Movie Review: The Central Park Five

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Movie Review: The Central Park Five

The Central Park Five
Directed by: Ken Burns & Sarah Burns & David McMahon.
Written by: Ken Burns & Sarah Burns & David McMahon.

In 1989, five black and Latino teenagers were arrested, tried and convicted of attacking and raping a white woman who was jogging through Central Park. The case garnered national attention, and certainly was horrifying to everyone in New York City – a city that was already deeply divided along racial lines (remember, this was the same year Spike Lee directed his masterpiece – Do the Right Thing). The media had a field day with the attack – describing the teens as a “wolf pack” and popularizing the term “wilding” – to describe such attacks by these large groups of non-white teenagers. This is a case that everyone heard about – even me, who was only 8 at the time.

How many people remember however that The Central Park Five were eventually exonerated? After spending anywhere between 6 and 13 years in prison, new evidence came to light. A man named Matias Reyes, who was arrested not long after the Central Park Five, and was convicted of being the East Side Rapist, responsible for many similar attacks. He eventually confessed to the crime – saying he committed it alone – and whose DNA was linked to the crime.

So, if they didn’t do the crime, and if they had no DNA evidence to convict them, than how did these five men get convicted in the first place? Simple – they confessed. But as we are seeing more and more often in the American Justice system, confessions are not always accurate. In this case, you have five teenagers – between 14 and 16 – who were questioned for hours on end, without a lawyer present, who eventually just gave in and confessed – although none took responsibility themselves, they all pointed the finger at the others, perhaps thinking that this way they could go home. Despite the fact that the confessions do not match each other, and have some glaring factual flaws in them, and despite the fact that now reasonable timeline could be established to make the prosecutions timeline fit, and despite the fact that even before trial, the DA knew the DNA evidence did not match any of the defendants, they pushed forward with the case – and got convictions.

The documentary The Central Park Five has been directed by Ken Burns, best known for his PBS documentaries, along with his daughter Sarah and son-in-law David McMahon. The movie is clearly not impartial – few documentaries truly are – and the filmmakers are clearly on the side of the five men – Kharey Wise, Kevin Richardson, Raymond Santana, Yusef Salaam and Anton McCray – all of which are interviewed (although one does not want his face shown). Perhaps this closed with these men can account for the film’s single biggest flaw – the fact that the filmmakers never really question the five on what they were really doing at the time of the attack. It’s pretty much undeniable that they are innocent of what they were charged and convicted for – but by their own admission, they were in Central Park that night as part of a large group of teenagers – perhaps up to 30 – and participated in other crimes that night. So while The Central Park Five were innocent of what they were charged with, they aren’t really completely innocent, are they? A more complex documentary would address this issue.

Yet, perhaps the movie doesn’t need to address it. After all, they weren’t charged with anything other than the attack and rape of the jogger – a crime which they are clearly innocent of. They served years behind bars for something they didn’t do – something that should not happen to anyone, despite what else they may be guilty of. What the movie does do is lay out a step by step process of how the cops and the DA got confessions and then convictions out of the suspects, and how the media ate up everything up they were fed, without ever questioning what really happened. The city was horrified by what happened, and in a race to sell papers, the different New York City papers piled on, seeing who could be the most outraged by the crime.

The Central Park Five joins the ranks of documentaries like the Paradise Lost trilogy and West of Memphis – all about the West Memphis Three, convicted of the murder of three young boys because of a confession by one of them. It makes you question the justice system – a system that seems more interested in getting results than getting correct results. This was a high profile case the police needed to close – and close it they did, even if they should have known they didn’t have the right people.

Movie Review: The House I Live In

Movie Review: The House I Live In

The House I Live In
Directed by: Eugene Jarecki.
Written by: Eugene Jarecki & Christopher St John.

The War on Drugs is hugely expensive and not very effective. Most people have known this for years now. Eugene Jarecki’s excellent documentary The House I Live In goes back and looks at the history of American drug laws, and the War on Drugs, to figure out why it hasn’t really worked in practice. The answers he comes up with shocked and saddened me.

The case The House I Live in makes is that the War on Drugs is basically racist. The earliest drug laws in America were to criminalize opium in California. Why? Because California had a lot of Chinese immigrants, largely unpopular among the white citizens, and this was a way to arrest them. The same thing happened later with marijuana laws that targeted Latinos. And the same thing is going on right now with African Americans. Why is it that although African Americans make up just 13% of America, and studies show that they make up about the same percentage of drugs users, that 90% of the people arrested and jailed on drug charges are black? And why, until recently, did people get the same sentence for possessing 5 grams of crack that they got for possessing 500 grams of cocaine, when there is no real difference between the two of them? The answers are simple – more young black men sell crack than cocaine, and as street level dealers, they are easy targets for the police – who want to show they are making arrests, even though the ones interviewed in this movie admit they aren’t really making a difference. And also, prisons are big business. They are an increasing number of for profit prisons in America, and even the ones that aren’t, still need to buy a lot of stuff from private companies. Locking up drug users doesn’t really help them, but it ensures a continual profit for business, and don’t we all want that? And more prisons mean more jobs, and don’t we need those as well?

Politicians don’t want to be seen as “soft on crime” – something that they will be hit with during every election, so as such, they pass laws like “mandatory minimums” so “bleeding heart” judges won’t let people go with nothing but a slap on the wrist. They have no choice but to sentence people to long prison terms, even if it won’t actually help curb drug abuse.

What Jarecki’s point really boils down to however is this – drugs are mainly a result of poverty. For many growing up in the slums, they see little opportunity to become successful, and selling drugs seems to be the quickest, easiest way of making money. For years, this was mainly young, African American males being arrested, but this has started to turn around in recent years – as there are many more unemployed, disenfranchised white men out there – and they have started to sell crystal meth. Throwing these people in jails doesn’t solve the main issues however – that with more and more people unemployed, or struggling to make ends meet, there are going to be more and more people who turn to drugs.

Now, I am advocating making drugs legal? Not really, although drug laws do certainly seem to serve only to drive the prices of drugs up, which in turn increases the amount of crime drug users commit in order to satisfy their addictions. But I do think that more emphasis needs to be on rehabilitation than punishment – getting people clean, instead of locking them in jail for decades. And more effort needs to be made to give the disenfranchised of every race more of an opportunity to make something of their lives, so that they do not turn to drugs in the first place. You want to get people off drugs, don’t give them a reason to go drugs in the first place. Some will undoubtedly still use drugs – it’s a fact we must learn to live with – but something needs to be done to stop the number of people going to jail for non-violent drug offenses – especially since it does not appear that justice is meted out equally among all users.

Movie Review: In Another Country

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Movie Review: In Another Country

In Another Country
Directed by: Sang-soo Hong.
Written by: Sang-soo Hong.
Starring: Isabelle Huppert (Anne), Yoo Jun-sang (Lifeguard), Kwon Hae-hyo (Jong-soo), Moon So-ri (Geum-hee), Moon Sung-keun (Moon-soo), Jung Yoo-mi (Won-ju), Yoon Yeo-jeong (Park Sook).

