MIFF Session #6: ON A BEACH AT NIGHT ALONE

Young Hee is a beautiful young Korean film star whose recent affair with a married man has sent her into voluntary exile to Europe. She discusses this with her dowdy companion while they stroll the parks and mise en scene of Hamburg. While enjoying the beach one evening she is carried away by what appears to be a stalker.

Later, she appears in a provincial Korean cafe talking to the man she'd loved but it is distant. She appears in another small scale cafe and engages with another man who unsuccessfully conceals his own marital status. Later she, he and the other guy and two female partners share dinner and Korean wine and Young Hee goes postal with the manners

A quartet of the above spends time at a seaside resort as a very dodgy window cleaner videobombs their chitchat. This is a very very funny scene,

Later, she is woken while sleeping on the beach by a member of a film scouting crew who takes her into his company for another edge-burning dinner chat.

This is a Hong San Soo film. It is mostly made of conversation (not dialogue, mind you, this is a studiously careful distinction) and interpersonal dynamics. I know I seem to have taken the piss here but what I am describing is a purely lovely moment of cinema. Stanley Kubrick characterised successful films as being constructed of six insubmersible units, blocks of human interaction that defied further breakdown. Hong Sang Soo makes Kubrickian comedies of manners. He doesn't care who notices. He doesn't care who cares. He just does it and he does it repeatedly and teaches any who will look that good films can come of little more than knowing and loving the material.

I love Hong Sang Soo's films despite the festival darling status he has attained. I love them because they are themselves. I haven't been able to say the same of any filmmaker's work since INLAND EMPIRE and that, my friends, makes me happy.

MIFF Session #5: JUPITER'S MOON

Pre-title cards tell us that Jupiter has many moons, one of which is thought to have conditions that might allow life. Its name is Europa. Fade in to a freight train carriage hauling live chickens as well as a crammed in number of Syrian refugees on their way to find life in the Europa we have down here. They reach the drop point, get on boats and buzz into a surprise reception from border control who fire on them. One young man, Aryan, who has lost contact with his father in the confusion gets to the European side and runs until stopped by an immigration officer who fires three shots into the boy's vital organs and leaves him dead for later retrieval.

We linger on the corpse sadly but then notice that drops of his blood are forming bubbles and rising to the air. Then Aryan's body itself rises slowly over the forest canopy as he sluggishly copes with being alive in the first place and that he is flying. Few of the fleeing refugees witness this, having their own survival a little further centre stage.

Next we meet a jaded doctor fallen from professional favour, waking up in his small, boxy Budapest flat. He gets up with his second cigarette, heads off to give some ill-gotten banknotes to his girlfriend, a nurse at a local hospital and then to the refugee camps to do some rounds with the new arrivals. Here he meets Aryan on a trolley, dead but for the vital signs and then the levitation. Dr Stern is astounded beyond words just long enough to know a good thing when he sees it and whisks the lad away from the confusion of the camp and into the city of lights, possibilities and sheer exploitation as the atheist doctor is already planning on squeezing the religious out of their hard-earned.

But the spectre of a wonder has power and that might just include a touch of redemption. "we live horizontal," says Dr Stern and, "at some point we stopped looking up." We have just seen him take a moment to look on the star filled night sky. He sees stars, including a shooting one, but they are just stars. We have also seen him reach for a sincerity beyond his attempt at redemption through money (no spoilers) and it is through his encounter with Aryan. 

For Aryan's part the picture is a little confused. He says at one point that he has his own purpose like everybody else but doesn't name it. He has powers to go with the levitation but we only see them in a strange scene involving a neo-nazi. And it is strange in that apart from the cinematic virtuosity of it the scene seems to serve little purpose beyond demonstrating Aryan's ability to control his power. It goes on for much longer than it should, seems to have come from nowhere, involves no redemption of the bigot and the powers are not seen again. Otherwise Aryan is short of superheroism. He doesn't soar through the skies like Superman, he wades in the air or controls his falls, seemingly doing so for the purposes of creating awe.

