Star City Blog

The Trials of a “Tomboy”

by Justin Senkbile

“Tomboy” is the second film from French director Celine Sciamma, and it opens at The Ross as Glenn Close's gender-bending performance in “Albert Nobbs” continues for another week. Which is interesting because both films deal explicitly with people who, for entirely different reasons, maintain precarious secret identities. More specifically, both of these movies are about women pretending to be men.

But “Tomboy” fells like a sort of antidote to the polished charms of “Albert Nobbs”. This is a beautiful, charming film, but with a healthy amount of jagged edges. And part of what makes it hit in such a visceral way probably has a lot to do with the fact that instead of Glenn Close's aging butler Nobbs, “Tomboy” has an arguably more confused heroine in its ten-year-old Laure (Zoé Héran)

With her short, spiked hair, sharp features and penchant for baggy shorts and tank tops, it's not surprising that the kids in the neighborhood know her better as the new boy in town, Mikael. In fact, she's so completely convincing as a rough-and-tumble little boy that we're not even informed of her true gender until about a third of the way through (if the title of the movie hadn't already tipped you off, that is).

When Laure isn't at the family's new apartment, passing the time with little sister Jeanne (Malonn Lévana), she's out with the neighborhood kids as Mikael. A girl named Lisa (Jeanne Disson) takes a liking to this scrawny, athletic boy, and the rest of the gang seems all too happy to have him on their soccer team. Laure does her best to maintain the misunderstanding.

Sciamma wisely eschews waxing psychologically with this kid. We're never drug through any speculations on why Laure wants to be a boy, or what her budding relationship with Lisa is. Her family life (which includes mom and dad, played by Sophie Cattani and Mathieu Demy) is, if not totally stable, warm and supportive enough. But even if it wasn't, could the sort of situation Laure finds herself in ever be fairly explained in adult terms?

As the distance between childhood and adulthood keeps growing, it seems harder and harder to understand the idea of aimless, joyous “playing”. Sciamma, by a combination of the freedom given to the kids and her own patience behind the camera, conjures up this mysterious spirit flawlessly and with such richness that, for this reviewer, it often felt a bit like rediscovering a home movie. We can almost feel these little brains in motion, inventing as they go along, making a whole world out of a few toys, or a completely fulfilled afternoon out of a dozen splashing water bottles.

Throughout “Tomboy”, we spend a lot of time watching these impressive child actors playing, talking and simply being. These are the richest scenes in an already vibrant film.

“Tomboy” is playing at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, 13th and R streets, through February 23rd

 

Who is “Albert Nobbs”?

by Justin Senkbile

Stuffed into a rigid suit and moving with immaculate austerity, Albert Nobbs (Glenn Close) works as a waiter at the Morrison Hotel, somewhere near Dublin, Ireland in the 19^th century. Though an essential fixture in the functioning of the household for years, Albert is private to the point of eccentricity, so its only natural that no one would suspect this timid waiter is in fact a woman, wrapped up tightly in a corset.

The center of “Albert Nobbs”, a film directed by Rodrigo Garcia (who made a pretty good movie in 2009 called “Mother and Child”) is Albert's dream: to open a tobacco shop with her hard-earned savings, and find a bride to share it with. The idea comes by way of an encounter with another woman in hiding, a housepainter going by the name of Hubert Page (Janet McTeer). Hubert has managed to find a willing wife who knows about her secret, and has made a comfortable life for herself. But how exactly such a feat was pulled off, Albert isn't entirely sure (“Do I tell her I'm a woman before or after the wedding?”).

So with a clumsy and frequently touching naivete, Albert stumbles along in pursuit of a young maid at the hotel named Helen (Mia Wasikowska) without really knowing how to and, one senses, without really knowing why. For her part, Helen begins accepting the advances only to secure a few new hats and boxes of chocolates. She has her own problems, after all, particularly her fiery boyfriend Joe (Aaron Johnson), and hasn't much interest in her strange, aging co-worker.

“Albert Nobbs” is a textbook Oscar hopeful, with impeccable period costumes, jokes that don't always hit the mark, and even it's own Sinead O'Connor song (“Lay Your Head Down”). And its all built around Close's “prestige” performance in such a way that it can't help but feel calculated. But this is something of a passion project for Close: not only does she star in it, she's credited as a co-writer of the script (along with John Banville and Gabriella Prekop) and of the above mentioned song. And fortunately, her passion wasn't all for naught, because behind the preciousness of it all, there are a smattering of truly touching moments.

