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Film: Ward No. 6
Year of production: 2009
UK Release date: 11th July 2011
Distributor: Artificial Eye
Certificate: 15
Running time: 83 mins
Director: Aleksandr Gornovsky & Karen Shakhnazarov
Starring: Vladimir Ilin, Aleksey Vertkov, Aleksandr Pankratov-Chyornyy, Evgeniy Stychkin, Viktor Solovyov
Genre: Drama
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Russia
Language: Russian
Review by: Bill Sherwood
Ward No. 6, an adaptation of Chekhov’s 1892 short story of the same name, is brought up to date in this modern treatment of a tale of the doctors and patients inhabiting the rooms and corridors of a Russian psychiatric hospital.
The film begins with several inmates of a psychiatric ward being interviewed. They briefly recount their childhoods as possible reasons for their current circumstances and discuss their dreams and aspirations. Some want marriage and families, where others simply want to get out.
The audience is taken back over 400 hundred years and given a potted history of the asylum’s gradual transformation from a wooden chapel dedicated to St Nicholas, then a stone monastery, a hospital for sufferers of TB, and finally, its present incarnation as a large psychiatric institution that ward no. 6 is a part of.
The previous senior psychiatrist, Dr Ragin, is now a mute inmate himself and the focus of the story. Through his predecessor, it is learned that Ragin wanted to study theology in his youth and was never inclined toward medicine, but his father had forced him toward it.
Given his innate philosophical bent, Ragin cannot help befriending the patient Ivan Gromov, a man he considers to be the one interesting conversationalist in the entire town. Ivan’s own philosophic musings make Ragin question his thoughts on existence for the very first time and having his world view turned upside down, his life changes its course in a manner he could never have expected…
The first thing an audience will notice about Ward No. 6 is its curious combination of supposed reality and fiction. The men interviewed at the beginning of the film are all real inmates of psychiatric institutions and are giving real answers. They are also peppered throughout the film and sometimes performing scripted roles. The documentary style is maintained through scripted interviews where actors play the main parts, but anything about Ragin’s back-story, which is beyond the scope of the ‘documentary’ time frame, is played as a drama where the camera is the traditional fourth wall.
At first, the transition of styles does not feel smooth to the viewer, or even necessary. Dr Khobotov, the present senior psychiatrist, and Ivan are not badly acted at all, but when they are presented as interviewees amongst the real patients they stick out as fictional entities and consequently make the scenes far less believable. It is, however, an interesting method of marking the past, when Ragin was in charge of the patients and his own mind, against his present circumstances. For the dramatic sequences in the past, the audience is a passive viewer taking in the story, but in the present, the viewer is like a doctor studying Ragin as he is now a part of the system.
Updating Chekhov’s narrative to modern Russia and into a fictional documentary has some other awkward and occasionally humorous moments. Here and there characters talking directly to the camera offer personal information that in a story would be imparted through the narrative, not their own mouths. One result of this is that Dr Khobotov frankly admits that he wanted Ragin’s job when he first started working at the hospital. Another is when Ragin’s predecessor lists all the things that were wrong with the hospital under his supervision. That is, Ragin put a stop to his predecessor’s clandestine selling of surgical spirits, the harem of nurses and female patients that he’d set up, and the vermin. Apart from creating some black humour, all this really manages to do is reference the fact that it is a literary adaptation without explaining why.
At the core of this film are the conversations between Ragin and Ivan, and the effect they have on the doctor. His philosophy is partly fatalistic and he enjoys citing the life of Diogenes, a Greek founder of Cynicism. Although these talks are important in terms of the story, they do not take up much screen time. This is a good thing because they tend to come across as dialectics about the absurdities of societal institutions that might have been better in a lecture hall, or more tellingly, a book.
Throughout the film, the viewer is constantly being posed questions about insanity, whether in the individual or society itself, the methods of defining it and the treatment. Early on, Dr Khobotov explains that the line between sanity and insanity is illusory. Although this is a fairly obvious statement, it is not at all comforting, as it casts doubt on the process by which people are committed to psychiatric institutions. When Ivan persuades Ragin that it was not by chance that he had been committed and not fair either, the viewer feels sympathy for the fact that society trapped him. However, niggling in the back of one’s mind is that he has a certified persecution mania. The diagnosis itself is the trap because despite feeling that Ivan is right, the audience can never agree 100 per cent, which is a teasingly satisfying dilemma.
As this is the film’s main point, it is a slightly laborious one. Its running time is not long, but it feels it could be shorter. Late in the story, Ragin sums the message up to his friend, Mikhail, saying that once a human is declared mad they should give in because nothing can save them from their fate. Parts of the film feel like an unnecessary embellishment of this statement, delivered after the audience figure out the message for themselves. Alternatively, by leaving out his speech, this might not have been the case.
A well acted and thoughtful film, Ward No. 6 nevertheless feels like it has bitten off more than it can chew. Its mixture of styles manages to keep the viewer interested, but in the end is more of a gimmick that is obviously there to distance itself from its literary source. It never really decides whether to let the audience think for themselves or to tell them what is what, but it impresses the most in that it has at least tried to present its troubling themes in a unique way.
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Film: Back To Normandy
Year of production: 2007
UK Release date: 27th June 2011
Distributor: Artificial Eye
Certificate: 15
Running time: 113 mins
Director: Nicolas Philibert
Genre: Documentary
Format: DVD
Country of Production: France
Language: French
Review by: Gordon James Knox
Released as part of The Nicolas Philibert Collection. In 2002, Être Et Avoir, Nicolas Philibert’s documentary about a provincial infant school and its kindly schoolmaster, won the hearts of film lovers worldwide. In Back To Normandy, the director returns to rural France with a film-about-a film-about a 19th century court case that could not be more different.
