Munich Film Festival III
Jul. 7th, 2019 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakRest of the Munich Film Festival for yours truly:
Angelo, directed by Markus Schleinzer: this one was a case of „director, I completely agree with the. point you‘re making, I get why you make it this way, but I still wish you‘d have told the story differently (while still making said point)“. Based on the 18th century story of Angelo Soliman, who started out as a child slave, probably from Nigeria, was sold from noble to noble until ending up in Austria where… well, that’s part of both the rl story and the one the movie tells. It works with some Brechtian elements – every now and then, the characters freeze in tableaus or there are other means to point out what you’re watching is staged, starting with the scene in which not-yet-Angelo is sold which ends with the camera pulling up and revealing we’re in a studio. But that’s not what I found off putting, though it emphasizes the „you’re about to learn a moral lesson“ thing.
Again, it’s not that I object to the lesson in question. The movie while avoiding the usual tropes and means – no one gets whipped or raped – manages to hammer down the inhumanity of slavery and the sheer callousness of the Europeans, including those considering themselves benevolent patrons. (Incidentally: Angelo is the only named character. The others are credited as „the Comtesse“, „the Emperor“, „Angelo’s wife“ etc. „Angelo“, of course, is not his real name, which we never learn. German wiki entry for the rl person says it’s lost, English wiki entry offers a Nigerian name but doesn’t indicate the source.) The Comtesse first buys a black child out of several, names him Angelo, and when he sickens and dies early on, buys another child giving him the same name. (It hardly needs Angelo II, the movie’s central character, bonding with the parrot for the audience to get he’s a cute adorable pet to her.) The prince who acquires the adult musician Angelo pretends to value him until he finds out Angelo has secretly married a white woman. The Emperor, based on Joseph II (if you’ve seen Amadeus, you might recall „Too many notes“), says he enjoys talking to Angelo but what he really does is monologueing philosophically at him, with Angelo making the very occasional philosophical remark back, and when help is really needed, the Emperor leaves it at a philosophical observation as well. The only white person treating Angelo as something other than a decorative set piece is his future wife, and just when you think that in the scenes with her he’s finally more than a reflection of what the white person du jour wants him to be, there’s the tragic turn (after they’ve been found out) when she asks him to talk to her instead of brood, he repeats the first French phrases he learned („My name is Angelo. I am very happy here.“) which his first owner, the Comtesse, had him say.
The final, historically based insult comes after his death (as an old man) when his dead body is mumified and used as an exhibition piece as an „African savage“ in the museum, which his daughter sees to her horror. (It burned in 1848, so doesn’t exist anymore.) Again, the utter inhumanity is conveyed in a devastating way throughout without once a physically brutal act being shown. But Angelo, the person, remains elusive. You can not tell what he thinks of any of the other characters (with the arguable exceptions of his wife and daughter), what he wants. It’s his wife who later wonders whether he started the relationship because he knew it would infuriate owner No.2 so much that the guy would let him go, but whether this is the case or not is impossible to say because the various boys and men playing Angelo are directed tob e essentially passive mirrors, pointing out the evilness of the system and its participants. Angelo is a moral lesson, not a character in his own right. And I would have liked a story where this is not the case.
Canción sin nombre, a Peruvian movie directed by Melina Léon: speaking of lessons. In this movie, Georgina (of indigenous descent) makes the mistake of going to a supposed free clinic and ends up with her baby stolen directly after birth and no one listening to her until journalist Pedro takes up the case. Pedro is gay (signalling to the audience he and Georgina won’t rend up as a romantic couple) and has just started a relationship with an actor; hi spart of the movie makes it feel like a 70s feature a la All the President’s Men, as he uncovers rings of corruption around the trade with human beings. It’s a black and white movie, which further enhances the period atmosphere, set in the 1980s, and as befits a film noir, the ending highly ambigous – one human trade ring is exposed but only mid level culprits arrested, and when Pedro asks someone at the ministry why there hasn’t yet been an effort to actually track down the sold babies, the official condescendingly tells him that the babies surely are better off where they are now than with mothers like that, and Georgina will not get her child back. The actress playing Georgina, Pamela Mendoza Arpi, plays the raw despair well throughout, and Tommy Párraga as Pedro is very likeable, but I had again a divided reaction: while in a deeply corrupt system a complete victory and finding of the baby would have been unrealistic and not fitting the genre, I still wished our two main characters would have been given happier endings. (Pedro broke up with his boyfriend when he started to get threats; breaking-up for the other person’s good without telling said other person what the hell is going on is one of my least favourite tropes.) Ah well.
