Ebertfest 2012: Day 3

Chaz Ebert and Roger Ebert

Whether it’s the selected films or the genial vibe of the event , Roger Ebert’s presence can’t be missed at the festival bearing his name even if he is no longer introducing each movie and conducting every post-film Q&A.  He made his second appearance from the stage this year to lead into the showing of a documentary about a longtime filmmaker friend who experienced his own brush with death.

Ebert’s computer gave voice to some of his words.  His wife Chaz read the rest of a lovely tribute to director Paul Cox.  From introduction through the discussion, the session was an extended feel-good moment, so I’ll try my best not to seem like a crank in writing about the film, which I didn’t care for.

Chaz Ebert, Paul Cox, and festival director Nate Kohn

ON BORROWED TIME is part career overview, part documentation of Cox’s journey from cancer diagnosis to liver transplant.  I’ve not seen much of Cox’s work, but what I am familiar with hasn’t particularly won me over.  An abundance of shots and scenes from his oeuvre are regularly dropped into the documentary, but free of their contexts and with my rudimentary knowledge of his films, it looks like so much indistinguishable b-roll.  I’ll allow that, to some degree, this is my problem more than it is the film’s.

Watching this clip show and hearing people friends and collaborators attest to his abilities yielded the similar effect of taking in a concert film featuring a band whose greatness is, at best, something I’m not convinced of, and, at worst, something I question.  No matter how accomplished the final product might be, if the basic content isn’t engaging, it doesn’t matter how eloquently it’s delivered.

I want to be clear about my ignorance of Cox’s overall body of work and biases formed based on what I have seen.  I don’t think ON BORROWED TIME is a particularly good entry point for someone in my position.  It goes without saying that those with affection for the director’s films will take more away from this than I did, but that cuts straight to my issue with the documentary.  It’s for those already in the club, not those who need to be persuaded or educated.

I suppose it points out the positive environment fostered at Ebertfest if I feel as though I must be apologetic for disliking a film.  Then again, Cox means a lot to Ebert and went through a serious health situation, so in this instance it seems like I’m being a bit rude.  So it goes, I guess.

David Poland, The Alloy Orchestra's Ken Winokur and Terry Donahue, and David Bordwell

I’ll have no such problem praising The Alloy Orchestra, which has performed at almost every Ebertfest.  The three-piece band’s accompaniment to a silent film is an annual highlight, and this year is no different.  Rather than playing with one feature, they presented their WILD AND WEIRD program of short films from 1906 to 1928. (Some of the dates I’m listing with these films conflict with the information on The Alloy Orchestra’s website.  I’ve cross-referenced with the Internet Movie Database and Wikipedia, but who knows which source is most accurate.)

The program consisted of:

-DREAM OF A RAREBIT FIEND (Wallace McCutcheon and Edwin S. Porter, 1906)
-THE RED SPECTRE (LA SPECTRE ROUGE) (Segundo de Chomón and Ferdinand Zecca, 1907)
-THE ACROBATIC FLY (F. Percy Smtih, 1910)
-THE THIEVING HAND (J. Stuart Blackton, 1908)
-PRINCESS NICOTINE; OR, THE SMOKE FAIRY (J. Stuart Blackton, 1909)
-ARTHÈME SWALLOWS HIS CLARINET (ARTHÈME AVALE SA CLARINETTE) (Ernest Servaès, 1912)
-THE CAMERAMAN’S REVENGE (MEST KINEMATOGRAFICHESKOGO OPERATORA) (Wladyslaw Starewicz, 1912)
-DREAM OF A RAREBIT FIEND: THE PET (Winsor McCay, 1921)
-FILMSTUDIE (Hans Richter, 1926) (with poetry by Hugo Ball)
-THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 9413, A HOLLYWOOD EXTRA (Robert Florey and Slavko Vorkapich, 1928)

Early cinema is a big blind spot for me, so it was a treat to see these highly imaginative and inventive shorts often experimenting with special effects and animation.  Among my favorites was the comedy ARTHÈME SWALLOWS HIS CLARINET is built upon an accident that results in an unfortunate musician having his instrument pushed through the back of his skull.  Think of star Ernest Servaès as a proto-Steve Martin with an arrow through his head.  The stop-motion animated THE CAMERAMAN’S REVENGE is a sophisticated parody of melodramas in which a restless beetle couple have extramarital affairs and run afoul of a camera-wielding grasshopper.  The short amazes with the personality given to the insects. THE LIFE AND DEATH OF 9413, A HOLLYWOOD EXTRA is a visually striking criticism of a system that chews up and spits out aspiring stars.  Surely Guy Maddin, a past Ebertfest guest, would go crazy for it if he hasn't seen it.  (Fun fact: Gregg Toland photographed it.)  As a whole, the WILD AND WEIRD program served as a fun introduction to this time in cinema history.

