[Editor’s Note: A restored version of Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie has just been released by Criterion on DVD and Blu-ray, and is now available at the LFM Store below at the end of this post.]
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JENNI COMES IN LATE — THE FACE OF MARIA FALCONETTI –CONVERTED — PEOPLE WALK OUT EARLY
I was late to the screening. It was French New Wave Week in World Cinema 340 and we were watching Godard’s MY LIFE TO LIVE (a.k.a. VIVRE SA VIE). It was my first Godard. I was a lazy undergrad. I came in about 15 minutes late, an intruder bringing a squeaky door and too much light into the darkened, cavernous auditorium. I felt hot and embarrassed at my intrusion. I sat in an uncomfortable plastic chair in the back, hiding from all my fellow students. The first thing I saw was a face. It made me cry. It always makes me cry.
THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC is one of my favorite films. Seeing it for the first time, I had a (re)conversion to Catholicism/cinema. Seeing it every time since, I am continually reconverted. And always crying at the face of Maria Falconetti.
I am Nana. She sees the face of Maria-as-Jeanne D’Arc and she cries too.
We are all crying, we three faces. I have a feeling no one else in the auditorium is crying. Before the screening is over, half the students have walked out. Perhaps they were disappointed at the lack of sex and the one bit of sterile nudity in a picture about prostitution. Perhaps they couldn’t feel anything when they looked at Anna Karina’s face. Perhaps they didn’t like lengthy philosophical discussions about the meaning of language and speech. Perhaps they thought the French New Wave weird and pretentious and Godard’s film most of all.
But not me. I was converted that night while watching VIVRE SA VIE. I was converted to Godard. He was my first New Wave love (Truffaut would come later, but Godard was always stronger).
It’s been almost eight years since I watched VIVRE SA VIE in college, but I have never forgotten the images or the effect the film had on me. I have never forgotten it. I recently watched the new Criterion Collection remastered DVD of VIVRE SA VIE — now my second time seeing the film. I still can’t explain my thoughts on it. It is a religious experience in that way. It is a spiritual/emotional thing, not an intellectual one. I have thoughts and feelings, but I cannot put them into words. If words were enough, I wouldn’t need the pictures.
By Joe Bendel. Life as the only admitted alcoholic in a small coastal Irish village is difficult for Syracuse (Colin Farrell), especially with his mean-spirited ex-wife constantly belittling him in front of his wheelchair-bound daughter, Annie. It is easy to see how both father and daughter would welcome a bit of fantasy into their lives in Neil Jordan’s Ondine (see the trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York, following its high-profile run at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Syracuse made a hash of his life through binge drinking. Now on the wagon, he uses the church confessional as his surrogate AA meeting. Barely eking out a subsistence living, one day he pulls up his fishing nets and finds a beautiful woman tangled up inside. Adamant that she not be seen by anyone, Syracuse lets her recover at his recently deceased mother’s ramshackle cottage.
Though Syracuse tells Annie about the mystery woman calling herself Ondine as if it were a fairy tale, the bright young girl automatically assumes it to be the truth. Inevitably, Annie soon meets the woman she believes to be a ‘selkie,’ a mermaid like creature from Celtic mythology, half convincing her father and perhaps even Ondine herself with her ardent conviction. Yet, Jordan periodically drops hints that Ondine’s origins might be darker and worldlier than Annie’s romanticized version of reality.
The human need to believe in something good and edifying lies at the heart of Ondine, but Jordan also deftly incorporates themes of family and personal responsibility. Completely shedding his movie star persona, Colin Farrell is thoroughly convincing and undeniably likable as Syracuse, despite the character’s myriad faults. Indeed, he is the lynchpin of the movie, serving as the tragically flawed moral center of this emotionally deep film. Continue reading Review: Neil Jordan’s Ondine
LFM’s Steve Greaves reviews the award-winning web series satire about the fictional, 70’s progressive rock band, “Gemini Rising.”
By Steve Greaves. Before there were hair bands, there were hairy bands. Yes, the heather was high and across the mythic plains there were hairy, sensitive barbarians in hordes of typically five, but growing in might at times to numbers almost unimaginable. Few live to bear witness. Quite often the drummer would don an afro though he be of the Celtic dynasty.
