The History & The Drama of Director Alexander Dovzhenko

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Sunday, 17 September 2017 09:00

Written by Jack Angstreich

 The Enchanted Desna

A landmark event for New York cinephiles this summer took place at the Museum of the Moving Image on the last weekend of August: a presentation of the extraordinary Ukrainian trilogy of Yulia Solntseva, the widow of Alexander Dovzhenko, one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema.

Solntseva had been a significant actress in Soviet film, appearing several times in films by her husband. At his death in 1958, he left three unproduced screenplays that she proceeded to realize, displaying a remarkable command of the medium, beginning with Poem of an Inland Sea from 1958, which was screened in 35-millimeter.

Especially exciting, however, was the glorious presentation of the other two works in the trilogy, which were both screened in excellent 70-millimeter color prints with innovative stereophonic, magnetic soundtracks, possibly for the first time in New York. These quasi-propaganda films transcend Stalinist aesthetics and feature elaborate—sometimes delirious—crane and tracking shots—with even a few handheld shots— dynamic editing, arresting superimpositions, dream and fantasy sequences, and other notable elements.

The Chronicle of the Flaming Years from 1961, which was the first 70-millimeter production in the Soviet Union, dramatizes the Nazi invasion of the Ukraine during the second World War, centering on the experiences of Ivan Orlyuk, an extremely appealing young soldier. The episodic narrative is unforgettable for its stunning, epic battle scenes.

Even more amazing was The Enchanted Desna, a sometimes delirious, lyrical, magical realist adaptation of autobiographical writings by Dovzhenko, and ranked by Jean-Luc Godard as the best film of 1965. The narrative oscillates between the protagonist's Ukrainian childhood around the turn of the century, his time as an officer in the Red Army during World War II, and the modern day of magnificent Soviet construction. The screenings of this dazzling, indescribable work were a capstone to one of the pinnacles of New York film exhibition of recent years.

Off-Broadway Review—Sarah Ruhl’s “For Peter Pan on her 70th birthday”

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 15 September 2017 22:56

Written by Kevin Filipski

For Peter Pan on her 70^th birthday

Written by Sarah Ruhl; directed by Les Waters

Performances through October 1, 2017

 

Kathleen Chalfant (center, arms upraised) in For Peter Pan on her 70th birthday(photo: Joan Marcus)

Sarah Ruhl’s plays are an ungainly hybrid of whimsy, tragedy, absurdism and sheer absurdity—and her latest to arrive in New York, with the equally ungainly title of For Peter Pan on her 70^th birthday, is no exception. (The haphazard capitalization is Ruhl’s own.) Its protagonist is Ann—which rhymes with Pan, of course—a former grade-school player of Peter, who introduces herself, is seen at her father’s agonizing deathbed with her four siblings, then at the booze-fueled wake with their father’s ghost wandering in and out of the proceedings with the family dog, and finally in a fantasy sequence donning the green outfit and flying harness one last time as her brothers and sister enact roles from J.M. Barrie’s beloved saga, like Captain Hook, Wendy and the Lost Boys.

 

The idea of an elderly woman stepping into Pan’s shoes to replay her childhood certainly has promise, but Ruhl bludgeons it to a premature death with countless side trips into forced whimsy and heavyhanded dialogue, right from Ann’s opening monologue in front of the curtain, and continuing with the deathbed scene, where it’s not the physical and emotional turmoil of waiting for someone to die that’s excruciating but the paucity of the writing and meaningless conversations. The wake, too, suffers similarly: would a group of middle-aged Midwesterners from Iowa boisterously start singing “O Canada” simultaneously? The other song interludes—including one of the brothers picking up a trumpet to play not “Taps” but “The Saints Go Marching In”—are additional desperate padding.

 

For 90 intermissionless minutes, Ruhl’s play meanders both obviously and pointlessly. Unsurprisingly, she has explained that she wrote it for her mother, which is fine as far as it goes, but For Peter mines territory similar to her other work, as willful weirdness and irrational characters and their relationships pile up onstage in order to stretch out a play whose ideas barely pass muster for a 10-minute curtain-raiser.

 

What’s disheartening is that Les Waters directs persuasively, David Zinn’s sets are beguiling, Matt Frey’s lighting is often dazzling, and Kristopher Castle’s costumes are amusing. Fully on board is the entire cast, led by Kathleen Chalfant, who plays Ann with her usual resourcefulness and intelligence. But nothing can disguise that For Peter Pan—even more than her previous play seen in New York, How to Transcend a Happy Marriage—is all dressed up with no place to fly.

