In This World
This morning's viewing began with one of the most emotionally powerful movies I've ever seen. Michael Winterbottom's In This World is an extraordinary project. He set out to tell a story about immigrants coming to Europe at a time when, as he says, just about every politician up for every election across the continent this year tried to score votes with slogans like "The boat is full" and other barely disguised racist pronouncements.
What filmmakers face after showing their films at the Berlinale
Interesting enough, but it's his approach, "something between a fiction feature and a documentary," that packs the punch. Jamal Udin Torabi plays an Afghan boy of around 15 named Jamal Udin Torabi. Enayatullah, the older relative who's going to be making this journey with him from Pakistan to London, plays Enayatullah. You get the idea. Winterbottom and a bare minimum crew shot on DV and tried to make themselves as invisible as possible. There was no screenplay per se, just a sketch, a sequence of events.
We begin at a refugee camp outside of Pesheswar, Pakistan, a camp recently filled with those fleeing the US bombing of Afghanistan that began in October 2001. Jamal makes bricks all day for about a dollar a day. We see him head into town to meet relatives where, around a table in a crowded cafe, plans are made to finance a trip, from people smuggler to people smuggler, over land, all the way to London. Jamal and Enayatullah are to have a better future. Because there is no set dialogue, because the "actors" play themselves and because there is no effort to make the images "cinematic" or to hide the videoish quality of the images -- though many are strikingly beautiful -- there's an odd overall effect, and a moving one, too: This is a documentary-like reality, but one we inhabit emotionally because there is also a driving narrative. It's a road movie, yes, but characters develop and the events along that road are at times terrifying, at times very funny, at times heart-breaking.
Winterbottom and crew from afar
This journey was actually made. At the press conference, Winterbottom and his producers were careful not to say outright that that many of the scenes actually record illegal border-crossings and so on, but so it was. Winterbottom shot around eight hours a day and, most importantly, stayed flexible. Crossing over into Turkey from Iran, for example, the pair was supposed to run into a band of thieves. Instead, the Kurds who actually do help refugees make their crossings turned out to be, as Winterbottom says, "some of the most hospitable people I've ever met." And so, the sketch was redrawn, and the film gains a sequence of human kindness it actually needed by this point after so many bleak ones before it.
From Istanbul on, the trip takes its darkest turn, but let me hasten to add that the final note is not one that'll have you giving up hope. This film is a strong contender for one of the Bears at the end of next week.
The Life of David Gale
The same cannot be said of Alan Parker's The Life of David Gale. Of course, the film had the extreme disadvantage of following In This World. Despite performances by some of the best Hollywood actors around -- Kevin Spacey, Laura Linney and Kate Winslet -- it's the Hollywood part that's the problem. Just the first time you see and hear anyone open their mouth, after World, it seems so fake. What a stark reminder of how clownish performances are that we take as epitomes of realistic acting.
But that, of course, ought to wear off and it might have if Parker's directing style weren't more appropriate for HBO than for the big screen, and certainly a big screen at a major film festival. Very briefly: David Gale (Spacey) is a philosophy professor at "Austin University" (read: "University of Texas") falsely accused first of rape, then murder. He also happens to be a leading campaigner against the death penalty. The framing device: With just a few days to go before he's to be Texas's 152nd execution in the current governor's term, a journalist (Winslet) gets to interview and - surprise! - Gale enlists her to prove his innocence. The clock is ticking. And so on.
Worse, when Parker switches to the flashbacks of Gale's story, the bulk of the film, he resorts to a sort of 80s-era MTV-edit thing for the switchover, and just generally, the whole affair is about as clumsy a film as he's ever made. Spacey claims to "love every frame of this film," but he also made K-Pax, so we know that his acting ability far exceeds his taste.
