Play

The following is my response to Notebook’s 4th Writer’s Poll.  This year mine will be a triple-feature…

NEW: Play by Ruben Östlund and Tyrannosaur by Paddy Considine
OLD: Kes (1969) by Ken Loach

WHY: Children adrift in an indifferent and torturous modern world, left to their own devices. Tyrannosaur touches on the theme of child abuse as a sub-plot and also connects to Kes as a relentless and bitter vision of working class England. Considine’s film is conspicuous for the lack of children among the principal characters and the haunting consideration of what their lives would be like if they had children. These three films can be triangulated as a sort of progression, with Kes at the peak as the most “complete” family portrait and the two newer films at opposite ends of the lower spectrum, though all of these films are about broken structures and people (also broken or incomplete aesthetics, in the case of Play).

Tyrannosaur

The poll can be accessed at the following address:

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/notebooks-4th-writers-poll-fantasy-double-features-of-2011

Kes

Ameena Matthews in "The Interrupters"

My best film experiences of 2011 (in no particular order):

“The Interrupters” (2011) by Steve James.  My high point of new films in 2011.  Ameena Matthews is a star.  I’ve rarely seen such magnetism and heart in any personality on film — documentary or fiction.  I would follow her into war or do her any favor she asked.  Everything was right about this film.  It’s time to evaluate James’ entire career up to this point.  He might not be given his due in the documentary landscape.

“Sarah’s Key” (2010) by Gilles Paquet-Brenner.  One of the best new films I saw this past year.  I’m not normally a fan of the “Holocaust genre” but this one moved me, probably because it was about so much more.  The best and most powerful closing image of the year, which reminded me of my favorite new film of 2010 and it’s piercing closing image: “Jaffa” (2009) by Keren Yedaya.

“Petit a petit” (1971) by Jean Rouch
I haven’t seen nearly enough by the old master but this one could be his magnum opus.  Somehow it sums up everything his cinema is about, with poetry and precision yet as breezy and playful as the best of the New Wave.

“Barry Lyndon” (1975) by Stanley Kubrick
More emotion than I’m used to seeing in a Kubrick film.  I found it full of subtle energy.  The scope and tragedy of the story moved me.  Also, I love the wording of that first intertitle: “How he acquired the style and title…”

“Dry Summer” (1964) by Metin Erksan.  Seeing this film (only my second Erksan) confirmed that I had just encountered a master previously unknown to me.  I eagerly await more revelations from him.

“Inglourious Basterds” (2009) by Quentin Tarantino.  Watching this film over and over again gave me a comfort and pleasure.  Somehow it encapsulates my European experiences and I can feel that in the future it will symbolize a certain formative period of my life in a very emotional way, which means it will have a very special place in my heart.  I love watching without subtitles and feeling just as confused as I normally do when I am between multiple unknown languages.

“Broken Flowers” (2005) by Jim Jarmusch.  This film aches with yearning and mystery.  I treasure it and can’t believe I waited so long to actually see it.  As much as any of his works, proves Jarmusch to be an absolute cinematic magician.

“The Passion of Joan of Arc” (1928) by Carl Theodor Dreyer.  Seeing this in a luminous print on the big screen with a transfixed audience reminded me (yes, here comes the popular cliche again!) how transformative and powerful true film (and film projection) can be.  And now I finally get this film’s brilliance, which is not so apparent on a dvd.  Deservedly one of the high water marks in the history of cinema and visionary for so many reasons.

Jonathan Rosenbaum

Jonathan Rosenbaum’s website functions as a clearinghouse of sorts for almost everything he has ever written, right on down to his first published critical work for a high school newspaper as a teenager in the 1950s.  So the immediate thing one often misses is his thoughts on current issues — though his reprints usually come with a few paragraphs worth of contemporary reflection.  Of course, Rosenbaum has retired as a full-time critic, so one can read his employment of online resources as a pensioner’s pastime.