Sang-soo Hong is one of those filmmakers whose films pretty much only play at film festivals in North America. Eventually, his films achieve a cursory theatrical release over here – but if often takes time. In 2012, his 2010 film Oki’s Movie, his 2011 film The Day He Arrives and his 2012 film In Another Country all got released. They get praised in all those film magazines I read – like Film Comment – but until In Another Country, I had only seen one of his films (The Day He Arrives) – and quite liked it, so I was looking forward to seeing more of Sang-soo Hong’s work. I enjoyed In Another Country, but still it felt somewhat lacking. Is this what all the fuss was about?

In Another Country is really three films set in a small Korean town, all written by a young female screenwriter, and contains similar character in each, in similar situations. Isabelle Huppert stars in all three as a French woman on vacation – either a filmmaker scouting a location, a woman looking for a quiet place to resume her latest affair with a Korean man, or as a woman looking to get away from her latest divorce. In all three she meets a famous Korean director – and in a few, his wife – as well as a lifeguard. While the director seems to be a better match for her – both in terms of age and education level, she keeps coming back to the lifeguard.

The film is amusing while it is playing – not least because it reminds us that Huppert, who usually plays darker characters in heavy movies, can be a gifted comic actress in the right role. Here, playing a trio of neurotic characters, she is sweet and charming, even while she is making mistakes, which is often. She is the heart of the movie, and she carries it effortlessly.

 

The film itself seems to be built on miscommunication. Huppert doesn’t speak Korean, and the locals speak broken English at best, so she is never quite sure is happening, as the character speak around her, but very rarely directly to her. The one exception is the Yoo Jun-sang’s lifeguard character, He is much younger, but is seemingly the only character who takes her seriously – and is genuinely interested in her. The two could not be more mismatched, and that is almost their charm together. They are not unlike the couple at the heart of Lost in Translation, with the genders reversed. They may never quite fall in love, or even into bed, but they share a deeper connection.

I was amused by In Another Country. It reminded me of Woody Allen – especially something like Melinda and Melinda, where Allen experimented with telling the same story as both a comedy and a tragedy. Hong’s screenplay is simple, but funny, and the characters are well drawn. His direction needlessly calls attention to itself at times – strange zooms are prevalent throughout. But I certainly did enjoy the film. I’ve been reading about Hong for years now, and The Day He Arrives seemed to confirm, for me, his talent. In Another Country is a mildly amusing and diverting comedy – but perhaps I should still see some of his earlier films. Something tells me if he garnered all that praise, they had to be much better than this film.

Movie Review: The Gatekeepers

Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Movie Review: The Gatekeepers

The Gatekeepers
Directed by:  Dror Moreh.
Featuring: Ami Ayalon, Avi Dichter, Yuval Diskin, Carmi Gillon, Yaakov Peri, Avraham Shalom.

The Gatekeepers is an urgent, necessary and depressing look at the relationship between Israel and Palestine since 1967, told through the eyes of six former heads of Shin Bet – the Israeli intelligence agency responsible for anti-terrorism and intelligence gathering in the West Bank and Gaza. I’m sure some will complain that the Palestinians are not given a voice in this documentary – and as such it is biased – but I don’t think that’s a fair complaint. This documentary is about these men, and what they did, and their opinions on what is happening now, and their predictions for the future. And the outlook is bleak.

You would expect that the men who led Shin Bet to be hardliners in their defense of Israel and their actions against Palestine – especially since they played in role in what has happened. But they really aren’t. Perhaps this is because they are not politicians – never have been – and for much of their career, no one in Israel knew who they were. The only member of Shin Bet whose identity is known to the public is the head – and they answer directly to the Prime Minister. What emerges as these men tell their stories is a portrait of men who did what they thought necessary at the time, who followed the orders of politicians, and have had that experience change them. One of them says “I think you become a leftist once you leave this job”. To a man, they support a two state solution between Israel and Palestine, and support getting the illegal settlers out of the West Bank and Gaza. They think Israel should be willing to talk to any group about a solution – even if that group answers rudely, they should at least talk to them, and work on a solution. One resigned after Prime Minister Rabin was assassinated by a radical right wing Israeli for trying to get a permanent peace treaty in place. They express frustration that the Israeli underground – who they tracked and arrested planting bombs on buses to kill hundreds of Arabs at once, and were even plotting to blow up the Dome on the Rock, which would have led to all out world with the entire Muslim world, basically got a slap on the wrist and went back to their normal lives.

Yet, these are also the men responsible for the deaths of many Palestinians – blown operations where they dropped a one ton bomb on a house in a residential neighborhood, killing many innocent civilians, or killing terrorists who took a busload of Israelis hostage – even though the men had been arrested and were no longer a threat. They had almost unlimited authority to carry out missions, and use deadly force. One Prime Minister told the head of Shin Bet, if you can’t find me, just use your best judgment.

Do these men try and justify their own behavior? To a certain extent, yes. But overall, I think the reason they have come forward to speak about the work they did – which the documentary tells us is the first time they have done so is simple: They are tired of Israel’s actions being decided by a group of spineless politicians, who are not thinking of the long game, but instead only the immediate. These men talk of how Israel has become “cruel”, one compares them to the Germans in WWII (not the ones who exterminated the Jews, but the ones who occupied the Poles, Dutch, Czechs, etc.) and the final line in the movie candidly tells us that Israel will “win every battle, and lose the war”.

The film is directed by Dror Moreh, who has obviously been inspired by the great Errol Morris. He weaves the interviews with these men together with some great, heartbreaking, violent archival footage, to give us a sense of the events being discussed. Moreh remains unseen throughout the movie, but occasionally you can hear him ask a question – once as he tries to get an opinion on the morality of what has been done “Forget morality when you’re dealing with terrorists” he is told. There will be people on all sides of the debate who find The Gatekeepers troubling – those who think it is too pro-Israel, and those who think it is too anti-Israel. Anyone who walks into The Gatekeepers with their mind made up about the situation is likely to have that opinion shaken – or at least challenged. To me, that is what a great documentary does. And The Gatekeepers is a great documentary.

Movie Review: Neighbouring Sounds

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Movie Review: Neighbouring Sounds

Neighbouring Sounds
Directed by:  Kleber Mendonça Filho.
Written by:  Kleber Mendonça Filho.
Starring: Irma Brown (Sofia), Sebastião Formiga (Claudio), Gustavo Jahn (João), Maeve Jinkings (Bia), Dida Maia (Ricardo), Irandhir Santos (Clodoaldo), W.J. Solha (Francisco), Lula Terra (Anco), Yuri Holanda (Dinho), Clébia Souza (Luciene).

