[Editor’s Note: Cyril Tuschi’s Khodorkovsky is available free in its entirety at Vimeo.]
By Joe Bendel. Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is now the chief lobbyist for Russian energy concerns. It may explain his less than vigorous interest in the political persecution of Mikhail Khodokorvsky, the chairman of the Yukos Oil Company and a leading bankroller of Russian opposition parties. It certainly helps explain how the Putin regime does business. Unfortunately, not even eight billion (with a “b”) dollars could protect Khodorkovsky from Kremlin persecution. German filmmaker Cyril Tuschi examines both the man and the dubious case brought against him in Khodorkovsky, which opens tonight in New York at Film Forum.
As any Russia watcher knows, Khodorkovsky is complicated individual. He was once an ardent Communist, which is how he was allowed to take control of Yukos during the fixed privatization process. He was not just an oligarch, he was the worst of the lot by any standard of open corporate governance. At this time, he enjoyed close relations with the Kremlin. Around the turn of the millennium, he radically changed the Yukos corporate culture, embracing openness and capitalism. He also started supporting democratic reformers. He is now serving a prison sentence in Siberia, as the result of what Schröder reportedly called “a thing between men.”
Though fascinating and not a little bit scary, this basic story is all well documented. However, Tuschi uncovers new (or criminally under-reported) information (particularly regarding the suspicious murder of a provincial mayor making trouble for Yukos) and scores legitimate interviews with Khodorkovsky himself, mostly conducted via letters but also hurriedly shot in between sessions of the Siberian kangaroo court. Aside from his subject, Tuschi also talks on camera to almost all of Khodorkovsky’s close associates not currently behind Russian bars, notably including his insightful early business advisor, Christian Michel, as well as a surprising number of Russian officials.
Tuschi’s German perspective hardly burnishes the former Chancellor’s image, but it gives the film an intriguing twist. He also includes dramatic black-and-white animated interludes that unmistakably evoke the Orwellian nature of the Khodorkovsky case. A classy package, Arvo Pärt’s fourth symphony, which he dedicated to Khodorkovsky, serves as the film’s soundtrack. Even Tuschi’s commentary is rather sharp. About all that is missing is a happy ending. Indeed, the documentarian had to know he was onto something when his laptop containing the film’s final edit was “mysteriously” stolen from his home.
Frankly, Tuschi’s documentary is timely beyond the prosecution of Khodorkovsky, reminding audiences wealth cannot provide a lasting defense against a government wielding unchecked power, as the case in neo-Soviet Russia. In fact, the circumstances of his imprisonment are so egregious, Milan Horáček, the German Green Party Human Rights delegate to the European Parliament, adopted his cause, stating unequivocally: “One can’t distinguish between human rights for the young, old, poor or rich.”
More documentaries should aspire to be like Khodorkovsky. Never smug or snarky, it is a bold, and sometimes artful film that truly challenges the powerful, An important and engrossing work of big-screen journalism, it is highly recommended when it opens tonight (Wednesday, 11/30) in New York at Film Forum, with Tuschi scheduled to attend the 7:50 screening.
By Jason Apuzzo. We like to periodically put a spotlight on short films here at Libertas, and this recent short film above called “The Arab Spring” caught my eye over at Vimeo. The film is essentially an abstract representation of the historic events of the Arab Spring, and is quite polished in terms of its graphic design and sound. Take a look. We wish filmmaker Raoul Marks the best with it.
[UPDATE: The filmmaker has made the decision to remove the film from Vimeo. See the comments from filmmaker Raoul Marks in the comments section below.]
[UPDATE #2: The film is now back up, with a minor alteration.]
Charlize Theron prepares a new persona for herself in "Young Adult."
[Editor’s Note: the post below appears today on the front page of The Huffington Post.]
