with!

Miri contacts the police, though she neglects to mention the boy, and hospitals, but with no luck. Eventually they brave the immigration department and discover that the mother was living in the country under an assumed name. Miri is told that the woman’s story about having a son were discounted as a cheap attempt to be allowed to stay and that she has been returned, effectively untraceable, to Beijing. The question then, is what will Miri do with the boy in her care?

As the film follows the sometimes dramatic, sometimes comic, story of Miri and ‘Noodle’, the nickname given to the child, it ponders the absurdity of a human being who can stand in front of you, yet officially not exist. It also explores the sister’s relationship, their past and the path they must take to have a chance of future happiness. As they struggle to find a place in the world for little Noodle, they find their own route from emotional cowardice to actual heroics. On the way they manage to raise plenty of smiles and chuckles from the audience as well as leaving the room, as the hosts of the Filmspotting podcast are fond of saying, ‘a little dusty’

The Israeli comedies that I’ve encountered at this years festival have left me with a desire to further tap what appears to be a rich vein of unpretentious but satisfying works. This film will probably obtain few, if any, awards and, outside of its homeland, garner little attention. But give it the time and it will win a place in your heart.

Diary of the Dead is the latest zombie flick from the undisputed master of the genre, writer/director George A Romero. In the past he has managed to combine all the gore, frights and laughs that his audiences demand with a social or political message. His shambling monsters have given us the director’s insights into racism, consumerism, the class system and the Vietnam-war era distrust of the government. In his latest film he takes on mass media misinformation, the surveillance society, our fascination with the pain and suffering of others and information overload, along with his perennial theme of peoples inability to work together, with success.The film opens with a group of film students and their alcoholic professor working on their class project, a ‘Mummy film’, out in a woodland area. This wonderfully self-referential theme continues as we realize that everything that we, the audience, are seeing is being recorded by the director of the amateur crew, Jason (Joshua Close). As the director argues with his Mummy about the excessive speed of his monster’s perambulation (perhaps referring to Zack Snyder’s remake of an earlier Romero film, or to the works of his one time collaborator, John Russo, whose zombies also move with far greater speed than Romero’s) and his heroine, Tracy, (Amy Ciupak Lalonde) rails against the genre-staples of the impending loss of her dress and her characters inability to run without tripping over a tree root, one of the students overhears a radio report (voiced throughout the movie by Stephen King, Wes Craven and even Simon Pegg amongst others) about the dead coming back to life. As they argue over the merits of the story, more reports come in and as nerves begin to fray, they abandon their film.

With two members of the group heading off in one direction, the rest head back to their University and, having gathered an additional member in the shape of Jason’s girlfriend (Michelle Morgan), they set out in a Winnebago in an attempt to reach their families. When their first encounter with a group of the recently-deceased yet still-walking leads one member of the group to attempt suicide, they seek out a hospital. The hospital though has been deserted, at least by the living…

Romero has chosen to show the entire film through the eyes of cameras within the story. The protagonists quickly gain a second camera, allowing the director more freedom with his editing and CCTV footage is also employed. Romero is careful to make sure that we even see the characters editing the footage together for upload to the internet (its inbuilt resilience keeping it up when the phone and TV begin to fail). This effort pays off, leaving the audience with no information other than that which the protagonists gather. This effect (as employed in the Blair Witch Project and recent Cloverfield) is not simply a way to heighten the tension, but is an integral part in Romero’s attack on our obsession with recording every event (“If it isn’t recorded, it didn’t happen. Right?” mocks one character), as well as the intrusion of surveillance (particularly by the government who, along with the military, never come out well in Romero’s films) into every aspect of our lives. Romero keeps pace with the concerns of society, keeping the ‘Dead’ series relevant.

That isn’t to say that this film lacks some good old fashioned thrills and fun. There are enough moments of surprise to keep the audience on edge and enough new and inventive ways to take down a zombie to keep the laughs coming (death by scythe and acid being two of the stand out take-downs in this film). Romero keeps the film moving at a cracking pace, never giving his characters more than a moment to catch their breath, before plunging them into greater problems with a rapidly increasing zombie count.

