The fact that the FIPRESCI group thought to give it a special "anti-award" makes me laugh, though.Mister Tee wrote:Thanks to Sonic and the others who've been keeping this up to date.
It doesn't appear to be a Cannes where anyone saw God. There was the obligatory "it's godawful/it's genius" split over AntiChrist (about which I'm already bored senseless),
Cannes 2009
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'Dogtooth' wins Un Certain Regard
Lanthimos’ drama nabs honors at Cannes
By JOHN HOPEWELL
In a rare triumph for Greek cinema at Cannes, Yorgos Lanthimos’ unsettling repression drama "Dogtooth" took the top Un Certain Regard Prize Saturday at Cannes.
The triumph of "Dogtooth" - yet another dysfunctional family tale which finally flares into violence at an edition of Cannes which has had a handful - was something of a turn-up for the books.
Turning on three teen children who are kept almost completely cut-off from the world by their parents, "Dogtooth" drew sympatgetic reviews.
But this year’s Un Certain Regard boasted films from a bevy of name international auteurs - Korea’s Bong Joon-ho, Iran’s Bahman Ghobadi, Romania’s Cristian Mungiu and Corneliu Porumboiu, Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda - whose films grabbed a lot more attention.
And a bevy of movies had generated warm buzz during the festival. Three of these took all the other Un Certain Regard kudos.
Porumboui’s much-admired "Police, Adjective," about a cop’s reluctant surveillance of a pot-smoking teen, won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize, adding to a Fipresci award earlier Saturday as best film in the sidebar.
Two other praised films shared a Special Prize: French director Mia Hansen-Love’s "Father of My Children," a painful record of the suicide of an indie producer; and Bahman Ghobadi’s section opener "No One Knows About The Persian Cats," a shot-on-the-hoof tale of two budding musicians in Iran’s rebellious, repressed but vibrant underground rock-music scene, a film which marks a change of direction for the helmer.
UN CERTAIN REGARD PRIZE
"Dogtooth," Yorgos Lanthimos (Greece)
UN CERTAIN REGARD JURY PRIZE
"Police, Adjective," Corneliu Porumboiu (Romania)
SPECIAL PRIZE UN CERTAIN REGARD 2009
"No One Knows About The Persian Cats," Bahman Ghobadi (Iran) and "Father of My Children," Mia Hansen-Love (France).
Lanthimos’ drama nabs honors at Cannes
By JOHN HOPEWELL
In a rare triumph for Greek cinema at Cannes, Yorgos Lanthimos’ unsettling repression drama "Dogtooth" took the top Un Certain Regard Prize Saturday at Cannes.
The triumph of "Dogtooth" - yet another dysfunctional family tale which finally flares into violence at an edition of Cannes which has had a handful - was something of a turn-up for the books.
Turning on three teen children who are kept almost completely cut-off from the world by their parents, "Dogtooth" drew sympatgetic reviews.
But this year’s Un Certain Regard boasted films from a bevy of name international auteurs - Korea’s Bong Joon-ho, Iran’s Bahman Ghobadi, Romania’s Cristian Mungiu and Corneliu Porumboiu, Japan’s Hirokazu Kore-eda - whose films grabbed a lot more attention.
And a bevy of movies had generated warm buzz during the festival. Three of these took all the other Un Certain Regard kudos.
Porumboui’s much-admired "Police, Adjective," about a cop’s reluctant surveillance of a pot-smoking teen, won the Un Certain Regard Jury Prize, adding to a Fipresci award earlier Saturday as best film in the sidebar.
Two other praised films shared a Special Prize: French director Mia Hansen-Love’s "Father of My Children," a painful record of the suicide of an indie producer; and Bahman Ghobadi’s section opener "No One Knows About The Persian Cats," a shot-on-the-hoof tale of two budding musicians in Iran’s rebellious, repressed but vibrant underground rock-music scene, a film which marks a change of direction for the helmer.
UN CERTAIN REGARD PRIZE
"Dogtooth," Yorgos Lanthimos (Greece)
UN CERTAIN REGARD JURY PRIZE
"Police, Adjective," Corneliu Porumboiu (Romania)
SPECIAL PRIZE UN CERTAIN REGARD 2009
"No One Knows About The Persian Cats," Bahman Ghobadi (Iran) and "Father of My Children," Mia Hansen-Love (France).
"I want cement covering every blade of grass in this nation! Don't we taxpayers have a voice anymore?" Peggy Gravel (Mink Stole) in John Waters' Desperate Living (1977)
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Map of the Sounds of Tokyo
(Spain)
By LESLIE FELPERIN
Variety
Pretty to look at but largely vacuous, Spanish helmer Isabel Coixet's romantic drama "Map of the Sounds of Tokyo" plays like a perfume ad without a product. The Tokyo-set yarn about a Japanese hit-femme who falls for a Spanish man she's supposed to whack reps a vague cross between "Nikita" and "Last Tango in Paris," but without the former's kinetic action or the latter's resonance. Admittedly, "Tokyo's" softcore sex scenes smoke, which might just help pic map out niche distribution in some territories, but critical support will be thin on the ground, judging by the boos that greeted the Cannes press showing.
"Map of the Sounds of Tokyo" delivers a major disappointment after Coixet's underrated Philip Roth adaptation "Elegy," which seemed to herald the arrival of a new, tougher-minded vigor in her direction. Instead, the latest pic, this time written entirely by the helmer herself, sees Coixet returning to the excessively precious, cod-melancholy tone that marred her earlier pic "The Secret Life of Words."
Critical goodwill extended toward the helmer for her patchy if effective breakout arthouse drama "My Life Without Me" won't be so forthcoming this time round.
The story here is told via ponderous, would-be poetic narration in Japanese by an unnamed sound recordist (Min Tanaka), who explains how he has a chaste relationship with a mysterious woman named Ryu (stunning Rinko Kikuchi from "Babel"). Ryu does menial but cinematically picturesque work in Tokyo's fish market, so, she explains later, she doesn't have to think.
The fact that she has a big, stylishly furnished if minimalist apartment that a fish-market-worker's salary could never afford, always wears slinky black clothes, and in her free time cleans graves and looks sad all adds up to the revelation that she's a hitwoman. Ryu's latest assignment is to kill Spanish wine-shop owner David (Sergi Lopez, "Pan's Labyrinth") on the behalf of a businessman (Takeo Nakahara) whose daughter Midori supposedly committed suicide over David .
Instead of just killing David in a crowded street and running off like a proper assassin would, Ryu packs her piece in a dainty handbag (clothes and accessory porn will rep one selling point for femme auds), goes to meet him in his store and is instantly charmed by fact that he recognizes her as a woman who knows her wine. Before you can say "Tampopo," slurps of ramen lead to a different kind of slurping in a love-hotel room fashioned to look like a Paris subway car. Soon after, Ryu offers to pay the client back his money with interest so she doesn't have to slay David.
It's all really rather silly, but one thing that can be said in Coixet's defense is that she knows how to tap into the erotic fantasies of some female viewers. Although Lopez's alarmingly hirsute chest might put off some, his David is almost the perfect arthouse stud monkey: He has a nice bourgeois job that requires refinement and connoisseurship, but is muy macho and assertive in the bedroom, and loves cunnilingus to boot.
If only the film showed the character enjoying lengthy discussions of feelings and demonstrating skill at fixing household appliances, he could be to specialist-film-loving women viewers today what Beatrice Dalle in "Betty Blue" was to arty college boys in the 1980s.
Although Lopez and Kikuchi have great chemistry and both have proved their acting chops elsewhere, something's gone badly awry here so that every time they open their mouths -- to talk, instead of snog -- they sound stilted and flat. It doesn't help that neither is speaking their first language, but largely it's the pretentious of the script that fails them.
The movie looks nice, courtesy of Jean Claude Larrieu's lensing (Coixet herself once again takes a credit as camera operator and this is one job she's indisputably good at). But as with fellow Cannes 2009 competitor Gaspar Noe's "Enter the Void" also proves, use of Tokyo's photogenic, color-saturated locations will only get a film so far if it doesn't have something interesting to say. Sound design credited to Fabiola Ordoyo is good enough but not quite as intricate or nuanced as one would expect given the prominence of sound in both title and screenplay.
Rest of tech credits are pro.
-----------------------------------
Map of the Sounds of Tokyo
24 May, 2009 | By Lee Marshall
Screendaily
Dir/scr Isabel Coixet. Spain. 2009. 106 mins
A designer noir-romance with a designer title and designer emotions, Isabel Coixet’s follow-up to Elegy is as empty as a shiny new Prada handbag on a boutique shelf. Scripted for style and atmosphere rather than for substance, this lushly shot and scored Tokyo-set bauble with its dirge like pacing features unlikely couple Sergi Lopez and Rinko Kikuchi in an affair that seems dictated more by their star status than their chemistry, which is notably lacking.
Map’s slick production values, trendy global-fusion ambience, glossy melancholia and raunchy but female-oriented sex scenes seem calculated to make this extended jazz-pop video a commercially viable date movie for couples looking for a bit of upmarket lust, but the critical reception at Cannes has been cool.
After a Tokyo-by-night credit sequence things start promisingly with a striking restaurant scene where a group of deal-clinching Japanese and Western businessmen eat sushi off naked models’ bodies. But the feast is soured when senior executive Nagara (Nakahara) gets a
call telling him his daughter has committed suicide; she had been in a relationship with Spanish wine shop owner David (Lopez), whom Nagara blames for her death – so like any grieving father, he asks his faithful assistant Ishida (Sakaki) to find a hitman to whack David.
The hitman turns out to be a hitwoman , Ryu (Kikuchi), a solemn loner who works nights at the fish market. Her only real friend is an elderly sound recordist (Tanaka), whose elegaic
voiceovers seem to serve little purpose than to give away the ending from the start and compensate for Kikuchi’s one-note performance as Ryu by filling us in on her dark, enigmatic, under-developed character .
Sound recording can mine a rich narrative seam, as The Conversation and The Lives of Others demonstrated; here, though, it has no bearing on the story and seems chosen purely because it’s a cool and quirky job for the narrator to have.
Somewhat predictably, Ryu falls for the man she was sent to erase, and they begin a series of sexual encounters in a Parisian-themed love hotel, that carry distant echoes of Intimacy and
Last Tango in Paris. By turns steamy and tender, these tastefully explicit scenes work fine within the confines of the themed room the couple always book, but they don’t make us believe in
the connection between the two lovers. It doesn’t help that their wooden English dialogue sounds at times like an outtake from a language class; but the main problem is that neither lead
really seems to have found a way into their role, and Lopez in particular gives one of his most soulless performances in years.
Jean-Claude Larrieu’s rich close-up camerawork has undeniable style, caressing surfaces and textures in classy, slightly desaturated colour. A sparingly used soundtrack mixes urban jazz and bossanova themes with indie rock ballads – but its pretensions are exposed in an unintentionally hilarious scene towards the end when an angst-filled David sings along to Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence in a karaoke bar (Lopez impressively delivers dialogue in Japanese, English and Catalan). Nouvelle cinematic fusion food was rarely so insubstantial and unsatisfying.
-------------------------------------
Film Review: Map of the Sounds of Tokyo
By Maggie Lee
Hollywood Reporter
An erotic-thriller about a Japanese assassin who falls in love with her Spanish target, Isabel Coixet's "Map of the Sounds of Tokyo" is "Nikita" reincarnated with Tokyo eyes. Glossy cinematography and a Wong Kar Wai wannabe soundtrack conspire to rehash some cliched images of the Japanese metropolis, with little that Chris Marker, Wim Wenders, Jean-Pierre Limosin or Sofia Coppola haven't done before.
"Map" will fulfill a certain semi-artsy, mostly European crowd's taste for upmarket exotica with its suggestive representation of a demure oriental beauty's sexual flowering under the experienced touch of a hot-blooded Hispanic. With 2007 Oscar-nominee Rinko Kikuchi ("Babel") making a bold impression as the assassin, a Japanese release is also likely, even if the corny dialogue may be lost in translation.
What's a cool chick with movie star mascara doing slicing slabs of tuna in Tokyo' Tsukiji fish market? An elderly sound recorder (Min Tanaka) is too polite to probe when he befriends taciturn Ryu (Rinko Kikuchi) at the ramen museum. Anyways, he's only enamored of the slurping sounds she makes when she eats, so he's content to meet for casual meals and visits to anonymous graves. One learns of her other vocation through a montage of hit jobs reminiscent of John Woo's "killer" films.
Ryu gets an assignment from corporate CEO Nagara (Takeo Nakahara) to take out David (Sergi Lopez) a Spanish wine merchant who dated his daughter Midori. Nagara blames David for her suicide -- her dying words scribbled in blood intimating the film's theme. Ryu approaches her target through wine-tasting, but also gets a taste of his incredibly hairy chest in a love hotel room furnished like a train carriage. Then, she does what is considered a big "no, no" in the business, and the rest is noir history.
The potboiler plot (which has almost no action for a film about contract killing) and pseudo-Zen musings on life's inherent heartache exist only to underscore the steamy softcore sex scenes, which are well shot but interrupted by gag-worthy dialogue like "Sit here, on top, in my face, till you warm up."
Kikuchi manages to imbue Ryu's cool, placid exterior with some vulnerability that makes her more human. Less likeable is Lopez, whose portfolio of villainous roles (organ trafficker in "Dirty Pretty Things", wife-batterer in "Solo Mia" and Fascist torturer in "Pan's Labyrinth") casts an aggressive air over his image as a romantic lover. And despite his protestations of love for Midori, there is no back story to their relationship to help one make sense of his ensuing affair with Ryu. Even more disturbing is Coixet's fascination with portraying talented, beautiful women who offer up themselves to validate a conflicted older man (already a subject of her "Elegy.")
Given the film's title, one would expect some dramatic arc or conceptual idea to issue from the sound recorder, or a special treatment of sound or music. Not so. Aside from narrating the film, neither his role nor his recordings of Ryu end up having much bearing on the plot. The sound does not particularly stand out, and the music is a cafe compilation of Latin mood pieces and nostalgic Japanese songs that sometimes borders on kitsch -- like the Japanese rendition of "La Vie en rose" heard during a smooch scene.
The choice of locations -- from a club serving sushi on a nude blonde to traditional diners, from the music mecca of Shimokitazawa to a small shrine nestled against autumn leaves, from pachinko parlors to karaoke cells -- merged with glittering helicopter shots of Tokyo's skyline and night traffic, sticks to the beaten tourist path that underlines the film's pretentious but shallow style.
