Time to watch some movies! Working for a festival, at a certain point you almost forget about the films themselves. But I’m unusually lucky in the case of this year’s Sydney Film Festival – my contract is over, I’m freelancing this week, and I can dive right in. After months of hard work on the program, weeks of anticipating and guessing – not to mention watching lots of poor-quality screeners on a little laptop screen – I’m completely psyched to sit in the dark and be absorbed by some of the best films out there right now.
It’s a terrific program across the board, as I’ve already mentioned, and I’ll never get to them all. But here are my top 15 picks:
1. The Tree of Life - I’m putting it first because it’s almost too obvious. You wouldn’t have needed me to tell you this one was worth checking out even before it won the Palme d’Or. But I’ll tell you why I’m especially keen on Terrence Malick’s fifth feature in 38 years. These days so many films we’re supposed to care about, arthouse and otherwise, are all about darkness and chaos, seemingly designed to smother hope or the thought of anything good – Black Swan, Snowtown, everything from Von Trier. But more and more Malick seems intent on using his monumental talent and vision to inspire and create wonder. “A movie without spiritual values is like useless information,” according to Turkish director Semih Kaplanoğlu. (And really, the same sort of criteria applies to virtually everything else on this list.) Beyond that is the sheer scope of the thing. I’m going into The Tree of Life expecting no less than a life-changing experience – it reminds me of when I was a kid, diving into Kubrick and Coppola films at school. As Roger Ebert points out, Malick is one of the few filmmakers left who sets out to create a masterpiece every time.
2. HERE – I’d be psyched about this one even if it wasn’t the debut feature of an old friend of mine from film school, Braden King. I’ve followed it throughout its production and after, and have been dying to see it on a big screen for a long time. Bias aside, everything I’ve read and heard about HERE indicates that it might signal a step towards the future of film. Its creators bill it as a “multi-platform motion picture” – one whose story, a riff on the romantic road movie (it’s the first American feature shot in Armenia), unfolds across not only the narrative of the film itself, but in a series of art installations, in the performances of an associated musical collective, in photography and digital media. It’s meant to be an evocative and gorgeous film as well – which, knowing Braden, won’t surprise me.
3. The Future – Six years ago I went into Me and You and Everyone We Know not expecting much – mainly because of my antipathy for the art scene in general and performance art in particular. But Miranda July totally won me over from that point forward. There’s just something so sweet and positive and real about her stuff. It’s the opposite of pretentious. And though it always seems like she’s not even trying, I have a feeling that lurking behind the deer-in-headlights demeanor is a canny genius – whose second feature is likely to be very good indeed.
4. 13 Assassins – Takashi Miike’s name is virtually synonymous with quirky genre films with a truly sick sense of humor (e.g., Audition). But the word on 13 Assassins is that he’s gone straight (well, sort of) and crafted a rip-roaring tribute to Kurosawa’s samurai epics with a dash of Tarantino’s violent fun. In other words it sounds like it could be my favorite movie ever.
5. The Forgiveness of Blood- I haven’t seen Maria Full of Grace, Joshua Marston’s award-winning debut. But I’m curious about his follow-up, not only for the kudos it’s been getting, but for the fact that it’s set in Albania and is in Albanian. I just think it’s cool that an American indie director has made two features, and neither of them are in English. Why don’t more English-speaking directors do this? (Well, other than the obvious reasons.) Anyway, this is the kind of cinema I’m interested in lately – stories about regular people, made with mostly nonprofessional actors, set in unlikely places that I don’t know much about.
6. Cave of Forgotten Dreams – I resisted wanting to see this one for a long time. I’m very much against to all the 3-D bullshit being rammed down our throats, and I was determined to hold out even in spite of Werner Herzog. But the more I heard about it, the more I realized I have to see this. Not only are the reviews of the total experience of this film glowing across the board (if anything, this is probably the kind of thing 3-D is actually good for), but at the end of the day it’s hard for me to resist any doco about human prehistory, which is one of my favorite set of mysteries to ponder. It could be the cheesiest Discovery Channel production and I’d be all over that. But it’s not – it’s Herzog.
7. Win Win- Tom McCarthy’s The Station Agent was one of my favorite films of the last decade – and his follow-up, The Visitor, was very good too – both of them low-key, heartfelt, funny and original stories about people who seemed absolutely real. Working for a big studio in a more straightforward comic vein, it looks like he’s gone upmarket a bit – but I can’t imagine he’s sold out his style or his way with characters and dialogue. I’m expecting great things, especially with Paul Giamatti’s formidable talents aboard.