With Diary of the Dead Romero has reinvigorated his oeuvre. The laughs, frights and social commentary are all there. What more could you for from the Dead?

Frank and Cindy, the first film by director G.J. Echternkamp, treads a fine line. The documentary journey through a year in the life of his family could have easily slipped into farce, bitterness or a wailing, miserable dirge about the unbearable pressures of living with his parents. Thankfully the director managed to avoid all of these pitfalls and produce a funny, often poignant and finally touching slice of life in his film, shown at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival.Frank Garcia, Echternkamp’s step father should need no introduction. After all, along with the other members of OXO he should be a household name. His mantelpiece should be littered with Grammies; he should be attending red-carpet galas with the cream of the music industry; he should be successful, famous and rich. At least, that was what Cindy thought when Frank, many years her junior, proposed to her in the midst of the whirlwind that followed OXO’s hit, Whirly Girl. Yes, their hit. Their one and only, solitary, single, never to be repeated, once in a lifetime, hit. More than twenty years after the event, Cindy’s son decided to pick up his camera and record the circus that was his life. Initially intending to produce a piece to amuse his friends by mocking his parents, Echternkamp.’s project grew into a 73 minute documentary about their individual fights with alcoholism, a marriage that seems on the verge of disintegration, regrets, shattered dreams and sheer, blind optimism. That he manages to portray these two larger than life individuals without reducing them to caricatures, that he makes them funny, monstrous, pathetic and sympathetic by turn is the key to this film. The film doesn’t pull its punches as it explores Cindy’s issues as a mother to the young Echternkamp, nor Frank’s battle to lift himself from wine-fuelled fog he propels himself into everyday in the cellar Cindy has banished him to. Yet as the film progresses the love, compassion and need to do the right thing that drives these flawed souls onward is revealed, but without a cloying, saccharine taint that could have undone all the directors hard work.

Of particular note is a scene where Cindy, at his behest, pores over old photographs and scrapbooks of her son. Missed birthdays sadden her, but the reaction when she finds a series of get-well-soon letters, written by his classmates following an auto wreck is terrible yet wonderful to watch. The remorse written across Cindy’s face is truly heartbreaking. Equally powerful is a scene where Frank turns on G.J., not because he feels uncomfortable having his actions taped and his life exposed, but to protect Cindy who, for the first time, has become upset by the recording. It adds another facet to the picture of Frank and brings the audience closer to a potentially unlikable or pitiable character.

This is not a film which is creating a huge buzz at the festival. Due to the locations in which it is playing it is not being seen by large numbers of people. However those of us who have been lucky enough to spend 73 minutes in the company of Frank and Cindy have discovered an absolute gem of a film. It’s our little secret, but if there is any justice in the world, it won’t stay that way for long.

Many films shock and surprise you. Some, Rosemary’s baby for instance, like to lull you into a false sense of security before slowly turning the thumbscrews until you are squirming in your seat. Others, like Psycho, turn on a dime and slip a knife between your ribs before you realize what is going on. Brazilian director Claudio Assis’s Bog of Beasts, playing at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival steps out of its corner swinging from the offset, relentlessly battering you about the head with image and idea. Sadly it fails to land the knockout punch that would take this film from great to spectacular, but it does do some damage along the way.This is not a film for the faint-hearted or the easily offended. It opens with Heitor (Fernando Teixeria) stripping the clothes from his granddaughter until she stands naked in front of a crowd of lecherous onlookers and only gathers pace from there on in. This barely post-pubescent girl, Auxiliadora (played with conviction by Mariah Teixeira) becomes the fantasy of the man digging a cess-pool next to her grandfather’s house, an infatuation that leads to conflict and tragedy. As this plays out a second drama runs in parallel within this town which morality has abandoned just as surely as the sugar cane factory has been left to rot. A young intellectual Everardo (a quite chilling Matheus Nachtergaele) and his friends spend their time poring over the scattered celluloid of an old porn film which litters the floor of an abandoned cinema. These young, unemployed men spend their time drinking and planning their next night of debauchery, their intelligence squandered as they pursue another alcoholic stupor.

