Day: October 1, 2012

LFM Reviews Life of Pi in 3D @ The New York Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. In 3D, New Age platitudes look like they are coming straight at you. At least Taiwanese auteur Ang Lee makes them stunning to behold. The tiger does not hurt, either. Generating significant buzz, Lee’s they-said-it-couldn’t-be-done adaptation of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi officially opened the 50th New York Film Festival, now underway at several Lincoln Center venues.

Growing up in India’s French quarter, Pi Patel was named for a Parisian swimming pool, but embraced mathematics as a means of truncating the embarrassing Piscine. As a boy, religion was his hobby, practicing Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam Furr’s Cafeteria style (but no love for Buddhism, evidently). He also picks up a few animal training pointers from his zookeeper father, which will stand him in good stead.

Much to Patel’s chagrin, his father decides to immigrate to Canada, where he and his brother will enjoy better future opportunities. Tragically, their ship sinks en-route – which is how, through an unlikely set of circumstances, Patel finds himself sharing a life boat with the family’s ferocious Bengal tiger, Richard Parker.

Pi is not exactly a story of a boy and his tiger. Despite the character’s avowed spirituality, he never hopes to change the tiger’s nature. Richard Parker begins and ends the film as a wild beast. However, Patel will attempt to train him with the techniques he learned from his father, in order to survive. They will not cohabitate, though. Patel will spend most of his time in a makeshift raft lashed to the lifeboat, ceding the larger vessel to Richard Parker.

For those who were wondering where Ang Lee has been, he has spent the last four years or so in a wave tank in Taiwan. Not surprisingly, the man who helmed Crouching Tiger has a keen sense of how to incorporate 3D to best serve the on-screen action. As dramatic as the tiger sequences are, it is the way he realizes depth and scope that are particularly arresting. He and his team create a spectacular fantasy world in the middle of the ocean.

Unfortunately, the narrative settles into a second act doldrums, largely repeating its Robinson Crusoe-Grizzly Adams motifs in what seems like an endless loop. Yet, in contrast to the film’s frequent heavy-handedness, Lee’s payoff hits the mark, precisely because of his tasteful understatement.

Indeed, there are many elements that work quite well in Pi, particularly its nostalgic portrayal of French India. For many viewers conditioned by Jewel in the Crown to think of pre-1949 India solely in terms of the British Raj, this is fertile ground, worth exploring in further films. Lee also nicely establishes the Patel family history, especially the role played by his dashing honorary uncle, Mamaji (played by the distinctive Elie Alouf). The wrap-around framing device is also quite effective, featuring a relatively brief but moving performance from Irffan Khan as the adult Patel, relating his story to a Martel-like novelist. For hardcore film geeks, Pi even features an unusual aspect ratio shift.

Pi has its merits, but it also illustrates the perils inherent in films confined to lifeboats. Visually, it is quite the triumph, but Lee’s young cast-members are not all some more enthusiastic critics are billing them to be. Ultimately, much of Pi is like a 3D painting—dazzling to soak in, but rather static. Better filmmaking than story-telling, Life of Pi certainly deserves technical consideration during awards season. Recommended for those interested in 3D as legitimate creative medium, Life of Pi launched this year’s NYFF on Friday, with a theatrical opening already scheduled for November 21.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on October 1st, 2012 at 11:56am.

Preserving India’s Film Heritage: LFM Reviews Celluloid Man @ The New York Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Here in America, we have the Library of Congress, MoMA, and Martin Scorsese – amongst others – all working on behalf of film preservation. In India, they had P.K. Nair. Now retired, Nair was an institution unto himself. Shivendra Singh Dungarpur profiles the curator, while bemoaning the current state of the archive his subject tirelessly assembled in Celluloid Man, which screens as part of the Cinema Reflected sidebar during the 50th New York Film Festival.

Accepting a research position at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Nair initially harbored his own filmmaking ambitions. However, with the formation of the National Film Archive of India (NFAI), Nair found his destiny as a archivist. For over a quarter of a century, he played a central role acquiring prints of historically significant Indian films, representing all of the country’s regional and linguistic traditions, as well as prints of important works from around the world, for FTII students and faculty to analyze and devour.

Following lead after lead, Nair tracked down many of the only surviving prints, or in some cases mere fragments, of what were popular and critical successes of their day, but are now largely lost. Of an estimated 1,700 films produced during India’s silent era, only nine have been saved for posterity—entirely through Nair’s efforts.