There are niches within niches, and Koldcast.com’s web TV series Gemini Rising picks up the musk of a very specific kind of band at a very specific juncture in popular (or not) music culture. For a while in the early 70’s, after the Summer of Love sounds had burned out and UK and NY punk were not yet kicking, there was a lot of soul-searching and cosmic exploration informing the kinds of themes and approaches to being a “rock” band. Much of what emerged at that time was amorphous, exploratory, meandering, melodramatic and self-indulgent schlock. It is to rock what “fusion” is to jazz – i.e., technically impressive, but virtually hook-free and generally leaves you in a worse mood than before.
The term coined was Progressive Rock, and while there are many, many great songs and bands in the genre when it began through today, one has to laugh at the inherent ridiculousness of the original trappings: grown men in tights and scarves singing operatically and emoting in a quasi-Shakespearian manner about wizards and astrology. It was one big hairy Renaissance Pleasure Faire and an aural gateway to the ages for those willing to explore the far edge of listenability.
Before there were hair bands, there were hairy bands.
Allrighty then Shackleton, let’s talk bands. Experience the nerdy wrath of names like Uriah Heep, Marillion, Pendragon, Hawkwind, Elf and Rainbow (Ronnie James Dio is a movement unto himself too vast to explore here, all you need to know is he’s slain many a hydraulic dragon in as many middle-earthly bands, and is a powerful elvine singer who also fronted Black Sabbath post-Ozzy Ozbourne).
The common thing about bands amid this subterranean niche in “hardish” rock is not so much what they are but that what they’re not: not hard enough to be metal. Not catchy enough to be pop. Not light enough to be jazz. Too noisy to be opera. These are broad strokes to draw admittedly, but this is the kaleidoscopic point of entry into fully grasping the modest genius of Gemini Rising.
While there is a surprising amount of variety among episodes in the series, what holds it all together is the lack of anything much ever really happening. Like their own music and that of their “contemporaries” cited previously, the act never really lands because the band itself is never grounded and always in juvenile crisis. As a caricature, Gemini Rising is the spawn of other “rock mockumentary” bands that are perpetually stuck in a rut even when opportunities to show off their cosmosonic magic arise … anywhere from within recording studios, to the Gong Show-styled Larry LaMay variety hour – and all guaranteed to bring a yellow and orange glow to your 14-inch Zenith.
Comparisons to This is Spinal Tap and Bad News are a given anytime a hard “rock mock” shows up, but the idea is again fresh and the large, funny and clearly dedicated cast and varied settings put an original and enthusiastic spin on the typical flailing band situations. The genius is in being so confidently loose within a sub-genre that can only be recreated through the pains of extreme specificity. The look and feel of the people, the places and the music videos and media within the environment are spot on. Lead singer Robert Mckenzie is perfectly cast in east coast actor and Syrrah vocalist Righteous Jolly, who sounds not unlike the formidable Geoff Tate of neo-prog metal icon, Queensryche.
The sheer dumpiness of the era and the fringes of the midwest and rustbelt provide plenty of deadpan juxtapositions, as well as a textural approach to the film that flatters its efforts – nay, its quest to be vintage ’74 in flavor. Fake hairs on the projector, low lighting, and other distressed effects add to the smutty visual character of the series. Clever use of graphics and exacting font choices complete the whole wood-paneled non-spectacle. You’ll be craving a Tab and a stick of Big Red in no time.
Shot on a shoestring or merely made to look that way, the expansive cast and at times spacious outdoor locations (“We’re going to bring birds into the studio?” “That goose is an artist!”) go a long way to make this production feel bigger than it is. Part of the charm of this effort is that the “young underdog band” is mirrored to an extent by the obvious “let’s put on a show” ethic of everyone involved, a sort of lo-fi equilibrium between the filmmakers and the subject matter that allows for enough discipline to stage something inventive and funny without taking itself too seriously in the process. Overthinking this material would suck the spontaneous life right out of it. All in all this is a great example of the kind of fun, affordable, collaborative art filmmakers can actually create and get seen today with little more than talent and imagination.
Highlights include the extra episode “Amphibian Liberation Army” (the star of whom is an activist who goes by the handle “Che Johnson”) and song performances including “Lady of the Lake” and “Star Child.” A good place to start your zodiacal rock odyssey is the Gemini Rising trailer above.
By Jason Apuzzo.Prince of Persia is opening this weekend, a Jerry Bruckheimer film based on a video game and starring an American guy of Swedish descent in the lead. If that’s your type of cinema, feel free to knock yourself out this weekend – but I thought that for the heck of it I would briefly review a marvelous film that’s still out in theaters right now and that was made by (and about) actual Persians. It’s a little indie gem called No One Knows About Persian Cats, which won the Special Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard section of last year’s Cannes Film Festival.
