By SAÏDEH PAKRAVAN - The long-awaited trial by the International Tribunal at the Hague of Radovan Karadzic, one of the Serbian leaders responsible for the Bosnian genocide and accused of crimes against humanity has not yet taken off. Like his mentor Milosevic who actually died before sentencing—a death that in its timeliness, one might think orchestrated by the devil himself—the Serb uses every kind of loophole to avoid allowing international justice, such as it is, to be served.
EUROPE IN FOCUS: STORM (THE REVELATION)
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT: SIN NOMBRE
By SAÏDEH PAKRAVAN - Near the Mexican border, scraps of cardboard bear the scrawled words “Sin Nombre” or “nameless,” for the migrants who died trying to make the journey to El Norte. That heartbreaking qualifier was one of the inspirations for the eponymous film by Cary Fukunaga, adding “Sin Nombre” to the vast literature about the great migrations of our times covered in detailed essays, films, novels, and news articles. We knew or could guess at the misery and determination of the wretched of the earth desperate to reach El Norte where flow rivers of milk and honey (as shown to great effect in Emanuele Crialese’s lyrical “Nuovomondo” in 2006). But who knew that the freight trains going from Central American countries to the United States through Mexico carry, huddled on the roofs of wagons, thousands and thousands of clandestine immigrants, an endless column of ants on the move, undeterred, unstoppable, intent on reaching their goal? The trains reminded this critic of nothing so much as Costa-Gavras’s “Amen” where freight trains from all over Europe carry Jews to the gas chambers of Auschwitz, Dachau, and Birkenau. The difference with “Sin Nombre” is that here people board the trains on their own volition, starting a journey fraught with all kinds of dangers and risks to flee El Sur, their homelands of poverty and misery where they have no future and basically no life. Growing up in shantytowns amid piles of garbage, prey to disease or violent gangs, all they want is out but only a minute number will succeed.
THE ROAD
By KEVIN BOWEN - Grade: A; Cast: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce
Director: John Hillcoat
JANE CAMPION'S BRIGHT STAR
By KEVIN BOWEN - Grade: A; Cast: Abbie Cornish, Ben Whishaw, Paul Schneider, Kerry Fox; Director: Jane Campion. In Bright Star, the poet John Keats explains poetry as going into a lake only with a mind to luxuriate there, not to think about how to swim to shore.
GOOD HAIR: A GOOD DOCUMENTARY
By KEVIN BOWEN - Grade: B, Cast: Chris Rock. Director: Jeff Stilson. What a pleasant surprise. Chris Rock channels Michael Moore, but instead of greed, he examines black women and their hair. The results is a refreshing look at the love and mania caused by our natural and unnatural tops.
CHILEAN DIRECTOR'S 'THE MAID' DEBUTS WORLDWIDE
By ALI NADERZAD - Latin America as a matriarchal society is a reality that’s alive and well in director Sebastian Silva’s ‘The Maid’ (La Nana). Raquel (Catalina Saveedra) has been a live-in maid for twenty-five years with the Valdes family, an outpost of affluence based in the Chilean capital. And from the looks and sounds of it in ‘The maid,’ women not only rule the coop but fathers are relegated to merely existing within their man-child role. At a post-screening discussion at the Angelika Theatre last night, the filmmaker, Sebastian Silva, stated he wanted the father--he spends his time between clandestine trips to the golf course (in one scene his wife admonishes him gently, “you should think about playing less golf sometimes”) and building model ships--to appear like he’s just one of the kids.
FRENCH THRILLER SET IN JOHN LE CARRE COUNTRY
By SAÏDEH PAKRAVAN - Christian Carion’s espionage thriller takes place at the height of the Cold War. Loosely based on actual facts, it tells the story of KGB colonel Grigoriev (Emir Kusturica) who for mostly idealistic reasons uses a French businessman (a sober performance by Guillaume Canet) to tell Western intelligence agencies about Soviet spying on military installations and structure in their countries. In 1965, with the first film based on a John Le Carré novel, “The Spy Who Came in from the Cold,” --a somber, stark B&W film with Richard Burton in the lead role--the world discovered that spying was not all about smooth, urbane, tuxedo-wearing James Bond casually dropping fortunes at casinos on the French Riviera, jumping from the bed of one sexy broad to the next, and, time permitting, getting rid of the bad guys. Rather, Burton’s crumpled, exhausted face reflected that the reality of spying must be a dismal affair, learning to suspect everyone, living with the constant fear of being found out by the side you work for and the side you spy on--sometimes one and the same--the rapid loss of any illusion one might harbor as to ideals and principles, the certainty that all humans are worms only busy digging for a darker hiding place and an assured food supply. Also the realization, almost overnight, that agendas and motivations are not what you expect, there is no selflessness, nothing is straightforward, and no matter appearances, human beings, including ourself, are never good. All this to say that “L’affaire Farewell” fits snuggly into John le Carré country, as far from James Bond as imaginable. Don’t expect to be uplifted but rather ponder on the uselessness of so many pieces of our history. What was communism all about? Did people on all sides lose their souls? Is this why our world is now in the hands of thugs rather than those of murderous or peaceful ideologues? And are we better off?
