MSP Filmfest 2020

It's going to be a different film fest this year. No crowds, no volunteering, no running into friends, no trips to Punch Pizza for those after-film coupon specials.

But there are still going to be films. It's just that you have to watch them at home.

There are advantages to such an approach, too, of course. First off, and most important, you greatly reduce the risk of contracting a life-threatening virus. Also, parking is easier, and the films are cheaper. If you happen to be a member (we are) a movie costs $5 for two. And it's far easier to submit a film rating after the show. Not that tearing a paper ballot beside 3 stars or 4 stars was hard. But it's much easier to add comments at a keyboard online than with a stubby pencil standing in the lobby of the theater after a show.

Anyone can take a look at the festival offerings on line at this link:

https://mspfilm.org/festivals/mspiff/

Here are comments on a few of the works we've seen so far.

The Father (Bulgaria)

It's a familiar story—the larger-than-life, domineering father and the quirky, modern-day urban son—as photographer Pavel returns to his native village to attend the burial of his mother, Valentina. Pavel's father, Vassil, is an eminent painter who's deep into occult imagery. He believes that Valentina is already trying to contact him from beyond the grave, and he coerces Pavel into driving him to the remote "office" of a shaman who might be able to help. Pavel is an obliging son, but he finds himself in a tough spot, trying to satisfy the cravings of his pregnant wife and finish an advertising project at his studio remotely  while humoring his belligerent and egotistical father, whose fondest desire is the spend the night in the woods, naked, next to a meteor crash site. In the end, everything in this humane and subtle work revolves around a jar of home-made quince jam. With geraniums.

The County (Iceland)

Director Grimur Hakonarson scored a hit a few years ago with 'Rams.' His new feature, ‘The County’ offers a portrait of a much more industrial farm and an agricultural infrastructure that relies heavily on corruption and coercion. The culprit in this case in the county co-op, which demands that its members buy fertilizer and other farm materials at inflated prices from them, but offers very meager prices for the crops, milk, and meat it buys in return. Inga finds out how deeply the family farm is indebted to the co-op only after her husband dies. She also learns from one of her hands that her husband had been required to spy on purchases by his friends and neighbors as a condition for remaining solvent. Grieving, and at the end of her rope, Ingra decides the time has come to challenge the co-op's mafia-like practices. The film is a slow burn of righteous indignation, barren countryside, Icelandic sweaters, spattering milk, and grass-roots community support. Highly entertaining.

And the Birds Rained Down (Canada)

Three men have decided to spend their declining years at a remote cabin in the woods north of Quebec City. Their reasons for living "off the grid" differ but their desire to remain out of sight is equally strong. They take long swims in the morning, sometimes drink whisky at night, and support themselves by growing marijuana and exchanging it for supplies brought in on a four-wheeler by the youthful manager of a nearby resort. Their daily habits are upended by the arrival of a noisy journalist looking to interview people old enough to remember details of a fire that devastated the region decades earlier. 

Things get more complicated still when the resort manager arrives with an elderly woman—his aunt—who's spent most of her adult life in a psychiatric hospital against her will, and would like to try something else. She needs a place to hide out. 

The result is a beguiling late-life pastoral—a few owls hooting, a few loons calling in the distance, early morning wood-splitting, eating "grub" off a tin plate by the light of a kerosene lamp—to which an element of drama is added by the approach of another forest fire. A few of the folk songs around the bonfire could easily have been cut, and the strands of the plot kept in better balance, but this woodsy narrative holds our interest most of the time. 

 Gloria Mundi (France)

The film—a great film, I would almost say—opens with the birth of a child, Gloria, filmed with aesthetic brio to the sounds of a liturgical choir, fully evoking the miracle and majesty of coming into the world. But life isn't easy for a working-class family in modern Marseilles. The infant's mother, Mathilda, works at a retail dress shop; her father, Nicholas, drives for Uber. The grandparents help out a lot, but grandpa Richard drives a bus by day, while grandma Sylvie cleans rooms in the cruise ships that dock in the harbor overnight. They both need their sleep, albeit at different times. It seems that the only people in the family that are "getting ahead" are Mathilda's half-sister, Aurore, and her dashing but arrogant husband, Bruno, who together run a successful pawnshop and are about to open another one.  As if things weren't complicated enough, the ever-descent Richard asks his wife to send a letter to her ex-husband, Daniel, now serving a long prison term, to inform him that he's become a grandfather. A short time later, he arrives at their door! He's served his time, and now he wants to see the child.

Director Robert Guédiguian follows the intertwined lives of these individuals, some of whom are far more descent than others, with an eye to character, nuance, expression. A casual remark opens avenues into the past that no one has time to explore. Frustrations build. The otherwise natural response to a difficult situation, charged with desperation, suddenly looks like a crime. But who's to blame?  Sic Transit Gloria Mundi. "So goes the glory of the world." 

