Waiting For Happiness [Mauritania, 2002]

Sometimes a film feels like it’s about nothing, even if you know what it’s really about. Waiting for Happiness is one of those films where you feel like you’re peeking from behind a curtain and peering into someone’s life rather than watching a narrative feature. I don’t require a strong narrative for enjoyment. I have some episodic films that rank among my favorites. That being said, Waiting for Happiness didn’t do a lot for me.

What you have here is a young man, Abdallah, that is emigrating to Europe soon and he’s come to spend time in his mother’s coastal town before his departure. He sticks out like a sore thumb in his Western dress. He also doesn’t speak the local dialect and has a hard time understanding people and being understood.

Most of the film is him silently observing his surroundings: a woman outside his door teaches traditional song to a young girl, an elderly electrician and his child apprentice buzz around the town fixing things, a would be emigre washes up dead on the beach. Those things are pretty interesting and kind of drive the film, but there’s too much disconnect…too many episodes that reveal nothing and go nowhere…like the Chinese immigrant singing karaoke to a single woman in the back room of a restaurant. I’m sure the filmmaker accurately captured life in this seaside town with its peculiar beauty of desert on the edge of the ocean, but there wasn’t enough going on for me to become engrossed. Even at a relatively short 96 minutes, the film dragged on. I could see myself liking other films by Abderrahmane Sissako as I liked elements of the film a lot (and it was gorgeously shot), but this one just didn’t do it for me despite it having picked up a lot of international awards.

Attenberg [Greece, 2010]

Greek new wave cinema is weird…and I mean that in a good way. A year or so ago I saw the “WTF-inducing” film by Yorgos Lanthimos called Dogtooth. I mistakenly read than Lanthimos was the director of Attenberg, but it turns out he is co-producer of it and acts in it as well. Regardless, it was my pick for Greece, a country I love dearly.

I’ve always had a fascination with the place. I played soccer with a lot of Greeks. I’d go to the Greek food festival in town and a few years ago, I finally had a chance to travel there. A few incredible weeks bouncing around the place by myself and the place cemented itself in my heart forever. I went from the bustling metropolis of Athens to the ancient monasteries of Meteora to the wild beaches of Halkidiki and the arty metropolis of Thessaloniki. Despite her current economic troubles, I’d go back in a heartbeat given the chance. It’s the only place I’ve ever traveled where I’ve had the thought, “I need to go back there instead of traveling somewhere new.” Anyway, it was a spectacular experience and I absorb as much Greek stuff as I can now.

Attenberg is the story of Marina, an insular 23 year old that avoids most people save her terminally ill father and her promiscuous best friend Bella. Marina’s never been with a man, so she goes to her more experienced friend and asks for advice. Bella proceeds to show her how to kiss and we’re treated to what is probably the most awkward kissing scene ever put on film and a really peculiar opening sequence. That really sets the tone for this offbeat film: Bella and Marina have an entire arsenal of Monty Python-esque silly walks that they do, Marina delivers commentary and play by play while making out with the first guy she’s ever been with and Marina has bizarre, detailed sexual discussions with her dying father. It’s at once bizarre and charming as well as serious and hilarious. Definitely not for everyone, but it takes some of life’s heavier moments (the death of a parent, losing one’s virginity) and filters them through a bizarrely abstract lens that somehow humanizes the moments more by stylizing them.

Daratt [Chad, 2006]

Oddly enough, this is the second movie from Chad that I’ve seen this year. I saw the excellent A Screaming Man a few months ago and when starting this film project, I thought I might have to break my rule of only using films I’d never seen before, but it turns out that director Mahamat Saleh Haroun has directed several full-length features which are available in the US on DVD.

In Daratt, we find Atim, a sixteen year old living with his grandfather. Chad has just announced a general amnesty for everyone involved in their long civil war. They claim the cycles of violence have gone on too long and that more violence and retribution aren’t going to solve anything. Atim and his grandfather are outraged by the lack of justice and his grandfather soon instructs Atim to take his father’s gun and to go to the city and to kill Nassara, the man who killed Atim’s father before he was born.

Atim is from the provinces and it takes him a while to find his footing in the city, but he eventually does. He tracks down Nassara, who runs a bakery, and gets a job at the bakery. Atim has several opportunities to kill Nassara, but Nassara is attempting to mentor Atim and to teach him a trade. Atim’s conflict between avenging his father and making a better life for himself is what the film hinges on.

Daratt is good, but Mahamat Saleh Haroun has grown quite a bit as a filmmaker and I would recommend A Screaming Man over it if you’re only going to watch one film from Chad.

On a peculiar note, I found that this film, along with Opera Jawa were both commissioned in celebration of Mozart’s 250th birthday.

Free Men [France, 2011]

World War II movies have been done to death. That’s not to say that good ones don’t exist or that the subject has been exhausted, but there’s really not much to most of them that we haven’t seen before. This is not the case with Free Men. The film is set in Paris and focuses on North African contributions to the resistance against Nazi occupation. There’s an angle you don’t hear everyday. I’m into this already.