This is not a film which seems overly concerned with narrative however. It is more concerned with ideas, with concepts and their presentation on the screen. Over the course of its eighty minute running time morals are discussed by men who lack them and prostitutes are beaten and raped in the vilest of ways. Tarantulas are deposited into a bell jar to join a collection of large insects floating, preserved, within. A local band plays and the population dresses up as if for a carnival, ignoring the horrors that surround them. Lives are shattered, innocence is lost and the pure are corrupted. This film is foul.

And yet, it is beautiful. The film is shot exquisitely, with particular care given over to the worst of the acts depicted. The opening scene with young Auxiliadora is awash with deep, cloaking shadows as the girl stands like a perverted David atop a concrete plinth. As Everardo shouts out for butter to facilitate the sodomy of a prostitute he chases and kicks through the brothel where she works, the camera follows them from room to room, placing the viewer in the seat of an impotent god, staring down from the heavens at the horror below, but unable to aid the woman below. We are even pushed down into the room as he stamps her head into the bed, leaving us accomplices to the crime. The cinematography is nothing short of brilliant in this and many other scenes.

In the end though, the film is strangely unmoving. We are moved to pity for the woman, but we do not feel her pain. We are disgusted by the grandfather’s actions, yet we are not moved to tears of anger by the girl’s plight. The characters are never given depth, never granted more than a cursory development and so we are never truly amongst them. As a treatise on man’s inability to enjoy without destroying, about his sullying of the pure in his greed to possess it, about his creation of the very hell he rallies against, the film works. As a technical exercise in exquisite film making, in presenting images on extraordinary beauty, even when their subject turns the stomach in disgust, is works. As a way to stir our emotions, to stoke the fires of passion and anger within us, sadly it fails. But perhaps that was never the director’s intention. Perhaps he has done enough.

Blind Mountain, the second feature from Chinese writer-director Yang Li, is a film which starts with everything in its favour. It has a compelling, distressing real-life inspiration in the plight of women kidnapped and sold off as brides to meet the demands of a male-biased population created by the one-child policy. It has actual rescued brides amongst its cast, adding authenticity to an already talented cast. It has spectacular mountain vistas from the Chinese countryside in which to spin its tale. It even has the established conventions of a good escape drama to draw upon. Yet with all of this potential it sadly, ultimately fails.The film opens with the naive Bai (the excellent Lu Huang) heading out into rural China in pursuit of an elusive job with which to pay back her parents for her education. Left at a remote farm whilst her co-workers search for medicinal plants in the mountains, she drinks a glass of water and falls asleep. When she awakes from this surprising slumber she finds her ‘friends’ have gone and that her freedom has vanished along with them. She has been illegally sold to a farming family to be the bride of their son. Trapped by bars, chains and the complicity or indifference of the villagers she struggles against her plight in the face of violence.

In spite of this premise, the film struggled to capture my attention. The problems begin with the dialogue. Although much subtlety can be lost in translation to subtitles, Blind Mountain is hamstrung by the clumsy, forced and cliched lines that the characters are lumbered with. I am always more lenient on translated films than those which I can watch in their native tongue, but I’m not this forgiving. The multiple escape attempts blur together (each is simply a variation on the one before) until you really wish Bai would give up or use her education and implied intellect to try something different! Bai’s repeated beatings are strangely shot in a fashion which gives them the air of a nothing more serious than a schoolyard scuffle. This is confusing not only due to the fact that they render her unconscious, but also because an earlier rape scene is so powerful, particularly so as it shows the complicity of another female. Equally annoying is the Paul Haggis-esque determination of Yang Li to hammer home his point through unnecessary repetition and constant reminders to the audience of the stakes involved. Threaten violence. Show a limping woman. Bring on a corrupt official. Rinse, repeat and throw in a dead baby girl to make sure that the audience understands how we have got to this point. This is the second film I’ve seen at the festival which didn’t trust its audience and it pays as heavy a price for it.