When accessing his website the first thing one notices is its crude design.  He has gone on record before stating that he does not have the funding for a professional designer though still, one can do wonders with stock page formats and there are no shortage of young people with the know-how and time to achieve better effects for little to no pay.  In addition to the clumsy and uninspired layout the search function is not very manageable, as the archives do not pull up article titles but rather extremely long pages with multiple entries one must scroll through one by one.  That makes for two huge strikes against the website, with regards to design and functionality.

When it comes to content I must say that I am not always admiring of the lengthy, personal essayist style and manner of the writing.  Rosenbaum often writes as much about himself as the films he is reviewing and that would be ok if he had an inordinately interesting background or personality.  Without those necessities, the personal essay style leaves a lot to be desired.

Of course respect must be given to Rosenbaum as one of the giants of modern American film criticism and the extensive nature of his online collection of critical writings makes for a potential treasure trove of archival material for the discerning investigator.  Yet and still I must admit to rarely being impressed by either the quality of his writing or the insights gleaned.  Rosenbaum’s Facebook feed is often more interesting than his website, which may hint to the fact that a fresh story or two here and there could inject much-needed life into what can be a very inert homepage.

www.jonathanrosenbaum.com

“That’s life’s enigma.  Long as life’s within us.  We’re gonna sin a lot and pray that Christ forgive us.” – Money, Cash, Hoes by Jay-Z

Martin Luther

Arguably the greatest features of The Criterion Collection (if one discounts the films themselves) are the in-depth essays that accompany each release.  These essays, written by some of the greatest critics on the cinema, constitute a brilliant canon of film history.  The day will surely come when they are all collected in an edited volume but until then we have the website for accessing a majority of these archived pieces.  Therefore the Criterion website is a wonderful resource for those looking into this film history and a place where one can enjoy some of the greatest writing on film that the internet has to offer.

The Current is the journal-like section of this website and it usually contains the following: either the aforementioned essays that accompany specific film releases, special supplementary essays on these films as online exclusives, repertory roundups that report on cinematheque activities from all around the world, the “Three Reasons” video series used to promote upcoming releases, and various bits of poster art or special photographs.

In layout and intent the Current does a bit of mimicking of MUBI’s The Notebook (which has been recently redesigned and now boasts a visual flair that is equal to the Current), though it really cannot compete due to the lack of regularly-updated essays and a variety of regular contributors.  Because of this lack of consistency the comments section is almost always a letdown, as no dialogue is ever able to evolve and grow.  Though at least now readers have the ability to comment directly on a page whereas before comments had to pass through a mysterious screening process that seemed to be very idiosyncratic and limited.

The “Three Reasons” series are promoted like video essays but play as something like Criterion-specific movie trailers.  However, they are well-made and almost always interesting, if only short and simple.  One can see this series expanding to a more elaborate style of video essay, maybe to accompany the great critical writing included with each release.  This would be valuable to begin taking more advantage of the great critical minds that collaborate with The Criterion Collection, also because the video essay has yet to see a standard-bearer of excellence, which Criterion could easily serve as.

The Current is a nice place to visit but ironically enough, not regularly, as it is not designed to be a timely rundown, other than the regularly scheduled Friday repertory reports.  A few monthly check-ins should serve their intended purposes well.  As such the value in this website, aside from its aesthetic pleasures, is chiefly in its archival use.  This is not a limitation, as The Criterion Collection wholly satisfies its market segment in this way and carves out a space (and brand) that few can compete with.  As demonstrated, there is still room for growth and development and we can hope to see Criterion take full advantage of the potential that their unique online space has to offer.

http://www.criterion.com/current/posts

Stranger Than Paradise

There is a great deal of similarity between the cinema of Jim Jarmusch and that of Quentin Tarantino — so much that it often appears the two directors are conversing with each other through their work. Tarantino owes a lot to the films of Jarmusch.  What follows is a brief outline of the web of references that link the two directors.