Chuskit: delightful (despite the sad premise) and charming Tibetan-Indian movie directed by Priya Ramasubban. It ran as part of the programm aimed at children, but I found it just as suited for adults. Our heroine Chuskit starts out as a little girl living in a Tibetan village (located in India, part of the Tibetan settlements there which accumulated during the last decades) with her family, just about to start school when through a terrible accident she loses the use of her legs. Cue three years time skip, after which we meet Chuskit again, and the way she won‘t give up and how her family helps her somewhow manages to come across as deeply felt and engaging instead of corny. It‘s a film without villains, other than Chuskit‘s physical state which is no one‘s fault; she butts heads with her grandfather a lot, but the movie makes it clear this is mostly due to a) Chuskit‘s increasing chaffing at the way her state confined her, which the grandfather, who as opposed to the other family members isn‘t working anymore and hence around a lopt, often serves as a lightning rod to, b) her grandfather‘s traditionalism and fear Chuskit will only be hurt further if she doesn‘t accept her limitations, not any ill will on his part. All the family members - Chuskit‘s geeky brother, who turns his scientific curiosity into inventing ways and means to help his sister with every day problems, her father, who works as a sherpa, and her mother, who usally ends up as the mediator between Chuskit and her grandfather - come across vividly, and so does the village they live in. The movie has a hopeful message of a community being able to help each other and a freedom of malice which these days really felt refreshing to me.
Tel Aviv on Fire, directed by Sameh Zoabi: successful comedies featuring a cast of Palestinian and Israeli characters, set in the here and now, surely are a rarity. This one I found to be a gem. Salam got a job as a dogsbody on the set of the Palestinian soap opera „Tel Aviv on Fire“ (currently running a storyline where a brave Arab spy (female) is undercover to seduce an Israeli general and also involved with her handler). Due to living in Jerusalem while the soap is filmed in Ramallah, he has to pass checkpoints on a daily basis. On one occasion, he ends up questioned by Israeli commander Assi and tries to impress him by claiming to be a writer of the show. As is a comedy‘s wont, this claim ends up in Assi offering plot suggestions for the soap and before you know it, Salam is a writer, the soap now has the spy developing real feelings for her mark, and the torrid love triangle captivates an Israeli audience as well as an Arab one, though they have very different ideas as to what the ending should be... The way the movie makes fun of soap operas is with much affection for the subject, the gags all had me in stitches, and I cared about Salam, Assi and the other characters a lot. (I even found myself wondering which soap twist would satisfy both sides. *g*)
Il Primo Re: directed by Matteo Rovere. One of those movies with the laudable aim of using a dead language in a spoken way. To wit: in this case, a kind of proto-Latin to fit the setting, the mythical founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus. The brutality level is about the same as, say, Spartacus (the tv show), which is to say it can get very gory indeed. I understood fragments of the proto Latin, no more, so the subtitles were essential. They went for an archaic atmosphere, minimum dialogue, and to me it felt a bit more stone than iron age, plus other than the twins and the priestess, no one got anything resembling characterisation. And of the twins, Romulus was incapacitated two thirds of the movie, only aquiring his personality in the last third. And yet, the result had my attention.
Of the myth it was based on, basically the only elements to survive were: Romulus & Remus are twins and shepherds, there is hostile contact with Alba Longa, they come up with rag tag followers, crossing a line (a literal one, in the ground) triggers but does not cause (earlier causes were given) fratricide. Anything else – their mother being a priestess, the requisite evil throne stealing uncle, being suckled by a she wolf, sons of Mars etc – is gone. We start with the two of them nearly getting drowned by a flood of the Tiber, emphasizing their closeness and being there for the other, but at this point it’s hard to say which twin is which, and the fact the twins as well as other prisoners taken by men of Alba spent a lot of movie time nearly nude in the mud doesn’t help. Romulus gets wounded during their break from captivity, during which they also take the local priestess hostage (she turns out to be the proto Vestal), and it’s at this point distinguishable characterisation kicks in, as Remus prevents the other escaped prisoners from ditching and/or killing his brother (who due to being wounded is slowing them down) by first outfighting everyone and then by hunting a mighty deer that feeds the lot and enables them to survive. Crowned by him declaring himself their king. If you know which twin will survive in the end (as you should, because that town in Italy isn’t called Rema, is it?), you know this building up of Remus is due to a tragic twist, and sure enough, when the priestess prophecies only one of the brothers will survive to found an empire, Remus does not take it well, declares he doesn’t need the gods and will be his own god from now on and developes a case of ruthless hubris during which he leads their not so merry band to slaughter the next helpless village. The recovering Romulus in the end sides with the surviving villagers and reignites the nearly extinguished fire of the by then dead proto vestal, appointing one of the village girls her successor. Cue tragic fight and fulfilled prophecy. As I said, the only actors actually getting to do something beyond what stunt people do are the ones playing the twins and the first Vestal, and of them, Alessandro Borghi as Remus carries the majority of the film, selling all the aspects – co dependent loving and protective brother, ruthless and hubristic tragic hero in the Aristotelian sense.