More than thirty years ago, Philibert began his career as an assistant director on Moi, Pierre Rivière, Rene Allio’s 1976 film based on the 1835 memoir of a Normandy farmer’s son, Pierre Riviere, who wrote it in his prison cell while condemned to death for the brutal murder of his mother, sister and brother with a billhook.
Allio chose to shoot his film very close to the location where the murders occurred and cast farmers and other non-actors in the major roles. At the time, Philbert was tasked with finding locals to fill the parts, and for Back To Normandy, he tracks them down again to see how it changed their lives.
Interspersed with interviews with some of the original cast members are shots of key locations used in Moi, Pierre Rivière and other locations relating to the historical case itself. Back To Normandy is a cine-essay which (very gently) touches upon themes of history and modernity, community and society, and the art of filmmaking itself…
The full title of Allio’s film translates as “I, Pierre Rivière, having slaughtered my mother, my sister and my brother…” This was the opening line of the killer’s jailhouse confession, the manuscript of which was rediscovered in the early 1970s by a team of scholars under the direction of the philosopher and intellectual historian Michel Foucault. Where some may have dismissed the tale as merely a footnote to an inexplicable crime, Foucalt argued that Rivière’s singular account (all the more remarkable for having been produced by a peasant with only basic schooling) revealed crucial insights into the development of modern judiciary and its relation to mental illness. As Rivière’s case was the first to use psychiatric testimony, it offered an unparalleled guide to the way medical scrutiny was being married to judicial control. Not only did the case appeal to Foucault’s longstanding interest in those power structures which underpin society, but it also posed a radical challenge to our ideas about the Enlightenment itself, since language and writing are usually considered the prerogative of the rational and law-abiding. In collaboration with Foucault, Allio dramatised the events in a brilliant and unsettling film, which received almost unanimous critical acclaim when it was first released and yet remains largely unseen by modern audiences.
Some of the ideas found in that film are revisited in Back To Normandy; but in a very indirect way. The first half of the film consists mainly of interviews with the amateur actors as they reminisce about their experience working on the film. What eventually becomes clear is that the filming of Moi, Pierre Rivière didn’t have that much of an impact on their lives at all. Most of them fondly remembered the film crew sweeping into the area and offering them a singular experience, but when the cameras left, life more or less returned to normal.
Jacqueline Millière, frighteningly believable as the tormenting Rivière matriarch, speaks of some initial wariness on the part of people who recognised her on the street shortly after the film’s original release, but that soon went away. The merry Borel family considers its patriarch’s thespian adventure a source of hilarity. Even the enigmatic Claude Hébert, who played Pierre to great acclaim and seemed destined for a glittering onscreen career, would go on to lead a life far removed from the world of cinema. Everyday life, though, went on, and the stories of heartbreak and quiet tragedy revealed in some of the interviews gives us a rare glimpse into the life beyond, no less dramatic for occurring away from the eye of the camera lens.
Tentatively, Philibert does begin to work in parallels and connections between his documentary and Moi, Pierre, as well as the era in which the story was set. In one particularly gruesome scene, we are shown how the slaughter of a pig is carried out in much the same way as it would have in the 19th century. Charles and Annie Lihou speak movingly of the impact of their daughter’s schizophrenia on the rest of the family. Annick Bisson — who, as a 16-year-old, played the luckier of the killer’s two sisters — now works with mentally handicapped adults. The Enlightenment idea of rational progress, the philosophical background to the Pierre Rivière case, is echoed in oblique references to the seemingly unstoppable march of modernity - shots of farm machinery, an organised protest against plans to turn a nearby area into a nuclear waste dump. Even the process of filmmaking isn’t immune – in one scene, we learn that the film-printing studio Allio set up is in financial difficulties and is set to cease production, a victim of the digital revolution. At times, a bittersweet sense of nostalgia emerges, as well as a kind of sadness for the way things change - sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse. In spite of Philibert’s highly objective and oblique approach (sometimes exasperatingly so), this is a deeply felt film.
Back To Normandy closes with a scene which reveals just how much personal import the film has for its director. Philibert’s father had been cast in a small role in Moi, Pierre Rivière, but sadly his scene never made the final cut. Thirty years later, Philibert has tracked down the cut print, sans audio, and it is with this footage the film closes. Presumably now departed, the old man addresses the camera in the role of a court official, and though we cannot hear the words he speaks, the image still contains the power to speak to us in some strange, indefinable way. The scene seems to acknowledges that film can only ever be an approximation of life, and though it can never wholly capture the complexities of living itself, it is capable of a poignancy in spite of, or perhaps precisely because, of its limitations. It’s an unexpectedly moving finale to a film which doesn’t always fully connect, but when it does Back To Normandy achieves a quite singular profundity.
Back To Normandy is a deeply personal film about an experience which was fundamental in forming Philibert’s artistic identity. Although it never suffers from artistic self-indulgence, it may be a little abstract for most tastes. Certainly a familiarity with Allio’s original film would seem to be a prerequisite for a full appreciation of this thoughtful and highly nuanced documentary. Watch Moi, Pierre Rivière first, and then consider giving this a go.
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Film: ABC Africa
Year of production: 2001
UK Release date: 27th June 2011
Distributor: Artificial Eye
Certificate: 15
Running time: 84 mins
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Genre: Documentary
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Iran
Language: Persian/English
Review by: Paul Kelly
Released as part of The Abbas Kiarostami Collection. In 2000, Abbas Kiarostami, one of Iran's foremost filmmakers, received a fax from the UN's International Fund for Agricultural development. In it, he was asked to visit the Uganda Woman's Effort to Save Orphans charity in order to make a documentary about their work. After going to the area to scout for locations, Kiarostami and his assistant Seyfolah Samadian decided to put together the raw footage they had shot on hand-held cameras. ABC Africa is the final result of their work.
