When was the last time you were in a large, crowded movie theater, anxiously awaiting the beginning of a new film? When both you and the audience around you laughed, cried and sighed together over the story and the characters? When the entire audience burst into sustained, enthusiastic applause as the end credits rolled? When you left the theater in such a happy afterglow that you just had to call or text friends to tell them they must see this?
This was my experience on Saturday night, at the Chicago International Film Festival, watching a screening of Paolo Sorrentino's The Hand of God. As much as I loved the film itself, it was the experience of seeing it with a full audience, on a huge screen that enhanced its impeccable scenic design and sumptuous cinematography, that brought me close to tears. "I forgot what this was like!" I thought to myself, more than once in those two-or-so hours. During the COVID lockdown, I had stopped imagining pleasures that I once took for granted, not allowing myself to even think about travelling outside the country, seeing live theatre, or being in crowded events of any kind. When one of those old pleasures was unexpectedly restored for me, the tidal wave of emotion it unleashed took me by surprise. I'd actually planned to see another film that night, starting just 10 minutes after The Hand of God ended. But I couldn't bring myself to go. I needed to sit with that feeling of joy and wonder. And also to text a few cinephile friends who I knew would love the film as much as I did.
(Note to the concerned: all in-person screenings at the CIFF require attendees to present either proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test result within 72 hours prior to the screening. Masks are required, when not actively eating or drinking.)
This was my first trip to the CIFF since 2018; last year's festival was almost entirely virtual, and in 2019, I was helping to care for my seriously ill parents. I hadn't even been in downtown Chicago for any reason in well over two years. Despite all the headlines about muggings, car-jackings and other escalating types of crime, this trip felt no less safe or enjoyable than it had in previous years. It was a clear and gorgeous weekend in Chicago with tourists happily roaming the Magnificent Mile and cinephiles giddily queuing up at the River East AMC for an outstanding slate of cinematic treats.
My festival weekend was evenly divided between packed evening screenings of high profile, highly anticipated films and afternoons of disturbing documentaries. Back at home, I streamed one additional title. (Because we're still not out of the COVID woods, the festival is offering a sizable slate of virtual presentations again this year.) What follows are my thoughts about the films I saw, in the order that I saw them:
The Other Side of the River
This German documentary follows a 20-year-old Syrian woman named Hala who leaves her home and crosses the Euphrates to join an all-female Kurdish freedom fighting unit. After ISIS is forced out of her hometown, she returns and joins the police force there, much to the dismay of her traditional Muslim family.
This film is uncomfortable on many levels, and not always to good effect. The filmmaker, Antonia Kilian, does little but follow Hala around and point her camera at whatever she can get away with filming; the results are raw and shocking, but too frequently provided without needed context. There is very little narration, and Kilian's camerawork can be disruptive and intrusive. The obvious discomfort of Hala's mother and sisters at being so relentlessly filmed is upsetting to witness.
Hala and her fellow fighters are militantly opposed to marriage and to men in general; their comments are startling, but not difficult to understand. There's overwhelming evidence here of the harrowing lives that Syrian women lead, with multiple stories of horrific abuse at the hands of their fathers, brothers and husbands. Hala's own father shows up briefly to tell us that "We can take care of Hala with one bullet." He goes on to claim that he loves all his children and wants the best for them, but seems fixated on the 'shame' that Hala's actions have brought on the family. Her mother, who has given birth to twelve children - some of them still toddlers - can't be much past 40. But she has the careworn face and slow, shuffling walk of a much older woman.
Hala isn't an easily embraceable heroine. We're told told that she throws a grenade into her family's home after learning that two of her younger sisters are being married off. Although we never learn the extent of the damage she causes or whether any of her family were injured, we do get to see her bitter unrepentance for her actions.
I felt very sad and a little sick after watching this, but I'm not sure if that's what Kilian wanted me to feel or even how she felt herself. While I usually appreciate a filmmaker who lets me draw my own conclusions, I believe The Other Side of the River would have benefitted from some judicious editing and a clear point of view.
The Hand of God
This film is a welcome change of pace from Italian director Paolo Sorrentino, whose films get nuttier and weirder every year. (And whose HBO Max series, The New Pope, I named the worst streaming series of 2020.)
Here, Sorrentino mostly puts aside his tendencies towards meticulously art-directed profanity to tell the story of his own early life in Naples. Young actor Filipo Scotti plays Fabietto, a stand-in for Sorrentino as a teen-ager in the 1980s. Sorrentino opens with raucous remembrances of his large, loud, exuberantly vulgar extended family, including a sexy but problematic aunt (Luisa Ranieri) who will bewitch and haunt Fabietto throughout his life. His parents are played by Teresa Saponangelo and Toni Servillo (the latter, a familiar fixture in Sorrentino's work) and they are superbly funny and mercurial.
(Slight spoiler ahead - skip the next two paragraphs if you want to go in this film with no expectations...)
Like all Neopolitans of that time, Fabietto is obsessed by Napoli's recently acquired soccer star Diego Maradona, and (in a plot twist from Sorrentino's own life), Maradona is instrumental in keeping him alive. When his parents go skiing, Fabietto decides to stay home and watch Maradona play. At their ski house, his mother and father are poisoned and killed by a carbon monoxide leak. As Fabietto's uncle tells him at the funeral, he has been saved by "the hand of god." In more ways than one - "the hand of God" is also Maradona's explanation for scoring a World Cup semifinals-winning goal.
