David Savage
Entries from April 2008
CINEMA RETRO COLUMNIST DAVID SAVAGE'S COVERAGE OF THE TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL CONTINUES WITH HIS REVIEW OF THE NEW AUSTRALIAN FILM, NEWCASTLE
Speaking of surf movies (see my fellow Cinema Retro columnist Tom Lisanti's appreciation of Ride
the Wild Wave by clicking here), I have proof that the genre is not a relic of the
past. Newcastle, from indie American director Dan Castle, is an
exhilirating new film making its debut at Tribeca Film Festival that breathes
new life into one of the most formulaic conventions in the movies. Set in the
Australian blue collar beach town of the film's title, up the coast from Sydney,
Newcastle is as anti-idyllic surf movie as you're ever likely to see.
Instead of picturesque sunsets reminiscent of Endless Summer, coal barges
line the ocean horizon of this seaside town. It may be populated by
golden-skinned surf gods and babes, but they are without illusions. Life is hard
and surfing offers the only wave out of this dead-end town.
After placing third in tryouts for the approaching Junior Pro Surf
Championship, a competition that has the power to make or break young surfers'
dreams, Jesse is down but not yet out. He's determined not to end up like his
brother Victor, a promising former surfer who ended his career in injury and now
works on the dry docks with his father, unloading coal. He struggles to cope.
His hormones are raging. His twin brother, Fergus, is likely gay (pale and with
newly purple hair) and the source of constant embarrassment. When the temptation
arises of a weekend away at Stockton Dunes (a remote beach) with his surf
buddies, Jesse leaps at the opportunity, even if it means Fergus has to go
along. Two local girls join them and the weekend holds the promise of nothing
but blissful abandon on the waves and a possible "first time" with one of the
girls. As they move through the weekend trip, Fergus learns to surf and thus
gains acceptance by his mates, but a tragedy unfolds when Victor shows up to
challenge his younger brother on the waves.
Remarkably, the film never hits a false note, even while working squarely
within two classic genres: the surf movie and the teen, coming-of-age film. In
the former category, Castle gives the film a sense of heightened realism by
hiring an ensemble of strong actors as well as seasoned surfers, all of whom
demonstrate an effortless athleticism as they carve and cut out of the waves,
ride crests and "shoot the curl" in take after incredible take. Castle's team of
ocean cameramen are second to none, shooting with fearless energy and great
skill both above and below the waves, using natural light and mostly a handheld
technique so that the viewer feels thrust right out in the action of the
crashing surf. The land-based photography (Richard Michalak, ACS), by contrast,
is dark and claustrophobic, filmed in French New Wave-style handheld and with
little dolly action, underscoring the cramped and volatile nature of Jesse's
home life.
Within the confines of the coming-of-age genre, Castle resists the cliché
typecasting of teen ensemble films, and it's to his credit that he makes each
character seem distinct and fully drawn, even when many of these teen boys are
not fully aware of who they are themselves. There is no gross-out humor, sexual
gags or other pranks typical of teen movies, but there is plenty of content
which rings true to anyone who remembers grappling with the anxieties of
sexuality, peer pressure, ambition and sibling violence at that fragile age.
The adult actors, most prominent among them being the award-winning
Australian actor Barry Otto (Oscar and Lucinda), round out a teen cast
who demonstrate a maturity and dedication to their craft that seems refreshing
when compared with the Ken-doll plasticity of their American counterparts found
on shows like "The O.C.," for example.
I spoke with the director and screenwriter Dan Castle at the festival and he
owned up to weaving a lot of his own life into the script, which took him eight
months to write once he got down to business for real after thinking about the
project for a year. Bizarrely, he hails from another Newcastle: New Castle,
Delaware. But it was a visit in 2001 to the Newcastle Down Under that inspired
the idea for the film, even before he had any characters in mind. "As I drove
through the streets during my first visit to Newcastle in October 2001," Castle
said, " I knew I was in a very special place. The town, the beaches, the seaside
pools, the community of surfers and the nearby Stockton Dunes all resonated with
me."
He too is a surfer ("not a good one," he swears) and he too lost his
virginity in a tent alongside his best friend, who was busy losing his. Even as
he surfed with his buddies as a teen, he realized he was gay. From that aspect
of himself the character of Fergus was born; from other aspects of himself, and
no doubt from other members of his group, other characters were created.