The Ugandan Woman's Effort to Save Orphans is a charity which works with children and teenagers left without parents as a result of the AIDS epidemic which still exercises its stranglehold over the continent. By a sharing of money and business incentives, these woman take orphans into their care and help them to live a normal life, as well as providing for themselves.
We learn little about the inner workings of the charity because sit-down, one on one interviews are not in the nature of the film. ABC Africa is an example of pure, minimalist documentary filmmaking. There is no structure to what Kiarostami and his assistant set out to do, no agenda on their minds as they chat with the locals. What results from this is a film which may lack the kind of hard hitting journalism that we are accustomed to seeing in tales from some of Africa's poorest countries, but one which offers a candid insight into a way of life we cannot possible fathom…
As hard hitting and insightful as much of the footage is, much of it is far too long and the film could have done with an awful lot longer in the editing suit. Here a director has a chance to make a film that will really get people thinking about an important issue that is too often overlooked. But instead of strongly focusing on the important points at hand, Kiarostami allows his camera's attention to wander into crowds of dancing children or clouds drifting by for periods of time - so long that it is easy to forget you are watching a film. Much of what takes an hour and twenty minutes could have been distilled into a far more impactful ten minute promotion for the charity.
This is a shame because there are moments when the fly-on-the-wall immediacy of the film is striking. This is particularly true of a visit to a centre which cares for AIDS victims, where the gaunt, hopeless and helpless faces of young and old alike make their way across the screen in a solemn procession, before a nurse is shown removing the body of a child with a blanket and a cardboard box with an efficiency which is as haunting as it is deeply sad. The style also works during an impromptu meeting with several families living in one shared house with open windows and doors; the happy dancing feet of the children and the patter of the rain outside working in harmony, reminding us that there is hope even in places seemingly void of it at first glance.
These moments are exceptions in Kiarostami's film, however, and do not do enough to lift the rest of the film, which feels like being forced to sit and watch a friend's holiday videos; undoubtedly interesting to have made and important socially, but unforgivably boring to watch. I use the word unforgivable because it seems to me that having the opportunity to make a film about people who deserve our help for the great work that they do, and failing to portray their story in a way which is interesting to watch, is just that. It's all very well to enjoy looking at the smiling faces of these children on film, but if Kiarostami had made a more watchable, structured film, he could have done a lot more to keep those faces smiling. This is not to question his motivation, he certainly made ABC Africa for all the right reasons, but the fact remains that Abbas Kiarostami is a talented and experienced enough filmmaker to have done far better with the chance that he was given.
Undoubtedly a film needed to be made to share the great work that Uganda Woman's Effort to Save Orphans does, but perhaps Abbas Kiarostami was not the man to make it. What should have been one of the most impactful documentaries of its day is rendered almost unwatchable by the director's refusal to structure the film even slightly.
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Film: The Wind Will Carry Us
Year of production: 1992
UK Release date: 27th June 2011
Distributor: Artificial Eye
Certificate: 15
Running time: 118 mins
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Starring: Behzad Dorani, Noghre Asadi, Roushan Karam Elmi, Bahman Ghobadi, Shahpour Ghobadi
Genre: Drama
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Iran/France
Language: Persian
Review by: Tim Molton
Released as part of The Abbas Kiarostami Collection. This 1999 Iranian production by Abbas Kiarostami references the poetic works of the controversial Forough Farrokhzad and contemplates the relationship between life and death. The Venice Film Festival Golden Lion nominee and Grand Special Jury Prize winner has drawn praise from critics worldwide, and saw Kiarostami hailed as one of the great directors at the turn of the millennium.
A group of purported engineers make their way to the small Kurdish village of Siah Dareh, though the motivation behind their trip is initially unknown. Towards the end of their scenic journey through the hills of Iran, the men meet a small boy, Farzhad (Farzhad Sohrabi), who offers them a place to stay and is immediately befriended by the focal engineer Behzad (Behzad Dourani).
Behzad tells young Farzhad that his presence there is to hunt for treasure, a rumour which is subsequently circulated by the young boy, but about which the locals still speculate. Behzad, however, spends his time wandering the village and observing the villagers, whilst persistently querying the health of a sick and elderly woman who resides in the village. The woman, we learn, is Farzhad’s 100-year-old grandma, and her health is a constant source of interest to Behzad and his crew.
During their time in the village, the engineers become agitated and impatient, and it becomes clear that they are awaiting the death of the elderly Mrs Malek. Behzad receives regular telephone calls from his Producer in Tehran - an increasingly frustrated woman – whose concerns are only for the time that it is taking for Mrs Malek to pass away.
Behzad, however, is determined to stay in the village until his duty is fulfilled, and by doing so opens himself up to a different world to that which he knows. A slow-paced and naturally beautiful town, which thrives on simplicity and collective responsibility, becomes his short term home and gives him a little more insight into the nature of life and death…
The opening scene sees the car of engineers driving down the long and winding road of a hill side, whilst asking one another for directions and looking out for landmarks to confirm that they are on the correct route. Straight away, Kiarostami fuses comic dialogue with an idyllic backdrop and symbolic references to great effect, setting the tone for the rest of the film. Utilising the flat roads around the mountains, he intimates that too often people are distracted off course by the appeal of a less challenging alternative.
Kiarostami is also quick to draw attention to the impatience of the engineers in the car, a trait which is maintained by the characters throughout the film, and which is a major theme of the feature.
The film is very documentary-esque in the way that life, lifestyles and scenery are so prevalently observed throughout. The beautifully simplistic way of life becomes ever more appealing as the picture develops, and the audience begin to appreciate the appeal of such a lifestyle.
But this film is as much about what we do see as what we do not, and it is this desire to see more which the director continually feeds throughout. Kiarostami intelligently plays on the viewers’ intrigue and impatience, often to the point of frustration, with the aim of educating his audience in the same way as his protagonist.
