the city in film
As described previously, I’ve been exploring a new medium, the “filmerick” (limericks to summarize great films). Here’s a new one in honor of Chloé Zhao’s poignant and meditative on-the-road epic, Nomadland:
Nomadland (Chloé Zhao, 2020)
They may think that you don’t have a plan,
When they see that you poop in a can,
But it’s them that did go mad,
You hard-working nomad:
You’ve a home on the road in your van.
For my longer (and slightly more serious) review, see The Arts Fuse.
Now out on the Arts Fuse, my review of Herself, Phyllida Lloyd’s new feature produced in partnership between Amazon Studios and Screen Ireland.
Through this classic cinema framing, we come in for the close up: by watching Sandra’s story — by attending to this particular life, as lived and experienced slowly, by this individual — we may hope to understand a more general story playing out elsewhere.
Sadly, this “elsewhere” is more accurately an “everywhere,” as there are loads of Sandras not just in Dublin, but in Dayton, Durban, Dallas, Dubai, Delhi, and Da Nang — as well as right here in Boston and its suburbs. Based on a true story and reminiscent of too many others, Sandra is a mother fleeing an abusive spouse, hoping to find a safe home for her children in a world where even something this simple would seem to require a miracle.
To read the full review, click here. To watch this film, head to Amazon Prime.
A big thanks to mubi for releasing Nimic, the latest work from Yorgos Lanthimos (The Lobster, The Favorite).
This delightfully-eerie short combines Matt Dillon (who can pull off “clueless and confused” like no other actor working today) with a devilish Daphne Patakia (who quite literally steals the show from the more senior actor), capturing all the End-of-Empire fear of a host of recent offerings in the “stalker/imposter/body-snatcher” genre (It Follows, Goodnight Mommy, Get Out, Us, Under the Skin — and even Lanthimos’s own The Killing of a Sacred Deer) and distills this anxiety down to its purest essence in a 15-minute package. (Also worth noting, as with a number of these other films, there’s some subtle race and gender subtexts at play here; one only need do a quick search for “you will not replace us” to discover the real ugly fears at the heart of so much of the current cultural divide, explored in these collected works: far more threatening than serial-killing maniacs or flesh-eating zombies is the terror of being usurped.)
Dillon plays a middle-aged father of three, a cellist who gets up like any other day, boils an egg for breakfast like any other day, and heads off on the subway for rehearsal — just like any other day. But returning home, something is off — a glitch in the matrix, perhaps — and he finds himself followed by a doppelganger: the sweet and sly Patakia, who — strangely, mysteriously, intriguingly — looks nothing like Dillon (just roll with it). As she follows him home, Diego Garcia’s deft cinematography provides the perfect “stalker-cam” viewpoint: we find ourselves at once both in pursuit and pursued, as the fish-eye lens bends the very streets of the city around the characters. (The score — starting, stopping, on-screen, then off: strings whining, bending, screeching, humming, all at once — heightens the pace and the sense of tension and pursuit.)
As the circle bends back on itself, we begin to question even more of the reality we’ve just seen. See it once, and then watch again to truly appreciate how much mystery, confusion, fear, and dread a great director can pack into a short.
I had a great time reviewing the new quasi-documentary, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, directed by Bill and Turner Ross, set in an staged recreation of a dive bar, but exploring some very real interactions. It’s a super film that really stretches the limits of the medium.
Here’s a teaser from my write-up:
The tone is what critics love to call “elegiac,” but one senses that using such language in “The ’20s” (as the bar is known to locals) might earn you the titular bloody nose, so we’ll just say it feels like the bar is hosting an Irish wake for itself. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tonight we die” could well be the subtitle for the film – or perhaps an updated and more accurate NSFW version, given the multiple paths to “merry” taken over the course of the night: “Eat, drink, smoke some weed, drink some more, fool around a lot and fondle a little, fall down a few times, pick a fight, drink some more and make up and hug it out, for tomorrow we finally accept the fact that we’ve all died a long time ago….”
To read the full review, head on over to The Arts Fuse.
Located in a seemingly-forgotten scrubby clearing of a wooded park on Kiev’s Dolobetski Island, the open-air free-weight gym of Kachalka is like an adventure playground for adults. A relic from the Soviet Era, the lifting facility is lovingly stewarded (and constantly expanded!) by caretaker Petro Shakhanov.
Gar O’Rourke’s short (9 min.) film, produced with funding from Screen Ireland and made available for free streaming via the PBS “POV” series, captures the spirit and the creativity of this location: it is a classic example of the way people in an urban context — even (or perhaps especially) during periods of economic down-turn – are able to tap into their deep reserves of creativity, grit, and communal resources to make do (and more), creating value out of waste, forging community out of the daily magic of simply showing up and sharing. The site hosts a bizarre menagerie of home-made — and quite curious — exercise machines fashioned from scrap metal, rusty chains, and whatever other spare parts have been saved and salvaged over the years, which the camera crew (and some new visitors to the Island) have a lot of fun exploring. (The sound team had a good time as well: throughout the film, the scenes are sewn together with a continuous soundtrack of cheery clanking metal.)
Interestingly, the film makes no mention of recent threats to the future of the facility, which exists in a sort of legal limbo. As with countless other types of urban “informal uses” — including community gardens, vacant lot soccer fields, prime graffiti mural sites, underground clubs and rave venues, sidewalk markets, and even shanty-towns and squatter settlements — properties such as this are allowed to thrive when land values are low, but become targets for formalization when the economics shift in favor of development.
One assumes the production team was aware of the issue: hopefully the film will help raise awareness of the community value of the park; at worst, it will at least preserve some of this legacy for future generations. For the moment, support for the gym seems strong, as the current pandemic conditions have increased the need for outdoor recreation (and, presumably, decreased market-forces pushing for development). After the bridge leading to the island was closed and weightlifters demonstrated their commitment by swimming to the island for their daily workouts, the police relented are agreed to re-open the access.
The film has screened in festivals around the world, including HotDocs, Newport Beach, and Flickerfest (where is received a special mention), but thanks to PBS you can watch it at home for free while you complete your own workout.