The Forgiveness of Blood [Albania, 2011]

The Forgiveness of Blood deals with the little known practice of, gjakmarrja (blood feuds) in Albania. Basically, if someone is killed or otherwise severely dishonored, the only way for things to rectified between families is for someone in the family of the killer to be killed by someone in the family of the dishonored. There are, however, strict rules governing how this retaliation can be carried out (“kanun.”) That’s your necessary background info for The Forgiveness of Blood.

Nik, a teenager, leads your normal teenage life: he hangs out with his friends, he goes to parties, he flirts with girls, etc. Nik’s life becomes incredibly “unnormal” when his father and uncle accidentally(?) kill a man and go into hiding. This leaves Nik as a susceptible and acceptable target for revenge under the kanun. Nik basically has to go into self-imposed house arrest to help atone for his father’s and uncle’s sins. It is there that the boredom sets in…and then the anger…and then the resentment for being punished for a crime he didn’t commit. Nik becomes more isolated and estranged from his family as the ordeal drags on. Not only that, but he becomes frustrated at how he doesn’t even have a voice in the decisions to be made despite it being him that is suffering.  His middle-school aged sister, Rudina, is forced to work to help support the family instead of going to school. The family’s youngest son refuses to speak to anyone. The pressure ratchets up significantly on everyone and the house boils over with anger despite the fact that everyone loves each other very much. It’s a fascinating film about a peculiar cultural practice, but what a film it is. Definitely worth watching.

Hollow City [Angola, 2004]

 

N’Dala is a homeless young man forced out of his native town of Bie into the big city of Luanda by civil war. He was taken in by a Catholic orphanage, but he wanted no part of it and ran away to fend for himself on the streets (why he makes this decision is puzzling and it’s never really explored.) His first day is spent meandering and he sneaks into the beach tent of an old fisherman who later discovers him, feeds him and becomes a friend to him. N’Dala also meets Ze, a kid a few years older than him who shows him the ropes in the big city. They sneak into movies, they smoke cigarettes, they do chores for prostitutes and swindlers in exchange for food and shelter. N’Dala badly wants to go back to Bie, but it’s not an option and his hanging around with the bad guys eventually catches up with him. It is remarkable how good of a job non-professional actors that are children do in the film. That being said, it didn’t do a lot for me as a film. I understand that it’s important that films like this be made, but this one didn’t grab me at any time as there was no real narrative or character development. You kind of feel like you’re just peeking in on brief segments of someone’s actual life.

A Separation [Iran, 2011]

To those uninitiated into global cinema, it may come as a surprise that Iran consistently cranks out great art films. I’ve probably seen a dozen or so and now find myself constantly on the lookout for the latest cinematic offerings from Iran. I heard about A Separation before it was even  nominated for the Academy Award because of a good friend of mine that’s Iranian. His family had told him to keep an eye out for it and knowing what a film buff I am he suggested it to me too. Needless to say, the film did not come to Birmingham in a theatrical release and after it won the Best Foreign Picture Oscar it was just a waiting game for when it would eventually come out on DVD. And what it wait it was. Well over a year after it’s release it finally made it to DVD in the US a few weeks ago.

A Separation, as you might guess from the title, is about a married couple parting ways. Samin’s spent countless time and a lot of money on visas to get the family to be able to live abroad. Nader’s father now has Alzheimer’s and he’s not budging. Sounds simple enough right? But they have a daughter that complicates matters. Simin wants the daughter to go abroad with her as they’re very close, so the daughter stays with her dad because she knows her mom won’t leave without her. Bold move for a kid, but she was correct. Samin did not travel abroad.

Nader must now find someone to care for his elderly father while he’s at work and the daughter is at school and he chooses a lower income woman who comes to work around the house with her small daughter. This is when the trouble arrives. The newly arrived help has a miscarriage shortly after she is fired (after 2 or 3 days when Nader discovered she was leaving his father at home unattended) and goes to the police to blame it on her former employer. That’s the setup for the incredible amount of problem it causes both families. The film explores the dynamics of both families and how they come together to deal with this unforeseen tragedy. Needless to say, it’s incredibly heavy, but it’s almost like a suspenseful thriller in that you have no idea how things are going to play out for everyone involved. The Oscars are generally a waste of time to me, but they often do a great job with Best Foreign Picture category and 2011 is no exception. This was definitely a film that deserved all of the lavish praise heaped upon it.

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Headhunters [Norway, 2011]

…and The Oscar for best trailer editing goes to…HEADHUNTERS!

I’d been looking forward to the release of this on DVD for a couple of months now after reading so much good about it and seeing the trailer. After viewing it, I have to say I’m pretty let down. What was billed as a smart, sexy, thriller came up decidedly short on both the smart and sexy fronts…though there’s no shortage of thrills. The plot had a lot promise: big time corporate headhunter leads incredibly lavish lifestyle and steals his clients’ high end art on the side to finance his hefty spending. Said headhunter’s art gallery owner wife introduces him to an out of work CEO who just so happens to have a believed-to-be-lost Rubens painting lying around. Needless to say, he plans to steal it (oh and his wife is ignorant of his moonlighting as a thief.) Turns out that said out of work CEO is a former paramilitary with a short fuse. The thief becomes the hunted. Sure, it’s far fetched, but it sounds fun on paper at least (kind of Bond-esque.) I can suspend disbelief to a point, but this one kind of goes beyond what I can ignore. A small in stature businessman who dislikes guns is all of a sudden a crack shot when called upon to use a gun? He’s virtually indestructible and survives multiple vehicle crashes, being attacked by a pitbull the size of a small horse and other over the top stuff. The trailer is incredibly well edited and it looks like a lot of fun, but unfortunately is has plot holes big enough to drive a truck through. I’ve certainly seen worse movies and this one isn’t unwatchable or anything, I just don’t feel like it’s lived up to the hype it’s gotten.

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The Turin Horse [Hungary, 2011]

In 1889, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche witnessed the whipping of a horse in Turin, Italy. He hurled his arms around the neck of the horse to protect it and collapsed soon after. In less than a month, he was diagnosed with a mental illness that would leave him speechless until his death eleven years later. While we know what happened to Nietzsche after the incident, nothing is known of what happened to the horse. This film is a fictionalized account of what happened…

To say this film is stark is an understatement, to say it is bleak is an understatement. It is spectacular though. An old man and his middle aged daughter live in a remote area in a simple house. They own a horse and a cart and both are essential to their livelihood. The old man has a bad arm. She helps him get dressed, she cooks for him, she helps him harness and feed the horse. It’s close to twenty minutes before the first bit of dialogue is spoken…and then it’s just a word or two. The movie is spread over six days and the condition of the horse gets worse and worse. It’s winter time and the wind is howling furiously. A neighbor drops by to borrow some brandy. A band of gypsies steals water from their well. Things move at a glacial pace. Life is hard out here.

Words can’t really do this justice because it’s unlike most anything else you’ve seen. In trying to describe it to someone, I said “It’s like Andrei Rublev with Hildur Guðnadóttir doing the soundtrack.” That won’t mean much to a lot of people, but rest assured, that’s powerful and the two people that got both references agreed it was a good starting point of description. It was Hungary’s submission to the Academy Awards for “Best Foreign Picture” in 2011, but it was (somehow) not nominated. This is the first film I’ve seen by Bela Tarr, but it certainly won’t be the last of his that I view. Interestingly enough though, he has proclaimed that The Turin Horse will be his last film.

 

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