Most come by way of Albert's interactions with Hubert, and Close and McTeer's palpable platonic chemistry on screen. For my money, Wasikowska's is the stellar performance here. Her Helen shifts flightily from harmlessly childish to calculatedly cruel, often within the same scene. Brendan Gleeson turns in a notably good supporting performance as Dr. Holloran, a resident at the Morrison.

Most of all, “Albert Nobbs” is a film about identity. “You don't have to be anything but who you are” counsels Hubert. And therein lies Albert's problem. The reason that she has assumed this male identity certainly has a lot to do with the gender politics of her era. But the film focuses instead on the big, broad questions. Who is she? And how is one, male or female, expected to behave outside of the endless duties of the hotel? The tragedy of the film isn't so much the well-handled finale as it is the sense that Albert has begun tackling these questions a bit too late in the game.

“Albert Nobbs” is playing at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, 13^th and R streets, through February 23^rd.

 

“Addiction Incorporated” and the Man who Blew the Whistle

by Justin Senkbile

As a smoker who's just recently begun considering kicking the habit, I'll admit I was a little anxious as I approached Charles Evans Jr's documentary, “Addiction Incorporated”. Imagining some kind of traumatic, tobacco-stained version of “Food Inc.” (images of grotesque lungs, interviews with emphysema patients – that sort of thing), I was surprised to find this film is something quite different, though no less troubling.

Not exactly an anti-smoking film, and not really even an expose of big tobacco (though it provides more than enough ammunition for either cause), “Addiction Incorporated” simply and compellingly traces the story of one tobacco company's in-house nicotine research, and the domino-effect it caused over the next twenty-odd years.

Our principal figure is an affable scientist named Victor DeNoble. Hired to run a secret lab within Phillip Morris in the 80's, DeNoble made some earth shaking discoveries about the way nicotine interacts with one of the many other chemicals present in cigarettes. Not only did Phillip Morris keep the research from publication, they used it to further manipulate the chemistry of their products. In short, DeNoble inadvertently showed big tobacco how to make their products more addictive.

He and a few colleagues were sacked shortly thereafter. But journalists caught wind of the story, and after many uphill battles and several dramatic congressional hearings in the mid-nineties, the unbreakable power and influence of big tobacco finally began to wane. DeNoble became known as the first insider to blow the whistle on the tobacco industry. Even if you didn't catch the TV coverage at the time, the story may feel familiar, as this is the one Russel Crowe, Al Pacino and director Michael Mann brilliantly dramatized in 1999's “The Insider”.

“Addiction Incorporated” has an awful lot of animation in the first half, an ingredient added to most non-fiction films these days, and rarely to good effect. Here, some of it works quite well, in the form of graphs and charts that illustrate the concepts DeNoble is describing. But there's quite a lot of needless junk too, which serves only to disrupt the already riveting narrative in progress. It's the second half where we really get into the good stuff, as Evans serves up a wealth of archive footage of the hearings, and features plenty of talking heads, including a former Phillip Morris attorney.

Information on the health hazards of smoking is so ubiquitous these days (thanks in large part to the story detailed here) that it's striking the way “Addiction Incorporated” hardly touches on it at all. DeNoble talks a lot about the science of addiction, and of nicotine in particular, but this ends up being a corporate integrity story, as opposed to a public health one. Smoking is framed here as a moral issue, exactly like the ones that keep you recycling or buying organic produce, for example.

That's right: no graphic photos or detailed health statistics here. “Addiction Incorporated” generates outrage simply by detailing the actions of a few very powerful companies.

“Addiction Incorporated” is playing at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, 13^th and R streets, through February 9^th.

 

Oscar Nominated 2012 Short Films Opening at The Ross

Fifteen short films earned Oscar nominations last Tuesday in three shorts categories, each with their own trend toward films from particular countries. The contenders hail from a variety of countries and have varying degrees of experience, from first-time directors to three-time Oscar nominees.

For the seventh consecutive year, Shorts International and Magnolia Pictures present the festival of the Oscar-nominated live-action, animated, and documentary short films, OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS 2012. These feature-length programs include all of this year's nominated films, as well as several additional titles that were short-listed for this year's awards.