There are several key characters in this movie that are never actually introduced to the audience, and this serves to bolster Kiarostami’s message, as the film achieves its goal without having to display such characters. The viewer learns, in a sense, to take pleasure in what is available to them rather than to dwell on possibilities. For example, aside from Behzad, the engineers are never seen. Neither is Mrs Malek, the ailing old lady whose imminent death is seemingly the engineer’s only reason for being in the village. The audience are never permitted to view inside any of the village houses, and Youssef - the man on the hill to where Behzad must drive each time his mobile phone rings in order to get a signal - is also never seen. Youssef’s voice is only heard from below the hill, where he digs a ditch for telecommunications purposes and converses with Behzad. Neither do we see the face of the Youssef’s 16-year-old fiancé, Zeynab, during one of the film’s key scenes. During this scene, Behzad seeks milk from Zeynab’s cow and is taken down to a cellar where the young lady milks a cow whilst Behzad - somewhat condescendingly - recites poetry to her.
The poem recited is that from which the title takes its name, and is a relatively erotic poem. Behzad asks several times to see the young woman’s face, but to his dismay she does not hold up the lamp with which the cellar is lit. Again, the viewers are left to their own imagination, and encouraged to listen rather than only to see.
There are, of course, some wonderful and tranquil moments captured here, such as a turtle taking its time to make its way across the land and a large beetle pushing its earth along the ground. Nevertheless, the sound in this film is every bit as important as the aesthetic visuals, and Kiarostami’s soundtrack with the simple sounds of nature are what allow the audience to experience so much with far less visual information.
Ironically, it is the local doctor towards the end of the film who talks about not limiting himself - choosing to occupy his time observing life rather than surrounding himself with death. Perhaps, then, it is his words which echo most once the film has ended; do not wait for the promises of paradise to materialise in the afterlife, when so much beauty is before you in the present.
The doctor’s statement that nobody has been to this paradise and come back to tell us whether it exists is somewhat surprising and unexpected within a nation so devoted to religion. But this is a film which discourages intrigue and impatience and promotes acceptance, and the ability to slow down enjoy what is at hand.
A brilliantly filmed and wonderfully narrated feature, which expresses in so many different ways the beauty of life and the necessity for appreciation. This non-drama discourages expectation and anticipation, choosing instead to incite observation and fulfilment. While it may be a little slow-paced for many, those with patience and a penchant for the idyllic will be rewarded with an insightful and humorous piece of world cinema. TMO
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Film: Ten
Year of production: 2002
UK Release date: 27th June 2011
Distributor: Artificial Eye
Certificate: 15
Running time: 91 mins
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Starring: Mania Akbari, Amin Maher, Kamran Adl, Roya Arabshahi, Amene Moradi
Genre: Drama
Format: DVD
Country of Production: France/Iran/USA
Language: Persian
Review by: Mark Player
Originally available through Optimum Home Releasing since 2003, Abbas Kiarostami's Ten is being re-released as part of Artificial Eye's new Abbas Kiarostami Collection. The DVD set also includes Ten's behind-the-scenes companion piece 10 On Ten, as well as Taste Of Cherry, The Wind Will Carry Us, ABC Africa and Certified Copy.
Not to be confused with Blake Edwards' film of the same name, where Dudley Moore becomes romantically obsessed with a swimsuit-clad Bo Derek, Kiarostami's Ten is regarded as somewhat of a landmark in contemporary Iranian cinema. Taking a much loved narrative technique used by the director in many of his past works (conversations taking placed inside a car) to its logical limit, the film is set entirely in a single vehicle. Not only does it result in an intriguing character study of the car's owner, but offers an interesting evaluation of Iranian society from a usually repressed female perspective.
The character in question is a nameless female driver of the car (Mania Akbari), formerly divorced, but now remarried to another man. The film is divided into ten sections (hence the title), each one dedicated to a different conversation involving the driver and a passenger – her young son, Amin; her sister; an elderly religious woman; a prostitute hitching a lift; and a friend with a complicated love-life – as they travel through the crowded streets of Iran.
The passengers confide their frustrations with the driver, discussing their role and identity (or lack of) in a society where women are best neither seen nor heard. Gradually, we also start to learn things about the driver; chiefly: how her divorce and subsequent second marriage has affected the relationship with her 8-year-old son...
Using non-actors, set in a single location (albeit a moving one) and taking full advantage of the flexibility offered by digital camera equipment, Ten is about as low-key as an internationally released film can get. The entire production consists of two cameras fixed onto the dashboard, one pointing at each front seat. Indeed, the film feels somewhat paradoxical in nature: a work from one of Iran's most revered auteurs that in actuality, considering the nature of the production, had very little input from him. Much of the dialogue was improvised and the characters were partly based on the people that played them; for instance, the driver and her son in the film are also mother and son in real life and much of their ensuing tension stems from real traumas.
The performances, then, if they can be called such, are very good; evoking a candid, fly-on-the-wall naturalism that was undoubtedly the film's intention. The real meat lies in the verbal confrontations between the driver and her son, with the precocious Amin (Amin Maher) making for a formidable sparring partner; challenging his mother's desires for an independent lifestyle in the face of marital and parental commitments as well as society's wish for quiet conformity. Some of his chauvinistic tirades last up to fifteen minutes; the majority of which captured in a single shot, but not necessarily in a single take, however. The splicing together of multiple takes from the same angle is very slight, yet noticeable upon closer inspection, but the performances remain impressive nonetheless.
Another interesting facet to the performances is the amount of time that they're visible on screen. Kiarostami has chosen a very careful and unhurried editing pace, meaning that the film will play out for several minutes before cutting to the other person in the conversation, except for the segments involving the old woman on her way to the Mausoleum for prayer and the prostitute, where Kiarostami decides to never show them. Only a glimpse is afforded to the latter, as she stands on a street corner with her back turned to camera in the only shot of the film that's not inside the car.
