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Monday at AFIFest2020

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Monday was a light day for me at AFIFest 2020 Presented by Audi. But even though I only have two films to report on today, the films themselves were not light.

“Inanimate object, do you have a soul that sticks to our soul and forces us to love?” Belgian director Zoé Wittock brings her premier feature Jumbo to the festival. Inspired by a true story, it tells of a young woman who falls in love with an amusement park ride. Yes, it sounds strange, and it is. Jeanne (Noémie Merlant) is an extremely introverted young woman who works after hours at an amusement park. When a new ride arrives, it seems to be in tune with her emotionally. Her boss is attracted to her, but her heart belongs to the ride she has christened Jumbo. Her mother, who was abandoned by Jeanne’s father only wants for Jeanne to find love and happiness, but not the kind of love one has for a machine. The stress of such an forbidden love is destroying Jeanne’s relationship with those around her, and threatens to leave her in a severe depression. Such attractions to inanimate objects is a condition that some people really do have. But if someone like Jeanne finds their joy in fulfillment in such love that does no harm to others, should it be challenged or accepted for what it is?

There always seems to be a doc showing at AFIFest that I know I’ll resonate with because of its left of center subject. This year’s version is The Big Scary “S” Word, from Yael Bridge. Perhaps the theme phrase is said by Cornell West: “Socialism in as American as apple pie.” This film gives a bit of the history of socialism in the US (including its role in the founding of the Republican Party [!]). Socialism, as it is found in this documentary, is the idea that society works best when it works to serve everyone. Among the ways this is highlighted in the film is teachers in Oklahoma fighting for more school funding, a socialist elected to the Virginia legislature, and the Bank of North Dakota (state-owned, the very definition of socialism). The emergence of people like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in recent years has brought socialism into out field of vision again. Socialism is indeed a “big scary word” in US politics. The term has been rolled out since the time of Teddy Roosevelt to disparage anything progressive. Things like trust busting, Social Security, and Medicare were all branded as socialism.

Given that I have a strong affinity for the subject, I hate that I found the film wanting. The title of the film identifies the emotional response to socialism. This film is far too cerebral to combat that emotional response. I would concur with Cornell West about socialism being part of the very nature of the American dream. But to make others see it that way can’t be just a matter of reason alone. The film lacks (for the most part) any real passion or any sense of the moral rationale for socialism. The film alludes at a few points to the idea that we need a broad social movement to bring socialism into the fore, but no practical information as to how to being that about. Probably my biggest disappointment is that the film doesn’t confront what may be the hardest to bring socialism to the US, the political system that is so dependent on money (especially corporate money). Sanders and AOC continue to be on the outer edges of politics. A few faces of socialism will never overcome the might of money.

The Sounding – Transformed Mind

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What do we make of someone who refuses to live conventionally? Is there something wrong with them that needs to be fixed? Or should we find a way into their world to see things in new ways? The Sounding (the first feature film by Catherine Eaton) presents viewers with these kinds of questions.

Liv (played by Eaton) has lived her life on a secluded island off the coast of Maine. She has been raised by her grandfather Lionel (Harris Yulin), a retired neurologist. At some point when Liv was young child, she ceased talking. There were no physical or evident psychological reasons. She just didn’t talk anymore. Lionel has read her everything from P.G. Wodehouse to Michel Foucault, but her favorite is Shakespeare.

When Lionel discovers he is dying, he recruits Michael (Teddy Sears), a former student and the son of a friend, to come to the island to protect Liv, along with Lionel’s attorney (Frankie Faison), so she can continue to live the life she has created. One evening when Lionel’s voice fails during the reading, Liv takes the book and begins to read. The words of Shakespeare become the words by which she speaks to the world.

But Michael ignores Lionel’s wishes and seeks to cure Liv of her “communication disorder”. He ends up having her committed to a psychiatric hospital. There, she rebels. She will only speak lines of Shakespeare. In time, Michael will realize his attempt to “cure” her only brought harm.

Language is very much at the heart of this story. When Liv ceased talking, it might have been interpreted as leaving the world. Yet, she had friends and people who loved her on the island. When she chooses Shakespeare as her new language, that is not just convenient language, but it invokes a different world—one that other people may not value as she does.

To use a line from Hamlet, “Aye, there’s the rub.” For those who want Liv to fit the patterns of their own world, she seems to be pathological. That is a category they understand. But perhaps their insistence of conformity is a pathology in itself. Michael discovers that Liv does not need to become like others; he needs to find the truth of her understanding of the world. She does not need to be cured. She needs to be accepted and encouraged in her life.

The Apostle Paul wrote, “Do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds ….” The medical staff in the hospital represent the forces that want to conform all things to the world. But we should realize that many parts of the life of faith require a different understanding of the world. And sometimes even our language manifests that difference. For example, we call the day in which Jesus was executed “Good Friday”. Where the world sees failure, we see triumph.

That different attitude also leads us to see the world differently than others. We see other people as children of God, and thus our family. We see God’s creation as a great gift, so we have a great responsibility to care for it. We believe that weakness can be more powerful than strength. There may be a certain amount of pathology to faith.

