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Reporting from Slamdance – Narrative Features (part 2)

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Here is another round of narrative features that are part of this year’s Slamdance Film Festival. This set of films is from around the world.

The world premiere of No Trace (Nulle Trace) from Canadian director Simon Lavoie served as the Opening Night film. Set in a dystopian future, the film begins with watching railroad ties go by before we discover “N”, a woman whose face shows years of struggle, driving a handcar along the tracts. When she stops, she picks up Awa, a young Muslim woman and her baby, and secrets them away in a crate to smuggle across the border. After a successful drop off, uniting the young mother with her husband, N returns to her travels. But misfortune will reunite the two women in a struggle to survive in the wilderness.

The film is shot in stark black and white in such a way to portray a cold, empty world. The world the two women inhabit seems to have lost all morality beyond the rule of the strongest. N is a survivor and is not opposed to using force if necessary. Yet when she finds Awa a second time, she cares for her, even at a cost to herself. The two women are very different, not just in age and looks, but in perspective. A part of that difference is faith. At one point, Awa asks N if she is a believer. N responds that she has never been that desperate. She tells Awa that belief “won’t help you survive.” But Awa continues in her prayer and trusts in God to deliver her—either in this world or the next.

The world of foreign domestic workers is the focal point of Alberto Gerosa’s Dea, making its world premiere at Slamdance. This is the story of a 20 year old Indonesian woman who contract to go to Hong Kong as a domestic worker. The understanding is that she will make enough money that she can send most of it back to help her family. What seems like an opportunity for a good life, ends up with many slights and disrespect, some small, but others serious, including sexual assault. When she loses her job, she has no real status in the society.

The film has 40 co-writers listed, each only with a first name. It is the result of an acting lab made up of immigrants in Hong Kong and Macau. Everything that happens to Dea in the film is based on things that happened to these young women. The socio-economic realities that the film brings forth are not limited to Hong Kong, of course. Exploitation of the poor is a near universal occurrence.

Isaac (Izaokas), from director Jurgis Matulevičius, is a Lithuanian film noir, set in Soviet Lithuania in 1964. In an introduction that takes place during World War II, with Jews being tormented and killed by Nazi sympathizers. This event becomes the focus of a film that Gedas Gutauskas wants to make. Gedas has just returned to Lithuania from 20 years in the US where he’s gained fame as a writer and film director. He reconnects to two old friends, Andrius and Elena. The three were very close until Gedas escaped to the West. Andrius and Elena are married, but the marriage has gone sour. The authorities are following and bugging Gedas. An investigator wants to re-open the case of a murder during that World War II event because Gedas’s script is so accurate, he thinks Gedas must have been involved. In reality it is Andrius who is tied to the story.

As with any noir film, there are twists as we slowly come to understand the truth, not only of that terrible event that opens the film, but also the relationships between Gedas, Andrius, and Elena. It also reflects a bit of the Soviet era angst with police surveillance and a hint at official corruption that only wants certain truths to be exposed. The film is mostly black and white, with the middle section in color. That middle section is the least noirish part of the film.

Light of My Life – A Father’s Love

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Light of My Life opens with a father and daughter camping in the woods as he tells her a bedtime story that is peripherally connected to the story of Noah’s Ark. The story is one of rescue and protection of a young female fox as the world if facing destruction. The scene is shot in a closeup that visually establishes an intimacy between the two. In an abstract way, that is the summary of the situation the father faces in this film.

Dad (Casey Affleck, who also wrote and directed) and eleven year-old Rag (Anna Pniowski) have been together for the past ten years—living in a tent or squatting in vacant houses. They forage and occasionally go into town to get supplies. At this point it seems a bit like last year’s Leave No Trace. But whenever they come across others, Dad always introduces Rag as his son. That is the first hint that things may be a bit off in this world.