The past haunts the present in subtle, yet powerful, ways in Kleber Mendonca Filho’s brilliant debut film Neighbouring Sounds. The film opens with old photos of slaves on Brazil’s sugar plantation, before flashing forward to present day Recife, a town on the Brazilian coast where the upper, middle and lower class live side-by-side, yet worlds apart. If you can afford to, you lock yourself behind gates and walls, as the residents of this small neighbourhood are paranoid of the people around them that they do not know. This paranoia seems unfounded, as we don’t see much crime on the streets – and what we do see is committed by the spoiled grandson of area’s richest resident Francisco (W.J. Solha) – who made his money on the sugar plantations. He owns much of the area, but while his is the fanciest house in the area, with the most protection, he is also the only one who feels safe enough to leave his house in the middle of the night – to walk down to the beach and go swimming in the Ocean, despite signs warning of sharks.

The film has a large structure, layering story upon story much the same way Robert Altman did in films like Nashville or Short Cuts. Gradually, characters begin to emerge. Joao (Gustabo Jahn), another grandson of Francisco, who has a job showing condo in his grandfather’s building – condos where maid quarters are expected. He hates his job, but does it anyway. He has started seeing Sofia (Irma Brown), who used to live in the area and wants to see her former house before it’s torn down to make way for even more condos. There is Bia (Maeve Jinkings), a bored housewife, who escapes through pot and an unbalanced washing machine. She is fighting a private war with the barking dog next door, and gets into a fight with her sister – they are both getting a new TV, and Bia’s is bigger. There is Dinho (Yuri Holanda), the delinquent car radio thief, who as the grandson of Francisco, has no need to steal people’s radios, except that he wants to.

The common thread running through the movie is Clodoaldo (Irandhir Santos), who shows up one day and gets all the residents to agree to pay a monthly fee for him and his men to patrol the streets at night to keep everything safe. This basically involves them sitting under a tarp, talking to each other on their walkie-talkies. Clodoaldo has secrets as well, as everyone in the neighbourhood does, but is also the only character who comes into contact with everyone else – from the upper class of Francisco and Joao, to the middle class Bia, to the lower class maids and doormen the other forget about, unless it’s to complain about them.

Neighbouring Sounds is a slow burn of a movie. When the film begins, you think it may just be a slice of life film about this neighbourhood. And yet, fairly early on, the sense of mounting dread begins. You know from the start that something darker is lurking beneath the surface here, you just cannot quite figure out what it is. None of the characters are what you would call wholly good or wholly bad. Joao seems like a nice guy – in one of the film’s best scenes, he’s the only one who argues on behalf of a doorman the rest of the condo residents want to fire for sleeping on the job – which would mean the longtime employee could be gotten rid of with no severance package. In this scene it becomes clear that resentment is not just between the different classes, but between everyone – no one trusts their neighbours. But Joao also puts his longtime maid out to pasture, replacing her with her dour daughter, even though she doesn’t want to retire, and at only 60, doesn’t really need to. On the surface he seems nice – he seems to have some guilt about his family’s wealth and wants to be seen as just another resident of the street, but his sense of entitlement gradually starts to show.

The mounting dread is aided by the intricate sound design of the movie, where everything is ramped up just a little beyond its normal volume – footsteps on the ceiling above you can sound as ominous as anything else in this movie. And gradually, a few bizarre things happen to make you wonder just what precisely is going on.

Neighbouring Sounds is a remarkable debut film for Kleber Mendonça Filho. Like many first time directors, he picked an ambitious project – many characters, interlocking stories, subtle shifts in tone, gradually ratcheting up the tension – but unlike many directors he has the skill to pull it off. The movie ends with two scenes in which we see the past coming back to haunt one character, and then that same past seemingly about to repeat itself with another character. All over a fence. Or a dog.

Movie Review: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II

Monday, March 4, 2013

Movie Review: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part II
Directed by: Bill Condon.
Written by: Melissa Rosenberg based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer.
Starring: Kristen Stewart (Bella Swan), Robert Pattinson (Edward Cullen), Taylor Lautner (Jacob Black), Peter Facinelli (Dr. Carlisle Cullen), Elizabeth Reaser (Esme Cullen), Ashley Greene (Alice Cullen), Jackson Rathbone (Jasper Hale), Kellan Lutz (Emmett Cullen), Nikki Reed (Rosalie Hale), Billy Burke (Charlie Swan), Mackenzie Foy (Renesmee), Maggie Grace (Irina), Jamie Campbell Bower (Caius), Christopher Heyerdahl (Marcus), Michael Sheen (Aro), Dakota Fanning (Jane), Cameron Bright (Alec), MyAnna Buring (Tanya), Lee Pace (Garrett), Joe Anderson (Alistair).

I have often been accused of liking movies where nothing happens. You know the movies I mean – the long, slowly paced ones that have a lot of talk in them and not a lot of action. The films of Kelly Reichardt (Old Joy, Wendy & Lucy and Meek’s Cutoff) are a prime recent example. But I always say that in those films, a lot happens, you just have to pay attention. The characters are struggling with their own morality, or with feelings they are trying to repress. It is all very subtle, but it’s very much there.

It may seem odd to start my final review of a Twilight film with talk of long, slow movies where subtle things are bumbling beneath the surface, but I think it’s appropriate. Because after reading all four of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight books, and watching all five movies based on those books, I have come to the conclusion that The Twilight Saga really is a series of books and movies in which nothing happens. The characters stare longingly at each other, and have long, serious sounding conversations about love, vampires, werewolves, the Volturri, sex, family and everything else – but none of it really means anything. The dialogue is horrid, and the meaning behind it all ridiculous. Worse yet, it seems like Meyer was so in love with what she created, that she takes out all real conflict in her stories. You read the books, and it seems like we have four novels leading towards and ultimate showdown with the Volturri – one in which nothing really happens and EVERYONE gets to live happily ever after. No one pays any sort of price for anything that happens. At least director Bill Condon and screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg know enough to know we WANT to see a big confrontation, which they give us, even if it turns out not to be real.

The first hour of Breaking Dawn Part II is the worst this series has ever been – in fact, it’s as bad anything I have seen in recent years. In it, Edward and Bella deal with their young daughter Renesmee (the single worst name in history), and with Bella as a young vampire – incredibly strong and hungry. Everyone sits around looking very serious, and saying ridiculous dialogue to each other – especially if it involves Jacob and “imprinting”. Bella’s father is told that she is alive, but different – and seems to have no real problem with that. Then, of course, the Volturri – the powerful Italian vampires who run everything – find out about Reneesme, and embark on a journey to confront the Cullens. The Cullens gather their own forces, and it appears we are about to witness and epic vampire battle royale – which we do see, but it turns out not to be real.