Whilst there isn't a plot in the traditional sense, that's not to say that the Ten is about nothing. It’s a look at a small, predominantly female group, who feel they lack the ability to control their own lives and fulfil their own desires. Segments are introduced via numbered title cards that count from ten down to one - designed to emulate an old-fashioned film leader, but this has the appearance of a cheap video effect. On the bright side, those who find the following conversations to be tediously everyday – which, admittedly, they are – will easily be able to work out how many segments are left.
Naturally, Ten's defiance of standard cinematic conventions won't be for everyone. Also, one can't help but think that it would've made for a better video installation in an art gallery than a full length feature. The concept, albeit very pure and easily defined, feels as if it’s being stretched to fit the gap, as opposed to being pushed to its limits. However, while it could be argued that other recent national works, such as Marjane Satrapi's animated biography, Persepolis, look at the role of women in Iranian society in a more structured and entertaining way, it doesn't come close to the verity honesty that's evident here.
Ten is a fascinating exercise in filmmaking economy; however, such minimalism requires plenty of patience in order to fully appreciation the film. Some will be put off by the cheap, no-frills production; others will be captivated by its rawness. Either way, Ten remains a daring and challenging work in more ways than one. MP
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Film: Taste Of Cherry
Year of production: 1997
UK Release date: 27th June 2011
Distributor: Artificial Eye
Certificate: 15
Running time: 98 mins
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Starring: Homayoun Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bagheri, Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari, Safar Ali Moradi, Mir Hossein Noori
Genre: Drama
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Iran/France
Language: Persian
Review by: Karen Rogerson
Released as part of The Abbas Kiarostami Collection. The most celebrated Iranian director of the late 20th century, Abbas Kiarostami’s film career began in the early 1970s. With a largely non professional cast, and shot almost entirely using a camera fixed in a car, Taste of Cherry deliberately retains the simplicity of the self-taught Kiarostami’s early works.
In the outskirts of Tehran, a man circles the streets in his Land Rover with apparent aimlessness, cut off from the hubbub of the crowds outside, ignoring appeals from labourers surrounding the car asking if he wants to hire workers. Eventually, the man’s purpose is revealed.
In the dusty hills circling the city, he has dug a grave in the hillside. That evening, he intends to take his entire stash of sleeping pills, lie down in the ground and wait to die. He’s trying to find a stranger who will agree to come to the grave the next morning and call out his name to see if he is still alive. If he is, the man must help him out of the grave; if he has died, the man must shovel dirt into the grave to cover his body.
The driver, identified only as Mr Badii, is offering a generous financial reward for this task. The men he encounters are dispossessed, immigrant workers earning meagre wages, scavenging rubbish heaps for plastic bags to resell, enduring the loneliness and tedium of guarding a deserted construction site, or far from home and drafted into the service of the army. But despite the promise of money, it’s no easy task for Badii to find someone to help him. His proposal is met with fear and unease from some, and compassion but moral objection from others.
The film takes place over the course of one day and its following, decisive night, centring upon Badii’s search and composed almost entirely of shots within his car and of its progress through the hills…
With no music, save for the opening and closing titles, the film is soundtracked by the gentle crunch of the car’s wheels on gravel as Badii cruises the bare roads of the barren, dusty hills surrounding the city. This monotony is broken by the occasional cry of a wild bird, the sounds of traffic, the racket of a construction site, or the far off barking of a dog. The colourlessness of the soundtrack is matched by the dusty bleakness of its landscape. Towards the film’s end, the sudden injection of colour in shots of trees turned to gold by the late evening light and the dramatic contrast of a thunderstorm over the hillside at night give a last minute suggestion of vitality which may or may not indicate some renewed attachment to life on the part of Badii.
The predominance of shots filmed on a fixed camera within the car is characteristic of Kiarostami’s filmmaking. He has spoken of the particular quality this device lends to personal interaction – “I have a very intimate sense when I am in a car with someone next to me...silence doesn’t seem heavy or difficult.” Badii and the strangers he talks to in the car always appear separately on the screen, emphasising the isolation between them, as well as the peculiar intimacy in which the dialogues take place.
Homayoun Ershadi’s performance as Mr Badii is grave and dignified, expressive of depression’s blank eyed lack of reaction to life - and to others - and the way it can obscure the possibility of hope. At the same time, Badii is able to empathise with the loneliness and aspirations of the men that he meets, even if these interchanges become increasingly mechanical and desperate as his search goes on. Abdolrahman Bagheri also shines as the harsh voiced but compassionate Turkish stranger who relates his own story of a confrontation with despair, a tale which has the quality of a fable in its simplicity and lack of moralising.
Taste Of Cherry examines one man’s dark night of the soul, and the lack of any explanation for Badii’s choice of suicide lends the film a sense of abstraction which makes the story that of any man battling between despair and the sense of life’s preciousness. A moral debate goes on in the film about the nature of suicide, whether self destruction is as great a sin as murder, or whether perhaps unhappiness itself and the pain it causes others is a greater wrong. The repeated appeal to the successive strangers for help has the quality of a religious parable, as each man’s response reveals his own beliefs about the nature of compassion for his fellow man, and whether the most compassionate act could be to help that man towards his own destruction with some dignity.
Despite the artfully crafted naturalism of its style and the realistic and quietly affecting performances of its cast, Taste Of Cherry is as bleak as its subject. Its repetitive shots of the Land Rover creeping along the hillside roads – in some cases, they look as if they have been literally reused – creates a mood of numb blankness. This is probably a deliberate device to evoke the colourless nature of the world seen through the viewpoint of Badii’s despair, but this visual blandness and the incredibly slow pace make the film hard to engage with, seeming longer than its hour-and-a-half duration. Taste Of Cherry’s creeping pace and uncomfortable silences – however deliberately meant – don’t do credit to the best scenes, which appear towards the film’s end (in which I don’t include its controversial final scene).
