In last week’s post, I talked about the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival (KVIFF), and its series devoted to Hollywood director Otto Preminger. This week, I thought I would follow up by bringing a couple of documentaries, indies, and foreign flicks to your attention.
At a midnight screening on my last night in Karlovy Vary, I saw one of my two favorite films. I almost didn’t go because I had to get up at 7:00am to take the long journey to the airport in Prague. Blood Father, starring Mel Gibson, was definitely worth it. Gibson—or more specifically, his star image as an action hero—dominates this film about a low-life father who finds redemption when he goes on the run with his wayward daughter. A former alcoholic and drug user, and an ex-con, John Link literally and figuratively lives on the margins of a society that would rather he not exist at all. Long-lost daughter Lydia shows up, hoping to escape the drug cartel on her trail. Their journey together is violent and volatile as every avenue of hope and freedom is closed off to them. Blood Father is directed by French filmmaker Jean-Francois Richet, who won a Cesar for Mesrine, the story of a real-life French criminal from the 1960s-1970s. Beautifully shot and edited, with no shaky cam or chaotic montages, Blood Father reminded me of the best of the genre from back in the day when the likes of Walter Hill, John McTiernan, and pre-Titanic James Cameron cranked out coolly-crafted flicks for adult audiences.
BLOOD FATHER OPENS IN THE U.S. ON AUGUST 12. WELL RECEIVED AT CANNES, IT PLAYED BEFORE A PACKED HOUSE AT MIDNIGHT AT KARLOVY VARY.
Based on Blood Father and Mesrine, Richet clearly understands the power of a star’s image to create not only character but subtext—a lost skill in today’s Hollywood where fan-boy directors are slavishly devoted to comic-book characters and thinly written graphic-novel protagonists. The idea that a star’s image should fill in the gaps of genre archetypes to give them depth and grit is beyond the experience and skill set of today’s studio-backed directors. The fear of offending fan-boy audiences, who claim ownership to these characters, results in the casting of interchangeable blond actors who all seem to be named Chris. Mel Gibson’s first shot in Blood Father is a warts-and-all close-up of the actor’s deep-set wrinkles, wiry gray hair, and unkempt salt-and-pepper beard. It encompasses the sum total of Gibson’s career—from his glory days as an action star to his offscreen fall from grace. It recalls the mug shot from a few years back when the star was arrested for drunk driving, which began a personal and professional decline. Like John Link, whose past choices have caught up with him, leaving him lost and lonely, Gibson is now defined by his bad personal behavior and unpopular, politically incorrect statements. Star image, charisma, and role merge into this unforgettable movie character. When Link apologizes to his daughter, acknowledging the suffering he has caused his family, it is impossible not to think that this could be Gibson speaking about himself. Blood Father is a film for adult viewers, not because of the violence—which is graphic—but because it is about bad choices, regrets, mistakes, and too little time left to make up for it.
‘TOWER,’ WHICH WON THE GRAND JURY PRIZE AT SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST, IS STILL PLAYING THE FESTIVAL CIRCUIT, BUT YOU CAN CATCH IT ON PBS’S ‘INDEPENDENT LENS’ DURING THE 2016 – 2017 SEASON.
Film festivals provide the opportunity to see documentaries on the big screen, exposing viewers to the wide variety of styles that make up the nonfiction format. From the many excellent documentaries that I viewed, my favorite was Tower. Directed by Keith Maitland, Tower chronicles that day in 1966 when a sniper occupied the roof of the clock tower at the University of Texas in Austin and shot 49 people, killing 16. Tower revitalizes the docu-chronicle format by combining news footage with animation. Maitland used a simple, two-dimensional linear animation to fill in those parts of the event never captured by photos or footage. He also animated the talking-head interviews with victims, police, and reporters who bore witness to the day’s events. I was skeptical at first, thinking the animation might detract from the testimonies of those interviewed, or somehow lessen the seriousness of the event. I was wrong, because the stark simplicity of the animation made the emotional responses of the witnesses all the more heart-wrenching. Tower is also well-researched and well-structured, two important factors that speak to its credibility. Considered the first mass shooting in the U.S., the incident at UT-Austin gave birth to the school and public shootings we live with today. Pay careful attention to Walter Cronkite’s analysis of the shooting: It is so eerily relevant to today, it will give you shivers.
THE POSTER FOR THE FILM SUGGESTS THE FICTIONAL NATURE OF THIS ‘DOCU-FICTION,’ BUT IT DOESN’T GO FAR ENOUGH. IT IS CURRENTLY PLAYING FESTS IN EUROPE.