In time, we learn that there has been a global pandemic that has wiped out nearly the entire female population, including Rag’s mother (Elisabeth Moss in flashbacks). That has created a world in which women are at high risk of abuse. The dystopia plays out in the background, even as the film is set in idyllic nature. The evil that is in the world has not destroyed the beauty, as we often see in dystopian stories, rather it coexists with the goodness of nature. This story is very much a story of good and evil, but without really focusing on the evil, as many horror films would do. Rather the focus is on Dad’s love for Rag that leads him to do everything he can to protect her.

It should be noted that the first half of the film is fairly leisurely in developing the conflicts of the story. First and foremost, it wants us to see the tremendous bond between Rag and Dad. (The chemistry between Affleck and Pniowski creates a wonderful sense of intimacy.) Much of the film is the two of them talking, sometimes about the mundane things of their life, but often venturing in to more serious areas, such as the difference between morality and ethics, or what it will take to get the world back into balance. Both of those discussions provide insights into events in the story. They help us understand the kind of person Dad is as he faces difficult situations.

Dad is not the only good person we encounter in this film. Towards the end, as they come to a house that used to belong to Dad’s grandparents, one of the men now living there can tell that Rag is a girl, but confronts Dad to make sure he really is her father, and not someone exploiting her. He also shares some wisdom about the situation to remind Dad that there are some places where women might be safe. In time he will have to find such a place for her. But that will require giving up his role as protector. A part of the wisdom shared with him is to have trust in God to make a plan.

It is refreshing to have a story in which goodness is developed throughout while the evil aspects stay mostly in the background. We know that people are capable of doing evil. Light of My Life spends its time not so much in the battle to defeat evil by confronting it, but by building the bond of love that provides the power that will lead the characters to overcome that evil.

Photos courtesy of Elevation Pictures

When the English Fall – Post-Apocalyptic Tale through Amish Eyes

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In post-apocalyptic fiction we are used to seeing the dystopian aftermath. Gangs, lawlessness, greed, violence. When the English Falls by David Williams has all that, but it is on the periphery of the story. At the center is a man of faith trying to understand what God is calling him, his family, and his community to be and to do.

The book is in the form of a journal kept by an Amish farmer and carpenter named Jacob. He and his family live in rural Pennsylvania. His daughter is troubled by seizures and dreams that may be prophetic. Jacob is uneasy about keeping the journal because it seems vain and prideful. However, he feels the need to continue to better understand himself.

When the journal begins, the only stress is his daughter’s illness. But one evening there is a massive aurora borealis and in the aftermath all electronics and most of the machines in the world are disabled. That is only a minor inconvenience for the Amish community, because they have so little of those things. But as the days progress life in the cities becomes very difficult. At first the farmers send food to the cities, but even that cannot keep up with the shortages. Soon there is news of violence—first in the cities, then working its way out into the country. Soon that violence comes very close indeed.

The Amish do not feel justified by their lifestyle—thinking how smart it seems now to have eschewed most technology. Rather they understand that they have responsibilities to the world around them. When the middleman who sells Jacob’s furniture shows up with his family, Jacob takes him into his home, even though it will cause his own family to have less. As the violence comes closer and closer, some of the non-Amish local farmers form their own militia to try to prevent looting and theft. They would surely protect their Amish neighbors, but the Amish feel uncomfortable in “safety” that is found in violence, even if they are not being violent.

Jacob often reflects his own questions about how this could happen, but it is always in the context of his faith. And it is a dynamic faith that calls him to act selflessly in the face of both violence and the needs of others. As the story progresses (it takes place over about three months), he and the others in his community will be faced with difficult decisions. The question they are most likely to ask is what is it God wants them to do in these troubled times. And they know from their decision to live the simple life of the Amish way that God does not make their life easy. But to live any other way would be to fail to live as they believe God has called them. In those actions they redefine what we may think of as heroism in a dystopian world.

