Montreal International Film Festival
(Non-English-Language Feature-Length Films)
Film reviews by Evelyn C. Leeper
Copyright 1994 Evelyn C. Leeper
THE ARCHITECTURE OF DOOM, directed by Peter Cohen, Sweden, 1989, 1:59: "This fascinating film takes an amazing look at the Third Reich from the point of view of aesthetics, particularly Hitler's. With shockingly accurate logic and a wealth of visual material, the filmmaker offers a strong new answer to the question of how it could have happened in the first place."
This film starts at the beginning, discussing Hitler's early artistic ambitions and his failure to be accepted into the Art School in Vienna. Some of Hitler's early water colors are shown (described as being of the picture postcard level), and indeed the fact that many of the upper echelon of the Third Reich were failed artists in one medium or another figures strongly in Cohen's thesis. This rejection of their work, it is implied, may have led to the Third Reich's rejection of modern art and its proponents as "degenerative," "decadent," and representative of a general decay in society. (Sound familiar?) Hitler declared that the Reich would save society from this decay. This was, of course, just another way of saying that art must serve the state.
Basing his artistic goals on his three obsessions--antiquity, Richard Wagner, and his home town of Linz--Hitler gradually expanded his artistic philosophy into other fields. Cleanliness, for example, was seen as an expression of beauty and stressed to the populace. Later, when the gassings of "undesirables" began, this could be presented as just another effort towards cleanliness. And Hitler fought the war not with 20th Century objectives, but with those of antiquity: enslave the enemy, level their cities, destroy the land. Had he not followed this policy, Cohen suggests, the Russians might not have opposed him so strongly.
Cohen uses only archival footage to demonstrate his theses. While he at times seems to drift somewhat off his purpose of showing the aesthetic basis for all of Hitler's policies, on the whole he covers that well and has produced a very engaging and thought-provoking film. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4).
MISS AMERIGUA, directed by Luis Vera, Paraguay/Sweden, 1:33:
We chose this film in part because the description reminded us of SMILE, an unfairly over-looked American film about a day in the life of a beauty pageant. (Vera was present at the screening and I asked him if he had seen SMILE--he hadn't.) MISS AMERIGUA is much more political than SMILE, but still contains a lot of wit and character development as well.
The film begins twenty years ago, when Evaristo Morales's father is killed by Sergeant Banderas, and Evaristo, still a young child, must flee for his life. It then flashes forward to the present, the day of the big beauty pageant in Amerigua, sponsored by many companies, including "Coca-Cola--always Coca-Cola," as the rather nerdy-looking reporter says.
The film primarily follows three of the contestants through the day: Rosa Morales, sister of Evaristo and mistress to the now-Colonel Banderas; Maria Descamparo, fiancee to the Colonel's son; and Carmen Banderas, the Colonel's daughter. We also meet Inocencio Lopez, the reporter; Reencarnacion, the somewhat effete hairdresser; and various other characters who will shape the day's events.
Imbued with an atmosphere of magical realism and witchcraft, MISS AMERIGUA is an entertaining film with political content (though the latter is fairly predictable and delivered as speeches as much to the audience as to the other characters in the film). The contrast between the old ways and the new is perhaps more subtle and runs as an undercurrent trough the film, without a blanket declaration that one is better than the other. The English subtitles were not always perfect ("know" instead of "now," for example), but were readable, and usually fairly accurate to the Spanish dialogue (though I caught a couple of mistranslations, such as "damned town" for what is closer to "shitty town"). Rating: +2 (-4 to +4).
(Vera was apparently very impressed at how many people were in the audience for a 9 AM showing, since he commented on it not only when he spoke at the showing, but also the next day in a radio interview.)
L'HISTOIRE DE YUNNAN (THE STORY OF YUNNAN), directed by Zhang Nuanxin, China, 1:37:
During the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, the Japanese often brought their families over to Manchuria with them. At the end of the Sino-Japanese war (the Chinese aspect of World War II) most returned to Japan, but some found themselves left behind in China. Such was the fate of Jai-Teng Shuzi, a young woman who came to Japan when she as only fifteen. Rescued from suicide by a Chinese soldier, Xiasha, she eventually marries him and returns with him to the remote province of Yunnan. How she makes a life and a home there for the next thirty-five years forms the core of this movie.
It is quite a change to see a film from and about China that is not terribly depressing. Yes, Shuzi undergoes hardships, but she also has much happiness and satisfaction in her life. She isn't sold by her husband, beaten by her mother-in-law, tortured by the government, or subject to many of the trials that so many recent Chinese and Chinese- American films (e.g., THE JOY LUCK CLUB) have emphasized. This is perhaps all the more surprising in that this film is about a woman and directed by a woman, and commentary on the poor position of women in Chinese society seems to be almost a trademark of Chinese film these days. But THE STORY OF YUNNAN is filled with good people--not all perfect people, but not unthinking and uncaring people either.
