Beasts of No Nation (Cary Fukunaga, 2015)

BEASTS OF NO NATIONS
Director: Cary Fukunaga; USA, 2015
Reviewed by Kiomars Vejdani

The film is from the point of view of a small boy in an unnamed war-torn African country. Director Cary Fukunaga has created an infernal atmosphere where chaos and cruelty rules and human life has lost its value. In this nightmarish setting he takes us through the emotional odyssey of its protagonist. We watch the boy's transformation from an innocent and carefree childhood (in the extremely funny scene of "imagination TV") to horror of watching his father and brother being killed, desperation and misery of being left alone and unprotected, to joining the rebel group and becoming a killing machine shooting anyone considered enemy without getting upset or giving it any thought. In the end when he is taken out of war zone and put in a boy's camp we see him reverting to normal boyhood playing with the others on the beach. But how much of his childhood innocence has been lost we can not tell for sure, as such an experience is bound to leave some deep scars on his soul. The film is a powerful drama of loss of human values.

The Here After (Magnus von Horn, 2015)

THE HERE AFTER 
Director: Magnus von Horn; Sweden | Poland | France, 2015
Reviewed by Kiomars Vejdani

Film relates the tragedy of a young boy who because of a major crime (killing his girlfriend) has been marked for life. Even though he has been punished by law for serving his term of sentence, community is not prepared to forget and forgive his crime. Director Magnus von Horn builds his drama with assured pace. The film's tension escalates in proportion to the intensity of community's hostility and the boy's frustration. It ends at the highest point of his despair. A morally vague but tue ending, for what he has done can not be forgiven not even by himself.

Bang Gang (Eva Husson, 2015)

BANG GANG (A MODERN LOVE STORY) 
Director: Eva Husson; France, 2015
Reviewed by Kiomars Vejdani

Director Eva Husson uses detailed character study of a group of teenagers to explore sexual behaviour of younger generation of present day, their carefree attitude toward sex even to the extreme of promiscuity such as orgies. But at the end film uses a traumatic scandalous incident to take a morally conservative stand toward sex and a belief in a long term stable relationship, a last minute change of mind which affects the film's thematic consistency.

11 Minutes (Jerzy Skolimowski, 2015)

11 MINUTES
Jerzy Skolimowski; Poland/Ireland, 2015
Reviewed by Kiomars Vejdani

A series of events run alongside each other: A young attractive woman is having an audition by a film director in his flat; A jealous and suspicious husband is trying to find the whereabouts of his wife; A pregnant woman is taken to hospital by ambulance; A young man is trying to commit suicide; A motor cyclist driving very fast worried about his affair with a married woman being exposed; And a street vendor selling hot dogs to three nuns. As the stories of these characters move parallel to each other the tension of each situation begins to rise, and as the tempo of parallel action increases we begin to suspect some connection between them. Their stories seem to be converging towards a collision point, and as they get closer to this point the tension of the drama increases until at the moment of collision it ends in a catastrophic tragedy. Only in retrospect we realize we were watching 11 minutes in the lives of these people (hence the title of the film). The aim of Skolimowski's tense drama is ultimately to show the role of fate in our lives.

High-Rise (Ben Wheatley, 2015)

HIGH-RISE
Ben Wheatley; UK, 2015
Reviewed by Kiomars Vejdani

Ben Wheatley's new film has the chaotic world of Fields of England. Although film at its starting point is a satire on Thatcher's era and its values, it stretches far beyond that point into the territory of Apocalypse in the making. An unbalanced world with its standards crumbling symbolised by a tall "high rise" building which despite (or perhaps because of) its elaborately sophisticated architecture, its structure seems off balance and expected to collapse any minute. The metaphor of social distance and class difference has been made only too obvious with lower class in floors below leading a miserable life while upper class on top floor have all the amenities and luxuries at their disposal. Disintegration of social system leads to retrograde movement of civilisation, eventually reaching to a primitive level of existence when people start to eat their own dogs.

Ben Weatley is a master of showing horrors of dehumanisation while in his treatment replacing horror with humour. 

