SCREENING LOG - 10/3-10/9/2005

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Methadonia (2005, Michel Negroponte)
not listed on IMDb
This documentary about recovering heroin addicts stuck in the limbo of methadone treatment screened at the Festival shortly before its broadcast premiere on HBO. It must have been some kind of marketing tie-in, because the film itself, while certainly focused on a harrowing and attention-worthy subject, has less a claim to cinematic achievement than documentaries of past NYFFs, such as Jonathan Caouette's TARNATION, Errol Morris' THE FOG OF WAR, or Agnes Varda's THE GLEANERS AND I. Negroponte's camera is certainly sympathetic to his subjects, as they bemoan their state of perpetual suffering before literally nodding off in front of the camera as a result of their mixing methadone with benzene in a desperate attempt to recreate their highs. Unfortunately Negroponte's voice-over narration creates too much of a buffer in explaining away their situation; it's as if the suffering of these people is too upsetting to take in without an intermediary. Observations about the social system that ensnares these addicts go no deeper. One fascinating theory that gets touched on all too briefly is that the pharmaceutical industry is not in the business to aid the recovery of these addicts, because they would rather sell methadone to them indefinitely. The voice over more or less admits that there's virtually no hope for these people, then segues to a success story to provide a tear-jerking and uplifting finale, but one that seems to run counter to everything the film was leading to. mixed

The Sun (2005, Aleksandr Sokurov)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0439817/
The last of Sokurov's trilogy of totalitarian leaders, following Lenin (TAURUS) and Hitler (MOLOKH), chronicles the Japanese Emperor Hirohito on the brink of offering surrender to the U.S. Regarded by his subjects literally as a living deity, the Emperor struggles to persuade both them and himself of the logic of surrender instead of fighting to a certain death for the lost cause of the Empire. Issey Ogata, who was so good as the quirky inventor in YI YI and the morose lead in TONY TAKITANI, excels as the Emperor, portraying him as a man disenchanted with his divine status, while harboring an intense curiosity and yearning for the outside world, reflected in his fascination for marine biology and Hollywood headshots. Staged largely in the murky, claustrophobic confines of Hirohito's bunker, the first half of the film sags with a morbid sense of ceremony in the face of impending doom; in the second half, as Hirohito emerges into the sunlight to meet with General MacArthur (portrayed as obnoxiously American as any contemporary Bush caricature), the film acquires a more lively rhythm, filled with a sense of the possibilities of cultural and personal renewal in the ashes of defeat.
yes

Gabrielle (2005, Patrice Chereau)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0435479/
Much as I wanted to embrace a film by a respectable director (THOSE WHO LOVE ME CAN TAKE THE TRAIN, SON FRERE) and two of France's most accomplished actors, this adaptation of Joseph Conrad's short story THE RETURN pretty much represents a cinema I find creatively bankrupt, if only for its strained reaching for Quality. Pascal Greggory, whom I remember so fondly for his controlled portrayal of conflicted sexual desire in RAJA, here robs the screen of oxygen in a series of longwinded tirades, as a jilted husband whose woundedness worsens when his wife inexplicably returns. Isabelle Huppert fares better as the wife, largely because her role requires more reserve and less talking. The script takes the basic idea of shattered intimacy and stolen honor and beats it into the ground. But it's really the cinematography and staging I find most at fault. In the notes of the press release the director states that this was the first film in which he finally freed himself of his theatrical background and tendencies, and achieved something truly cinematic. But to these eyes, the proceedings amounted to overheated dinner theater banter, desperately enlivened by bad imitations of Scorsesean dolly movements that add no meaning to the action. Other gimmicks, like arbitrary switching between black-and-white and color, add even less. The result is something restless, inattentive and emotionally brittle, neither cinematically inspiring or humanly insightful.
no

Three Times (2005, Hou Hsiao-Hsien)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0459666/
The film I had the most difficulty coming to terms with at this year's NYFF, this examination of life's possibilities within three distinct periods of Taiwanese history -- 1911, 1966 and 2005 -- comes across as both a bold formal experiment and a repackaging of familiar Hou elements. Shu Qi and Chang Chen play the lovers in all three episodes. The title of the 1966 segment, "A Time for Love", sounds like a Wong Kar Wai movie, and it plays like a Wong-Hou hybrid. A series of long, attentive shots of the pool hall, where she works and he marks time before returning to his military stint, evolves into a road movie of missed encounters and burgeoning desire as the two try to reconnect weeks later. Of the three episodes, this is undoubtedly the most accomplished in terms of rhythm, emotional buildup, and attentiveness to the setting it has constructed -- perhaps because the period depicted is that of Hou's own youth. The 1911 segment, "A Time for Freedom", is much more arch in both mood and meaning, as a teahouse girl's bid to be bought out of her bondage contrasts her patron's participation in the Taiwanese democracy movement. The deliberateness of the pacing may be a reflection of the structured way of life being represented, but in that regard it seems like little of a step forward from his earlier masterpiece FLOWERS OF SHANGHAI. Hou tries to add something new in shooting this segment as a silent film with intertitles -- though his given rationale was as much out of respect for cultural authenticity (the characters are supposed to speak a Taiwanese dialect that no longer exists) as for cinematic homage. The final segment, "A Time for Youth" goes deeper into the dark well of contemporary Taipei youth Hou essayed in MILLENNIUM MAMBO, with Shu Qi as a goth rock singer involved in a meaningless tryst with Chen as a photographer. Much is made of the way people see each other almost exclusively as images, whether through the photographs they hang on their walls, the tattoos and expressive clothing they wear, or the text they read from each other on their cell phones and computers. It's nice to see Hou carrying Antonioni's torch into the 21st century, but Hou, not unlike recent Jia Zhangke, seems a bit too focused on the emptiness of these people's lives to achieve true empathy with them, and the results risk being as empty as their objects of regard are made out to be. Despite the mixed results, the level of Hou's craftsmanship, his camera's ability to transform human activity into the pure play of light and movement (especially in the first section where the movement of pool balls becomes an expression of love, youth and freedom) is at an all time high, and makes this self-contained trilogy well worth watching.
yes

Who's Camus Anyway? (2005, Mitsuo Yanagimachi)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0456873/
Yanagimachi's loving and playful fresco of life at a Japanese film school is saturated with references to other movies, tirelessly referenced in conversations between students as they prepare to shoot what resembles a Japanese version of IN COLD BLOOD. The students eat, breathe, work, and have sex in a world that seems so immersed in movies that they can relate to events only in terms of movie characters and scenes; a student director's stalker girlfriend gets dubbed "Adele H" while a lovelorn film professor gets nicknamed "Aschenbach" after the lead in DEATH IN VENICE. The film moves in a uniquely winding trajectory through a world that feels vivid and authentic, however pedantic and warped its characters may seem. It feels like both a bemused critique and admiring tribute to the indomitability and voraciousness of youth in taking on the eternal problems of the world in whatever manifestation it takes -- here it so happens to be one of DVD collections, production meetings and rehearsals.
yes

From the NYFF Shochiku retrospective:

Japanese Girls at the Harbor (1933, Hiroshi Shimizu)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0160535/
yes

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