Edited By Sonic Youth on 1243474067
(Spain)
By LESLIE FELPERIN
Variety
Pretty to look at but largely vacuous, Spanish helmer Isabel Coixet's romantic drama "Map of the Sounds of Tokyo" plays like a perfume ad without a product. The Tokyo-set yarn about a Japanese hit-femme who falls for a Spanish man she's supposed to whack reps a vague cross between "Nikita" and "Last Tango in Paris," but without the former's kinetic action or the latter's resonance. Admittedly, "Tokyo's" softcore sex scenes smoke, which might just help pic map out niche distribution in some territories, but critical support will be thin on the ground, judging by the boos that greeted the Cannes press showing.
"Map of the Sounds of Tokyo" delivers a major disappointment after Coixet's underrated Philip Roth adaptation "Elegy," which seemed to herald the arrival of a new, tougher-minded vigor in her direction. Instead, the latest pic, this time written entirely by the helmer herself, sees Coixet returning to the excessively precious, cod-melancholy tone that marred her earlier pic "The Secret Life of Words."
Critical goodwill extended toward the helmer for her patchy if effective breakout arthouse drama "My Life Without Me" won't be so forthcoming this time round.
The story here is told via ponderous, would-be poetic narration in Japanese by an unnamed sound recordist (Min Tanaka), who explains how he has a chaste relationship with a mysterious woman named Ryu (stunning Rinko Kikuchi from "Babel"). Ryu does menial but cinematically picturesque work in Tokyo's fish market, so, she explains later, she doesn't have to think.
The fact that she has a big, stylishly furnished if minimalist apartment that a fish-market-worker's salary could never afford, always wears slinky black clothes, and in her free time cleans graves and looks sad all adds up to the revelation that she's a hitwoman. Ryu's latest assignment is to kill Spanish wine-shop owner David (Sergi Lopez, "Pan's Labyrinth") on the behalf of a businessman (Takeo Nakahara) whose daughter Midori supposedly committed suicide over David .
Instead of just killing David in a crowded street and running off like a proper assassin would, Ryu packs her piece in a dainty handbag (clothes and accessory porn will rep one selling point for femme auds), goes to meet him in his store and is instantly charmed by fact that he recognizes her as a woman who knows her wine. Before you can say "Tampopo," slurps of ramen lead to a different kind of slurping in a love-hotel room fashioned to look like a Paris subway car. Soon after, Ryu offers to pay the client back his money with interest so she doesn't have to slay David.
It's all really rather silly, but one thing that can be said in Coixet's defense is that she knows how to tap into the erotic fantasies of some female viewers. Although Lopez's alarmingly hirsute chest might put off some, his David is almost the perfect arthouse stud monkey: He has a nice bourgeois job that requires refinement and connoisseurship, but is muy macho and assertive in the bedroom, and loves cunnilingus to boot.
If only the film showed the character enjoying lengthy discussions of feelings and demonstrating skill at fixing household appliances, he could be to specialist-film-loving women viewers today what Beatrice Dalle in "Betty Blue" was to arty college boys in the 1980s.
Although Lopez and Kikuchi have great chemistry and both have proved their acting chops elsewhere, something's gone badly awry here so that every time they open their mouths -- to talk, instead of snog -- they sound stilted and flat. It doesn't help that neither is speaking their first language, but largely it's the pretentious of the script that fails them.
The movie looks nice, courtesy of Jean Claude Larrieu's lensing (Coixet herself once again takes a credit as camera operator and this is one job she's indisputably good at). But as with fellow Cannes 2009 competitor Gaspar Noe's "Enter the Void" also proves, use of Tokyo's photogenic, color-saturated locations will only get a film so far if it doesn't have something interesting to say. Sound design credited to Fabiola Ordoyo is good enough but not quite as intricate or nuanced as one would expect given the prominence of sound in both title and screenplay.
Rest of tech credits are pro.
-----------------------------------
Map of the Sounds of Tokyo
24 May, 2009 | By Lee Marshall
Screendaily
Dir/scr Isabel Coixet. Spain. 2009. 106 mins
A designer noir-romance with a designer title and designer emotions, Isabel Coixet’s follow-up to Elegy is as empty as a shiny new Prada handbag on a boutique shelf. Scripted for style and atmosphere rather than for substance, this lushly shot and scored Tokyo-set bauble with its dirge like pacing features unlikely couple Sergi Lopez and Rinko Kikuchi in an affair that seems dictated more by their star status than their chemistry, which is notably lacking.
Map’s slick production values, trendy global-fusion ambience, glossy melancholia and raunchy but female-oriented sex scenes seem calculated to make this extended jazz-pop video a commercially viable date movie for couples looking for a bit of upmarket lust, but the critical reception at Cannes has been cool.
After a Tokyo-by-night credit sequence things start promisingly with a striking restaurant scene where a group of deal-clinching Japanese and Western businessmen eat sushi off naked models’ bodies. But the feast is soured when senior executive Nagara (Nakahara) gets a
call telling him his daughter has committed suicide; she had been in a relationship with Spanish wine shop owner David (Lopez), whom Nagara blames for her death – so like any grieving father, he asks his faithful assistant Ishida (Sakaki) to find a hitman to whack David.
The hitman turns out to be a hitwoman , Ryu (Kikuchi), a solemn loner who works nights at the fish market. Her only real friend is an elderly sound recordist (Tanaka), whose elegaic
voiceovers seem to serve little purpose than to give away the ending from the start and compensate for Kikuchi’s one-note performance as Ryu by filling us in on her dark, enigmatic, under-developed character .
Sound recording can mine a rich narrative seam, as The Conversation and The Lives of Others demonstrated; here, though, it has no bearing on the story and seems chosen purely because it’s a cool and quirky job for the narrator to have.
Somewhat predictably, Ryu falls for the man she was sent to erase, and they begin a series of sexual encounters in a Parisian-themed love hotel, that carry distant echoes of Intimacy and
Last Tango in Paris. By turns steamy and tender, these tastefully explicit scenes work fine within the confines of the themed room the couple always book, but they don’t make us believe in
the connection between the two lovers. It doesn’t help that their wooden English dialogue sounds at times like an outtake from a language class; but the main problem is that neither lead
really seems to have found a way into their role, and Lopez in particular gives one of his most soulless performances in years.
Jean-Claude Larrieu’s rich close-up camerawork has undeniable style, caressing surfaces and textures in classy, slightly desaturated colour. A sparingly used soundtrack mixes urban jazz and bossanova themes with indie rock ballads – but its pretensions are exposed in an unintentionally hilarious scene towards the end when an angst-filled David sings along to Depeche Mode’s Enjoy the Silence in a karaoke bar (Lopez impressively delivers dialogue in Japanese, English and Catalan). Nouvelle cinematic fusion food was rarely so insubstantial and unsatisfying.
-------------------------------------
Film Review: Map of the Sounds of Tokyo
By Maggie Lee
Hollywood Reporter
An erotic-thriller about a Japanese assassin who falls in love with her Spanish target, Isabel Coixet's "Map of the Sounds of Tokyo" is "Nikita" reincarnated with Tokyo eyes. Glossy cinematography and a Wong Kar Wai wannabe soundtrack conspire to rehash some cliched images of the Japanese metropolis, with little that Chris Marker, Wim Wenders, Jean-Pierre Limosin or Sofia Coppola haven't done before.
"Map" will fulfill a certain semi-artsy, mostly European crowd's taste for upmarket exotica with its suggestive representation of a demure oriental beauty's sexual flowering under the experienced touch of a hot-blooded Hispanic. With 2007 Oscar-nominee Rinko Kikuchi ("Babel") making a bold impression as the assassin, a Japanese release is also likely, even if the corny dialogue may be lost in translation.
What's a cool chick with movie star mascara doing slicing slabs of tuna in Tokyo' Tsukiji fish market? An elderly sound recorder (Min Tanaka) is too polite to probe when he befriends taciturn Ryu (Rinko Kikuchi) at the ramen museum. Anyways, he's only enamored of the slurping sounds she makes when she eats, so he's content to meet for casual meals and visits to anonymous graves. One learns of her other vocation through a montage of hit jobs reminiscent of John Woo's "killer" films.
Ryu gets an assignment from corporate CEO Nagara (Takeo Nakahara) to take out David (Sergi Lopez) a Spanish wine merchant who dated his daughter Midori. Nagara blames David for her suicide -- her dying words scribbled in blood intimating the film's theme. Ryu approaches her target through wine-tasting, but also gets a taste of his incredibly hairy chest in a love hotel room furnished like a train carriage. Then, she does what is considered a big "no, no" in the business, and the rest is noir history.
The potboiler plot (which has almost no action for a film about contract killing) and pseudo-Zen musings on life's inherent heartache exist only to underscore the steamy softcore sex scenes, which are well shot but interrupted by gag-worthy dialogue like "Sit here, on top, in my face, till you warm up."
Kikuchi manages to imbue Ryu's cool, placid exterior with some vulnerability that makes her more human. Less likeable is Lopez, whose portfolio of villainous roles (organ trafficker in "Dirty Pretty Things", wife-batterer in "Solo Mia" and Fascist torturer in "Pan's Labyrinth") casts an aggressive air over his image as a romantic lover. And despite his protestations of love for Midori, there is no back story to their relationship to help one make sense of his ensuing affair with Ryu. Even more disturbing is Coixet's fascination with portraying talented, beautiful women who offer up themselves to validate a conflicted older man (already a subject of her "Elegy.")
Given the film's title, one would expect some dramatic arc or conceptual idea to issue from the sound recorder, or a special treatment of sound or music. Not so. Aside from narrating the film, neither his role nor his recordings of Ryu end up having much bearing on the plot. The sound does not particularly stand out, and the music is a cafe compilation of Latin mood pieces and nostalgic Japanese songs that sometimes borders on kitsch -- like the Japanese rendition of "La Vie en rose" heard during a smooch scene.
The choice of locations -- from a club serving sushi on a nude blonde to traditional diners, from the music mecca of Shimokitazawa to a small shrine nestled against autumn leaves, from pachinko parlors to karaoke cells -- merged with glittering helicopter shots of Tokyo's skyline and night traffic, sticks to the beaten tourist path that underlines the film's pretentious but shallow style.
Edited By Sonic Youth on 1243474067
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Win Butler
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And, to finish of D'Angelo's twittering around:
The Time That Remains ('09 Suleiman): 70. Basically DIVINE INTERVENTION II, except more personal and with fewer strident metaphors.
Enter [...three hours later...] the Void ('09 Noé): 57. Formally amazing (especially the slide-show flashback sequence), but really stoopid.
Radical new direction for Noé in that there's almost no violence (and what little there is isn't graphically unwatchable).
Map of the Sounds of Tokyo ('09 Coixet): 26. Jesus, what a fucking hack. Just an embarrassment. I hope bribes were involved, at least.
Also added below are a few more reviews for "Enter the Void" (bad ones)* and "The Time that Remains". What a disappointing festival. Lots of daring stuff, edgy stuff that no one liked very much.
*Am I a prude if I don't want to watch a graphic sex scene shot with a Vagina Cam?
The Time That Remains ('09 Suleiman): 70. Basically DIVINE INTERVENTION II, except more personal and with fewer strident metaphors.
Enter [...three hours later...] the Void ('09 Noé): 57. Formally amazing (especially the slide-show flashback sequence), but really stoopid.
Radical new direction for Noé in that there's almost no violence (and what little there is isn't graphically unwatchable).
Map of the Sounds of Tokyo ('09 Coixet): 26. Jesus, what a fucking hack. Just an embarrassment. I hope bribes were involved, at least.
Also added below are a few more reviews for "Enter the Void" (bad ones)* and "The Time that Remains". What a disappointing festival. Lots of daring stuff, edgy stuff that no one liked very much.
*Am I a prude if I don't want to watch a graphic sex scene shot with a Vagina Cam?
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Win Butler
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Negative reviews for Tsai Ming Laing's:
Face
22 May, 2009 | Updated: 22 May, 2009 4:23 pm | By Dan Fainaru
Screendaily
Dir:Tsai Ming-Liang.Taiwan-France-Belgium-Netherlands.2009. 139m.
In Face, a Taiwanese director shoots his own version of the Salome myth in Paris. This may sound too simple a description for Tsai Ming-liang’s eccentric work, but without it, the viewer will have to wait until the final third of the movie to work out what’s going on. Less emotional and more theoretical than anything he has done before, Face will appeal exclusively to Tsai Ming-liang’s devoted fans who find themselves in familiar territory here, but the rest of the audience may be baffled – to say the least. Art house and festival interest is, as always, likely, but prospects seem highly limited beyond that.
Face is evidently conceived as a tribute to Francois Truffaut and the spirit of the New Wave, as well as being a theoretic treatise on the art of cinema. In a way, Face would fit perfectly in the screening rooms of the Louvre – where part of this film is shot, including a late sequence when Jean-Pierre Leaud emerges from the bowels of the building into the light, with Leonardo de Vinci paintings on either side of him.
That a film director, (played by Tsai’s regular alter-ego, Lee Kang-Sheng) is in Paris and looking for an actor named Antoine (Leaud, once Truffaut’s alter-ego), is clear from the very first shot, though all it shows for a while is an empty cup of coffee in a Parisian café. His Parisian producer (Fanny Ardant) has a tough time with him, this much is clear as we witness her chasing him through a snow-covered forest. Then, the first of several musical numbers (a regular feature for Tsai) takes place, and soon it turns out this is a magical forest.
From this point on, the picture pursues its course with traditional long, fixed shots, eventually moving towards a kind of discourse on image with sound and without it. Then there’s a guessing game of quotes from various
sources, and a long speech from Leaud in which he strings together all the idols of the New Wave cinema. To complete the picture, he also summons two more Truffaut muses, Jeanne Moreau and Nathalie Baye, as guest stars with no particular roles to play.
There is another scene where the spirit of the director’s mother, who died while he was on this shoot, shares some fruit with Fanny Ardant and then hovers above the bed chastely shared by Ardant and Leaud. Later, Ardant is seen browsing through several books and albums dedicated to her late partner in life.
Replete with Tsai’s trademarks – performances from Lee Kang-Cheng and Lu Yi-Ching, mention of his fear of water, aquariums and fish, odd musical numbers, homosexuality – this is once again a series of framing shots, each lending the picture a stunning visual look. Many of the scenes have charm and wit, including one where Laetitia Casta (Salome in the film-within-the-film) spreads ketchup over John The Baptist who is lying in a bathtub.
--------------------------------------------------
Film Review: Face
By Peter Brunette
Hollywood Reporter
CANNES -- Malaysian-born, Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-Liang's films have always required a lot of work. He's a rigorous practitioner of the extreme long-take aesthetic, and audiences have been willing to stick with such demanding masterpieces as "What Time Is It Over There?" "The River" and "Vive l'amour" because despite the constant battle to overcome ennui, Tsai always pays off, either in humor, fresh insight into the human condition or a novel, strikingly profound combination of the visual and aural.