Stranger Than Paradise was one of the first of the new wave of American indie films, which paved the way for Tarantino and the Sundance generation at the beginning of the 1990s. In this film Jarmusch utilizes an episodic structure with title cards announcing the different segments. This is a structure he repeats in a number of his later films including Mystery Train and Ghost Dog. Tarantino has been using title cards and an episodic structure in most all of his films. Jarmusch begins using pop music on his soundtrack that has an effect not dissimilar to the way Tarantino uses pop music on his soundtracks. Both employ them for thematic and structuring aims: “I Put a Spell on You” comments on the alluring Eva (Eszter Balint) in Stranger Than Paradise; “Bang Bang” narrates the entire plot of Kill Bill.

Down By Law introduces a DJ (Tom Waits) as a central character, with Jarmusch beginning to make more steps towards an exhibition and exploration of pop culture through this figure. Tarantino also utilizes DJs as a point of reference in his films (if only an aural motif) and in his first amateur production My Best Friend’s Wedding he himself plays the role of a DJ.  One remembers the “K-Billy Super Sounds of the 70s” motif running through Reservoir Dogs and also the role of Jungle Julia (Sydney Tamiia Poitier) in Death Proof.

The Killing

With Jarmusch’s Mystery Train you can draw a line of continuity from Kubrick’s The Killing to it and all the way through to Tarantino and his plays with non-sequential storytelling. This timeline represents the general development of the non-linear/non-oneiric narrative structure in American cinema. Also by this stage you see the further growth of Jarmusch’s interest in using multiple foreign languages in his cinema.  In almost all of his films characters must communicate above and around language barriers. Tarantino has often shown an interest in mixing nationalities in his cinema and his most recent films are melanges of multiple languages (Inglourious Basterds is the best example). In Mystery Train the love of Elvis and Elvis as a structuring metaphor prefigures Tarantino’s obsessive evocations of Elvis. Mystery Train also utilizes pop culture to a degree that Tarantino would eventually expand upon in his cinema.  One thinks of the mobilization of the television series Lost in Space as not only the title of a narrative segment in Jarmusch’s film but also the subject of one of its key jokes.

Jarmusch is a very referential director — it’s just that each of his films always refer to one or more of his other films, making his cinema highly self-reflexive. Characters pop in and out of his movies and feel like they could be continuations of previous characters, and not just because the same actors portray them. For example Screaming Jay Hawkins used as a musical motif in Stranger Than Paradise becomes the man personified in Mystery Train. Tom Waits reprises his role as a DJ from Down By Law in the film Mystery Train (both directors share Steve Buscemi and maybe Tarantino was introduced to him through the film Mystery Train). Tarantino has also created a similar self-contained “movie” world in his films, one that points both inward to his own films and outward towards the films of others. Michael Parks’ Texas ranger is one example, having appeared in no less than three films that Tarantino was involved with.

Night on Earth contains maybe the richest example of this cinematic “conversation” that the two directors share. This conversation is housed in the Paris sequence, which was clearly a highly influential source for Tarantino in making Pulp Fiction. First there is the use of a band-aid, which makes a prominent symbolic appearance on the taxi driver character played by Isaac De Bankole just as it will on the character Marcellus Wallace played by Ving Rhames. The significance of the band-aid requires a dedicated essay in and of itself that I do not have the time to address now. Also, in this Paris sequence we see the appearance of the “mystery case” in the possession of the two African businessmen in the back seat of the taxi. What is in that case, and why is it so important? Of course that “mystery case” will function as the ultimate symbol in Pulp Fiction and Tarantino would imbue it with both more literal and metaphorical significance.  With Jarmusch the case remains a cipher, ultimately a passing glance in the nighttime on the street of Paris.