In her press conference afterwards, Zhang emphasized that this film was not about war, but about a woman's life, and how what's best is not money or material objects, but love and family life. She said that while this was an accurate portrayal of village life of the time period, villages are much more modern today. Interestingly, in order to appeal to the Taiwanese market, the lead actress (Lu Xiuling) is not Japanese, but Taiwanese.
Although there is less government support for films in China than previously, there is apparently still the same amount of control, and Zhang had to make some compromises, such as spending very little time on the Cultural Revolution and showing hardly any of the love scenes, and this in spite of the fact that the film was financed out of Hong Kong. (I suppose I'm a bit surprised that the government didn't seem to object to showing a large family as a good thing.) Zhang said there was equality between the sexes in the film industry in China, and that there were probably twenty to thirty women directors, but I don't think their pictures get as wide a distribution as some of the men directors' films do.
The scenery is, of course, gorgeous, and the music by Lin Wai Zhe quite appropriate to the feel of the movie. See this movie if it comes your way. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4)
THE REVENGE OF ITZIK FINKELSTEIN, directed by Enrique Rottenberg, Israel, 1:23:
Itzik Finkelstein is a failure at forty and just when he is about to kill himself, help (of a sort) arrives. It's not a deal with the devil, but rather a deal with a monk from a secret order dedicated to chaos and destruction. "The Earth is a mess," Anselmo de Medici (the monk) says. "Lies and stupidity everywhere." And the only way to save the Earth is to find destroy it. So he offers Finkelstein a chance for him to get revenge on whichever person ruined his life.
A lot of the jokes in this are old, but it's still funny, certainly as funny as a lot of American comedies. Though made in Israel, there is no real Jewish content to the film. Nevertheless, I expect that if this plays at all in the United States, it will be in cities with large Jewish populations. It would appeal, I suspect mostly to older audiences (meaning thirty and up), and is a pleasant enough way to pass the time. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4).
CARL--MY CHILDHOOD SYMPHONY, directed by Eric Clausen, Denmark, 2:05:
We had originally planned to see only one film today, but then decided to pick a couple more to fill in the day. Our first choice was a split choice: Mark wanted to see FEDERAL HILL and I wanted to see FRESA Y CHOCOLATE. unfortunately, both were sold out, so we decided on the spur of the moment to see CARL--MY CHILDHOOD SYMPHONY instead.
This is the story of the early life of Carl Nielsen, probably Denmark's most famous classical composer. The film starts in 1871 when Carl is still a young child first being introduced to music, then shows him as a slightly older boy, then joining the army to play in the regimental band, and finally leaving the army to spend all his time composing.
The main problem with this film is that Nielsen's life seems to be neither particularly harsh nor particularly wonderful. In spite of their poverty his family seems to live fairly comfortably. There is illness, injury, and death, but it seems to be taken as totally ordinary, without any major angst over it. There are lots of scenes of beautiful scenery, and kindly, quirky villagers. When Carl goes into the army you figure, "Oh, now we'll see how brutalizing the army is," but, no, that's an easy and comfortable life for him as well. Even his disappointments in love don't seem to affect him very much.
It's a very pretty picture, and I suppose sheds some light on Nielsen's music, but cannot compare to other film biographies of composers such as AMADEUS or MAHLER. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4).
EL AMANTE DE LAS PELICULAS MUDAS, directed by Pablo Torre, Argentina, 1:32:
I had hoped for more from this film, but it was somewhat of a disappointment. (It is, of course, possible that after seeing eighteen other films, including three earlier today, I was not in as receptivea mood as I might have been.) This story of an aging silent film star has strong echoes of SUNSET BOULEVARD, and also the same films of the opening of THE JAZZ SINGER that we saw near the beginning of the festival in JACK WARNER, THE LAST MOGUL. Interestingly, in the Warner documentary, they represented the start of something; here they represent the end. This film sounds a bit like CINEMA PARADISO: a young boy meets a silent film star who talks about the early days of the movies. But this is a dark film, with far more menace and unsettling atmosphere than CINEMA PARADISO.
One of the mis-steps the film makes is in its use of music. The boy's mother gets a job playing the piano in the film star's funeral home. But she plays Schubert's "Trio for Piano, Violin, and Violincello," and when she does, the sounds of a violin and a violincello mysteriously appear from nowhere, and it is clear that the piano music that is being played is not sufficient to stand on its own. On the other hand there is good use of old film clips, as well as newly created black-and-white footage purporting to be of the film star (as played by Alfredo Alcon) in the Hollywood of the 1920s. (The "fake" footage is not as good an imitation of what the real old footage looks like as that used in the television series "Young Indiana Jones," but then Torre probably had neither the money nor the facilities that Spielberg did.)
For its somewhat nostalgic look at Hollywood in the era of the silent film, this is worth seeing, but probably only for fans of that era. Rating: +1 (-4 to +4).
(See general article for comments on JEANNE LA PUCELLE I (LES BATAILLES) and JEANNE LA PUCELLE II (LES PRISONS.))
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