In my coverage of last year's Wisconsin Film Festival (WFF) — my first — I expressed a whole heap of reluctance at not getting the most out of what the Madison's annual celluloid-celebration had to offer. That is, I saw way, way fewer movies than a gung-ho cinephile should have. It was a foolish rookie mistake brought on by my own timidity — by my film festival inexperience — and it's gnawed steadily at me over the past year.
For this year's fest, I promised myself I'd take full advantage of of the 192-film smorgasbord before me. My path to redemption included twelve movies (up from the pathetic five I attended last year) over the course of the five-day festival. Sure, it's an improvement, but there's still so much I missed. Actually, my ego took an immediate hit when on the festival's first night I encountered a group of fest-goers with tickets to fifteen movies, an average of three per day. It doesn't sound tough, but quietly sitting still in a theater for six hours a day is a test of endurance in a category all its own.
But even as I kept running into people who had more tickets than I did, I kept reminding myself that quality is just as important as quantity. Thankfully, the WFF lineup was short on neither. I believe I got the best of both worlds, but there's no way to tell just how many amazing experiences I missed. Here's most of what I got:
DAY 1 (Bonus Day)
LOURDES (2009)
Dir: Jessica Hausner
For the first time ever, the traditionally four-day WFF kicked off one day early with a slate of "bonus screenings." The first movie on my list took me to The Orpheum Stage Door — The Orpheum's less-glamorous, semi-hidden side venue that may have at one point specialized in showing adult films and/or exploitation double-features. Festival Director Meg Hamel greeted the more-than-half-full theater with enthusiasm for the bonus screening's positive attendance. The overall success of a film festival screenings depends almost as much on the atmosphere — the physical experience of the movie — than the actual quality of the movie itself. To that end, the general lack of teenagers and other assorted hoodlums makes experiencing a film festival movie that much more enjoyable. Imagine my shock when a pair of chatty young females sat directly behind me up in the Stage Door's balcony. They chatted freely even after the lights went down, and after I turned around to shush them, they naturally — in defense of their dignity — began chatting louder and more frequently.
That's too bad, because they missed a beautiful movie. The Austrian film Lourdes begins with a wonderfully-filmed, beautifully-choreographed opening shot that focuses on an empty banquet hall as the film's cast of character's gradually files in. It's an early sign of the unbridled precision to come. We follow a handful of characters on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, a place many Catholics consider a sacred place where miraculous healings can occur. I am not spoiling anything when I say that a miraculous healing does occur to Christine (Sylvie Testud), a young woman with MS. While Christine is an interesting, complex character in her own right, writer-director Jessica Hausner populates the film with a healthy number of intriguing characters, set-pieces and subtle-yet-weighty conversations. In the end, the film isn't just a study of how Christine reacts to her miraculous healing, but how those around her (and in turn, humanity as a whole) react to it. It has the open mind to remain open-ended, the kind of film that's very aware of its own beauty and isn't afraid to flaunt it.
OSS 117: LOST IN RIO (2009)
Dir: Michel Hazanavvicius
This is the easiest way to describe Hubert Bonisseur de La Bath (aka OSS 117): he's the French Austin Powers. I wasn't aware that OSS 117 had been around for such a long time (according to Wikipedia, the novels featuring this French spy predate the appearance of James Bond by four years). Lost in Rio is the second modern film adaptation, behind Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006). Both films pay loving homage to both the character and the goofiness of the spy genre, with Lost in Rio being the funnier of the two.
The crowd at Madison's Orpheum Theater sure loved it. The number of beers cracked in the middle of the movie (an act for which I won't throw the first stone) almost outnumbered the frequent waves of uncontrollable laughter — and there were plenty. I wasn't impressed with Nest of Spies, but Lost in Rio plays all of its comedy cards right, overloading its audience with well-timed one-liners, sight gags, politically-incorrect jabs and running jokes. It helped that in attendance was a smart, sophisticated audience, the kind that not only laughs at all the right moments, but also knows WHY these moments are funny. If I had to vote, I'd say that OSS 117: Lost in Rio was the most fun I had at this year's WFF.
DAY 2
CHILDREN OF INVENTION (2009)
Dir: Tze Chun
On the first "official" day of the festival, I opted against seeing the official "opening night" film (The Topp Twins: Untouchable Girls) in favor of Children of Invention, a film I chose to see for two reasons: 1) It has a favorable 79 percent Tomatometer reading, and 2) Its trailers and synopsis reminded me of the excellent, moving 2005 Japanese film Nobody Knows, in which a group of young siblings are forced to take care of themselves after their mother abandons them.
