I have begun experiencing my life as if it were in a movie, after spending hours and hours watching films in the past week and a half at the Jerusalem International Film Festival.
The first movie we saw was "Tikkun," directed by Avishai Sivan, which eventually won a lot of prizes at the festival. It was shot in black and white and depicts the Hasidic community of Jerusalem from the outside, though it pretends to see it from within. It was thought-provoking, very slow moving, laconic, and not entirely convincing to me (though I appear to be in a minority).
We then saw "The Assassin," a Taiwanese film directed by Hou Hsiai-Hsien, which was slow-moving, boring, laconic and engimatic. I strongly recommend that you avoid it.
Another slow-moving film (maybe films shown at festivals have the right to be slow-moving, as it were, because they are addressing an audience committed to film), but an excellent one, was "The Pearl Button," directed by the Chilean Patricio Guzman, whose earlier film, "Nostalgia for Light," we had seen a few years ago at the film festival. Guzman moves from the element of water through the indigenous people of Patagonia, who were almost entirely exterminated by white colonists, to the Pinochet regime: nature and politics.
Another Chilean film that we saw was "The Club," about a group of defrocked Catholic priests in a coastal village. Harsh - I don't think many committed Catholics would enjoy it - but original and, again, thought-provoking. The high level of these two films indicates a sophisticated film industry and a society concerned with probing its own dark areas.
I went to see "Dreamcatcher" by myself, because my wife was deterred by the subject. It's a documentary about Brenda Myers-Powell, a former prostitute and drug addict who now devotes her life to saving other women from that fate. One admires Myers-Powell greatly from start to finish and feels nothing but empathy and sadness for the victimized girls and women she reaches out to. However, the movie barely touches on the victimizers, the men who rape girls and traumatize them, so they turn to prostitution, and who patronize prostitutes, often beating them up and sometimes murdering them.
We saw one Indian movie, "Umrika," which was charming but slight. We liked it because it showed us India again.
We also saw "I Smile Back," because it stars Sarah Silverman in a serious acting role, not as a comedian, and we were sorry we saw it (though I have to admit that I was impressed by Silverman's acting). The film had two major problems. Rather than a plot, it had a situation: a wife and mother was mentally unstable and dependent on drugs, did irresponsible and self-destructive things, and there seemed to be little hope for her rehabilitation at the end. Also, because Silverman is not just an actress, but a comedian with a persona, it's very hard to see her as not in the role of the raunchy, irreverent stand-up comic.
We would strongly recommend "Iraqi Odyssey," a documentary by Samir, about his own family, scattered all over the world, like millions of other Iraqis, by the violent politics of their country. Samir manages to bring out the vivid personalities of his relatives and reminds you of the catastrophic history of his country, tying it to their fate.
We also saw the last documentary film made by Albert Maysles, "Iris," about Iris Apfel, a nonagerian New York Jewish woman, who talks just like everyone I knew when I was growing up, a woman who has devoted her life to style. Unlike the other movies that we chose, which mainly make you feel sad about the state of the world, "Iris" was cheerful.
"Land and Shade," a Colombian film directed by Cesar Acevedo, was another slow-moving movie, but one that didn't get very far. At most it makes you think about the oppressed workers who cut the sugar cane to sweeten your food.
I think the best film we saw was "Song of my Mother," directed by Erol Mintas, about displaced Kurdish people in Istanbul. The hero, an elementary school teacher teaching Kurdish children, is torn between the demands of his mother, obsessed with returning to their village, which has been destroyed, his pregnant fiancee, and his ambitions as a writer.
On top of these eleven films, we got hooked on a twenty part Danish thriller, "The Killing," which is much better than the American version, which we initially started to watch by mistake - I downloaded the wrong series.
So no wonder I am looking at my life as if it were a slow-moving movie, which might be more of a situation than a plot.
The first movie we saw was "Tikkun," directed by Avishai Sivan, which eventually won a lot of prizes at the festival. It was shot in black and white and depicts the Hasidic community of Jerusalem from the outside, though it pretends to see it from within. It was thought-provoking, very slow moving, laconic, and not entirely convincing to me (though I appear to be in a minority).
We then saw "The Assassin," a Taiwanese film directed by Hou Hsiai-Hsien, which was slow-moving, boring, laconic and engimatic. I strongly recommend that you avoid it.
Another slow-moving film (maybe films shown at festivals have the right to be slow-moving, as it were, because they are addressing an audience committed to film), but an excellent one, was "The Pearl Button," directed by the Chilean Patricio Guzman, whose earlier film, "Nostalgia for Light," we had seen a few years ago at the film festival. Guzman moves from the element of water through the indigenous people of Patagonia, who were almost entirely exterminated by white colonists, to the Pinochet regime: nature and politics.
Another Chilean film that we saw was "The Club," about a group of defrocked Catholic priests in a coastal village. Harsh - I don't think many committed Catholics would enjoy it - but original and, again, thought-provoking. The high level of these two films indicates a sophisticated film industry and a society concerned with probing its own dark areas.
I went to see "Dreamcatcher" by myself, because my wife was deterred by the subject. It's a documentary about Brenda Myers-Powell, a former prostitute and drug addict who now devotes her life to saving other women from that fate. One admires Myers-Powell greatly from start to finish and feels nothing but empathy and sadness for the victimized girls and women she reaches out to. However, the movie barely touches on the victimizers, the men who rape girls and traumatize them, so they turn to prostitution, and who patronize prostitutes, often beating them up and sometimes murdering them.
We saw one Indian movie, "Umrika," which was charming but slight. We liked it because it showed us India again.
We also saw "I Smile Back," because it stars Sarah Silverman in a serious acting role, not as a comedian, and we were sorry we saw it (though I have to admit that I was impressed by Silverman's acting). The film had two major problems. Rather than a plot, it had a situation: a wife and mother was mentally unstable and dependent on drugs, did irresponsible and self-destructive things, and there seemed to be little hope for her rehabilitation at the end. Also, because Silverman is not just an actress, but a comedian with a persona, it's very hard to see her as not in the role of the raunchy, irreverent stand-up comic.
We would strongly recommend "Iraqi Odyssey," a documentary by Samir, about his own family, scattered all over the world, like millions of other Iraqis, by the violent politics of their country. Samir manages to bring out the vivid personalities of his relatives and reminds you of the catastrophic history of his country, tying it to their fate.
We also saw the last documentary film made by Albert Maysles, "Iris," about Iris Apfel, a nonagerian New York Jewish woman, who talks just like everyone I knew when I was growing up, a woman who has devoted her life to style. Unlike the other movies that we chose, which mainly make you feel sad about the state of the world, "Iris" was cheerful.
"Land and Shade," a Colombian film directed by Cesar Acevedo, was another slow-moving movie, but one that didn't get very far. At most it makes you think about the oppressed workers who cut the sugar cane to sweeten your food.
I think the best film we saw was "Song of my Mother," directed by Erol Mintas, about displaced Kurdish people in Istanbul. The hero, an elementary school teacher teaching Kurdish children, is torn between the demands of his mother, obsessed with returning to their village, which has been destroyed, his pregnant fiancee, and his ambitions as a writer.
On top of these eleven films, we got hooked on a twenty part Danish thriller, "The Killing," which is much better than the American version, which we initially started to watch by mistake - I downloaded the wrong series.
So no wonder I am looking at my life as if it were a slow-moving movie, which might be more of a situation than a plot.
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