I found out during the closing credits that much of the film is based on real people and real events, which severely ratcheted up the awesomeness. Younes is a petty black market pedlar during wartime Paris and has no real opinions or political leanings. When his cousin, Ali, and other North African immigrants are going to meetings and organizing for labor unions and the French resistance (in the hopes that the liberation of Algeria will soon follow), Younes answers their invitation with “I’m just here to make a lot of money and get out.” Younes is concerned with his family, not the bigger picture. He eventually gets hauled in by the French police in order to rat out Ali and they basically offer him substantial sums of money to hang around the Paris mosque and inform on the comings and goings at the mosque. Younes, apolitical as ever, agrees since there’s money to be made and because he’s threatened with jail time unless he agrees.

The mosque director, Si Kaddour Benghabrit, is helping and sheltering all sorts of people at the mosque regardless of their ethnicity or faith. In particular, he’s providing Muslim religious ID cards to North African jews and harboring them. The Nazis get wind of this and start cracking down on activity at the mosque. Younes, begins to waver on his informing to the French police as he realizes what a raw deal it is for him and others once the authorities start investigating his friends and family and reveals to the mosque director that he’s an informer. The shrewd Benghabrit tells Younes he knows this already and helps guide Younes into protecting his friends, namely the famed singer Algerian Jewish singer Salim Halili.

As the film progresses, Younes becomes more politicized (though I would definitely not say radicalized), and gets quite involved helping defend his fellow Algerians from the Nazis in Paris (even to the point of armed resistance.) While many of the characters in the film are real people,  Younes’ character is likely a composite, but his story is certainly not an unbelievable one. Younes is the main character, but Benghabrit could be viewed as such too. Everything goes through Benghabrit: plans, fake documents, official meetings, etc. Halili’s inclusion in the film is great. It adds another true historical element to the film and it opened to door to including a bunch of incredible music. There’s even a scene where Halili is going to perform a duet with the famed Egyptian singer Mohammed Abdel Wahab (there’s a great recording of Wahab’s music by Simon Shaheen that you should check out here.)

This is one I really enjoyed and would heartily recommend.

TRAILER: Free Men

Distant [Turkey, 2002]

I’m not going to pretend to know a ton about Turkish film, but I have enjoyed the small handful that I’ve seen. Turkey is a place I’m infinitely fascinated by (especially Istanbul.) I fully intend to delve deeply into Turkish cinema at some point after I complete this project. I figured Distant would be stark given the title and the bleak, wintery landscape on the poster, but I didn’t know it’d be beyond bleak.

Yusuf, a young factory worker from the countryside loses his job in a layoff as a result of a major, nationwide recession. His older cousin, Mahmut, lives in Istanbul and leads a comfortable life as a corporate photographer (he mainly photographs tile for a manufacturer.) Mahmut enjoys artistic photography, but it doesn’t pay the bills so he engages in mundane work but is paid well for it. He has a large apartment in the city with a huge study, a studio, a scenic view, etc. Yusuf, like so many before him, flees to the city in hopes of economic fortunes (he wants to become a ship worker.) Mahmut agrees to put Yusuf up for a while until he can get on his feet. It become apparent very quickly though that Mahmut has no real prospects. It’s the middle of winter and there’s no hiring in the shipping industry. Yusuf meanders about aimlessly and appears content to stay at Mahmut’s apartment in his spare bedroom.

Mahmut, an independent man, grows weary of Yusuf’s presence shortly after his arrival and the two begin to annoy each other rather quickly. They try taking a trip together to bond, but it doesn’t work at all. Family obligation wins out though and the two tolerate each other’s existence. The longer this drags on, the more Mahmut becomes irritated and his solitary existence is somehow heightened by the presence of another person. He seemed lonely before, but his loneliness is unbearable in the presence of another person. The gorgeous, but stark winter landscapes of Istanbul highlight the isolation even more.

I was quite into the film at first despite the long silences (it is probably 7-8 minutes before the first word is spoken in the film), but after a while it became tiresome. If the filmmakers objective was to draw you into the awkward and uncomfortable tensions in the apartment, then he did a masterful job. The actors all did a superb job (the two leads both split the best actor award at Cannes) and it’s beautifully filmed, but I simply lost interest in the unsympathetic characters after a while. It did a bang up job of showing the loneliness and mundane nature of much of modern life. I liked it okay. I didn’t hate it by any means, but didn’t enjoy it enough to recommend. It had a powerful overall message, but I don’t feel like it really delivered on it well. Kind of surprised to see that it picked up so many accolades, but hey, to each his own I suppose.

TRAILER: Distant

The Colors of the Mountain [Colombia, 2011]

The greatest casualty of war is that of the innocent. Make no mistake, combatant casualty is certainly tragic, but there’s not much worse than the suffering that is foisted upon the innocent. Rural Colombia is the setting for The Colors of the Mountain and we see fighting between government forces and guerrillas. Technically speaking, we don’t actually see much fighting at all between the two sides, but we do see the movements and machinations of both sides and we see the innocent lives that are upset and disturbed and lost. Here we see the lives of farmers, women, children, the elderly and others torn apart and disrupted by armed conflict. The local school teacher takes a small stand by painting over guerrilla graffiti and it costs her her livelihood. Families begin fleeing the conflict. We’ve all seen this type of thing before.

