2018 Roger Ebert's Film Festival: Day 2

If the first day of the 20th annual Roger Ebert's Film Festival inspired looking at the past, the second day pointed thoughts about the past and present toward the future.  Whether this emerging structure was intended or it's simply what stood out because of where my head is at currently, I like the balance of noticing what used to be and not allowing it to dictate how things should remain.  One can appreciate and respect the past without believing that today and tomorrow must be defined on yesterday's terms.  Don't misunderstand me, I'm not suggesting throwing out everything that has preceded.  That knowledge should be built upon, not permanently fixed.

The present in INTERSTELLAR looks bleak as blight is bringing the last harvests of specific crops, which will inevitably lead to the planet being incapable of growing food at some date.  Dust storms seem likely to bring about all sorts of respiratory issues for the population, especially in the youngest generation.  In Christopher Nolan's 2014 film, the world is no longer at war, perhaps the lone positive byproduct of the perilous environmental situation, but fear of what is ahead has made thinking regressive, something manifested in educators now teaching that space exploration was all a massive constructed lie to gain an edge in the Cold War.

Matthew McConaughey's Cooper understands the practical need to be a farmer, yet he's frustrated how society is essentially barricading itself in its home and embraced denial of reality instead of believing in and working toward a future that could be better.  He becomes involved with a secret outpost of NASA that seeks a new home for humankind in a different galaxy.  While participating means a tremendous personal sacrifice--if he ever returns, he will have missed decades with his children--the alternative is waiting for doomsday to come.  Cooper chooses the more hopeful option, even though it means making the tough choice to leave behind the son and daughter he loves dearly.

INTERSTELLAR is a film of staggering visual wonder that serves as a kind of amusement park ride through a wormhole and into a black hole, yet the father-daughter connection bridging space and time make the greatest impact. Although Nolan can be characterized as a cold, logical filmmaker, here he searches for the unquantifiable in love of family and awe at the universe. The mission into the stars becomes a journey into the heart.

Although the film is just four years old, in the current political atmosphere it plays much differently.  The retrograde developments and fatalistic thinking seem all the more plausible in this pessimistic time.  If only we can have faith that a small, renegade group is still striving to stave off the worst possible outcome for everyone, although the film mitigates the investment we should put into some secret resistance delivering salvation.  Some people may be more qualified to make things better, but in the end everyone needs to pitch in.  It all comes back to the idea that parents make preparations to assist their children even if the full realization of those actions don't arrive until after they are gone.  The past should set the table for the future, not marginalize it.

Ebertfest showed INTERSTELLAR in a 70mm print, which made this one of the potential high points of the festival for me.  I'd seen it in 70mm before but was underwhelmed by the visual result in a better source.  Splashed across the huge screen at the Virginia Theatre, I expected this presentation to deliver what I hoped to see that first time.  While this print was pristine, my experience was the same.  INTERSTELLAR in 70mm lacks the sharpness and clarity that I expect.  Some of the farm scenes, especially in the house, seem dark and lower in detail.  This is not the case with 70mm prints of DUNKIRK, so I'm not sure what the difference is.

Monica Castillo, Selena director Gregory Nava, and Claudia Puig

Gregory Nava's SELENA, a biopic about the Tejano singer Selena Quintanilla-Perez, is the only film to play here in the first two days that I hadn't already seen.  While the film's arc is more about the rise and tragic end of the pop star's life, one of the tensions extends from her father Abraham (Edward James Olmos) resisting the desire of his children, particularly Selena (Rebecca Lee Meza as a child, Jennifer Lopez as a teen and adult), to do things according to their tastes, not his.  As a frustrated former musician, Abraham has certain ideas of how things should be done based on when he was growing up.  While some of his objections, such as his dislike for Selena's more revealing fashions, emanates from a paternal impulse, many of them are rooted in believing that all the answers exist in the past.

SELENA gave a big boost to Lopez's career, and her strong technical performance makes it easy to understand why, although she's limited by a screenplay that doesn't give the character much of an interior life.  My primary criticism of the film is that the writing leaves a lot to be desired, whether it's the information dumps of dialogue or the progression of events that don't fully convey how much Selena's professional status is changing.  As biopics tend to do, SELENA features a greatest hits of anecdotes on her rise to fame, but these scenes feel strangely disconnected until someone unloads some clunky talk to fill in some of the gaps.

I appreciate, though, that Nava doesn't define Selena through her death.  When the film opened, for much of the American public their greatest awareness of her would have been about her murder.  I suspect most filmmakers would have opened SELENA with the tragedy and flashed back to tell the story, but doing so would implicitly say that being killed is why she should be of interest to people, not her talent or accomplishments.  Nava doesn't foreshadow the murder unless you recall who was responsible, which has the weird effect of Selena's fate hanging over the film like the sword of Damocles for those who know it or seeming like a shocking turn virtually out of nowhere for those who are unfamiliar with the outcome.

Nava also does a nice job of depicting the struggle in being Mexican-American, which complicates Selena's professional life by being perceived as not fully either nationality.  There can be a tendency to assume that those with hyphenated identities favor the part that is not American, yet here we see that doing so is often not fair.  Selena's native tongue is English, and she wants to sing in that language.  The system, however, pushes her toward where it thinks she best fits, which mirrors her father's experience of wanting to sing with a doo wop group but facing opposition by the majority culture and his own because of his heritage.

Rebecca Theodore-Vachon, Belle director Amma Asante, and Chaz Ebert

Heritage is also the prism through which Gugu Mbatha-Raw is viewed and treated as Dido Elizabeth Belle in Amma Asante's BELLE.  Based on a true story, Dido has a British father and a slave mother, and her father wishes to have his parents care for her according to the status he gives her while he is away in the Royal Navy.  Her great-uncle and great-aunt, Lord and Lady Mansfield (Tom Wilkinson and Emily Watson), raise Dido much the same way they do her cousin Elizabeth Murray (Sarah Gadon), yet there remain some customs that have her occupy in which her place is above the servants but below the rest of the family.

Dido's young adulthood coincides with an important case regarding the crew of a slave ship disposing of its human cargo and seeking recompense from the insurer.  Lord Mansfield is adjudicating it, and Dido's awareness of the matter shapes her understanding of who she is and how society observes her.

Asante excels at bringing out the economic, social, and political questions in a costume drama and tying their relevance to today.  Race is certainly an important component of what BELLE is examining, but the film also explores the worth and expectations of women in a culture that does not fully value them and actively seeks to bind them to a way of moving through society that limits their potential.  The phrase judicial activism gets lobbed as an accusation nowadays, yet is a strict adherence to the past beneficial?  Lord Mansfield's decision in the Zong case could be interpreted as activism--I suspect any verdict departing from the observer's opinion qualifies as such--even though it seems like the evolution of thought in applying the law.  Again, blanket denial of the past is not the goal, but making the future beholden to what preceded should not be either.