Kevin's Digital Week: At War

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Thursday, 02 September 2010 05:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week
9th Company (Image)
The former Soviet Union’s quagmire in Afghanistan, which preceded our own by some 20 years, contributed to its ultimate demise. That it was also Russia’s Vietnam is undeniable, and Fyodor Bondarchuk’s 2005 drama is the first Russian film we’ve seen in America that equates their lost war to ours, mainly by aping American war movies set in Vietnam, like Full Metal Jacket, Platoon and Apocalypse Now.

It’s remarkable that, for all its war-movie clichés, 9th Company is a gripping, 140-minute thrill ride: it’s no surprise this was a hit back home. A large, impressive cast carries out the company’s impossible mission; the movie, though patriotic to a fault, knows enough to praise soldiers over unseen Kremlin leaders. The first-rate Blu-ray presentation is complemented by an extra DVD of interviews with cast, writer, director and actual veterans who are, unsurprisingly, highly emotional after seeing the film.

The Simpsons: The Complete 13th Season (Fox)
Compared to how terrific Season 20 looked in its Blu-ray incarnation—it was the first season of the long-running Fox series to be shown in HD—older seasons of The Simpsons are at a slight disadvantage. Happily, though, the 21 episodes that make up Season 13 (from 2001-2) have a sharper look than I would have expected from them; worth noting are the fun interactive menus in full HD.

As to the series itself, 13 is another uneven Simpsons season, with guest stars Pierce Brosnan, REM, Paul Newman, Phish, N'Sync and U2 muddling their way through some lazy storylines and even lazier jokes. Still, let’s face it: The Simpsons on auto-pilot is better than pretty much everything else on TV. The extras include a Matt Groening intro, deleted scenes and commentaries, and a few negligible featurettes.

DVDs of the Week
Cinevardaphoto (Cinema Guild)
French director Agnes Varda has had a bumpy feature-film career: for every classic like Vagabond, there's a dud like Kung Fu Master. But her shorts and documentaries are another matter. Her recent autobiographical essay, The Beaches of Agnes, was among the best non-fiction films of recent years, and this new disc collects several short works that reinforce Varda's reputation as one of our most valuable and insightful directors.

Cinevardaphoto is a triptych of shorts showing the staying power of photographic images, whether an exhibit of vintage pictures, each of which includes a teddy bear; an old photo Varda reexamines three decades later; or hundreds of pics that Varda herself shot during the early, heady days of Fidel Castro's Cuba. In addition to these incisive historical and psychological portraits, the disc includes a half-dozen other Varda shorts and a 20-minute featurette in which she self-effacingly discusses her cinematic artistry.

Selling Hitler
(Acorn Media)
The 1981 scandal of the Hitler Diaries hoax is the focus of this hilarious but tellingly real dissection of the journalists and historians who were taken in by an obvious forger in one of the biggest-ever journalistic fiascos. This 1991 British mini-series stars an exemplary cast led by Jonathan Pryce as German reporter Gerd Heidemann, always looking for the next big scoop, who spend millions of Stern magazine’s money to ensure no one else could scoop the “scoop” of the century.

Giving Pryce strong support are Barry Humphries, Alison Doody, Alan Bennett and Alexei Sayre; directed adroitly by Alistair Reid from Howard Schuman's teleplay, Selling Hitler’s five fast-moving episodes only rarely degenerate into surrealistic but silly Wagnerian parody. The lone extra is an onscreen update about the major players involved—too bad there’s no documentary that sketches in the historical background.

CDs of the Week
Martinu: Cello Sonatas
(Chandos)
Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959), one of the 20th century’s greats, composed two cello concertos and a cello concertino, along with three cello sonatas, all heard here—along with two short sets of variations (on Slovak and Rossini themes)—in this beautifully performed recording by cellist Paul Watkins and pianist Huw Watkins.

Although both sets of variations are charming, the meaty sonatas are the disc’s real treats. In the first sonata, composed in Paris in 1939, you can hear the ominous rumblings of the war to come; the second, composed in New York in 1942, has the nervous energy of an artist starting anew; the light-hearted third, composed in France in 1952, has Bohemian folk songs at its root. Although other recordings of these essential pieces exist, this is among the best.