Heckle and Jeckle

When we arrive at Ghost Dog we finally see Jarmusch pluck something from Tarantino’s bag of tricks, extending the younger director’s narrative themes. Of particular interest is the final shootout when Ghost Dog assassinates a mansion full of mobsters. Only Louis (John Tormey) remains, and he is saved from the onslaught because he has been handling his business on a toilet, emerging at the final moment when all the chaos has ended. This recalls Tarantino’s use of a toilet as a hiding place/narrative diversion, most notably the multiple occurrences with John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Kill Bill then also reaches back to engage with Ghost Dog in numerous ways. The very focus on Samurai-styled hitmen and the use of a musical score by the RZA immediately come to mind. Also, Tarantino uses cartoons (and a very cartoonish Shogun Assassin) at the conclusion of his film, which mirrors the use of cartoons as a structuring motif in Ghost Dog. Both of these films leave us with a tantalizing possibility: the little girl that Ghost Dog inspires may one day grow up to be an assassin, just like the daughter that Vivica Fox leaves behind, who may want to exact revenge on Uma Thurman because she feels “a little raw” about the situation. Maybe these two young girls will even meet and join forces at some point!

With The Limits of Control Jarmusch returns to the hitman genre that he and Tarantino thoroughly explored. However, this film is much more experimental than anything he has ever made. It remains to be seen how he and Tarantino continue the conversation, and if Tarantino will follow Jarmusch into more avant-garde cinematic waters.

Overall Tarantino does a pretty impressive job of bringing the Old South to life. You feel like you’re there. He’s created a world, more vivid than World War II-era France. You feel like you discover things you never knew existed (whether they did or not, it certainly feels like they could have, or should have). I can only imagine how it will look and feel in vibrant, colorful moving pictures. Has a chance to be pretty powerful in that respect.

I can’t think of any filmmakers in recent history that have attempted to put on screen what Tarantino will with this film. Maybe none ever have. It could be utterly singular with some amazing set-pieces. That being said, surely this will be one of the more controversial American films to come out in the past 10 or 20 years. Everyone will be up in arms talking about it and attacking it for one reason or another. Therefore, it won’t surprise me if it makes twice as much money as Inglourious Basterds did. Especially if there is a huge black star in the lead role. If Will Smith gets the part, game over. This will be a bona fide hit. I’m just speaking economically, not aesthetically.

I now have high hopes that this will be his best film since Jackie Brown. It should top Inglourious Basterds by a long shot. Destroy Death Proof. Best Kill Bill because of its more concentrated focus. There is both comedy and also some pretty horrific, brutal stuff. Very little irony. People will also be happy to know there’s very little “pop cultural” Tarantino dialogue (maybe that goes without saying, being set in an era that precedes modern pop culture and all). It will probably be the most naturalistic dialogue he has ever realized on screen. Though truthfully the Waltz role is way too deferential to his role in Basterds. It’s the only thing in the script that sounds fake and forced. In fact, if his role were lessened somehow, similar to the presence of Bill in Kill Bill, that might help propel this film into “excellent” status. It would certainly make it more of a star vehicle for the lucky lead player. As it stands now the film is a duo and does not need to be.

It’s got the revenge plot structure. Technically the whole film is a revenge quest. Yet somehow the emotions drive things rather than bloody action. If Tarantino modulates that balance and really works on the character development in another script draft, he could have the audience screaming and cheering with satisfaction in the aisles.

“If ifs and buts were candy and nuts…” Enough speculating. Django Unchained will be the only great love story Tarantino has ever put on film. Better than in Jackie Brown because it is more naked than in that film. More literal. And since this will be the only great love story he has ever put on film, many will say it’s the greatest thing he has ever put on film, period. They could be right. Let the anticipation begin…

Goran Paskaljevic and Milco Mancevski

A special section called “Europe Outside Europe” represents the competition program at FEST.  This section is composed of films from European countries that have not yet been included in the European Union, which in essence makes it a de facto Balkan panorama.  Well-known directors in this year’s section included Milco Mancevski and Danis Tanovic.  The jury presiding over the competition section included the Serbian director Goran Paskaljevic, Cineaste editor Deborah Young, German film critic and curator Barbara Lorey de Lacharriere, and Serbian film critic Dubravka Lakic.

