Glen's First Annual Film Awards

No matter how knowledgeable the voters are, no matter how catholic their film taste is, no matter how devoted they are to seeing every god-damn release, film awards are bound to irritate me - the reason being that they don't have the courtesy to reward my favourite films. So, with that in mind, I've initiated my own little awards ceremony. 

Solaris: The Mundane Overtakes the Sublime

One of the most oft repeated bits of trivia about Solaris is that the source book's author, Stanislaw Lem, decried Tarkovsky's adaptation on the basis that he didn't write about, "...people's erotic problems in space." This quote, particularly when taken in the context of Tarkovsky's later comments on 2001: A Space Odyssey, (he considered it "sterile") suggest the film be read as just that: a treatise on peoples' erotic problems in space. And, having not read Lem's novel, for all I know it might be when judged in comparison to its predecessor. But on its own terms Solaris own presents itself as something rather different: a film about the difficult relationship between humankind's tendency to navel-gaze and its ability to engage with the universe around it.

In Solaris' beginning it is the scientific questions which are brought to the fore. While human loss hangs over the proceedings - brooding walks, recurrent references to the day's personal meaning, even a portrait - the text remains stubbornly devoted to the questions of Solaristics. Men sit around and debate whether there remains any scientific value left in the project and how one measures the worth of scientific knowledge. Perhaps most tellingly of all the early scenes end with the remarkably alienating, humanity-defying traffic sequence.

It's only when Kris actually reaches the station that "erotic problems" begin to surface. But this apparent change in focus simply dovetails with the film's own thematic concern: namely the difficulty humans have approaching matters with import beyond their existence and that imply limits to their existence. It's a concern which is hinted at in Dr Snaut's suggestion of acclimatisation through placing cut-up paper in the air vents to mimic the rustle of leaves on Earth, and which is latter brought home more forcefully in his birthday speech in which he insists that humans don't want to discover aliens so much as they want to rediscover themselves.

Kris is too caught up in worrying about what the reappearance of his dead wife means for him to consider it as part of the larger question of what Solaris is and how (or indeed if) it thinks. Even Dr Sartorius, who forcefully attempts to ignore any human dimension to the problem responds to the planet's physical manifestations as an attack on his psyche and responds in kind. As a result of these stubbornly human respones Solaris' interaction with the people on the station becomes ever more defined by them. As Doctor Snaut and Hari observe: S\she becomes more human the longer she stays around them.

It's no surprise then that the final, almost last ditch attempt to communicate with Solaris consists of the people aboard the space station telling the planet who they are. It's even less of a surprise that the apparent "breakthrough" appearance of islands on the surface of Solaris is merely yet another case of the planet being made to reflect themselves.

Dispatches from Rotterdam: What Day is it Now?

38 Witnesses: This might’ve counted as evidence for Takashi Miike’s assertion that every film with at least one good scene is worthwhile, except that it’s more of a decent film with one brilliant scene. Granted, almost all the others come at the right times and contain the right ideas – it’s just that they’re often written a little too expressively for a realist film or that they ably express the idea behind the scene without really revealing the person delivering it. The former is especially the case with the dialogue given to Yvan Attal which indulges in a few too many “long, dark night of the soul” clichés, far too many nautical metaphors and is just a little bit too focused for a drowning man with a desperate need to walk a plank. Perhaps a better actor might have been able to give the words more weight but Attal doesn’t quite nail the thousand yard stare.

In any case he’s adequate and, as suggested by my opening remarks, this is a pretty thorough exploration of guilt and justice in which both the moral and practical questions are given full reign. Should one own up to a moral failing if it’s too late to have a practical impact? Should justice deter, punish or rehabilitate? As dramas of ideas go this one does a solid job of being thoughtful about such quandries without being prescriptive. Yet because of its slightly off dialogue it never truly shines until its stunning climactic scene which spells out the horror of the initiating incident in clinical, yet gut wrenching, detail. 

Dispatches from Rotterdam: The Loneliest Planet

While the title is a good fit for this film a more accurate one might have been Rupture. This is not just because of The Incident, which creates a rupture in the protagonists’ relationship at the halfway mark of the film, but also because of Loktev's regular use of extreme long-shots. The most obvious point of these shots relates to the official title: they show how isolated these three people are in the magisterial Georgian landscape. But they're also about the sublime being interrupted. Each shot starts with the three figures entering the frame while a thick, swirling string piece slowly builds and each shot ends abruptly, just before the three figures leave the frame and before the score has a chance to finish. This break from an expected formula proved jarring every time and it is a good match for the uncertainties which are suddenly introduced into the narrative. 

The Loneliest Planet is also impressive in its ability to evoke a shared history in small gestures. The central couple’s relationship is suffused with games and familiar conversational gambits which are oft repeated in the first section of the film and which convey a lived-in intimacy. Even more impressive is the way in which the second half of the film introduces previously un-hinted at things - a shared song, a moment of experimentation - in such a way as to imply their significance to the couple's relationship. This is a film in which small gestures add up to a lot.

Dispatches from Rotterdam: Capsules from Day Three

A Fish: Sadly this is sub-Lynchian rubbish consisting largely of weird things happening for no particular reason and to no particular effect. Actually, to be fair, the plot does eventually supply a reason but it only adds up to a slight gloss on the old "it was all a dream" ending, which is hardly sufficient to redeem 90 minutes full of bizarre happenings which aren't in the least bit disquieting. Part of the absence of disquiet can be attributed to the film's lead character whose near silence and almost complete lack of affect make him only marginally more interesting than any given inanimate object with which he shares the frame. Indeed watching him breakdown at the end is about as moving as watching a second-hand toaster breakdown.

As for the much ballyhooed 3D (The first such film in competition for a Tiger Award!), well, at least it's technically competent. No one would mistake it for the work of James Cameron or Wim Wenders but there are only minor defects, such as the occasional blurring of a foreground plane. However the 3D isn't actually exploited artistically, outside of maybe two sequences involving fog effects, which leads to the inescapable conclusion that it was used solely for the purpose of boosting the profile of a thoroughly lousy film.

Dispatches from Rotterdam: Capsules from Day Two

11 Flowers: This film is a gorgeously shot attempt to recall the director's (Xiaoshuai Wang's) childhood in an intensely political environment. The ambition is clearly to show the life and drama going on around a naive but rapidly growing boy. To this end narrative detail is drip-fed through overheard conversations and half glimpsed encounters shot with hand-held POV shots. Unfortunately Xiaoshuai Wang doesn't fully follow through; the "half-glimpsed details" add up to a clear picture of events, which rather lessens the intended fog-of-childhood effect. It doesn't help that the main plot is never especially compelling - instead it's overshadowed by recurring father-son encounters in which the elder attempts to equip the younger with the skills needed in a China where Mao literally hangs over everything.

Dispatches from Rotterdam: Anna

How to encapsulate - let alone assess or explicate - the sprawling, nearly four hour long documentary Anna? Well to start with it's helpful to note that, title aside, the documentary makers are only tangentially interested in Anna; the young drug addict taken off the streets by one of the filmmakers in an act that is initially, ostensibly charitable. Instead they're more interested in the social issues that Anna's situation represents; particularly those that might be termed "hippie concerns", such as the nature of institutionalised community versus that of self-constituted community and how best to reject the former.