Tyberg: Symphony No. 3; Piano Trio
(Naxos)
Composers whose careers—and even lives—were snuffed out by the Nazis have become an entire cottage industry: Decca’s invaluable Entartate Musik CD series in the ‘90s unearthed much chamber/orchestral music and operas that were forgotten; more recently, conductor James Conlon has led works by composers like Braunfels, Zemlinsky and Schreker to critical acclaim. Now add to this list the name of Marcel Tyberg, an Austrian Jewish composer who died in Auschwitz on New Year’s Eve in 1944.

A Buffalo doctor came into possession of some Tyberg scores and gave them to Buffalo Philharmonic conductor JoAnn Falletta, who led the world premiere of Tyberg’s Symphony No. 3, which, along with his Piano Trio, are heard here. Tyberg’s music shimmers glossily,  but ultimately doesn’t measure up to Braunfels, Zemlinsky or Schreker. Although attractive and well-played—the slow movements of both works sound particularly lovely on this recording—they are not the unearthed masterpieces we hoped for. Yet to hear Tyberg’s music at all is a treat, so thanks are due to Naxos, Falletta and her Buffalo musicians.

Kevin’s Digital Week 33: Middle East, America and Europe

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Friday, 27 August 2010 05:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

Blu-rays of the Week

Ajami
(Kino)
Ajami is a ghetto on the outskirts of the Israeli town of Jaffa populated by Palestinian immigrants, Christians, Arabs and Jews, all living in close proximity. In Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani’s tense crime drama, these people continually butt heads, extracting revenge for the pettiest—or most vicious—of slights, and bloodshed is the usual result. Never wallowing in its display of this endless cycle of violence, Ajami  unflinchingly — and, ultimately, heartbreakingly — shows the best and worst of humanity, often seen side by side.

Don’t hold last year's Best Foreign Film Oscar nomination against it: Ajami is certainly unsettling, but it’s also an edge-of-your-seat thriller detailing minute-by-minute survival. This brutally frank glimpse at quotidian reality in the Middle East was shot on digital video and transferred to film, so the clarity of the images is given a harshness by the grain so essential to its quasi-documentary quality. The extras include a half-hour featurette, The Story of the Actors, and a substantial 23 minutes of deleted scenes.

City Island
(Anchor Bay)
Writer-director Raymond De Felitta studies a dysfunctional — but ultimately lovable — family living on a Bronx island most people think of solely as a place to eat fresh seafood. Although these characters are fashioned out of clichés (smart daughter goes bad, mixed-up teenage son horns in on chubby neighbor, mom suspects dad of cheating, etc.), De Felitta and his cast let us care about their them, even when they act stupidly or are stuck in a familiar subplot (Dad, a corrections officer, is also an aspiring actor, which his wife would never understand).

Andy Garcia and Julianne Margulies as the parents, Dominik Garcia-Lirido and Ezra Miller as their kids, Steven Strait as the father’s son from another relationship, and Emily Mortimer as an actress befriending dad — all are authentically New Yawkers without resorting to caricature. The hi-def image is excellent, and the extras include a De Felitta/Garcia commentary, deleted scenes and a conversation among director and cast at a City Island restaurant.

DVDs of the Week

Temple Grandin
(HBO)
In Mick Jackson’s biopic, Claire Danes gives the kind of transformative performance as a real-life autistic woman who became our greatest advocate for humane livestock treatment that we usually associate with Meryl Streep. Danes throws herself into her role with such fervor that we experience Grandin's incredible and difficult journey to overcome a disability and an uncomprehending society.

Julia Ormond gives an equally affecting portrayal as Grandin’s sturdy mother, whose own strength obviously helped her daughter succeed. David Straithairn and Catherine O’Hara round out an excellent cast, yet whenever Danes is onscreen, she dominates the movie like she never has before. It’s heartening to watch Danes (and Ormond) show the ferocity needed to do justice to Grandin’s inspiring story. Extras include Grandin's own audio commentary and a short making-of.