Alas, that is not the case with his latest offering, the very bloated "Face," which starts off impenetrable and ends that way as well. Gorgeous images regularly punctuate the film, but they will not be enough for most viewers, and thus even specialty art house potential seems slim. A pickup by a U.S. distributor would be in the miraculous range. Perhaps the film will do better on DVD among the cinematic cognoscenti whose appetites are only whetted by negative reviews like this one.
"Face" is about little more than itself, its director and Francois Truffaut -- in that order. The "plot line" that can be pieced together by reading the press kit and slogging through the entire film (and using a lot of imagination) is that a Chinese director (Lee Kang-Sheng) has come to France to make a film about Salome and wants Truffaut regular Jean Pierre Leaud to play Herod. Fanny Ardant, another Truffaut regular at the other end of his short life, works on the film as a kind of production assistant.
Tsai also appears to believe that he has become a famous-enough auteur (this is his 10th film) to openly quote himself. Thus, those familiar with "Hole" will find the flooded waters and the sudden breaking into unmotivated song from that film in the new one as well. (Now the songs are in Chinese and Spanish, lip-synched by Laetitia Costa.) The fish tank from "What Time Is It Over There?" also re-appears as well as the Parisian fountain that provides its memorable ending, but this time quizzically with a deer that has been a nonrunning motif.
Images succeed one another with little or no narrative connection, yet many of them are stunning in their own right. For example, at one point the director and actor Leaud are in the forest watching the same forest depicted on television, and Leaud hands his pet bird to the director, who cleverly pretends to make it fly from televised tree to tree. Something deep about reality and representation is probably being said here, but it is unclear just what. In any case, the gesture presumably abets the mirrors that have been placed earlier throughout the snow-covered woods. It also must be said that with the gorgeous model Costa playing Salome, the dance of the seven veils is a huge treat.
Other motifs just seem to fall flat, like the one in which a character (Costa?) obsessively covers windows and mirrors with black tape. It goes without saying that every application of the tape is shown at full length. Shots rarely show what they normally would, and everything is seen as through a mirror -- or at least through a reflecting window -- darkly. Characters seen on screen are rarely those heard on the soundtrack, who remain off-camera.
Completely gratuitous cameos by the likes of Jeanne Moreau, Nathalie Baye and Mathieu Almaric prove little more than embarrassing.
As one would expect in a movie called "Face," faces abound, but they rarely add up to anything beyond their sheer there-ness. This kind of lengthy self-indulgence by an heretofore brilliant director is almost enough to make you want the producers to rise up against the auteurs and take over again.
-----------------------------------------
Face
Visage
(France - Taiwan-Belgium - Netherlands)
By JORDAN MINTZER
Variety
Although it occasionally sports a pretty "Face," Tsai Ming-Liang's laborious Francophone feature winds up seriously irritating the skin without ever actually getting under it. First project under the Louvre Invites Filmmakers program is about -- either ironically or prophetically -- a Taiwanese director's catastrophic attempts to shoot the myth of Salome in France. Filled with the helmer's habitual shenanigans, and including a cast of Gallic stars, pic nonetheless feels shoddily conceived and highly overindulgent, even for Tsai. Only diehard fans will hark to this strictly arthouse item, which reps a shaky cinematic debut for Gaul's foremost house of art.
This is actually the second time that Tsai has made a film in France, and both "Face" and 2001's "What Time Is It Over There?" use similar Parisian locations, two of the same actors, and several repeated references to the French New Wave, especially to Francois Truffaut. But while "Time" convincingly portrayed the urban solitude, "Face" loses its narrative wind in clunky musical set pieces, misguided French-language thesping, and a near 2½-hour running time that far outstays its welcome.
Pic starts off in typical Tsai fashion with a well-staged gag in which filmmaker Hsaio-Kong (Lee Kang-Sheng) tries to repair a leaky faucet, but winds up flooding his mom's (Lu Yi-Ching) entire apartment. Plumbing accidents seem to be a must in the helmer's films (as is casting Lee as his alter-ego and deadpan actress Lu as the mother). Lee and Lu's Taiwan-set scenes, however, play much better than those taking place in France.
Kong is seen back in Paris directing his Salome movie -- although one really needs to know the myth by heart to grasp that, especially since the film has no dialogue and consists entirely of cheesy music videos in which the model playing Salome (real-life supermodel Laetitia Casta) lip syncs to songs in highly uncomfortable locations (a sewer, a snowstorm, a meat locker).
Kong seems bent on making the entire shoot unpleasant, while also trying to avoid being sucked in by Salome's seductive dances and displays of flesh. This and the depression caused by the death of Kong's mother complicate things for his hysterical producer (Fanny Ardant), who also has to put up with a poorly wrangled forest animal and a senile lead actor (Jean-Pierre Leaud).
As the story alternates between the numerous dance sequences (inadequately handled by Casta) and behind-the-scenes antics involving Leaud and a cameoing Jeanne Moreau and Nathalie Baye, it never develops a coherent thread or enough suggestiveness to sustain the action. Even a rather surprising scene in which Kong both gives and is given fellatio by Mathieu Amalric seems only there for the heck of it (or perhaps as some kind of sleazy metaphor for the world of international co-productions).
Visually speaking, Tsai provides a few memorable images, especially a scene filmed entirely with light from cigarettes and lighters that's captured beautifully by regular d.p. Liao Pen-Jung. Sound work by Roberto Van Eijden ("The Silent Army") and Jean Mallet ("Before I Forget") impressively orchestrates the interior spaces, which are filled with Tati-esque effects.
Print and press notes both indicate that this is "Opus 1" of the Louvre's new filmmaking initiative, which will allow directors (seemingly, other than Ron Howard) access to the museum's primo collection. Pic includes one noticeable museum-set scene featuring Da Vinci's "St. John the Baptist," but the link between that and the rest of the action is only interesting if you know, or care about Salome's story -- something that the film doesn't help.
-----------------------------------------
In Favor of Imagery: Tsai’s “Visage” Paints a Puzzling, Pretty Picture
by Eric Kohn
indieWire
A scene from "Visage" ("Face"), directed by Tsai Ming-Lai. Image courtesy of the Cannes Film Festival. From the very first minutes of “Visage” (“Face”), director Tsai Ming-Lai stakes out familiar territory. But familiarity in a Tsai Ming-Lai movie is an elusive thing. Working in abstract mode, Tsai depicts strange and cryptic moods, regardless of his intentions. The immediate thematic parallel to his earlier work arrives when a Taiwanese filmmaker (Kang Sheng-Lee) copes with a late night kitchen leak that ultimately floods his entire apartment. The progression from slice-of-life detail to slapstick comedy and ultimately lyricism happens swiftly, echoing a scene in Tsai’s first feature, “Rebels of the Neon God.” In “Visage,” water symbolizes any number of psychological issues plaguing the character, particularly unfiltered thoughts, or frustration over the inability to control his life. Despite the ambiguity, this amusingly provocative sequence turns out to be one of the more lucid moments in the movie.
Essentially a meditation on the cinematic process, “Visage” was commissioned by the Louvre, and shot inside of it. The vaguely defined plot finds the filmmaker traveling to Paris and shooting a story based on the myth of Salome set in the museum. It’s hardly the only meta aspect of the narrative. The filmmakers - both Tsai and his onscreen persona - cast Jean-Pierre Leaud as King Herod, the stepfather of Salome. The presence of Leaud, whose first big screen appearance arrived when he played the young star of Francois Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows,” functions as a prop to underscore the movie’s aesthetic dedication to Truffaut. Although not borrowing the director’s style, it constantly references him. The theme song from “Jules and Jim” plays lightly in the background of one scene, while various other regular Truffaut actors show up resembling characters from his films.
The plot finds the filmmaker struggling to make his movie and coping with the loss of his mother, although that hardly describes its trajectory. Filled with gorgeous and inexplicable events, “Visage” tears apart any semblance of coherence in favor of imagery. Leaud sits in a snow-covered forest staring at a series of mirrors, when suddenly a group of women appear and sing to him. Quite randomly, a buck strolls into the frame. This will not be its last appearance. Later, the filmmaker gets his own dance number, sans music. He’s wrapped in plastic and covered in tomato sauce. Go figure.
Like other Tsai movies, “Visage” deals with incredibly alienated people. It also reflects the director’s sense of wonder about the contents of his art-filled set. “I felt quite lost when I looked at the paintings in the Louvre,” he said earlier today at the press conference for the film. “At the same time, they deal with important themes.” The themes come through well enough, although this often makes the so-called story a bit difficult to follow (I had to consult press notes afterwards to sort it all out, and I’m still a bit puzzled). On a visual level, however, it’s undoubtedly the prettiest movie in the festival’s main competition. As a project commissioned by a safe haven for art and based around its creation, you couldn’t ask for much else.
Edited By Sonic Youth on 1243095883
Face
22 May, 2009 | Updated: 22 May, 2009 4:23 pm | By Dan Fainaru
Screendaily
Dir:Tsai Ming-Liang.Taiwan-France-Belgium-Netherlands.2009. 139m.
In Face, a Taiwanese director shoots his own version of the Salome myth in Paris. This may sound too simple a description for Tsai Ming-liang’s eccentric work, but without it, the viewer will have to wait until the final third of the movie to work out what’s going on. Less emotional and more theoretical than anything he has done before, Face will appeal exclusively to Tsai Ming-liang’s devoted fans who find themselves in familiar territory here, but the rest of the audience may be baffled – to say the least. Art house and festival interest is, as always, likely, but prospects seem highly limited beyond that.
Face is evidently conceived as a tribute to Francois Truffaut and the spirit of the New Wave, as well as being a theoretic treatise on the art of cinema. In a way, Face would fit perfectly in the screening rooms of the Louvre – where part of this film is shot, including a late sequence when Jean-Pierre Leaud emerges from the bowels of the building into the light, with Leonardo de Vinci paintings on either side of him.
That a film director, (played by Tsai’s regular alter-ego, Lee Kang-Sheng) is in Paris and looking for an actor named Antoine (Leaud, once Truffaut’s alter-ego), is clear from the very first shot, though all it shows for a while is an empty cup of coffee in a Parisian café. His Parisian producer (Fanny Ardant) has a tough time with him, this much is clear as we witness her chasing him through a snow-covered forest. Then, the first of several musical numbers (a regular feature for Tsai) takes place, and soon it turns out this is a magical forest.
From this point on, the picture pursues its course with traditional long, fixed shots, eventually moving towards a kind of discourse on image with sound and without it. Then there’s a guessing game of quotes from various
sources, and a long speech from Leaud in which he strings together all the idols of the New Wave cinema. To complete the picture, he also summons two more Truffaut muses, Jeanne Moreau and Nathalie Baye, as guest stars with no particular roles to play.
There is another scene where the spirit of the director’s mother, who died while he was on this shoot, shares some fruit with Fanny Ardant and then hovers above the bed chastely shared by Ardant and Leaud. Later, Ardant is seen browsing through several books and albums dedicated to her late partner in life.
Replete with Tsai’s trademarks – performances from Lee Kang-Cheng and Lu Yi-Ching, mention of his fear of water, aquariums and fish, odd musical numbers, homosexuality – this is once again a series of framing shots, each lending the picture a stunning visual look. Many of the scenes have charm and wit, including one where Laetitia Casta (Salome in the film-within-the-film) spreads ketchup over John The Baptist who is lying in a bathtub.
--------------------------------------------------
Film Review: Face
By Peter Brunette
Hollywood Reporter
CANNES -- Malaysian-born, Taiwanese auteur Tsai Ming-Liang's films have always required a lot of work. He's a rigorous practitioner of the extreme long-take aesthetic, and audiences have been willing to stick with such demanding masterpieces as "What Time Is It Over There?" "The River" and "Vive l'amour" because despite the constant battle to overcome ennui, Tsai always pays off, either in humor, fresh insight into the human condition or a novel, strikingly profound combination of the visual and aural.
Alas, that is not the case with his latest offering, the very bloated "Face," which starts off impenetrable and ends that way as well. Gorgeous images regularly punctuate the film, but they will not be enough for most viewers, and thus even specialty art house potential seems slim. A pickup by a U.S. distributor would be in the miraculous range. Perhaps the film will do better on DVD among the cinematic cognoscenti whose appetites are only whetted by negative reviews like this one.
"Face" is about little more than itself, its director and Francois Truffaut -- in that order. The "plot line" that can be pieced together by reading the press kit and slogging through the entire film (and using a lot of imagination) is that a Chinese director (Lee Kang-Sheng) has come to France to make a film about Salome and wants Truffaut regular Jean Pierre Leaud to play Herod. Fanny Ardant, another Truffaut regular at the other end of his short life, works on the film as a kind of production assistant.
Tsai also appears to believe that he has become a famous-enough auteur (this is his 10th film) to openly quote himself. Thus, those familiar with "Hole" will find the flooded waters and the sudden breaking into unmotivated song from that film in the new one as well. (Now the songs are in Chinese and Spanish, lip-synched by Laetitia Costa.) The fish tank from "What Time Is It Over There?" also re-appears as well as the Parisian fountain that provides its memorable ending, but this time quizzically with a deer that has been a nonrunning motif.
Images succeed one another with little or no narrative connection, yet many of them are stunning in their own right. For example, at one point the director and actor Leaud are in the forest watching the same forest depicted on television, and Leaud hands his pet bird to the director, who cleverly pretends to make it fly from televised tree to tree. Something deep about reality and representation is probably being said here, but it is unclear just what. In any case, the gesture presumably abets the mirrors that have been placed earlier throughout the snow-covered woods. It also must be said that with the gorgeous model Costa playing Salome, the dance of the seven veils is a huge treat.
Other motifs just seem to fall flat, like the one in which a character (Costa?) obsessively covers windows and mirrors with black tape. It goes without saying that every application of the tape is shown at full length. Shots rarely show what they normally would, and everything is seen as through a mirror -- or at least through a reflecting window -- darkly. Characters seen on screen are rarely those heard on the soundtrack, who remain off-camera.
Completely gratuitous cameos by the likes of Jeanne Moreau, Nathalie Baye and Mathieu Almaric prove little more than embarrassing.
As one would expect in a movie called "Face," faces abound, but they rarely add up to anything beyond their sheer there-ness. This kind of lengthy self-indulgence by an heretofore brilliant director is almost enough to make you want the producers to rise up against the auteurs and take over again.