The Lobster – When Love is a Chore

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In a somewhat benign dystopia (The City) all people who are not in a relationship must go to a resort for single people. They have forty-five days to fall in love and become a couple, or they will be transformed into an animal. Yorgos Lanthimos (previous film: Dogtooth) brings us films that have very strange settings and allows us to see what seem to be fairly normal people in bizarre situations. So it is with The Lobster. This is a very different kind of romantic comedy than most viewers expect.

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David (Colin Farrell) is recently divorced and must check in to The Hotel and try to find a suitable mate. You would think people would be going crazy to pair up, but there is such a lack of emotion in this strange world that we’re not surprised that there are so many who fail. As David begins to close in on his end date, he manages to escape to the woods where there is a group of “Loners”, people who choose not to follow society’s rules about being in pairs and carry on a guerrilla war. There are rules to being in The Loners, including no flirting, but soon David is attracted to “Short Sighted Woman” (Rachel Weisz). Whereas in The Hotel such attraction would be encouraged, amidst The Loners, they risk being ostracized, so must develop their own way of showing affection.

There is a wonderful supporting cast that includes Olivia Colman (Hotel Manager), Lea Seydoux (Loner Leader), and John C. Reilly (Lisping Man). David is the only character with an actual name; the others are defined by their roles or their flaws.

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For those unfamiliar with Lanthimos (and since this is his first film in English, that will be most people), the kind of quirky world he has created might be compared to the films of Wes Anderson, although Lanthimos uses a more subtle and drier sense of humor. Here that translates into an entertaining look at what it means to love and be in love in a world where loving is not so much a joy, but a chore. For those in The Hotel, love must be found to survive, but that means it is not something that we experience so much as something that must be accomplished (or perhaps even faked). For David it is only in the freedom of the forest among the Loners that he finally finds love, but then it is forbidden. David and Short Sighted Woman must forge their own way to finding the joy that love represents.

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The film gives us a chance to consider the expectations of society that we fit a certain mold in our relationships. If we aren’t paired up, if we aren’t a couple, if we don’t meet certain criteria, we are outsiders. But then it seems the outsiders have their own set of rules. They expect conformity within their nonconformity. Trying to fit love into any set of rules may lead us to miss the kind of happiness that we find through the discovery of what makes any love unique.

Photos courtesy of A24

Mad Max Fury Road: Baptism By Water, Dust & Fire

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furyroad1stWhen we meet Mad Max (Tom Hardy, for the first time), he is wrestling with a vision of the past. He hears cries for help, and sees those he has lost along the way. We know who he is because we’ve seen the previous films by George Miller (ironically enough, Babe, Happy Feet 1 & 2… and the Mad Max trilogy), but his name isn’t uttered until the closing stanza of the film. Max is a man without a community, a man without hope, a man desperately in need of redemption, even though he’s not proactively seeking any of the three.

Soon, Max has run afoul of Immortal Joe (Hugh Keays-Byrne) and one of his crazy-eyed henchman, Nux (Nicholas Hoult). But Max is not alone: he’s tied to the welfare of Imperator Furiosa (Charlize Theron) and a band of women who Furiosa is stealing/freeing from Joe. Joe believes that these women are his property (and has impregnated a few of them), controlling his ‘tribe’s’  water, gasoline, and future as well.

Bouncing off of walls and other vehicles of mass destruction, Miller’s script is linear in its own way, but it’s also multilayered. Bombastic visuals make up for a dearth of dialogue, rocketing the audience (especially the 3D one) along through a series of battles, chases, storms, and other calamities, leaving us feeling like we’ve survived a desert storm (war). Elements reflect other post-apocalyptic fare like The Book of Eli and one wonders if the character of Max himself was necessary for the film’s greatness. Could we have been enthralled, enticed, invited in if it had been merely a “world gone bad”? Max himself is not even necessarily the figure we find our eyes riveted to…

Mad Max Fury Road MainFuriosa is herself a stunning character, and not for her beauty or charm. Like other Theron characters before her, she has been stripped of her more feminine nature and held up as an individual ripe with character and strength. She is Miller’s Ripley, the one-armed driver who has a vision for the future, while Max only has visions. She is the moral compass, the driving force, making this Max character seem more like a “reboot” than a sequel storyline. It’s as if he must learn to be human all over again, after the devastating events of Tina Turner’s Thunderdome.

