From PIFF 2011

Pune International Film Festival (PIFF) 2011 was a much eagerly awaited event for me. Especially because I had been irregular at PIFF for the last two years. And it turned out to be a much fulfilling experience this time, evoking memories of my first PIFF attendance. As it turned out, PIFF 2011 had enough in store – I discovered new directors, glimpsed new cultures, and tasted a smorgasbord of films ranging from average to excellent to moving.

I tried a little disciplined approach this year and actually made brief scribblings of the films just after I watched them. They are nowhere near a review though; just brief commentary on what I watched, and are definitely inadequate in bringing out the essence of the films. Here they are, anyway.

I began PIFF this year with the Australian film The Tree. I don’t remember watching any films from Australia earlier, and I didn’t know what to expect. All I knew about Australia was that they play all possible sports, eat kangaroos, and have unintelligible accent. So, it was a cultural education, sort of. The Tree shows the Australian countryside and of the lives lived there. Simone, the 8-year-old girl, who lives with her widowed mother and three brothers in a rambling house beside a giant tree, begins to feel the presence of her dead father in the tree. But, of late, the tree has suddenly started throwing all sort of trouble on their house – roots clogging the house’s drains, big branches falling off and destroying part of the house, unwanted creatures paying a visit (frogs in the commode, dangling scary bats in the bedroom). When it is decided that the tree should be felled to get rid of such troubles, Simone vehemently refuses the idea. Simone suspects that her father is gradually being forgotten by the whole family – her three brothers show no outward grief, and her mother seems to be warming up to a new man in her life. Well, that’s the bare bone plot. The film, though about the loss of a dear one, is not morose. Rather, it’s a delight to watch the children, who succeed in reminding the joy of childhood. The sadness just lingers at a corner, and the beauty of living is what remains at the end of the film. A good start to PIFF 2011.

Eight Times Up (8 fois debout) shows us Elsa, who is divorced, lost custody of her son, doesn’t have a proper job, and gets evicted from her apartment because she cannot pay her rent. In short, she has lost grip of her life and doesn’t know how to fight back. Her next-door neighbor (an unkempt single male who also gets evicted later for the same reason) is an equally pitiable character. They both keep appearing (unsuccessfully) for numerous job interviews, do occasional odd jobs for cash, and try to make ends meet somehow (again rather unsuccessfully). To everyone, they are what you call losers and better be avoided. Nothing is wrong about a film on losers and their hopeless lives. In fact, they can be excellent film material. However, to me, this was just about an average attempt. The strands of desperation were lost on me, not because I couldn’t feel it, but because it grew tedious. Even the attempts of hilarity at their pathetic circumstances looked too drawn-out. “Seven times down, eight times up,” is what one of the characters say. I try to believe it. Except that, by the end of it, I seem to have lost interest in what happens next.

Probably the most-liked film of the second day was Puzzle, which introduces us to the life of Maria, a middle-aged housewife who, to the surprise (and later dismay) of her family, gets more than involved in the game of solving puzzles. The film is beautiful not because how it’s shot, but because how well it’s written. The characters come alive with such subtle movements that we barely notice how they are coming into their own distinct persona. Small gestures (Maria making a fish pattern with salad dressings), fragments of conversations (the husband sweet-talking to a lady in their store to sell something), dresses worn (the carefully chosen dress that Maria chooses to wear on the competition day) – all suggests at things and carry the story in ways that are subtle yet significant. I admired the details. There are probably more things I liked (but unable to pinpoint now), but two things I did have reservations about. One, making Maria sleep with her games partner – which seemed unnecessary – not because I hold a prudish view, but because it seemed highly improbable that a woman of Maria’s intelligence would do it. Maria is portrayed as someone who’s in control of her actions, is measured and calculative about what she does, and is unlikely to get carried into a relationship that she’s obviously not interested in, especially when weighed against her love of her husband and the family. Two, the profusion of close-up shots in the whole film, which to me looked a little too obtrusive and unnecessary. Minor quibbles apart, this is going to remain memorable for reasons I’ll continue to discover.

R is a film I didn’t want to watch (I had to go for it because the film I wanted to watch was removed). So, R turned out to be every bit as expected, and will probably be forgotten very easily. Depiction of graphic violence and shocking visuals in films are dime a dozen these days, and they are unlikely to make a film any better unless the films are written well. R shows the violence – the way factions work, newcomers get inducted, fights fought, lives lived and lost – all within the confines of the prison walls. Barely a plot, lots of blood and gore, nothing memorable. Wouldn’t have regretted if I had skipped it.