Children of Invention's primary target is the American Dream, specifically the Immigrant-American Dream. The toll that the quest for financial stability takes on hardworking mother of two, Elaine Cheng (Cindy Cheung), is nothing compared to the toll it takes on her two children, Raymond (Michael Chen) and Tina (Crystal Chiu). One day, Elaine is arrested for her unwitting involvement in a pyramid scheme aimed at ripping off minorities and other low income families. The film doubles both as a celebration of familial loyalty and unconditional love, and as an indictment of racism's role in the maintenance of the economic totem pole. It explores the reality of the supposedly Titanic-esque American Dream in light of its sailing within ice berg-infested waters. And it's all done without evoking an ounce of cheap pity. Children of Invention could very well have over-tugged its audiences' heart strings, but its subdued, matter-of-fact portrayal of one family's struggle sends a clear message that cuts through the veil and for a moment exposes the American Dream for the commodified hype mechanism it's become for so many people.
THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA: DANIEL ELLSBERG AND THE PENTAGON PAPERS (2009)
Dir: Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith
My first documentary of the festival, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers, didn't start out well. A friend and I arrived at the Orpheum to discover that a Q&A session following the aforementioned Topp Twins screening had gone on a lot longer than originally planned. It was fifteen minutes before Pentagon Papers was scheduled to start, and not a single person from the monstrosity of a line had been allowed in yet. By the time we got in line, it was less than 40 feet away from wrapping itself around the entire city block. It was 8:10 by the time we were admitted to our 8:00 show.
A little perturbed that the movie's start time hadn't been delayed, we sat down to a movie-in-progress, and having missed anywhere from five-to-ten of the film's opening minutes, I required an additional ten minutes to settle into the film's story by piecing together the information I missed. Nominated for a Best Documentary Academy Award, Pentagon Papers works both as a biographical documentary on the life of the incredibly intelligent Daniel Ellsberg, and as an historical exposé on the publication of the Pentagon Papers and the veritable shit storm that followed. Both informative and entertaining, Pentagon Papers plays out like a well-executed political corruption thriller. Modern-day interviews with Ellsberg and those associated with him at the time add more insight into the historical impact of the Pentagon Papers and the First Ammendment war it caused. Ellsberg's story is a polarizing one: some praise him for insisting that Americans have the right to know what the government is up to, and yet others condemn him for supposedly jeopardizing national security. The movie doesn't pretend to be unbiased, but neither does it celebrate partisanship. When a documentary treats its subject with this much respect and integrity, it doesn't matter if he was an average nobody or one of the biggest whistle-blowers in US history — his story is going to succeed on film.
DAY 3
UNFORGETTABLE (2010)
Dir: Eric Williams
Having interviewed filmmaker Eric Williams prior to the premiere of his documentary Unforgettable, I somehow felt that I had already seen the movie. I certainly felt more connected to Unforgettable than I did to any other movie at the WFF. The film's Friday night premiere closed out the day's festivities at Madison's Monona Terrace, making it something of a main event. The previous two days' films had taken me to locations like Lourdes, Rio, Boston and DC, and knowing that Unforgettable would to a degree take me back to La Crosse, I looked to its Friday night screening as a return to familiar territory.
Actually, while Unforgettable may revolve around La Crosse native Brad Williams — the second man identified as having "hyperthymesia," or "super autobiographical memory" — it doesn't spend much time hanging around Wisconsin. That's because Brad's uncanny memory transforms him from a small-town radio personality to a nationwide TV talk-show obsession. A travelogue of Brad's cross-country adventures, Unforgettable does right by focusing more on the man than on the condition that has grown to define him. Working with four years-worth of footage, Eric Williams has assembled a very intimate, informative and surprisingly-humorous portrait of his brother. There's rarely a dull moment, and most of what makes the film so entertaining results directly from both Williams' sharp senses of humor. We get the impression that, though Brad Williams may have an extraordinary memory, he's still an average Joe. And who doesn't like to see an average Joe gain nationwide recognition?
Also saw:
COLLATERAL (2004)
Dir: Michael Mann
FOR THE LOVE OF MOVIES: THE STORY OF AMERICAN FILM CRITICISM (2009)
Dir: Gerald Peary
DAY 4
THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (2009)
Dir: Niels Arden Oplev
When the WFF released its lineup three weeks prior to the event, I hadn't heard of the uber-popular Millenium Trilogy, three posthumously-published crime novels from Swedish author Stieg Larsson. At first glance, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo — the first of three already-completed Millenium Trilogy film adaptations — looked like just another foreign film, but as the days progressed and I read more of what the Internets had to say about Dragon Tattoo, my interest swelled immensely. Apparently I picked the right movie to get excited about — the Saturday night showing of Dragon Tattoo sold out the nearly 2,000-seat Orpheum. Though a fellow cinephile and I arrived at the theater 20 minutes early, the only seats still available were in the last few rows of the Orpheum's Everest-high balcony.