Visions of Israel
(Acorn Media)
Another in the impressive Visions of.. series, this time the overhead aerial cameras roam over the cities, countryside and stunning natural wonders of Israel. We see the sprawling capital, Tel Aviv, along with the biggest city, Jerusalem, by day and at night; outlying areas like the one that houses an ingenious irrigation system that literally turned the desert green; and awe-inspiring ancient relics like the hilltop fortress at Masada.

With narration that’s by turns jocular and serious by renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman, and a soundtrack that features the often jaunty rhythms of Klezmer music, Visions of Israel is another winner in this travel series: too bad it’s not on Blu-ray like some of the other episodes are. The bonus feature (an extra 23 minutes of superlative footage that weren't used in the 55-minute program) includes sights as breathtaking as what’s in the original program.

CDs of the Week

Pizzetti: Chamber Works
(Naxos)
Ildebrando Pizzetti is no household name, not even in Italy, where this underrated composer lived from 1880 to 1968. His music, while conservative, is original and attractive, and many of his works should be heard in the concert hall, where they would undoubtedly win new converts. Instead, Pizzetti is getting his partial due on CDs, and the Naxos label has been at the forefront of releasing his orchestral and chamber music for a fresh hearing.  

This new recording features three of Pizzetti's most appealing chamber works, two quite substantial and one, Tre Canti, a buoyant 10-minute bauble in three short movements. The two large-scale works (each about 30 minutes long) are the Piano Trio and Violin Sonata, and the superb musicians—violinist Leila Rasonyi, cellist Laszlo Fenyo and pianist Alpalsan Ertungealp — acquit themselves admirably, particularly in each work’s slow movement, in which yearning tones and gorgeous melodies intertwine.

Shostakovich: The Lady and the Hooligan
(Delos)
Dmitri Shostakovich didn’t write many ballets—only three in a long composing career—but those three are masterpieces: The Golden Age, The Bolt and The Limpid Stream. The delightful The Lady and the Hooligan (a choreographic novel from 1962) is instead a pastiche patched together from his earlier works, like the latter two ballets, Ballet Suites and Cello Sonata. If you didn’t know better, you'd think Shostakovich composed a familiar-sounding but lovely new ballet.

The Delos recording features the Minsk Symphony Orchestra under Walter Mnatsakanov’s baton, and if there’s roughness in some of the orchestral playing, the weightiness needed to make it all work comes through, particularly in the tragic finale. Also included is Shostakovich’s Ballet Suite No. 2, which contains Shostakovich's characteristic eclecticism in spades.

Film Review: Daisies

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Monday, 23 August 2010 04:59

Written by William Heidbreder

Daisies
by Vera Chitylova
Czechoslovakia, 1966
(Facets Multimedia/DVD)

Most Eastern European films from the Communist period are in some way political. Indeed, arguably the most instructive body of criticism of Stalinism to be found is in the cinema of Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. In Czechoslovakia most of the relevant films were made between 1963-69, the period of the Czech New Wave. Daisies is a central exemplar.
    
Whether or not this is the greatest Czech film -- and it might be -- it is undoubtedly the most fun. Indeed, it is almost intolerably exuberant and delightful. One of the key European films of the ‘60’s, Daisies focuses on two young girls who share an apartment, both named Marie (perfectly played by Ivana Karbanová and Jitka Cerhová, who appear only in a handful of Czech films from the period).

The girls’ premise is that since the world has gone “bad” they too will be “bad”. In a series of vignettes (the film has no real plot), they proceed to make fun of everyone and everything in their world. They arrange dinner dates with older men who take the train into the city in order to meet them. They then ridicule these invariably sentimental, well-heeled gentlemen (we can infer their class status as Party members from the fact that they can afford to dine in expensive restaurants) while gorging themselves on food.

Food is everywhere in the film, up to the final vignette where the women ruin the prepared food in an empty banquet hall and then “make good” by piecing together broken plates and glasses in a mock clean-up. At this point, their party ends in a crashing chandelier that segues into nuclear explosions, followed by the filmmaker’s dedication “to all those whose sole source of indignation is a messed-up trifle.”  
    
