Once again, this time due to a family commitment, I was only able to see a single film on the ninth day of the festival, so my ninth and tenth days have been compressed into this single diary entry. Which, to be honest, was a welcome relief as the mid-festival blues have begun to kick in like some vengeful, angry mule. Even though I barely had time to scratch myself, it was good to get away from the festival even for a day, as I re-calibrated my mind in order to prepare myself for, yep, another four films on the festival’s tenth day. So herein lies the hump in my MIFF journey:
The Dance of Reality (Dir. Alejandro Jodorowsky)
Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky is responsible for some of the most memorable and bracing images of my cinematic life. From the existential, acid drenched West depicted in his seminal cult film El Topo to the saturated, Giallo colour scheme of his Oedipal thriller Santa Sangre, the man has in the past concocted some of the most unique filmic outings in the history of the medium. Famed for his cinematic cocktail of Jungian psychology, polytheist religious worship, gypsy magic/tarot, LSD escapism and whatever else fits, Jodorowsky is the ultimate cinematic prankster. His own historical mythology has constantly been in question, as he himself oftentimes leads those who enquire down a path of multiple endings, with his own past being as constructed and fabricated as the logic of his films. In his newest film (and first since 1990) The Dance of Reality, Jodorowsky attempts to bring his convoluted myth to the big screen through an autobiographical lens. The results are, as to be expected, strange.
The film depicts a young boy, a stand in for Jodorowsky himself, growing up in a seaside Chilean town as he attempts to deal with the imposed will of his Stalin worshiping, tyrannical father (played by Jodorowsky’s son Brontis). Alejandro is caught at a crossroads, between the ideologically stern influence of his father and the melodramatic spirituality of his mother; a woman who’s every word is sung in an operatic tone. The film focuses on this conflict through the traditional esoteric Jodorowsky symbolism, but also brings up other abstract dualities in the process. The dance of reality for Jodorowsky it seems is a delicate balance between ecstasy and agony, between the sacred and the profane, as he concocts numerous images that elicit such discord. This is best illustrated through the journey of Alejandro’s father, a man whose intense communist rhetoric makes way for a religious rebirth, a theme present in much of Jodorowsky’s older works. The real issue with The Dance of Reality however is that Jodorowsky’s previous films still hang in the back of our cinematic minds. Absent are the overwhelming physical set constructions and bold controversies of his great films that make his images that stick in the cobwebs of your psyche. Granted, The Dance of Reality is a much more quiet and personal film than The Holy Mountain for instance (well, at least by Jodorowsky’s standards), but the film ultimately lacks in the grandiosity and uncanniness of what forged his cinematic legacy in the first place. At the end of the day, The Dance of Reality is a welcome return for one of the most unique and gifted directors to grace our screens and is proof that Jodorowsky as myth maker is still crackling with a seemingly unstoppable creativity.
Gebo and the Shadow (Dir. Manoel de Oliveira)
Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira is 105 years old. His newest film Gebo and the Shadow was released last year, meaning that he was probably about 103 or so when he was conceptualising and developing it. This in itself is an obvious accomplishment, and although he probably deserves some credit for being able to helm something that most find difficult to do even in a middle aged mindset, it would be unfair to deny the fact that this film actually feels like it was directed by a 103 year old man. Based on a stage play, the film tells the story of a very humble and modest family unit in the late 19th century headed by the eponymous father Gebo from the film’s title. The mother of the family is played by the once illustrious Claudia Cardinale, whose conflict with Gebo extends from her dissatisfaction with the simplicity of her life unlived. The couple share a complacent, adopted daughter, with their actual son having left them years ago for reasons which Gebo knows and has kept from his wife since his departure. When their son returns out of the blue, he condemns their conservative lifestyle and ends up causing the family more grief than that provided by his absence. Oliveira shoots the film in a series of immensely elongated shots of characters simply sitting at a table conversing. His camera occupies its space at table height, leaving most of the drama to the performers, who unfortunately lack the electricity required to bring the heft of the written material to life. The whole affair comes off as rather dusty, with its slow and considered pace feeling less like restraint and control and more like a lack of thematic clarity. Outside of some beautifully romantic lighting schemes and one or two haunting, static images, Gebo and the Shadow is a film that suffers from a lack of action in almost every sense of the word.
Computer Chess (Dir. Andrew Bujalski)
Considered the king of the mumblecore movement, director Andrew Bujalski has taken his lo-fi, American independent sensibilities to their logical extremes in his newest film, the highly perplexing Computer Chess. Framed as a documentary of a techno-chess tournament in 1984, the film depicts the exploits of numerous academic groups as they pit their computer programs against one another in a number of chess games across numerous days. Adapting his sensibilities to the geekiest of realms, Bujalski has utilised an incredibly unique visual style to allow this chess convention to unfold. Deciding to occupy the period absolutely, Bujalski has adopted the technology of the times by using cameras that replicate the visual images of the early 1980s. His film feels like a telecast, a warbled series of black an white, letterboxed images that not only come with appropriate static and glitches, but are also endowed with strange bursts of surreal left turns that make Computer Chess a truly beguiling experience.