Angelo, directed by Markus Schleinzer: this one was a case of „director, I completely agree with the. point you‘re making, I get why you make it this way, but I still wish you‘d have told the story differently (while still making said point)“. Based on the 18th century story of Angelo Soliman, who started out as a child slave, probably from Nigeria, was sold from noble to noble until ending up in Austria where… well, that’s part of both the rl story and the one the movie tells. It works with some Brechtian elements – every now and then, the characters freeze in tableaus or there are other means to point out what you’re watching is staged, starting with the scene in which not-yet-Angelo is sold which ends with the camera pulling up and revealing we’re in a studio. But that’s not what I found off putting, though it emphasizes the „you’re about to learn a moral lesson“ thing.
Again, it’s not that I object to the lesson in question. The movie while avoiding the usual tropes and means – no one gets whipped or raped – manages to hammer down the inhumanity of slavery and the sheer callousness of the Europeans, including those considering themselves benevolent patrons. (Incidentally: Angelo is the only named character. The others are credited as „the Comtesse“, „the Emperor“, „Angelo’s wife“ etc. „Angelo“, of course, is not his real name, which we never learn. German wiki entry for the rl person says it’s lost, English wiki entry offers a Nigerian name but doesn’t indicate the source.) The Comtesse first buys a black child out of several, names him Angelo, and when he sickens and dies early on, buys another child giving him the same name. (It hardly needs Angelo II, the movie’s central character, bonding with the parrot for the audience to get he’s a cute adorable pet to her.) The prince who acquires the adult musician Angelo pretends to value him until he finds out Angelo has secretly married a white woman. The Emperor, based on Joseph II (if you’ve seen Amadeus, you might recall „Too many notes“), says he enjoys talking to Angelo but what he really does is monologueing philosophically at him, with Angelo making the very occasional philosophical remark back, and when help is really needed, the Emperor leaves it at a philosophical observation as well. The only white person treating Angelo as something other than a decorative set piece is his future wife, and just when you think that in the scenes with her he’s finally more than a reflection of what the white person du jour wants him to be, there’s the tragic turn (after they’ve been found out) when she asks him to talk to her instead of brood, he repeats the first French phrases he learned („My name is Angelo. I am very happy here.“) which his first owner, the Comtesse, had him say.
The final, historically based insult comes after his death (as an old man) when his dead body is mumified and used as an exhibition piece as an „African savage“ in the museum, which his daughter sees to her horror. (It burned in 1848, so doesn’t exist anymore.) Again, the utter inhumanity is conveyed in a devastating way throughout without once a physically brutal act being shown. But Angelo, the person, remains elusive. You can not tell what he thinks of any of the other characters (with the arguable exceptions of his wife and daughter), what he wants. It’s his wife who later wonders whether he started the relationship because he knew it would infuriate owner No.2 so much that the guy would let him go, but whether this is the case or not is impossible to say because the various boys and men playing Angelo are directed tob e essentially passive mirrors, pointing out the evilness of the system and its participants. Angelo is a moral lesson, not a character in his own right. And I would have liked a story where this is not the case.
Canción sin nombre, a Peruvian movie directed by Melina Léon: speaking of lessons. In this movie, Georgina (of indigenous descent) makes the mistake of going to a supposed free clinic and ends up with her baby stolen directly after birth and no one listening to her until journalist Pedro takes up the case. Pedro is gay (signalling to the audience he and Georgina won’t rend up as a romantic couple) and has just started a relationship with an actor; hi spart of the movie makes it feel like a 70s feature a la All the President’s Men, as he uncovers rings of corruption around the trade with human beings. It’s a black and white movie, which further enhances the period atmosphere, set in the 1980s, and as befits a film noir, the ending highly ambigous – one human trade ring is exposed but only mid level culprits arrested, and when Pedro asks someone at the ministry why there hasn’t yet been an effort to actually track down the sold babies, the official condescendingly tells him that the babies surely are better off where they are now than with mothers like that, and Georgina will not get her child back. The actress playing Georgina, Pamela Mendoza Arpi, plays the raw despair well throughout, and Tommy Párraga as Pedro is very likeable, but I had again a divided reaction: while in a deeply corrupt system a complete victory and finding of the baby would have been unrealistic and not fitting the genre, I still wished our two main characters would have been given happier endings. (Pedro broke up with his boyfriend when he started to get threats; breaking-up for the other person’s good without telling said other person what the hell is going on is one of my least favourite tropes.) Ah well.