My problem with the Twilight Saga has always been the same, and always been relatively simple. Nothing ever seems to be at stake in movies. There is never any real danger – we know that everything will be ok in the end, and so the movies lack any real dramatic tension. Perhaps even worse is that everyone seems so miserable for the entire running time of every movie. Love is hard, and is not all joy to be sure, but shouldn’t Edward and Bella – who end this saga in the most sickeningly cloying scene in the entire series, in a field full of flowers telling each other “No one has ever loved anyone as much I love you” seem at some point to be happy? They have spent the entire five movies looking, sounding an acting completely and totally miserable. I don’t even think it is either actor’s fault – this is clearly how these characters are supposed to behave, but sweet Jesus, does it ever get tiring.

You could argue, I suppose, that I am criticizing Twilight for not being the movie I want it to be, rather than the movie that it is. Fair enough, I guess. It always bugs me when people do this – telling filmmakers what they should have done, instead of just critiquing what they did do. Yet, in this case, what they did do is create a dramatically inert series of movies – movies with nothing of interest happening, with dour, boring characters, and horrible special effects - seriously folks, can you honestly looking at all the scenes of vampires running at full tilt in this movie – none worse than Bella taking off after that climber, and not burst into laughter at just how shoddy the special effects are? These movies make $300 million a pop, couldn’t they spring for better effects for the finale?

Still, I suppose that perhaps all I should do is just throw up my hands and admit the books and movies are not for me. Obviously, millions of teenage girls LOVE this series – both the books and the movie – beyond all reason, and they tend to be an underserved demographic, as Hollywood chases after the dollars of teenage boys, and simply assume girls will also show up. So, good for them I guess. I just wish the series treated these teenage girls with more respect – more respect for their ability to handle complex, intelligent plots and characters. There is no reason you couldn’t make a cheesy love story about vampires. But there is no reason that when you do, it has to be as dour and self-serious as the Twilight series.

DVD Review: How to Survive a Plague

Wednesday, February 27, 2013

DVD Review: How to Survive a Plague

How to Survive a Plague
Directed by: David France.
Written by: David France & Todd Woody Richman & Tyler H. Walk.

How to Survive a Plague mixes old news footage and home movies to tell the story of ACTUP – an organization that was enraged with government and drug company complacency during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s through the mid-1990s – when finally a combination of drugs was discovered that helped to prolong the lives of those infected with HIV. There is still no cure, but considering people were dying in a matter of months when the disease first came into being, and can now live seemingly indefinitely with it, this was a major breakthrough. That is happened has more to do with ACTUP than it does with the government.

 The movie shows just how the group progressed – what they did through the years (starting in 1987) as the death count rises. ACTUP  was smart enough right from the beginning to know they had to use the media to their advantage – so they had the type of protests that were too big for the media to ignore. They have media insiders teach them how to deliver catchy slogans that the media can grasp onto – the sound bite is more important than a speech – and know how to use grand gestures – huge banners reading “Silence = Death” or covering Senator Jesse Helms house (a hateful, hateful man) with a giant cloth condom. The system wasn’t working, they couldn’t change the system from within, so they did what they could to change it from the outside – and let everyone know they weren’t going anywhere.

Throughout the course of the movie, we will see them protest everyone from New York Mayor Ed Koch to then President George H.W. Bush (Reagan gets a pass, presumably since the movie begins late in his administration), to Helms, to the FDA and NIH, to various drug companies – and in 1992, Bill Clinton on the campaign trail. Their message really was simple – unless you step up and DO something, you are murdering us, and our blood will be on your hands.

It’s a provocative message, and I must say at times, I did think they were accusing the wrong people – but that hardly matters. They needed to guilt people into helping them, because nothing else was working. When AIDS first hit, hospitals did not want to diagnose people with the disease, or treat those who had it. Their bodies were often put in black garbage bags, and many funeral homes wouldn’t accept the bodies. Drugs, that were widely available in other countries, had not been approved by the FDA yet – it took them years to get through the “testing” phase, and people with AIDS did not have years to wait.

As with any group like ACTUP – from Vietnam Protesters to Occupy Wall Street and everything in between – eventually cracks start to emerge. Drugs still weren’t becoming available, and those that were didn’t help as much as hoped. Some wanted to get more involved in the inner workings of power – both in politics and the drug companies themselves – and others saw it as a waste of time. The movie pretty much skips over a few years in the early to mid-1990s when the new cocktail of drugs was discovered – saying only that it was “a dark time” – mostly because the group was fracturing, and people were still dying. But the movie ends with some inspiring moments. The only modern talking heads we had seen throughout most of the movie were those of scientists who worked tirelessly to research the disease and develop drugs to help those infected. Many of the faces we see during the course of movie who are infected say often that they expect to die. Many do. But some are still around today, and that is inspiring. And yet, for them, it seems more sad than that. They certainly feel a degree of survivor’s guilt over being the ones who didn’t die.

But overall, How to Survive a Plague is a tragic, yet inspiring story. Without ACTUP, who knows how long it would have taken for drugs that actually helps AIDS patient to become available. ACTUP is an example of how to protest effectively – and the value of doing so.

Movie Review: Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God

Movie Review: Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God

Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God
Directed by: Alex Gibney.

I am an atheist, but I have always believed that most Catholic priests are good men. Men who devote their lives to their faith, and try their best to help those in their congregations. And even after all the clergy molestation scandals that have rocked the Catholic Church in recent years, I still firmly believe that. I also firmly believe however that those in positions of power in the Church are more interested in keeping that power, in protecting the Church and their assets, then they are in actually helping the victims of the monstrous actions of the minority of Priests, who take advantage of their positions of power to prey on children. Watch a movie like Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God (or Twist of Faith or Deliver Us from Evil, two other excellent documentaries about the same subject) and I think you will find it impossible to disagree.

Mea Maxima Culpa focuses mainly on one case – the case of Lawrence Murphy, who was a Priest at a school for deaf children between 1950-1974, and molested countless boys during that time. That he preyed on children at all is deplorable, but preying on deaf children is somehow even worse – especially when we hear that he picked out the students whose parents didn’t speak American Sign Language, so it would be even harder for his victims to tell their parents about the abuse.

The film was directed by Alex Gibney, one of the best and most prolific documentarians working today (although he is dead wrong on Zero Dark Thirty, but I digress). He interviews many of Murphy’s victims, who sign their answers, and we hear the voices of famous actors (like John Slattery, Chris Cooper and Ethan Hawke) translate their painful words for us. The readings by these actors are very good, but the pain these victims feels really doesn’t need translation – it is written all over their faces, as it tells their stories.

The molestation scandal that has rocked the Church is obviously bigger than Murphy and his victims – and the movie gives us a wider ranging portrait of what was done in this case – how the complaints made their way up the food chain where they were ignored at each and every step – and how those responsible for covering up the crimes of Priests goes all the way to the top. Pope Benedict, before he was Pope, was in the head of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, and wanted to see every report on priests molesting children, although he didn’t really do anything about them. And the beloved Pope John Paul II, who seems to be on the fast track for Sainthood, is not above criticism either – considering his support of Marcial Maciel Degollado, who even the future Pope Benedict wanted to investigate, but Pope John Paul II protected (according the documentary, an investigation was finally launched – on the very day Pope John Paul II died).

