Festivals: World
Festivals: World
Yaroslav PIDGORA-HVYAZDOVSKYY
Berlinale Posture 63rd Berlin International Film Festival was a disaster in terms of cinematography and the most successful in terms of business. Why? Some critics and film critics, while agreeing with the lowest level of this year’s Berlinale art, in comparison with the last 5 years at least, tried to explain it speaking about the worldwide decline of cinema as an art form. However, the example of Cannes Film Festival, especially of the last one, safely concludes — cinema has not died yet, while Berlin Film Festival is close to death. Isn’t it?
I
f we extrapolate the situation with the competition program of the 63rd Berlin Film Festival in the world, it looks as if the movie followed the social direction, working exclusively on a reflection of the world and specifically human problems associated with race, gender and social injustice, poverty, violence in the family and school, religious conservatism and corporate greed etc. The sense is that the film, just like a man, can not be limited with themes, forms or callings only. Berlinale chose social films as its path. Advocating liberalism and complete freedom, human supremacy over society and false of national, spiritual and sexual rules, the festival actually turned into a sort of cinematic Greenpeace or supranational and unreligious organization fighting for human rights, hardly paying attention to the development of forms, deep immersion into the soul of this man, and in the end search for God. Some may accuse such a flatness and exemplified the competition film «An Episode in the Life of an Iron Picker»
by Danis Tanović. The important part of the movie about the horrible living conditions of Gypsy in Bosnia is a mockumentary form, when the camera captures everything alienated and aside as in documentary, although the screen is playing, not recording a story in fact. Tanović, known for superb debut with «No Man’s Land» in 2001, said at the press conference, that he read a film story in the newspaper, then he went to its characters, it was a family of four people, he asked them to repeat everything that have happened to them again, in front of the camera. Yes, there is a persistent feeling of authenticity throughout the film, but mockumentary is not a new genre and has a myriad of movies, and this fact completely undermine the importance of the form. It is a good movie with clear solid history, with strong message and compelling playing of Nazif Mujić, who performed his real life as an actor and received a «Silver Bear». But the movie can be blamed for the secondary ideas. There’s no doubt that original ideas are too hard to be found, though they happen sometimes,
but the question is not in the originality. Do we need such a movie, we can watch turning on the TV news channel? «A Long and Happy Life» by Russian Boris Khlebnikov should be also added to the «news» genre, the film is even more «dark» than Tanović’s movie. The young farmer somewhere in an unmarked and remote spaces of Russia loses his land because of fictive reason of incorrect documents, and his vain attempts to fight the corrupt system and human treachery lead to tragedy. Short, only 77‑minutes «… life», is made professionally, duly, with clear conclusions, but it doesn’t cause even the slightest emotion nor in the audience, nor critics, nor jury. «Promised Land», the new work of Gus Van Santa received very cool reception. It made a comical parallel to Khlebnikov’s movie, it also tells us about the land that might be slyly taken from the owners. The film significantly cracked director’s reputation, used to be considered as capable to achieve formally interesting and deeply spiritual results, shown in «Elephant» and especially «Restless». The indignation was slightly extinguished by the information, that Van Sant was completing the boring Greenpeace movie as the guest director, nor as his personal project. But there’s no use to lock the stable-door after the horse is stolen. However Berlinale competition program was complete with specially prepared projects, such as «Side Effects» by Steven Soderbergh, who seems gambling with medical themes, using health problems again after «Contagion». Actually, the film is a thriller with a love-story-plot in the Hitchcock tradition, but it has no effect. It is totally unfit Berlinale standards, the standards of the Festival, that must promote and identify movie worth not only for mass, but for eternity — I’m sorry for pathos. So why was the film taken to the competition? Because this is Soderbergh’s film starring Jude Law, Rooney Mara and Channing Tatum. Including «Side Effects» in competition Berlinale festival automatically received all film’s participants on the red carpet, that was paid by such giants businesses as L’oreal and BMW, and the investments were paid back with frenzied media, viewers and readers attention. The largest number of American stars actually made this year festival the most successful (300,000 tickets sold, which is also the Ukrainian culture №3 2012