-----------------------------------------
Face
Visage
(France - Taiwan-Belgium - Netherlands)
By JORDAN MINTZER
Variety
Although it occasionally sports a pretty "Face," Tsai Ming-Liang's laborious Francophone feature winds up seriously irritating the skin without ever actually getting under it. First project under the Louvre Invites Filmmakers program is about -- either ironically or prophetically -- a Taiwanese director's catastrophic attempts to shoot the myth of Salome in France. Filled with the helmer's habitual shenanigans, and including a cast of Gallic stars, pic nonetheless feels shoddily conceived and highly overindulgent, even for Tsai. Only diehard fans will hark to this strictly arthouse item, which reps a shaky cinematic debut for Gaul's foremost house of art.
This is actually the second time that Tsai has made a film in France, and both "Face" and 2001's "What Time Is It Over There?" use similar Parisian locations, two of the same actors, and several repeated references to the French New Wave, especially to Francois Truffaut. But while "Time" convincingly portrayed the urban solitude, "Face" loses its narrative wind in clunky musical set pieces, misguided French-language thesping, and a near 2½-hour running time that far outstays its welcome.
Pic starts off in typical Tsai fashion with a well-staged gag in which filmmaker Hsaio-Kong (Lee Kang-Sheng) tries to repair a leaky faucet, but winds up flooding his mom's (Lu Yi-Ching) entire apartment. Plumbing accidents seem to be a must in the helmer's films (as is casting Lee as his alter-ego and deadpan actress Lu as the mother). Lee and Lu's Taiwan-set scenes, however, play much better than those taking place in France.
Kong is seen back in Paris directing his Salome movie -- although one really needs to know the myth by heart to grasp that, especially since the film has no dialogue and consists entirely of cheesy music videos in which the model playing Salome (real-life supermodel Laetitia Casta) lip syncs to songs in highly uncomfortable locations (a sewer, a snowstorm, a meat locker).
Kong seems bent on making the entire shoot unpleasant, while also trying to avoid being sucked in by Salome's seductive dances and displays of flesh. This and the depression caused by the death of Kong's mother complicate things for his hysterical producer (Fanny Ardant), who also has to put up with a poorly wrangled forest animal and a senile lead actor (Jean-Pierre Leaud).
As the story alternates between the numerous dance sequences (inadequately handled by Casta) and behind-the-scenes antics involving Leaud and a cameoing Jeanne Moreau and Nathalie Baye, it never develops a coherent thread or enough suggestiveness to sustain the action. Even a rather surprising scene in which Kong both gives and is given fellatio by Mathieu Amalric seems only there for the heck of it (or perhaps as some kind of sleazy metaphor for the world of international co-productions).
Visually speaking, Tsai provides a few memorable images, especially a scene filmed entirely with light from cigarettes and lighters that's captured beautifully by regular d.p. Liao Pen-Jung. Sound work by Roberto Van Eijden ("The Silent Army") and Jean Mallet ("Before I Forget") impressively orchestrates the interior spaces, which are filled with Tati-esque effects.
Print and press notes both indicate that this is "Opus 1" of the Louvre's new filmmaking initiative, which will allow directors (seemingly, other than Ron Howard) access to the museum's primo collection. Pic includes one noticeable museum-set scene featuring Da Vinci's "St. John the Baptist," but the link between that and the rest of the action is only interesting if you know, or care about Salome's story -- something that the film doesn't help.
-----------------------------------------
In Favor of Imagery: Tsai’s “Visage” Paints a Puzzling, Pretty Picture
by Eric Kohn
indieWire
A scene from "Visage" ("Face"), directed by Tsai Ming-Lai. Image courtesy of the Cannes Film Festival. From the very first minutes of “Visage” (“Face”), director Tsai Ming-Lai stakes out familiar territory. But familiarity in a Tsai Ming-Lai movie is an elusive thing. Working in abstract mode, Tsai depicts strange and cryptic moods, regardless of his intentions. The immediate thematic parallel to his earlier work arrives when a Taiwanese filmmaker (Kang Sheng-Lee) copes with a late night kitchen leak that ultimately floods his entire apartment. The progression from slice-of-life detail to slapstick comedy and ultimately lyricism happens swiftly, echoing a scene in Tsai’s first feature, “Rebels of the Neon God.” In “Visage,” water symbolizes any number of psychological issues plaguing the character, particularly unfiltered thoughts, or frustration over the inability to control his life. Despite the ambiguity, this amusingly provocative sequence turns out to be one of the more lucid moments in the movie.
Essentially a meditation on the cinematic process, “Visage” was commissioned by the Louvre, and shot inside of it. The vaguely defined plot finds the filmmaker traveling to Paris and shooting a story based on the myth of Salome set in the museum. It’s hardly the only meta aspect of the narrative. The filmmakers - both Tsai and his onscreen persona - cast Jean-Pierre Leaud as King Herod, the stepfather of Salome. The presence of Leaud, whose first big screen appearance arrived when he played the young star of Francois Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows,” functions as a prop to underscore the movie’s aesthetic dedication to Truffaut. Although not borrowing the director’s style, it constantly references him. The theme song from “Jules and Jim” plays lightly in the background of one scene, while various other regular Truffaut actors show up resembling characters from his films.
The plot finds the filmmaker struggling to make his movie and coping with the loss of his mother, although that hardly describes its trajectory. Filled with gorgeous and inexplicable events, “Visage” tears apart any semblance of coherence in favor of imagery. Leaud sits in a snow-covered forest staring at a series of mirrors, when suddenly a group of women appear and sing to him. Quite randomly, a buck strolls into the frame. This will not be its last appearance. Later, the filmmaker gets his own dance number, sans music. He’s wrapped in plastic and covered in tomato sauce. Go figure.
Like other Tsai movies, “Visage” deals with incredibly alienated people. It also reflects the director’s sense of wonder about the contents of his art-filled set. “I felt quite lost when I looked at the paintings in the Louvre,” he said earlier today at the press conference for the film. “At the same time, they deal with important themes.” The themes come through well enough, although this often makes the so-called story a bit difficult to follow (I had to consult press notes afterwards to sort it all out, and I’m still a bit puzzled). On a visual level, however, it’s undoubtedly the prettiest movie in the festival’s main competition. As a project commissioned by a safe haven for art and based around its creation, you couldn’t ask for much else.
Edited By Sonic Youth on 1243095883
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Win Butler
-
Sonic Youth
- Tenured Laureate
- Posts: 8005
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 8:35 pm
- Location: USA
Eric wrote:Still holding out hope that Noe hits it out of the park.
Your wish is Noe's command. (Admittedly, it's only one review so far.)
BTW, is it my imagination, or have nearly all the Competition entries run over two hours?
Enter The Void
22 May, 2009 | By Mike Goodridge
Screendaily
Dir: Gaspar Noé, France-Germany-Italy. 2009. 163mins.
Almost defying definition in contemporary cinematic terms, Gaspar Noe’s third feature film Enter The Void is a wild, hallucinatory mindfuck for adults which sees the director explore new shooting techniques and ambitious special effects to capture a young man’s journey after death. More experience than narrative, it runs to a massive 163 minutes, meandering and careening in and out of story and into visual realms and moods that are nothing short of hypnotic. It is a film that will instantly achieve cult status among young adults. If audiences care to, they can lose themselves in Noe’s images and trip on his imagination. If they don’t, they will be bored to tears.
Bound to divide critics and audiences as decisively as 2002’s Irreversible, Enter The Void is clearly the work of a visionary mind who plunges into darkness literally and thematically at any given opportunity. Scenes here – from the graphic performance of an abortion to extensive drug use, violence and frequent, explicit sex acts – will render it a limited distribution prospect with the most prohibitive censorship ratings available. But with his first two features Seul Contre Tous and Irreversible, Noe has built a loyal following bound to lap up his latest no-holds-barred opus. Life on DVD could be even more profitable, and adventurous viewers will no doubt adopt the film as an accompaniment for booze and drugs use.
Still unfinished in its Cannes competition screening – and 13 minutes longer than the festival had advertised – Enter The Void begins from the subjective vision of the lead character, an American slacker and budding drug dealer called Oscar (Brown) living in Tokyo, complete with blinks that block out the image every few seconds. 30 minutes into the film, he is killed and from then on the characters and buildings are viewed from above as if he is watching.
Noe’s use of crane shots both in Tokyo, in studios and in modelwork is staggeringly original, and he tracks characters through the city by speeding over the buildings from aerial vantage points.
The film starts as Oscar’s sister Linda (the ever-naked De La Huerta) leaves the apartment they share to go to work and he then experiments with DMT – a drug which occurs in the brain during an accident or at point of death. While he is in mid-trip (which Noe visualises using animated spirals), Oscar gets a phone call from his English friend Victor (Alexander) asking him to bring his drugs to a local bar called The Void. He is joined by his Alex (Cyril Roy), a drug buddy of Oscar’s whom Linda disapproves of.
But when Oscar walks into the bar, he realises that it is a setup and the police chase him into the toilet, eventually shooting him dead.
From then on, Oscar’s spirit can only observe as Alex goes on the run from the police, Linda falls apart after his death and finds that she is pregnant by her clubowner boyfriend Bruno (Cary Hayes) and Victor is racked by guilt at his role in the incident.
But Noe also tracks back in time, to Oscar and Linda’s childhood where we see the horrific car crash which killed their parents, and to the days leading up to Oscar’s death in which Victor finds out that Oscar slept with his mother.
As the film enters its third hour, the plot goes out of focus as the film starts to explore sexuality and the creation of new life. A lengthy final sequence tracks couples having sex in Love Hotel (a studio creation based on the Japanese concept of love hotels) and new life is created. Indeed Noe actually shows us the penis ejaculating into the vagina in full frame glory.
The characters are all fairly uninteresting and some are indeed loathsome, but that is not the point. The film defies cinema convention in every way. It is almost like an adult video game with no rules, or an art installation which evolves into something immersive and sensory. One thing is certain. Spiked with all the tricks, sound effects and technological invention at Noe’s disposal, Enter The Void is a trip.
----------------------------------------------
Film Review: Enter the Void
By Peter Brunette
Hollywood Reporter
CANNES -- No one ever said that in-your-face French director Gaspar Noe's previous film, "Irreversible" (2002), was a walk in the park. Featuring a sometimes violent but also often loving narrative told backward toward a heartbreaking innocence that was both its beginning and its ending (and that constituted the very proof of the film's talismanic motto, "Time destroys all things") -- as well as the notorious nine-minute anal rape scene of Monica Bellucci -- it greatly divided audiences.
With "Enter the Void," unfortunately, Noe has shown that while remaining just as self-consciously controversial, he has succumbed to the many unfounded rumors about his own brilliance. Opinion about this English-language film, however, is not likely to be divided.
It goes without saying that the film is violent, but its obsessive emphasis on sex and drugs -- to the point that most viewers are going to feel utterly bludgeoned by both -- makes it virtually unwatchable, especially at its unofficial "director's cut" length of 160 minutes. Commercial prospects seem remote, but its LSD and other drug-induced visual fireworks might ensure a long life as a cult film on DVD.
Oscar and Linda, whose parents were killed in a car crash when they were kids -- an accident that they witnessed -- have been finally reunited in Japan. Alas, Oscar has become a drug addict and dealer and Linda an exotic dancer with some extra-curricular activities on the side. Oscar is sleeping with his friend Alex's mother, and when Alex finds out, he contrives to get Oscar killed by the police in a raid on the club they frequent.
Amazingly, most of the story is told from the literal point of view of the deceased Oscar, using virtually the identical hand-held technique -- especially the spinning, stumbling-in-the-dark camera -- from "Irreversible." Noe purports to show us what happens after we die, and it turns out that very boring stuff is in store for us. The huge part of the story that is told in flashback has the camera right behind Oscar's head (so that, annoyingly, we rarely see his face); in the part of the story that happens after his death, all is shot from above, as from the POV of Oscar's hovering spirit. None of this contrived stuff is helped by the fact that Nathaniel Brown, who plays Oscar, is such a weak actor.
The worst part is that instead of cutting from one scene that the dead Oscar is observing to the next, Noe has decided to go through an elaborate kind of diving into light or black holes, followed by a camera that flies over buildings for several minutes in order to settle into the next location. This happens at least 20 or 30 times in the film, to the point that viewers will begin to long for the simple directness of a good old-fashioned cut.
Many flashbacks to the children's early trauma, along with other scenes, are unnecessarily repeated several times. The whole thing ends up presumably on a life-affirming note when virtually every character in the film -- even poor Oscar, now kind of enabled through the visual perspective of a friend to consummate his unspoken but obvious incestuous desires for his sister -- gets it on, and with relish. Couples coupling in fascinatingly diverse ways are shown over and over, and the whole thing ends in a kind of apocalyptic and ultra-silly sperm-meets-egg apotheosis that seems shot by what one wag of a critic later labeled a "vagina-cam."
It also is suggested that Oscar's spirit crashes into a baby named Oscar in a plane flying overhead, presumably leading to his reincarnation.
--------------------------------
Enter the Void
Soudain le Vide
(France)
By ROB NELSON
Variety
Billed by director Gaspar Noe as a "psychedelic melodrama" inspired by his hallucinogen-powered screening of "Lady in the Lake," "Enter the Void" suggests the Gallic provocateur should get some better drugs. Not clever enough to be truly pretentious, Noe's tiresomely gimmicky film about a low-level Tokyo drug dealer who enjoys one long, last trip after dying proves to be the ne plus ultra of nothing much. Having come in under the wire for Cannes competition, "Enter the Void" may once again be ready to enter the editing room.
While the overall audacity of the project can't easily be denied, "Enter the Void" delivers an altogether different kind of pain than the director's earlier pair of punishing provocations, "I Stand Alone" and "Irreversible." Not even Noe's detractors expect his work to be boring, but, at 162 minutes, the new film has more than its share of longueurs -- despite showing what happens after death as seeing a lot of people having sex.
Noe's opening scene of a Kubrickian "star child" journey -- triggered by the dope-smoking dealer's repeated tokes -- sends false promises that "Enter the Void" will be a methamphetamine-era version of the ultimate trip in "2001."
But, the film contains only a half-dozen or so vision-questing shots that could help it to pass as avant-garde. Some viewers will nonetheless insist on calling this an exercise in pure cinema; many others will prefer to describe it as pure trash.
Including graphic images of an abortion procedure, "Enter the Void" eventually becomes a vulgar version of a kid's "Where did I come from?" query, complete with a shot from the p.o.v. of an egg-bound sperm. It begins, though, merely as a puerile fantasy of what happens after death.
In the course of a drug deal gone bad, young Oscar (Nathaniel Brown) dies from a gunshot wound in the filthy toilet stall of the Void, a club that some will insist is of the same corpus as the Rectum in "Irreversible." Never subtle, Noe unleashes a literally flashy stroboscopic effect as our hero breaks on through to the other side.