The films will show in more than 200 theaters across the U.S. and Canada—including at The Ross beginning on Friday, February 10—up until the Oscars telecast on Feb. 26 and will be organized into three programs by their Academy category (live action, animated, and documentary).

It’s the second year the documentary shorts have been part of the screening series, which began in 2005. Last year, the initiative took in $1.35 million nationally, breaking records and marking an 800 percent growth in attendance since the series’ first year.

“I love short films,” opined Danny Lee Ladely, Director of the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center.  He continues, “At their best they can be sublimely poetic, enormously entertaining, and they’ve been around since the dawn of cinema.”

OSCAR NOMINATED SHORT FILMS 2012 are showing at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center on Friday, February 10 through Thursday, February 16. 

“A Dangerous Method” to Obtain a Talking Cure

by Justin Senkbile

David Cronenberg's “A Dangerous Method” is a detailed history of the development of Sigmund Freud's “talking cure”, better known today as psychoanalysis. And as such, it ends up being a film about the psychology of psychologists, and the ways in which their own relationships and neuroses formed what would eventually be remembered not just as a touchstone in psychology, but a fundamental part of much of twentieth century thought.

In yet another role that plumbs psychosexual depths (his starring role in “Shame” continues at the Ross for another week), Michael Fassbender here plays newbie analyst and Freud protege Carl Jung. We meet him shortly after a troubled young woman, Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightly), is being admitted into his care. With her, he begins experimenting with Freud's psychoanalytic method.

Freud shows up shortly afterwards, played by frequent Cronenberg collaborator Viggo Mortensen. Already well-established as the father of this brave new method, Freud takes a supportive but strictly authoritarian role in Jung's life. It's Jung's fascinating sessionswith Spielrein that will bring him together with his Austrian father figure. And its his quick burning affair with her that will eventuallyhelp drive the two men apart.

Based on actual events, as documented in letters between these historically heavyweight figures (Spielrein went on to become a noted psychoanalyst as well), “A Dangerous Method” has a very exciting sense of immediacy to it. Especially when we're listening in as Jung and loose-cannon analyst Otto Gross (Vincent Cassel) discuss the moral and psychological implications of an extramarital affair. Or as we eavesdrop while Jung and Freud casually dissect a recent dream, as friends would.

Most of all, we watch as Jung experiments with his work through his life. His relationship with Spielrein seems based on just as much professional curiosity as sexual attraction. Like an insatiable explorer, Jung delights in burrowing deeper into analysis of his own desires and behavior. So what better way to test the mettle of his ideas than having an affair with a madwoman (one played by Keira Knightly, no less)?

That's the sort of thing that's most fascinating here, the way that “A Dangerous Method” so often illustrates theory being fleshed out, filled in and adjusted by experience. That's no short order for an actor, but seems like child's play for Fassbender, a performer capable of communicating enormous complexity with his presence.

Her forceful Russian accent is a bit startling at first, but Knightly gives a full body performance here, spending much of the early scenes writhing and convulsing under the weight of her psychosis. The kind of “bodily horror” we're used to from previous Cronenberg films like “Dead Ringers” and “The Fly” finds a home in this film too, right there in Knightly's startling, contorting face.

As far as intellectual adventure films go, this is about as compelling as they come. And for its performances, its visceral power and its graceful final notes, “A Dangerous Method” emerges as Cronenberg's best film in recent years.

“A Dangerous Method” is playing at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, 13^th and R streets, through February 9^th.

 

The “Shame” of Addiction

by Justin Senkbile

Director Steve McQueen's “Shame” is a film with a focus on sex, but it plays out with icy stares and teeming silences instead of rapturous moans and cleverly-lit thrusts. Because, although we see quite a lot of it, this movie isn't about sex at all. And though its central character is undoubtedly an addict, this really isn't about addiction either. It actually took me most of the 101 minute running time to realize what should be obvious: “Shame” is about shame.

Michael Fassbender, who also starred in McQueen's first film, 2008's “Hunger”, plays Brandon, a young-ish professional living a robotic existence in Manhattan. As an archetypal “modern man”, it's only appropriate that he should work in a sterile office and live in a mostly bare, white-walled apartment, as he does. But Brandon is a slave to the pleasures (or, in his case, curses) of the flesh. He hires high-class prostitutes, picks up girls in bars and gorges on any kind of pornography he can get his hands on. But he's never satisfied, and succeeds only in becoming even more distanced, more confused and more self-loathing.