In the end Mancevski walked away with the grand prize (a replica of the sculpture “Erythrocyte” by Serbian artist Nikola Pesic) for his film film Mothers.   Mothers was the best of the competition films that I saw (granted I did not get a chance to watch Tanovic’s Circus Columbia).  It was more experimental in form than Dmitri Mamulia’s Another Sky and more emotional than Mladen Maticevic’s Together.  It is comforting to see that Mancevski is still pushing the boundaries of his art form rather than succumbing to mainstream demands, as can often happen when your feature film debut is awarded the Golden Lion in Venice.  During a post-screening interview Mancevski revealed that despite offers, he is not attuned to working in Hollywood on big budget pictures because he is not willing to sacrifice his freedom of creative expression.  Hopefully his fifth film will continue to blaze new paths in Macedonian cinema and serve as a model for future generations of creatively-inclined Macedonian auteurs.

Milco Mancevski

Overall there were some impressive films screened at the Belgrade FEST and I detected a slight improvement of quality in the selection as compared to last year.  My festival award would have likely gone to Sarah’s Key by Gilles Paquet-Brenner.  I didn’t see another film that was as polished and assured, along with its emotional gravity and relevant investigation into issues of identity and family values.  Regardless of the fact that at its core this is a holocaust film, complete with all the attendant tropes that go with it, it rose above a mediocre repetition and spoke cogently to contemporary concerns.  Paquet-Brenner has worked consistently throughout the last decade and I will look forward to his next outing in the director’s chair, which seems likely to come soon.

In continuing if I had my way I would give a special prize to Memories of Overdevelopment by Miguel Coyula.  The intricate, novel structure of this film and its willingness to illuminate societal issues relevant to both Cuba and the United States while also contemplating on the nature and possibilities of artistic expression made it one of the standouts of the festival.  Last week I received an e-mail from Coyula and he notified me that his film won several awards at the New Filmmakers Film Festival in Havana.  The critic who presented the awards said that we are used to films that more normally verbalize ideas, but that rather a constant dialogue with images and their juxtaposition are key to appreciating this work.  I would tend to agree and think that there is a lot to appreciate in Memories of Overdevelopment.  Viva la image!

www.fest.rs

R

The film R by first-time writing/directing team Tobias Lindholm and Michael Noer is a work of gritty realism that gives an example of how to transcend genre by adhering to it faithfully.  R follows the generic tradition of the prison film, which demands certain tropes: the new guy learning the ropes, the hierarchical struggle, the rise through the ranks, dispatching of a snitch, the downfall.  This Danish film owes a debt to American Me and Blood In, Blood Out, among others.  However, though it works with and through shared conventions it does not succumb to a romantic Hollywood-ization of incarceration.

Ostensibly the protagonist of the film is Rune (Pilou Asbaek), the new guy in question and (also ostensibly) namesake of the movie.  He arrives in prison on a two-year stint for stabbing a man which of course immediately runs him afoul of inmates who were friends to his victim.  They take advantage of Rune in numerous ways until he makes himself useful in the drug trade and slowly moves up the ladder of respectability.  Eventually things go wrong and Rune must pay for a botched deal with his life.  This occurs about three-quarters of the way through the film.

Rune is stabbed to death in a kitchen closet.  We don’t even see the fatal act, what in a more traditional film would surely be the climactic ending.  In R the narrative carries on without Rune and not so much as a slight consideration as to what his absence means to those around him.  He is abruptly cut out of the prison existence and our viewing experience while the film quite radically shifts focus to a Muslim inmate named Rashid (Dulfi Al-Jabouri) who served as Rune’s partner in crime (and who set him up to be executed).  The directors promptly build up an identification with Rashid as if the story is refreshing for another try to make things right.  We see him in a visit with his distraught mother, we see him run afoul of the Islamic gang he is a de facto member of because of racial/religious segregation in the prison, we see him turn informant, and then we see as vengeance is meted out on him with boiling hot oil.

Rashid does not die but the film ends immediately upon the point of his attack.  An idea is produced about the closed, fatalistic circle that is prison life.  There is no resolution and no investigation.  The film leaves us in fragments much like the inmates who must serve their time in an inhuman environment.  Form mirrors content at the same time it strains to break free of it in the film R.  This is the tension that allows the pioneering gene film to take off.

