MSPIFF, Part Two

Okay, you can relax now, it's finally here: the concluding installment of a batch of short reviews of films you've never heard of and will probably never see. What could possibly be more exciting? Couldn't think of anything, could you? Well, here they are...

1. "The Milk Woman". From Japan comes this fairly average story of romance that is elevated slightly by its rather less blatantly sentimental approach and its low-key style. A young woman who was too shy to tell her high school love how she felt about him watches him go off and marry another. More than 30 years later, still as isolated and single as ever and working delivering milk to area homes, she's surprised to encounter her old love and his wife... but his wife is not only dying, she also wants him to go on and find someone new? Will they become a pair now? And if they do, will it last? This is the sort of story that cheap romance writers turn into the stuff of overwrought melodrama in the West, but this refreshing Japanese approach makes the material come across more like an understated Haiku, and the cast never overplays it for vulgar sentiment. This definitely is a nice change of pace, but still a love story is still a love story (well, okay, with very few exceptions). And the conclusion takes just a step too far into the romantic cliches that the film had avoided up until that point. The romantically inclined may very well have a grand time, and even the non-romantics will find it above average of its kind. Still, it DOES help to be predisposed toward liking that kind.

2. "Street Fight". In 2002, the Newark, New Jersey mayor's race pitted the long-term, well-entrenched incumbent against a rabble-rousing newcomer, and when the incumbent decided that it was no holds barred as far as defeating his opponent, things really got ugly. Nothing unusual there so far... except that both men were Democrats. "Street Fight" (an Oscar nominee for Best Documentary) is a very enlightening look at a downright ugly and brutal aspect of American politics, where none of that stuff about being polite and respectful to members of your own party applies. If you vote regularly but are not politically involved beyond that, you'll learn a lot... and whatever your involvement, it will probably scare you. And by the way, if you wind up finding yourself an enthusiastic supporter of the incumbent, I don't want to know about it.

3. "The Shutka Book Of Records". In the remote regions of what was once Yugoslavia, a large population of Roma (the West knows them as "Gypsies") lives and competes. Competes how, you might wonder? It's more like how do they NOT compete. One man determinedly struggles to have everyone acknowledge his as the largest collection of suits. Another takes equal pride in his hats. Others strive to convince the largest number possible of their rather... well, let's just say "unorthodox"... spiritual and religious beliefs. And while you will never look down on them (the film has a genuine love and respect for them), you will nonetheless wind up laughing as hysterically as at any Christopher Guest mockumentary. The difference is, this is all real. It really does take all kinds to make a world (and a village), and "The Shutka Book Of Records" is a great illustration of how much duller a world this would be without the more eccentric among us. Long live the odd!

4. "Love". Like "The Shutka Book Of Records", this film has a Yugoslavian connection. But that's as far as the similarities go. "Love" is a deadly serious, somber story about a former soldier and assassin from Serbia, now living in New York City among the immigrant community there and continuing to carry on his trade. The very bland, emotionless narration informs us that as he watched his former country disappear, he gradually became more invisible himself and is now as non-existent as his former homeland. But what he really is, is simply an underwritten character whom you never get to know and probably wouldnt want to. Virtually the entire cast of characters consists of people with absolutely no emotion and flat, bland speach and who go through life mumbling everything they say like a bunch of bad actors. Having partially grown up in the midst of a heavily Yugoslavian community with grandparents who were born & raised there (one Serbian, one Croatian) I can testify that Yugoslavians are among the most emotional people in the world... you NEVER have any doubt what they're feeling. The fact that some of these characters have been through virtual Hell on Earth can't account for the WAY too understated manner ALL of them are portrayed...
and then there's the editing that leaves too many plotlines unresolved, and the way so many of those that are resolved are so predictable. "Love" is a film that had a lot of potential to make some powerful comments on the political in the context of a story about the very, very personal... but in this case that potential was far from realized. The one bright spot is the character of an American CIA agent after our "hero". Sly, amusing and sinister all at once, he makes you wish the whole film had been about him. But as those great philosophers, the Rolling Stones, once told us, you can't always get what you want.

5. "My Dad Is 100 Years Old"/"Uso Justo"/"Ashaman." This was a program consisting of three short films.

"My Dad Is 100 Years Old" was made for the centennial of the birth of the great Italian neo-realist director Roberto Rossellini, directed by Canadian Guy Maddin and written by and starring his daughter, Isabella Rosselini. Far from the realism that Rosselini specialized in, it nonetheless encaspulates what made him great and suggests why as accomplished an artist is no so well remembered today. In a highly surreal scenario, Rosselini plays Alfred Hitchcock, Charlie Chaplin and many other contemporaries of her father as they debate his film making style. The film verges on pretentiousness at times but succeeds in transcending it. It also succeeds at being a fascinating curiosity recommended for anyone interested in why directors make films.

"Uso Justo" might remind some of Woody Allen's "What's Up, Tiger Lilly?": the director has taken a segment of an old black & white Mexican soap opera and dubbed completely absurd and totally unrelated new dialogue on top of it, about a film crew descending on a Mexican village to make a strange, experimental film. While just as thoroughly silly and hilarious as the Allen film, "Uso Justo" also IS a GENUINE experimental film in its own right, one which in many ways has as much to say about the art of storytelling and film making as "My Dad is 100 Years Old". It can't have been easy to come up with an appropriate film to play on the same bill as that one, but Minnesota Film Arts has succeeded.

"Ashaman." Well, two out of three ain't bad. Like "Uso Justo", "Ashaman" takes found footage... in this case, a selection of clips from the films of a semi-legendary Mexican leading lady of the 1940's... removes all dialogue and sound, and replaces it with a new soundtrack, in this case a series of Mexican pop songs of the day. The goal, according to the film's "director", is to create a commentary on "pure film"... totally removed from the art of storytelling. But the result is more like a series of 1940's black & white music videos. And all the pretentiousness that "My Dad Is 100 Years Old" avoided, "Ashaman" steps right into the middle of. If you really want to see a film that creates its effect from pure images and sound without conventional storytelling, try to catch one of Matthew Barney's films. And if you really want more of what "Ashaman" offers, MTV does it better.


Well, wasn't that thrilling? Aren't you glad you came back? Oh, well, I thought I might as well ask. Coming soon, in the next installment: titles like "Thank You For Smoking", "Inside Man" and "United 93". In other words, movies that have actually played somewhere that you're likely to be able to see them! You just never know what to expect in the blog...