Chevalier (Athina Rachel Tsangari, 2015)

CHEVALIER 
Athina Rachel Tsangari; Greece, 2015
Reviewed by Kiomars Vejdani

A group of six men on a boat on holiday get engaged in a series of games to decide who is the overall best among them. Director Athina Rachel Tsangari uses this setting to explore mental state of her characters and their development in detail. At the beginning of the film they are mature and logical men. But as the games progress they gradually become more immature. They lose their rational way of thinking, their controlled behaviour and altogether civilised side of their nature, with basic and primitive emotions and instincts coming to the surface They regress from state of adulthood to act like a child. Their immaturity, selfishness and low level of frustration tolerance becomes more apparent. Only after the game is over they return to normal state making us think about the futility of the whole exercise. It is a brilliant character study with a lot of humour. The joke of “blood brothers” is something to remember.  

Amos Vogel on Postchi

Amos Vogel on Dariush Mehrjui's Postchi [Postman, Iran, 1971]:

"[Mehrjui's] successful fusing of pathos, humor, and preoccupation with the poor resembles nothing less than Chaplin or early De Sica in its ferocity. In his earlier The Cow, the only owner of such a precious animal in a poverty-stricken village goes insane over its loss and assumes its place; berserk, he is put into a harness, is dragged off to a nearby hospital, beaten like an animal, and finally dies the death of a beast in a mudhole. The Mailman is an unforgettable Woyzeck-like figure, the eternal simple-minded victim who finally rises to mistaken grandeur in a murderous gesture that leaves him braying with despair over the body of his victim. Since such films can never be popular, they are living proof of the fact that box-office returns must not be allowed to determine the life of a work of art."

Source: Film as a Subversive Art

KVIFF#50 - Part III: Cousins, Zeleke, Kadár,/Klos, Taviani/Taviani

يادداشت‌هايي دربارۀ چند فيلم از پنجاهمين دوره فستيوال فيلم كارلووي واري – بخش سوم و آخر

من بلفاست هستم (مارك كازينز؛ بريتانيا، 2015)

كازينز يكي از پركارترين مستندسازان سينماي امروز است كه سالي حداقل دو فيلم به فستيوال‌هاي بين‌المللي مي‌فرستد. او تا به حال فيلم‌هايي دربارۀ شهرها و مناطقي كه از آن‌ها گذر كرده (مكزيكوسيتي، تيرانا، ساردينيا) ساخته، اما فيلم تازه‌اش دربارۀ شهري است كه در آن به دنيا آمده و سال‌هاي نوجواني‌اش را در آن سپري كرده، سال‌هايي كه با تنش خونين بين كاتوليك‌ها و پروتستان‌ها، تب جدايي‌طلبي و مداخله نظامي بريتانيا به سياه‌ترين روزهاي بلفاست تبديل شد.

اما انتظار خلق يك شاهكار، صرفاً به منزله اين كه كازينز اين شهر را بهتر از سوژۀ تمام فيلم‌هاي ديگرش مي‌شناسد كمي بيهوده است؛ تاريخ سينما ثابت كرده وقتي شناخت فيلم‌ساز از موضوع چندان دقيق و وابسته به جزييات بي‌شمار و به همان نسبت دست و پاگير نيست شايد فيلم بهتري خلق ‌شود.

KVIFF#50 - Part II: Zeman, Ergüven, Morina

كارِل زمان: ماجراجوي سينما

يادداشت‌هايي دربارۀ چند فيلم از پنجاهمين دوره فستيوال فيلم كارلووي واري، جمهوري چك، 2015

كارِل زمان: ماجراجوي سينما (توماس هودان؛ جمهوري چك، 2015)