Flashbacks reveal Oscar to have made a childhood promise to his sister Linda (Paz de la Huerta) -- now a stripper -- that he'd never leave her. True to his pledge, and despite having been cremated, Oscar floats spectrally through Tokyo.
Via digital effects, the camera -- i.e., Oscar's watchful spirit -- seems to fly above city streets, up the sides of skyscrapers, through walls, and down various passages including a fallopian tube and, appropriately, a sewer.
For better or worse, the film's production team has adequately fulfilled the director's wishes, which include far too many sweeping shots of neon-bathed Tokyo at night.
In terms of style, the film does begin with a certain integrity, mirroring the fully subjective approach of "Lady in the Lake," Robert Montgomery's 1947 noir. But soon enough, the camera is all over the place -- spiraling into the void of Oscar's bullet hole and out of a child's playground crawl space, for example.
In another stylistic copout, the film's many flashback scenes aren't arranged according to the character's drug- and death-induced free associations, but rather based on Noe's sense of what rudimentary info his audience may require to follow the barebones narrative.
Notwithstanding de la Huerta's full-frontal turn, the actors often perform with their backs to the camera. The film's English dialogue, exceedingly banal and overemphatically delivered, seems designed for international screening sans subtitles or dubbing. The soundtrack alternates between Christian organ music, bass-heavy club beats, and a persistent churning noise familiar to those who've seen Noe's other films.
More than two hours in, as Noe's camera roves at random through the so-called Love Hotel, the film peaks with a series of explicit sex scenes. The last of countless putative endings finds the director suggesting that after the one's umbilical cord is cut, it's all downhill from there.
In Cannes, the film was screened sans credits save for "ENTER" at the beginning and, aptly enough, "THE VOID" at the end.
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The Time That Remains
22 May, 2009 | By Howard Feinstein
Screendaily
Dir/scr Elia Suleiman. Palestine-France. 109mins.
Suleiman adapted the screenplay for The Time That Remains from diaries his father wrote as he was dying in their native Nazareth, a mostly Arab city in Israel. This impressive film is, however, as much about the director (who, as always, plays himself, this time in the last third of the movie) as it is about his father, Fuad (Bakri). They journey in opposite directions. His father shifts from gun-making and resistance fighting during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence to postwar acquiescence. Suleiman traces his own path from young conformist to political activist, and ultimately to mute observer.
A master stylist, Suleiman intersperses Keaton-style sight gags, tense scenes chronicling Israeli abuse, and intimate sequences of his family at home. American distributors tend to shy away from pro-Palestinian fare, but this leisurely film could find a home in European arthouses and on television.
The Time That Remains is bracketed by a sequence in which an Israeli man driving a van during a thunderstorm is thrown into a time warp. He sees Palestine before the war and the levelling of 500 Arab villages. A phantom-like figure in the back seat is Suleiman, placing himself from the start in the position of witness. The movie flashes back to 1948, as a ragtag Palestinian Liberation Army resists in vain the much better equipped Israeli forces. His father fights back, but is brutally beaten and left for dead.
A flash forward takes us into Nazareth about a decade later. The only character who expresses a spirit of rebellion is a “mad” neighbor (Qubti) who wants to kill himself rather than submit to minority status. Young Elia (Hanna) attends an Arab school where students sing patriotic Hebrew songs. His political coming-of-age commences when he is reprimanded for telling his classmates that the US is imperialist. As a teen (Espanioli), he rips an Israeli flag.
Later, he is denounced and forced into exile. An ellipsis leads us to today, when the grown Elia returns to Nazareth to visit his aged and now widowed mother (Qudha Tanus). He watches young people living in a climate of apathy and apolitical concerns.
The episode of the man threatening to douse himself with gasoline is played for comedy. So are such scenes as the older Elia embracing his school friends, a PLA soldier wandering off in all directions but the correct one, and Fuad being harassed by bored Israeli soldiers while fishing. Suleiman uses repetition to milk his funny moments. Sight gags were already prominent in some of his earlier films, like Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996) and Divine Intervention (2002), which earned him a jury prize in Cannes.
Suleiman captures the unique beauty of Nazareth, an ancient terraced city of glaringly white stones and stunning vegetation. He deftly shifts from highly symmetrical shots, often through windows, to oblique ones, showing people traversing Nazareth’s multiple levels and a range of vistas of the town. The music is comprised mostly of Arab melodies that were, he says, his father’s favorites. His style becomes for some a little monotonous after an hour, but this is otherwise a successful fusion of the political with the personal.
--------------------------------
The Time That Remains: Chronicle of a Present Absentee
(France - Belgium - Italy)
By DEREK ELLEY
Variety
The Never-ending Story between Arabs and Jews gets another wryly humorous workout, marbled with personal sadness and mystification, in "The Time That Remains," Palestinian Elia Suleiman's third leg of his long-in-the works trilogy on his people's place in the modern state of Israel. Inspired by his father's diaries, and the writer-helmer's own memories, vignettish pic is both more rigorously fashioned and a lighter sit than "Chronicle of a Disappearance" (1996) or "Divine Intervention" (2002), coming close at times to fringe theater, with Suleiman almost an outside observer. Moderate returns look likely among upscale viewers.
Those expecting a more ambitious, large-scale treatment of the subject -- from the initial announcement pic was to be a semi-autobiographical history of Suleiman's family from 1948 to the present -- may well feel let down. "Time" is essentially "Divine" with a more personal and historical edge: A succession of small events, running jokes and ironic observations in the director's Tati-esque style. Almost perversely, Suleiman avoids referencing most of the key political markers of the past 60 years, holding his focus tightly on a small family and neighbors in his home town of Nazareth.
Framing device (which could be eliminated) has "E.S.," as he's billed in closing crawl (Suleiman), taking a taxi from the airport as he arrives in Israel. As the cab gets caught in a sudden thunderstorm, the tone turns mystical as he asks the -- rather obvious -- question, "Where am I?"
Pic's five subsequent sections, each about 20 minutes long, are separated simply by fadeouts, with no date captions -- though it's not difficult to guess the periods from implanted info.
Initially, it's 1948, with Arab resistance falling apart and the mayor of Nazareth -- in a scene which augurs the movie's often tableau-like style -- signing an official surrender to the Israeli army. Though several members of his family move abroad (notably to Jordan), Fuad Suleiman (Saleh Bakri, charismatically handsome) still believes in armed resistance, which leads to his arrest, beating and near death.
The immaculate visual style, with every shot geometrically composed and figures always set against either Nazareth's postcard-pretty lanes or placid, picturesque landscapes, immediately establishes a formalism that's echoed in the perfs (a bizarre character here, a silent observer there) and use of minimal resources to sketch larger events (a couple of army jeeps, a brief burst of gunfire, a handful of soldiers). This is, in effect, microcosmic theater, ironically playing out scattered moments from an often bloody history of occupation in beautiful, sun-bathed locations.
Second seg shifts to 1970, with Fuad's young son, Elia (Zuhair Abu Hanna), scolded at school for calling the U.S. "colonialist" and Fuad himself seemingly reconciled to Israeli occupation of his homeland and going on night fishing trips with a friend. Pic succinctly (but also humorously) sketches Israel's own colonization through a patriotic Hebrew song sung at the school on National Day and the kids being shown the Hollywood Zionist allegory, "Spartacus."
By now, pic has established a rhythm of repeated scenes and characters -- including a mad, foul-mouthed old neighbor (Tarek Qubti) who's always threatening to immolate himself -- which provides some kind of structure to the succession of brief episodes.
As the '70s wear on, and Elia grows to teenhood (Ayman Espanioli), his inherited sense of injustice leads to him being given 24 hours to leave the country, for some unspecified wrongdoing.
Film starts to develop an emotional pull in the final half-hour, as Elia returns one Christmas as a grown man (Suleiman) to resume his place outside the same corner bar with his mates, and also care for his aging mom (Samar Qudha Tanus). Dialogue, always spare, becomes even more minimalist here -- Suleiman himself never speaks -- and the helmer's Buster Keaton-like, hangdog looks provide a silent commentary on the succession of witty sketches, which seem to imply that nothing has changed -- or ever will.
As in "Divine," there's an uneven quality to Suleiman's often surreal ideas, but in general there are way more hits than misses this time round, some of them laugh-out-loud. Pic could easily be criticized for lacking upfront political commitment, but there are already enough didactic dramas out there on the same subject to cut Suleiman some slack for his ironic, outsider-ish approach.
Technical package is tops, from Marc-Andre Batigne's crystal-clear lensing, through the slightly theatrical period design and costuming, to use of source music. Brief effects shots are smoothly integrated. Some trimming of the final modern seg would improve its pacing, which is noticeably more leisurely than the rest of the tightly cut movie.
----------------------------------------
Film Review: The Time That Remains
By Deborah Young
Hollywood Reporter
Seven years after "Divine Intervention," director Elia Suleiman returns with more humorous-sad stories from his native Palestine, couched in the ironic autobiographical language at which he is grandly adept. "The Time That Remains" and its subtitle, "Chronicle of a Present Absentee," suggest that there is little to hope for in the current political situation, where Suleiman's own role is that of a passive observer. Despite its serious subject, this gentle, bittersweet film is an easy watch and should penetrate arthouse markets at least as well as its predecessor.
Examining his own uncomfortable status as an Israeli Arab through the memories of his family in Nazareth, Suleiman traces his family's history from 1948, the year Israel declared its independence. The fighting between various Arab armies and the Israelis is seen first as farce, then as drama when his father, Fuad Suleiman (played with silent intensity by the handsome Saleh Bakri), a resistance fighter, is almost killed by the new Israeli army. Poorly armed with homemade weapons, the resistance movement is doomed.
Fuad survives, however, and has a son, Elia (Zuhair Abu Hanna), who is constantly in trouble at his Israeli school for his political views. This is succinctly conveyed in a pair of face-offs between the boy and his teacher. Dialogue is kept to a minimum and visuals take the lead in conveying the awkwardness of his family's life as Arabs living in Israel, without nationality, under a military administration. Yet life goes on in its ordinary absurdity.
Elia's deadpan family keeps their thoughts to themselves, though their crazy alcoholic neighbor (Tarek Qubti) doesn't mince words when talking about politics. His is virtually the only open protest against Israel in a film imbued with a fine sense of irony and much more regretfulness than anger.
Time passes and Elia becomes a wide-eyed teenager (Ayman Espanioli). More time passes, and he becomes Elia Suleiman in person. He has returned to Nazareth to visit his aged mother, who is lost in her own world. The Israeli police are unbelievably nice and cooperative -- one even brings over homemade tabouleh, washes the dishes and cleans the house. Meanwhile, in Ramallah, a huge army tank menacingly points its gun at an Arab man who totally ignores the threat, the way kids dancing in a discotheque ignore curfew.
Despite the long list of co-producers, the film was clearly made on a budget, a fact that gives it a more intimate and personal look than an epic dimension. Violence is kept off-screen and there are no action scenes per se. The retro charm of old Nazareth is captured by Marc-Andre Batigne's cinematography and deceptively naive camera movement, barely more than in a silent movie. Soundtrack is a funny selection of songs that range from "Jingle Bells" to a disco remix of "Staying Alive," each with a point to make, and a heady excerpt of "Spartacus" is thrown in as a freebie.
Edited By Sonic Youth on 1243124862
22 May, 2009 | By Howard Feinstein
Screendaily
Dir/scr Elia Suleiman. Palestine-France. 109mins.
Suleiman adapted the screenplay for The Time That Remains from diaries his father wrote as he was dying in their native Nazareth, a mostly Arab city in Israel. This impressive film is, however, as much about the director (who, as always, plays himself, this time in the last third of the movie) as it is about his father, Fuad (Bakri). They journey in opposite directions. His father shifts from gun-making and resistance fighting during Israel’s 1948 War of Independence to postwar acquiescence. Suleiman traces his own path from young conformist to political activist, and ultimately to mute observer.
A master stylist, Suleiman intersperses Keaton-style sight gags, tense scenes chronicling Israeli abuse, and intimate sequences of his family at home. American distributors tend to shy away from pro-Palestinian fare, but this leisurely film could find a home in European arthouses and on television.
The Time That Remains is bracketed by a sequence in which an Israeli man driving a van during a thunderstorm is thrown into a time warp. He sees Palestine before the war and the levelling of 500 Arab villages. A phantom-like figure in the back seat is Suleiman, placing himself from the start in the position of witness. The movie flashes back to 1948, as a ragtag Palestinian Liberation Army resists in vain the much better equipped Israeli forces. His father fights back, but is brutally beaten and left for dead.
A flash forward takes us into Nazareth about a decade later. The only character who expresses a spirit of rebellion is a “mad” neighbor (Qubti) who wants to kill himself rather than submit to minority status. Young Elia (Hanna) attends an Arab school where students sing patriotic Hebrew songs. His political coming-of-age commences when he is reprimanded for telling his classmates that the US is imperialist. As a teen (Espanioli), he rips an Israeli flag.
Later, he is denounced and forced into exile. An ellipsis leads us to today, when the grown Elia returns to Nazareth to visit his aged and now widowed mother (Qudha Tanus). He watches young people living in a climate of apathy and apolitical concerns.
The episode of the man threatening to douse himself with gasoline is played for comedy. So are such scenes as the older Elia embracing his school friends, a PLA soldier wandering off in all directions but the correct one, and Fuad being harassed by bored Israeli soldiers while fishing. Suleiman uses repetition to milk his funny moments. Sight gags were already prominent in some of his earlier films, like Chronicle of a Disappearance (1996) and Divine Intervention (2002), which earned him a jury prize in Cannes.
Suleiman captures the unique beauty of Nazareth, an ancient terraced city of glaringly white stones and stunning vegetation. He deftly shifts from highly symmetrical shots, often through windows, to oblique ones, showing people traversing Nazareth’s multiple levels and a range of vistas of the town. The music is comprised mostly of Arab melodies that were, he says, his father’s favorites. His style becomes for some a little monotonous after an hour, but this is otherwise a successful fusion of the political with the personal.
--------------------------------
The Time That Remains: Chronicle of a Present Absentee
(France - Belgium - Italy)
By DEREK ELLEY
Variety
The Never-ending Story between Arabs and Jews gets another wryly humorous workout, marbled with personal sadness and mystification, in "The Time That Remains," Palestinian Elia Suleiman's third leg of his long-in-the works trilogy on his people's place in the modern state of Israel. Inspired by his father's diaries, and the writer-helmer's own memories, vignettish pic is both more rigorously fashioned and a lighter sit than "Chronicle of a Disappearance" (1996) or "Divine Intervention" (2002), coming close at times to fringe theater, with Suleiman almost an outside observer. Moderate returns look likely among upscale viewers.
