Film Fest 2021

 The Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Fest never disappoints, though, like fishing for muskies or visiting the casino, you can't expect to hit the jackpot right away.

The number of entries might have been reduced from previous years—it's hard to tell because the short films are listed along with the features—but there are still far more offerings here than most viewers are likely to see in a week. Hilary and I have seen only eight films since we got back from Ely. In case anyone is in the mood for a film on a rainy Saturday or Sunday, here's a brief rundown, starting with the winners.

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

Luzzu tells the story of Jesmark, a Maltese fisherman with a sick child and a leaky boat. But he also has friends, and a stolid determination to continue in his solitary profession, although the fish populations are declining and the EU is encouraging independent fishermen like him to take a generous bailout and find other work. 

His wife, who was raised in an affluent environment, would like him to get a job on a trawler to insure the steady income required to pay the doctor bills. He considers that a sell-out; the trawlers are the ones who are ruining the fishing in the first place. The plot becomes more intricate as Jesmark, who's hard-working but taciturn and somewhat naive, begins to learn more about bribery and corruption in the local fishing industry, which extends from whose catch gets auctioned first at the daily market to the nefarious sale of illegal fish.   

Balloon, set in the high altitude valleys of Tibet, depicts the daily life of a sheep-tending family. The landscape is stark and there's plenty of almost random movement, but the atmosphere is refreshing as we follow the activities of Dargye, his ever-cheerful wife Drolkar, their two young sons, and Dargye's aged father, who mostly sits around reciting Buddhist chants. 

The ethnographic material is worth the price of admission, but as the days roll past and the couple's third (and oldest) son is brought home from boarding school by Drolkar's sister, a melancholy Buddhist nun, several thorny issues develop having to do with balloons, Chinese family planning policy, and reincarnation.  

    

The narrative line of Under the Open Sky is easy enough to describe: former Yakusa gets out of prison and has trouble reintegrating in society. But it would be a mistake to describe the film as some sort of polemic about injustices met up with by ex-cons, as many reviewers have done. The central character, Masao Mikami, is a complex character—vaguely charming, slightly naive, independent by nature, liable to speak his mind, and prone to explosions of violence when he witnesses acts of injustice or intimidation. Upon his release he gains the support of a sponsor and a social worker, and is soon receiving welfare benefits. If he's eager to find work, it's only because he hates to sponge off the government. Unfortunately, the only thing he learned how to do in prison was sew aprons.

But Mikami has soon been befriended by the owner of the grocery store down the block, and a young screen-writer also takes an interest in his story. From these elements director Miwa Nishikawa spins a tale that begins to feel long at the one-hour mark, but picks up speed again as Mikami regains his social bearings, with flashbacks to his troubled youth and to the trial that sent him to prison adding additional  layers of complexity to his character. A final undercurrent surfaces when Mikami decides that he wants to locate his mother, a geisha who abandoned him at the age of four.

Also worth a look:

Co-op Wars, a locally produced documentary about the early days of the food co-op movement in the Twin Cities, when hippies sparred with Marxist-Leninists and disputes about whether to stock brown rice or Coca Cola led to violent warehouse takeovers.  

Asia, which follows the intertwined but often independent lives of a mother and her adolescent daughter who suffers from a degenerative muscle disease.   

Clash of the Titans

Two global forces met head to head recently, and it was a struggle to decide which side to be on. On the one hand, the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Fest was arriving in town. But at the same time, a potential flood of warblers and other migratory bird species were due to pass through town on their way to nesting sites farther north.

Hilary and I decided to split the difference and spend six days on a cross-country trek that included stops at the Ice Age Trail north of Bloomer, Wisconsin; Hunt Hill Audubon Camp an hour north of there; the wild and strange and ragged landscapes of the Totagatic Pine Barrens west of Minong; Wisconsin Point, just east of Superior; The harbor and rock shelves of Two Harbors; Crosby-Manitou State Park; a number of woodsy trails in the vicinity of Ely; and one final stop at the Sax-Zim Bog north of Meadowlands, where we'd been often but never in the springtime.