By Govindini Murty. Charlize Theron’s new movie Young Adult offers one of the most striking depictions of narcissism to hit movie screens in some time. Directed by Jason Reitman, Young Adult tells the story of Mavis Gary (Theron), a self-absorbed writer of young adult novels who returns to her hometown to steal back her happily-married former boyfriend (played by Patrick Wilson). I had the chance to see Young Adult recently at a screening hosted by The Huffington Post and AOL. HuffPost Founding Editor Roy Sekoff moderated the colorful Q & A that followed at Arianna Huffington’s home with screenwriter Diablo Cody and actor Patton Oswalt. In the most memorable exchange of the evening, actress Sean Young (Blade Runner) asked Diablo Cody why she had decided to explore the subject of narcissism in the film. Cody wryly responded that perhaps it was because Young Adult was the first screenplay she wrote upon moving to LA. This drew a big laugh from the crowd, but the implication seemed more serious: what is the ever-increasing narcissism in Hollywood entertainment doing to our broader culture?
Charlize Theron’s Mavis embodies all the narcissism of modern popular culture. She’s obsessed with reality TV (the Kardashians drone on in the background of several scenes), a medium that has elevated the navel gazing of minor celebrities to the level of major entertainment. Mavis writes young adult novels that are only thinly-disguised relivings of her own high-school glory days, and she’s otherwise obsessed with appearances and shallow celebrity status. The film repeatedly shows Mavis studying herself in the mirror – either in depressed self-loathing after an alcoholic bender, or with vain self-satisfaction as she puts on makeup to impress her former boyfriend.
Charlize Theron tries to steal away married man Patrick Wilson in "Young Adult."
In keeping with the instability of identity that goes with modern narcissism, Mavis also adopts different personae as it suits her: at home she plays the dumpy writer in baggy jeans and t-shirts, but when she wants to seduce her old boyfriend she dresses in a low-cut black dress and adopts the manner of a big-city sophisticate. Later when Mavis is invited to a baby’s naming ceremony, she takes on another guise: that of a sober career woman with her hair in a bun, wearing a high-necked dress and conservative spectator pumps. Her various outer guises fail to impress the people of her hometown, though, for Mavis has neglected to develop any sustaining character traits. Mavis is the classic narcissist: cut off from objective reality, lacking any concern for other people, insecure in private but willing in public to ride roughshod over anyone and everything in order to gratify her whims.
Interestingly enough, Young Adult is one of several upcoming films that explore the dangers of vanity and narcissism. For example, two new adaptations of the Snow White fairy tale, Mirror Mirror and Snow White and the Huntsman, depict vain queens willing to kill to maintain their beauty – with Charlize Theron even playing the villainess in the latter film. In keeping with the original fairy tale, the wicked queen’s obsession with her own appearance in both films is so extreme that she literally has a spirit residing in her mirror that she calls on to affirm her own beauty – this spirit acting as the exterior personification of her own vanity.
In Young Adult, Theron’s Mavis may not literally kill young women in order to remain beautiful, but her narcissism leads her to disregard all moral standards as she attempts to destroy the marriage of her former boyfriend and undermine the happiness of his wife and baby.
Vain Queens: Charlize Theron in "Snow White and The Huntsman" and Julia Roberts in "Mirror Mirror."
Young Adult vividly depicts what happens when self-love crosses the line into monstrous solipsism. This type of narcissism is becoming a defining trait of our modern cinema, and is taking on ever more baroque forms. It extends into the trend of psychological thrillers like Inception, The Ward, Dream House or Sucker Punch that take place almost entirely within the mind of a character, often one who is mentally unstable. Although these thrillers depict elaborate action, they recast this action as being the involuted imagining of a diseased mind – or of someone who has lost the will to live. Indeed, in Inception the hero’s wife becomes so confused between reality and delusion that she commits suicide. Such films are symbols of a culture in decay – like the passive Narcissus of Greek mythology, so intent on gazing inwardly at himself that he loses the will to engage productively with the outside world.
The last time such narcissistic themes appeared en masse in Western culture was during the late 19th century Decadent movement, just before Europe collapsed into the conflagration of World War I. Decadent novels like Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray portrayed self-absorbed aesthetes who cared only for their external appearances, using them as cover to commit the ugliest of crimes. Dorian Gray’s portrait is the functional equivalent of the “double” seen by Mavis as she stares into her mirror – or of the reflected doubles that feature in Mirror Mirror, Snow White and the Huntsman, or even The Devil’s Double or Black Swan. Like Narcissus gazing at himself in the forest pool, all these reflected doubles signify the modern split psyche – alienated from humanity, from moral values, and from objective reality.
