Marshland La Isla minima

Excellent Spanish movie Marshland (La Isla minima) is playing all next week at Cinema du Parc.

(No I have no deal with them! I just love the movies they show.)

Saw Marshland last night and was mightily impressed. Set in 1980 in southern Spain, the film is in a certain way a standard "whodunnit" but in the midst of the aftermath of a post-Franco government where nothing is what it seems and everyone has something to hide.

Filmed very beautifully with this aspect of nature that one rarely sees in Spanish film, the atmosphere is stifling, reflecting the small isolated town where it's set. When two sisters go missing, two police officers from Madrid are sent to investigate and they discover a series of young murdered women going back years. A plethora of red herrings and deliberate obfuscation part and parcel of all crime thrillers, but you're at the edge of your seat for much of the movie (and a few perfectly terrifying scenes).

The background is just as interesting though it's very understated (which seems to be the trend in these kinds of movies or TV shows where directors and writers make these broad political suggestions by simply planting a few clues about social things happening in the background): in the immediate aftermath of the death of Franco and Spain's slow transition to democracy, the past is still something people aren't willing to come to terms with and fear is a major part of the average person's response to any figure of authority. This colours, of course, our heroes' investigation and when one partner hears of the nefarious past of the other, it's not clear how this will end up.

Marshland has won a whole slew of awards and is widely acclaimed as one of the best films to come out of Spain in a few years (I love Spanish writing but their films rarely hit the mark except for the odd Almodovar film here and there). The film plays at Cinema du Parc all week next week. If you're a fan of crime thrillers, of the TV show True Detective (you can see the influence of that show on the movie), or of recent Spanish history, it'll be an interesting ride.

The Tribe

Now showing at Cinema du Parc, The Tribe is a 2014 Ukrainian film, written and directed by Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy. The film is set in a boarding school for deaf kids but a very violent and nearly adult-less school where a small time gang runs all kinds of scams or crimes, from pickpocketing to prostitution to mugging pensioners to running visa scams.

The intriguing thing about the movie is that there is no dialogue: the entire film is done in sign-language but that takes surprisingly little time to get adjusted to as an audience member. Yes, we miss details, but the story arc is clear and easy to follow. Filmed with entirely deaf actors, the complexity of the film shoot must have been overwhelming (see a really interesting Vice interview here with one of the stars of the film).

What a bleak, depressing and dog-eat-dog world. I've been thinking a lot about the notion of power, particularly in how we (as in The West) deal with Russia, and this notion of power, physical power, being the end all beat all of respectability is one that isn't prominent in our law-based society. This thought came about because of an article I read a while back about what we don't understand about dealing with Putin, that power and how he holds on to power, is of deadly importance to him and explains all this visual imagery that is so key for him to maintain this reputation for being a strong man.  Obviously, the way we think about power is complex. But it seems to me that we approach power in a more subtle way in North America: power comes not just from brute strength but also from smarts, street smarts, intelligence and being one step ahead of one's enemy. But here power is open-faced, bloody, raw. There is no question that he who has the power is the one at the top and there is no room for things like diplomacy, intellectualism, or even just outmaneuvering one's enemy.

This is an almost operatic kind of tale, love, pain, betrayal, and murder. And there is no spoken dialogue. Quite an unusual cinematic experience on the whole. The critical reviews have been very solid, people comparing it to The Godfather and reacting to the fact that there are these long takes with very little cutting.

I have to say that this film is one that stays with you; I'm already replaying certain scenes in my mind, trying to work them out, wondering what the director was trying to do and, more importantly, how he did it.

Definitely worth seeing (I was surprised that there were so many people there) but don't see it if you're on the verge of feeling depressed or bleak. It's a dark and angry film though it's fascinating.

The Tribe plays this week and next at Cinema du Parc.

Brazilian Film Fest starts this Friday! Stefan Zweig film adaptation one major highlight

I love film fests and Montreal has so many unusual and interesting ones to be proud of. Sure, our film festivals aren't Toronto's: we don't have Nicole Kidman or Channing Tatum walking the red carpet. We don't have photographers snapping photos or $300,000 cocktail parties.

But Montreal's not that kind of town. And this makes me proud, actually: we're not about Hollywood glamour or red carpets. We're not about simply spending a certain amount of money to make something "good." We're about interesting, creative programming for intelligent sophisticated art lovers. We should embrace this fact about our city.