Mea Maxima Culpa is the type of movie that inspires outrage and anger, but more than that sadness. Sadness because these Priests had a duty – took a sacred oath – to protect those in their care and help them, and instead used their positions to permanently damage them. Anger and outrage because it has become increasingly clear that those in positions of power didn’t want to see what was directly in front of them – didn’t want to know what had happened, and took the easy way out, shunting the problem off the side and ignoring the victims. One expert, who has testified at trials on behalf of the victims, says he is often asked how often he testifies on behalf of the Church – and he says “Always”. Because it is the people, not the priests or those in power, who are the real Church. If only those who had it in their power to change things believed that, this scandal would never have become so far reaching, such a permanent black mark on the Catholic Church, and so damaging to the victims. And also, it must be said, so damaging to all the good Priests out there – the majority of them – who really DO care, but are now looked upon with suspicion. There are no winners and losers in this case, just more sadness and anger than any child should have to feel.

DVD Review: A Simple Life

DVD Review: A Simple Life

A Simple Life
Directed by: Ann Hui.
Written by: Susan Chan & Yan-lam Lee.
Starring: Andy Lau (Roger), Deannie Yip (Ah Tao), Paul Chun (Uncle Kin), Pik Kee Hui (Aunt Kam), So-ying Hui (Mui), Fuli Wang (Roger's mother).

After her parents died during the Japanese occupation, Ah Tao (Deannie Yip) was forced into a life of service. She spends the next 60 years serving several generations of the same family. Most of the family has moved to America, but one has stayed behind in China. This is Roger (Andy Lau), a quiet, unassuming movie producer. Ah Tao is still his all-purpose servant – cooking, cleaning, shopping and keeping his small apartment running. They share an unspoken bond and are quietly content in their lives. Then Ah Tao has a stroke. Roger assumes that she will continue to live with him, and that he’ll bring in some help for her, but she insists on being put into an old folks home.

As I was watching A Simple Life, I kept assuming that at some point director Ann Hui and her writers Susan Chan and Yan-Lam Lee would add some false drama to the proceedings. That the old folks home would be crooked or cruel. But while its run down and not exactly high class, they do their best, and everyone is nice. Or that the sad old man who keeps asking for money will eventually scam Ah Tao out of all of her savings. But that doesn’t happen either. Instead A Simple Life is a precisely what the title implies – the story of Ah Tao’s life, and her bond with Roger – and his entire family. This is a true story about the type of woman that they never make movies about.

Deannie Yip plays Ah Tao in one of the best performances of the year. It is a simple, subtle, delicate performance where she plays this normal woman who loves the family she has served for decades, but does not want to be a burden on them. I assumed that the movie would eventually become something like Tokyo Story or Make Way for Tomorrow – two of the greatest films of all time, both about older parents who are pretty much forgotten and rejected by their grown children. Roger starts out the dutiful son surrogate who comes to visit Ah Tao in the old folks home. She tells him not to bother, but he will not be deterred. He loves Ah Tao – has been with her his entire life, and feels it is his duty to serve her to pay her back for everything she has done for him. At the old folks home he says he is her godson – and out at a movie premiere, says she is his Aunt. He does this not for his own benefit, but to make her feel more comfortable – less embarrassed by not having a family of her own – because she really does. And the rest of his family feels the same way. When they come to visit Roger, they all visit her as well – and love it. We meet Roger’s mother, and while she is a nice woman who loves her children, and they love her, they feel an even deeper connection with Ah Tao.

 The movie is, like the title suggests, simple. But it is quietly touching as well. We so rarely see real people on screen – people who live unremarkable, yet contented lives. The performances by Yip and Lau are remarkable in how they show these two normal people and their deep connection. A Simple Life is a simple film – but a wonderful one.

DVD Review: Hello, I Must Be Going

Sunday, February 10, 2013

DVD Review: Hello, I Must Be Going

Hello, I Must Be Going
Directed by: Todd Louiso.
Written by: Sarah Koskoff.
Starring: Melanie Lynskey (Amy), Blythe Danner (Ruth Minsky), John Rubinstein (Stan Minsky), Julie White (Gwen), Christopher Abbott (Jeremy).

I love Melanie Lynskey. Ever since I saw Peter Jackson’s Heavenly Creatures (1994), her debut film, I’ve thought there is something special about her. Her co-star in that film, also making their film debut, was of course Kate Winslet who has gone onto become the most acclaimed and award actress of her generation. While Lynsky’s career has not taken off in the same way, she has become one of the great character actresses working today – adding interesting performances on the margins of films. The type of performances that don’t win awards, but are key to a movies success. Think of her roles in films like Win Win, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Shattered Glass, Flags of Our Fathers, Away We Go, Up in the Air, The Informant, Leaves of Grass or Seeking a Friend at the End of the World and you have an eclectic mix of performances. So I was looking forward to seeing Lynsky take on a lead role again for the first time in years. And while Lynsky is wonderful in Hello, I Must Be Going, the movie itself is rather dull and predictable.

Lynskey stars as Amy, a woman in her early 30s who has essentially given up having a career of her own in order to support her husband’s. And now that he has left her, she is left humiliated and alone with no kids and no marketable skills – and living at home with her parents. Her dad Stan (John Rubinstein) is loving and supportive, but her mother Ruth (Blythe Danner) blames her for what what wrong in her life. Now Stan needs to close a big business deal to save his business and allow him to retire. As part of this deal, they invite Gwen (Julie White) and her 19 year old son Jeremy (Christopher Abbott) over for dinner. Gwen is married to the man they have to convince to sign the deal. Everything must be perfect. And so, of course, Amy and Jeremy start sleeping with each other.

You can probably guess what is going to happen in Hello, I Must Be Going, and you’d most likely be right. Amy, who has been devastated and had her confidence shattered by her divorce will gradually learn what love can really be like, and this will help her come out of her shell, and get on with her life. Lynskey is wonderful at showing this gradual progression throughout the movie. She makes Amy far more sympathetic than she must have been on the page – since when you stop to think about what she does, she is more than a little bit of a whiner. But because she is embodied by the ever lovable Lynskey, we root for her anyway.

Lynskey is not the problem with Hello, I Must Be Going. Everything else is. Christopher Abbott is quite good as Jeremy – or at least as good as the movie allows him to be. I never understood what exactly draws him to Amy in the first place – and what keeps him coming back for more. While Amy is a well-drawn character, Jeremy remains an enigma – but not a fascinating one. Worse yet is the ham-fisted plot of the business deal that brings them together, and especially Danner’s ever annoying character, who is finally (and not so-shockingly) revealed to be just as insecure as her daughter.