Linney, Spacey, Parker and some guy
John Updike once wrote that when he had to review a book he didn't like, he always tried to find at least one positive thing to say about it. It's a good rule, so here's my one positive thing: Laura Linney. Her character may start off a bit thin, but Linney gets in there and deepens and widens until her Constance is the most honest and real thing walking around up there on the screen. I'll also say this: There are times when the screenplay lapses into a cartoon version of Texas ("You know you're in Bible Belt Country when there are more churches than Starbucks") with a cartoon governor and a big ol' batch of bad, bad clichés ambling out of a lawyer's mouth, but then, there are times when it doesn't. Constance's house, for example, looks very, very Austin.
Someone asked Parker if there were other anti-death penalty movies he admired or that may have inspired him. He mentioned Dead Man Walking. Well. I have seen Dead Man Walking, and Mr. Parker, The Life of David Gale is no Dead Man Walking.
Jackie Chan
 I may not be able to catch Traces of a Dragon: Jackie Chan and His Lost Family, since it's scheduled weirdly, but hey, I did catch the press conference. The story behind the doc is that Jackie Chan's father came into his office one day and said that the day may come soon that he will go to sleep and not wake up. And he had a few things to say. For the record.
Mabel Cheung's documentary is that record. Chan gave her complete access and carte blanche to take his conversations with his father about the history of his family and to investigate further. Seems they've turned up quite a few surprises Jackie was utterly unaware of himself and, as the story of one family unfolds, several criss-crossed stories of China and Hong Kong are unwound as well. Catch it if you can. I hope I will.
Hero
Let's get the most obvious thing to say about Hero out of the way right off: It's gorgeous to look at. Most cineastes know Chris Doyle is an amazing cinematographer, a Brit who gets Asia, but this is his masterpiece, without a doubt. He popped up late in the press conference, too, which was a surprise, but the bigger surprise was that he's rather irritating to listen to, full of himself as he is. But that doesn't take away from his outstanding work on Hero.
Maggie Cheung, Zhang Yinou and Zhang Ziyi
Zhang Yimou, it turns out, has always wanted to do a kung fu genre movie. He read the novels growing up, and of course, has been watching the films for decades. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon made Hero possible, he freely and immediately admits. Because if he were going to do a kung fu movie, it would have to be big, would have to pay for itself in part in foreign markets. But of course, it's done very, very well domestically, becoming a major box office success in China, a cultural event.
Which isn't exactly all good news for Zhang Yimou. Some in China have claimed that he has been too eager to make the censors happy but the government as well. To understand why, a bit on the story: A warrior called Nameless approaches the Emperor Qin and claims to have killed the assassins that have been haunting him for years. Qin hears him out but then tells Nameless he suspects he isn't telling the whole truth. He answers Nameless's story with one of his own, and over and again, we see a series of versions of how it may have come to pass that Nameless is now ten paces from the Emperor when "killing at ten paces" is precisely what Nameless specializes in.
Qin, Zhang Yimou's critics say, is portrayed too kindly, too smart, too human; history shows the ruler of around 200 BC China to have been a ruthless tyrant. How can the director ignore the political impact of a statement endorsed in the film by Qin and at least one potential assassin that order, "all under heaven," is the most vital rule of the land? That only when power is in power's place will there be peace?
Maggie Cheung, Zhang Yinou and Zhang Ziyi
Zhang Yimou claims he never wanted Hero to make any political statement at all and refuses to confirm or deny anyone's political readings of the film. Instead, Hero is a work of art about relationships, about contemplating cultures, about... color. Yes, color. The series of stories told each have colors assigned to them -- red for passion; blue for love; green for memory; black for the mark of Qin; and white for truth. That last one, Zhang Yimou says, was Maggie Cheung's idea.
But the essential idea was to make a genre film without the violence associated with the genre. "There is enough violence in the world," Zhang Yimou says. It's what attracted Jet Li to the film as well. "He's always smashing things," says the director, and he wanted to get at the heart of a warrior who realized that the real battles are fought without swords.
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