That's the bit that had me frowning. Dr Stern's development seems increasingly to be influenced by Aryan's power and the suggestion of his immortality and this is allowed by the film to suggest that we buy into the notion of the miracle. While the magical realist premise of the dispossessed alien having superpowers impressed me the maturation back into the desiccated realm of faith alienated me. The film doesn't quite leave things open enough to keep them interesting.

That's a shame as the piece really does have a lot of charm in its characterisation and evocation of a kind of contemporary earthly hell. The sheer skill of the many winsome Steadicam shooting and one of the best car chases I've ever seen (one shot from the point of view of the pursuit vehicle's bumper bar!) and the levitation is always purely beautiful. But at a time when so much of cinema works such visual miracles as a matter of course I cannot take this leap of faith.

MIFF Session #4: THE ENDLESS

Brothers Justin and Aaron escaped from a cult ten years ago but the younger, Aaron, who does not remember the oppression that Justin does, wants some closure and decides to return to the commune to seal his farewells. Justin reluctantly agrees to drive him there but only for a day. They drive through the dry western U.S. landscape past a number of strange mini volcanic plugs and arrive at the old site.

It's still going but there are none of the uniforms or void-eyed indoctrinees wandering about. If anything, everyone seems pretty normal. They self-finance through craft beer and artisanal goods like clothes and folky art. A little loopiness here and there but what else would you expect. There is a decidedly un-culty feel to it all. But everyone they remember doesn't seem to have aged in the intervening decade; people who should look forty look freshly twenty. And then there are the strange phenomena around the settlement like apparent force fields and some truly sanity-doubting atmospheric effects. Through this push and pull of alienness and seductive warmth the brothers give their characteristic responses, Justin's cynicism and Aaron's wonder. A lot of good deadpan joking later between them and the settlers later the mysteries only seem to deepen.

Big ideas don't need big budgets. Like anything they are subverted by low production confidence like insufficient attention to acting or missteps in attempted visual effects but most of all there must be the writing. On the higher level of the characterisation and dialogue we're in good hands as the very able cast render their extraordinary dialogue natural. On the lower level there is a middle-heavy drag as the development is hampered by too much labour on key issues and repetitiveness (I don't mean the obvious repetition here but the restatement of information we already have) where action should be taking the foreground. However, the wise decision to reveal the concepts through some astute dialogue that seldom falls into exposition (as it must at points) serve this film well. The effects are modest to the point of elegance and it is good to see this handled well instead of recent grating attempts to reintroduce in camera effects beyond production means (and then attempts to pass their failure off as campiness). Mostly, the central conflict between the brothers is allowed space to develop and take its rightful place.

I enjoyed the scene that harked back to the clever and rougher-shod Resolution and find on checking that not only did this team (Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead) make that one (and included cast members in reversed roles) but also the intriguing Spring from last year's MIFF. Now that that's established the pattern is emerging: these guys are creating their own fiction realm. It's derived heavily from the name-checked H.P. Lovecraft but where earlier Lovecraftians (e.g. Stuart Gordon or Brian Yuzna) concentrated on the Cthulhu mythos with tentacles and prehistoric birthrights, this team seem more interested in the weirder everyday strange of the Color Out of Space. As with the always watchable works of Britt Marling and crews we could be seeing a new approach to the fantastical on the rise. If I'm right it could be as genre-shaking as J-horror in the 1990s or found footage in the 2000s. Let's hope.

MIFF Session #3: AFTERIMAGE

Wladyslaw Strzeminski, an artist of great cultural stature in his adopted post war Poland, is staring down the afterimage of the radicalism he had fought for in his youth. He talks about afterimage, in the very first scene where he shows how able he can be despite the loss of an arm and a leg (during WWI so I can't make the joke I want to). The afterimage, the ghost of the thing seen remains on the surface of the eye, in reversed colour and upside down but persistent. So, who wins, the Stalinist thugs who want to erase him from history or the artist who should only need to be?