LARS VON TRIER'S ANTICHRIST
By SAÏDEH PAKRAVAN- Has Lars von Trier ever made an accomplished film? To be sure, the man who stated flat out in Cannes that he was “the best director in the world” has an impressive filmography. But “Dogville,” “Breaking the Waves,” “Dancer in the Dark,” are any of these films actually good? One can argue, of course, that only the most pedestrian mind would expect art to be “good” when it can be so many other things. And a von Trier film is always many other things. Thought-provoking and provoking, disturbing, original, starkly and knowingly shocking, etc. But to this reviewer at least, they fall flat. They start out with a compelling premise but, like the road to hell, soon run into trouble. The problems that plague the Danish director’s films come to the fore in “Antichrist,” shown to much heated argument at the recent Cannes film festival. The film opens here this week. Did censorship prevail? Apparently not, but at what cost? The U.S. version received no cuts and will not have a rating. In a country where Janet Jackson’s breast is still infuriating censors several years after its brief exposure at the Super Bowl, the hardcore images and the harrowing scenes of sexual mutilation in “Antichrist” would not be allowed normally. So, “Antichrist.” I will not fall into either of the two camps that practically came to blows in Cannes—the one shocked by the extreme gore and the one engaging into metaphysical or theological discussions about a fairly sophomoric exposé of the degradation suffered by women through the ages and the pacts they may or may not have entered into with Satan. What’s the story here? A couple loses a child, goes into decaying, dark, deserted woods to recuperate—not the most obvious choice, one would think, but appropriate for what follows—the woman goes mad, or may have been mad, or possessed, or plain evil, from before. The film, divided into four chapters sandwiched between a prologue and an epilogue, doesn’t work as a horror film—too much suspension of disbelief and of rationality required—doesn’t work as the unraveling of a relation—we can’t bring ourselves to care about this odd couple, the husband a moronic therapist encouraging his wife to get over the awful death of her baby by taking deep breaths and counting to five—doesn’t work as a history lesson, even in the chapter glibly titled “gynocide,” and doesn’t work as a Hyeronimus Bosch-inspired vision of hell in the nature around us and within us. Most unforgivably, the first part is rather boring and the second part rather grotesque. Anthony Mantle, the cinematographer behind “Slumdog Millionnaire” and “the Last King of Scotland,” does some nice work here but the slow-mo shots in a sea of ferns and dead trees grow repetitive as do too many jerky handheld images. A few years back, “The Blair Witch Project” with its dreadful sense of doom and its scenes all the more terrifying for never spelling anything out was far more shattering than this ambiguous amalgam of various themes into a pompous film that never takes off. Von Trier remains a director to be reckoned with but, beside his unsatisfactory tackling of subjects too complex for a two-hour overview, will be remembered for his Dogme95 movement—lightweight, perhaps, as compared to the influence of Italian neo-realism and, later, of the French new wave, but still, unlike “Antichrist,” opening doors into a range of possibilities.
JACQUES AUDIARD'S 'A PROPHET'
By SAÏDEH PAKRAVAN - A number of film critics and a good portion of the film-going public in France hold Jacques Audiard to be the country’s foremost director. Previous works such as “A Self-Made Hero” (1996) and “The Beat That My Heart Skipped,” (2005) helped create this reputation. The absolutely stunning “A Prophet” confirms it. The film, which received the Grand Prix at the last Cannes Festival, tells the story of Malik el Djebena, a nineteen-year old second- generation Arab in prison with a six-year sentence for an unspecified crime. Malik makes himself indispensable to the Corsican capo, Cesar Luciani (Niels Arestrup), after having passed with flying colors his first test--killing inside the prison a witness for the prosecution at an upcoming trial. A quick study, the young man keenly observes the way the game is played around him and starts putting his own pawns in place. He uses his occasional day out for drug deals, for eliminating the competition and generally establishing a strong position for himself so that when he finally completes his sentence and gets out, he’s already a major and respected crime figure who will presumably go on to even greater authority. The film is indeed stunning, quite extraordinary in the way it shows prison life as it has never been shown before. The all-around deals and arrangements--not least with prison officials—the ongoing trade of everything tradable, the corruption, the award and retribution system, are remarkably detailed and well-served by the superb, relentless, in-your-face cinematography that captures the agitation and vicious violence of prison life but also moments of respite and some briefly elegiac ones. The score by Alexandre Desplat deserves another high mark not only for accompanying the action but for being such a tightly integrated part of it that it underlines the story without any kind of intrusion. Only occasionally, becoming aware of the soaring accompaniment, does one realize how magnificent the score actually is. And of course the acting. The camera never leaves Tahar Rahim for a moment. This unknown actor without whom there would be no film is simply perfect in every expression, every nuance that passes on this mobile, young yet battered face as swiftly as summer clouds pushed across the sky by strong winds. Everything is there. You have to pay attention to the batting of lids, to a slight frown, to the shadow of a smile, to the beginning of fear or worry to understand the subtlety and strength of this remarkable performance. It might not be an exaggeration to say that Jacques Audiard, son of legendary screenwriter and director Michel Audiard, has not only surpassed his father but everyone else in the process. “A Prophet,” clocking in at slightly less than two and a half hours, never sags and is thrilling from the first moment to the last. It is cinema at its absolute best.

