Sneak peeks at some of the New York Film Festival’s first-week offerings.
The New York Film Festival, one of the city’s most prestigious movie-related events, kicked off its 46th year on Friday with their opening night presentation of The Class, French director Lauren Cantent’s award-winning look at the current state of the public school system in Paris. I missed that one, but I did catch up with three flicks that are premiering during the festival’s first week.
Wendy and Lucy
Writer/director Kelly Reichardt made a big splash with his acclaimed debut film Old Joy a few years back, but I think this sophomore effort is a much stronger movie. Like Old Joy, Wendy and Lucy tells a very small and simple story, but it has an emotional resonance that its predecessor lacked. Michelle Williams plays Wendy a young drifter passing through Oregon on her way north to Alaska. Traveling with her on this lengthy road trip is her beloved dog Lucy. Stopped in a small town to pick up supplies, Wendy unwisely decides to shoplift supplies from the local supermarket, while Lucy waits outside. She’s caught of course and thrown in the slammer for the afternoon. When she’s finally released and heads back to the scene of the crime to recover her dog, Lucy is nowhere to be found. No one at the supermarket remembers seeing her and she hasn’t been picked up by the local animal shelter. Considering her dwindling finances, Wendy can’t afford to stick around until Lucy is found, but she also knows that she can’t leave her only friend in the world behind. Clocking in at a brief 80 minutes, Wendy and Lucy is the cinematic equivalent of a great short story. Reichardt never overwhelms the viewer with exposition, keeping the narrative lean and focused. And Williams continues to prove why she’s the only ex-Dawson’s Creek cast member who actually has a shot at winning an Oscar one day. Move over Old Yeller–there’s a new three-hankie dog weepie in town.
Screened at the NYFF September 27th and 28th. Opens in limited release on December 10, 2008 with a wide expansion to follow in January 2009.
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Hunger
The most brutal prison story I’ve seen since HBO’s Oz went off the air, Hunger tells the real-life story of Bobby Sands, a member of the Irish Republican Army who led a hunger strike in 1981 while locked up in Northern Ireland’s infamous Maze Prison. Divided into there distinct parts, the movie devotes its first half-hour to depicting daily life in the Maze, where prisoners are regularly beaten by the guards and train themselves to smuggle letters and even makeshift radios in various body cavities. The second section is an extended conversation between Sands and the prison’s priest over the ethics and morality of his planned hunger strike. The final thirty minutes give us front-row seats to witness Sands’ death from starvation. His transformation into a human skeleton is depicted in almost clinical detail and I can only imagine the toll this experience must have taken on the actor playing Sands, Michael Fassbender. Normally, I’m not a fan of actors abusing their health for their profession, like when Christian Bale almost killed himself by losing weight for his role in The Machinist. It just feels irresponsible to me, particularly when you know that there are real people in the world who face starvation every day and not by choice. But I have to admit that Hunger wouldn’t be as powerful had Fassbender not subjected himself to such extreme measures. Seeing the havoc starvation wrecks on a body makes it that much more difficult to view Sands as some kind of heroic martyr. Director Steve McQueen (no, not that Steve McQueen) admirably maintains an objective point of view throughout the film, which is a difficult balancing act to pull off with such potentially incendiary material. Expect this film to generate a lot of debate when it hits theaters next year.
Screened at the NYFF on September 27th and 28th. Opens theatrically in March 2009.
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Waltz with Bashir
I always enjoy seeing animated movies that use the art form to tell more grown-up stories–ones that don’t revolve around ugly green ogres and their donkey sidekicks, for example. And this Israeli documentary is most definitely not for kids, unless you’re eager to give them nightmares. Director Ari Folman uses animation to explore his experiences fighting in Israel’s war with Lebanon in the early ’80s. For two decades, Folman was unable to remember anything about that period in his life, but the memories start to flood back into his mind after he meets up with other former soldiers. He’s particularly troubled by the thought that he may have been witness to a horrible genocide, something which many of the men he encounters are understandably reluctant to discuss. This sounds like powerful stuff and there are moments in Waltz With Bashir that hit you like a punch in the gut. But somehow the animation–which is stunning by the way–ends up distancing us from Folman’s story instead of engaging our attention. Maybe the horrors of war are something that’s best experienced in live action.
NYFF Screenings:
Wednesday, October 1 at 9:15pm
Thursday, October 2 at 6:00pm
Opens theatrically December 26, 2008