Well first, this doesn't play like a biopic despite its subject being a historical figure and including events that took place in his lifetime. The point is afterimage, Strzeminski's and the regime that oppressed him. Also, that of writer director Andrzej Wajda himself who presented this as his swansong work. Tellingly, this film about an artist whose stunning colour compositions meant to break their viewers from the constraints of their days is delivered in the drab brownish blue palette of the severest rooms of the Warsaw Pakt. We see his youthful works incidentally, as exhibits and witness his mature painting but all of it lives in draughty wooden apartments and icy streets. If there are the kind of Eureka moments that plague even the best intended biopics they are given with so slight a signal that they feel like part of a fiction.

Boguslaw Linda playing craftily disabled (Strzeminski lost both a leg and an arm but not once do we question how the actor is concealing this) a character who has become craftily able. The regime's officers might well admire him for his art, his work and even his politics but totalitarianism (even very localised in arts administration) can never tolerate unbridled expression. His Marxist fervour even seems to stand against him as in his maturity and the experience of two cataclysmic wars he has broadened his knowledge of the world. But that stops short of feeding the trolls who are successfully seeking to starve him. With decreasing control and importance he is finally rendered beyond life, on display as the young citizens of the New Poland rush by without looking.

This sober and sobering piece is played with astute skill by Wajda, never collapsing into maudlin indulgence nor so severe as to alienate. His last statement, though bound by period, is a timeless and timely. The irony and symbolism are big but the tale is linear. On the one hand this plugs it back into the very regime that oppressed Strzeminski with its oafish demand of socialist realism but then the triumph of his memory contrasts so violently with the long nameless suits and rubber stamps that crushed him. What a way to go.

MIFF Session #2: TRAGEDY GIRLS

A creepy introduction with a necking couple in a car in an isolated spot at night tells us that we are in the hands of someone who knows their genre. It develops into a twist (that, fortunately, I don't have to reveal) that tells us that knowledge of genre must also include awareness of its subversions. And then it's on as high school BFFs Sadie and McKayla begin their career as serial killers.  From that shift in viewpoint we get a massive game of spot the genre reference. Halloween, Friday the 13th, Carrie, Ginger Snaps, Heathers, Heavenly Creatures, Scream and many, many more: the gang's all here.

Like most of those titles Tragedy Girls plays less as horror than something from the darker corners of high school comedy. It deviates by omitting the struggle against the hierarchy fuelling those films. These girls are already popular and depend on the status quo to advance themselves even further. We never see their macabre blog that casts the local murders to an adolescent detail but we don't need to. In scenes like the obligatory triumphal strut down the school hall to a pop song we see them check their phones which loose flurries of animated love hearts rising in the light like soap bubbles. If the recent Unfriended depended on the compulsion of the Skype screen this one has gone beyond that to the minimal read of the mobile. So have the times. And that's the point.

The constant reference to genre classics is not just for cutes. As with the savvy teens of Scream these ones can cite chapter and verse and do so when the film itself isn't busy with that (and boy does it get busy). But while this was an innovation in Scream its an expectation of Tragedy Girls; we would think less of it if it trod a straighter path; it requires the smarts to focus the deeper field.

So, if it isn't misfits breaking through or dowds getting makeovers what are we doing here watching this? Well, we do get a big kill quota and some expertly constructed black jokes and, despite a slightly saggy middle act, we never feel less than catered to. But we also have to notice the youthful vulnerability, the overconfidence coupled with the fragility: these kids are still kids for all their force and that sends a chill. But the chill doesn't come from the gore or the suspense: it seeps out of the sight of the power of the unformed will to succeed and the readiness to spin it any way possible.

This is a Scream from Trump's America. The final image undoes every triumphal closing blast from John Hughes's high school of the 80s and bodes sequels we should both welcome and fear. BABY USA has woken and is screaming for its dummy. Stops the screaming but leads to more. Do we dare feed it with another ticket?

I honestly can't say I'd resist.