I want to like this film. It addresses worthy social and political issues. It has the deliberate pacing that I admire in other director’s works. It is beautiful to behold. I deeply admire the director’s tenacity in bringing his vision to the screen despite enforced cuts to the film in his homeland. But in the end he and it do the worst thing that any film can – they bore me.

Stranded: I Have Come from a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains, the second film from director Gonzalo Arijon, requires a different form of review. The story is a well known one – a small plane containing forty five people from and related to the Old Christians rugby team crashed into a mountain in the Andes and sixteen kept themselves alive for more than two months by consuming the remains of those who had already died – so I cannot whet you appetite for the film by setting up the premises and making you want to see more. And whet it I must, for this film, shown at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival in the wake of great word of mouth from Sundance, is a must see.

Using a combination of reconstruction footage, grainy photographs taken by the survivors as they clung onto life where none should be and new interviews with the men who lived to tell the tale, Arijon has woven a captivating piece of cinema. The washed-out reconstruction footage takes the audience through the journey that the plane and its passengers took, from hi-jinks on the runway, gallows humor on the plane as things began to go awry and on through the crash and eventual rescue. This runs in parallel with the interviews with the survivors which begin as talking heads but end up showing several of the survivors making an emotional trip, along with members of their families, back to the crash site thirty years after the event.

These men have seen things and experienced things which are beyond the comprehension of most. The endured that which would have killed many – either though exposure, starvation or through simply losing the will to live – and they survived. The moments of silence in their tales are the most telling, the moments when they can find no words to explain the horrors and where the audience must rely on the echoes in their eyes. The men rarely refer to themselves – they praise or express sympathy for others, never seeking glory or pity for their own actions or losses.

When it comes to the most controversial element of the tale, the cannibalism of the already dead, the director neither skirts nor sensationalises the event. The simple sound of tearing fibres is enough to curl the toes in the reconstruction and no more is needed there. The men recount it with solemnity and dignity, far more than the press did when the secret to their survival was discovered. Their ability to separate the friends they had lost from the means of their survival was born out of desperation, but by the end of the film anyone who did not understand it, sympathise with it and finally approve of it had far harsher sensibilities than I.

There is little more that I can say to encourage you to see this film. My eloquence fails in the light of the words of the men who lived to tell the tale. The Sundance word of mouth was right – if you can endure the subject matter this is a film that should not be missed.

Beautiful Bitch, written and directed by Martin Theo Krieger, tells the story of a young Romanian orphan as she struggles to make her way in the world. Shown on the second day of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival this provocatively titled film may turn out to be the highlight of the event. With moments that induce laughter and tears, a riveting story and a heart stopping sequence that held the entire audience rigid with fear, Kreiger has struck cinematic gold.

The story opens with Bica, a solvent abusing waif (the silver paint which replaces the traditional glue in her plastic bag not only lending the addict a deathly grey pallor about the lips but also echoing the mercurial nature of the escape from reality that it brings), trying in vain to evade the Romanian police with her infant brother in tow. Separated from her sibling she is taken in by corrupt ex-cop Cristu (a demon she mistakes for a guardian angel) who ships her to Germany, concealed in the trunk of a car. There she is trained as a thief, picking the pockets of strangers to fill those of her patron. One of her victims is the separated father of Milka, a brat with razor sharp tongue. From this unlikely start a friendship forms and Bica gets a glimpse into a world of material security, if not emotional closeness. But as Bica begins to see hope, Cristu fears he will lose his golden goose and his obsession with the young girl descends into violence. The film revolves around the strength Bica draws from her friends and her need to find a better life for herself and her brother.

The tension created by Keriger as the film progresses is truly spectacular. One particular scene, revolving around a firearm discovered at the home of Milka’s father, had the entire audience holding its breath. By the end of the scene the collective sigh of relief threatened to drown out the theatre’s sound system! The director manages to mix heart stopping moments such as this with enough humor to keep the audience engaged and sprinkles in the tiniest suggestion of a hint of hope. This is just enough to lift the audience, yet subtle enough to avoid erasing the memory of the tragic events witnessed and to maintain the believability of the story. The balance is perfect.

