Bloody Sunday

Paul Greengrass's Bloody Sunday was a revelation in docudrama. It's riveting, gritty, chilling, sickening, but not in the least bit exploitative or overdone. In 1972, during a pro-I.R.A. civil-rights march in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, 27 unarmed civilian protesters were gunned down by the British Army, and 13 killed. Though Greengrass is obviously on the side of the Irish-Catholic demonstrators, he presents two contrasting points of view throughout the film. We see the protestors, ordinary Irish folk, lead by Ivan Cooper, their member of Parliament (a wonderful performance, full of gravity, by James Nesbitt); and we see the under-trained soldiers in British Army preparing for the confrontation, their anxiety, their disdain for the Irish “hooligans” and their confusion going in. The events are presented simply but deftly, building with tense emotion to the imminent clash.

The camera is handheld, but most importantly, not too hand-held, avoiding the jerky motion-sickness-inducing motions of The Blair Witch Project but lending the aesthetics of documentary film. And there is no music throughout, just dense soundscape and overlapping dialogue. Bravo! There is nothing I hate more than inappropriate or overdone music.

Until the end, anyways, when it faded to black and the credits started to roll. Oh no, I thought, there’s going to be a U2 song now. And there was! It took me a moment to realize that the song was, what else, Sunday, Bloody Sunday, and then I remembered that I used to love this song when I was a teenager and was really into U2. But now, I have trouble taking U2 seriously after they became ironic rock stars, then at some point, seemed to lose the irony.

But that's such a trivial digression. Bloody Sunday reminded me of every civil rights movement in history, of Kent State, Tianenman Square. It's an amazing feat of filmmaking, and having seen it, I might reconsider seeing United 93, Greengrass’s portrayal of the events of 9/11 and the plane that didn’t reach its target (though I’m still not convinced of the necessity of that film's existence). Bloody Sunday, however, is a completely necessary film, an outrage, a challenge, an impassioned shout for justice. See it!

The Cove

One of the most talked about documentaries on the film circuit this year opened in theatres this week, and having found ourselves with a rare afternoon off, Joe and I of course went to go see The Cove, a documentary about a small, carefully-guarded lagoon in Japan, where over 20,000 dolphins are killed every year. The press about this film has been overwhelmingly positive and I have to add my voice to the accolades, and my most sincere urging to go see it. It’s not only an activist film, but a taut, harrowing thriller. It teems with passion, and rarely did I feel that it was showboating or soapboxing.

Joe, a staunch vegetarian, ranted afterwards about people who are horrified that anyone could eat a dolphin, but who are happy to eat cows or pigs, to which I had no reply, since I might be counted as one of those people. And sure, I could see his point, being a lapsed vegetarian myself (but oh, the bacon...!). On the way home from the theatre, I had a craving for a Vietnamese salad roll with shrimp and sliced cold pig (why not call it what it is?), which I got at a great little take-out place on Jean-Talon Blvd. It was delicious! But I recognize that I should at least be extremely picky about the animals that I do eat on occasion, which I mostly am. What constitutes “extremely picky” would constitute a whole other discussion, rather than a simple digression. But I digress... I hope this doesn’t distract from the issue at hand!

Most people I’ve spoken to don’t want to see this film. I, too, had hesitations. I could imagine the horror of a dolphin slaughter perfectly well, and didn’t want to have to see it.
However, I can say that The Cove is not needlessly violent, and there is only the one main slaughter scene, the crux of the movie. The Cove is more about the efforts of Ric O’Barry (Flipper’s trainer-turned-activist) and the filmmakers to expose the secret slaughter, and the espionage aspects of the narrative certainly are tense, but it's great storytelling as well. By the time the slaughter is finally captured, we are well-prepared for it, and on the side of O’Barry and the film team. The Cove is really well-made and passionate documentary, and needs to be seen.

The Black Book; Stepbrothers; The Cell

Recently, I wrote about Paul Verhoeven and the need to possibly re-evaluate my views on his work. I haven’t rented Showgirls yet but we did see The Black Book, Verhoeven’s most recent film from 2006. The Black Book is, as with most Verhoeven movies, an exercise in extremes. It encompasses the best and the worst of Verhoeven’s impluses towards pulpy melodrama and excess.

The Black Book is a cartoon, basically. It reminded me of war comics, though of a particulary trashy sort. Though the characters suffer some awful and horrific things, I wasn’t as moved as I would have been had they been any semblance of a human being, a real person, and not the cartoony symbols that they were. But that’s focusing on the wrong things, really. Paul Verhoeven is not into subtley, veracity, or any kind of restraint. He is not into “real.” It would be as if I expected Sgt. Rock or Superman comics to thoughtfully and conscientiously portray a war. That isn’t to say comics can’t do this. Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus is the best and most obvious example.