8. A Separation – An eerie and wrenching family drama about marriage and social boundaries in contemporary Iran, Asghar Farhadi’s debut About Elly was one of the best films of 2009. This one, his second film, won the Golden Bear at Berlin, while the cast took an acting award as an ensemble. Last year’s Golden Bear winner, Kaplanoğlu’s Honey, became my favorite of the year. And lately I’m obsessed with just about any independent cinema from Iran. I don’t think we can go wrong here.
9. The Arbor – Clio Barnard’s account of the tragic life of British playwright Andrea Dunbar has been described as one of the best documentaries of the year, with an original approach that features a cast lip-synching to recorded interviews interwoven with archival footage and excerpts from her plays. As a bonus, it screens with Tiong Bahru, the latest film in the ongoing Civic Life project, a wonderful series of short films produced in collaboration with local communities – Singapore in this case. (Both of these films were shot by Ole Bratt Birkland.) I’m fresh off taking a workshop the other night with Joe Lawlor, one of the Civic Life directors – great guy with a great vision about sharing film and filmmaking with people all over the world.
10. Letters from the Big Man – It’s directed by the award-winning Christopher Munch; it’s said to have amazing cinematography – having been shot on the Red camera by Chris Sweeney; it’s set in the big woods in my beautiful home state of Oregon; it stars Lily Rabe, who is Jill Clayburgh’s daughter, whose name suggests one of my favorite vegetables and who looks really good in hiking gear; it’s about Sasquatch; and it’s meant to be an original take on the local legend with environmentalist overtones. Take your pick – there’s plenty to like there, but actually the Sasquatch part is enough for me. Potential downside: apparently Bigfoot is not portrayed as a mysterious figure stalking in the background, but as a regular character with closeups and everything. So this could end up being a festival-circuit Harry and the Hendersons.
11. The Troll Hunter – Another reworking of an old legend in a woodland setting, this is a Blair Witch-type fakeumentary about a government search for the fabled monsters in the remote wilds of Norway – and believe it or not it’s getting bang-up reviews. From the buzz I’ve heard, and from how quickly the sessions sold out, I reckon it’s one of the most anticipated films in the festival. Something about a well-executed Scandanavian thriller about trolls must transcend genre boundaries and appeal to all sorts of people – including me I guess.
12. The Mill and the Cross- Lech Majewski’s meditation on Peter Bruegel’s 1564 masterpiece The Procession to Calvary is “the closest a feature film has ever come to being a painting” (according to Festival Director Clare Stewart). Apparently the production design and visual effects are jaw-dropping, and I’m especially interested in seeing how the religious element is handled. Bonus: it’s one of two films in the festival starring Rutger Hauer, who plays Bruegel here and a very similar role as the titular character in Hobo with a Shotgun.
13. Le quattro volte – Of all the films in the festival, this is the one that’s hardest for me to picture what it’s going to really be like. Apparently it’s an exploration of Pythagoras’ philosophy of soul transmigration by way of a visual celebration of human, animal and vegetable life in a quaint Italian village. I hear it’s a joyful cinematic experience that’s been winning audiences over since it debuted at Cannes last year. It sounds a bit like Stan Brakhage, a bit like The Tree of Life. (And on that note: it all remains to be seen, but I’m already starting to look for points of connection between some of these visually bold, experience-based, spiritually-minded films on my list.)
14. Position Among the Stars- Dutch director Leonard Retel Helmrich spent 12 years following an Indonesian extended family made up of both Muslims and Christians, sharing a roof together and living on the borderline of poverty; the result is supposed to be an intimate, beautiful, and stylishly unorthodox doco. Something about everything I’ve heard about it reminds me of Brillante Mendoza’s Lola, a narrative set in the slums of Manila which is one of my recent faves.
15. The White Balloon – I’m particularly excited about all the films in the Jafar Panahi/Mohammad Rasoulof retrospective – they’re taxing my FlexiPass like no other single program – but I didn’t list any of the others here as I wanted to focus on newer films. But I’ll include The White Balloon, Panahi’s beloved 1995 debut, as it’s screening at the State Theatre in a brand-new print, recently purchased by SFF. I’m just starting to discover all of Panahi’s amazing films, and I just can’t imagine a better way to see this classic – about nothing more than a little girl’s quest for a goldfish – for the first time.