MIFF Session #1: RADIANCE

Misako writes film narration for the sight impaired. This involves auditioning the narration to groups of the target audience. Responses range from the unhelpfully polite to the confrontingly blunt. The message is that she is being too flowery. By venturing outside of flat descriptions she is curbing their imagination and they lose touch with the conjured image and the experience becomes confusing.

One of the most outspoken of the test group had been a career photographer. He feels an acute pain at the irreversible loss of his connection to his art. Misako happens upon him in a park, cradling a beautiful old Rolliflex camera taking what we see are images from his bleached remaining vision. At first she recoils from him, quietly making her exit but is so haunted by his story that she is compelled toward him. He doesn't make this easy. He describes his camera as his heart and cannot consider the loss of its use without dread. Her job will need a lot of tiny steps. Meanwhile, the draft of the narration continues with Misako gaining an understanding of the balance necessary between practicality and elegance which bids a greater understanding of what the experience is to them.

This is not a tale of walking a mile in someone else's shoes but of plummeting into the cavern of alien values and finding one's own indistinguishable. Poignantly, this film is told in scenes of unerring beauty (not least of which is the aching beauty of Ayame Misaki in the lead role) so that we the sighted are also simultaneously confronted and seduced. And if that ain't what cinema is all about ....

Review: A GHOST STORY

This is a movie about time and futility. In one scene we watch as a character eats a large pie with a fork. Oh sit down, it's good.

Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara (in the credits as C and M) are a young couple in a country house who seem to be in the process of moving. There is an increasing sense that things are not well between them but in one moment of intimacy she tells him that in her childhood home she would write notes on pieces of paper and hide them around the house. It was a way of recording time and life. She wonders what she'd find if she went looking for them.

C dies (no spoilers here, it's very early on). M identifies his body in a hospital and leaves in shock. The body rises from the trolley, draped in the sheet that covers it and begins to walk through the building unnoticed by anyone it meets. The ghost, a man wearing a sheet with eye holes stops at a dead end in the building. The wall in front of him is cut with a sharp light which expands to a doorway. Either too stunned by his new circumstances or unwilling to proceed he doesn't go through. The light vanishes and the ghost moves back home. He haunts his widow but after a very little development along these lines she moves out (not before depositing a note into a crack in the wall and painting over it). Then we begin to understand that this will not play like a hipster update to the Patrick Swayze/Demi Moore movie but something quieter, stranger and more profound.

The poster shot of Affleck in the costume, which makes him look like a ghost form an old cartoon, does justice to what you might expect being a blend of whimsy and unease. This disarming idea allows us distance with its goofiness but draws us in through its sincerity. Affleck has a great deal to do between allowing our projections on to his sheet and emoting though action alone as he has no further dialogue outside of flashbacks (and then very little). The thing is, it works.

After more scenes which might suggest a close narrative built on a parade of tenants interacting with the ghost  - including a wonderful party rant by Wil Oldham about futility and time - we see we are in for a very long haul as progress has its way in scenes that speed up decades and then start travelling in directions we don't expect. The distance created between the aspirations of humans, their lives, their loss, their legacy, and the barely conceivable immensity of time itself allows this film, kept within a 133:1 screen and clocking in a 87 minutes (one minute shorter than Eraserhead), to feel like the kind of epics that Christopher Nolan and Terrence Malik have made with far greater means and in grander presentations. The small square image (with rounded corners) and brief running time are very deliberate. The credits run, leaving the viewer with the feeling that they have just sat for three hours as life itself was told in IMAX. If the film itself wasn't seductive by itself this achievement alone should astound us: like the Tardis it is much bigger inside than out.

So, if you hear someone ridiculing the pie eating scene know that they have missed its solid grief. If someone ridicules the bed sheet costume as being precious or cutesy know how hard it is to tell the difference between what we project on to it and what is the craft of the actor beneath it. Finally, if you have any inclination to see this film please go to a cinema to see it: there is so much to gain from seeing a view of such vastness within such a small window.