The watchwords of the film are play, consumption, and artifice. The two women do nothing but play — with food, with magazine cutouts, with words and names. They have covered the walls of their apartment with drawings, cutouts, and writing. Food is central because they belong to the nascent world that French critics of the time called la société de consommation, consumer society.

This being a film from Communist Czechoslovakia and not Gaullist France, this world is not so much critiqued as used as a subversive weapon. A society of plentiful consumer goods and enough food to waste without flinching was not what the people of Eastern Europe had but what many of them wanted, and would finally get 20 years later. (The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia did flinch, and precisely at the food wastage, when apparatchiks saw the film, unwittingly making themselves targets of the witticism of the film’s prescient dedication).

What the young women in the film, and the young woman who made it, were taking aim at was a society based on a philosophy that was by turns utopian and tragic and not particularly comic, a society that took itself incredibly seriously. The music drives this home; much of it is bombastic or solemn, quasi-hymnal, and ironically counterpointed by the brilliant images and dialogue.

The work demonstrates how play, consumption, and artifice can be subversive strategies, more so in the Czech context than they would have been if this film had been made in the West, where much the same situations and behavior would have taken on a rather different meaning.
     
Indeed, Daisies was championed in the '70s by Western feminist critics, who saw the women in the film as role models for a playfully ironic and subversive critique or “deconstruction” of patriarchy. Chitylova herself took pains to disavow this interpretation, but it is easy to see both what fueled it and why it must have been in error.

Although the filmmaker said she originally considered using men, it is obvious that the film works much better with young women. In a patriarchal society — and despite its greater gender equality Communism was surely that — women, especially young women, have the privilege of being allowed a far greater measure of irresponsibility, because less is expected of them.

The problem is that this limits as much as it enables the political effectiveness of the appropriation of this irresponsibility through a strategy of playful irony. I’m not sure that the film escapes this limitation by virtue of a distance between the discourse of the characters and that of the film itself, because to speak of such a distance is to speak of irony, and the characters as well as the filmmaker are thoroughgoing ironists. That is, what is it to speak of an ironic treatment of characters whose discourse itself is entirely ironical?   

The film is very self-consciously a work of filmic artifice. But then the characters themselves seem to know that they are artificial, which is part of the meaning of their use of Cartesian doubt (wondering whether they exist, and at one point poignantly noting that not having a job and an identity card renders this problematic), and of their cutting off each other’s limbs and heads with scissors, along with mock screams, which is another manifestation of their refusal to take anything seriously, at least until the final chandelier crash.

The problem with the feminist reading and the strategy it implies is the failure to recognize that this kind of playful irony can be very effective in a work of fiction but is less so in real life. The film’s relentless attack on the new party bourgeoisie and its spirit of seriousness is quite potent. The feminists differed from the filmmaker in tacitly proposing that people, or women at any rate, live this way.  

A less innocent strategy is to propose instead that people learn to view as farce the life of a society whose ideology is that of a straight man. The Party didn’t laugh at the film or at the mess it had created in real life, but maybe it ought to have; it was Marx himself who said that tragic events return as farce.
    
I don’t wish to imply that the film ceases to delight when the Stalinist frame of reference is disregarded. Part of the fate of the spirit of 1968, which this film so well embodies, is that the kind of attitude that is here celebrated easily morphs into a kind of cynicism, which is indeed what the societé de consommation has become in the West. But the film delights on repeated viewings because it manages in some way I don’t fully grasp to steer clear of that.

The film’s somewhat Dadaist celebration of rebellion represents the eternal youth of a nascent consumer capitalism, a mythical time we all would like to remember when a ludic rage freed us of all responsibilities, when the use of play, consumption, and artifice felt like joyful liberation rather than some kind of compulsive ritual where people have to pretend to be happy.
    
(Available on DVD from Facets Multimedia, and on Amazon.com and Netflix. Amazon inexplicably has it packaged with Jill Godmilow’s Waiting for the Moon, a film about a famous lesbian couple, the writer Gertrude Stein and her companion Alice B. Toklas).