At the beginning, Brandon is set up so perfectly as a creature defined only by his addiction that it's a little jarring to learn he's a person too, which we discover while observing him out with co-workers or simply holding the door open for a neighbor. It's equally disorienting to realize he has a sister, Sissy (Carey Mulligan), who has barged back into his life, in need of a couch to sleep on. Her presence is a burden in his eyes (he even tells her as much), but she's serving a twisted purpose that he may or may not realize: he gets a chance to beat up on someone besides himself for a while.

Detractors of the film point to a few particular elements in their criticism, one of them being the notion that McQueen, with all the clean, empty rooms and ostensibly blank silences that populate the film, is using ambiguity as an end in and of itself; in short, that he has nothing to say, and worse yet, not even a compelling style. It's an appealingly succinct idea, but to accept it only means that you aren't paying attention to Fassbender and, to a lesser extent, Mulligan.

Because it's true: nothing McQueen has done here has any value without his actor. But creating that very situation is a feat only a remarkably skilled director would be able to pull off. At the risk of being reductive with such a powerful performance, I'll put it this way: Fassbender fills in McQueen's gaps. It's his eyes, his clenching jaws and most of all his simple presence that are communicating everything worth receiving here. In one excruciatingly visceral scene, where Sissy sadly sings “New York, New York” in an upscale bar and Brandon watches, it's the faces alone providing volumes of history, feeling and conflict.

In the wake of “Shame”, it's clear how rare such pictures actually are today. We see a lot of money movies that have built themselves around a star, but this is a real movie that builds itself around an actor. Since most of us are hard-wired us to approach challenging films with the director's intentions in mind, a movie like this is particularly tough to grapple with, hence the claims that McQueen is a director with no style and no substance.

All that being said, there is a bone to pick. “Shame” really could've benefitted by showing Brandon's carnal advances getting turned down at least once. In this Manhattan, it seems every female body we encounter is immediately melted under the guy's icy, objectifying stare. Obviously Fassbender is a flawlessly handsome dude, but such an oversight not only deprives us of an even fuller picture of the character (imagine how Fassbender would play such a scene!) but indicate an unsettling concept of women, one that might fall in line with Brandon's urges, but is not likely true to his actual perceptions.

I know we're only a few weeks in, but I don't think we'll see a sadder movie this year. This is certainly among the saddest I've seen. But “Shame” isn't a cruel film, its an illuminating one. Dark, rough and challenging, yes, but also immensely rewarding.

Shame” is playing at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, 13^th and R streets, through February 2^nd

All's Well in “Le Havre”

by Justin Senkbile

In Aki Kaurismäki's deceptively simple new comedy, “Le Havre”, André Wilms plays a former bohemian and currently aging shoeshine man named Marcel Marx. Marcel lugs his gear around the French port city of Le Havre, and brings his crumpled euros back home each evening to wife Arletty (frequent Kaurismäki collaborator Kati Outinen). Its evident they're barely making ends meet, but all is peaceful in the Marx household.

Even when a bunch of illegal immigrants are discovered in a shipping container, and one of them, a young boy, manages to escape the police, the pacific mood around the neighborhood is barely disrupted. It's Arletty's sudden hospitalization that sends Marcel whirling. But almost as soon as she's been admitted he meets the fugitive boy, Idrissa (Blondin Miguel), and instinctively begins to help him.

His innate antipathy towards the immigration laws, and towards the steely-eyed Inspector Monet (Jean-Pierre Darrousin), who is busy hunting for Idrissa, is something shared just as automatically by his neighbors. Yvette (Evelyne Didi), the baker, happily shelters Idrissa while Marcel goes searching for the boy's family. And the grocer Epicier (François Monnié) is a key component of Idrissa's escape plan at the end. The only person who actually seems threatened by the fact that this hungry kid has entered his country is a nosy informer, played by the iconic Jean-Pierre Leaud.

What would likely take up a number of precious scenes and minutes in an American film about immigration isn't even an afterthought for Kaurismäki's characters. There are no moments of internal conflict about what's legal and what's right, about state law versus human morality. Because the situation is simple: the boy needs help.