I guess, however, that I’d expected more; perhaps that’s where I went wrong. Never expect anything from Verhoeven but extreme and explicit trash! I might have liked it more, then. But I got higher expectations since this was a return to his home country, his first film in Dutch since The 4th Man, which was an intriguing, stylish thriller, and a lot of fun. I had hoped it would be more like that! It wasn’t. It was more like Total Recall and Showgirls at once, with lots of tits and violent bloodshed and a vat of shit dumped on our heroine for good measure. Gross!

But in spite of these crass moments - some would say, because of them - The Black Book never bores. It races along its twisty, turny way at breakneck speed, tragedy after tragedy occuring with nary a pause for reflection, so that it feels like the characters are not psychologically affected by any of it. That’s how I felt, too: mostly unaffected by all the suffering. It’s just entertainment! But, well, did I already mention that the film is set during the Holocaust? It seems maybe too irreverent to speak of The Holocaust in terms of trashy entertainment. Just a thought.

So in the end, do I still feel that Verhoeven needs re-evaluation? He’s managed to convince me that his films aren’t necessarily worth writing off, but I’m not sure that I like them all that much.

And here’s a brief run-down on some of the other movies we’ve seen recently.

Stepbrothers. A horrible movie. Joe is the Will Ferrell fan; I think he’s great on SNL, but not really much else. Anchorman was pretty good, and my four-year-old son loves Elf. Usually, Ferrell often provides the only really funny bits in each of his movies, and two or three funny bits per movie, at best. Some, like Old School, have only one (I’m streeeeaking, I’m streeeeeeeaking!). Stepbrothers sucked all the way through, but got worse and worse to the end, plus oddly and inappropriately violent for a comedy. I don’t even know why we watched the whole thing. Really, run away from it as fast as you can.

The Cell. This was kind of like playing catch-up with movies I’d meant to see and had put off. But after seeing Tarsem Singh’s more recent and absolutely lovely The Fall, we wanted to right that oversight. Again, the art direction and cinematography are both breath-taking and surreal. But the plot was completely unoriginal, very Silence of the Lambs, right down to the last-minute race against time to save the latest victim, and so, the film failed overall to impress me much, beyond the visuals. But in the realm of the visual, Tarsem (as he’s now known as) does a great job with his highly inventive and imaginative settings.

Dear Zachary

Joe saw the trailer for Dear Zachary and immediately wanted to see it. He says that I saw the trailer with him, but I swear, I have zero memory of it. Has he mis-remembered, or am I really getting that senile? In any case, we finished watching it last night; it was at once horrifying, gripping, and overwhelmingly sad.

Dear Zachary by Kurt Kuenne is “about the 2001 murder of his best friend, Dr. Andrew Bagby; Andrew was killed by his ex-girlfriend, who fled the United States for Canada, then discovered she was pregnant with Andrew's son, whom she named Zachary. Originally begun as a project for Zachary to learn about his father, the film follows Andrew's parents' battle to win custody of their grandson from the clutches of their son's murderer, and is an activist plea for reform to Canada's flawed bail system, which allowed Andrew's murderer to walk free while awaiting extradition and kill again.” (From IMDb)

It’s difficult to criticize a documentary like this, one that is passionate and has a bona fide cause to champion. Suffice it to say that the material did not need the overly-edited treatment that Kuenne gives it; horror movie tropes and comic talking heads seemed at times just inappropriate. Tiny gripes, really, in the grand scheme of things. This film is so honest and heartfelt, so gut-wrenching and infuriating, that it will stay with me for some time. See it, then write to your member of parliament about bail reform. What’s art for, if not to change the world?

Mister Lonely

Last week, on the day of Michael Jackson’s funeral, it seemed fitting to start watching Mister Lonely, a film starring Diego Luna as a Michael Jackson impersonator. He meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator, played by Samantha Morton, who convinces him to come to a commune where her husband “lives as” Charlie Chaplin, her daughter as Shirley Temple, and others as The Pope, The Queen, Buckwheat, Abe Lincoln, James Dean, Madonna, Red Riding Hood, Sammy Davis Jr. and the Three Stooges. A subplot stars Wernor Herzog as a pilot/priest who oversees flying nuns. How could this not be amazing? I loved Mister Lonely, loved its beautiful cinematic long sequences, its genuine and unsettling weirdness, its wonder and hope that slowly revealed its dark tragedy, its entrancing music by Jason Spaceman from Spiritualized. Released in 2007, Mister Lonely was Harmony Korine’s first film in eight years. It’s the kind of film that provokes strong reactions: you either love or hate it, as I hear is the case with his previous films, Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy (which I haven’t seen, though I do mean to). This film is, evidently, not as dark or disjointed as his others, and might even be called spiritual or uplifting if it weren’t for (maybe because of) its sadness. The perfect film in theme and mood to pay tribute to the real Michael Jackson in all his strange sadness as well. Diego Luna as Michael explains his obsession: “I don't know if you know what it is like to want to be someone else, to not want to look like you look, to hate your own face and to go completely unnoticed. I have always wanted to be someone else. I have never felt comfortable the way I am.” It makes perfect sense on so many levels.