Icon of modern vanity: Kim Kardashian at the mirror.
In the old days this destructive narcissism was known by another word – vanity – and it was considered one of the seven deadly sins. However, in the twentieth century with the rise of photography and the cinema, Western culture has become ever more dominated by the visual image – and vanity has ceased to be stigmatized, instead being outright celebrated. Of course, there is a glorious life-affirmation inherent in appreciating the beauty of the physical. It would be just as perverse to denigrate beauty as to overvalue it. Nonetheless, Western culture has become so over-preoccupied with outward appearances that it is neglecting the important moral and intellectual qualities that give those appearances any larger meaning.
Perhaps dramas like Young Adult represent a healthy effort to deal with the problem of narcissism. After all, the movie shows how Mavis Gary’s self-absorption only leads to heartbreak, as relationships with family and old friends prove more difficult for her to manage than she expected. Reality eventually comes crashing into the hermetically-sealed world of Mavis’ narcissism and she is forced to deal with it.
This is as it should be. We can only evade objective reality for so long before being faced with one of two choices: either retreat into the reflection in the mirror and go mad, or look outside of ourselves and reestablish a healing connection with humanity and the larger world.
By Patricia Ducey. Early on in The Descendants, the camera sweeps lovingly over the old family portraits that line the walls of Matt King’s Oahu den. His forebearers, among them a landed Hawaiian princess and her Caucasian husband – along with their many ambitious, high achieving progeny – stare back at us radiating a self-possession and grandness we soon realize is sorely missing from Matt’s present day world.
Matt King (George Clooney) practices law and lives a middle class existence on Oahu with his family, a wife and two daughters, whom he barely relates to. He and his many cousins are heirs to the huge coastline land grant left to them by their royal and self-made ancestors – but the law mandates that they must now dissolve the trust, so they must sell the huge estate to who they decide as a family is the best buyer. The meeting will take place soon. Oh yes, I think hopefully, this will be grand: a large, wealthy family in conflict as they grapple with the meaning of legacy and of the land in this last piece of American wilderness.
But then Payne switches to Matt’s domestic crisis; his wife Elizabeth after a boating accident lies in a coma, and weak, ineffectual Matt must rise to the role of father and husband –because the one parent who made the family work is unconscious. As the family story takes over, Payne, the visual poet of Middle America and middle age, goes a bit sideways; his excursion into the tropical Eden and Matt’s discontent is not as successful as his previous films. In Election, About Schmidt, and Sideways his Midwestern protagonists feel the dissatisfactions of less than fully lived lives out there in flyover country, but they eventually claw their way out of despair through action or love.
Matt King is not so lucky, or perhaps not so brave. He retrieves his wanton teenage daughter Alexandra (Shailene Woodley) from the boarding school that is attempting, unsuccessfully, to reform her. Matt is determined that he and Alexandra, and younger girl Scottie (Amara Miller), will face the end of Elizabeth’s life together as a family. The doctor has informed him her coma is hopeless; they will remove the breathing tube per Elizabeth’s prior instructions. Both girls are bratty and foul mouthed; they humiliate and disobey their father just for the pure sport of it — because in his bumbling immaturity he allows them to, playing the ineffectual father to their faux maturity. In short, they represent the now clichéd American family, Hollywood version.
From "The Descendants."
Alexandra is particularly angry with her mother, and she finally tells her father why: her mother was having an affair — something Matt, in his detachment, never even remotely suspected. Finally, Matt is furious; he confronts Elizabeth’s friends and they reveal his identity. He knows this is his chance to step up as man of action. Instead, he enlists daughter Alexandra’s help to find the man and confront him! This is something a teenager would do — and why would a man involve his daughter in the pathetic exercise of stalking her mother’s lover? Surely all hell will break loose, I surmise, and Matt will see his errors and grow up. Alas, when he and Alexandra find the hapless lover, Matt instead gives him a good talking to and then invites him to visit his dying wife in the hospital, despite the fact that the lover admits that for him the affair was not serious. At this point, I emotionally checked out. Even the plain spoken eloquence of Robert Forster as Elizabeth’s father, and the crackling life force of Woodley’s Alexandra were not enough to sustain this movie. Continue reading LFM Review: The Descendants
By Joe Bendel. In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, scores of Cuban musicians found success playing in American. Chico and Rita were two of them—almost. Their Afro-Cuban musical romance is told in Fernando Trueba, Javier Mariscal, and Tono Errando’s Chico & Rita, one of eighteen officially submitted films in best animated feature Oscar race and a 2011 European Film Awards nominee, which screened at this year’s African Diaspora International Film Festival.