Together

Rare is the contemporary Serbian film that celebrates life rather than wallowing in death and destruction, that preserves a notion of family unity rather than tragic domestic discord.  Such a film is Together by Mladen Maticevic.  It is an otherwise unremarkable family melodrama about a woman (Milica Zaric) who cheats on her husband (Aleksandar Sreckovic) with their young son caught in the middle.  Fortunately the film becomes radical and of interest in its confident rejection of the status quo in Serbian cinema.

Mladen Maticevic at FEST

Consider the closing image of Together.  The mother and father are reunited in a loving embrace, joined by their son, as snow falls by the brightly-lit Christmas tree they have finished decorating.  This seems to be a direct affront to maybe the most notorious recent Serbian film called A Serbian Film, which ends with a grotesque embrace between father, mother and son as they lay on a bed while the father shoots one fatal bullet that passes through them all and ends their lives — together.

Violence is explored in both films while Together owes its most immediate debt to Straw Dogs in its depiction of a home invasion and the eventual triumph of a non-violent man finding the strength to overcome criminal opponents while protecting his family.  Perhaps the moral conundrum is not as pronounced as it is in Peckinpah’s film but the implications are similar.  However, there is a far greater prize at stake in Together: the preservation of a family unit rather than the liberation of an identity.  In saving his matrimonial unity it is as if the husband has saved all of Serbia.  One can only commend this action as this society has often been under attack, sometimes by domestic cinematic forces, while Together serves on the lines of defense.

www.fest.rs

Michel Ciment

On a Saturday morning the veteran French film critic Michel Ciment hosted a master class in which he discussed his personal history as a critic as well as the larger history of film criticism and cinema in general.  As a young man Ciment loved to read film criticism of all types and often kept a notebook listing the films he had seen with short observations regarding how he felt about them.  He began publishing his first film reviews for a small student magazine and then decided to send a long review of Orson Welles’ The Trial to the venerable film journal Positif.

Ciment recalled that many critics at that time attacked Welles’ film, believing it to be a betrayal of Kafka’s writing among other offenses.  He instead wrote an extended defense of the film which was accepted and published by Positif launching his career as a professional critic in the process.  During the late 50s and early 60s Positif and Cahiers du Cinema were often at odds with each other, championing different filmmakers as well as different causes.  Positif was known as a left-oriented magazine (how Ciment also identified himself) while Cahiers du Cinema leaned to the right.  Of course these two French journals were not only on the front lines of the battle for cinema in the 50s and 60s but they also became the flagship enterprises and symbols of advanced film criticism throughout the world.

The class began with a brief interview conducted by Dusan Makavejev who himself was interviewed by Ciment on a few occasions in the 60s when he was making his early feature films.  The two reminisced on the movies they loved growing up and also their first encounters with each other.  After this brief introduction Makavejev opened up the floor to questions.

Dusan Makavejev

Among the many ideas that Ciment discussed was that the “politique des auteurs” is a myth.  He noted that Truffaut et al did not actually discover auteurs as many French film critics in the 20s were already writing about directors and speaking of them as auteurs.  Furthermore he revealed that the term “politique” is a bit manipulative and too political and that he has always preferred the American iteration “auteur theory” in its place.

When asked about current film criticism and particularly the prevalence of online outlets such as film blogs Ciment struck what seemed to be a rather reactionary note.  He lamented the fact that we live in a “culture of narcissism” and people are often interested in speaking about themselves — but in a vacuum where there can be no response.  Ciment felt that there was too much information out there in cyberspace which made it too hard to sift through the rough for finding the diamonds.  He also felt that many people were lazy nowadays in addition to being afraid of criticism and noted that on more than one occasion after inviting young critics to submit their work to Positif he would never hear from them again.