Straits of Hunger (Kiga kaikyô) by lesser known Japanese director Tomu Uchida is a film that has a long drawn out plot, which unfolds to give different interpretations to the same story as it moves forward. The film has three distinct segments featuring the lives of a fugitive (who’s running away with a loot), a prostitute (with whom the fugitive spends a night), and a follower (a cop). The on-location shots of the film was very impressive (considering that it was a black-and-white era film) and the twisted story never fails to pique your interest (it never reveals the true sequence of events, and leaves it at your own interpretation). One complain though: the screening was cut short considerably (the original version, we are told, runs a length of 3 hours, but got to see just a little more than 2 hours).

Old age and happiness don’t seem to go well together. People get estranged, love sours, loved ones are lost, and experiences make one bitter. Therefore, it’s so wonderful to see the cinematic representation of a happy middle-aged couple (Tom and Gerry) wade through life with a rare contentment and placid joy even when their friends and families keep struggling with their own troubles and losses. Another Year by British director Mike Leigh is a film that has nothing spectacular. It’s so quotidian (for once, that’s the perfect word) that it contains nothing but a plain vanilla slice of life. And I’m so very impressed and moved by watching it. It evoked a mood that stayed with me well after the credits rolled, I walked out into the noisy crowd, and quietly drove back home. Sure, Tom and Gerry (and their only son Joe) have a rare fulfilling life, but it’s made poignant and more beautiful by the bonds they share with all the people – friends and families, who aren’t as lucky. It’s like by showing the contrast of these lives, we see what it is to experience happiness. It’s not the on-your-face happiness, but happiness of feeling a gentle wind, working on a vegetable patch, reading together, sharing a good meal, and comforting and caring each other, and being thankful. Another Year is just what it’s title says – just another year in the lives of these people. Full of small joys, a little sorrows, and the lives lived in between.

Mamas & Papas attempts to look at the gamut of emotions associated with parenthood. With four disparate situations we see the pain, desperation, hopelessness, and confusion. An affluent middle-aged doctor (she helps childless couples) has to cope with the tragic loss of her own daughter and flees to a foreign holiday for some solace; a young woman who is trying everything to conceive but cannot gets increasingly touchy and ends up driving away her husband to an extra-marital affair; a cash-strapped departmental store clerk, who’s already a mother of two children, is worried about her pregnancy and decides to put the baby out for adoption; and another young couple who cannot decide whether to have a baby drifts apart after an abortion. Four strands, one theme – parenthood; rather, the troubles of parenthood. Liked it okay, but cannot find anything ecstatic to say. Maybe, the pangs of parenthood don’t get conveyed so easily. Or, maybe, I'm overdosed with films that has several stories running in parallel.

The Rowan Waltz (Ryabinoviy Vals) seemed, to me, to have a very interesting storyline – of young Russian girls who were trained and recruited to detect and clear mines that were left in the fields of Russian countryside during the World War II. But, after some time into the film, I realized it to be a cliché-ridden average film. There’s a bit of drama, blooming love, heartbreak, and finally a love triangle. A linear, simple, and old-style storytelling. This will easily get drowned in the sea of week-long movie-goers experience. However, the pretty Russian damsels, absolutely beautiful countryside, and an overall sweetness should win some hearts, as we realized (much to our annoyance) by the shrieks, mutterings, and other such exclamations of our neighbors.

Majority (Çogunluk) is a film that, on the surface, looks like many other films that has touched a similar story – of an affluent aimless spineless young man who is just whiling away his time with his friends, hopping malls and discos, driving expensive cars when bored, and without having a care of the world. Things take a different turn when he gets involved with a young waitress (of an inferior “gypsy” clan) and realizes that his affiliations are more important than his own wishes. To me, what sets the film apart, however, is the excellently chosen cast – the visibly slacker young boy who still carries all the baby fat (I could greatly identify with him), the stern staunch foul-mouthed patriarch who knows how to manipulate, the timid lovelorn young girl who’s head-over-heels in love despite knowing the impossibility of it. The other redeeming feature of the film is that it doesn’t end with a reformed protagonist – it just ends with how the protagonist realizes the futility of resistance; and the film ends with the ominous hint that he’s probably just giving in by joining the ranks of the majority.

Sweet Country, the only film from Michael Cacoyannis retrospective that I saw, is a disturbing film – it shows the horror of political upheaval in Chile in the 70’s through the turn of tragic turn of events on a family who were close to the overthrown government, and of a US family who sets out to help them flee the country. Several strands of stories are interwoven (not often successfully), but the dark and disturbing pent-up pressure (some with the portrayal of graphic sexual violence) can be felt, nonetheless. The statement against military regimes is loud and clear, but cinematically, it doesn’t seem to achieve much great height.