Taste Of Cherry is an artful piece of filmmaking, showcasing Kiarostami’s work’s characteristic qualities of naturalism, lack of sentimentality and a refusal to overegg the drama of a simple plot for the sake of manipulating the audience’s emotions. Cleverly constructed, it won critical acclaim and the Palme d’Or in 1997, but its cleverness doesn’t make it the easiest film to like. KR
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Film: 10 On Ten
Year of production: 2004
UK Release date: 27th June 2011
Distributor: Artificial Eye
Certificate: 15
Running time: 88 mins
Director: Abbas Kiarostami
Genre: Documentary
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Iran/France
Language: Persian/English
Review by: Karen Rogerson
Released as part of The Abbas Kiarostami Collection. Award-winning director, Abbas Kiarostami delivers a masterclass in film direction, revealing the techniques underlying his artfully artless filmmaking. The documentary focuses on his 2002 work 10, a film which showcases the hyper realism which is Kiarostami’s signature style.
The documentary retains the same pared down minimalism as 10, being entirely shot within a car while Kiarostami addresses the camera directly. Delivered in the style of a lecture, Kiarostami’s talk is divided into ten sections, covering crucial aspects of filmmaking, such as the role of the camera, script, location, music, actors and director.
Kiarostami describes how he attempts to minimise the artificial impact of the technical traditions of filmmaking, techniques which can impair telling the naturalistic stories for which he is renowned. Digital camera or video is favoured instead of “artistic” cinematography. Music is rarely used, as this can manipulate the audience’s reactions to move or excite, like “picking pockets in the dark.” Kiarostami favours using a large number of non-professional actors, both to give flesh and voice to his characters and to avoid a contrived style of acting. Simple locations – his preferred one being the interior of a car – are used to allow the film to focus upon the characters without distraction.
Kiarostami is clearly keen that his role as director is not that of a critical and controlling presence, but one who enables his characters to tell their stories with the minimum of interference, without the distraction of superfluities, such as a literary narrative voiceover or unnecessary visual flourishes. In his conclusion, Kiarostami warns students not to disregard the formula of American cinema. Hollywood’s success has enabled American films to dominate cinema throughout the world, so despite his obvious distaste for the Hollywood formula, he advises that it shouldn’t be taken lightly or disregarded...
The documentary raises some useful insights into filmmaking. It’s difficult not to be aware, when watching mainstream cinema, of the methods which are often lazily used to manipulate audience reaction and distract from the absence of any real substance. Crassly overblown music makes films laughable when it’s disproportionate to the emotional impact of what’s actually going on onscreen. Big budget special effects don’t compensate for overlooking a decent script or a good cast. As Kiarostami comments, the absence of complicated technical equipment or special effects can free filmmaking from the shackles of capital and censorship, in an industry where production and distribution backing figure so largely that it determines whether a film gets widespread viewing, or gets made at all.
By contrast to the Hollywood machine, Kiarostami adopts an almost punk ethos in his filmmaking, where a lack of technical sophistication – all the skills needed to film are contained in a digital camera, he says – helps to minimise the artificiality of the process. This type of film undoubtedly has an important place and it’s a natural reaction to the out of control commercialism that’s produced so many sub-standard sequels and poor English language remakes of far superior European originals.
Interesting as Kiarostami’s ideas are, they overlook the fact that more metaphorical modes of filmmaking can also depict a kind of truth. Visual art and literature moved away from naturalism and linear narrative in the early 20th century to exploring different ways of representing reality – whether through the fractured planes of Cubism, the emotional intensity of Expressionism, or the interior dreamscapes of surrealism. Film became a popular medium at the same time, and filmmakers have never shied away from the opportunities it offers to present human existence in more experimental ways. Kiarostami’s recreations of everyday dialogue and situations may ape reality, but that doesn’t mean that the expressionism of directors such as Terence Malick or the surrealism of Luis Buñuel can’t be equally valid ways of expressing the experience of human consciousness. As Kiarostami admits, he is a self taught director, and his principles may not be for all, but they certainly contribute an important insight into his own methods for creating films with artistic integrity and serious intention.
An interesting watch for any film student, but a little dry for anyone who isn’t, Kiarostami talks intelligently and persuasively about the ethos behind his work. Any filmmaker, particularly those drawn towards the low tech and improvisational approach used by directors such as Mike Leigh, should find food for thought in Kiarostami’s methods, even if the pared down naturalism of his work may not be enjoyable for all audiences. KR
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Film: La Ville Louvre
Year of production: 1990
UK Release date: 1990
Distributor: Artificial Eye
Certificate: E
Running time: 84 mins
Director: Nicolas Philibert
Genre: Documentary
Format: DVD
Country of Production: France
Language: French
Review by: Sarah Hill
The Louvre is arguably one of the world’s most well-known museums. It has dominated Paris since the late 12th century, expanding alongside the city itself. The Louvre has seen many structural additions and renovations over the years, particularly the introduction of the glass pyramid, built by I.M. Pei, which was officially opened on March 30th 1989. The pyramid is the focal point of the museum’s main axes of circulation and serves as an entrance to large reception hall beneath. It’s the vast amount of work that went into to renovating the Louvre and its exhibits which is the subject of this documentary by award-winning filmmaker Nicolas Philibert (Etre Et Avoir).
La Ville Louvre delves into the Louvre’s many passages and reserves as thousands of workers – from construction workers to cleaners – strive to ensure that the museum and its exhibitions are ready for the grand re-opening following the addition of the glass pyramid in the 1980s…
Uncertainty pervades the opening scenes of Nicolas Philibert’s La Ville Louvre. Lit only by the dim light of a torch, a shadowy figure walks slowly up some steps and pulls out a large set of keys with which he unlocks a door. The audience is being taken on a journey into another world – a city within a city – home to numerous priceless objects of art - unlike anything seen before.