Credit though must be given to the young actors playing the majority of the lead roles in the film. They bring an honesty and naivete that is truly refreshing and utterly convincing. Katharina Derr in particular is hypnotic in the lead role, at once tough and emotionally withdrawn whilst remaining vulnerable and motherly towards the younger thieves. Her spiral back into solvent abuse following a subtly filmed yet appropriately revolting rape scene is utterly heart rending. If she continues to act she will be one to watch for.

If I had seen no other films at this festival then this one alone would have made attendance worth while. If you can find a screening, and you can find a seat, this is the film to watch.

The Banishment, the second film by director Andrei Zvyagintsev, paints a dark and brooding portrait of a dysfunctional family spiraling towards total breakdown. Shown at the Santa Barbara International Film it stars Konstantin Lavronenko, Aleksandr Baluyev and Maria Bonnevie. With deliberate pacing it places you at the very centre of the drama and rewards your patience with exquisite cinematography. Unfortunately, having entranced the audience for the first two hours of his 150 minute epic, Zvyagintsev simply didn’t know when to stop.The film opens with Mark (a burly Aleksandr Baluyev) racing through the deserted streets of a bleak industrial landscape, nursing an improvised tourniquet around his arm. He staggers into the home/workshop of his brother Alex (Konstantin Lavronenko) and, refusing professional aid, demands that his brother dig out the bullet. With tools sterilized with a blow torch and a swig of industrial alcohol to dull the pain (let alone his eyesight) the job is done. The brothers proceed to discuss work and their deceased father’s house – apparently this minor surgical moment isn’t enough to deflect the course of everyday conversation. On his brother’s advice, Alex and his wife and two children take a train out to the paternal abode where a terrible secret (they always are) is revealed. The rest of the film sifts though issues raised from trust, betrayal and the pain caused by an inability to communicate with those closest to you, leading to tragic consequences for all involved.

To call the film slow would be a disservice. It is glacial, perhaps tectonic, in its delivery. They say a watched pot never boils and at times the audience might be left thinking that the same might be true of this film. But just when you think you’ve slipped into Wong Kar-Wai territory one of the rare moments of action erupts. These sparks, when they do come, are so startling that they payoff is always worth the wait and the relief almost tangible. That is not to say that the parts in between are simply periods of tedium, the audience waiting for the slow crawl to the next moment of revelation. Zvyagintsev fills the spaces in between with beautiful countryside vistas, lush and verdant in deep contrast to the bleak industrial cityscape that the characters have left behind. As the plot twists and turns like the road from the oft-visited cemetery Zvyagintsev brings the heavy stone walls in closer and blinds Alex and the audience with rainstorms, dirty windows and selective shallow focus. Sound too plays a strong role in the contrast between the natural and the man-made, with the delicate sounds of nature often assaulted and beaten back by the rumble of engines and heavy machinery. His actors, in particular Baluyev and Lavronenko, inhabit the world flawlessly, although Bonnevie adopts a strange bug-eyed expression for part of the film, making it appear that someone is slowly turning the handle on an invisible vise they have placed upon her head. The film is, without a doubt, beautiful to behold.

In the end it is a lack of trust in the audience that lets the film down. Enough clues are scattered throughout the first two hours to provide the audience with enough to deduce the sting in the movie’s tail. Zvyagintsev does not credit the audience with enough intelligence to make the leaps required and spends the last twenty-plus minutes hammering his point home with a reenactment of events past. It is unnecessary, even insulting, and it turns the end of the film into a weary trudge rather than the sharp snap it needed. The last moments of a film leave the strongest impression and this one has a bitter aftertaste. It is a terrible shame but it undoes all the hard work of the previous two hours.

So do I advise you commit the time to watching this uneven epic? Absolutely, but with one caveat; watch the first two hours, until the realization of the true horror of what has occurred hits home and then, very quietly, sneak out of the theater. Trust me as much as Zvyagintsev distrusts you and you’ll be rewarded with two gripping, beautiful hours of Russian cinema at its finest.

If you watch the first two hours

If you stay till the end