 

For Peter Pan on her 70^th birthday

Playwrights Horizons, 416 West 42nd Street, New York, NY

phnyc.org

 

September '17 Digital Week I

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 07 September 2017 03:06

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week 

Heal the Living

(Cohen Media)

Based on Maylis de Karengal’s best-selling novel, Katell Quillevere’s profound film probes the emotions and private lives of several people damaged, destroyed, or otherwise affected by the death of a healthy young man and the donation of his organs.

With clinical precision but affecting immediacy, Quillevere dramatizes the dizzyingly complicated decisions that arise from life-or-death ordeals, with persuasive performances and two graphic scenes of surgery that are perhaps two too many. The film looks splendid on Blu; lone extra is a Quillevere interview.

 

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

(HBO)

Rebecca Smoots’ remarkable journalistic endeavor dove into the history of the woman whose harvested diseased cells have become an enduring line of defense for fighting cancer and a host of other diseases since her death in 1951.

And while the film adaptation—written and directed by George Wolfe—can’t hope to cover the same amount of time, narrative and breadth of characters in a mere 90 minutes, by concentrating on the relationship between Smoot (a wonderful Rose Byrne) and Lacks’ daughter Deborah (a poignant Oprah Winfrey), it demonstrates what such a momentous scientific breakthrough meant to those most directly affected by it. The film looks fine in hi-def; extras are two brief featurettes.

 

Jessica Jones 

Daredevil

(Netflix)

Netflix’s first two Marvel-inspired series show how a strong main character can lead the way to binge viewing, as Krysten Ritter tears up the screen in Jessica Jones, overwhelming the preposterous storylines and ridiculous characters she has to deal with.

Unfortunately, Daredevil is stuck with limp noodle Charlie Cox as the hero, which seriously crimps its style. Luckily, there’s a supporting cast sturdy enough for Daredevil to muddle through, including Rosario Dawson, who’s also superb in Jessica Jones. Both shows look great on Blu; no extras on either set, however.

 

The Love of a Woman

(Arrow Academy)

French director Jean Gremillon’s final film was this intimate, unsentimental 1953 drama about a female doctor who becomes an island’s new MD while battling sexism—then falls in love with a man who wants to take her back to Italy and make her a housewife.

It sounds like pure soap opera, but under Gremillon’s sensitive guidance, actress Micheline Presle and actor Massimo Girotti give performances of enormous sympathy, making this a quite satisfying tragic romance, and a lovely swan song for the director. The B&W films looks flawless on Blu; the lone extra is a substantial one: a 96-minute documentary, In Search of Jean Gremillon, from 1969.

 

New Battles Without Honor and Humanity 

(Arrow)

This trilogy directed by Kinji Fukasaku between 1974 and 1976 continues the epic gangster tales told in his original late ‘60s quintet, but these may be even more ferocious, forceful and brutal in their studying such amoral and immoral characters. That each of the films works as a standalone story is another enticing feature.

Arrow’s boxed set is another winner: all three films are in good (if sometimes soft) new hi-def transfers, there are interviews with co-screenwriter of the second and third films, Koji Takada, and an appreciation by Fukasaku biographer Sadao Yamane, and also included is an illustrated accompanying book.

 

Night Moves

My Blue Heaven

(Warner Archive)

Night Moves was director Arthur Penn’s last fully-realized drama, a 1975 private eye mystery with Gene Hackman at his peak (and then 17-year-old Melanie Griffith in the altogether) in a ramshackle but pointed pulse-taker of an America wounded by Vietnam and Watergate that’s become a nation of isolation, loneliness and confusion.

Herbert Ross’s amiable 1990 comedy about a gangster in the witness protection program, My Blue Heaven traffics in so many stereotypes that even a cast led by Steve Martin, Rick Moranis, Bill Irwin, Deborah Rush, Melanie Mayron and Carol Kane can’t save its increasingly labored attempts to wring laughs out of the basest genre clichés. Both films have excellent hi-def transfers; Night Moves also includes an on-set featurette.

 

Ronin 

(Arrow)                                

John Frankenheimer’s 1998 action flick has grown in stature over the years, mainly for its often spectacular car chases through Paris and the narrow alleys of Nice. There are several inventive if illogical set pieces, including one in the Arles Roman amphitheater, but the action continues so relentlessly that two hours fly by.

The top-notch cast, led by Robert DeNiro, Natascha McElhone, Jonathan Pryce, Jean Reno, Michael Lonsdale and Stellan Skarsgard, also helps. Arrow’s new hi-def transfer is superb; many extras include Frankenheimer’s commentary, interviews with the actors and cinematographer Robert Fraisse and featurettes on stunts and music.

 

The Tempest

(Opus Arte)

Shakespeare’s final play was this magical fantasy about reconciliation and forgiveness, but this new Royal Shakespeare Company production accentuates the magic, remarkably realized by Imaginarium Studios, with projections, lighting and other visual effects given primacy over the poetry and relationships.