As the documentary begins to delve into this unknown universe, the most striking thing is just how vast it really is. Indeed, the viewer is informed that at the time of filming, the Louvre had 15 km of underground passages, employed 1,200 employees and housed 300,000 works of art. However, despite this obvious grandeur, the film focuses mainly on the many people within this world who work to ensure that all the expositions are mounted and to the highest possible standard before the Louvre is re-opened to the public. One of the things that the film does well is how it conveys the extent of the staff’s commitment. In one particular scene, a team of six is required to lift one painting which, when laid flat, fills half the large room. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that certain members of staff are shown working out in the Louvre’s very own gym in order to be able to lift such cumbersome works of art.
It seems that the staff will do almost anything if it’s in the best interests of the museum and its art. They deliberate over every detail – even down to whether they wear the Yves Sant Laurent suits or something from another designer, because, as the manager tells them, at the Louvre, “You can do what you like, as long as you do things properly.” The dedication is palpable as the director repeatedly cuts back to a female member of staff sitting alone in a room, delicately restoring a painting with painstaking precision, with the light from the window behind her creating an almost celestial glow. This sense of divinity is reinforced by the fact that the works of art are treated with a large degree of reverence and they are nearly always the sole focus of the frame.
Despite the initial serious tone, the film also exhibits some very subtle comedic moments, as the film moves away from the majestic paintings to the more mundane aspects of working life at the Louvre, such as when they have to undergo fire safety and first aid training. Their blank stares as they are forced to stand around and be lectured until they are required to grapple with a fire extinguisher is something that almost any worker in the audience can relate to, and so it is difficult not to chuckle in recognition.
However, throughout the film, there is an overwhelming, inescapable feeling that something is missing: a voiceover. Whilst the decision to not include a voiceover is partly understandable, as the subject of the film is highly visual - this is reflected within the form of the film itself and the fact that it chooses to limit the use of audio codes - it makes the viewing experience just that bit more difficult. Without a voiceover, the film lacks context. The audience does not really learn anything about the subject of the film and it is difficult to feel any connection with the staff, particularly as they say very little - it feels as if we are merely observing them rather than becoming part of their unusual environment.
The objects themselves also lack context, as they are not viewed in their usual positions within an exhibition and it is possibly more difficult to appreciate them without having been given any further information. In addition, a voiceover would certainly help to give the film a better pace, as it can often be very repetitive: many scenes involve the workers quietly deliberating over where to position the same few paintings. Therefore, without a voiceover to move things along, the film feels as if it far exceeds its 84-minute running time.
La Ville Louvre has an interesting premise and, for a while at least, it is impossible not to be struck by the vastness and the sheer amount of work involved in running one of the world’s most famous museums. However, once the initial fascination has worn off, the film’s lack of pace and context means that even serious appreciators of art would struggle to remain enthralled by it. SH
Film: Kaboom
Year of production: 2010
UK Release date: 10th June 2011
Distributor: Artificial Eye
Certificate: TBC
Running time: 86 mins
Director: Gregg Araki
Starring: Thomas Dekker, Haley Bennett, Chris Zylka, Roxane Mesquida, Juno Temple
Genre: Comedy/Horror/Mystery/Sci-Fi
Format: DVD
Country of Production: USA/France
Language: English
Review by: Anna Attallah
Written and directed by veteran of the New Queer Cinema scene Gregg Araki, this LSD infused slice of science fiction won the first ever Queer Palm award at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival. Having made his name tackling shocking subjects (from drugs, kinky sex and Neo-Nazis in his Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy to child sexual abuse in the critically acclaimed Mysterious Skin), Araki now branches out into underground cults and conspiracy theories in the psychedelic college comedy Kaboom.
Smith (Thomas Dekker) is a typical college student – or, more precisely, what a typical college student wishes they were: a person whose degree constitutes zero studying and a hundred percent hard partying. His days are spent lusting after his surfer roommate, Thor, and hanging out with his sardonic best friend, Stella (Haley Bennett). So far so ordinary, until Smith receives a postcard stating he is “the chosen one” and people from his dreams disconcertingly start popping up in his waking life.
These include Stella’s lesbian love interest, Lorelei (Roxanne Mesquida), a witch with rejection issues (don’t ask), and an ethereal redhead who introduces herself by vomiting on Smith’s shoes at a party. After ingesting a drug-laced cookie, Smith heads off to have technicolour sex with a voracious man-eater named London (Juno Temple). When she kicks him out of her room, he and the mysterious red-headed girl are chased by strange men in animal masks through the college grounds. The girl is brutally stabbed in the head, but when Smith wakes up alone, he isn’t sure if this escapade was real or simply a very bad trip.
It transpires that the red-headed girl is named Madeleine and she is involved with a secret underground cult called the ‘New Order’. Unbeknownst to Smith, his involvement with this cult is a lot closer to home than he realises. It is only when his friends and family start disappearing that Smith discovers time is running out not just for himself, but for the whole world...
It is clear that this is a film which is going through a serious identity crisis. Is it an irreverent comedy tackling teenage angst, a journey of sexual discovery, a horror film, or a tense thriller? Araki seems to have given up on trying to weave these different styles together and instead has just thrown them all at the screen and hoped for the best, resulting in a film that seems far too amateurish for someone who is directing their tenth feature. Although Araki’s sense of fun and unpretentious attitude shine through, it’s hard not to get the feeling that he is trying to do a Donnie Darko, but falling short.