Houston: We Have a Problem turned out to be the exact opposite experience of Tower. Supposedly about the unknown history of the space race, the film chronicled Yugoslavia’s role in the history of the space program. I had not planned on seeing this documentary, and did not read any of the press information in advance, but I had a free afternoon so I popped into a press screening. I was enthralled by this lost bit of history, which seemed to tie together so many threads of Cold War history. “Seemed” is the operative word, because the film was a fake—a mockumentary, or docu-fiction, as Slovenian director Ziga Virc dubbed it. I admit that I was completely fooled until I read the background material on the film. One of the segments that made it seem sincere was the story of a Yugoslav scientist who had been sent to America by Tito. He had left behind a pregnant wife, and a child he never met. The wife committed suicide, which was downright heartbreaking. The reunion between father and daughter was a running thread in the film, except—you guessed it—this story was fake, and the scientist and his daughter were actors. Why Virc thought it was clever to emotionally manipulate viewers, especially by using suicide, is beyond me. Suicide does not seem like mockumentary material to me.
I ALSO SAW ‘BEASTS OF NO NATION,’ WHICH HAS BEEN WRITTEN ABOUT EXTENSIVELY, SO THERE IS NOTHING I CAN ADD. THIS FILM WAS SHAFTED BY ITS OWN DISTRIBUTOR, NETFLIX, WHICH REFUSED TO GIVE THEATER CHAINS A 90-DAY WINDOW BEFORE STREAMING IT. THE FESTIVAL CIRCUIT IS THE ONLY PLACE TO SEE THE FILM ON THE BIG SCREEN, BUT YOU CAN STREAM IT. WAY TO GO NETFLIX.
Fifteen years ago, director Peter Jackson explored the same idea with Forgotten Silver, a fake documentary about a lost film pioneer from New Zealand named Colin MacKenzie. It takes a while to catch on to the idea that Jackson is pulling your leg, but there are enough clues for the attentive viewer to figure it out and enjoy the ride. The tone of the film is affectionate, not so much for the nonexistent Colin MacKenzie but for the legendary tales and oft-told myths of film history. None of that could be said of Houston: We Have a Problem. According to the catalogue description, and to a couple of reviewers who fawned all over this film, its “meta-fictional fakery” is intended to teach us all about the conventions of documentary and how us dumb-bunny viewers are all too willing to accept the information delivered by these conventions as the truth. And, by the way, if one more critic, filmmaker, or academic tosses the phrase “meta” at me, I will gag. I wonder if Virc has ever read any of John Grierson’s writing on nonfiction filmmaking. Grierson not only coined the word “documentary” back in the late 1920s, but he defined the format as the “creative treatment of actuality.” His four-word definition also reveals that documentary is not “the truth,” but a filmmaker’s opinion, perspective, or expression—except he did not have to play an elaborate, expensive hoax on his audiences to make that point.
‘KINGS OF NOWHERE’ IS ABOUT A VILLAGE IN MEXICO THAT WAS FLOODED OUT WHEN A NEW DAM WAS BUILT. IT WILL AIR ON THE SUNDANCE CHANNEL IN EUROPE.
Now that I have let the cat out of the bag about Houston: We Have a Problem, I don’t recommend the film. There is no point in seeing it: It’s fake, so you won’t learn anything; I have already revealed its supposed goal of examining documentary conventions; and, there is nothing in its construction or cinematography that is particularly interesting. As Variety noted, “It’s simply not about very much aside from lampooning the ease with which a canny storyteller (for such Virc undoubtedly is) can fabricate ‘truthiness’ by co-opting the tropes and mechanisms that we all long ago accepted as the documentary norm.”
I caught several excellent nonfiction films at KVIFF. Some, like Tower, examined an event as a subtle social criticism; others, like Fogo and Kings of Nowhere introduced viewers to forgotten people in faraway places who were being displaced by the modern world. The Last Summer followed projectionist Miguel Angel all over Spain as he held open-air screenings of 35mm movies to small rural villages. But digital projection is forcing Angel out of business, which means these small corners of the world will be without the communal movie-going experience. The microcosm of Angel’s life stands in for the macrocosm of the digital revolution and its impact on culture. LoveTrue pushed the boundaries of documentary because of its intimate nature as it exposed the naivete of several couples hurt by their expectations of true love. The films were informative, sincere, relevant, and touching, albeit in different ways. Houston: We Have a Problem is a slap in the face to these documentarians who struggled to find funding, worked for years to complete their films, and genuinely had something relevant to express, whether it is “the truth,” or not.