What really sets The Colors of the Mountain apart though is that nearly all of the main characters are children: Manuel, Julian and Poca Luz. Manuel receives a new soccer ball for his birthday and it makes him the toast of the kids in the village. Everyone wants to play with the new ball as the one they had previously was ragged and terrible. Shortly after receiving the gift though, it gets kicked into a vacant field. The kids discover the field is land mined when a farm animal wanders into it and is blown to pieces. The kids set about hatching a plan to get the ball back and take some incredibly stupid risks in the process.

The locals mostly try to ignore all that is going on, but eventually they can’t. Families flee. People disappear. Innocent bystanders are extorted and exploited by both sides of the conflict. Somewhere in the midst of all this turmoil, these kids try to lead a normal life: they go to school, they do their chores, they play soccer. The film’s power is in its subtlety. I don’t think many people need to be told that armed conflict is a terrible thing. Countless war movies before have shown that amply. The quiet grace of The Colors of the Mountain and its focus on bystanders is what gives it its strength.

How I Ended This Summer [Russia, 2010]

We always hear about things being “more than the sum of their parts.”  Occasionally, things are less than the sum of their parts as well and unfortunately How I Ended This Summer is one of those things for me. This bleak Russian film is the tale of two men working on an island meteorological station in a remote part of the Russian northeast. It’s beautifully shot and it’s impeccably acted (the two leads shared the “Silver Bear” best actor award at the Berlin Film Festival the year this screened), but there wasn’t a whole lot of story there. I certainly take no issue with slow films or with films with seemingly no narratives, but this just didn’t excite me at all.

Pavel, the younger of the two is a product of his age: headphones, video games, a bit flippant, etc. Sergei, the much older man is stern, speaks little and is utterly serious about his work despite it appearing to have no real purpose. Sergei goes fishing one afternoon and when Pavel is relaying the weather readings via radio to some sort of home base/office, he’s instructed to put Sergei on the radio. Pavel, at Sergei’s instruction, fudges on Sergei’s whereabouts. Pavel is then instructed to take down a radiogram informing Sergei that there’s been a serious accident and both his wife and child are dead.

That’s a pretty dramatic and not at all unbelievable set-up. For whatever reason though, Pavel refuses to give the radiogram to Sergei upon his return and it makes Pavel have to constantly cover it up to the radio operators on the other end. Eventually, Pavel gives Sergei the news when it’s unavoidable to hold off any longer and Sergei just freaks out. That’s not a surprising reaction at all, but it basically turns into Sergei trying to kill Pavel and Pavel being on the run. The withholding of the info and the incredible overreaction just don’t make sense to me. I’ve seen some film reviewers suggest this entire film is an allegory for the new Russia vs. the old Russia, but that doesn’t really work for me as an explanation. If that was the intent, then there’s something I’m missing. Like I said, it’s incredibly well acted and well shot. The story just didn’t make any sense and had too many inexplicable big leaps for me. I was really looking forward to this one from the trailer, but it just didn’t work for me. I do, however, want to track down some other films with the actors though and I’d even give the director’s other films a shot as this seemed so promising.

TRAILER: How I Ended This Summer

Opera Jawa [Indonesia, 2006]

Opera Jawa is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping to discover when I started this film project. Indonesia isn’t a known hotbed of art film in Asia like Japan and China are, so to find a gem like this is fantastic. I don’t even know where to start with it, but suffice it to say it is bizarre and challenging in the best way possible. Based on “The Abduction of Sita” from the Hindu epic The Ramayana, the film is a visual and aural extravaganza that assaults the senses as it delights them. It’s sensory overload to the extreme: song, music, sensual dance, gorgeous landscapes, slaughterhouses, fortune telling with pig livers, street violence, etc. New York Times film critic Jeannette Catsoulis absolutely nailed it in her review:

“A colorful and confounding head trip, Opera Jawa is guaranteed to test the fortitude of all but the most adventurous viewer.”

I’m a music junkie and have been into Indonesian gamelan music (both Javanese and Balinese) for a long time and its prominent place in Opera Jawa is the reason I picked the film in the first place. I’m not familiar with The Ramayana like I am some other Hindu epics, so some of it was lost on me at times, but it didn’t really matter given how visually appealing and intriguing it was. It’s not a simplistic retelling though, it’s set in modern times against a modern background of political and social unrest and relies heavily on symbolism (some of which I wasn’t familiar with.) It was a gorgeous combination of ancient and modern, sacred and profane, beautiful and violent. Full of contradictions, it’s unlike anything you’ve ever seen. I found out it was the director’s seventh film and I definitely plan on searching out more. It’s certainly not for everyone, but it’s definitely worth checking out. It’s one of the few 100% rated movies I’ve ever seen on Rotten Tomatoes.

TRAILER: Opera Jawa