largest in the fest history, and looks just like a bonus). Completely commercial f ilm of Soderbergh in the competition shows a lot, including the festival orientation and direction. So if the social orientation demonstrates thematic selection of Berlinale, the Americanization confirms its practical choice. Hundreds of delighted gapers and photographers were flickering with eyes and cameras before the festival center, scanning Hollywood stars Matt Damon and Shia LaBeouf, Rupert Green and Thiel Schwaiger, Jeremy Renner and Arterton Jamie, Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, James Sturgess and Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone and Jeremy Irons… This year the competition had three American films, and none had anything special, worth to have been invited to one of the three most important festivals in the world. They had nothing special, except the actors or directors with the «Hollywood passport». Moreover, the American film «Before Sunset» by Richard Linklater got the «Golden Camera» in the middle of the festival. The prize is quite prestigious, despite the fact the film was shown out of competition. Well, Linklater seems to be the only one who made an independent trilogy with the same pair of characters (and performers Ethan Hawke & Julie Delpy!). Yes, his movies are verbal and intellectual and have non-commercial form, where the camera keeps the heroes in focus almost all the time, and almost all the heroes do is permanently speaking. And it’s interesting for unaccustomed audience and quite funny for the connoisseur of English. But the same question remains: where the Berlinale concept is? And I get no answer. Also I clearly see what there are. These are enthusiastic reporters and fans witnessed cute Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke with bleached, upright hair at the «Berlinale Palace». Nice, «funny» actors… The media’s been wonderstruck with the quantity of American presence since the early festival days. Such presence defined clear and complete outlines of Berlinale and summarizes its formula: funds of large corporations (invested in popular and expensive selebretis) + own vision of the world (expressed in movies with specific topics and in the clear attitude to those films) = nonconformist, politically correct, income, totally understandable
Film Fashion. American movies used to be highlights, but they turned to be almost a rule now. Social topics used to be explosion and resistance, but they turned to be a rule of few (tens, hundreds) people who select movies relying own liberal European values, or orders of someone more powerful and rich. Homosexual theme was revolutionary and attacking this year. That is unusual
Gemma Arterton
Photo: Sean Gallup
Berlinale.de
Frame from the Closed Curtain by Jafar Panahi and Kambuziya Partovi, award for Best Script
for Berlin, the gay capital of Europe. The first program film of Polish Małgorzata Szumowska «In the Name of…» tells about a priest-abbot of the camp for troubled teens, who is both the drunkard and the pederast. A French «La religieuse» by Guillaume Nicloux directly accuses nuns’ lifestyle with hidden violent elements and shows lesbian goings-on of sequestered women. The strong gay content of nun’s image creates the figure of Isabelle Huppert, who acts a sick Superior, been unhealthy in love with her subordinates. Few would have paid attention this
beautiful film with revisionist Fleur entourage of XVIII century, if Huppert (I should also appreciate Pauline Etienne, the performer of protagonist, who shined like a little pearl in the anticlerical Sabbath). This is not about unsurpassed Huppert’s acting. She is a star, and people like to look at her, easily turning a blind eye to what has gone wrong, even if it happens twice in succession in the case of the Berlinale (the last year’s «Captive» by Brilliante Mendoza got withering criticism). However, it should be noted that the assessment of film critics has actually no importance for the future of movies. Critics, just like ordinary people, are no more essential nor in movies nor in politics. The times of Pauline Kael, «The New Yorker» journalist, who could save or destroy the film with one review, disappeared with her death. Estimates in the daily festival magazine Screen are either irrelevant (by the way, the only film came to the estimation of 3.4 points out of possible 5, it was «Gloria», the prize for actress Paulina Garcia). Policy is the major. That’s why the movie «Closed Curtain» by Jafar Panahi, sentenced to house arrest with the ban in ‘25 making movies by Iranian authorities last year, received one of the major prizes, the «Silver Bear» for the script. And despite the fact that Esopian straightness of metaphors created by Panahi, the screenwriter, is rather a message for students than for exacting Berlinale audience and especially for the jury headed with Wong Kar-wai. But Panahi sufferers, he’s sentenced by power, Panahi «must be here», as several dozen of activists wrote in their placards at the «Berlinale Palace», but he was not «here», because of the violence they did… The «Golden Bear» was given to Romanian Călin Peter Netzer for «Child’s Pose» not due to it artistic value (nonsense!), but for the theme: a guy beats down the child by car and his rich family tries various ways to «justify» the guy in the court and save from prison through agreements with lawyers and giving bribes to judges. . . . . . . . . . . . . УК
…Berlinale requires Cinematography no more, Berlinale requires the confirmation of its ideas and its own vision of the better world. And the audience, at least in Berlin, tolerates it.