يكي از اساتيد سينماي فانتزي اروپا كه ردش را مي‌توان در دنياي تري گيليام و تيم برتون هم جستجو كرد (كه هر دو هم در اين فيلم طرف مصاحبه قرار گرفته‌اند) در واقع يك مهندس نابغه تصويرگري و مخترع تكنيك‌هاي مكانيكي ساده‌اي بود كه تأثير خارق‌العاده‌اي روي پرده خلق مي‌كردند. او كه بيش‌تر براي اقتباس‌هاي خلاقانه‌اش از رمان‌هاي ژول ورن شناخته مي‌شود و زماني پول‌سازترين فيلم‌ساز چكسلواكي بود موضوع اين مستند هشتاد دقيقه‌اي قرار گرفته، فيلمي كه برخلاف ميزانسن با آرتور پن با تحقيقات درجه يك و بررسي چند بعدي سينماي زِمان همراه است، اما آن صميميت ديوانه‌وار نادري را ندارد.

KVIFF#50 - Part I: Mise en scène with Arthur Penn

 يادداشت‌هايي دربارۀ چند فيلم از پنجاهمين دوره فستيوال فيلم كارلووي واري، جمهوري چك، 2015

امسال در كارلزباد

احسان خوش‌بخت

كارلووي‌واري، شهري كه پنجاه سال پيش اولين دوره يك فستيوال بين‌المللي فيلم در آن برگزار شد، تركيب خيال‌انگيزي از معماري اتريشي-مجار و تغزل كوهستاني شهري سوييسي است كه با انبوهي هتل‌هاي پنج ستاره و چشمه‌هاي آب معدني محاصره شده. شهري كه از بتهوون تا شاهان قاجار را مجذوب خودش كرده از سوي غرب آن قدر به آلمان نزديك هست كه نامي آلماني هم داشته باشد: كارلزباد.

بزرگ‌ترين و معروف‌ترين هتل شهر، هتل بزرگ پوپ، كه مركز پارتي‌هاي شبانه فستيوال هم هست، اگر به جاي سفيد صورتي مي‌بود مي‌توانست همان «هتل بزرگ بوداپست» باشد. مردم كارلووي واري، يا به طور دقيق‌تر مردمي كه از جاهاي ديگر جمهوري‌هاي چك و اسلواك و كشورهاي ديگر به اين شهر مي‌آيند، تحت تأثير زيبايي مكس افولس‌وار شهري كه با هر پيچ رود جاري در دل دره به رقص درآمده عادت به نونوار كردن و به‌تن كردن بهترين لباس‌هايشان دارد. كارلوووي واري، جلوي غيرحقيقي و بيش از حد رتوش شده دارد، و اين چيزي است كه يك فستيوال سينمايي مي‌تواند بهره‌هاي بسيار از آن ببرد.

از طول اصلي فستيوال من حدود دو سوم آن را در كارلووي واري گذراندم و به جز فيلم‌هاي بد و مأيوس كننده‌اي كه حتي نوشتن يك خط درباره‌شان بايد با ماليت سنگين كاغذ و جوهر موازنه شود (و به همين دليل بهشان اشاره‌اي نخواهم كرد) اين چند فيلم آثار قابل توجهي‌اند كه در پنجاهمين دوره فستيوال ديدم.

ميزانسن با آرتور پن: يك گفتگو (اميرنادري؛ آمريكا/ايتاليا، 2014)

براي ساختن چنين فيلم ديوانه‌واري نياز به دانستن چيزهاي زيادي دربارۀ سينما نيست، فقط مقدار زيادي عشق و اعتماد به نفس لازم است كه امير نادري به وفور از هر دو بهره برده. اما براي بهتر شناختن زمينه‌هاي نمايش و توزيع چنين پروژه ديوانه‌واري كه سه و ساعت و نيم از گفتگوي تقريباً اديت نشده‌اي با آرتور پن را به يك فيلم سينمايي تبديل كرده لازم است كه حداقل يكي از پشتيبانان پروژه را شناخت: برنامه سينمايي تلويزيون سوم ايتاليا (RAI3) كه به نام Fuori Orario (به معناي ديروقت) مجموعه‌اي حيرت‌انگيز از سينماي كلاسيك، مدرن و تجربي را از نيمه شب تا صبح در طول آخر هفته‌ها نمايش مي‌دهد.