More SIFF reviews
May. 28th, 2007 08:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tiggymalvern
Ah, it needs to be Memorial Day every Monday - I cut twelve minutes off my journey time to the animal shelter this morning XD. Anyway, films - one documentary, one anthology of gay shorts and one Chinese warring states movie. Who says I'm not versatile? ;-)
On Sunday afternoon, I went to see In the Shadow of the Moon, a British documentary about the Apollo program based around interviews with ten of the surviving astronauts. This film was an audience award-winner at Sundance, with a sold-out showing here, and it's really not hard to see why. Focussing on the people rather than the politics or the technology makes it different from other documentaries on the subject, and it's incredibly powerful listening to these men tell their stories - some of them, Michael Collins in particular, turn out to be intelligent, witty and engaging narrators.
The film-maker was present at the showing to answer questions afterwards, and he said one of the triggers for making this documentary was knowing that NASA were about to open up film canisters that had been sealed since the sixties in order to transfer the prints to HD digital media. So while some of the footage of the missions is what everyone's already seen, a lot of it has not been shown since the sixties, and some of it was never broadcast at all. It's accompanied by a great and appropriate soundtrack by Philip Sheppard, a composer who'd never done a film score before (as the director said, that meant they could screw him on the fee XD).
The director also commented that it was a film that needed to be made because these men have now reached a stage in their lives when they're willing to say things they never have previously - three of the Apollo astronauts have died already, and if they want to get anything on the record, now's the time to do it. The men talk about not only the missions, but also themselves, their families, their views on the world and what the moon changed in them - one man admits to an ongoing guilt that while the pilots selected for Apollo were being feted as national heroes with their pictures all over the media, their fellow pilots who didn't make the cut were sent to fight and die in Vietnam. The director now plans to try and interview the other surviving astronauts, not to make another film, but simply to complete the oral history before it's lost - he said as filming went on, he got more offers of interviews as it became clear what he was doing.
I could go on and on about the interesting facts that came out of these interviews, but you should all see the film instead (it's getting a US release in September).The end credits of the film are an entertainment in themselves, as the astronauts give their reactions to the conspiracy theories that say the whole thing was faked in a hangar in Arizona XD My second SIFF film this year and a second unquestioned top score of five - I think I voted two films a five in the whole of last year.
Sunday evening was a trip to La Vida Homo, this year's anthology of gay shorts. It was somewhat disappointing compared to last year's varied selection - every film was competent, but none really jumped out as exceptional. The best of the bunch were Signage and Kali Ma, which were both fours; the rest I gave three. I Just Wanted to Be Somebody didn't show at all, for reasons that nobody explained, and there were technical difficulties getting one of the other films to play too that resulted in everyone being given free tickets to any other SIFF film. Pity I've already pre-booked all of mine - one of you locals will have to rec me something else :-)
This afternoon, I went to see A Battle of Wits, a film I didn't have great expectations of with an imdb score of 6.8, but thought would be fun. It turned out to be a vastly better and more complex film than I'd anticipated - the short blurb at the SIFF site does it no justice at all. Set during China's Warring States period, this earthy historical epic pits the intimidating army of the Zhao Nation against the humble state of Liang. With the help of an unconventional military strategist, Liang will prove that might is no match for wits
That's the plot of the first half of the film, which is entertaining in the standard David and Goliath style. And then when the siege is over, the plot really kicks in for the second half, as politics take over and the fall-out of the battles are addressed by both sides, thematically growing ever-darker. Andy Lau puts in a great performance as the practical pacifist, the man following the Mozi philosphical school of thought that a war is better prevented, but where it can't be, it's better to protect the underdog from the aggressor.
Any film set in this period and with these themes is now forever doomed to suffer by comparison with Hero. A Hero it certainly isn't, but then it isn't trying to be. There's nothing fantastical or romanticised about the film, and it doesn't shy away from the sheer brutality of battle and the rulers of the time. Though Hero has shown how huge armies can be filmed and look, and even my purely amateur eye for cinematography can see that the direction in this film is more workman-like than inspired, and more could have been made of the visuals. But perhaps that was a conscious decision, not to try and make war look grand when that's very much against the message of the film.