Chuskit: delightful (despite the sad premise) and charming Tibetan-Indian movie directed by Priya Ramasubban. It ran as part of the programm aimed at children, but I found it just as suited for adults. Our heroine Chuskit starts out as a little girl living in a Tibetan village (located in India, part of the Tibetan settlements there which accumulated during the last decades) with her family, just about to start school when through a terrible accident she loses the use of her legs. Cue three years time skip, after which we meet Chuskit again, and the way she won‘t give up and how her family helps her somewhow manages to come across as deeply felt and engaging instead of corny. It‘s a film without villains, other than Chuskit‘s physical state which is no one‘s fault; she butts heads with her grandfather a lot, but the movie makes it clear this is mostly due to a) Chuskit‘s increasing chaffing at the way her state confined her, which the grandfather, who as opposed to the other family members isn‘t working anymore and hence around a lopt, often serves as a lightning rod to, b) her grandfather‘s traditionalism and fear Chuskit will only be hurt further if she doesn‘t accept her limitations, not any ill will on his part. All the family members - Chuskit‘s geeky brother, who turns his scientific curiosity into inventing ways and means to help his sister with every day problems, her father, who works as a sherpa, and her mother, who usally ends up as the mediator between Chuskit and her grandfather - come across vividly, and so does the village they live in. The movie has a hopeful message of a community being able to help each other and a freedom of malice which these days really felt refreshing to me.
Tel Aviv on Fire, directed by Sameh Zoabi: successful comedies featuring a cast of Palestinian and Israeli characters, set in the here and now, surely are a rarity. This one I found to be a gem. Salam got a job as a dogsbody on the set of the Palestinian soap opera „Tel Aviv on Fire“ (currently running a storyline where a brave Arab spy (female) is undercover to seduce an Israeli general and also involved with her handler). Due to living in Jerusalem while the soap is filmed in Ramallah, he has to pass checkpoints on a daily basis. On one occasion, he ends up questioned by Israeli commander Assi and tries to impress him by claiming to be a writer of the show. As is a comedy‘s wont, this claim ends up in Assi offering plot suggestions for the soap and before you know it, Salam is a writer, the soap now has the spy developing real feelings for her mark, and the torrid love triangle captivates an Israeli audience as well as an Arab one, though they have very different ideas as to what the ending should be... The way the movie makes fun of soap operas is with much affection for the subject, the gags all had me in stitches, and I cared about Salam, Assi and the other characters a lot. (I even found myself wondering which soap twist would satisfy both sides. *g*)
Il Primo Re: directed by Matteo Rovere. One of those movies with the laudable aim of using a dead language in a spoken way. To wit: in this case, a kind of proto-Latin to fit the setting, the mythical founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus. The brutality level is about the same as, say, Spartacus (the tv show), which is to say it can get very gory indeed. I understood fragments of the proto Latin, no more, so the subtitles were essential. They went for an archaic atmosphere, minimum dialogue, and to me it felt a bit more stone than iron age, plus other than the twins and the priestess, no one got anything resembling characterisation. And of the twins, Romulus was incapacitated two thirds of the movie, only aquiring his personality in the last third. And yet, the result had my attention.
Of the myth it was based on, basically the only elements to survive were: Romulus & Remus are twins and shepherds, there is hostile contact with Alba Longa, they come up with rag tag followers, crossing a line (a literal one, in the ground) triggers but does not cause (earlier causes were given) fratricide. Anything else – their mother being a priestess, the requisite evil throne stealing uncle, being suckled by a she wolf, sons of Mars etc – is gone. We start with the two of them nearly getting drowned by a flood of the Tiber, emphasizing their closeness and being there for the other, but at this point it’s hard to say which twin is which, and the fact the twins as well as other prisoners taken by men of Alba spent a lot of movie time nearly nude in the mud doesn’t help. Romulus gets wounded during their break from captivity, during which they also take the local priestess hostage (she turns out to be the proto Vestal), and it’s at this point distinguishable characterisation kicks in, as Remus prevents the other escaped prisoners from ditching and/or killing his brother (who due to being wounded is slowing them down) by first outfighting everyone and then by hunting a mighty deer that feeds the lot and enables them to survive. Crowned by him declaring himself their king. If you know which twin will survive in the end (as you should, because that town in Italy isn’t called Rema, is it?), you know this building up of Remus is due to a tragic twist, and sure enough, when the priestess prophecies only one of the brothers will survive to found an empire, Remus does not take it well, declares he doesn’t need the gods and will be his own god from now on and developes a case of ruthless hubris during which he leads their not so merry band to slaughter the next helpless village. The recovering Romulus in the end sides with the surviving villagers and reignites the nearly extinguished fire of the by then dead proto vestal, appointing one of the village girls her successor. Cue tragic fight and fulfilled prophecy. As I said, the only actors actually getting to do something beyond what stunt people do are the ones playing the twins and the first Vestal, and of them, Alessandro Borghi as Remus carries the majority of the film, selling all the aspects – co dependent loving and protective brother, ruthless and hubristic tragic hero in the Aristotelian sense.