The film was directed by Todd Louiso, a character actor himself (probably still best known for playing the shy record store guy in High Fidelity), who has directed at least one better film than this – 2002’s Love Liza, with a terrific performance by Philip Seymour Hoffman (I missed Louiso’s sophomore effort 2009’s The Marc Pease Experience). He shows a sensitive eye behind the camera, but really cannot overcome the holes in the screenplay. Hello, I Must Be Going contains an excellent performance by Lynskey – and not a whole hell of a lot else.

Movie Review: West of Memphis

Saturday, February 2, 2013

Movie Review: West of Memphis

West of Memphis
Directed by: Amy Berg.

I have now seen four documentaries about the West Memphis 3 – the three Paradise Lost films directed by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky made between 1996 and 2011, and now Amy Berg’s West of Memphis made in 2012. Of them all, I still think the original Paradise Lost from 1996 is the best. When Berlinger and Sinofsky went down to make the film, they assumed, like everyone else, the three were guilty and they would be making a film about how three teenagers murdered three younger boys. What they found though didn’t add up. There was no evidence, aside from a confession got out of the slowest of the three boys, who recanted. Other than that, the entire case seemed to be built on smoke and mirrors. And it is also unquestionable that without that film, they rest would not have been made. Pretty much everyone who became involved in the case over the years became involved BECAUSE of that documentary. Having said that, I think that West of Memphis is probably the most complete single film about the case. It has the benefit of hindsight, and the years of research and investigation into the original case and shows you precisely what did happen. Even after four documentaries about the case – not to mention an excellent book about it – I’m still learning things.

The story is now familiar to most people – it has become one of the most well-known true crime stories in recent American history. Three eight year boys were found beaten, bound and murdered in a shallow creek. The police have no real leads, but think that the crime might have something to do with Satan worship. They focus on Damien Echols, a “strange” teenager in town, who dresses all in black, and is said to worship Satan – as well as his two friends – Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley. The story becomes huge in the small town, and begins to attract national attention. After hours of interrogation, Jessie confesses to helping Jason and Damien kill the three boys. His confession is splashed all over the front page of the paper. It is also riddled with mistakes and inconsistencies that the detectives help him remember correctly. He later recants his confession, and refuses to testify against Damien and Jason – who are to be tried separately. There is no physical evidence tying any of the three of them to the murders. Despite this, all three are convicted, and Damien is sentenced to death.

The movie opens with a recap of the case from back in 1994 – including gruesome crime scene footage and descriptions, that quite frankly, are hard to stomach, but necessary. It then goes over what has happened in the 18 years since then – the celebrities who became involved in trying to free the West Memphis Three – from Eddie Vedder to Johnny Depp to the Dixie Chicks to Peter Jackson (who produced this film, and also gave lots of money in order to hire appeals lawyers and investigators to help out) – as well as the “regular” people who became involved – including a woman named Laurie who ended up falling in love and marrying Damien. The film also supplies an alternate theory of the crime.

For years, the most likely suspect was thought to be John Mark Byers – the stepfather of one of the murdered boys. He was front and center in the first two Paradise Lost movies (especially the second one, which is admittingly the weakest of the three) – and certainly did himself no favors, with his over the top grieving and hate filled tirades against the West Memphis Three, not to mention some apparent slip ups. But in one of the ironies of this case, many focused on him solely because he “seemed” like the type of person who WOULD do something like this – which is precisely what got the West Memphis Three in trouble in the first place. There is no evidence against him, and no one really believes he did it anymore. That person is now Terry Hobbs – another stepfather – and there actually is some evidence to support this claim – a hair found in one of the knots that bound the murdered boys for example. Whether or not he did it, you’ll have to decide for yourself based on what the movie shows. It is clear there will never be a true investigation into him by the police or the prosecutors, who insist they convicted the right three people.

And that is sad thing about this case. What has become clear enough for pretty much everyone to except – that the West Memphis Three are innocent and served 18 years in prison for something they didn’t do, is what the police and prosecutors – not to mention the original judge – will never admit. When it became clear that the three were going to get new trials, the prosecutors came up with a deal for the three of them. In one of the strangest pleas I can imagine, the West Memphis Three were allowed to maintain their innocence, while admitting that the prosecution had enough evidence to convict them -  and were allowed to go free. This was presented as a Win-Win for all involved. The Prosecution technically got guilty pleas, and are able to close the case, maintaining they convicted the right three people, and they spent years in jail for the crime, and also protect themselves and the state from any lawsuits the three may file. The West Memphis Three got to get out of jail, and not spend years longer waiting for a new trial, where there was no guarantee they would be found not guilty. Win Win, right?

Except it isn’t a w in win, because the real killer or killers of those three innocent boys is still out there. The prosecution and police don’t care, because they have protected their own asses. But is that really their job? Isn’t their job to find, convict and punish the guilty, and get some level of justice for the victims and their families? The case of the West Memphis Three is one of injustice – injustice because three innocent kids spent 18 years in jail for something they didn’t do, going in when they were teenagers and coming out as they approach middle age. And injustice because someone killed three innocent children, and will never face justice for it. There is no happy ending to a case like this.

Movie Review: A Royal Affair

Movie Review: A Royal Affair

A Royal Affair
Directed by:  Nikolaj Arcel.
Written by: Rasmus Heisterberg and Nikolaj Arcel based on the book by Bodil Steensen-Leth.
Starring: Alicia Vikander (Caroline Mathilde), Mads Mikkelsen (Johann Friedrich Struensee), Mikkel Boe Følsgaard (Christian VII), Trine Dyrholm (Juliane Marie), David Dencik (Ove Høegh-Guldberg), Thomas W. Gabrielsson (Schack Carl Rantzau), Cyron Melville (Enevold Brandt), Bent Mejding (J. H. E. Bernstoff), Harriet Walter (Augusta - Princess of Wales), Laura Bro (Louise von Plessen), Søren Malling (Hartmann).

A Royal Affair is the type of lavish, historical romantic drama that we always see this time of the year – a prototypical “Oscar bait” movie, about a beautiful young Queen (Alicia Vikander) who does the unthinkable and falls in love with someone not her husband. In this case, that is Johann Friedrich Struensee (Mads Mikkelsen), a German doctor hired to be the personal physician of the Danish King Christian VII (Mikkel Boe Folsgaard), who ends up sleeping with the King’s English wife.

This probably sounds like something you’ve seen before – and in many ways you would be right. The difference in A Royal Affair is that the filmmakers are as interested in the title affair itself – but rather in the politics of the time (the late 1700s in Denmark), and how Struensee did everything possible to drag the country into the age of Enlightenment – and for a brief time succeeded. He is seen as a hero in Denmark today – not so much at the time he was around.

