MOVIES
Editor: Andi Prewitt / Contact: aprewitt@wweek.com H O WA R D M I T C H E L L
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GET YO UR REPS I N
While local rep theaters are out of commission, we’ll be putting together weekly watchlists of films readily available to stream. This week, in honor of Netflix’s recent release of the star-studded The Devil All the Time, we highlight films boasting stellar ensemble casts.
The Devil All the Time (2020) Based on Donald Ray Pollock’s critically acclaimed novel, this gritty, dramatic thriller follows a young man (Tom Holland) through a series of strange encounters with sinister characters in the corrupt town of Knockemstiff, Ohio. Co-stars include Riley Keough, Sebastian Stan, Mia Wasikowska, Bill Skarsgård, and standout Robert Pattinson as a lecherous preacher. Netflix.
DEBT OF GRATITUDE: Forgive Us Our Debts is a much-needed examination of Portland’s history of discrimination.
Homesick Police brutality and its links to the housing crisis are themes in the Portland-set short Forgive Us Our Debts. BY C H A N C E SO L E M - P F E I FER
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Willamette Week SEPTEMBER 23, 2020 wweek.com
SEE IT: Forgive Us Our Debts screens at the Cinema Unbound Drive-In at Zidell Yards, 3030 SW Moody Ave., prior to The Shining, on Saturday, Sept. 26. 9 pm. Sold out.
Jim Jarmusch’s nocturnal dramedy consists of five vignettes, all focusing on a different cab driver in a different city on the same night. Perhaps the most notable of the anthology is the opener, in which a grungy chain-smoking cabbie (Winona Ryder) escorts a movie executive (Gena Rowlands) around L.A. Amazon Prime, Criterion Channel, HBO Max.
Magnolia (1999) This epic drama from auteur Paul Thomas Anderson explores the myriad ways in which fateful coincidences form delicate connections, binding us all together. The first-rate ensemble cast includes Julianne Moore as a pill-addicted housewife, Philip Seymour Hoffman as a tender nurse, and Tom Cruise in one of his most memorable roles as a bawdy motivational speaker. Amazon Prime, Google Play, HBO Go, HBO Max, Hulu, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube.
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On Aug. 15, Portland filmmaker Howard Mitchell’s new short preceded Do the Right Thing at the NW Film Center’s newly launched drive-in theater. In some ways, the pairing was natural. Like Spike Lee’s 1989 classic, Forgive Us Our Debts depicts an urban neighborhood and its Black residents caught in the cyclical distress of poverty and racism. In its 15-minute runtime, Mitchell’s film zooms in on a family of Black Portlanders falling victim to a predatory gentrifier and the police who enforce his practices. On Sept. 26, Forgive Us Our Debts finds another apt pairing at the Zidell Yards drive-in: The Shining (1980). This time the connection is tonal. The oppressive dread of Forgive Us Our Debts owes much more to Kubrick than Lee. The threat of violence hovers as a thick, low-lying inhalant, as 13-year-old Trey (Jason Putnam) fields mysterious phone calls, while his grandma (Tracy Shaw) naps to grainy gospel tapes and his father, Dante (Jacques Allison), arrives home on edge and toting a 30-rack. There’s no haunting per se, but you wouldn’t be wrong to think some ancient treachery lurked just outside the family’s front door. Mitchell certainly views his film as one focused on a violation. “I wanted to think about the idea of ‘home’ and make it universal,” says the director, who also goes by the pseudonym Gato. “Robert Frost said that home is a place, that when you get there, they have to let you in. Home is yours. No one can take it from you. And yet, we know they can. And rather violently.” Panama-born and New Jersey-raised, Mitchell moved to town in 2009 after flipping a coin: heads Austin, tails Portland. Tails turned up, Mitchell relocated from Seattle, and Forgive Us Our Debts marks his fifth short film, made possible in part by a 2018 fellowship from the NW Film Center. Though Mitchell has captured Portland from a sidewalk vantage before in a series of shorts connected by public transit, Forgive Us Our Debts led him to plunge deep into the city’s history of discrimination. “Police brutality is inextricably linked to the housing crisis,” Mitchell says. “It’s a two-headed dragon.”
Certainly, depictions of police violence against Black civilians have become more frequent in film and TV during the past several years, but rarely with such an emphasis on the grotesque as in Mitchell’s work. Backgrounding Trey’s after-school routine with a graphic Dante’s Inferno coloring book, Mitchell also doubles certain disturbing shots, like a police officer scoffing and grinning at Trey’s father’s defense of their home. “It’s this idea of the spiritual and the profane crashing together,” Mitchell says of his Alighieri allusions. “You have the grandmother representing faith and then Dante bringing in his rage and Black anger. And the boy wrestling with the two between himself.” Put another way, it’s uncommon for injustice against Black Americans to be played for horror in film, not drama. Mitchell’s work aims to peel open the audience’s eyes and force them to stare through Trey’s. The director cites classic international cinema like The Spirit of the Beehive (Spain, 1973) and The 400 Blows (France, 1959) as inspirational examples of shedding intellectual bias through a young POV character. “It’s the tabula rasa of a child, that clear mind, unhindered,” Mitchell says. “A child is something we’re all supposed to identify with. [That] may take the guard off some people.” Relating to audiences while maintaining artistic credibility is something Mitchell often views via his Portland State master’s degree: adult education with a critical theory emphasis. As for feeling at home after his fateful coin flip, Mitchell wishes there were more Black filmmakers in Portland, but he also credits the Film Center for supporting his work when he might have otherwise moved away. Now, it seems, Portland’s sometimes hidden hells may have unlocked new creativity in Mitchell, as he develops his first feature: a PDX noir. “It expounds upon these same themes as a crime drama,” Mitchell says. “The mayor is involved, and this Black bike repairman becomes embroiled and has to sleuth his way out of it. I think it’s ripe. There’s a lot of darkness here.”
Night on Earth (1991)
Waiting for Guffman (1996) A troupe of community theater actors, led by their eccentric director, Corky St. Clair (Christopher Guest, who also directs), aims to put on an original musical celebrating their small town’s history. Eugene Levy, Fred Willard, Bob Balaban, Catherine O’Hara, and the always delightful Parker Posey co-star in this almost entirely improvised mockumentary. Amazon Prime, Google Play, Hulu, iTunes, Vudu, YouTube.
Babel (2006) Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett headline this heartrending drama from multi-Best Director Oscar winner Alejandro Iñárritu. Tragedy strikes while the American pair are vacationing in Morocco, and their stories internationally intertwine with their Mexican nanny (Adriana Barraza) and her nephew (Gael García Bernal), as well as a hearing-impaired teen girl in Japan (Rinko Kikuchi). Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, Netflix, Vudu, YouTube.