Nell Minnow, Omer Mozaffar, Paul Cox, and Michael Barker

Sony Pictures Classics co-president Michael Barker is a regular Ebertfest guest and is here with three films this year.  His introduction to A SEPARATION, in which he described it as a perfect film, set the bar high.  Having already seen and loved Asghar Farhadi’s film, I was inclined to agree.  (My review is here.)  Seeing it again, I’m convinced that Barker isn’t resorting to hyperbole.  It’s amazing how no moment, shot, or line of dialogue is wasted in A SEPARATION.  If a film can achieve the platonic ideal of perfection, this one has done it.

One line that stuck out to me this time was when Nader corrects his daughter Termeh during a language lesson.  She uses a word that her teacher told her was correct, but Nader argues that “wrong is wrong” and that it does not matter who says otherwise.  (I wish I’d written down the exact line.)  This point gets to the crux of the dispute between the couples and why it spins out of control.  The failure of everyone involved to own up to their mistakes inflames an already volatile matter.

Notes:

-This year’s festival has had a bit of bad luck in terms of invited guests being able to attend.  Patton Oswalt couldn’t make it Thursday.  A SEPARATION star Peyman Moadi was supposed to be in Champaign on Friday, but Barker explained that he’s currently shooting a movie in such a remote part of Iran that they were unable to get in touch with him.

-Each year it’s interesting to discover what improvements have been made to the Virginia Theatre.  This time it’s a renovated men’s restroom.  It is nicer, although I think there’s even less room to maneuver in it now.  Never fear, though.  The best view of Champaign (from the urinals) remains.

-On Opening Night I was pleased that an organist was back at the festival, but unless I’ve missed him, he’s not been present since.

On Borrowed Time (David Bradbury, 2011): C-/40
Wild and Weird program (Various): B+/74
A Separation (Jodaeiye Nader az Simin) (Asghar Farhadi, 2011): A+/100

Ebertfest 2010: Day 3

In my eagerness to post my Ebertfest 2010: Day 2 report, I overlooked the fact that the panel discussions started at 9:00 a.m., not 9:30. So I was a little late rolling into the Illini Union for the first topic: "Do Film Students Really Need to Know Much About Classic Films?" Populating the panel were a couple film students and some professors, including Ebertfest regular David Bordwell.

The consensus opinion seemed to be that rigid adherence to the canon is not beneficial or instructive. Considering how expansive the canon is these days, I don't know that it is this oppressive, inflexible list. Still, I think it's a mistake to avoid some of the landmarks--*cough* CITIZEN KANE *cough*--just because their statuses as the all-time greats have been cemented for such a long time. Younger viewers may balk at them, in part out of contrarianism, but I think it's important to have a foundation in the classics because their fingerprints continue to be all over what we see today.

The second panel featured Roger Ebert's "far-flung correspondents". On his blog and Twitter, Ebert has championed several film bloggers based in locations all around the globe. He extended that generosity by inviting them to the festival and having them participate in the panels and post-film Q&As. Ebert's medical problems in recent years have forced him to take a reduced role in those areas, but in showing up to introduce these guests and staying for the discussion, he emphasized how glad he is to have these people here.

The correspondents talked about their home countries and the film cultures there. While it was interesting to hear their stories, I took off early in the hope of getting over to the Virginia Theatre for a decent spot in line. It didn't happen, even with the rainy morning.

The day's film schedule kicked off with the Oscar-winning DEPARTURES (OKURIBITO). I was, and remain, disappointed that it beat THE CLASS (ENTRE LES MURS)--which I still contend is a better film--but DEPARTURES proved to be a good film, and one that went over exceptionally well with this audience.

In this gentle film, director Yôjirô Takita examines the work of Japan's encoffiners. These individuals prepare corpses for being placed in coffins and conduct the ritual in front of the departed's family and friends.

The entry point into this world is Daigo (Masahiro Motoki), a cellist who loses his orchestra job and doesn't exactly know what he's getting into when he accept a want ad seeking help in departures. The character mentions that his grandparents died when he was young, his mother's funeral occurred while he was out of the country, and his father has been out of his life since he was little. Daigo has never seen a dead body, and he's not sure he's cut out for this work.

