MIFF 2015 - Day 3
Well, this was a mixture of depressing and disappointing. Onwards...
The Look of Silence
I think this may be the film of the festival. Joshua Oppenheimer's followup to the horrific The Act Of Killing, he flips the camera from the perpetrators of the mass murders in Indonesia in the 1960s to Adi, the brother of one of the victims, as he speaks to the killers and tries to get some kind of acknowledgement or apology from them. Instead, he gets a lot of "I was just following orders" and in one case, a brutally direct threat that the people in power would willingly do it again. But while it illustrates how damaged the country still is by the horrors of that time, Adi is a one man truth and reconciliation commission. He just wants to heal the wound by acknowledging it. Instead we come to understand how horrific the times were, and that the shadow cast by them is long. It's an unsettling and powerful piece of filmmaking, and a superb companion piece to The Act of Killing.
The Hunting Ground
Depressing in a wholly different way, this time focusing on the epidemic rates of rape on college campuses in the US. The film ends with a shocking statistic, that over 100,000 women will be raped on campus this year. But much like other stories of institutional abuse and coverup, the crimes themselves pale in comparison to the treatment of the victims by the institutions. The forensic detail applied to how the business logic of colleges incentivises them to ignore the crimes bears strong resemblances to the logic applied by churches. Here's hoping that this film will get people as angry about educational institutions failure to care for their students as they are angry at churches for covering up child abuse. The fact that 20% of students on campus will experience sexual assault is something the colleges should be actively trying to combat, not cover up and victim blame.
Two Shots
Ugh. We've left the depressing behind, now it's just disappointing. A short film blown out to a feature, the narrative and character work that started off so promising is totally destroyed by tacking a totally unrelated set of scenes on to the second half. Some blackly comic moments, but the last half ruins everything. Barely worth mentioning as a result.
Sleeping With Other People
Jason Sudekis and Alison Brie play two people who lost their virginity to each other in college, then meet again 12 years later in a sex addicts meeting. That setup is quickly discarded and replaced with a fun comedy about two people choosing to be in a non-sexual relationship so that they can't screw it up (even if they can't admit to each other that's why they're doing it). It's light, funny and extremely ribald. The end is a bit of a letdown, as for a moment it looked like the film was going for something a bit different and surprising, but it's still good fun and everyone's great in it. Though it will probably be remembered more as the film where Alison Brie models lingerie for reasons that seem less than essential to the plot.
The Look of Silence
I think this may be the film of the festival. Joshua Oppenheimer's followup to the horrific The Act Of Killing, he flips the camera from the perpetrators of the mass murders in Indonesia in the 1960s to Adi, the brother of one of the victims, as he speaks to the killers and tries to get some kind of acknowledgement or apology from them. Instead, he gets a lot of "I was just following orders" and in one case, a brutally direct threat that the people in power would willingly do it again. But while it illustrates how damaged the country still is by the horrors of that time, Adi is a one man truth and reconciliation commission. He just wants to heal the wound by acknowledging it. Instead we come to understand how horrific the times were, and that the shadow cast by them is long. It's an unsettling and powerful piece of filmmaking, and a superb companion piece to The Act of Killing.
The Hunting Ground
Depressing in a wholly different way, this time focusing on the epidemic rates of rape on college campuses in the US. The film ends with a shocking statistic, that over 100,000 women will be raped on campus this year. But much like other stories of institutional abuse and coverup, the crimes themselves pale in comparison to the treatment of the victims by the institutions. The forensic detail applied to how the business logic of colleges incentivises them to ignore the crimes bears strong resemblances to the logic applied by churches. Here's hoping that this film will get people as angry about educational institutions failure to care for their students as they are angry at churches for covering up child abuse. The fact that 20% of students on campus will experience sexual assault is something the colleges should be actively trying to combat, not cover up and victim blame.
Two Shots
Ugh. We've left the depressing behind, now it's just disappointing. A short film blown out to a feature, the narrative and character work that started off so promising is totally destroyed by tacking a totally unrelated set of scenes on to the second half. Some blackly comic moments, but the last half ruins everything. Barely worth mentioning as a result.
Sleeping With Other People
Jason Sudekis and Alison Brie play two people who lost their virginity to each other in college, then meet again 12 years later in a sex addicts meeting. That setup is quickly discarded and replaced with a fun comedy about two people choosing to be in a non-sexual relationship so that they can't screw it up (even if they can't admit to each other that's why they're doing it). It's light, funny and extremely ribald. The end is a bit of a letdown, as for a moment it looked like the film was going for something a bit different and surprising, but it's still good fun and everyone's great in it. Though it will probably be remembered more as the film where Alison Brie models lingerie for reasons that seem less than essential to the plot.
posted by Andrew Lee at 12:22 AM
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