Not a five, but an easy good solid four.
On Sunday afternoon, I went to see In the Shadow of the Moon, a British documentary about the Apollo program based around interviews with ten of the surviving astronauts. This film was an audience award-winner at Sundance, with a sold-out showing here, and it's really not hard to see why. Focussing on the people rather than the politics or the technology makes it different from other documentaries on the subject, and it's incredibly powerful listening to these men tell their stories - some of them, Michael Collins in particular, turn out to be intelligent, witty and engaging narrators.
The film-maker was present at the showing to answer questions afterwards, and he said one of the triggers for making this documentary was knowing that NASA were about to open up film canisters that had been sealed since the sixties in order to transfer the prints to HD digital media. So while some of the footage of the missions is what everyone's already seen, a lot of it has not been shown since the sixties, and some of it was never broadcast at all. It's accompanied by a great and appropriate soundtrack by Philip Sheppard, a composer who'd never done a film score before (as the director said, that meant they could screw him on the fee XD).
The director also commented that it was a film that needed to be made because these men have now reached a stage in their lives when they're willing to say things they never have previously - three of the Apollo astronauts have died already, and if they want to get anything on the record, now's the time to do it. The men talk about not only the missions, but also themselves, their families, their views on the world and what the moon changed in them - one man admits to an ongoing guilt that while the pilots selected for Apollo were being feted as national heroes with their pictures all over the media, their fellow pilots who didn't make the cut were sent to fight and die in Vietnam. The director now plans to try and interview the other surviving astronauts, not to make another film, but simply to complete the oral history before it's lost - he said as filming went on, he got more offers of interviews as it became clear what he was doing.
I could go on and on about the interesting facts that came out of these interviews, but you should all see the film instead (it's getting a US release in September).The end credits of the film are an entertainment in themselves, as the astronauts give their reactions to the conspiracy theories that say the whole thing was faked in a hangar in Arizona XD My second SIFF film this year and a second unquestioned top score of five - I think I voted two films a five in the whole of last year.
Sunday evening was a trip to La Vida Homo, this year's anthology of gay shorts. It was somewhat disappointing compared to last year's varied selection - every film was competent, but none really jumped out as exceptional. The best of the bunch were Signage and Kali Ma, which were both fours; the rest I gave three. I Just Wanted to Be Somebody didn't show at all, for reasons that nobody explained, and there were technical difficulties getting one of the other films to play too that resulted in everyone being given free tickets to any other SIFF film. Pity I've already pre-booked all of mine - one of you locals will have to rec me something else :-)
This afternoon, I went to see A Battle of Wits, a film I didn't have great expectations of with an imdb score of 6.8, but thought would be fun. It turned out to be a vastly better and more complex film than I'd anticipated - the short blurb at the SIFF site does it no justice at all. Set during China's Warring States period, this earthy historical epic pits the intimidating army of the Zhao Nation against the humble state of Liang. With the help of an unconventional military strategist, Liang will prove that might is no match for wits
That's the plot of the first half of the film, which is entertaining in the standard David and Goliath style. And then when the siege is over, the plot really kicks in for the second half, as politics take over and the fall-out of the battles are addressed by both sides, thematically growing ever-darker. Andy Lau puts in a great performance as the practical pacifist, the man following the Mozi philosphical school of thought that a war is better prevented, but where it can't be, it's better to protect the underdog from the aggressor.
Any film set in this period and with these themes is now forever doomed to suffer by comparison with Hero. A Hero it certainly isn't, but then it isn't trying to be. There's nothing fantastical or romanticised about the film, and it doesn't shy away from the sheer brutality of battle and the rulers of the time. Though Hero has shown how huge armies can be filmed and look, and even my purely amateur eye for cinematography can see that the direction in this film is more workman-like than inspired, and more could have been made of the visuals. But perhaps that was a conscious decision, not to try and make war look grand when that's very much against the message of the film.
Not a five, but an easy good solid four.