DEPARTURES is a sentimental film about how the living cope with the loss of their loved ones and have their pain eased through the ceremony that encoffiners perform, but it's not a soppy one. The film is serious and earnest, but those qualities are never burdensome or false. It's sort of shocking to see a film that treats its subject, this one in particular, directly and softly. Perhaps the film cheats by having the deceased mostly consisting of those who have died many years before their time--these are "pretty" bodies, for lack of a better way of putting it--but some concessions have to be made to the audience. I certainly wouldn't want to watch a film in which these men attend to highly decayed corpses, and I bet you wouldn't either.

As unpleasant as this may all sound, the film is respectful and matter of fact about what encoffiners do. The comfort that the ritual gives to the surviving family also translates to the audience. Takita also finds spots for humor, such as the encoffiner instructional video, to deflate any discomfort viewers may feel about a subject that many don't want to reflect upon.

The Alloy Orchestra are regulars at Ebertfest. Typically their accompaniment of a silent movie is among each festival's best moments. This year they played along to Dziga Vertov's MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA (CHELOVEK S KINO-APPARATOM). The three-man band's scores favor percussion, which is a perfect match for a film that often looks at the industrial and technological marvels of its day.

MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA has the organizing principle of a day in a Russian city, but this film can be seen and enjoyed context-free. It's montage, montage, montage done with such vigor and imagination that this 81-year-old film still feels fresh and exciting. The superimpositions, quick cutting, and meta qualities are mind-blowing in their imaginative use. A woman blinking her eyes is crosscut with the opening and closing of blinds. Vertov often shows his man with the movie camera in a stylistic choice that rolls the making-of material into the film proper.

Vertov's dazzling display of technique is pretty compelling. Married with The Alloy Orchestra's live accompaniment, the film is lifted to transcendent heights. If this isn't the most kinetic film ever made--it charges out of the gate and picks up speed crossing the finish line--it has to be up there among the adrenaline shots of pure cinema. That the musicians can keep up with the frenetic pace and enhance the experience of watching MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA is a credit to their considerable talents.

The last film of the third day was SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK, which Ebert is proclaiming to be the best film of the '00s. I liked the film when I saw it during its intial release in 2008, but I was also overwhelmed by the ambition and challenges it contains.

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK writer-director Charlie Kaufman penned the screenplays for mindbenders BEING JOHN MALKOVICH, ADAPTATION, and ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND. (Those three previous films all landed on my year-end Top 10 lists.) This film, his first in the director's chair, again takes place in a strange world that looks a lot like ours yet behaves differently.

It's important to make note of the person behind SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK because it's best understood as a piece of Kaufman's reflexive body of work. Kaufman takes a scenario to its most absurd limits and aggressively deconstructs it in search of the primary level of truth.

At heart SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is about examining the shattered pieces of a broken relationship and trying to find where it all went wrong. In typically Kaufman-esque fashion, here it means years of staging and re-staging mundane conversations and arguments in hopes of divining shards of revelation.

The word synecdoche means to substitute the general for the specific and vice versa. The film can be understood as the main character's failed marriage viewed through the filter of all his relationships, which he pores over with obsessive, writerly focus while missing the broader picture.

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK'S tone is too mournful to call it a comedy, or what I associate with the term, yet funny elements are sprinkled throughout the film as it folds upon itself. Despite the metaphorical clouds that hover over Philip Seymour Hoffman as the playwright Caden Cotard, hope endures that the sun will emerge.

SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK is an audacious and uncompromising film, which in non-criticspeak means it requires a lot of patience and an open mind. It sounds trite to condense the film into a statement that all anyone needs is love, but that's the simple thesis buried under this mountain of philosophizing.

Having now seen the film a second time, I find that it opens up and is revealed to be simpler than it appears to be. SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK lets loose a steady roar of neuroses--loneliness, self-doubt, self-loathing, fear of disease, fear of death, fear of missed chances--but Kaufman shares these things not to wallow in them but to convey that we all have the same things banging around in our brains. The beautifully sustained final twenty or so minutes were enough to make me want to lay down and absorb all that this film has to offer.

Kaufman has resisted requests to explain the film in more concrete terms, and he continued that stance in tonight's post-film Q&A. He still had plenty of interesting and funny things to say about his movie, and I think he's correct in ducking attempts to lay out what the film means. SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK was likened to a Rohrschach test, which is an apt comparison. The film isn't a puzzle to be solved but a mirror that shows something different depending on when we look at it and what state of mind we're in at the time.

-DEPARTURES: B/68

-MAN WITH A MOVIE CAMERA: A+/100

-SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK: A/89