The nicest way to describe King Christian VII would be to say he was feeble minded. He is certainly not very bright, and would no doubt be diagnosed with some sort of mental disorder were he alive today, but no one was all that interested in doing that at the time. Because Christian is a perfect foil. The learned council – full of religious zealots and the rich – passed laws that suited them, and not those that helped the common man. Christian attends all these meetings so he can sign off on all these laws – when he asks what he’s signing, they simply tell him not to ask questions, and just sign, and he does.

But then two people come into his life who will end up changing not just him but the country. The first is his beautiful English bride Caroline Mathilde, who is a modern woman, upset that most of her books were sent back to England because they had been banned in Denmark. She is horrified to discover her husband really is a silly twit – more in love with dog than anything else. But she does what she was raised to do – become Queen of Denmark, and give the King an heir – after which, she promptly banishes him for her bedchamber. Then comes Struensee, who is one of many doctors interviewed by the King to be his personal doctor. Struensee immediately sees how childish Christian is, and knows just what to do to manipulate him. Soon Christian sees Struensee as his “best friend” and confidant – and Struensee sees how he can get Denmark to become a modern country – which in this time means things like ending serfdom, banning torture and opening orphanages. It is also clear that Struensee and Caroline are drawn to each other – the share similar ideals, and are both saddled with the King, who they don’t really like, but need to accomplish their goals. It’s only a matter of time before they will fall into bed with each other.

A Royal Affair is an extremely handsomely mounted production. It has all the trappings of this kind of movie – beautiful costumes and production design, lush cinematography, a romantic score. The film is one of the most expensive made in Danish history – and may well get an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language film, as it is their entry (beating out The Hunt, also starring Mikkselsen). But A Royal Affair is also more concerned with ideas than most costume dramas of this sort. In fact, it is the romance between Struensee and Caroline that gets the short end of the stick here – the movie is so concerned with the politics, the maneuverings of Struensee, and his rivals on the council, and how they all manipulate Christian, that it almost feels like the pair fall into bed simply because the plot requires them to. Both Mikkselsen and newcomer Vikander are very good in their roles, but the sexual chemistry between the two of them isn’t quite there. They seem better suited to each other when they are discussing their ideals than in the throes of passion.

Still, I think that’s why I liked A Royal Affair. I’ve seen too many movies set in this time period, or shortly before and after, where people who are not supposed to fall in love with each other inevitably do just that. The movies often use society’s outrage at the lovers as proof of just how backwards that society is. But A Royal Affair knows that there were more important things wrong with society, other than the fact that it kept lovers apart. And this makes A Royal Affair an engrossing costume drama.

Movie Review: On the Road

Friday, January 25, 2013

Movie Review: On the Road

On the Road
Directed by: Walter Salles.
Written by: Jose Rivera based on the book by Jack Kerouac.
Starring: Sam Riley (Sal Paradise), Garrett Hedlund (Dean Moriarty), Kristen Stewart (Marylou), Kirsten Dunst (Camille), Viggo Mortensen (Old Bull Lee), Tom Sturridge (Carlo Marx), Elisabeth Moss (Galatea Dunkel), Amy Adams (Jane), Steve Buscemi (Tall Thin Salesman), Terrence Howard (Walter), Alice Braga (Terry), Danny Morgan (Ed Dunkel), Coati Mundi (Slim Gaillard).

Jack Kerouac’s On the Road was published in 1957, and has since inspired several generations. The book somehow manages to be both romantic and cynical – romantic in hitting to the open road, either all by yourself or with your friends, and having “experiences” everywhere you go. Cynical in the way it looks at long term romantic love, and American society as a whole. You would think a book this popular and influential would have been made into a movie at some point in the last 55 years – but until Walter Salles decided to tackle it, no one else had. That’s probably because everyone thought that Kerouac’s style – a stream of consciousness – would be lost in any movie adaptation. And watching On the Road, you’d have to admit that the novel certainly loses something in translation. And yet, the movie is also endlessly fascinating. Kerouac’s novel that seemed so daring in 1957, when it hits screens in 2012, it seems nostalgic.

Sam Riley plays Sal Paradise, Kerouac’s alter-ego, who at the beginning of the movie hits the road from New York to Denver to see his friend Dean Moriarty (Garret Hedlund) in 1947. He doesn’t know Dean all that well, but there are others in Denver he does know, and Sal is tired of being a frustrated writer in his mother’s New York home, so decides to be a frustrated writer on the road. Over the next few years, he will crisscross the country – from New York to Denver to San Francisco back to New York to New Orleans all through the South, and eventually Mexico, often right alongside Dean and his young ex-wife Marylou (Kristen Stewart), and whoever else happens to want to go along for the ride. They drink, smoke and do drugs nearly constantly, will sleep with anything that moves -which are a specialty of Dean’s, who is an expert at making everyone fall in love with him. These two young men are trying very hard to fill the holes in them left by their absent fathers – Sal’s who died just prior to the beginning of the story, and Dean’s who was once a barber who became a hopeless wino on the streets of Denver, who is constantly searching in vain for. Eventually, we know, Sal will become the writer he wants to be – when he finally sits down and starts writing out everything that happens that we see in the movie – and Dean will eventually, well, Dean remains Dean – oblivious to the pain he causes everyone around him until it’s too late to undo that damage. In this version of On the Road anyway, it seems the basic journey is the one that has Sal go from enthralled with Dean to disillusion with him.

Riley’s Sal Paradise is mostly a passive presence in the film – always sitting back and observing everything, but hardly ever really getting involved. He loves Dean, may well be in love with Marylou, but he rarely vocalizes what exactly he is feeling to anyone. He is content to be along for the ride. The best performance in the movie belong to Garret Hedlund, who gets the best role in the movie as Dean, the ever charming, ever scheming Dean who does whatever he wants whenever he wants to do it. It’s easy to see why Sal is so drawn to Dean – he is the person that everyone loves, an expert at seducing women at the drop of a hat. Yet all these women – and a lot of men too – truly do fall in love with Dean. They know he will never love them back the way they love him, but they can’t stop themselves. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the sad face of Kristen Stewart, who is quite good as Marylou, who loves Dean when they are on the road together, but knows full well that when they reach wherever they’re going, he’ll be off again, leaving her along. Kristen Dunst plays Camille, Dean’s current wife, who sticks with him because of their children, but knows that even when he is with them, he is miserable. Even poet Carlo Marx (based on Allen Ginsberg), loves Dean, and wishes he would love him back. At least Carlo, unlike Marylou and Camille, is smart enough to stay mostly away from Dean. Hedlund does an excellent job of getting Dean’s lazy charm just about perfect.

The other two great performances are pretty much cameos – but Viggo Mortenson and Amy Adams as Old Bull Lee and his wife Jane, who of course are really William Burroughs and his wife. Mortenson is pretty much doing an impression of Burroughs, which is funny and tragic all at once, and Adams, normally so sweet and lovable, is mostly off her rocker – one time so high that she goes out to sweep a tree. You wish there was more of them in the movie, because they bring a weird energy to their scenes.

