|
|
Sept. 30, 2005
Rich tapestries of many lives
The wounded – and healing – are on the big screen at
film fest.
KATHARINE HAMER AND CYNTHIA RAMSAY
The 24th annual Vancouver International Film Festival continues
this week, with a number of movies from international Jewish directors.
A great screenwriter
Stewart Stern was a successful and acclaimed screenwriter for
more than 30 years, but he walked away from his career at its height.
Even as he was delivering his acceptance speech for Sybil at
the 1976 Emmy Awards – a speech that proclaimed the need for
people to address and confront their fears – he knew that he
was going to leave the business ... out of fear that his talent
had "gone away."
When director Jon Ward began filming the documentary Going Through
Splat: The Life and Work of Stewart Stern, he said he did so
because he wanted to know why Stern had stopped writing. As the
film developed, he said the more relevant question to him became,
what compelled Stern to start writing? This is what Going Through
Splat is about – the man who was able to write such movies
as Rebel Without a Cause, Rachel, Rachel and The
Ugly American.
Through interviews with peers, actors and friends, Ward explores
what it means to be a writer, in particular, to be as good a writer
as was Stern. Famous people like Dennis Hopper, Robert Wagner, Paul
Newman, Joanne Woodward and Sally Field, as well as several directors
and producers, and even a fellow war veteran, weigh in on the genius
that Stern possessed, the obstacles he had to confront and some
of the reasons why he may have quit his screenwriting career. Stern
himself speaks candidly of his childhood, his family and friends,
his traumatic time in the army during the Second World War, his
work and why he left it.
Going Through Splat includes archival photos, footage from Teresa,
Rebel Without a Cause and other films and TV shows, and images
of some of the scripts.
Stern escaped from New York and Hollywood to Seattle, where he lives
with his wife – who he married when he was 60 – and the
friendship of, no joke, cows and gorillas. While he still writes,
he hasn't written a screenplay for more than 30 years. It seems
that Stern has found happiness in his life. Unfortunately, for other
happiness-seekers, it looks like you have to go through splat to
get there.
Going Through Splat is at Granville 7, Theatre 5, on Wednesday,
Oct. 5, at 6 p.m., and Friday, Oct. 7, at 1:40 p.m.
The smell of death
We have all, by now, doubtless seen many news reports, documentaries
and feature films about terrorist activity in Israel. What sets
The Diameter of the Bomb apart is its utter lack of sentimentality
and lyrically directed images.
Taking the June 18, 2002, suicide bombing of a bus in Jerusalem
that killed 19 and injured 50 as its starting point, this National
Film Board of Canada/BBC co-production examines the impact on victims'
families and the emergency service workers, police and medical staff
involved.
Each victim is identified by their body number, over shots of a
medical examiner's table being washed down – and then recalled
by loved ones. There is Michal, whose husband, a headstone carver,
never thought he would be making a memorial for his wife –
and Shani, a bright-eyed 17-year-old who loved to dance and was
preparing for an exchange trip to Europe. These are countered by
interviews with the family of the suicide bomber himself (his relatives
believe he died honorably) and graphic descriptions of what happens
to bodies caught in the epicentre of such an attack.
"You're moving towards something you'll never get used to,"
says one fireman who attended the scene. "It's like a film
of all the most terrible things in the world. The smell is indescribable."
What gives this documentary its real power is the juxtaposition
of life and death: shots of young women dancing over a narration
about how medical examiners match DNA to pieces of flesh –
or time-lapse photography of the Jerusalem skyline with an ominous
sense of catastrophe building. The bomb itself is represented only
by silence and a blank screen – like that used to great effect
in Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, to mark the moment when
the first plane hit the World Trade Centre.
Diameter is truly gripping, thought-provoking cinema. Viewers
should be aware, though, that it contains some disturbing images.
Diameter plays at the Granville 7 Wednesday, Oct. 5, at 10
p.m., and Sunday, Oct. 9, noon, at the Vancity Theatre, 1188 Seymour
St.
Dysfunction junction
The Schaffer family of Long Island are about as messed up as they
come: swilling cheap beer, chain-smoking and fighting over who gets
to drive seniors to their hospital visits in the family car service.
Alexandra Brodsky's feature debut, Bittersweet Place, is
both literally and figuratively dark, set largely in festering suburban
living rooms.
In the Jewish-in-name-only Schaffer clan there is a well-meaning
but distant Pappy (Seymour Cassel) and his two daughters. One of
these daughters is subject to bouts of deranged behavior; the other,
continually picking up the pieces. There's also a hapless young
husband and a mysterious, handsome Hasid who appears in the neighborhood
one day. The latter ends up somehow – if not bringing the whole
family back to Judaism – looping them together more securely.
Not without some resistance though, especially from Pappy, who is
quite content, as his offspring dither, to sidle off and meet his
Polish girlfriend in a motel room. He's grown used to life the way
it is, so he's less than thrilled when his poker-playing buddies
invite the newcomer to join them for vintage movie nights.
"What the hell does a Lubavitcher know about Carole Lombard?"
Pappy demands.
Eventually, curiosity about his lapsed religion gets the better
of him. Still, there is no easy solution to the family's woes. Though
Bittersweet Place manages to sneak through the black cloak
of the 'burbs, the narrative is also pervaded by a deep-seated ennui.
It's the kind of sentiment that you often see in indie films such
as this – and one reason why the movie won't necessarily appeal
to a wider audience.
Bittersweet Place runs Saturday, Oct. 8, 12:30 p.m., at Pacific
Cinémathèque and Sunday, Oct. 9, 6 p.m., at Granville
7.
Holocaust happiness?
Fateless (Sorstalansag) begins in Budapest. It follows
Jewish 14-year-old Gyorgy's (Marcell Nagy) descent in the Holocaust
from relative affluence to life in the concentration camps. Soon
after his father must leave for a forced labor camp, Gyorgy is taken
away, first to Auschwitz, then to Buchenwald. The film focuses on
various incidents – horrific and hopeful – in the camps,
including the liberation by Allied forces, and Gyorgy's return to
his home.
Fateless is a German, Hungarian and British co-production
directed by Lajos Koltai. It is a lengthy – at two hours and
20 minutes – adaptation of 2002 Nobel laureate Imré
Kertesz's 1975 autobiographical novel. Beautifully filmed, even
when depicting torture and other grotesque treatment of camp inmates,
Fateless could be said to be daring. Its conclusion could
also be called provocative: Gyorgy's return to a devastated Budapest
makes him homesick for the certainties of camp life. He notes that
people only ever ask him about the horrors of the camps, but that
next time, if they remember to ask and if he doesn't forget, he'll
tell them about the happiness.
Unfortunately, this curious response doesn't really fit with what
the film portrayed. Gyorgy is befriended by a kind man in the camps
and there are a few instances of faith or optimism, but the experience
could hardly be called a happy one. While it is not unbelievable
that survivors could have such a reaction to their tragedy, the
storyline of Fateless doesn't lead comfortably to that resolution.
The ending seems contrived to make a rather non-innovative, prolonged
movie into something controversial and, therefore, more interesting.
It doesn't work.
Fateless plays on Sunday, Oct. 9, 9:30 p.m., in the Visa
Screening Room at the Vogue, and on Tuesday, Oct. 11, 3:40 p.m.,
at Granville 7 Theatre 7.
^TOP
|
|
