Film Carew

“The film you're fixin' to see/is based on a true story.” Thus, the opening title card/s for Richard Linklater's Bernie set the tenor for the filmmaker's 15th feature, introducing both its central preoccupation —the idiomatic turns-of-phrase of East Texas smalltowners— and the point of most critical discussion. The True Story stickering is, to me, rarely a sign that you're in for anything of interest; it just a shorthand marketing tag affixed to the most 'inspirational' dreck that the Oscar season can dredge up. It's a dubious phrase, not least of all that notions of veracity have little bearing in cinema; that artform Michael Haneke once dubbed “24 lies a second”. So often, these boasts of truth are slim at best; a mere sliver of anecdote surviving the journey from reality to screen fantasy; facts liberally tossed overboard in service of narrative convenience, screenplay structure, and refusal to adhere to accepted clichés. This is not a criticism in and of itself —poetic license is a charmed turn-of-phrase— but it becomes a negative when a film goes to great lengths to throw the reality of its back-story in our faces.

And Bernie finishes with one of my least-favourite clichés of the Based On A True Story sub-genre: when they show the pictures of the real people in the closing credits. Often, that feels like so much back-patting —look at how close our casting was to the real thing— and self-satisfaction; such pride usually the depressing end to a shitty picture. Bernie is better than most who abuse this device, but its credit-roll is, in contrast with the film, parasitically problematic; retroactively casting a bad light on all that's come before. For a film that treats a real-life murder as a quirky, black-comic set-up, showing the real-life murder victim —preserved in snapshot with her murderer— suddenly gives an air of genuine distaste to the whole affair; especially when there's even video footage of star Jack Black dutifully, reverentially studying the titular character —and real life human— he's bringing to screen.

Of course, Linklater is happy to poke at notions of reality. The film is, in part, a mockumentary; in which a mixture of actors and local townsfolk offer fake testimonials to an interviewer just off camera. Mockumentaries are usually satirical set-ups targeting low-hanging fruit, but Linklater uses the device as portrait of small-town gossip and sentiment; of the hive-mind of the rural and elderly. Employing 'real' dwellers of the town in which Bernhardt 'Bernie' Tiede dwelled should, theoretically, cloud distinctions between documentary and fiction, except the few townsfolk herein are clearly performing —either reading scripted lines, or offering carefully-rehearsed monologues where their own words have been smoothed over, shaped in service of the narrative— thus making their presence feel subsumed within the fiction. The film liberally ladles on the local vernacular, to the point where it becomes not just a crutch, but almost its raison d'être; a string of rural euphemisms for homosexuality apparently being the height of hilarity. It feels like a single, slight comic riff; another minor flick from a filmmaker whose many misfires have sullied what could be, if he stuck to his auteurist work (see: Slacker, Before Sunrise/Sunset, Waking Life), one of American cinema's mightiest names. Only, then, we hit the end, and credits roll, and those snapshots pop up, and, suddenly, making a minor, mildly-amusing black-comedy from a real-life murder feels kinda sleazy; like chasing an ambulance wielding a whipped-cream pie.

 
Holy Motors

Thee Royale Film Carew wrote volumes on the monstrous, maddening, masterful Holy Motors back when surveying MIFF's Leos Carax retrospective, and having had time to sit and stew on its parade of amazing visuals, bizarre developments, and dream-image symbolism has done little to dent the critical esteem in which I hold it. It proved to be not just a highlight of the Fest just past, but an undoubted highlight of the year in cinema; and an unexpected critical/buzzworthy breakout for a filmmaker who, as little as a year ago, felt lost to time; the early promise of his '80s/20-something pictures vanished. Instead, Carax is back, after 13 years in the wilderness, with his greatest picture.

 
Moonrise Kingdom

Oh, and, speak of the festivalia just past: though MIFF is dead and buried —its four-days-back end seeming an eternity ago— let us continue nerdworthy tradition and boil it all down; from the 100+ pictures I witnessed from the monstrous program, here's the undoubted highlights, which double as a sure guide for films to keep an eye out for in the coming future. Yes, friends, it's:

FILM CAREW'S 12 PICKS O' MIFF 12:

12. Tropicália (Brazil, Marcelo Machado): Colourful chronicle of the Brazilian psychedelic epoch is a wild riot of archival footage, mind-expanding Tom Zé quotes, and shit-hot jams; Machado's movie managing to live up to the music, not just live off it.

