Posts Tagged ‘film’
Unpacking the Tensions in ‘Armand’
Armand, the film creation by Scandinavian film royalty Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann’s grandson of Halfdan Ullmann Tondel is uncomfortable but offers up a feast of realizations about our lives
Elizabeth, played by the risk-taking actress Renate Reinsve (The Worst Person In the World), finds herself confronting the school board of her six-year-old son. What could such a young boy do to warrant the condemnation from the parents of another boy, his friend, and why do the principal educators though uncomfortable, still feel its their duty to accuse. The victim’s parents are at first patent with Elizabeth’s shocked response to the accusation. They are all from the same community and have history; so why would this sensitive issue be put in such a formal setting? This is where the real mystery begins.
Small towns have secrets and judgments and memories of its citizens that go back to their own student days. Elizabeth’s husband is recently deceased and the judging teachers at first want to be sensitive with her because of the loss, but Elizabeth is out there emotionally and doesn’t fall into the shaming that the system seems to need to put on her. Much is made of her laughing scene which for me was a bit long…but everything else she does is so beautifully strange and at same time, familiar, as if we are watching her and ourselves in our private spaces. She reveals herself through public through outbursts, and dancing…she is beautiful and they all want to judge her and it seems also be her or be with her. As an audience we want to condemn the condemners for their inability to probe themselves and project their fears and insecurities on the single woman… the societal witch, who is bursting with real life.
There is much to explore in an educational documentary on what is normal child play…here though we see adults acting like they did in their own childhoods, gossiping, having nosebleeds and wanting to avert responsibility.
I spoke briefly to the director wondering if he had seen the film Suddenly Last Summer, where Tennessee William”s character, Sebastian Venable, played by Julian Ugarte, is seemingly cannibalized by a culture that need pieces of him for themselves. Elizabeth’s world is like that. As the town’s actress, she serves as the vessel for all their unrequited impulses and we see how dangerous non actualization can be. Only when the truth is revealed, and the ‘children’ re draw the lines on the playground, do we experience the tension leaving our own bodies. The rain purifies and she, with Buddhist equanimity, moves on.
The director who has worked in an elementary school has much talent for showing the everyday intimate responses that is part of the human experience. He’s got the genes for it.
The Heretic
by Nancy Cohen-koan
I must give testimony: I could watch Hugh Grant perform bunion surgery, that’s how much I adore him. I even wrote a script for him, not knowing if he could do a Scottish accent or jump over a burning Maypole, but never mind, he’s gorgeous, and his voice completes the package, now deeper and more assured.
He also has a self-mocking humor that reminds me of my best therapy sessions.
In The Heretic, directed by Scott Beck and Bryan Woods, Grant plays a man, Mr. Reed, who has no truck for church or the gods that come with it and his man-‘splaining on the subject is full on.
Into Reed’s lair, two devoted young Mormons show up, Sister Barnes (Sophie Thatcher) and Sister Paxton (Chloe East), innocently hoping to get their baptismal quota in by five o’clock. They are fresh and shiny and have little doubts about their faith and the work they do to spread it. But these girls are not empty-headed groupies for God…they are well spoken, thoughtful and clever enough not to take liquid refreshment from a strange man.
Being chaste, they are not permitted to enter the potential convertees home if no other woman is present. But Reed assures them his wife is in the back making a blueberry pie. Never will I touch this fruit again without thinking of the evil baked into its crust. Pies, of course, are a great American hoax symbol…everything that is good in the world is America and her pies…. but now we know the levee is dry and innocence doesn’t sell. The missionaries have been caught in their own sales trap, but it’s hardly a fair match. They know little of life outside their tight community and though they have never met a monster like Grant, they are smart enough to be frightened.
Mr. Reed’s clever gamesmanship recalls Laurence Olivier’s character in Sleuth… someone who prides himself on playing tricks with their opponent’s mind. Reed’s erudition on religion is so delicious that I patently refused to his bad boy side until more than mid-way through the film, even when he dons a pair of yucky 80’s aviator frames.
There’s a bit of the lady or the tiger routine in the escape question scene, but I won’t spoil any of the suspense by saying more. What’s nice is at one moment there is concern for the sisters and in the next, we are curious to see what clever Reed will pull off.
Unless the host can fly, some of Reed’s tricks would seem to require a valet or two to assist and I was very surprised when shy Sister Paxton is suddenly able to spew out an analysis of the night’s events.
Usually, I tend to lose interest in horror as the bloody moments pile up and secretly yearn for a more civilized resolution, but still, the film followed me into my nightly dreams and was there the next day. It was very satisfying, though still, I am left with two questions: Mr. Reed… are the older women we meet later on in the story actually missionaries or your ex -wives and, yes, how good does Mr. Grant look in a kilt?
Swiss in New York Yah
Dieter Meier, known as the Godfather of techno pop along with collaborator Boris Blank, kept Le Poisson Rouge jumping Sunday night, though the uber polite Swiss obeyed the New York cabaret laws and didn’t dance. Dieter’s new project “Out of Chaos” starts with madness…the wailing violin, video images bouncing off the back screens aided by the alchemical zap of electro punk pioneer T.Raumschmiere.
Meier, strolling out in a red velvet jacket and shades, looked like he could play the regal vampire Tom Hiddleston’s uncle in Jim Jarmush’s Only Lovers Left Alive. Dieter Meier, the legendary voice behind the Swiss electronic pop pioneers Yello, renowned for the ’80s underground hits “Oh Yeah” (featured in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and The Simpsons) is a true Renaissance artist, making films and writing books; in 2013 he was the subject of a solo exhibition, Dieter Meier and the Yellow Years, at The Watermill Center in Long Island. His music is a combination of Brecht, Weill and Leonard Cohen. Though raised in a banking family, he has redeemed himself by being a poker player, an activist and now runs an organic sheep farm with the decidedly Swiss viticulture in Argentina.
His presence in New York is due to the generosity of Zürich Meets New York: A Festival of Swiss Ingenuity, a week of events highlighting the contemporary relevance of visionary movements and ideas born in Zurich and their impact on American culture. It is all building up to the 100th anniversary of the Dada movement and Zurich’s role as a 21st century hub for artist and scientific innovation.
One of nice surprises of this festiva.l besides falling in love with Dieter. was sitting next to a real live Nobel Prize Winner… Kurt Wüthrich, the 2002 winner for chemistry. Never happened at Starbucks.
A music sample: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ym1blr908hodjov/gH7hWppnk1
At another Swiss Fest event, Elizabeth Bronfen, Professor of English and American Studies at the University of Zurich, talked about her latest book.Night Passages maps the cultural history of the night in literature and films. She was joined on the New York Film Academy stage by Anastas Michos, cinematographer of Freedomland and Mona Lisa Smiles. Unfortunately it was hard to hear her some of her serious thoughts but Michos was enlightening, sharing the artists’ approach to shooting darkness and delivering the right look for a scene. He, analyzed the film clips of Taxi Driver along with his own Freedomland and Untraceable. Moderator Ben Cohen could use a new adjective to substitute for his exhausted ‘fantastic’, though he did mention that his new film with penis in the title is soon to (ouch) come.
For a list of events, ZHNY.eventbrite.com.
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