I've been probably every year to see something at the Brazilian Film Fest since its inception, and every year I've seen something to knock my socks off. One film that I am really looking forward to this year is "The Invisible Collection," based on a Stefan Zweig short story.

The short story is set in post-WWI Europe when a young man, financially ruined by the war, sets out to find some art that an elderly aristocratic man has in his country estate. By touring the countryside at this pivotal moment in history, Zweig shows us the huge disparities between classes in Europe at this time and in hindsight, we can see all the signs of the looming bitterness that eventually leads to WWII.

Brazilian Bernard Attal's film version is set in contemporary Brazil and again considers the inequality that is rife in Brazilian society with the same rough storyline: Beto, whose family antique store has fallen on hard times, travels to the countryside in search of rare drawings that will change his future.

Though Zweig didn't set his story in Brazil, he was connected to Brazil at the end of his life, fleeing with his wife from the Nazis ascension to power, and settling in a small city just north of Rio. He has a huge reputation in Brazil and a museum has been made at the site of his former home. It was there, in 1942, that he and his wife committed suicide, despairing at the rise of Nazi Germany and pessimistic about the future of humanity.

The final period of Stefan Zweig's life was beautifully captured in a best-selling book by Laurent Seksik, Les dernieres jours de Stefan Zweig (this piece was itself adapted into a hugely successful French play in Paris) and then made into a gorgeous graphic novel (with some of the most beautiful illustrations I've seen in recent graphic novels) with Seksik and the French artist Guillaume Sorel.

The film as part of the Festival du film Bresilien plays on Monday, December 1 at 5pm and then again on Thursday, December 4 at 7pm. Tickets here.

A lot of excellent stuff worth seeing this year including a documentary about the hugely successful film City of God, called City of God - 10 Years Later. The film looks at the actors and others associated with the 2002 film to explore how their lives have changed after the international phenomenon that the film created. This weekend they play The Way He Looks, Elena, and Meeting Sebastião Salgado (about the Brazilian photographer).

Check out the entire schedule on their website and be sure to like their Facebook page for updates.

Borgman

The movie Borgman by Dutch director Alex van Warmerdam is quite a ride. A bizarre movie. You know, that kind of movie you are sitting in and you are so perplexed and excited by what's happening that afterwards you need to just sit down on a park bench and process what you just saw.

The film starts with an almost throwaway epigraph: "And they descended upon the Earth to strengthen their ranks" and the camera pans a spring countryside that has not yet come to life. Swarthy-looking men are gathering, getting weapons (one is a priest) and deliberately moving towards something violent. But we are left in the dark, never sure where our footing is. Nor is this conflict ever really explained or detailed.

Men are hiding in the Earth underground and when they hear the other men with guns and swords approaching, they escape. Barely. This is not a mystical or CGI kind of experience. It's quite literal and very engaging: men running through thickets of trees, terrified of getting caught.

Then later, one of these men (looking like a homeless guy) shows up at the door of a wealthy Dutch family and asks if he can take a bath. When he is turned away, violence erupts but now it's too late: the sympathetic wife secrets him into the back guesthouse after the husband has left for work. Is this homeless-looking man up to something nefarious? Clearly he is but it's never made clear. Later his friends join him in the seduction of this family and the movie continues along almost like a parable, an allegory though there is no nice framework to set alongside the movie that makes the parable-like allusions clear.

I kept asking: "What is happening?" from beginning to end. It's not that it didn't make sense logically but there is no sense of  movie-logic here: things move along as if pre-destined and the actions of the characters are not mandated by free will. Other odd allusions: X's mysteriously tattooed on backs; scars on characters' bodies; surgeries being done on children which are never explained. Issues of class play in the background but nothing is ever determined nor is there a "message" to take away. Is it a treatise on destiny or fate? Are we supposed to feel nihilistic at the way our class determines our futures so that we have very little free will in shaping our own futures? Or is this reading too much into it?

It's a very interesting film and one I want to see again if only to get closer to some kind of resolution. Make more mistake: one doesn't leave this film understanding anything more than when one first arrives at it. But in terms of how movies operate, it's worth seeing and the acting is stellar.

Borgman is playing at Cinema du Parc all this week and next.