Director Walter Salles obviously loves road trip movies – his breakthrough was Central Station, about an old woman and a young boy searching for his father in Brazil, and he also directed The Motorcycle Diaries, about a young Che Guevara riding through South and Central America before he became a revolutionary. He and his cinematographer, Eric Gautier, capture the dusty charm and feeling of freedom of being on the road at the beginning of the movie – and also do a good job of making a moving car heading across the country feel claustrophobic by the end, when it is starting to lose its charm for Sal. The trip to Mexico, which is the last draw for Sal, feels like a fever dream, half seen, half remembered as things come crashing down around Sal and Dean.

This is probably the best version of On the Road that you could make – which probably points out why no one made it before now. It is a good film, but being forced to tell things in a linear fashion, full of “incidents” and cameos, and essentially ignoring the stretches of the book where Sal and Dean are apart, the film certainly loses something between the book and the film. And yet it remains a fascinating film – and a very good one at that.

Movie Review: Detropia

Friday, January 18, 2013

Movie Review: Detropia

Detropia
Directed by: Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady.

Detroit was once a thriving manufacturing city for the entire United States. Slowly but surely over the years, as one car company after after closed it factories or moved them overseas, Detroit became a poorer and poorer city, with high employment and a falling population. It is now estimated that the population is half of what it was during the boom times – and unemployment reaches over 30%. Even the auto bailout hasn’t helped very much. The city is broke and has no way of making more money. Once a great city, Detroit is now a mere shadow of its former self.

The excellent documentary Detropia doesn’t have any solutions to the problems. Nor is it really about how Detroit sunk down to the place where it’s at now. Instead, it is a portrait of what the city is now like – what the residents go through on a day to day basis, the struggles the city government has. To offset these scenes of quiet desperation, the directors Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady flash to the Detroit opera – which is still going, mainly because of payouts by the auto companies to try and make themselves look good. But if the city is emptying, who the hell cares if they still have “culture”?

The most memorable character in the movie is probably Mike Stevens – a retired teacher who now owns a blues bar. He is outspoken in his criticism for everyone who has helped to destroy Detroit, but also optimistic that it can – and will recover. He is convinced that sooner or later, his bar will start making money again – and he’ll be able to hire a cook (he does it himself now). He goes to the car show, and is in disbelief that an electric car in China costs $20,000 than the Chevy Volt. Yes, but, the Volt has many more features than that car – a Chevy representative tells him. Americans won’t want to drive that car, they assure him. But Stevens seems to remember the recent past better than the Chevy guys do – and when he mentions that is precisely what they used to say about Honda, they don’t have much to say, and quickly end the conversation.

We see Detroit’s Mayor Dave Bing trying to do the best job he can – in a job no sane person would want. He has no good choices in front of him. His city has no money, and he needs to cut services. But if he cuts bus service for example, than many of the residents who still live in town would no longer be able to get to work. He comes up with a novel idea – move people in sparsely populated neighbourhoods into the more crowded ones – perhaps only half the city will be full, but at least than the city could concentrate all their money there – and the businesses in those areas might have more customers. Unsurprisingly, none of the people who are to be “relocated” are very happy about the plan.

We also meet an artist couple, who considered many places before deciding on moving to Detroit. What made them pick the Motor City? They could live cheaper there than anywhere else – and Detroit has more empty buildings and warehouses where they can practice their art.

The film is strangely beautiful. There is something haunting about the shots that Grady and Ewing of an abandoned Detroit. The often just let the images of the empty streets, empty lots, abandoned buildings, closed factories. I have come to think of Detroit of a broken, dirty city – and while Detropia shows that, it also has a sadly beautiful quality.

Detropia is a rather obvious title for the movie – and is not the title I would have chosen. That makes it sound like a more simple minded film – one that probably tries to advocate  a solution or tries to advance some sort of political agenda. That isn’t the case with Detropia. This is a film that looks at a once proud city, that is now probably destroyed forever. What are the solutions? Perhaps, as Detropia shows, there isn’t one.

Movie Review: 5 Broken Cameras

Movie Review: 5 Broken Cameras

5 Broken Cameras
Directed by: Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi.

Emad Burnat is a Palestinian villager who has spent his whole life in his small village of Bil’in. He gets a camera on the occasion of his fourth son’s birth so he can document his son’s life. Emad, and seemingly everyone else is Bil’in, isn’t really political. They live a simple life, and are happy. All they really want is for things to stay the same. But when the Israeli government decides that they need to build a barrier – to separate villagers like Bil’in from the Israeli settlement near by, the people of Bil’in are not happy – and they start to protest. Their protests are non-violent – basically just the entire village going to the construction site of the barrier every Friday with signs and chanting at the workers and Israeli army member there. The Israeli response is not non-violent – he sees his friends and family arrested or beaten, and throughout the course of his movie, he will have five different cameras that he has used to document the protests destroyed.

The story that 5 Broken Cameras tells is undeniably powerful and important. The film is narrated by Burnat, who tells his story over the images his cameras caught. Professional filmmaker – and Israeli – Guy Davidi co-directed the film, one assumes to help give it a professional polish that Burnat, who says he knew nothing about filmmaking, would be incapable of giving. Had the two simply let the images speak for themselves, and cut back on the cloying narration, this could have been a great documentary. As it stands, I could not help but think that I was being manipulated throughout the entire running time of the documentary. The sad thing is, the filmmakers didn’t need to do that. In this case, it is hard to defend Israel’s actions – but I still don’t like the filmmakers bashing me over the head over and over again with their rather obvious point.

Take for instance a scene in which Burnat’s youngest son, Gibreel, who must be at most 3 at the time, goes up to an Israeli soldier and literally hands him an olive branch (olives being  the main crop of the area). The film shows this, without narration, as if it was a natural, spur of the moment gesture by the wide eyed innocent Gibreel. But the whole scene reeks of a setup – I wonder just how long Gibreel needed to be coached before he did that?

The same sort of manipulation can be seen throughout the movie. Burnat and Davidi never tire of showing us wide eyed, innocent children to go along with their cloying narration that never really shares any real insight into what is happening, but is there to pull at the audience’s heartstrings.

Which is sad, because the story of the Bil’in protests is an important one. We hear stories of violent clashes between Israel and Palestine – and more often, Israel and its neighbors – far too often. The villagers in Bil’in are not trying to wipe Israel off the map, they just want to be left alone in their village, so they can raise their own families in peace. Their protests are peaceful, and what Israel does in response is overkill.

But 5 Broken Cameras remains a film that isn’t really interested in presenting a fair and balance picture of what happened. Instead, they insist on beating its point into your head over and over again, in the most broadly sentimental way imaginable. It’s too bad. The filmmakers didn’t need to go this route to make a good film. In fact, they would have been much better served if they hadn’t. This is a sad enough story that the filmmakers needn’t have tried so hard to pull at your heartstrings.