This might classify as a rosy perspective of Europe, which hasn't historically embraced immigrants, especially when they're black and undocumented. But not a moment of this love-soaked picture seems false or pandering. Though it is dealing directly with current, dire situations, “Le Havre” has the feeling of being a fable more than anything else – or maybe even a fairy tale.

With the help of his constant cinematographer Timo Salminen, Kaurismäki shows us this city with his usual, irresistible twist of unreality. The paint is peeling and the appliances are well-worn in the homes and bars we visit, but the colors are eye-poppingly rich, and a phrase of lushly “movie” music swells up periodically. Kaurismäki's Le Havre is very much a real place - with real cops and real dirt – but it's also a fantasy world, where a sense of community thrives, and love and compassion can indeed conquer all.

“Le Havre” ends up being something like a deadpan, European flavored Frank Capra picture: honest but never cynical, and romantic without ever feeling superficial. It's the sort of movie one might mark off as a guilty pleasure if it wasn't so deeply, immediately touching.

“Le Havre” is playing at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, 13^th and R streets, through January 19.

Best of Lincoln Theater 2011

By Ladd Wendelin

There was something for everyone, no matter what your theatrical tastes, during the 2011 Lincoln theater season. It was a good year for angels, witches, and whatever humanimals are. Here’s a rundown of the best and the brightest, on the boards, and in the glow of footlights – 10 great reasons to look back upon and look forward to theater in Lincoln!  

Listen to Me – If you remember one name from the Wesleyan theater department this year, remember Jay Scott Chipman, who helmed this past October’s thrilling Enron, but also Gertrude Stein’s Listen to Me, which played as part of the ’10-’11 season. Told on a set composed of bar and line graphs, Enron explored the seedy dealings that led to the largest corporate collapse in U.S. history. But it was Listen to Me, staged at the 48^th St. Studio Theatre, that exploded with Wesleyan’s trademark youthful energy and a zest for the spoken word, which in turn seasoned and informed Enron. Chipman wisely referred to the play itself as an “event” in the program notes, and it certainly was that. Challenging, rewarding and not easily forgotten, Listen to Me was everything that take-no-prisoners, experimental theater should be in Lincoln.

X-FIles: The Musical - The Colonel Mustard Amateur Attic Theater Company pulled out all the stops this August and once again brought their zany and satirical sass to another hallowed pop culture institution, The X-Files. After the runaway backyard success of Jurassic Park and Dr. Quinn: Medicine Woman, bigger ideas needed time, more space and the funds to be fully realized, so Col. Mustard harnessed the power of social networking, employing Kickstarter, Twitter, Facebook, and Livestream to drum up support for the continued adventures of Agents Scully and Mulder. Relocating to the empty lot at 9^th and D, formerly home to Zion Presbyterian, not even an occasional rain shower on opening night stopped droves of attendees from experiencing “humanimals”, succulent barbeque and a show-stopping Lone Gunmen barbershop quartet. What will they think of next? Stay tuned… 

Angels in America: Part 1: Millennium Approaches – It’s a match made in theater heaven: Director Bob Hall, Flatwater Shakespeare and the Haymarket Theatre brought Tony Kushner’s epic drama to life this past April. A powerhouse cast of Flatwater regulars helped the show to earn its wings, including standout performances by Summer Widhalm (Harper), Richard Nielsen (Roy Cohn), and Daniel Kubert (Belize). With great performances and Hall’s strong directorial vision, Angels was simply divine, played with conviction, heart and humor, all necessary components for a tale of love and death in the midst of the mid-80s AIDS epidemic. The second coming of Angels in America, entitled Part II: Peristoika, will run March 29 – April 14, 2012 at the Haymarket Theater.

The 39 Steps – The highlight of this year’s Nebraska Repertory Theater summer shows was this witty, quick-change comedy adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic spy thriller, The 39 Steps. Not only did it feature outstanding nationally-recognized actors Matt Penn and Dan Rodden, but also sensational local character actors – the radiant Melissa Lewis and Robbie Hayek, who along with Penn played at least several dozen characters during the course of the play. Those who attended the July production experienced a theatrical tour de force - a rare feat combining all the talents and abilities in an actor’s arsenal. But would you expect anything less from the Nebraska Rep?

