tiggymalvern (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tiggymalvern) wrote2014-06-05 08:59 am
tiggymalvern) wrote2014-06-05 08:59 am
Entry tags:
SIFForty the Final
I've only watched two more films since the last report. I did intend to see another, a drama about a transgendered person, but there was a major accident and after taking 25 minutes to travel two miles, it became clear I wasn't going to make it, so I turned around and went home.
Unforgiven is a Japanese remake of the Oscar-winning Clint Eastwood film from 1992. The windswept, wintry landscapes of Hokkaido in the Meiji era stand in for the Old West. A samurai who fought for the losing Shogunate side struggles to feed his family as a farmer, and when an old friend turns up, he reluctantly agrees to kill criminals for a bounty.
It's been a long time since I saw the original, but from what I recall, this Japanese version is pretty faithful. There are unfortunately close paralleles between the Japanese treatment of the Ainu people and the US behaviour towards indigenous populations, which bind the two settings on either side of the Pacific even more tightly. The film was well acted and well directed, and definitely kept the attention, but it is obviously derivative, so I score it 8/10. The SO was feeling more generous, and gave it 5/5.
The final film I saw was Oil and Water, a documentary on the oil industry and resulting pollution in the Amazonian region of Ecuador. Hugo was sent by his indigenous Cofan people to the US when he was just 10 years old, in the hope that he could learn the language and the culture and become an advocate for his people's concerns. Meanwhile a young American boy did a school project on the oil industry in the region, and started volunteering with the lawyer who was taking the oil companies to court when he was just 12 years old. In later years, he decided that trying to get compensation from the industry after the fact, in court cases that dragged on for decades, was a poor solution. Instead, he attempted to set up a standards scheme for environmentally responsible oil production, along the lines of sustainable fisheries or timber production stamps. The film-makers followed these two young men over a period of eight years, through their early twenties.
The film definitely has some interesting material, but it suffers badly from not knowing what it wants to be. Is it an expose of the environmental impact of pollution? Is it the story of a young man moving between clashing cultures, and struggling to live up to the expectations of an entire people? Is it the tale of one committed person trying to make a difference? In spreading itself between all these things, the documentary ends up being a satisfying film about none of them. Beautiful music, though. 7/10.
So that's it for me. SIFF goes on, but without me, as I will be out of the country. I didn't see any films that blew me away this year, and left me desperate for a DVD release, but I didn't see anything that sucked, either. I seemed to score just about everything an 8.
Unforgiven is a Japanese remake of the Oscar-winning Clint Eastwood film from 1992. The windswept, wintry landscapes of Hokkaido in the Meiji era stand in for the Old West. A samurai who fought for the losing Shogunate side struggles to feed his family as a farmer, and when an old friend turns up, he reluctantly agrees to kill criminals for a bounty.
It's been a long time since I saw the original, but from what I recall, this Japanese version is pretty faithful. There are unfortunately close paralleles between the Japanese treatment of the Ainu people and the US behaviour towards indigenous populations, which bind the two settings on either side of the Pacific even more tightly. The film was well acted and well directed, and definitely kept the attention, but it is obviously derivative, so I score it 8/10. The SO was feeling more generous, and gave it 5/5.
The final film I saw was Oil and Water, a documentary on the oil industry and resulting pollution in the Amazonian region of Ecuador. Hugo was sent by his indigenous Cofan people to the US when he was just 10 years old, in the hope that he could learn the language and the culture and become an advocate for his people's concerns. Meanwhile a young American boy did a school project on the oil industry in the region, and started volunteering with the lawyer who was taking the oil companies to court when he was just 12 years old. In later years, he decided that trying to get compensation from the industry after the fact, in court cases that dragged on for decades, was a poor solution. Instead, he attempted to set up a standards scheme for environmentally responsible oil production, along the lines of sustainable fisheries or timber production stamps. The film-makers followed these two young men over a period of eight years, through their early twenties.
The film definitely has some interesting material, but it suffers badly from not knowing what it wants to be. Is it an expose of the environmental impact of pollution? Is it the story of a young man moving between clashing cultures, and struggling to live up to the expectations of an entire people? Is it the tale of one committed person trying to make a difference? In spreading itself between all these things, the documentary ends up being a satisfying film about none of them. Beautiful music, though. 7/10.
So that's it for me. SIFF goes on, but without me, as I will be out of the country. I didn't see any films that blew me away this year, and left me desperate for a DVD release, but I didn't see anything that sucked, either. I seemed to score just about everything an 8.