11. Our Children (Belgium, Joachim Lafosse): Lafosse's smothering, claustrophobic, catastrophic family drama feels like an asphyxiating cinematic experience; the pic starting off airy before slowly having the life choked from it. If you managed to miss the MIFF program synopsis —which gave away the entire plot— the descent was doubly brutal, the end genuinely shocking.

10. Miss Bala (Mexico, Gerardo Naranjo): Naranjo's high-art action-movie holds audiences hostage in the midst of a cops/cartel turf-war in Tijuana; staging the best-directed gun-totin' thriller since Children Of Men.

9. Whores' Glory (Austria, Michael Glawogger): Whilst his forays into fiction can be so-so, Glawogger cements his reputation as one of the world's great documentarians with this portrait of third-world sex workers. As ever, the Austrian is fascinated with the path of money; and how it trickles down through economies, to those toiling at the very bottom of the global food-chain.

8. Wuthering Heights (UK, Andrea Arnold): One of the great radical adaptations of canonical classic lit, Arnold razes Emily Brontë's book to the ground; scattering the words to the wind, and leaving only the savage landscapes of rural Yorkshire in the 19th century. It's a film whose darkness, corporeality, and brutal weather stand at odds with every BBC-period-piece cliché.

7. Children Of Sarajevo (Bosnia, Aida Begic): With shades of the Dardennes, Begic's socio-realist depiction of a pair of grown-up orphans struggling to keep their head above water in an eternally-dark Sarajevo doubles as portrait of the post-war generation in the former Yugoslavia.

6. Alps (Greece, Yorgos Lanthimos): The deadpan don of the Greek Weird Wave follows up his almighty Dogtooth (one of the 21st century's greatest artworks) with another singular slice of screwball symbolism and stilted acting; Lanthimos' vision of modern humanity one in which ersatz emotions and pantomimed routines are acceptable approximations of reality.

5. Modest Reception (Iran, Mani Haghighi): Provocative parable from an Asghar Farhadi associate sends a pair of mysterious Tehranis into the impoverished, rural mountains to throw bags of cash at locals as aggressive act of forced charity. Leaving things teasingly open to interpretation, the (unanswered) question remains: for those on the receiving end, is the tainted lucre a gift from God, or the work of the devil?

4. Neighbouring Sounds (Brazil, Kleber Mendonça Filho): Befitting its title, Filho's debut is a masterclass in sound design, with the ever-present noises of a Recife neighbourhood evoking the film's greater —and great— themes: the unnatural existence of life in high-density cities, where all actions are overseen either by neighbours or surveillance cameras. Filho —a former film-critic!— plays brilliantly with the passage of time, the screenwritten form, and audience paranoia; amounting to one of the most impressive out-of-nowhere debuts in recent memory.

3. The Loneliest Planet (Georgia, Julia Loktev): Shot high in the Caucasus Mountains, The Loneliest Planet plays as veritable backpacker-porn; even if, beneath the towering peaks and verdant valleys, its text turns towards tourism's dark side. The setting speaks of the extremes people will go to, physically and culturally, though the dialogue never does; Loktev abandoning exposition for the phenomenological effect of being present amidst vast landscapes.

2. Holy Motors (France, Leos Carax): Leos Carax's lurid style-piece creates a bizarre world that is, effectively, cinema made manifest; theatricality, immortality, symbolism, and narrative repetition all alive, and at play, in this endlessly playful, secretly profound picture.

1. Moonrise Kingdom (USA, Wes Anderson): Straight superlatives: far and away the pick o' the fest; the pick of the year so far; the culmination of Anderson's aesthetic; his magnum opus; one of the most beautiful films I've ever witnessed; and one of cinema's greatest-ever depictions of young love. Hits regular cinemas next week. Rejoice.