Liv’s world was something that Michael needed to appreciate for his own happiness. Perhaps that is how our faith will bring transformation not just to ourselves, but to the world that has conformed to its own pathology.

The Sounding is available on Apple TV.

Photos courtesy of Giant Pictures.

Sunday at AFIFest2020

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As AFIFest Presented by Audi continues to unfold, each day new films are being opened for viewing. During normal years, most films would play a couple times during the week. That challenge was to find the day and time that you could fit things. This year, I get to pick and choose the order I see films in each day. The lack of a rigid schedule is a plus for having a virtual festival. On the negative side, you don’t get to hear people saying how good something was so you can add it to your list to see.

Writen and directed by David Carbonier and Justin Powell, The Boy Behind the Door is a taut thriller. It is the kind of film that might, in normal years, be presented in a selections of Midnight films. Bobby and Kevin are best friends and dream of growing up to head off to someplace different from their home. They dream of California. But then the two boys are kidnapped. Bobby manages to escape, but he cannot leave Kevin behind. He is soon playing a cat-and-mouse game with the kidnappers as he tries to locate and free his friend. The film maintains a constant tension, with a few moments that make you jump. There is a fair bit of blood and violence, which for some people would be a plus, for others a turn-off. Bobby is the more resourceful of the boys, but he must also rely on Kevin for them to succeed. When one needs the other, these friends will do whatever is needed to save the other.

Japan’s Under the Open Sky, directed by Miwa Nishikawa, tells us of a man who, after spending the last 13 years in prison, is trying to adjust to the outside world. Masao Mikami has served his sentence for murder and returns to society. He vows that this time he will go straight. A lawyer serves as his sponsor and helps him get set up with welfare and a place to live. Mikami wants to make his own way, but there are challenges for an ex-con trying to find work. He is contacted by Tsunoda, a TV director, who is interested in helping him find his mother, who abandoned him as a child. The producer of the story wants something more interesting—using his gangster background to set him up to fail. Mikami was known as a brawler and has trouble keeping his temper in check. But he also manages to collect a group of people who care about him and help him find the chance of success in the outside world.

The dangers of recidivism as common for those who are released from prison. If they do not have access to jobs and help, the life of crime seems like an obvious choice. Tsunoda wants to write about Mikami as “an ordinary man” The world may not pay much attention to ordinary people, but for Mikami to fit into the role might actually be extraordinary.

(L-R) Paul Bettany as “Frank,” Sophia Lillis as “Beth,” and Peter Macdissi as “Wally” in UNCLE FRANK Photo: Brownie Harris/Amazon Studios

Family can be the source of pain or healing—and often both. In Allan Ball’s Uncle Frank, Beth Bledsoe (Sophia Lillis) has grown up in rural South Carolina, where she doesn’t really feel like she fits in. On the rare occasions that her Uncle Frank (Paul Bettany) visits from New York City, she is drawn to how different he is from her family. He counsels her to be who she wants to be, not who others tell her she is. She heads to New York for college, and to get to know Frank better. Crashing a party at Frank’s home, she discovers that he is gay. His partner Walid (Peter Macdissi) is the embodiment of kindness.

When Frank’s father dies suddenly, Frank and Beth drive together to the funeral. Walid follows separately because Frank doesn’t want the family to know about him. The three of them will have to face many of the pains of Frank’s past, especially after he is involuntarily outed. Those demons include a sense of guilt about who he is, which has led him to live with his self-loathing all these years. The film is set in 1973 when such closeting was even more prevalent than it is now. Frank’s advice to Beth to be who she wants to be was much harder for him to live out himself.

Saturday at AFIFest 2020

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Going to festivals often results in a bit of emotional whiplash. My Saturday viewing at AFIFest 2020 Presented by Audi is an example of that. From stories about executions to animated folklore to the angst of a recovering addict heavy metal drummer who suddenly loses his hearing. It is a day of very strong reactions.

The Iranian film There Is No Evil won the Golden Bear for Best Film and the Prize of the Ecumenical Jury at the Berlin Film Festival. Director Mohammed Rasoulof has recently been sentenced to prison and banned from making films in Iran. This is a series of vignettes that eventually ask the question “What kind of animal could execute someone?” We meet a family man doing his daily routines. We see a soldier who struggles with having the job of executing a criminal. We meet another soldier on his way to celebrate his girlfriend’s birthday who finds the house in mourning. We see a young woman who has come back to Iran to visit her uncle and aunt, only to discover an amazing secret.

The beautiful cinematography and the excellent stories show us a very human view of these people who all in some way are touched by capital punishment. The stories evolve to our discovery of a twist we probably didn’t expect. At the heart of the film is the question of what kind of effect capital punishment has on those who must carry it out. A powerful film that is very deserving of the accolades it has garnered.