Arab Blues (Tunisia)

Selma, who has been living  in Paris since the age of ten, decides to return to her childhood home in Tunisia to hang out her shingle as a psychoanalyst, convinced that the need is great. (In Paris, there are three shrinks practicing on every block!) Selma’s niece is gravely disappointed. She was hoping to escape the oppression of Islam by moving to Paris to live with her aunt. And most residents of Tunis don't know what a psychiatrist does. But many in her old neighborhood are eager to discuss their personal problems. She sets up a practice in the roof of her parent's building, and the lines start to form. First-time director Manele Labidi keeps the pot boiling with a string of eccentric patients and a sub-plot about Selma's attempts to appease the local cop—a very reasonable guy—while struggling to secure a permit to practice from a ditzy bureaucrat who would rather sell her the latest black-market lingerie from Turkey than help her establish a legal footing for her practice. In short, the film is a farce.

You may recognize the actress playing Selma, Golshifteh Farahani, from her role in Jim Jarmusch's recent film Patterson. (I didn't.) She holds the screen well and sustains a mood of exasperated frustration while never descending into that supercilious post-colonial distain that a few of her patients accuse her of.

But the film also has several glaring weaknesses. Her father's exile to Paris is never explained. Several family members refer to Selma's mother, as if the explanation for her odd return home lies in that direction, but no elaboration is forthcoming. Finally, there is no need for Selma actually to practice psychoanalysis in her home town. It's a long drawn out process. Few of her "patients" will have the time or the resources to stick with it.  She might as well keep it simple and describe herself as a psychotherapist.

These caveats do nothing to diminish the fun in the film, however, of which there is plenty.  

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Prior to the start of the fest we caught a few offerings from the film society and elsewhere:

The Woman Who Loves Giraffes

This pre-festival selection tells the story of  Dr. Anne Innis Dagg, who went to South Africa as a young woman in the early 1950s to study giraffes, at a time when young single women rarely went to that country, much less spent years doing research in the outback. The first third of the film tells Anne's story with the help of 16mm film she shot during her research. The middle section focuses on the difficulties she faced securing a tenured university position once she'd completed her PhD. The book she wrote became the "bible" of giraffe research, but no one would hire her because, well, you know... she was a woman. I don't want to give the ending away but I will say that Dr. Dagg was rediscovered by a new generation of ethologists who not only admire her pioneering work but continue to utilize it in their own research.

The Etruscan Smile

Another pre-festival selection, in which Brian Cox stars as Rory MacNeil, a crotchety Scotsman whose main goal in life is to outlive a similarly hard-drinking neighbor of the opposing clan. The local doctor refuses to continue prescribing horse pills to keep Rory alive, and he makes the journey to San Francisco, where his son, Ian, lives, to seek medical treatment. While the father is blunt and oblivious to the concerns of others, the son is diffident, refined, unsure of his path. Trained as a chemist, he has become a chef, and is in the process of opening a restaurant with the help of his super-rich father-in-law. He imagines that his father is visiting to see the new grandson. Not so.

The film is riddled with generational and old-world/new-world clichés, but it's fun to watch all the same, as Rory familiarizes himself with big-city life, begins to bond with his grandson, and nurtures an improbable relationship with Rosanne Arquette.

Love Them First

This documentary about a grade school in North Minneapolis is a real tear-jerker. It reminded me of how hard teachers work, how cute kids can be, how tough some pockets of the surrounding neighborhood are, and how emotionally draining—and rewarding—the entire educational process soon becomes. The film had the look of a TV news documentary, which is what it is, but the editing and cinematography were both top-notch.

The Booksellers

This documentary, which the Riverview Theater is streaming from their website, focuses on the high-end used book business, the disappearance of small shops in New York City and beyond, the quirky personalities of dealers and collectors, and the allure of the books themselves. It seems to me a little too much of the film is devoted to very wealthy collectors, though the section on the importance of hip-hop magazine archives redressed the balance somewhat. We were well into the film before mention was made of the effect of internet sales on the trade: beneficial for collectors looking for a specific item, detrimental to shop owners who want to get a good price for their books, or enjoy getting to know the customers who come to browse and chat. But it's beneficial to booksellers, too, because it connects them to buyers across the country and round the world that wopuld never have stepped into their shop.

It seems to me that every town needs a used bookstore. Maybe three. My favorite for years was B & H, which changed to Biermeier's at some point. The Bookhouse in Dinkytown moved down the street and around the corner, but it's still very well stocked. New shops have opened up in recent years in Northeast Minneapolis (Eat My Words) and near Macalester in St. Paul (Against the Grain) while others have closed (Sixth Chamber).

One slice of the trade that the film somewhat neglects is that of the casual browser looking for nothing in particular or nursing a narrow vein of interest desultorily. People like me. I was in New York in 1980, made it a point to stop into the Argosy Bookstore, and found a first edition in half-leather of Francis Hueffer's pioneering study The Troubadours (1878). It cost $25, which was quite a lot for a book in those days. The woman at the register (one of the three pictured above, I'm sure) asked me if I wanted her to erase the price penciled in at the corner, as if that were part of the regular routine. I must have said no, because I can still see it on the marbling of the endpaper.

As they interviewed the three sisters who run the shop, I pulled that book off the shelf. The leather is getting a little flaky at the top of the spine. And (yikes!) the first signature has become unglued. But it's still generally sound.

Maybe I'll read it someday.