 Lend Me A Tenor – A staple of contemporary theater found a home at the Playhouse this past October. Or, rather, it found a posh hotel suite, replete with opening and closing doors, a half-dead opera singer, and romantic travails between artists and those who love them. Directed by Morrie Enders, whose affection for Ken Ludwig’s madcap farce was more than apparent in the slapstick rhythm and pacing of the action, Tenor also benefited from a hybrid cast of Lincoln and Omaha talent, including the sauve Michael Corner (Max), Ed Culter (Tito Merelli) and Mark Kocsis (Saunders). With a season of mostly old standards and tried-and-true hits, the Playhouse brought out the best in Tenor, lending it enough classic cool for an audience-friendly experience.

The Wizard of Oz – You didn’t have to go “over the rainbow” to get your Oz fix this past July. What it lacked in polish, Pinewood Bowl, along with director/choreographer Courtney Piccoli, brought plenty of heart and humor to the annual outdoor event, along with a great performance from 13-year old Liza Piccoli, whose tender rendition of “Over the Rainbow” hit all the right notes. Not even this past summer’s grueling heat stopped Piccoli’s hoofers from selling Oz in all its Technicolor glory to the hundreds of Lincolnites who attended. Wedding bells will ring in 2012 when Seven Brides For Seven Brothers says “I do!” at the Pinewood Bowl.

‘cast.’ –  Following ‘coal chamber opera’, a one-man “basement play” performed earlier in the year, local playwright Robert Stewart (Wetrats Prod.) continued his unconventional streak of self-produced, independent shows by returning to the Tugboat Gallery with ‘cast.’, a one-act play about the shifty nature of storytelling, which featured octopus tentacles, a giant leg cast and a superb ensemble cast led by Matthew Gee, Katie Segrist, and Angela Barber. Unpredictable as a playwright and provocative as a director, Stewart's vision of theater is both surprising in its attention to detail and uncompromising. 

25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee – Not only did TADA Productions bring back Lawrence and Hope Juber of Gilligan’s Island: The Musical fame for the regional premiere of their latest creation, It’s the Housewives!, in March, but also the 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee – a hit during the 2008-2009 season, and another sold out run this past August. Returning cast members Bill Maltas (Vice-Principal Panch) and Matthew Works (William Barfee) were hilarious, as were new cast members, particularly Brent Welch, Jessie Cotton, and Jaci Manning. With its misfit spellers, William Finn's great score and audience participation, Putnam County remained as fun and joyous a musical as you were likely to come across this season. In 2012, TADA will stage the regional premieres of the Spider-Man musical spoof The Spidey Project and the Tony Award-winning naughty puppet show Avenue Q.

 Twelfth Night / A Midsummer Night’s Dream – What theater season in Lincoln would be complete without a tale or two (or more – Othello at the Playhouse) from the Bard of Avon? When Shakespeare’s gender-bending comedy Twelfth Night is set in the Old West, a gunslinger’s paradise, just outside of a bordello, it’s not to be missed, especially when Ian Borden’s all-encompassing reimagining brought UNL audiences into a packed Studio Theater. Mike Lee, who assumed the role of a banjo-picking troubadour, also found success as the mischievous sprite Puck in Flatwater Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Leave it to Bob Hall and Flatwater Shakespeare, who brought Puck, a half-man/half-jackass and the whole magical gang of fairy-folk to the Lincoln Foundation Community Gardens in June while the Swan at Wyuka Cemetery is under renovation. In addition to their run at the Gardens, Midsummer also played free shows at local parks, amounting to a magical evening of theater. That Shakesepeare fellow. He's gonna go far...

***

Wow! What a year! So, what were your favorite show(s) in the last year? Sound off, and get ready – 2012 is going to be a great year for theater in Lincoln!

 

A Young Veteran's Journey to “Hell and Back Again”

by Justin Senkbile

Of all the modern war documentaries, “Hell and Back Again” by Danfung Dennis has to be one of the most interesting. It begins in Afghanistan, as a group of American soldiers embark on an extremely dangerous mission. Eventually we're introduced to the leader of the platoon, Nathan, and to the film's simple and powerful structure.

Through Nathan, who was badly wounded on one of his last days of deployment, Dennis takes us back and forth from the villages and battlefields of Afghanistan to the parking lots and drive-thrus of North Carolina. War is hell, as is illustrated when a young soldier gets shot down in the first few minutes. But home is no cakewalk either, especially for Nathan. He quickly concedes that, up against the anxieties of a packed Wal-Mart parking lot, for example, life in Afghanistan seems much simpler.