Unfortunately his responses on this subject had the feel of an out-of-touch older man shaking his fist at “those darn kids” and their incomprehensible ways.  One would have hoped he recognized the democratization of media outlets and freedom of expression afforded to those who can now self-publish their work online.  In effect, one would have hoped he recognized a new revolution brewing for a new generation, not so unlike his own golden years in the 60s.  Furthermore, perhaps Positif is not such an attractive outlet anymore for a new generation of critics since not only is it limited to publishing in French but its content is not even accessible online for the general public.  A young writer publishing his own work on a website can share it with readers across the world and build up an international following with the inspired strokes of a few keys.  Our Cahiers du Cinema is The Daily Notebook on Mubi.com and our Positif, The Current at Criterion.com — and this is only to name a few.  Cinephilia and good film criticism is alive and well.  It has evolved.  The only thing dead are the traditions of the old generations — cine-criticism du papa — that weigh like a nightmare on the brains of the new.

Another Sky

Another Sky

The feature debut by the Georgian director Dmitri Mamulia is an exercise in “slow cinema”, a pure cinematic experience without a reliance on dialogue and an emphasis on visual expression.  The story of a farmer somewhere in Central Asia who goes on a quest to look for his missing wife is handled in an evocative and sometimes evasive way.  We learn very little in the way of traditional exposition (though a lot is revealed through images).  The film is a feeling rather than an action.  This makes it a commendable effort from a first-timer who appears to be on the right track.

It remains to be seen if the slow cinema trend is nothing more than a auteurist fad or pose.  The truth is that it seems this particular aesthetic has become a shorthand for filmmakers hoping to be taken as “serious” by the critical community.  I don’t dislike the aesthetic itself, just its homogenization as one-size-fits-all.  We would do better to have a new generation of international directors who cannot all be lumped into the same category but rather work in true individual expression and the cultural specificity of their native background.

Is Another Sky a good film?  It’s not bad.  It just perhaps would need to do a bit more to stand apart from the masses on the festival circuit.  It needs to dig deeper, to follow its titular directive by reaching higher and in a different direction.

The American

The second film by Anton Corbijn is a by-the-numbers thriller in terms of plotting and characterization.  His first film Control, about the life and death of the rock band Joy Division, was an excellent independent-styled expose.  An assured debut that won the Directors Fortnight at Cannes in 2007.  Control is the better film of the two in almost every way.  With The American it seems that Corbijn has moved into the big time while being co-opted by the Hollywood machine in the process.  One hopes he can still find his way with more idiosyncratic and personal projects rather than George Clooney star vehicles.

The American is the story of Clooney as a lonely hitman named “Mr. Butterfly” for the insect tattoo he sports on his back.  He tromps through scenic Europe working high-priced jobs for a suave and mysterious fixer, falls in love with a good-hearted Italian hooker named Clara (Violante Placido) and befriends an old priest who offers sage advice — all while trying to do the proverbial “one last job”.  Every element of this film’s construction is a cliche of the killer-for-hire genre or a rather unimaginative homage, as when we see short sequences of Clooney in his hideout working his body into shape which recall Scorsese’s Taxi Driver by way of Lerner’s Murder by Contract.

Of course he gives his last packet of ill-gotten money to Clara in the hopes that she will escape to another life with him and of course he is shot before he can make it to that next life, just as of course he maintains enough energy to drive while bleeding, reaching Clara for one more look at her before he slumps over dead in the driver’s seat.  The final shot of a butterfly slowly floating up and away from his car as the camera tilts with it is a bit too hokey to be worthy of a film that until this point had avoided inane symbolism.  However, all this is not to say that The American is a particularly bad film.

It’s quite good, despite one knowing every turn around the corner before it comes.  Corbijn is effective at creating a languorous mood that hangs over the film like an afternoon dream.  Clooney doesn’t seem right as a brooding hitman but he still delivers an understated performance that carries the entire movie.  When you play by the rules of the genre you often get a rigorous piece that delivers what it and hundreds of others before it promise.  Though as the saying goes, nothing ventured nothing gained.  This film will ultimately fade into oblivion.  Whether Mr. Corbijn does or not is still yet to be decided and entirely up to him.

www.fest.rs