Following that itinerary, we still arrived back home in time to catch plenty of films before the festival left town.

The days were breezy and cool, the leaves were barely unfurling, the serviceberries were in bloom, and the ephemerals dotting the forest floor were bathed in dappled sunlight. The woods and fields were full of song, especially in the early morning, and the word "idyllic" cropped up in conversation more than once or twice.

I'm not going to give you a complete rundown of the eighty-odd species we came upon during our trip, but I will mention a few things we did not see: We did not see a boreal chickadee at the Sax-Zim Bog; We did not see an upland sandpiper OR a sharp-tailed grouse at the Totagatic Barrens; and we did not see a single shorebird at Wisconsin Point. On the other hand, while we were sitting in the car on Barker's Island eating a miserable lunch from Taco John's, I did see two common terns fly by overhead. (Not a common sight, actually.) And at Vermilion State Park we got an extended point-blank look of a magnolia warbler at eye level. Wonderful bird.

And here's an odd fact. We had spotted ten other warbler species before sighting our first redstart or myrtle. Go figure.

I sometimes think that the black-throated green warbler is the most common bird in the north woods, but on this trip his song was overshadowed by the high-pitched ascending ratchety sound of the northern parula by a wide margin. This was true especially during an early morning hike we took along the shores of Bass Lake, a few miles north of Ely.

The sun was just coming up at the far end of the lake, the morning was very cool, and the woodsy smell of balsam filled the air. That combination of sensations evoked a random collection of outdoor memories including some associated with my summers as a canoe counselor fifty years ago, which include playing chess, reading  Scientific American, and listening to the Neil Young Song "Helpless," which one of the other staff members used to play endlessly in the bunkhouse after dinner. The entire concatenation presented itself to me in a flash, bundled up in a wrapping of adolescent melancholy that strikes me now as sweet. 

It also occurred to me, as Hilary and I strolled through the woods along the shore of the lake, that I have always approached that evocative woodsy environment with a reverence that I have never tried to further conceptualize, objectify, or converted into a theology. But it has often been present, during excursions like this one, as a source of pleasure and gratification and focus.

In short, it was a very nice walk.

 

New Arrivals

 

The cold spring rain is refreshing, and the sun broke through the clouds just long enough for me to take a stroll through the back yard, where long lost friends are slowly reappearing.

These include the vinca minor, flowering here and there (see above) and the wind ginger, unfolding nearby.

The pachysandra has always looks slightly artificial among the native species, but still very nice when in bloom (or in a Japanese tea garden!)

A few trout lilies struggle to hang on way out in the woods. These were planted by the previous owners, maybe forty years ago.

And within the "garden" proper the brunnera have started to produce their tiny petals, while closer to the deck I see the jack-in-the-pulpit starting to emerge.

And then I hear a rapid, stuttering, melodious song I haven't heard for a year. It's the ruby-crowned kinglet! And I soon spot him flitting around from branch to branch on the Amur maples a few feet in front of me. Ah, now I see him.

This tiny butterball of a bird is easy to identify for that very reason; he flits around nervously like no other bird. You seldom see the ruby crown except during mating season, but he was flashing his crest wildly this morning, and, snapping a few frames with my little Canon Powershot, I got lucky.

After I lost sight of him, I could still hear his crisp, melodious chatter in the woods nearby. And several white-throated sparrows, as if to balance the mood, were singing their mournful, slightly-out-of-tune three-note descent. 

A brief but exhilarating expedition before breakfast. What will the rest of the day bring?    

Oscar Shorts

Perhaps no form of film is better suited to watching on a computer screen than a short subject. We spent three evenings engaged in that pursuit, independently ranking each entry from zero to five, and judged only a few to be less than a four. Now, two weeks later, some of them are a little hard to remember.