The Poll Diaries traces the story of 13-year-old Oda Schaefer who, after the death of her mother, goes to join her estranged father living in a crumbling seaside mansion in pre-WW1 rural Estonia. It’s a politically charged time and the Estonian anarchists are fighting the Russian military. Oda’s disreputed surgeon father Ebbo, who has the horrid hobby (he calls it experiment) of studying and preserving the body part of the dead (often the unclaimed anarchists), teaches his daughter the science of surgery, which she uses to nurse a wounded anarchist hiding in the estate, and leading to consequences that changes her impressionable mind. The film is based on real life events of the poet Oda Schafer, we are told. The dark tale moves interestingly, the tender vulnerability and affection are well-portrayed, and the film doesn’t waver from what it sets out to tell. Liked it.

Hitler in Hollywood is set as a thriller where Maria de Medeiros (who plays herself) unexpectedly chances upon (while working on a bio-documentary of an European actress of yesteryears) a plot that was hatched years ago by the Hollywood studios to suppress a resurgent European film industry. I couldn’t warm up to the film for two reasons: one, the hand-held camera shooting style (I think I have problems with films shot that way); two, it was too conversational and many a times I was reading too much subtitle to actually enjoy the film. I envy the ones who know enough French to enjoy the film with relative ease.

Italian mafia is a subject that is so very filmy – I mean it can be made, and has already been made, into memorable films. So, it was no surprise that The Sicilian Girl got the biggest audience when it was screened (I had to watch the film sitting on the stairs of the theatre). However, The Sicilian Girl is admirable because the film shows the horror more than the heroics. This a film where there are no good and evil, where the mafia works and kills purely for the purpose of business and power. Based on the real life story of Rita Atria, a girl from a mafia family who comes out in public to testify against the mafia, it’s told with a right balance. The transformation of Rita’s initial vendetta (she initially wanted to punish her family’s killers) into a more acute desire to uproot the evil system, is as good as it gets. Abandoned by friends, family, and her lover, and finally at the cost of her life, we see Rita grapple with the hidden skeletons, some of which were from her own cupboard. A brief appearance by the director (Marco Amenta) in person at the venue, followed by a small talk, made the screening even more interesting.

Sweet Evil (L'enfance du mal) is the story sweet looking Céline who comes into the life of an affluent couple – a judge and his wife – and gradually starts creating a web of evil design. Céline is young, still a teenager, but she’s street-smart, and she has a ruthlessness that belies her age, or look. We soon see that it is revenge that’s on her mind – she is trying to punish the judge for something he had once done with a verdict. And she plans her way through it with such flourish that the judge almost looks like a sitting duck. The film ends, with the judge left dying of a stabbed wound, unattended on the road, and Céline deserting him with a sorry-I-cannot-help-you look.

Zeppelin! is a visually stunning film. Very atmospheric, mostly shot in black-and-white, lots of footage (original archive as well as recreated) of the Hindenburg disaster, and excellent reproduction of the giant flying object that was once nothing short of a miracle for the masses. Director Gordian Maugg takes the zeppelin and weaves a story around it – where all the characters are in some way molded by this giant airship. Inspiring love, loss, fear, and fascination – the airship becomes a character of its own, wielding its invisible hand and shaping the fate of three generations.

Twenty (Bist) is the only Iranian film I saw this time. And it didn’t turn out to be interesting enough to keep me awake all the while. The last time I watched an Iranian film at PIFF (Café Setareh) it turned out to be exceptionally entertaining. Bist revolves around, not a café, but a public reception hall which is well past its prime – it now hosts only a few weddings and funerals. The owner, Soleimani, is a bitter man and has a hidden past that’s started troubling his mind. He decides to sell the property and serves a notice of twenty days to his workers. The hapless workers, grappling with an uncertain future, huddles together in ways the defeated gets together. It all ends happy, though, and thereby also becomes forgettable.

Somewhere, Sofia Coppola’s well-crafted film, is something that is so nuanced it almost fails to get your attention. Of all the people who watched it, the reactions varied extremely. People either like it ecstatically or hate it vehemently (source: a few comments from people around, and IMDB user reviews). Somewhere gives us a glimpse of a Hollywood star, Johnny Marco, who apparently is as clueless about his life as his super luxury sports car (which goes round and round, purring beastly strength, but actually has nowhere to go). We see Johnny going, listless, from one thing to another, but failing to get the stimulus. He’s simply inert to life and he struggles to understand what is failing him in spite of having everything he can desire. A chance vacation with his daughter from a failed marriage makes Johnny momentarily aware of things – of blissful moments of togetherness. The film has excellent moments of lingering shots (they are also the most complained about) which somehow brings in the desired effect. For example, the unusually long shot of pole-dancing girls, which contrary to arousing Marco, puts him to sleep. Or, the almost clinical shot of Marco being applied a full face pack that makes him inert for a few hours – and it makes us wonder what his hyper brain is up to in this moment of complete inactivity. Or, when the father-daughter duo is basking by the pool, letting the time pass by blissfully. We like Somewhere because it remains enigmatic – it’s a quest to reach somewhere without ever knowing where it is. This was my closing PIFF film, and it was worth it.