"They were at the peak of their beauty," he remembers, "and yet at the
time don't realize that it's all pretty much downhill from there." The artful
shots of the surfers swimming nude underwater, almost mythical in feel, or the
close ups on golden-downed skin or ocean-blue eyes convey Castle's appreciation,
even reverence, for that fleeting beauty.
Although Dan didn't go to film school (he did go to NYU, but majored in
Business), he started out as an actor and moved to Los Angeles to pursue his
career (he studied at The Actors Studio and with Shelly Winters, whom he met by
chance in a coffee shop on Fairfax). It proved to be too passive, he explained,
as he tired of waiting for someone to tell him "yes." So he instead took a
friend's advice and began concentrating on his writing, which led to directing.
His last film, a short entitled The Visitor (also with Barry Otto),
garnered an Australian Film Institute (AFI) nomination for Best Short Fiction
Film in 2003, and he says he's working on three new projects, one of which is a
comedy entitled Surf Mom. It sounds like Dan might be a new surf movie
auteur with lots of material yet to explore. (Now…where's that
shark.)- David Savage
57,000 Kilometers Between Us (France)
Among the more experimental entries representing France at Tribeca this year
is video artist and fashion photographer Delphine Kreuter's confident debut
feature 57,000 Kilometers Between Us (57000 km entre nous), a
disturbing and truthful look at how technology is the great atomizer of society.
The characters in this tale, all connected in random ways made possible only on
the internet, mediate their daily lives through the filter of webcams,
multi-character gaming, online chats, blogs and camcorders. They record, stare
and chat, but never connect.
'Nat,' a 14-year-old girl at the center of the story, is struggling to
connect to someone, anyone, given that her mother is caught up in a deeply
dysfunctional new marriage with a man who records every waking second of his
family's life on his camcorder for his blog on marital bliss, but becomes an
uncommunicative zombie once offline. Her real father is a transsexual, who
watches her via remote from her new home, where she is not welcome. Her only two
"friends" consist of a married man online with a baby fetish (he dons diapers
and sucks a baby bottle via webcam) and a teen boy, Adrien, dying of leukemia in
a hospital intensive care ward. It's with this last friend she is able to find
some form of simpatico, as they portray fantasy characters in an
alternate-reality game, acting out thinly veiled games of heroic battle and
rescue. His mother will not visit him even as he lay dying, preferring instead
to hold brief chats with him via webcam. The characters' lives all intersect in
some way that underscores the paradox of connectivity without connection, until
Nat breaks the cycle and decides to act on her feelings for Adrien the only way
she knows how. It's a moving and heartbreaking ending, if enigmatic.
Filmed in a jarring, hand-held style and alternating between digital video
and film, Kreuter creates the look of a distopic future squarely within the
present, which is perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the entire film and
which gives it a quasi-documentary feel. It's that rarity of an experimental
film that manages to tell a story with clarity yet remain true to its form.
While it's doubtful this feature will get picked up by an American theatrical
distributor, if it shows up on Netflix, by all means grab it -- it's well worth
the 82 minutes of intensity. -David Savage
Cinema Retro columnist David Savage reports on preliminary screenings of new films leading up to the Tribeca Film Festival. Here, he takes a look at Mister Lonely, which manages to incorporate Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Michael Jackson, Queen Elizabeth and Abe Lincoln!
What happens when Michael Jackson, Marilyn Monroe, Charlie
Chaplin, the Pope, Madonna, Queen Elizabeth, Little Red Riding Hood, Sammy
Davis, Jr., Abe Lincoln and James Dean all find themselves living together in a
castle commune in the Highlands of Scotland? Unfortunately, not much in the
hands of Harmony Korine, whose new film Mister
Lonely, takes this brilliant premise and squanders it for 113 listless,
melancholy minutes. It’s a crying shame, really, as spontaneous eruptions of brilliant! usually followed when fellow
journalists heard the plot synopsis. Instead, loud, irritable sighs were
erupting around the theater as press attendees realized an hour in that nothing
much was going to pay-off the brilliant set-up.
When a struggling Michael Jackson impersonator, played by
Mexican actor Diego Luna (Y Tu Mama
Tambien), meets a Marilyn Monroe impersonator (Samantha Morton) on the
streets of Paris, he accepts her invitation to join her at a remote castle
compound in the Scottish Highlands where she lives with her husband, “Charlie
Chaplin†and a motley assortment of aforementioned impersonators in communal
isolation, sort of like the Island of Misfit Toys from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. There he can find acceptance, she
promises, and join them as they prepare their “greatest show ever†for their
local community.
