MIFF Day 10
Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me... Ah, what a good birthday it was, mostly.
THE WOMAN WITH THE FIVE ELEPHANTS
Svetlana Geier is a remarkable woman. Born in the Ukraine, her father was a victim of Stalin's purges, but was one of barely 1000 who were released from prison. He died later due to his injuries sustained during torture. Things looked bad for Svetlana and her mother, but then the Germans invaded, and were hailed as liberators. Svetlana and her mother went to work for the Germans, and she translated from Russian to German and vice versa for the occupying forces while her mother kept house for the top brass. She speaks of the terrible moment when her Jewish friends were killed. Nobody believed such a thing could happen, that the rumours were simply anti-German propaganda. It did happen, but to this day she cannot connect the horror of the massacre to the officer she served. She's obviously upset, but she has her reasons for believing in the decency of her employer. With the war against Russia going badly, the Germans sent her and her mother to Freiburg, and at great personal risk got them German non-resident passports as well as a scholarship to study. The result of this was that the men who showed her and her mother kindness were sent to the Eastern Front to die fighting Russia. Svetlana says that for all the horrors she knows the German Army perpetrated, she will always remain grateful to those men for the life they allowed her to lead, free from Stalin and the victimisation she would have suffered simply for being her father's daughter. They did not have to do it, but they put themselves on the line for her, and suffered the consequences. Now a grandmother, Svetlana still lives in Germany and teaches and translates. She has translated the works of Dostoyevsky - her 5 elephants. And in this she speaks of his themes, of the need for personal freedom, and the cost of it. Of purity of action as well as of motive. And also of the need to do more than simply translate word for word, but to see the work as a whole and translate that. Her outlook on life is fascinating, and her view that language is a force for change and for understanding is a compelling one. She is a remarkable and thoughtful woman, and if you get the chance to see this doco you should take it, because some people illuminate the world and she is definitely one of them.
ANIMATION SHORTS 2
Superior in every way to yesterday's offering, there are two that stand head and shoulders above everything else. The Astronomer's Sun is a beautifully designed stop-motion, brief and powerful, you'll be in tears by the end. And Maska is the latest short by the Quay Brothers, those masters of surrealist stop-motion, based on a short story by Stanislaw Lem. It's beautiful, lurid and totally awesome. I hadn't realised we'd be getting a Quay Brother's piece, and the surprise of it just increased my enjoyment.
LIKE A DREAM
I've often made the point that the end of a film is more important than the start, since the end defines that path just taken, while the beginning is allowed to be uncertain. Often it's more interesting that way. Cut twenty minutes from this and it would be a decent film, but to quote myself again, as I said with The Tree yesterday, Magic Realism is very hard to get right. The story of a man who repeatedly dreams of a girl, then meets her in Shanghai, only to discover she is a fairly crude factory worker, not the refined girl of his dreams. As the two of them try to find the real girl from his dreams, the story takes the promising path of learning to accept reality rather than fantasy, and embrace life rather than hide from it in dreams. Sadly, it decides to go all weird, with the girl of his dreams actually being a real person who dreamed of him too, in a strange third act reveal of their psychic connection. It's rubbish, and all the worst parts of the film exist here. Add to that some truly awful acting by supporting characters, a few misjudged monologues and a sense that too many filmmakers worship Wong Kar Wai, and well, this just fails. Which is a shame, because there's a good film hiding inside it all and the two leads are really great.
SPLICE
I like Vincenzo Natali, Cube was a great little film, Cypher was a lot of fun, and you have to see Nothing, a comedy about solipsism and misanthropy that's just awesome. Splice is his latest film, and with a bigger budget than usual, he's delivered a fun little monster movie. Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley star as Clive and Elsa, biotech researchers working for NERD (gotta love the humour). They've created a new lifeform to create vaccines and medicines that can be patented and sold, but now they want to take things to the next level and include human DNA in their creations. Told no, but doing it anyhow, they create Dren (spell it backwards...) a weird creature that rapidly grows up into a strange and oddly beautiful young woman, assuming you find multi-jointed legs and a tail with a venomous stinger at the end attractive. What follows is closer to Cronenberg's The Fly than Shelley's Frankenstein, but both have clearly influenced the story. It's a clever mix of horror and family comedy, though the comedy is very black and the family is very messed up. It won't set your world on fire, but it's a really enjoyable film with some great performances, cool effects and some surprising twists in its tail.