To be completely honest, this is one film in the festival that has perplexed me the most, and I can only respect it for having such an effect. As an artefact of worship of dead visual formats and early technological endeavours, the film is a roaring success, adapting its aesthetic exploits and period setting perfectly. Each of the performers embody a delicate sense of social unease and wavering confidence that provides the film with suitable, crowd pleasing laughs and off topic strangeness. The film never patronises its characters, but rather tie them into the fabric of its wholly realised universe. Whether the film is sorely a stylistic exercise or an insight into the impact of artificial intelligence on our human, physical forms remains to be seen. Somehow, on the one hand, the film denies all readings of such subtext, yet on the other begs interpretation. It certainly isn’t perfect, and is oftentimes even painstakingly boring, but at the end of the day Computer Chess eluded my cinematic vocabulary in new and exciting ways, and plunged me into an analogue experience that I’ll likely revisiting sometime soon.
The Missing Picture (Dir. Rithy Pahn)
The premise of The Missing Picture and it’s winning of the Un Certain Regard prize at the Cannes Film Festival secured its spot for my viewing at MIFF this year alone. The film is a personal recollection of the horrors of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia from the perspective of the film’s director Rithy Pahn who himself suffered at the hands of their ruthless exploits and who lost many of his family members to either exhaustion or starvation. The Missing Picture uses a combination of archival footage and a series of reconstructed settings using clay figures to stage some of the events that lie specifically in the realm of Pahn’s own memories. The notion of using clay figures to stand in for lost images is an interesting one, as Pahn quite literally carves our his memories in a physical form and allows them to stand in for a collective, visual consumption. The film is much like another screened at MIFF, Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing, as it follows in a trend of re-appropriating visual history and interlocking the subjective insights of those involved as an essential part of the process of remembering.
Unlike The Act of Killing though, The Missing Picture is a dry and drab affair that certainly lacks the gravity that the depicted Cambodian tragedy surely deserves. Pahn wanders about the events with a casual eye and in the process fails to demand the attention of the viewer outside of his shtick of historical re-visitation that is established even in the film’s first ten minutes. At one point in the film Pahn diverts our attention towards the inherent power of the cinema as a tool for comprehending atrocious past acts of human cruelty and attempts to establish a framework of worship that would be totally recognisable if it wasn’t such a forced affair. On the one hand The Missing Picture offers up a cogent comprehension of the dangers of adhering to strict ideology and the suffering and fear that it such positions inevitably create. On the other hand, the film suffers from a one-note cycle that fails to dredge up true empathy; a rare failure considering the inherent lack of mercy present in the films subject itself.
Tiger Tail in Blue (Dir. Frank V. Ross)
This year at MIFF the programming team implemented a series of films under the banner of “States of Play: American Independents”. I initially wasn’t going to book any films from this particular grouping of films, mainly due to my distaste of the Sundance brand American “indie” and the types of films that are now associated with that illustrious festival in the snow. As it panned out though, there were some holes in my schedule and so I decided on a whim to book in a couple of films, one of which was director Frank V. Ross’ Tiger Tail in Blue. The premise is simple enough: newlyweds Christopher and Melody struggle to remain intimate due to their work schedules conflicting with one another in an effort to stay financially afloat. Christopher fancies himself a budding writer and thus has taken up a night shift waiter position at a restaurant. There he works with Brandy, a young woman who as we slowly discover, he seems to share a close, personal bond with. Christopher and his wife Melody are obviously very much in love, but the constraints of their living and working conditions are slowly taking their toll. Brandy seems a simple route to escape from that it seems, with their relationship becoming engulfed in sexual tension with every passing scene.
In this blueprint the film works as a simplistic and highly familiar construct. Love requires effort and perseverance to survive sometimes, and Brandy provides an easy out towards simple pleasure for Christopher that is devoid of money, tension and pressure. Where Tiger Tail in Blue becomes something more than the sum of its parts however is in the decision to have the same actress who plays Melody stand in for Brandy at many moments in the film. The two actresses share a very similar appearance anyway, but this decision gives the film a strange bout of surrealistic tendencies that allows the audience to come to terms with the easy transition of affection, which in turn gives way to exposing the utterly fallible nature of attraction in the first place. Tiger Tail in Blue thus plays out in this uncanny love triangle for its entire length, and manages to demonstrate a depth of comprehension of the modern relationship far beyond any of its Hollywood counterparts. If you’re like me and the term “American indie” instantly brings a sour taste to your tongue, be sure to ignore it when Tiger Tail in Blue comes around, it’s pretty much the opposite of Little Miss Sunshine and is much better off for it.
The Last Podcast Show 
Pingback: Simon’s MIFF ’13 Diary: Day Eight | The Last Podcast Show·
Pingback: Simon’s MIFF ’13 Diary: Day Eleven | The Last Podcast Show·