Our movie marathon continued Saturday, May 8 with four screenings at the Charles. In the last few years it became our tradition to start off the festival Saturday with a screening in 3D. This year it would have been Inferno in 3D, but we decided to break our tradition and watch one of several foreign movies in this year’s line-up:
Lake Tahoe [IMDB][MFF], directed by Fernando Eimbcke, starring Diego Catano, Hector Herrara and Daniela Valentine…a story of Juan, a teenager who crashes his car on the outskirts of a sleepy Mexican town and tries to find a mechanic. During his quest he doesn’t seem to find what he is looking for, but meets an old paranoid dog owner who wants him to walk his dog, a young punk mother who is looking for a babysitter and a Kung Fu fanatic who’d like to watch a Bruce Lee movie with him. Their relationship to each other is quiet, perhaps as sleepy as the town, but during his mission to get the car running again he slowly finds some friendships and people he hesitatingly begins to care about.
Lake Tahoe was a genius mix of deadpan humor and drama that kept me interested from beginning to end. I loved the overall mood and atmosphere, the characters and how they interacted with each other. It was slow and quiet, but in a very good way. Very nicely paced, beautifully photographed, it managed to say a lot without using many words or music. Watching this movie reminded me of spending a relaxing vacation in another country…and I could have stayed a bit longer.
Our second screening was Stringray Sam, directed by Cory McAbee, starring himself, Crugie, Joshua Taylor, Willa Vy McAbee, Bobby Lurie, Frank Swart, Caleb Scott, Jessica Jelliffe, Ron Crawford, Michael DeNola, Michael Wiener and David Hyde Pierce [IMDB][MFF]. It actually was a story split in six Youtube-friendly parts…a sci-fi-western-musical. Another musical?! Yes! When I looked at the film-descriptions all it took to make me want to see it were Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and “homage to the cinema, rock & roll, comic books, and everything else cool from our childhoods.”
I didn’t expect it to become our second musical this year…and what a cool and fun musical! I absolutely enjoyed the songs, I loved director Cory McAbee in his role as Stingray Sam and guitarist Crugie as Quasar Kid, the Monty Python’esque collage-art…and how it managed to speak to the kid inside of me. During the Q and A Cory McAbee told his story when he was interviewed in Europe about one of his previous features The American Astronaut. The interviewer explained to him that many people in Europe were very angry with the American government and what they were doing at that time…that they feel like they don’t like Americans. His movie, however, included many things Europeans always loved and enjoyed about America and American culture. With this conversation in mind he wrote Stingray Sam including the Wild West, Cowboy, Sci-Fi, Musical, Space-Travellers that Europeans (or Germans in my case) always loved about American culture, but also highlighted the dark side with Tobacco and pharma companies, the privatised prison system, etc. Being European myself I can confirm that in Stringray Sam you can find the “cool” things we love about America, without ignoring the not so cool things.
It felt a bit strange to see six separate episodes in a row and not one full-length feature, but these episodes had cult-potential, were a lot of fun and I absolutely enjoyed them. I haven’t seen American Astronaut yet, but will have to check it out sometime.
After a short break we saw a documentary about Stanley “Stanless Steel” Pleskun in Strongman [IMDB][MFF] by Zachary Levy. A man strong enough to leg-press massive trucks and bend pennies with his fingers reaches his middle age and struggles with difficult personal relationships and a number of career disappointments. This documentary was filmed over the course of several years and presents a close portrait of Stan who wants to prove that he’s still got it, and that he is more than a kids’ party-attraction. Life, however, presents him with another reality…other strong men who bend bolts with much less of an effort or pull nails with their teeth…problems to stop smoking, breathing issues…family and relationship problems…and an alcoholic brother who developed a crack habit.
This film moved me on several occasions. It seemed obvious that Stan invested a many years and a lot of discipline to train and build up his strength, to become “the strongest man on earth”. I had the impression he might have found his motivation in an attempt to find a better life for himself than what his background was like growing up. His brother was presenting him an example of what not to become. I felt reminded of my own background… I, too, put a lot of work, time and discipline into my education to break out of my working class background and find a better living for myself. I don’t think I’m the strongest man, but there was a time I felt like I was the best software developer on earth. After a few disappointments I had to realize that was a big mistake. There were a few other moments in Strongman that reminded me of my own history in one way or another, turning this documentary into more of a personal experience than I ever anticipated. I really enjoyed this film.
Your Humble Narrator
In a slightly different matter: The film description in the festival booklet calls Strongman a cinéma vérité portrait. I think the director mentioned this documentary style during the Q and A as well. Not familiar with this expression I looked it up and found that it combines “[...] naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camera work, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects.” I might be wrong but I didn’t feel this applied to Strongman. Direct cinema on the other hand seemed to be a better fit. I read that both cinéma vérité and direct cinema have in common that they don’t use voice-overs, they both try to let the subjects speak for themselves, avoiding to make them dependent on the filmmaker’s interpretation, and they both try to avoid assigning social problems to a larger political or cultural context. Instead, they both try to capture truths and the everyday reality.
Furthermore I read that the difference between cinéma vérité and direct cinema is that direct cinema tries to put the camera and film maker as far into the background as possible. The camera is as a “fly on the wall” supposed to be as unnoticed as possible. Camera and crew should try not influence the situation at all to capture the “privileged moments” in which the person forgets about the camera’s existence and reveals truths you otherwise wouldn’t get to see.
Cinéma vérité, so I read, follows a different strategy…instead of being a “fly on the wall”, the film maker becomes a “fly in the soup”, actively participating in the situation and trying to provoke those “privileged moments”. Some examples would include reality-television or interview movies. Even fictional movies like the Blairwitch Project used this technique. I wonder if I understood it right… how would you as educated film people define the difference between cinéma vérité and direct cinema? It has nothing to do with Strongman, but I was curious because I wasn’t familiar with this word before.
Off to the next and last movie of the day, presented by director Bobcat Goldthwait himself: World’s Greatest Dad [IMDB][MFF] with Robin Williams, Daryl Sabara, Alexie Gilmore, Geoffrey Pierson, Henry Simmons, Mitzi McCall and Tony V. It’s the story about a middle aged author and poetry teacher Lance who fails to find somebody to publish his writing. He also seems to fail as single father of an abusive son Kyle. After an abrupt turn of events, Lance faces new challenges, fame and respect approaching from all directions.
Bobcat Goldthwait and Jed Dietz
Bobcat Goldthwait originally planned somebody else for Robin William’s role, and his character as poetry teacher was not at all related to the old Dead Poet’s Society at all, he explained during the Q and A. I enjoyed this film. It was very entertaining, funny, and sometimes also very dark which I always appreciate in a comedy. Similar to Sleeping Dogs Lie (a screening we saw a year or two ago), he managed to play with a darker, unspoken side of an individual’s psychology or social/cultural standards as a whole, while giving it all a very entertaining, lightweight appearance.
The following list is in order from my top pick down for both Friday and Saturday:
- Modern Love is Automatic
- Love Songs
- Invisible Girlfriend
- Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo
- Strongman
- Stingray Sam
- Lake Tahoe
- World’s Greatest Dad
- Seventh Moon