Virtually obsessed with guns and itching to recover from his massive hip injuries so he can get back to battle, Nathan might be a pretty tough nut to crack for those who've been following the avalanche of antiwar documentaries over the last decade or so. Ideologically, Nathan is worlds away from the disabled vet turned antiwar activist profiled in “Body of War”, for example.

He's also plagued by a presumably PTSD related anxiety. He worries about the parking lot, as mentioned above and, in one particularly moving moment, tries to stay calm as his doting and infinitely patient wife Ashley orders a long list of items at a drive-thru.

We've all seen fiction films pretending to be documentaries (“Spinal Tap” is still the best example), but the overwhelming feeling here is of Dennis making a documentary that pretends to be fiction. Nathan often seems treated as a character in Dennis' psychological drama instead of the subject of his emerging documentary. When the sounds and images slow down and get distorted as a doctor talks about pain medications, or when audio from Afghanistan is heard over a shot of Nathan reeling with sickness from the pain of his injuries, Dennis is boldly imposing a psychology on his subject.

Such manipulations usually send me screaming, but there's no doubt that Dennis is taking liberties here for purely compassionate ends. And it's hard to argue about choices like that after experiencing the depth of feeling we have for Nathan by the end of the picture.

Towards the end, I literally began to half-wonder if this wasn't actually a work of fiction, partly because of moments like those mentioned above, but also because of how stunning most of the images are, how nearly every shot is perfectly composed, and how almost every scene has some palpable amount of tension or visceral sense of pain.

Unfortunately, this stuff is real. Which makes the film's impact all the more lasting.

“Hell and Back Again” is playing at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, 13^th and R streets, through January 12.

 

“Melancholia”: The Beautiful and the Damned

by Justin Senkbile

“Melancholia” is the name of the latest film by Denmark's greatest director/provocateur/rampaging ego, Lars von Trier. Though it's a title more widely appealing than that of his previous picture, 2009's “Antichrist”, this labyrinth of sensations seems likely to be just as polarizing for audiences.

Kirsten Dunst stars as Justine, an apparently happy young woman about to marry a pleasant guy named Michael (Alexander Skarsgård). Much ink has already been spilled elsewhere over the astonishing slow-motion prologue of tableaux vivants that open the film. But after that, we cut to a shot almost as interesting: Justine and Michael's stretch limo, on its way to the wedding party, trying to shift itself around a sharp rural corner.

Sister of the bride Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg) and her needly husband John (Keifer Sutherland), are hosting the party in their sprawling mansion. Under the pressure of the attention, a recent nightmare and likely some past experiences with depression, Justine begins to deteriorate as the night wears on. So much so that her groom eventually packs up and leaves.

By the time we reach part two, titled “Claire”, the rogue planet Melancholia is easy to spot in the sky, and is reportedly closing in on earth. Justine is now lost in a despairing fog, and is staying at the mansion. Claire's nerves are bending as she reads doom-laden predictions of Melancholia's trajectory online, even while John, an amateur astronomer, tries to assure her the earth will be spared.

If you've paid attention to the first ten minutes of the film, it'll be no spoiler to reveal that Claire ends up being right.

Let's go back to that prologue, made up of carefully, coldly composed images that move hypnotically as Wagner barrels down on the soundtrack. From all this pomp and circumstance, von Trier cuts to great sight-gag: that shot of the limo. “Melancholia” is full of juxtapositions like this, where a loose irony is used to undercut the gravity of the lavish estate, the perfectly formed dialogue or the immaculately composed images. Justine's line about the meatloaf in the second half (“It tastes like ashes!”), even manages to be heavy and funny in the same moment. It's just as hard to take such a line without a slight laugh as it is to ignore and dismiss her suffering.

Von Trier has a way with actresses – his films usually get them awards at Cannes, including Dunst for this one and Gainsbourg for “Antichrist”. Here he gets two stunning performances side-by-side. Gainsbourg's warm and utterly baffled Claire deserves as much praise as Dunst's crumbling and ultimately transformed Justine.

Add those performances to an enigmatic, romantic atmosphere and a plethora of menacingly beautiful images, and you have the weird world of “Melancholia”. A strange, wonderful start to the New Year.

“Melancholia” is playing at the Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center, 13^th and R streets, through January 19.