Those expecting a more ambitious, large-scale treatment of the subject -- from the initial announcement pic was to be a semi-autobiographical history of Suleiman's family from 1948 to the present -- may well feel let down. "Time" is essentially "Divine" with a more personal and historical edge: A succession of small events, running jokes and ironic observations in the director's Tati-esque style. Almost perversely, Suleiman avoids referencing most of the key political markers of the past 60 years, holding his focus tightly on a small family and neighbors in his home town of Nazareth.
Framing device (which could be eliminated) has "E.S.," as he's billed in closing crawl (Suleiman), taking a taxi from the airport as he arrives in Israel. As the cab gets caught in a sudden thunderstorm, the tone turns mystical as he asks the -- rather obvious -- question, "Where am I?"
Pic's five subsequent sections, each about 20 minutes long, are separated simply by fadeouts, with no date captions -- though it's not difficult to guess the periods from implanted info.
Initially, it's 1948, with Arab resistance falling apart and the mayor of Nazareth -- in a scene which augurs the movie's often tableau-like style -- signing an official surrender to the Israeli army. Though several members of his family move abroad (notably to Jordan), Fuad Suleiman (Saleh Bakri, charismatically handsome) still believes in armed resistance, which leads to his arrest, beating and near death.
The immaculate visual style, with every shot geometrically composed and figures always set against either Nazareth's postcard-pretty lanes or placid, picturesque landscapes, immediately establishes a formalism that's echoed in the perfs (a bizarre character here, a silent observer there) and use of minimal resources to sketch larger events (a couple of army jeeps, a brief burst of gunfire, a handful of soldiers). This is, in effect, microcosmic theater, ironically playing out scattered moments from an often bloody history of occupation in beautiful, sun-bathed locations.
Second seg shifts to 1970, with Fuad's young son, Elia (Zuhair Abu Hanna), scolded at school for calling the U.S. "colonialist" and Fuad himself seemingly reconciled to Israeli occupation of his homeland and going on night fishing trips with a friend. Pic succinctly (but also humorously) sketches Israel's own colonization through a patriotic Hebrew song sung at the school on National Day and the kids being shown the Hollywood Zionist allegory, "Spartacus."
By now, pic has established a rhythm of repeated scenes and characters -- including a mad, foul-mouthed old neighbor (Tarek Qubti) who's always threatening to immolate himself -- which provides some kind of structure to the succession of brief episodes.
As the '70s wear on, and Elia grows to teenhood (Ayman Espanioli), his inherited sense of injustice leads to him being given 24 hours to leave the country, for some unspecified wrongdoing.
Film starts to develop an emotional pull in the final half-hour, as Elia returns one Christmas as a grown man (Suleiman) to resume his place outside the same corner bar with his mates, and also care for his aging mom (Samar Qudha Tanus). Dialogue, always spare, becomes even more minimalist here -- Suleiman himself never speaks -- and the helmer's Buster Keaton-like, hangdog looks provide a silent commentary on the succession of witty sketches, which seem to imply that nothing has changed -- or ever will.
As in "Divine," there's an uneven quality to Suleiman's often surreal ideas, but in general there are way more hits than misses this time round, some of them laugh-out-loud. Pic could easily be criticized for lacking upfront political commitment, but there are already enough didactic dramas out there on the same subject to cut Suleiman some slack for his ironic, outsider-ish approach.
Technical package is tops, from Marc-Andre Batigne's crystal-clear lensing, through the slightly theatrical period design and costuming, to use of source music. Brief effects shots are smoothly integrated. Some trimming of the final modern seg would improve its pacing, which is noticeably more leisurely than the rest of the tightly cut movie.
----------------------------------------
Film Review: The Time That Remains
By Deborah Young
Hollywood Reporter
Seven years after "Divine Intervention," director Elia Suleiman returns with more humorous-sad stories from his native Palestine, couched in the ironic autobiographical language at which he is grandly adept. "The Time That Remains" and its subtitle, "Chronicle of a Present Absentee," suggest that there is little to hope for in the current political situation, where Suleiman's own role is that of a passive observer. Despite its serious subject, this gentle, bittersweet film is an easy watch and should penetrate arthouse markets at least as well as its predecessor.
Examining his own uncomfortable status as an Israeli Arab through the memories of his family in Nazareth, Suleiman traces his family's history from 1948, the year Israel declared its independence. The fighting between various Arab armies and the Israelis is seen first as farce, then as drama when his father, Fuad Suleiman (played with silent intensity by the handsome Saleh Bakri), a resistance fighter, is almost killed by the new Israeli army. Poorly armed with homemade weapons, the resistance movement is doomed.
Fuad survives, however, and has a son, Elia (Zuhair Abu Hanna), who is constantly in trouble at his Israeli school for his political views. This is succinctly conveyed in a pair of face-offs between the boy and his teacher. Dialogue is kept to a minimum and visuals take the lead in conveying the awkwardness of his family's life as Arabs living in Israel, without nationality, under a military administration. Yet life goes on in its ordinary absurdity.
Elia's deadpan family keeps their thoughts to themselves, though their crazy alcoholic neighbor (Tarek Qubti) doesn't mince words when talking about politics. His is virtually the only open protest against Israel in a film imbued with a fine sense of irony and much more regretfulness than anger.
Time passes and Elia becomes a wide-eyed teenager (Ayman Espanioli). More time passes, and he becomes Elia Suleiman in person. He has returned to Nazareth to visit his aged mother, who is lost in her own world. The Israeli police are unbelievably nice and cooperative -- one even brings over homemade tabouleh, washes the dishes and cleans the house. Meanwhile, in Ramallah, a huge army tank menacingly points its gun at an Arab man who totally ignores the threat, the way kids dancing in a discotheque ignore curfew.
Despite the long list of co-producers, the film was clearly made on a budget, a fact that gives it a more intimate and personal look than an epic dimension. Violence is kept off-screen and there are no action scenes per se. The retro charm of old Nazareth is captured by Marc-Andre Batigne's cinematography and deceptively naive camera movement, barely more than in a silent movie. Soundtrack is a funny selection of songs that range from "Jingle Bells" to a disco remix of "Staying Alive," each with a point to make, and a heady excerpt of "Spartacus" is thrown in as a freebie.
Edited By Sonic Youth on 1243124862
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Win Butler
-
Sonic Youth
- Tenured Laureate
- Posts: 8005
- Joined: Wed Jan 01, 2003 8:35 pm
- Location: USA
Mixed-to-negative reviews for Parnassus:
Film Review: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
By Ray Bennett
Hollywood Reporter
CANNES -- The first big question about Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" involves how the filmmaker managed to complete the film when his star Heath Ledger died in the middle of shooting. The answer is with great imagination and skill.
The second big question is whether or not Gilliam has produced something to rank with his great fantasies "Time Bandits" and "Brazil" and the answer is sadly not.
A carnival show with a mirror to the imagination allows Gilliam to employ his remarkable gift for imagery but the worlds he creates will not take the breath away of children or grownups. The combined star power involved will generate a plentiful boxoffice return but the film is not intelligent enough nor silly or grotesque enough to become a lasting favorite.
Filled with phantasmagorical images with the occasional echo of "Monty Python's Flying Circus," the picture involves a classic duel between the forces of imagination, led by Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), and the architect of fear and ignorance, known here as Mr. Nick (Tom Waits).
Andrew Garfield and Lily Cole provide youthful love interest and Ledger is once again the joker in the pack as a stranger who is not what he seems.
The setting is a horse-drawn carnival sideshow in modern London, an attraction in which Dr. Parnassus, who claims to be immortal, invites ticket buyers to enter a world of their own imagination by stepping through a large mirror. Once beyond it, faces change and fates vary, which is how Gilliam gets away with having Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell step into the Ledger role.
Ledger makes his entrance as a man being hanged from London's Blackfriar's Bridge with his arms tied at his back. Saved and named George by the members of Dr. Parnassus' troupe, he claims to remember nothing and joins the players. The doctor and Mr. Nick have a lifelong wager in which the soul of Dr. P's daughter (Cole) is the prize, and he suspects the devil has placed George there to make trouble. The rest of the film involves various plunges into the mirror's vast wonderland with George changing physiognomy along the way.
The visual effects are colorful and entertaining without ever becoming a coherent force. The score by Mychael Danna and Jeff Danna has the required flair and sweep.
Plummer and Waits are the twin rocks of the film and they enter the spirit of playfulness with typical skill. Garfield continues to expand his considerable range and model Cole makes a pretty picture. The three stars that came to Gilliam's rescue also make amusing contributions but it's hard not to wonder how much better the film would have been with a complete performance by the charismatic and adventurous Ledger.
The film is dedicated to Ledger and producer William Vince, who died after filming was completed.
-------------------------------------------
Low on Luster, Gilliam’s “Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” Winds up a Sideshow
by Eric Kohn
indieWire
Heath Ledger in a scene from Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus." Image courtesy of Cannes Film Festival.Marred by shoddy special effects and half-formed fantastical conceits, Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” has the feeling of a comic fantasia desperately seeking to find its rhythm. Nearly abandoned after the sudden death of leading man Heath Ledger prior to completing production in January of last year, the final result reflects the frantic cobbling together of missing pieces. Ledger’s posthumous status haunts his scenes, as it does in the moments in which various actors replace him. Compounding that problem, the cartoonish CGI and inconsistent storytelling yield a seriously disjointed experience. Still, “Parnassus” deserves to be seen, probed and evaluated as an interesting misfire in Gilliam’s delectably quizzical canon.
The movie revolves around the eponymous traveling stage show, led by Dr. Parnassus (an enjoyably senile Christopher Plummer), a millennia-old magician whose immortality stems from a deal he made with the Devil (Tom Waits, topping his fleeting role as an angel in Tony Scott’s “Domino” with this far more appropriate casting decision). Unfortunately for Parnassus, the contract requires him to give up his daughter when she turns sixteen, a possibility that the younger doctor - at the time, childless - chose to ignore. In the present, though, he winds up with a lovely teenager named Valentina (Lily Cole) - and she’s on the brink of her sweet sixteen as the story begins.
The set up works; the details bump along with incorrigible problems. The bulk of the spectacle in “Parnassus” involves the other side of a mirror on his set, where attendees can venture into a sweepingly lyrical world within the confines of the showman’s mind. From the first scene, the problem of this central prop comes into focus: The world behind the mirror looks more than just fake - it looks cheesy. A psychedelic unreality akin to Tim Burton’s remake of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” this loopy alternate world becomes less of a problem at later points in the movie, but the transparency makes it hard to establish a credible aura of mystery from the outset.
Worse than that, the overall mythology of Parnassus and his magical troupe never truly congeals. There’s no hints at whether the world around him acknowledges the feasibility of his magical prowess or he must keep it a secret, “Harry Potter”-style. Without a steady framework in which to understand the movie, it lacks a much-needed luster from the beginning.
Ledger’s character complicates this glaring distraction. As Mr. Nick, an amnesiac discovered by the troupe and haphazardly added to their lineup, he dons a witty demeanor with enjoyable quirks. But Ledger’s very presence constantly forces the viewer to acknowledge his death, far more so than when he appeared as the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” a mere six months after his demise. Nick’s first appearance in “Parnassus” invokes the real world casualty with the unseemly image of the actor hanging from a noose. Additionally, many scenes directly acknowledge his passing. In one, where Johnny Depp plays Mr. Nick - since he appears, in a clever bit of last-minute rewriting, in a slightly different form behind the mirror - the character discusses the current state of dead stars. “They are beyond fear,” he says. “Because they are forever young, they are gods.” It’s the kind of frustrating overstatement that belongs on the cutting room floor.
Still, “Parnassus” benefits from all-around solid performances from its entire cast, a factor that helps the wonder eventually settle into place. The other two main supporting actors, Verne Troyer as the troupe’s resident little person and Andrew Garfield as the supporting player in love with Valentina, never hog the screen as overt sideshow attractions. The gimmick of Mr. Nick’s changing faces has an obvious, tacked-on feel, but the two other actors filling his shoes, Depp and Colin Farrell, both know what they’re doing. One of the end credits calls the movie “a film from Heath Ledger and friends,” implying less of a finished product than a memento with shiny wrapping paper, and it definitely achieves that much.
Toward the end, in starts to turn into something better than that. The rather lengthy sequence with Farrell as Dr. Nick surpasses everything that came before, not because of his performance but due to Gilliam’s marvelously innovative design. Parnassus’s world falls apart at the seams, thanks to a deliciously quirky soundtrack and the eruption of visual splendor. Culminating with a literal dance with the Devil, “Parnassus” finally discovers a strange and wonderful vibe.
The relentless Hollywood outsider, Gilliam’s career is marked by his willingness to fight against impossible odds in order to realize his vision, much like Orson Welles. Despite all its difficulties, “Parnassus” continues to display Gilliam’s distinctive talents, and at least he finished the damn thing. In that sense, “Parnassus” is his “The Magnificent Ambersons,” rather than “The Other Side of the Wind,” if the Welles comparison makes sense.
Meanwhile, the potential for discovering Gilliam’s mind as we explore the one belonging to his main character gives the movie an intriguing autobiographic edge. “We need to meet the public halfway,” Mr. Nick tells the troupe, explaining how they can improve the show. “The secret is not to hide, to go places people never expected you at.” On that level, “Parnassus” undoubtedly works as an ongoing quest to generate awe. There are glimmers of it in the finale, which involves a coherent universe of frenzied visuals, leaving us to contemplate the potential for a better result.
--------------------------------------------
The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus
22 May, 2009 | By Allan Hunter
Screendaily
Dir:Terry Gilliam. Fr-UK-Canada. 122mins.
Terry Gilliam has always seemed like the last apostle of unfettered fantasy in an age insistent on prosaic reality. The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus is a typically staunch defence of the transformative power of the imagination and its ability to change the world.
This is the purest expression of Gilliam’s distinctive sensibility in a long while, complete with outbursts of Pythonesque humour, entrancing dream landscapes, strange creatures, a dapper devil and a wise midget. It is an incredibly rich stew of a film and an often wilfully eccentric proposition for a mainstream audience. Despite the attractions of a stellar cast, its appeal will be largely confined to loyal Gilliam fans and those seeking a last look at the legacy of the late Heath Ledger, who died during the film’s production. The end credits for Imaginarium bill it as a film from Heath Ledger and friends.