Persian Cats is about two young Iranian rock musicians – a naive young guy and his cute, shrewd girlfriend – who are planning an indie rock gig for themselves in London just after having been released from prison. The film takes place in the underground rock scene of Tehran, where such imprisonments are apparently common. Hoping to snag fake passports and visas for themselves, the two young people spend much of the film meandering through the underground rock scene of Tehran – much of which is literally underground – trying to convince other musicians to join them in their attempt to get out of the country.
What makes Persian Cats so compelling – even somewhat shocking – is how utterly Westernized the young kids and their musical compatriots are. There was a period of my life when I spent a lot of time around musicians, and Persian Cats almost feels like a documentary about struggling young musicians in New York or LA – except in this case, these young kids are literally struggling to launch their careers under a death threat. As tragic as the circumstances are, though, the film makes it abundantly clear that American culture – and the freedom it embodies – is seeping through the pores of Iranian society to a degree far beyond what the regime there can control.
Persian Cats is directed by Bahman Ghobadi (A Time for Drunken Horses, Marooned in Iraq), and this is the second film of Ghobadi’s to deal with Iranian restrictions against women singing. [In Iran, it’s illegal for women to perform even traditional Persian music in public, so don’t expect Lady Gaga to appear there any time soon.] Ghobadi’s Marooned in Iraq dealt with a Kurdish man helping his ex-wife flee Iran subsequent to the ban on women performing. Persian Cats thematically picks up where that film left off, although this film is considerably more dynamic – and, indeed, more musical than its predecessor.
The film’s two leads are played by Negar Shaghaghi and Ashkan Koshanejad, both real-life figures of Iran’s alt-rock scene. In their mission to re-assemble their band (Take It Easy Hospital) and purchase forged passports and visas to exit the country, they encounter a variety of colorful figures – the most amusing being Nader (played by Hamed Behdad), a fast-talking agent-fixer. Behdad gives what is to me the stand-out performance of the film, particularly when at one point he grovels his way out of being lashed by the authorities.
Acting performances really are secondary, though, to the music and cinematography of the film. Cinematographer Turaj Mansuri draws deeply saturated colors out of the Tehranian night, and the indie-alt soundtrack features some nice numbers that are still swimming around in my head. The film is otherwise shot and edited very much like a documentary – and whereas the ‘documentary-realist’ style comes across in most films as an affectation, here it works perfectly. Persian Cats has a mellow, bouncy, improvised feeling to it – there’s not a moment that’s forced or contrived. And the acting itself feels improvised, although that may be because the cast members were apparently playing thinly veiled versions of themselves.
Persian Cats was co-written and executive produced by Roxana Saberi, the Iranian-American journalist who was imprisoned in Iran last year on trumped-up ‘espionage’ charges. And there is, ultimately, an aura of the ex-patriot about the whole production. Persian Cats feels like a film made by – and for – a younger generation who have mentally and emotionally checked-out of contemporary Iran, even when they’re still living there. That’s both encouraging and disheartening. Persian Cats is ultimately a film about young kids living free lives … for as long as they can keep the cage door open. That cage door is always there, though, as certain events late in the film make poignantly clear.
Congratulations to everyone involved in this film for making such a light, sweet and stylish feature about what is otherwise an ongoing tragedy. Persian Cats is not going to bring down the regime in Tehran – but perhaps someday when the mullahs are gone, it will remind people that not even that horrible regime could stop young people from rocking.
No One Knows About Persian Catsis still playing in select theaters (see here), and the DVD will be available on July 26th. You can also catch it right now on video-on-demand on a variety of cable networks (I caught it recently in gorgeous high-definition on Cox cable).
Republican Congressman Joseph Cao (right) along with protester.
By Joe Bendel. Most armchair political analysts were stunned when Joseph Cao, a Vietnamese-American Republican, defeated scandal-plagued Democrat William “Big Freeze” Jefferson to represent nearly the entire city of New Orleans in Congress. Alas, party registration will likely represent a challenge for Rep. Cao’s re-election. However, he will have an important base of support in the Crescent City’s Vietnamese community, whose strength and resiliency has emerged as a major post-Katrina political development.