Firstly, there are the endless “Am I awake or am I dreaming?” sequences which are meant to blur fact and fiction, but, in the end, only serve to make the viewer switch off, as inevitably the scene they are watching usually ends in Smith gasping and spluttering as he wakes. The chaotic conspiracy theory sub-plot also suffers from a lack of development; it is simply tacked on at the end in a slap-dash manner which seems to leave the characters just as confused as the audience. The mystery of Madeleine and Smith’s involvement in the cult is revealed seemingly in the space of twenty minutes, where Smith can barely keep up with the speed of events he is being forced to explain and the camera jerkily jumps from one unlikely link to the other.
The disordered structure isn’t helped by the fact that Araki uses every horror cliché in the book, with enough “he’s-behind-you!” moments to rival the number of scenes where characters start awake. In one scene in particular, Stella is forced to defend herself when her one time lover, Lorelei, turns murderous. The fact that Lorelei is a witch with supernatural powers gives endless scope for paranormal creepiness, but their exchange simply descends into a bland parody of the Wizard Of Oz, with Lorelei being defeated by water from the bathroom tap. Araki does occasionally produce some genuine tension, particularly when Smith is running for his life from the animal-masked members of the New Order, but hardcore horror fans will barely raise an eyebrow at most throughout.
Despite some dubious material, the cast take it all in their stride, with Thomas Dekker giving a sincere performance which captures the vulnerability of adolescence. Juno Temple is also worth a mention as she navigates her way through countless X-rated on-screen orgasms as if she’s been doing it all her life, confidently playing a part that would have been too out-there for many other young actresses to handle.
Apart from a great cast, Araki has also chosen the perfect soundtrack to compliment this off-beat adventure, with songs from popular Indie bands such as the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The xx to angsty favourites Placebo.
Although his efforts to charm the teenage audience he represented back in the 1990s seem forced, it is when he is in full college comedy mode that Araki is at his best, with some genuinely funny dialogue and sharp observations of college existence mostly courtesy of Hayley Bennett’s expert deadpan delivery. Nevertheless, you can’t help coming away wishing he’d ditched the senseless pseudo science fiction and stuck to his strengths.
Kaboom is refreshingly raw; a neon coloured foray into sex and sci-fi which doesn’t take itself too seriously. The script sparkles with some snappy one-liners and there is plenty of good-looking flesh on show, but even this cannot save the film from a clumsy plot which goes into chaotic overdrive as the sex gets increasingly weirder, the explanations get increasingly improbable, and the film collapses under its own ridiculousness. AA
Film: Nénette
Year of production: 2010
UK Release date: 23rd May 2011
Distributor: Artificial Eye
Certificate: PG
Running time: 70 mins
Director: Nicolas Philibert
Genre: Documentary
Format: DVD
Country of Production: France
Language: French
Review by: Lucy Judd
In the words of director Nicolas Philibert, “Nénette is a mirror… we attribute all kinds of feelings, intentions and even thoughts to her. In talking about her, we talk about ourselves.” These words act as a great introduction to this film, but they still manage to go only some of the way in explaining the unusual appeal of this film-documentary which centres on Nénette the orangutan, a key attraction of the Jardin des Plantes Zoo, Paris.
Transferred to captivity from her natural habitat in Borneo 37 years ago, Nénette, is now over 40 years old, and has far surpassed the usual life-expectancy of her species. She is still, though, as one of the zoo’s visitors points out, the “victim of her own rarity,” and - as the camera focuses on her from the other side of her glass cage - we learn of her life, of the three mates she has outlived, and of the four children she has born (three of which have been transported to other locations in the interest of conservation)…
In reviewing a documentary, you expect to be able to offer little to nothing on aspects such as characters and scripting. However, if there is one thing that Philibert can be congratulated for in Nénette, it is his well-executed inclusion of these elements within this genre. For example, the subtle establishment of Nénette’s character and history is incredibly successful, with the viewer more than likely to be drawn into her story. Be warned, though, this is achieved largely through the use of extended close-ups, and the passing comments and interviews of unseen visitors and staff at Jardin des Plantes. As a result, it does require some concentration to get the very best out of the story. Philibert’s ‘script’ technique is interesting, too, owing to the unusual combination of impromptu reactions and comments from visitors with a handful of staff interviews, which were probably useful in allowing some scope for the management of structure and theme-development in the film.
It might not be quite right to say that this documentary has a plotline so much as that some carefully considered framing and audio-visual editing have managed to highlight a series of themes which are interesting enough to occupy and entertain most people for seventy minutes. Similarly, we won’t be crediting Nénette and her orangutan companions with award-winning ‘performances’. However, Philibert can be worthily commended for capturing the very charm of these animals that first inspired him to create this short film. The human-like behaviours that Nénette exhibits are the most captivating of all, and the choice to include images from her ‘tea time’ was brilliant - there is something quite enthralling about watching an orangutan masterfully open and enjoy a flask of tea and a yoghurt as though she were a sun-worshipping picnicker in the park.
The running theme of this film seems to be that of the similarities between human and orangutan behaviours. The ‘mirror’ effect between the two sides of the glass emphasises the possibility of Nénette being capable of sharing human thoughts and feelings, and this is established by stark facial close-ups and a fly-on-the-wall filming style. All of this encourages the viewer to question how much Nénette is able to take in and understand, and, more importantly, how she might feel about all of it. With this, Nénette inevitably raises some of the moral and ethical questions that exist around keeping wild animals in captivity. However, crucially, this is left up to the viewer to make up their own mind, and thankfully, while there is plenty of room for sympathising with Nénette’s seeming depression, with the little orangutans playing happily nearby, too, there is little chance of this film being misinterpreted as any kind of animal rights propaganda.
This film certainly evokes curiosity about this little-known and little-understood species, and it does invite the viewer to ask many questions that unfortunately Nénette is, quite literally, unable to offer any answers to. This is, though, a truly fascinating picture, and part of its magnetism lies in this inherent inability of Nénette to give you any of your answers. Individual interpretation of her moods, thoughts and feelings mean that this film might potentially mean quite different things to different people. LJ