A reunion of Gilliam with Charles McKeown, his screenwriter collaborator on Brazil (1985) and The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen (1988), Imaginarium features many of the preoccupying themes and visual trademarks of Gilliam’s career. In many respects it has the air of a fond and perhaps final return to some very familiar ground. Christopher Plummer’s Dr Parnassus even feels like the kind of doddering seer of a figure who would seem very much at home in the company of Gilliam’s liars, rogues and vagabonds like Munchausen and Don Quixote.
Parnassus is thousands of years old and immortal. He now runs a ramshackle travelling magic show with his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole), eager assistant Anton (Andrew Garfield) and dwarf Percy (Verne Troyer). But Parnassus has made a deal with the devil, called Mr. Nick (Tom Waits) to pursue the great love of his love. The price was that the devil would come to reclaim the soul of their child on her sixteenth birthday which in the case of Valentina, is just days away.
Always a betting man, the Devil offers Parnassus a further wager. The first of them to claim five souls wins the prize of Valentina. The wager takes place as the troupe save the life of disgraced charity boss Tony (Heath Ledger), who they find hanging from a bridge.
Parnassus takes place in a contemporary London that Gilliam paints as a grim city populated by narrow-minded individuals with no sense of imagination. It is a despairing, old man’s vision of a world that needs a little magic and hope more than ever. Those qualities arise in the various journeys undertaken to secure the five souls and save Valentina. If an individual can be persuaded to step through the mirror of the imaginarium, they pass into an
idyllic fantasy of their happiest imagining whether that’s a Willy Wonka land of chocolates and sweets for a child or a land of enticing consumer goods and gliding gondolas for one older woman.
These sequences give full reign to Gilliam’s visual imagination as a huge head of Parnassus appears from the sand or the devil transforms himself into a giant, slithering snake. In one bizarre moment, a band of cross-dressing policemen embark on a song’n’dance routine to entice new recruits with an appetite for violence. It is the most obvious nod to Gilliam’s Python past in the film.
Parnassus is a visual treat but one that many will find lacking in coherence or self-discipline.
The death of Heath Ledger has prompted an elegant solution that works in terms of the film’s narrative as Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell all assume the role of Tony during the narrative. These transitions take place during the visits through the Parnassus looking glass so it seems entirely believable that Tony might change physical shape as he enters a different world and more of his true personality is stripped away to reveal the villain beneath.
In one sequence tiny boats bearing images of Rudolph Valentino, James Dean and Princess Diana float by and there is an eerily resonant tribute paid to those who die young and will never grow old or feeble.
Ledger’s final performance once again underlines his considerable screen presence and winning way with comedy but the film’s best turn comes from a dazzling Andrew Garfield as Anton. Deeply in love with Valentina and deeply jealous of her affection for Tony, he captures all the eagerness and wounded pride of his character in a totally delightful performance that is a further testimony to the versatility of an actor who seems comes up with something fresh in every film (Boy A, Lions For Lambs etc).
To anyone not sympathetic to Gilliam’s flights of fantasy, Parnassus will reek of rambling self-indulgence but fans will welcome it as a return to what he does best.
---------------------------------------------
Terry Gilliam's Imaginarium may be for fans only
Peter Bradshaw at the Cannes film festival guardian.co.uk
Heath Ledger takes a poignant final bow in Terry Gilliam's loopy, sweet-natured but madly self-indulgent fantasia The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, showing here at the Cannes film festival out of competition. Halfway through shooting, Ledger had made a desperately sad early exit, so the director ingeniously re-invented his character as a series of personae. Jude Law, Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp gamely stepped into the breach.
The Dr Parnassus of the title is played by Christopher Plummer, an ageing swami-showman who rattles around in his "imaginarium", a kind of Gypsy-wagon-cum-mobile-fairground theatre, with his fellow players: dyspeptic Percy, played by Verne Troyer, his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole) and leading man Anton (Andrew Garfield) who's obviously deeply in love with Valentina. When members of the audience are invited up on to the stage, they slip back through the ratty old curtains which lead them to a Narnia-like wonderland in which their imaginations can be set free. Dr Parnassus is engaged in a deadly duel with the devil (Tom Waits): Parnassus wants to claim souls for glorious, imaginative freedom – Satan wants to chain them to banality and dullness.
This contest is made more interesting when Parnassus and his troupe rescue a mysterious stranger from a Roberto Calvi-style attempted suicide-by-hanging under a bridge. He is "Tony", played by Ledger et al, evidently a leading charity campaigner and public figure – but soon revealed as shallow and insidious. A newspaper headline, Tony Liar, hints that he may be inspired by a certain former prime minister of tarnished memory.
When Gilliam shoots off into his surreal wonderland, his film has a kind of helium-filled jollity and spectacle. The moments when Plummer's face looms hugely out of the hallucinatory landscape are great: a reminder of the old Python magic. But the film's convoluted curlicues are tiring, insisting too loudly on how "imaginative" everything is. And when it descends into the real world – Lucy out of the sky without diamonds, as it were – the film can frankly be a bit ho-hum, with some very broad acting from the bit-part crowd players. Gilliam's previous movie Tideland showed he still has teeth, and he bares them occasionally here. The dark side reveals itself, time and again, in the ruined, unsentimental locations in London. But this movie, though perfectly amiable, could be for fans only.
--------------------------------------------------------
http://www.variety.com/index.a....ryid=-1
To print this page, select "PRINT" from the File Menu of your browser.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
(U.K.-Canada)
By TODD MCCARTHY
Vareity
Especially considering the trauma and difficulties stemming from Heath Ledger's death during production and the fact that Terry Gilliam hadn't directed a good picture in more than a decade, the helmer has made a pretty good thing out of a very bad situation in "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus." Synthesizing elements from several of his previous pictures, including "Time Bandits," "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and "The Fisher King," the often overreaching director addresses a mad hatter of a story with the expected visual panache and what is, for him, considerable discipline. With Ledger onscreen more than might have been expected, the film possesses strong curiosity value bolstered by generally lively action and excellent visual effects, making for good commercial prospects in most markets.
"Imaginarium" joined the short list of films interrupted by the death of a star when Ledger died in January 2008, after an initial stretch of shooting in London and before the box office smash of "The Dark Knight." Gilliam struggled to figure out how to proceed before asking three other stars, Johnny Depp (who toplined for the director in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"), Jude Law and Colin Farrell, to step in to fill Ledger's shoes.
Many Ledger fans certainly will turn out just to see his final performance. But it's genuinely interesting to see how, under duress, Gilliam contrived to work the other actors into the role. The way it plays out in the finished picture is that Ledger's incarnation of Tony, a man rescued from death who provides a possible way for Doctor Parnassus to win a wager with the devil, occupies the London-set framing story, while his three successors play versions of the character in the CGI sequences set in fantastical other dimensions. It all comes off well, without terribly disruptive emotional-mental dislocations.
That said, Tony is not a demanding dramatic role, nor a particularly flamboyant one like the Joker, so this can't legitimately be described as one Ledger's most striking performances. Like most of the other actors here, he's antic and frantic, dirty and sweaty, as the principals flail around trying to cope with their desperate straits.
At first, it seems Gilliam's worst habits will get the better of him once again, as the early hectic action centers on a small group of traveling players who move about the seedier neighborhoods of modern London in a 19th-century-style carnival wagon that unfolds to allow the performers out to try to snare its few derelict customers.
At the center of the clan is Doctor Parnassus himself (Christopher Plummer, with a Lear-like countenance), who a thousand years ago made a pact with the devil for immortality. The downside to the bargain, however, as Parnassus is reminded when the devil comes to collect in the person of Mr. Nick (Tom Waits, forever the hipster); is that, when the doctor's daughter Valentina (Lily Cole) turns 16, she becomes Satan's property. Unfortunately, her birthday is imminent, so Parnassus makes another deal, which allows him to save his daughter if he can deliver five souls to his alternate world of the imagination.
This phantasmagorical domain exists as something like the anteroom to the doctor's wagon. Entered through a mirrored partition, it can assume multiple forms, and great comforts await there as well as considerable perils. It's another "Alice in Wonderland"-like playground for Gilliam, and while all the specific action may not be entirely coherent or exciting, it's always visually stimulating and allows the three incarnations of Tony to host assorted guests.
In a morbid touch, Tony is first seen hanging from a noose suspended from a London bridge and presumed dead. Once resurrected and done flopping about in the mud, the young man, who says "mate" a lot, joins Parnassus' small band, which, in addition to his kewpie doll-like daughter, consists of the over-avid Anton (Andrew Garfield), who's smitten with Valentina, and midget Percy (Verne Troyer). Seeing little upside among the drunks and homeless who generally witness and sometimes disrupt the troupe's appearances, Tony suggests a modernizing makeover and a move to snazzier environs.
A lot of the stage business consists of pratfalls and chaotic behavior, which quickly become overbearing, and the plot mechanics are scarcely more engaging. Fortunately, the central conception is sturdy enough to bear Gilliam's sporadic excesses, which in any case are better focused than is sometimes the case with him. Worst are the persistent and ineffectual flailings of Anton, a character poorly conceived in hapless 19th-century romantic mode.
It's 66 minutes into the picture when Depp first appears, and you have to look twice to make sure it's him, so closely has his pulled-back hair, moustache and beard been tailored to match Ledger's. At one point, Depp's Tony conducts a middle-aged woman to the river of immortality and says that there she can join the likes of Valentino, James Dean and Princess Di among those who never got old, which serves to ease Ledger's unspoken admission to that group.
Ledger reappears whenever the action returns to modern London, but the fact that Tony is always dressed in a white suit makes him instantly identifiable when Law takes over to deal with some Russian gangsters who pass through veil. Last and very much the best of the three new Tonys is Farrell, who brings great zest to Tony's efforts to become the crucial fifth soul who will save Valentina for Parnassus.
Pic's second half is resplendent with ever-changing CGI backdrops for the imaginary world the doctor has created with his gift. "Original designers and art directors" Dave Warren and Gilliam no doubt played a dominant role in conceiving the film's look, which is ornate without being a riot of detail, but production designer Anastasia Masaro, visual effects supervisors John Paul Docherty and Richard Bain and costume designer Monique Prudhomme certainly made major contributions as well. Other production values are strong across the board.
Plummer enacts the oldest man in the world with verve, and Troyer, Waits and Cole nicely hold necessarily caricatured work in check.
Pic is dedicated to the memories of not only Ledger but producer William Vince, who also died during production.
Edited By Sonic Youth on 1243010941
Film Review: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
By Ray Bennett
Hollywood Reporter
CANNES -- The first big question about Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus" involves how the filmmaker managed to complete the film when his star Heath Ledger died in the middle of shooting. The answer is with great imagination and skill.
The second big question is whether or not Gilliam has produced something to rank with his great fantasies "Time Bandits" and "Brazil" and the answer is sadly not.
A carnival show with a mirror to the imagination allows Gilliam to employ his remarkable gift for imagery but the worlds he creates will not take the breath away of children or grownups. The combined star power involved will generate a plentiful boxoffice return but the film is not intelligent enough nor silly or grotesque enough to become a lasting favorite.
Filled with phantasmagorical images with the occasional echo of "Monty Python's Flying Circus," the picture involves a classic duel between the forces of imagination, led by Dr. Parnassus (Christopher Plummer), and the architect of fear and ignorance, known here as Mr. Nick (Tom Waits).
Andrew Garfield and Lily Cole provide youthful love interest and Ledger is once again the joker in the pack as a stranger who is not what he seems.
The setting is a horse-drawn carnival sideshow in modern London, an attraction in which Dr. Parnassus, who claims to be immortal, invites ticket buyers to enter a world of their own imagination by stepping through a large mirror. Once beyond it, faces change and fates vary, which is how Gilliam gets away with having Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell step into the Ledger role.
Ledger makes his entrance as a man being hanged from London's Blackfriar's Bridge with his arms tied at his back. Saved and named George by the members of Dr. Parnassus' troupe, he claims to remember nothing and joins the players. The doctor and Mr. Nick have a lifelong wager in which the soul of Dr. P's daughter (Cole) is the prize, and he suspects the devil has placed George there to make trouble. The rest of the film involves various plunges into the mirror's vast wonderland with George changing physiognomy along the way.
The visual effects are colorful and entertaining without ever becoming a coherent force. The score by Mychael Danna and Jeff Danna has the required flair and sweep.
Plummer and Waits are the twin rocks of the film and they enter the spirit of playfulness with typical skill. Garfield continues to expand his considerable range and model Cole makes a pretty picture. The three stars that came to Gilliam's rescue also make amusing contributions but it's hard not to wonder how much better the film would have been with a complete performance by the charismatic and adventurous Ledger.
The film is dedicated to Ledger and producer William Vince, who died after filming was completed.
-------------------------------------------
Low on Luster, Gilliam’s “Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” Winds up a Sideshow
by Eric Kohn
indieWire
Heath Ledger in a scene from Terry Gilliam's "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus." Image courtesy of Cannes Film Festival.Marred by shoddy special effects and half-formed fantastical conceits, Terry Gilliam’s “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus” has the feeling of a comic fantasia desperately seeking to find its rhythm. Nearly abandoned after the sudden death of leading man Heath Ledger prior to completing production in January of last year, the final result reflects the frantic cobbling together of missing pieces. Ledger’s posthumous status haunts his scenes, as it does in the moments in which various actors replace him. Compounding that problem, the cartoonish CGI and inconsistent storytelling yield a seriously disjointed experience. Still, “Parnassus” deserves to be seen, probed and evaluated as an interesting misfire in Gilliam’s delectably quizzical canon.
The movie revolves around the eponymous traveling stage show, led by Dr. Parnassus (an enjoyably senile Christopher Plummer), a millennia-old magician whose immortality stems from a deal he made with the Devil (Tom Waits, topping his fleeting role as an angel in Tony Scott’s “Domino” with this far more appropriate casting decision). Unfortunately for Parnassus, the contract requires him to give up his daughter when she turns sixteen, a possibility that the younger doctor - at the time, childless - chose to ignore. In the present, though, he winds up with a lovely teenager named Valentina (Lily Cole) - and she’s on the brink of her sweet sixteen as the story begins.
The set up works; the details bump along with incorrigible problems. The bulk of the spectacle in “Parnassus” involves the other side of a mirror on his set, where attendees can venture into a sweepingly lyrical world within the confines of the showman’s mind. From the first scene, the problem of this central prop comes into focus: The world behind the mirror looks more than just fake - it looks cheesy. A psychedelic unreality akin to Tim Burton’s remake of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” this loopy alternate world becomes less of a problem at later points in the movie, but the transparency makes it hard to establish a credible aura of mystery from the outset.
Worse than that, the overall mythology of Parnassus and his magical troupe never truly congeals. There’s no hints at whether the world around him acknowledges the feasibility of his magical prowess or he must keep it a secret, “Harry Potter”-style. Without a steady framework in which to understand the movie, it lacks a much-needed luster from the beginning.