Instead, our heroine is the one who recognizes what it takes to make hope a reality, even if she needs help to see it through. Furiosa believes in the “Green Place,” part-utopia, part-nostalgic past. She’s the one who attempts to intercede on behalf of the Five Wives of Joe, to say that they are not cattle, or property, or baby-producing machines. Initially, and most of the way throughout, Max is merely an additional gunhand, along for the ride.

DSC_3888.JPGA Deeper Discussion: Spoilers Ahead!

But Mad Max: Fury Road is not simply “man bad, woman good” the way that some reviewers have suggested. There is more nuance here, and it may often revert back to an understanding of John Locke/Charles Darwin behavior. Do we take more from our nature or our nurture? Does the fall of technology or ‘civilization’ signal a return  to the animalistic self and the Old Testament understandings of right and wrong? Or is there something higher and more intrinsic about who we are as people?

Max and Furiosa are incomplete people. One lacks a family, while the other lacks an arm (and feminine ‘purpose’ in Joe’s world). But they complete each other (not in a Jerry Maguire way) by being the visionary and the vision fulfilled. Ultimately, the ‘universal blood donor’ saves lives, but he’s not the Christ-figure. He’s the power, the will, the safety net of the Christ-figure, who ultimately proves to be the one who frees the oppressed and comforts the abused.

In the one real dramatic turn of events (spoiler! I told you again), after the group fails to arrive in the perfect world Furiosa was stolen from, Max convinces her that they must return to the land flowing with water and greenery in The Citadel. It is not an image of going away to some other place (a sometimes evangelical view of escape to heaven) but rather a liberating of the ideals, resources, and grace to everyone present in the here and now, already available. [One interesting aside: Keeper of the Seeds (Melissa Jaffer) tells the liberated wives that once, everyone had enough, and there was no need for war.] Instead of waiting for heaven, what if we lived like we should care for each other today?

FURY ROADThat is a sharp turn from the Valhalla that Joe has Nux and the other War Boys. It’s like (pre-Pan) as if Joe has established himself as the giver of all things to the Lost Boys, and they are predestined to live and die for his glory. Sure, there’s some Middle Eastern thought there about dying in glory, but it’s mixed into a brew that sees the Norse imagery included, along with the elevation of women to objectified status as well. Joe’s Valhalla includes the repression of belief, freedom, and water in the here-and-now, a charge that could be leveled against any organization, from the church of Martin Luther’s day to various world governments. Supply is artificially culled by Joe so that demand is higher, with the understanding that (except for Joe), tomorrow matters more than today. For the Max and Furiosa, much like for the early church sent out to be witnesses in Acts 1:8, they must prove that there is enough of everything (grace, water, gender) for everyone.

The two of them, working in tandem, are baptized by the dust of the storm (we’ve even see Max rise up out of the dust, akin to a baptism or earlier birth in Genesis 2:7). Then, they’re baptized by the fire of the flamethrowers, the bullets, and the grenades of Immortal Joe’s pursuit. And finally, they provide the baptism by freeing the ‘unlimited’ water supply to the villagers waiting below. [Ironically enough, neither one of them is actually ‘baptized’ by the water but they initiate that experience for others.] They make church happen, blasting open the divide between the water and the people, much like Jesus promised the church would in Matthew 16:18: “on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not stand against it.” In the land of desolate desert, Max and Furiosa make the water flow. They are in the practice of blowing away gates, rocks, impediments to ‘the good.’

Honestly, I’ve never walked away from a film feeling so punched in the face by the weight of it. The 3D work was masterful, and the action was slick. I almost feel like I’m stuck with sand in my teeth, from the immersive experience of such a depressing worldview. This was no beach vacation; this was a war for our future, a warning about who we could become.

It’s a lovely day. Or is it?