Among the animated shorts, both "Burrow" and "The Snail and the Whale" tell tales of animal adventure. The former probes cheerfully into the tunneling habits of several rodent and insect species by means of a colorful but blocky graphic style; the later, far longer and more sophisticated in technique, relates the adventures of a snail who, longing to see more of the world, hops a ride on—guess what?—a whale's tail. It's narrated by the late Diana Rigg, with Sally Hawkins voicing the snail. Both films are cute, both held my interest in a child-like way.

“If Anything Happens I Love You” is a mostly black-and-white piece about a couple whose daughter was involved in a school shooting, and it's highly effective, in so far as it makes you feel sad, sad, sad.

"Opera," from South Korea, was a misfire, I think. It depicts some sort of underground mining operation, but the triangular mountain that dominates the screen remains static and the characters moving back and forth are so small they lack individuality. There may have been a profound message here about tyranny or cooperation. If so, I missed it.

In my opinion, “Genius Loci” was the best of the bunch. I found the story incomprehensible and the tone sour, but the graphics were highly imaginative, almost as if they'd been made with construction paper cutouts and stop-action photography.

All of the live-action shorts were top-notch. The challenge here is to bring a little complexity to the story in a short span of time available.

 In Feeling Through a young homeless man, black, having failed to find a place to sleep among friends,  comes upon a middle-aged blind and deaf man, white, sitting on a bench in the middle of the night. The man needs some help getting on the right bus. He also needs some water. Adventures ensue, with irritation, self-interest, and compassion fighting for the upper hand at every step of the way. 

 In The Letter Room, a lowly prison guard (played by Oscar Isaac) aspires for something better and is happy to be put in charge of reading the letters that are exchanged between inmates and their contacts on the outside. Frustrated by the administration's lack of interest in his ideas for prison reform, and intrigued by the correspondence between one death-row inmate and his girlfriend,  the guard decides to do a little free lance counseling. Bad idea.  

 The Present offers a brief look at the daily challenges Palestinians face crossing back and forth from their territory into Israel proper. A simple tale involving a refrigerator, believable and well-acted.

In White Eye a young Israeli spots a bicycle parked in front of a fish warehouse that was stolen from him a few weeks earlier. He calls the cops and is told, "We can't do anything. You never filed a report." He asks a tradesman working nearby to help him cut off the lock. The man who now owns the bike, an African, arrives. He claims he bought it legally, and needs it to take his daughter to kindergarten every day. The cops show up, finally. And here comes the warehouse manager. It's getting messier all the time.   

But the best of the bunch, I think, was Two Distant Strangers, in which a sophisticated young black designer, leaving his girlfriend's New York apartment, encounters a feisty cop intent on hassling him. The encounter ends badly, like the ones we so often read about in the papers. But it was only a dream!

The man leaves the apartment again but does things differently, in the manner of Run Lola Run. Funny thing, the sequence of incidents is different but the end result is exactly the same, or worse. Ah, but it was only a dream! Once again, he leaves the apartment ...

It should come as no surprise to learn that the live action documentaries are mostly about bad things. Hunger Ward focuses on mass starvation in Yemen, though it offers not a shred of insight into the causes of the civil war or possible solutions to it. A Love Song for Latasha relates, from a mostly teenage and family perspective, the death in Los Angeles of a young black girl who was sent by her mother to but some orange juice at the local liquor store. Both are heartrending.

Collette offers a portrait of an elderly French woman who joined the resistance during WWII, and now, half a century and more later, has teamed up with a young German historian to seek out information about her brother's death in the death camps. A Concerto is a Conversation consists largely of a warm and gentle conversation between a young black Los Angeles composer and his Georgia-born grandfather about music and life, making great use of close-ups.   

But I found Do Not Split to be the most ambitious and enthralling of the five. It documents a few days of protest in Hong Kong against the encroachments of the Chinese government. Lots of chaos, tension, danger, excitement, courage, and youthful ardor.    

April Grays

 

Yes, April can be like this; here's proof.

White flecks of snow fell this morning, rectangular, widely spaced.

I began the day with a walking tour of a neighborhood in  Queens,

complete with pictures,

courtesy of a friend who sent me a link this morning.