Ledger’s character complicates this glaring distraction. As Mr. Nick, an amnesiac discovered by the troupe and haphazardly added to their lineup, he dons a witty demeanor with enjoyable quirks. But Ledger’s very presence constantly forces the viewer to acknowledge his death, far more so than when he appeared as the Joker in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” a mere six months after his demise. Nick’s first appearance in “Parnassus” invokes the real world casualty with the unseemly image of the actor hanging from a noose. Additionally, many scenes directly acknowledge his passing. In one, where Johnny Depp plays Mr. Nick - since he appears, in a clever bit of last-minute rewriting, in a slightly different form behind the mirror - the character discusses the current state of dead stars. “They are beyond fear,” he says. “Because they are forever young, they are gods.” It’s the kind of frustrating overstatement that belongs on the cutting room floor.
Still, “Parnassus” benefits from all-around solid performances from its entire cast, a factor that helps the wonder eventually settle into place. The other two main supporting actors, Verne Troyer as the troupe’s resident little person and Andrew Garfield as the supporting player in love with Valentina, never hog the screen as overt sideshow attractions. The gimmick of Mr. Nick’s changing faces has an obvious, tacked-on feel, but the two other actors filling his shoes, Depp and Colin Farrell, both know what they’re doing. One of the end credits calls the movie “a film from Heath Ledger and friends,” implying less of a finished product than a memento with shiny wrapping paper, and it definitely achieves that much.
Toward the end, in starts to turn into something better than that. The rather lengthy sequence with Farrell as Dr. Nick surpasses everything that came before, not because of his performance but due to Gilliam’s marvelously innovative design. Parnassus’s world falls apart at the seams, thanks to a deliciously quirky soundtrack and the eruption of visual splendor. Culminating with a literal dance with the Devil, “Parnassus” finally discovers a strange and wonderful vibe.
The relentless Hollywood outsider, Gilliam’s career is marked by his willingness to fight against impossible odds in order to realize his vision, much like Orson Welles. Despite all its difficulties, “Parnassus” continues to display Gilliam’s distinctive talents, and at least he finished the damn thing. In that sense, “Parnassus” is his “The Magnificent Ambersons,” rather than “The Other Side of the Wind,” if the Welles comparison makes sense.
Meanwhile, the potential for discovering Gilliam’s mind as we explore the one belonging to his main character gives the movie an intriguing autobiographic edge. “We need to meet the public halfway,” Mr. Nick tells the troupe, explaining how they can improve the show. “The secret is not to hide, to go places people never expected you at.” On that level, “Parnassus” undoubtedly works as an ongoing quest to generate awe. There are glimmers of it in the finale, which involves a coherent universe of frenzied visuals, leaving us to contemplate the potential for a better result.
--------------------------------------------
The Imaginarium Of Doctor Parnassus
22 May, 2009 | By Allan Hunter
Screendaily
Dir:Terry Gilliam. Fr-UK-Canada. 122mins.
Terry Gilliam has always seemed like the last apostle of unfettered fantasy in an age insistent on prosaic reality. The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus is a typically staunch defence of the transformative power of the imagination and its ability to change the world.
This is the purest expression of Gilliam’s distinctive sensibility in a long while, complete with outbursts of Pythonesque humour, entrancing dream landscapes, strange creatures, a dapper devil and a wise midget. It is an incredibly rich stew of a film and an often wilfully eccentric proposition for a mainstream audience. Despite the attractions of a stellar cast, its appeal will be largely confined to loyal Gilliam fans and those seeking a last look at the legacy of the late Heath Ledger, who died during the film’s production. The end credits for Imaginarium bill it as a film from Heath Ledger and friends.
A reunion of Gilliam with Charles McKeown, his screenwriter collaborator on Brazil (1985) and The Adventures Of Baron Munchausen (1988), Imaginarium features many of the preoccupying themes and visual trademarks of Gilliam’s career. In many respects it has the air of a fond and perhaps final return to some very familiar ground. Christopher Plummer’s Dr Parnassus even feels like the kind of doddering seer of a figure who would seem very much at home in the company of Gilliam’s liars, rogues and vagabonds like Munchausen and Don Quixote.
Parnassus is thousands of years old and immortal. He now runs a ramshackle travelling magic show with his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole), eager assistant Anton (Andrew Garfield) and dwarf Percy (Verne Troyer). But Parnassus has made a deal with the devil, called Mr. Nick (Tom Waits) to pursue the great love of his love. The price was that the devil would come to reclaim the soul of their child on her sixteenth birthday which in the case of Valentina, is just days away.
Always a betting man, the Devil offers Parnassus a further wager. The first of them to claim five souls wins the prize of Valentina. The wager takes place as the troupe save the life of disgraced charity boss Tony (Heath Ledger), who they find hanging from a bridge.
Parnassus takes place in a contemporary London that Gilliam paints as a grim city populated by narrow-minded individuals with no sense of imagination. It is a despairing, old man’s vision of a world that needs a little magic and hope more than ever. Those qualities arise in the various journeys undertaken to secure the five souls and save Valentina. If an individual can be persuaded to step through the mirror of the imaginarium, they pass into an
idyllic fantasy of their happiest imagining whether that’s a Willy Wonka land of chocolates and sweets for a child or a land of enticing consumer goods and gliding gondolas for one older woman.
These sequences give full reign to Gilliam’s visual imagination as a huge head of Parnassus appears from the sand or the devil transforms himself into a giant, slithering snake. In one bizarre moment, a band of cross-dressing policemen embark on a song’n’dance routine to entice new recruits with an appetite for violence. It is the most obvious nod to Gilliam’s Python past in the film.
Parnassus is a visual treat but one that many will find lacking in coherence or self-discipline.
The death of Heath Ledger has prompted an elegant solution that works in terms of the film’s narrative as Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell all assume the role of Tony during the narrative. These transitions take place during the visits through the Parnassus looking glass so it seems entirely believable that Tony might change physical shape as he enters a different world and more of his true personality is stripped away to reveal the villain beneath.
In one sequence tiny boats bearing images of Rudolph Valentino, James Dean and Princess Diana float by and there is an eerily resonant tribute paid to those who die young and will never grow old or feeble.
Ledger’s final performance once again underlines his considerable screen presence and winning way with comedy but the film’s best turn comes from a dazzling Andrew Garfield as Anton. Deeply in love with Valentina and deeply jealous of her affection for Tony, he captures all the eagerness and wounded pride of his character in a totally delightful performance that is a further testimony to the versatility of an actor who seems comes up with something fresh in every film (Boy A, Lions For Lambs etc).
To anyone not sympathetic to Gilliam’s flights of fantasy, Parnassus will reek of rambling self-indulgence but fans will welcome it as a return to what he does best.
---------------------------------------------
Terry Gilliam's Imaginarium may be for fans only
Peter Bradshaw at the Cannes film festival guardian.co.uk
Heath Ledger takes a poignant final bow in Terry Gilliam's loopy, sweet-natured but madly self-indulgent fantasia The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, showing here at the Cannes film festival out of competition. Halfway through shooting, Ledger had made a desperately sad early exit, so the director ingeniously re-invented his character as a series of personae. Jude Law, Colin Farrell and Johnny Depp gamely stepped into the breach.
The Dr Parnassus of the title is played by Christopher Plummer, an ageing swami-showman who rattles around in his "imaginarium", a kind of Gypsy-wagon-cum-mobile-fairground theatre, with his fellow players: dyspeptic Percy, played by Verne Troyer, his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole) and leading man Anton (Andrew Garfield) who's obviously deeply in love with Valentina. When members of the audience are invited up on to the stage, they slip back through the ratty old curtains which lead them to a Narnia-like wonderland in which their imaginations can be set free. Dr Parnassus is engaged in a deadly duel with the devil (Tom Waits): Parnassus wants to claim souls for glorious, imaginative freedom – Satan wants to chain them to banality and dullness.
This contest is made more interesting when Parnassus and his troupe rescue a mysterious stranger from a Roberto Calvi-style attempted suicide-by-hanging under a bridge. He is "Tony", played by Ledger et al, evidently a leading charity campaigner and public figure – but soon revealed as shallow and insidious. A newspaper headline, Tony Liar, hints that he may be inspired by a certain former prime minister of tarnished memory.
When Gilliam shoots off into his surreal wonderland, his film has a kind of helium-filled jollity and spectacle. The moments when Plummer's face looms hugely out of the hallucinatory landscape are great: a reminder of the old Python magic. But the film's convoluted curlicues are tiring, insisting too loudly on how "imaginative" everything is. And when it descends into the real world – Lucy out of the sky without diamonds, as it were – the film can frankly be a bit ho-hum, with some very broad acting from the bit-part crowd players. Gilliam's previous movie Tideland showed he still has teeth, and he bares them occasionally here. The dark side reveals itself, time and again, in the ruined, unsentimental locations in London. But this movie, though perfectly amiable, could be for fans only.
--------------------------------------------------------
http://www.variety.com/index.a....ryid=-1
To print this page, select "PRINT" from the File Menu of your browser.
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
(U.K.-Canada)
By TODD MCCARTHY
Vareity
Especially considering the trauma and difficulties stemming from Heath Ledger's death during production and the fact that Terry Gilliam hadn't directed a good picture in more than a decade, the helmer has made a pretty good thing out of a very bad situation in "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus." Synthesizing elements from several of his previous pictures, including "Time Bandits," "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" and "The Fisher King," the often overreaching director addresses a mad hatter of a story with the expected visual panache and what is, for him, considerable discipline. With Ledger onscreen more than might have been expected, the film possesses strong curiosity value bolstered by generally lively action and excellent visual effects, making for good commercial prospects in most markets.
"Imaginarium" joined the short list of films interrupted by the death of a star when Ledger died in January 2008, after an initial stretch of shooting in London and before the box office smash of "The Dark Knight." Gilliam struggled to figure out how to proceed before asking three other stars, Johnny Depp (who toplined for the director in "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"), Jude Law and Colin Farrell, to step in to fill Ledger's shoes.
Many Ledger fans certainly will turn out just to see his final performance. But it's genuinely interesting to see how, under duress, Gilliam contrived to work the other actors into the role. The way it plays out in the finished picture is that Ledger's incarnation of Tony, a man rescued from death who provides a possible way for Doctor Parnassus to win a wager with the devil, occupies the London-set framing story, while his three successors play versions of the character in the CGI sequences set in fantastical other dimensions. It all comes off well, without terribly disruptive emotional-mental dislocations.
That said, Tony is not a demanding dramatic role, nor a particularly flamboyant one like the Joker, so this can't legitimately be described as one Ledger's most striking performances. Like most of the other actors here, he's antic and frantic, dirty and sweaty, as the principals flail around trying to cope with their desperate straits.
At first, it seems Gilliam's worst habits will get the better of him once again, as the early hectic action centers on a small group of traveling players who move about the seedier neighborhoods of modern London in a 19th-century-style carnival wagon that unfolds to allow the performers out to try to snare its few derelict customers.
At the center of the clan is Doctor Parnassus himself (Christopher Plummer, with a Lear-like countenance), who a thousand years ago made a pact with the devil for immortality. The downside to the bargain, however, as Parnassus is reminded when the devil comes to collect in the person of Mr. Nick (Tom Waits, forever the hipster); is that, when the doctor's daughter Valentina (Lily Cole) turns 16, she becomes Satan's property. Unfortunately, her birthday is imminent, so Parnassus makes another deal, which allows him to save his daughter if he can deliver five souls to his alternate world of the imagination.
This phantasmagorical domain exists as something like the anteroom to the doctor's wagon. Entered through a mirrored partition, it can assume multiple forms, and great comforts await there as well as considerable perils. It's another "Alice in Wonderland"-like playground for Gilliam, and while all the specific action may not be entirely coherent or exciting, it's always visually stimulating and allows the three incarnations of Tony to host assorted guests.
In a morbid touch, Tony is first seen hanging from a noose suspended from a London bridge and presumed dead. Once resurrected and done flopping about in the mud, the young man, who says "mate" a lot, joins Parnassus' small band, which, in addition to his kewpie doll-like daughter, consists of the over-avid Anton (Andrew Garfield), who's smitten with Valentina, and midget Percy (Verne Troyer). Seeing little upside among the drunks and homeless who generally witness and sometimes disrupt the troupe's appearances, Tony suggests a modernizing makeover and a move to snazzier environs.
A lot of the stage business consists of pratfalls and chaotic behavior, which quickly become overbearing, and the plot mechanics are scarcely more engaging. Fortunately, the central conception is sturdy enough to bear Gilliam's sporadic excesses, which in any case are better focused than is sometimes the case with him. Worst are the persistent and ineffectual flailings of Anton, a character poorly conceived in hapless 19th-century romantic mode.
It's 66 minutes into the picture when Depp first appears, and you have to look twice to make sure it's him, so closely has his pulled-back hair, moustache and beard been tailored to match Ledger's. At one point, Depp's Tony conducts a middle-aged woman to the river of immortality and says that there she can join the likes of Valentino, James Dean and Princess Di among those who never got old, which serves to ease Ledger's unspoken admission to that group.
Ledger reappears whenever the action returns to modern London, but the fact that Tony is always dressed in a white suit makes him instantly identifiable when Law takes over to deal with some Russian gangsters who pass through veil. Last and very much the best of the three new Tonys is Farrell, who brings great zest to Tony's efforts to become the crucial fifth soul who will save Valentina for Parnassus.
Pic's second half is resplendent with ever-changing CGI backdrops for the imaginary world the doctor has created with his gift. "Original designers and art directors" Dave Warren and Gilliam no doubt played a dominant role in conceiving the film's look, which is ornate without being a riot of detail, but production designer Anastasia Masaro, visual effects supervisors John Paul Docherty and Richard Bain and costume designer Monique Prudhomme certainly made major contributions as well. Other production values are strong across the board.
Plummer enacts the oldest man in the world with verve, and Troyer, Waits and Cole nicely hold necessarily caricatured work in check.
Pic is dedicated to the memories of not only Ledger but producer William Vince, who also died during production.
Edited By Sonic Youth on 1243010941
"What the hell?"
Win Butler
Win Butler
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I've been reminded, at other sites, that 1) Isabelle Huppert as jury president might push something her former director Haneke's way and 2) A Prophet is also fairly widely considered in the running.
Does anyone know of a telecast Sunday? IFC used to do it regularly, but stopped 2-3 years ago, and I keep hoping they'll resume.
Does anyone know of a telecast Sunday? IFC used to do it regularly, but stopped 2-3 years ago, and I keep hoping they'll resume.