THE WOMAN WITH THE FIVE ELEPHANTS
Svetlana Geier is a remarkable woman. Born in the Ukraine, her father was a victim of Stalin's purges, but was one of barely 1000 who were released from prison. He died later due to his injuries sustained during torture. Things looked bad for Svetlana and her mother, but then the Germans invaded, and were hailed as liberators. Svetlana and her mother went to work for the Germans, and she translated from Russian to German and vice versa for the occupying forces while her mother kept house for the top brass. She speaks of the terrible moment when her Jewish friends were killed. Nobody believed such a thing could happen, that the rumours were simply anti-German propaganda. It did happen, but to this day she cannot connect the horror of the massacre to the officer she served. She's obviously upset, but she has her reasons for believing in the decency of her employer. With the war against Russia going badly, the Germans sent her and her mother to Freiburg, and at great personal risk got them German non-resident passports as well as a scholarship to study. The result of this was that the men who showed her and her mother kindness were sent to the Eastern Front to die fighting Russia. Svetlana says that for all the horrors she knows the German Army perpetrated, she will always remain grateful to those men for the life they allowed her to lead, free from Stalin and the victimisation she would have suffered simply for being her father's daughter. They did not have to do it, but they put themselves on the line for her, and suffered the consequences. Now a grandmother, Svetlana still lives in Germany and teaches and translates. She has translated the works of Dostoyevsky - her 5 elephants. And in this she speaks of his themes, of the need for personal freedom, and the cost of it. Of purity of action as well as of motive. And also of the need to do more than simply translate word for word, but to see the work as a whole and translate that. Her outlook on life is fascinating, and her view that language is a force for change and for understanding is a compelling one. She is a remarkable and thoughtful woman, and if you get the chance to see this doco you should take it, because some people illuminate the world and she is definitely one of them.
ANIMATION SHORTS 2
Superior in every way to yesterday's offering, there are two that stand head and shoulders above everything else. The Astronomer's Sun is a beautifully designed stop-motion, brief and powerful, you'll be in tears by the end. And Maska is the latest short by the Quay Brothers, those masters of surrealist stop-motion, based on a short story by Stanislaw Lem. It's beautiful, lurid and totally awesome. I hadn't realised we'd be getting a Quay Brother's piece, and the surprise of it just increased my enjoyment.
LIKE A DREAM
I've often made the point that the end of a film is more important than the start, since the end defines that path just taken, while the beginning is allowed to be uncertain. Often it's more interesting that way. Cut twenty minutes from this and it would be a decent film, but to quote myself again, as I said with The Tree yesterday, Magic Realism is very hard to get right. The story of a man who repeatedly dreams of a girl, then meets her in Shanghai, only to discover she is a fairly crude factory worker, not the refined girl of his dreams. As the two of them try to find the real girl from his dreams, the story takes the promising path of learning to accept reality rather than fantasy, and embrace life rather than hide from it in dreams. Sadly, it decides to go all weird, with the girl of his dreams actually being a real person who dreamed of him too, in a strange third act reveal of their psychic connection. It's rubbish, and all the worst parts of the film exist here. Add to that some truly awful acting by supporting characters, a few misjudged monologues and a sense that too many filmmakers worship Wong Kar Wai, and well, this just fails. Which is a shame, because there's a good film hiding inside it all and the two leads are really great.
SPLICE
I like Vincenzo Natali, Cube was a great little film, Cypher was a lot of fun, and you have to see Nothing, a comedy about solipsism and misanthropy that's just awesome. Splice is his latest film, and with a bigger budget than usual, he's delivered a fun little monster movie. Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley star as Clive and Elsa, biotech researchers working for NERD (gotta love the humour). They've created a new lifeform to create vaccines and medicines that can be patented and sold, but now they want to take things to the next level and include human DNA in their creations. Told no, but doing it anyhow, they create Dren (spell it backwards...) a weird creature that rapidly grows up into a strange and oddly beautiful young woman, assuming you find multi-jointed legs and a tail with a venomous stinger at the end attractive. What follows is closer to Cronenberg's The Fly than Shelley's Frankenstein, but both have clearly influenced the story. It's a clever mix of horror and family comedy, though the comedy is very black and the family is very messed up. It won't set your world on fire, but it's a really enjoyable film with some great performances, cool effects and some surprising twists in its tail.
posted by Andrew Lee at 12:31 AM
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