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10/08/2003 Entry:
"CIFF Days Four And Five"
On Monday I arrived at Landmark to see Manoel de Oliveira's A Talking Picture, only to discover it sold out. It seems like a lot more screenings are selling out this year, last year I bought almost nothing in advance and I don't think I got sold out of anything. This year I've already been bummered twice. I think I have tickets for everything else I want to see going forward, so I should be good from here on out. Oh, except upon my arrival Monday I discovered that one of the weekend's films had been bumped in order to show Michael Haneke's Time Of The Wolf. I'm going to attempt to get to this on Sunday, but it seems unlikely. My Sunday is already pretty full and I'm going to a wedding on Saturday. Freaking wedding during the film festival. Where are people's priorities?
I ended up instead going to see Twilight Samurai, a film from Japan about an aging samurai named Iguchi fallen on hard times in a changing era. This film evoked The Seven Samurai in its presentation of the samurai as heroes whose time has passed, but otherwise it was a very different film. It really focused more on Iguchi's personal troubles as a single father supporting two daughters and an aging mother, while attempting to defend the honor of his childhood sweetheart. Very little action or swordplay, this plays more like a film about a samurai than as a samurai film. I have to say it was really quite lovely. The cinematography was beautiful, and the actors heartfelt and believable. Twilight Samurai won several Japanese "Oscars" and it is well worth seeing, although the last couple minutes were a little bit too much. There are also some nods to Apocalypse Now in the last reel which were kind of surreal in a way. Not what I expected at that particular juncture. This is out on Region 2 DVD with English subtitles, and well worth checking out.
Day Five brought two films. The first was That Day from Raoul Ruiz. I had never seen any Ruiz, and apparently this is not one of his best, which is good to hear because I didn't like it at all. It is a "wacky" murder story about an insane man set free to kill an insane woman so that her father can steal her inheritance, and he ends up killing just about everyone else. There were some semi-amusing moments of interaction between the two police officers "investigating" the case, but otherwise I didn't get much out of this. Everytime one of the two main characters screamed I wanted to run away. I do have to say that from a craft standpoint, this was quite excellent. A lot of really assured camera work and fantastic shots. Excellent use of shallow focus at various points. That makes me more hopeful that the rest of Ruiz' work will be more enjoyable.
The second film was Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Bright Future. This started at exactly the same time as That Day ended, and I ended up bailing on That Day early to go get a good seat for Bright Future. This is noteworthy because I NEVER leave films early. I really couldn't see any reason to stay to the end for that one though. Bright Future is also supposed to be uncharacteristic for Kurosawa, which again is nice to hear because I didn't much care for this either. An aimless tale of disaffected youth, it reminded me vaguely of Jia Zhang Ke's Unknown Pleasures, which I saw last year and also didn't like. The only character I felt anything for in this film was the jellyfish. However, again, there was some craft here to be admired, and some shots that were quite beautiful. The film was shot on a wide variety of formats and stocks, and some of it was really striking.
If there is anything bad about the Cubs being in the league championships, it is that the traffic around the two film festival venues blows ass. Both these places are within walking distance of Wrigley, and it just makes the already hellish parking situation that much worse. Also Cubs fans, could you please not park in my neighborhood just to be able to walk to the train? Thanks fuckers.
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