Minor chores are done, though the jeans coming out of the dryer weren't really dry.

A few games of computer cribbage before turning to books.

Any books.

I ask myself, after studying a map in a book about Mencius,

why the Chinese named their kingdoms Chou, Chin, Ch'in, Ch'u, Ch'i, and Cheng.

They could have done better.

Then it's on to Gilbert White's Selborne County, where he describes

a remarkable spring that, during a drought, continued to produce

nine gallons of water per minute. He then calculates, for our benefit,

an output of two-hundred sixteen hogsheads per day. Well done.

Lunch consists of a sliver of onion pie—one of my specialties—

consumed cold, standing next to the fridge.

After bringing in the garbage can from the street,

I decide to make a fire, using a huge log that's been

sitting behind the yard-waste can all winter.

I know it won't burn, but by sliding kindling under it,

I create the illusion again and again.

Oscar Countdown: Four Films

Frances McDormand first showed up on my film radar in the year 2000, appearing as a character actress in two films that are still among my favorites, Wonder Boys and Almost Famous. It was not her presence that made those films great, but it didn't hurt. She had already cemented herself in the public eye three years earlier with an Oscar turn in Fargo. In time she began to take on the stature of a later-day Jack Nicholson, playing variations on her own idiosyncratic self in film after film, most of which I didn't see.

It was a major triumph for her to hold that over-the-top train wreck of a film, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, together. I liked it quite a bit.

Film-goers who have been avoiding Nomadland for fear of similar excesses can rest assured: it's a lovely, elegiac film full of nice people, gorgeous desert landscapes, and sketches of a simple but atavistically attractive way of life, all of which are anchored in the contours of McDormand's craggy face.

A few days after seeing the film, I could hardly tell you what happened. The love interest was tepid, and the most dramatic "turn" had something to do with exorbitant repairs to the minivan. The seasonal employment at Amazon almost looked attractive to me, though that may be because I spent twenty years working in a book warehouse myself; and the director, Chloé Zhao, has made life in a van look fairly appealing. Here again, my personal predilection for desert camping may have come into play. In short, Nomadland works well, like a atmospheric European film, as a haunting portrait of decent but often damaged or grieving people who have chosen a variety of alternative healing paths. Less ambitious than the vaguely similar Into the Wild, for example, it presents itself on the screen as a tone poem rather than an opera. More movies like this, please!  (Best Actress, Director, Editor, Adapted Screenplay, Cinematography) 

One Night in Miami consists largely of an extended conversation in a motel room between Cassius Clay (soon to become Muhammad Ali) and three friends—NFL running back Jim Brown, popular singer and impresario Sam Cooke, and political activist Malcolm X. It bristles with wit while digging deep into the obstacles and options facing eminent black men in those days (and also today). It's also a hell of a lot of fun to watch. (Best Supporting Actor: Leslie Odom Jr.)

Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, also based on a play, is "stagier" and less inspired, like drinking a mug of dark coffee that's simply too bitter. We soon adjust to the theatrical voicing of the characters, and the basement conversations between the musicians carry a lively spark, but Ma Rainey herself is difficult to like, the studio personnel hardly emerge from cardboard cut-out status, and the racial indictments, though well-founded, lack nuance. The silver lining is that the film is hardly more than an hour long. (Viola Davis: Best Actress; Chadwick Boseman: Best Actor)

Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. I have never seen a Will Ferrell film before, and might never see one again, but this mostly charming comedy/farce about an Icelandic duo who stumble into contention at the massive Eurovision contest is bolstered by the presence of Rachael McAdams, the silliness of its faux accents and folkloric Icelandic clichés, and lots of high-energy performances by various Euro-pop groups that I'd never heard of until I looked them up, including Lordi, Alexander Rybak, Conchita Wurst, and Netta. (Best Song)        

Oscar Countdown: Mank

Mank is a complex, busy,  peculiar, and largely unsatisfying work that once again underscores the fact that it's difficult to make a good film about a drunk. Why? Because a drunk tends to rely on the forbearance of everyone around him. They know him, perhaps they love him a little, they're willing to indulge him. But we don't know him, and we find him tiresome. "Get a grip on yourself," we say. "On what grounds do you deserve our sympathy and attention?"