Chico is a Bebop influenced piano player and something of ladies man. Rita is a stunning vocalist and all woman. During their first auspicious meeting, sparks fly and maybe a few faces are slapped. However, when Rita reluctantly sings Chico’s newest song in a radio competition, it is magical. Suddenly, Chico & Rita are the band to book. They also start to admit their mutual attraction, but circumstances keep getting in the way.
Before long, Rita is signed by an American producer, who whisks her away to New York. Chico eventually follows her, hoping to gain entree into the jazz scene through his old compatriot, Chano Pozo, whose tenure in Dizzy Gillespie’s band led to the creation of the so-called Cu-bop fusion of Bebop and Afro-Latin Jazz. Of course, those who are familiar with their jazz history know Pozo is not long for this Earth. Likewise, Chico & Rita’s rekindled romance appears equally ill-fated.
As the director of Calle 54, the best musical performance film frankly ever, Trueba’s participation inspires confidence and he does not disappoint. C&R is an instant jazz classic, featuring infectious and sophisticated original music by Bebo Valdés, whose life sort-of-kind-of inspired Chico’s story. But wait, there’s more, including the classic music of Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie, Thelonius Monk, and Woody Herman’s Four Brothers band, performing Igor Stravinsky’s Ebony Concerto (which Chico sight-reads early in the film). Still not convinced? How about Freddy Cole performing one of Chico’s songs as his famous brother Nat, tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath channeling Ben Webster, flamenco singer Estrella Morente appearing as herself, and a whole lot of Afro-Cuban percussion interspersed throughout the proceedings.
By Joe Bendel. Sergey Yastzhembsky has surely seen a lot of savagery, but not in Africa. A former high ranking official in the Yeltsin and Putin governments, Yastzhembsky served as the Kremlin’s chief spokesperson during the Chechen “troubles.” Since then, he has preferred the company of Africa’s indigenous tribes, capturing their traditional ways of life, perhaps for posterity, in Africa, Blood & Beauty, which screened this past Sunday as part of the 2011 African Diaspora Film Festival.
Implying an unmistakable hierarchy, Beauty is organized into four sections, explaining the rituals and customs pertaining to children, women, men, and spirits, in that order. It quickly becomes clear spirits might be duly venerated, but tradition favors men over women. In nearly all of the surveyed tribes, the women bear the burden of nearly all the real work, except for hunting and sometimes fishing. Still, the Himba of Namibia have something of a safety valve in place, requiring a man who murders his wife to pay restitution of forty-five cows to her family – but mandating nothing from a woman killing her husband.
Indeed, Beauty is at is best when it explains the practical applications of painful-looking rites – though even with a compelling explanation, those endured by children might very well distress sensitive viewers. For instance, Pygmies sharpening their children’s teeth has obvious survival applications. However, as presented in the film, the Himba ceremony of knocking out young boys’ bottom teeth makes little sense from a pragmatic standpoint. Continue reading LFM Review: Africa, Blood & Beauty
Though fascinating and not a little bit scary, this basic story is all well documented. However, Tuschi uncovers new (or criminally under-reported) information (particularly regarding the suspicious murder of a provincial mayor making trouble for Yukos) and scores legitimate interviews with Khodorkovsky himself, mostly conducted via letters but also hurriedly shot in between sessions of the Siberian kangaroo court. Aside from his subject, Tuschi also talks on camera to almost all of Khodorkovsky’s close associates not currently behind Russian bars, notably including his insightful early business advisor, Christian Michel, as well as a surprising number of Russian officials.