Documenting the unexpected rise of the New Orleans East neighborhood that challenged an out-of-touch municipal government and ultimately elected the nation’s first Vietnamese-American congressional representative, S. Leo Chiang’s A Village Called Versailles (see the trailer here) airs this coming Tueday (check your local listings) as part of the current season of Independent Lens on most PBS outlets.
Many of the older Vietnamese residents of the Versailles neighborhood (named after a large housing complex in Eastern New Orleans) had already endured two painful dislocations. Mostly from two predominantly Catholic towns in the North, they had first fled the North Vietnamese Communists to the South, only to come to America as refugees following the fall of Saigon. Indeed, the Katrina evacuation brought back many painful memories.
However, this time they returned – reclaiming their homes and neighborhood – in large measure thanks to the unifying role played by Father Vien Nguyen and the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, their rebuilding efforts were nearly sabotaged when then “Mayor” Ray Nagin used dubious emergency powers to dump an environmentally questionable landfill in their midst. Continue reading Faith & Activism in New Orleans: A Village Called Versailles
By Jason Apuzzo. A few weeks ago I was approached by a persistent if strangely insensate census worker who wanted to know what ethnic category I fell into. Presented with a palate of government-approved options, I found myself falling into what is no doubt the least sexy category of all – that of a generic ‘white’ person, even though my heritage (as far back as I’m aware) represents a vast and colorful mosaic of southern, central and eastern Europe.
To be frank, I felt a little disappointed. I’d assumed that since the last census in which I’d participated 10 years ago, things would’ve improved a bit. I thought there would’ve been some kind of category for gringos like me, so that the exercise of participating in the census would somehow be less tedious. Imagine, I thought, how exciting it would be to be, say, part Thai and part Alaskan – you’d have several boxes to fill out. That would be exciting.
Omid Djalili’s absolutely hilarious new film The Infidel (see the trailer here) presents a different kind of anxiety from the one I faced: that of the man whose ethnic identity literally makes him a marked man. The Infidel (which recently showed at The Tribeca Film Festival and in theaters, and is available for download below) stars the antic, Rabelasian actor-comedian Djalili as a British Muslim named Mahmud who learns by accident that he was actually born Jewish. The revelation of his Judaism, striking as it is to him, would not be so much of an issue if it weren’t for the fact that his daughter is about to marry the stepson of a radical imam from Pakistan who preaches jihad against the infidel … and that’s really when the hijinks begin.
Some wholesome friends of the Imam.
The Infidel is essentially a fish-out-of-water comedy in which a guy who believes himself to be a modern, liberal Muslim is faced with the reality of having to suddenly (and covertly) integrate into the Jewish world … while trying to retain his street-cred as a Muslim. Does this sound rife with comic possibilities? It is – and Infidel screenwriter David Baddiel and director Josh Appignanesi exploit every one of them.
Mahmud’s guide on his journey back to Judaism – Mahmud’s real name is ‘Solly Shimshillewitz’ – is a Jewish cabbie named Lenny, played with droll, understated humor by veteran TV star Richard Schiff (The West Wing). Lenny does his best to give Mahmud a crash-course in Judaism, a course which includes such ‘essential’ Jewish activities as: learning how to dance like Topol, how to say Oy vey! with the proper shoulder-shrug … and telling a Barbra Streisand joke at a bar-mitzvah. Watching Mahmud, the pseudo-devout Muslim, struggle trying to perform these ‘basic tasks’ provides some of the biggest laughs of the film. My favorite moment in Mahmud’s training is when Lenny sits him down to listen to a sad dirge by Mendelssohn. Lenny says of the music: “Doesn’t it make you want to put all your possessions in a wooden cart and slowly, sadly pull them away from your burning village?”
Ethnic humor of the kind that fueled My Big Fat Greek Wedding some years ago is basically what fuels The Infidel – but one senses that the stakes in this film are much, much higher than in Nia Vardalos’ delightful comedy. The inability of certain radicalized sectors of Islamic society to reconcile themselves to the modern world is largely what’s causing so many problems nowadays … and it’s precisely the intransigence of imam’s like the one depicted in The Infidel (played with silky menace by Yigal Naor) that is destroying relations between the Islamic east and democratic west right now. Continue reading Review: The Infidel
[Editor’s Note: A restored version of Jean-Luc Godard’s Vivre Sa Vie has just been released by Criterion on DVD and Blu-ray, and is now available at the LFM Store below at the end of this post.]