Indeed, Celluloid is pointedly critical of the lack of attention and resources devoted to the preservation and restoration of classic cinema in contemporary India, which is something of a shock given Bollywood’s economic vitality and its attendant publicity machine. Yet, according to Celluloid’s interview subjects, after Nair’s retirement, the NFAI has fallen into a dreadful state of neglect and Nair himself has essentially been declared persona non grata, for internal political reasons.

Film preservationist P.K. Nair.

That is a reasonably intriguing story, particularly for those well versed with classic Indian cinema traditions. The problem with Celluloid is its unwieldy one hundred sixty-four minute running time.  Time after time, talking heads echo each other, almost verbatim, to emphasize points under discussion. It is a quality cast of commentators, including Krzysztof Zanussi, Naseeruddin Shah, and Shyam Benegal – we just get it already.

An active supporter of the BFI’s restoration efforts, Dungarpur obviously takes this subject to heart. He also incorporates some interesting film clips into Celluloid, even for viewers not so deeply steeped in Indian film history. While some disciplined pruning would have tightened and strengthened the overall package, it is nonetheless a worthy cinematic tribute. Superior to These Amazing Shadows, the documentary tribute to the work of National Film Registry, but lacking the dramatic heft of Golden Slumbers, Davy Chou’s moving elegy for the Cambodian film industry destroyed by the Khmer Rouge, Celluloid Man fits quite nicely into this year’s Cinema Reflected sidebar. It screens this Thursday (10/4) at the Francesca Beale Theater as part of the 2012 NYFF.

LFM GRADE: B-

Posted on October 1st, 2012 at 11:54am.

LFM Reviews Beyond the Hills @ The New York Film Festival

By Joe Bendel. Alina is either tragically co-dependent or possessed by the Devil. Radically different measures would be required depending on the diagnosis – but either way, she will visit a host of trials upon her girlfriend Voichita and her fellow Orthodox convent residents in Cristian Mungiu’s Beyond the Hills (see clip above), Romania’s latest official best foreign language Oscar submission, which screens as part of the main slate of the 50th New York Film Festival.

Meek and pious, Voichita appears perfectly suited to a cloistered life. Alina is a different story. However, since her former friend has no real family, Voichita arranges for her to stay temporarily in her quarters. Yet as soon as she arrives, Alina starts badgering her former friend to leave with her (see clip above). Gently rebuffing her, Voichita watches in alarm as her visitor’s behavior becomes increasingly erratic and disruptive, eventually manifesting in several public meltdowns. The priest and the nuns do not want to abandon a soul in need, but after the medical establishment washes their hands of Aline, there seems to be only one remaining course of action: exorcism.

Mungiu implies a great deal in Hills, very definitely including the nature of Aline and Voichita’s relationship, while leaving just as much open to interpretation. It would also have been very easy to portray the priest and good sisters as stereotypical zealots dangerously convinced of their own infallibility. However, Hills constantly reasserts the messy humanity of each character. In fact, the ambiguity of the “possession” gives the film quite a distinctive flavor. Frankly, after about two hours of Aline acting out, most viewers will be ready to throw their lot in with the nuns, holding down the devil-woman as the priest reads the purification scriptures over her.

From "Beyond the Hills."

With a running time of 150 minutes, Hills often feels like what it is: a product of the Romanian New Wave of independent filmmaking. It probably would not have killed anyone had Mungiu shaved off twenty minutes or so. Nonetheless, he elicits several riveting performances, the most notable being Cosmina Stratan as Voichita, the confused innocent. As Alina, Cristina Flutur is also scarily convincing engaging in all manner of aggressive, self-destructive behavior. Yet it is Valeriu Andriută’s work as the priest, simultaneously severe and sympathetic, that really forestalls snap audience judgments.

Based on a novelized account of a real life incident in Moldova, Hills is not a kneejerk attack on Eastern Orthodoxy. Nonetheless, as the Russian Orthodox Church hemorrhages international credibility due to its perceived alliance with the Putin regime, it is hard not to invest Hills with an additional layer of meaning, whether or not Mungiu intended it. Given its ambiguous but evocative treatment of monastic life and supernatural possession, Beyond the Hills would be a fascinating film to see in conjunction with Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s Mother Joan of the Angels. Challenging in multiple ways, Beyond the Hills is recommended for hardy cineastes with at least a couple of Romanian New Wave films already under their belts when it screens tomorrow (10/1), next Sunday (10/7), and the following Thursday (10/11), as part of the 2012 NYFF.

LFM GRADE: B+

Posted on October 1st, 2012 at 11:52am.