Much as I loved this film, I must admit that once Fabietto's parents are gone, it loses a bit of its focus and energy. Some of this may be by design, as it's reflective of Fabietto's own disorientation as he struggles to come to terms with his grief and pain. But it's also fair to say that Scotti lacks the nuance and range to effectively cue us into his character's emotional state. Even so, Sorrentino surrounds him with enough oddballs and strange experiences to keep us invested in the story as well as to explain his ultimate decision to become a film director.
There are nods to Fellini throughout - some subtle, some obvious - including a scene where Fabietto accompanies his older brother to a cattle call audition for a Fellini film (another incident taken from Sorrentino's real life.) My initial gut reaction is to call this Sorrentino's Amarcord, but in truth, there's a soupcon of 8 1/2 in the mix as well, laced with the sensibilities of a man who came of age in the 1980s.
And then, there is this wonderful image: Fabietto comes upon a late-night film set in the heart of Naples. A scene is being shot in which a man in an impeccably tailored suit is hung by his heels high above the street, surrounded by beautiful rococo buildings. We get no context for this scene while it's being filmed, nor do we get any additional information when Fabietto is later shown watching the scene in a cinema. But it's a stunning, intriguing image all the same. And its so characteristic of Sorrentino's recent work, in which a lot of cool, visually interesting stuff is shot for no apparent reason other than it just looks interesting. Fortunately, The Hand of God has much more going on beneath its beautiful surface.
The Hand of God comes to Netflix on December 15, but it's really worth seeing on the big screen. Try to seek it out in theaters after December 3, if you can.
Babi Yar: Context
Babi Yar is a ravine near Kiev, Ukraine in which over 100,000 Jews were massacred by the German army in 1941. As per its title, this film is a chronological assembly of actual film footage shot before, during and after the time of the massacre, intended to put this horrific event into proper context. And it succeeds nobly, though it is a predictably tough watch.
The films opens with brief, grainy shots of Ukranian Jews being beaten and dragged through the streets of Kiev by their hair. It closes with the actual execution of twelve German officers who were charged with war crimes, a gruesome episode in which one officer appears to faint just before the gallows give way and the camera lingers on the twitching hands of another in the throes of death. Suffice it say that everything in between is sobering and properly shocking. (But be assured, there is no footage of the massacre itself.)
I chose to see this film because it was directed by Sergei Loznitsa, whose 2020 film State Funeral I greatly admired. State Funeral was a compilation of film footage shot during the national mourning period and funeral of Joseph Stalin, presented with some musical accompaniment but no narration or commentary. It was mostly fascinating, save for one long section in which Chopin's Funeral March is played on a seemingly endless repeating loop while mourners file past Stalin's open coffin.
Babi Yar; Context takes a similar approach to its material, offering only a handful of title cards to supply information that can't be gleaned from the footage itself. It's an important and worthwhile film, but definitely not for the faint of heart.
The Power of the Dog
I'd like to give you a tidy introductory summation of Jane Campion's new film, but it defies easy description or standard genre labels. It's shot on a ranch in Montana, but it's no Western. It has elements of a psychological thriller, but to call it such doesn't really get to the heart of its story either.
Whatever you call it, Benedict Cumberbatch is unnerving here as an inexplicably cruel and conniving rancher. He and his gentler, more refined brother (Jesse Plemons) run a family ranch together in uneasy partnership where Plemmons steadfastly deflects his brother's insults. When Plemmons meets and marries a sweet-tempered widow (Kirsten Dunst), Cumberbatch makes it his mission to undermine and unnerve her, and succeeds in driving her to drink. Dunst's teenage son, sensitive and shy, also becomes the target of Cumberbatch's nastiness.
What I've given you is a bare outline of the story. It's far more twisty and subtle than I can properly convey, and let's just say that at least two of these characters are not quite what they seem to be at first glance. Cumberbatch is electrifying in every scene, always managing to suggest a vulnerability - or at least some unplumbed complexity - beneath every wincingly nasty wisecrack. The gorgeously photographed landscape that surrounds them all is beautiful and forbidding at the same time. The film kept me off balance and guessing at things right up to the final shot (and apparently did the same for the rest of audience, judging by the conversations I overheard on my way out of the theater.)
The Power of the Dog will be in theaters in November, followed by a Netflix debut on December 5.
The Worst Person in the World
This Norwegian comedy-drama about a thirty-something woman's inability to settle on a career path or a partner is a pleasant, if not spectacular, way to spend a couple of hours. It's been compared by at least one critic to Frances Ha - an apt comparison, although this film is more distinctly European in its ambiguity. Its scenes wander in and around the characters emotions, without clearly defined comic beats or other cues to elicit desired audience reactions.
The film benefits from the fine lead performance of Renate Reinsve, a sweet-faced and subtle actress who comes off as likable and sympathetic even as her character makes selfish, ill-advised life choices. Her drift from job to job is played for laughs, while the scenes of her romantic break-ups are played with a realistic ambivalence and genuine pain.
I've seen a few films by this director (Joachim Trier), but I think this may be my favorite of his work. It's certainly the sunniest and sweetest of his films that I've seen.