While eavesdropping on the throng's pre-show chatter, I picked up on two women comparing Dragon Tattoo to The Silence of the Lambs (1991). It was a good comparison. Both films are unsettling procedurals, both films have strong female protagonists and both films carry a pervasive sense of despair and unease throughout. In ways too unsettling and spoiler-esque to discuss here, Dragon Tattoo comments on the nature of violence and its influence on society and the individual in many ways that Silence of the Lambs does not. The on-screen violence proved too much for several people in attendance at Dragon Tattoo's WFF showing — a small but noticeable portion of the balcony audience walked out of the theater during one particularly-vicious scene. While reading reviews of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I noticed many reviewers felt too upset and disturbed by the violence to give the film a positive review. To them I say: great, that's exactly the point — violence is supposed to be upsetting and disturbing. It's not supposed to be entertaining. In fact, violence and its relation to entertainment is a theme with which this film constantly plays. Anyone who sticks it out through the movie's upsetting on-screen acts of violence and deeply disturbing revelations is bound to see the points the film intends to make.
Also saw:
A TOWN CALLED PANIC (2009)
Dir: Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar
DAY 5
TERRIBLY HAPPY (2008)
Dir: Henrik Ruben Genz
Terribly Happy was the best film I saw at this year's WFF. It wasn't the most informative, the most harrowing, the most avant-garde, the most imaginitive, the most unpredictable or even the most purely entertaining. But it was the only film I can unquestionably describe as flawless. It was as perfect a movie as it could be. It certainly could boast having one of the most mature (meaning old) audiences of the festival. The excitement of the film festival environment often seems to encourage audience participation, which includes booing and hissing at the screen or laughing out of context. But the audience for Terribly Happy for the most part stayed stone sober (except for the people cracking open beers), focusing on the film with the quiet zeal of a professional film critic trying to completely absorb every frame for future analysis.
Or it could just be that Terribly Happy didn't exactly telegraph which moments were intended as funny and which were intended as dead-serious. Several film critics have taken note of the film's Coen brothers-esque off-key sense of humor. Not lacking in awkward fish-out-of-water scenarios, Terribly Happy focuses on a Copenhagen policeman (Robert Hansen) reassigned to a very small, very tight-knit Danish town, in which the sense that "something fishy is going on here" permeates the ambiguous conundrums Hansen can't seem to avoid. In that respect, my mind immediately jumps to compare Terribly Happy with the 2007 Edgar Wright comedy Hot Fuzz. But the impact of Terribly Happy flies so low under the radar that it practically necessitates conversation in order to flesh out its underlying themes. It could be a lot darker than it appears — or perhaps not. It doesn't grant us access to its innermost thoughts — we have to do that leg work on our own. As a subdued, perplexing police drama, Terribly Happy hits all its marks. Restraint and entertainment are two hard pins to juggle, but at that this film succeeds.
MOTHER (2009)
Dir: Bong Joon-ho
The 2010 WFF featured a special series focusing on the work of South Korean director Bong Joon-ho. The series included Barking Dogs Never Bite (2000), Memories of Murder (2003), The Host (2006), and his latest, the just-released-stateside Mother. Following the extreme popularity of Saturday night's sold-out screening of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I figured the festival-closing screening of Mother would be just as popular. Not so. The three-fourths-full Orpheum Theater signaled that most fest-goers had apparently had their fill of subversive crime dramas during the festival's first four days — their loss.
Mother was hands-down the WFF film I anticipated most. With Memories of Murder, Bong Joon-ho proved he could orchestrate a captivating, moody and funny police procedural. Mother is a similarly engaging procedural concerning a desperate unnamed mother's (Hye-ja Kim) amateur investigation into a murder for which her mentally-challenged son has been charged. The film engages a fierce disposition towards unpredictability, with the mother's investigation leading her into a wealth of eminently-odd scenarios. To give any of these away is to spoil much of the film's unforeseen pleasures. The biggest pleasures of all with Mother are the cinematography and editing. We are treated to a very unique, almost intoxicating (and intoxicated) mise en scene. The result is a film at times almost too aware of its own frantic optical frolicking. But the effect is never so much as to distract us from the unfolding of increasingly-weird events. Part of me wants to think that the 2010 WFF saved the best movie for last, but Mother didn't whole-heartedly meet my lofty expectations. Then again, there's no way I could have predicted the film would be so erratic — and I mean that in a good way.
Also saw:
THE ART OF THE STEAL (2010)
Dir: Don Argott |