The film I most anticipated coming into the festival was Wolfwalkers, directed by Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart. This is the third animated film based in Irish folklore from Cartoon Saloon. Like the previous films, Secret of the Kells and Song of the Sea, the hand animation is beautiful, drawing on the art history of the time period being portrayed. The story involves a young girl, Robyn Goodfellow, sent to Ireland with her hunter father. Her father is tasked with ridding the woods of wolves. Robyn wants to hunt with him, but her father forbids it. She doesn’t mind. In the woods, she comes across another young girl, Mebh, who has more lupine than human behavior. Mebh is a wolfwalker, she is a human when awake, but when asleep, her spirit takes the body of a wolf. She also has magical healing powers. Her mother, the head wolfwalker, has been asleep for a long time.

As Robyn tries to help Mebh, she discovers that because of a bite from Mebh, Robin is now a wolfwalker as well. Meanwhile Robin’s father and the Lord Protector are trying to wipe out the wolf pack. The folkloric stories that Cartoon Saloon has brought us all have an environmental message in that our efforts to conquer the natural world has had a terrible price. Like those who created such tales, we need to live more in harmony with the world around us.

Riz Ahmed as Ruben in SOUND OF METAL Courtesy of Amazon Studios

In Darius Marder’s Sound of Metal, we encounter a man who seems to lose everything in his life, but may indeed find true peace. Ruben (Riz Ahmed) is a heavy metal drummer who plays with his girlfriend Lou (Olivia Cooke). When he suddenly loses most of his hearing, he wants to push forward with cochlear implants, but the cost is prohibitive, and as a recovering addict, he is struggling. He reluctantly joins a community of deaf recovering addicts. He rebels against his deafness, but slowly begins to fit in with others with hearing impairments. When he sells all he has for his surgery, he may be back into addiction behavior (addiction to hearing or past life?).

Through it all the leader of the deaf community tries to get him to stop trying to fix things (mostly his deafness). He urges him to try to just sit—to find stillness. He tells Ruben that moments of stillness are the “place of the Kingdom of God.” I should point out that this is an emotionally exhausting story. I don’t mean that to discourage anyone from seeing it. That emotional involvement in the story should be a key goal of all filmmakers. Darius Marder, in his first feature narrative film manages to summon our emotions for Ruben’s search for happiness and life.

I should also comment on a short that I’ve seen. Shorts are always an important part of AFIFest. In A 1984 Period Piece in Present Day from Sean Glass, we meet a couple who check into a somewhat spooky motel for the night. There they watch an old episode of “Creepshow”. It is one that the man remembers fondly, but when looked at from the present day, there are serious issues with it. Has the show become outdated, have we grown as a culture, or is it just as spooky to consider as it was then?

Friday at AFIFest 2020

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Welcome to AFIFest Presented by Audi. As with everything in the world of COVID-19, it’s a bit different than most years. I’m not driving up to Hollywood for a day of working my schedule around when to get in line and when I can fit in something for dinner. Instead I have my feet up in my recliner and watch the offerings of the day. The downside is I don’t get to see the films on big screens. But it is still a world of excellent films. You can still take part in the festival by going to https://fest.afi.com/ for tickets and watch them in your recliner.

Day one, film one: Should the Wind Drop (Si le Vent Tombe). This is in the New Auteur section. Directed by Nora Matirosyan, the film is set in Nagorno-Karabakh, a small quasi-country in the Caucasus. The country exists as a part of a ceasefire agreement between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Alain is sent from France to do an audit of the airport to see if it can be opened to air traffic. Everything seems good, except that it is only a few miles from the ceasefire border and Azerbaijan military could shoot down planes entering their airspace. Through Alain we meet some of the people whose lives are impacted by his decisions. Key among them is a young boy who makes his living by carrying water to provide drinks to people. Each day he walks through the airport runways as a shortcut.

The film is really a way of making visible this not-quite-a-country. Most of the world has no idea of the conflict that has been on hold for twenty years. However, just three weeks ago, the conflict flared up again. The people of Nagorno-Karabakh have been shaped by living in the midst of war for so long. As one of them puts it, it is like living on a volcano, waiting for it to wake up. They have hopes for happiness and prosperity that have been put on hold indefinitely.

Another film in the New Auteur section is Nine Days, from Edson Oda. Will (Winston Duke) selects new souls to have “the amazing opportunity of life”. At first we watch him watching a bank of TVs where he sees daily life through the eyes of all the souls he has chosen. But when one of them (perhaps his favorite of them all) suddenly dies, he must choose a new soul to be born. He has a series of interviews with various new souls with a range of personalities. One of the reasons he is a selector is that he has had the experience of living. His assistant Kyo (Benedict Wong) has never lived. Kyo serves as a goad for Will to consider different aspects. He is a bit of a Jiminy Cricket conscience. Will is hampered in the process by his grief over the loss of the young woman who died. He also struggles with what he perceives as his own failure in life (a side of him that only emerges slowly).

One of the candidates he is interviewing, Emma (Zazie Beetz) doesn’t really follow the rules, yet something about her gets under Will’s skin. Because only one of the candidates will be chosen, this becomes a film about what it means to live. What qualities make for a good life? What strengths or weaknesses will determine of life is fulfilling or a disaster? I was attracted to this film because it seemed to be a mirror image of Hirokazu Kore-eda’s After Life (one of my all time favorites). Like that film, it is a moving celebration of both the moments that make up life and the totality of the sum of those moments.