One answer might be, "Because I'm in the process of writing the screenplay for the greatest film of all time." But the screenwriter himself wouldn't know that. He only knows that he's got to finish the script in sixty days, and considering his health, it might be the last one he ever writes, and it had better be good, because none of his earlier scripts were good.

 That is the basic premise of Mank. The central character, screenwriter Herman Mankiewicz, delivers bon mots that aren't witty, exudes a charm that isn't charming, and cultivates a "I could have been a contender" self-pity that means nothing to us, because we have no idea who or what he might have become, had he laid off the booze and done some real work. Howard Hawks would have done it differently.   

Meanwhile, the film abounds in technical issues. The black-and-white cinematography is meticulous and dazzling to a fault. The result is that everything looks a little too dark, or too bright, or too creamy, and all the wonderful period details distract our attention from both the characters and the story. We're being asked to look too many ways at once.

Compounding the problem, the voices seem to have been post-synched in an echo chamber. Why?

Herman Mankiewicz is best known today as the co-author, with Orson Welles, of the screenplay for Citizen Kane. Viewers who haven't seen that film—which I suspect are legion in this day and age—are likely to be even more confused than the rest of us. Citizen Kane is a thinly disguised and less than flattering biopic based on the life of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, though it also draws upon the somewhat larger-than-life braggadocio of Welles himself, who not only directed the film but also plays the lead.

Mankiewicz evidently knew Hearst well, and, to judge from flashbacks scattered throughout the film, he was invited to quite a few parties out at Hearst's palatial estate, San Simeon, on the central California coast. He also knew the ins and outs of the Hollywood studios, having written scripts for several of them. In one scene Mank introduces his brother (who later became a distinguished film director) to his brilliant writing buddies—a coterie that includes Ben Hecht and S. J. Perelman—and we're instantly wishing we could spend some time with them rather than with the boozy and existentially desperate Mank himself.

Because it lacks a sympathetic central character, Mark has a hard time getting us interested in its two central tropes. The first is that Mankiewicz, rather than Welles, ought to be given credit for the enduring appeal of Citizen Kane. Very few buy that theory today. The second is that Mank, no doubt a decent and lovable man underneath it all, inadvertently gave producer Irving Thalberg the idea for how to swing the California gubernatorial election in 1934, robbing socialist Upton Sinclair of the victory. The film even goes so far as to suggest that in his idealistic youth Hearst himself might have supported Sinclair.

Whether this is true or not, it's not the kind of thing that excites movie-goers today.

A single scene might serve to illustrate both the complexity and the vagueness of Mank. An old pal comes up to him at the studio and asks Mank for a dollar. Mank turns to the policeman standing behind him and asks him for a dollar. The policeman obliges. Mank gives the dollar to his old pal. I suppose this is supposed to suggest that people on the set are fond of Mank, and feel comfortable both asking him for things and giving him the things he asks for. But why didn't Mark give the guy a dollar from his own pocket? The scene isn't funny. What, precisely, are we supposed to make of it?

Some of the most touching scenes in the film involve conversations between Mank and Hearse's girlfriend Marion Davies. She looks glamorous but comes across as sweet and intelligent—far more appealing than the shrill character Mank wrote into Citizen Kane. Mank feels bad about this, and tries to convince his old friend, who has read the script, that her character as portrayed in the film isn't really how he thinks about her. Well then, why did he write it like that?

Even this cursory review ought to give you an idea how much thought went into the making of Mank. Too much of that thought, I'm afraid, has been devoted to incidentals--allusions to minutia of film history and California politics--and not enough about emotional ballast. In the end, the character of Mankiewicz himself hardly emerges from the realm of maudlin cliché. Long before the end of the film, some viewers may be gripped by the inexplicable desire to revisit that unparalleled cinema dynamo from three-quarters of a century ago, Citizen Kane.