Meanwhile, in a Catholic mission deep inside the Panamanian
jungle, a group of nuns discover a miracle: One of them has survived a fall
from an airplane flying at several thousand feet and, asking for God’s
protection on her fall back to earth, walks away unscathed. The other nuns
follow suit and become addicted to their new-found, extreme-faith sport. Their
leader is a priest played by Werner Herzog, who appears to be improvising his
lines (The two plot lines never intersect, except for allegorically, but it’s
this latter plot that provides the more interesting of the film’s two stories.)
A goldmine of material, one would think, but Korine gives
his characters little to do and nothing to say. For example, we never hear
anything from the James Dean impersonator, likewise Sammy Davis Jr., nor
Madonna (!) nor the Queen of England. James Fox as The Pope sinks his teeth
into what little script he’s given, and we never learn that he and the Queen
are husband and wife until nearly the end of the film when we see them in bed
together (she lighting a fag and he making small talk). Now there’s a
proposition! But Korine doesn’t explore it, nor does he take much interest in
the fireworks that might result from such a volatile and rich clash of people,
who are themselves imprisoned in personas of their own choosing. I began to
feel sorry for the actors more than the characters, all dressed up and nowhere
to go.
The film is not without its merits. Samantha Morton imbues
her Monroe with
the same sense of tragic fragility as the real-life Marilyn, and Korine manages
to convey the governing idea of “the purity of dreams†in both plot lines. The
mysteries of faith and the willful suspension of disbelief as one “becomesâ€
somebody else might just be two sides of the same coin. – David Savage
Beginning with this column, Cinema Retro's David Savage will be reporting from the Tribeca Film Festival in New York. In his first review, he critiques a new film about the cult of Che Guevara - and the irony of how a revolutionary who represented a brutal, totalitarian regime has somehow become a symbol of freedom and independence. TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL 2008
Strike a Pose: Hasta La Chevolution
No one hates a sourpuss at a party more than me, so I regret to file
my inaugural report from the Tribeca Film Festival (technically a pre-festival
screening) on such a cheerless note and with windless sails. Maybe I chose
poorly from the films on offer before the festival gets underway on April 23rd,
but if what I saw last night, Chevolution, is evidence of what it takes
to get a documentary into one of the most high-profile film festivals in the
world, then all I can say is that the bar has been lowered so far that one need
only step over it.
Piquing my interest was the following synopsis: How did the iconic
image of Che Guevara end up on beer bottles and bikinis? This inquiry into the
ethics and aesthetics of appropriation investigates how the enduring symbol of Cuba's
revolution skyrocketed to fame and was ultimately devoured by its own worst
enemy: capitalism. Great! Sounds provocative and timely. I was all ready to
see a well argued thesis against branding and the banalization of
once-meaningful symbols, and even, I hoped, a useful corrective against the
radical-chic cult of the Marxist assassin and Argentine revolutionary Che
Guevara. No such luck.
What starts out to be a fairly absorbing investigation into the
history one of the most reproduced images in the history of photography -- that
being Cuban photographer Alberto Korda's black and white capture of the young
guerilla warrior at a funeral for the victims of the ship explosion in Havana's
harbor in 1960 -- instead turns into a dreadfully shallow homage to the
guerilla warrior himself, leaving countless stones unturned, a parade of
talking heads unchallenged, and a litany of problematic statements floated over
our heads like methane-filled balloons. Co-director Trisha Ziff even sees fit
to interview herself at one point with this helpful amplification: "He's a
superstar, and a superstar with a message," she explains to her own
camera. What message that is, exactly, she never explains, which serves as a
telling bookend to this entire, pointless film.
On the surface, the directors, Ziff and Luis Lopez, invite our indignation
over how an honest portrait of a communist revolutionary ended up becoming a
global brand at the service of capitalism. Fine. Irony noted. But another layer
of irony left unexplored, like much in this documentary, is how the portrait of
Guevara, Castro's collaborator (and expendable pawn) in creating the most
repressive, blood-soaked, totalitarian regime in the Western Hemisphere came to
be the symbol of freedom and revolt against oppression. Whom did he set free,
exactly? Care to take that up with the Cuban expatriates in Miami? (They don't, except for one. See
below.)
Continue reading "TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL REPORT: DAVID SAVAGE REVIEWS A NEW DOCUMENTARY ABOUT CHE GUEVARA"
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