Cinephilia: 36th Wellington Film Festival Preview

It’s Film Fes­ti­val time of year, that two and a half week peri­od when watch­ing three films a day becomes more than shame­ful self-indul­gence, its almost oblig­a­tory.

Like life itself, prepar­ing for the Film Fes­ti­val is all about choic­es. You start with a vir­gin pro­gramme and then, over a peri­od of weeks, notes are scrawled, dates are checked, friends are con­sult­ed and pre­views like this are read and then dis­card­ed. You check the timetable won­der­ing whether you can leave work to, er, post a let­ter for a cou­ple of hours on Fri­day morn­ing; you find your­self at lunchtime check­ing how long it real­ly does take to walk briskly between Te Papa and The Embassy, and you try and for­get those moments dur­ing past Fes­ti­vals when you come out of a dis­ap­point­ing but wor­thy Finnish dra­ma at the Para­mount and pass hordes of hap­py peo­ple who saw the extra­or­di­nary Japan­ese ani­ma­tion at The Embassy instead.

The whit­tling is relent­less as the forces of time and space require choic­es to be made. To add an oth­er lay­er of com­pli­ca­tion to your per­son­al process here’s my list of the less obvi­ous options, some of which I’ve been lucky enough to pre­view, but most­ly I’m hang­ing out to see them like every­one else.

The rest of the pre­view, after the jump.

This year guest pro­gram­mer Richard King has come up with the most extra­or­di­nary ret­ro­spec­tive selec­tion I’ve ever seen at a Fes­ti­val, a stun­ning sur­vey of the last great icon­o­clas­tic peri­od of Amer­i­can Cin­e­ma — the out­law 70’s. I have to see all of them on the big screen or my life won’t be com­plete but I can par­tic­u­lar­ly rec­om­mend Five Easy Pieces (Rafel­son), The Long Good­bye (Alt­man) and The Last Pic­ture Show (Bog­danovich) to those not as com­mit­ted as I am.

Of the oth­er fea­tures in the Fes­ti­val, the one that comes clos­est to that 70’s indie spir­it is Half Nel­son (Ryan Fleck), star­ring Ryan Gosling (soon to star Peter Jackson’s The Love­ly Bones). He plays an inspir­ing inner city teacher with a drug prob­lem and it’s a won­der­ful per­for­mance in a very good film. Also nom­i­nat­ed for an Acad­e­my Award this year was Mag­gie Gyl­len­haal for Sher­ry­ba­by (Lau­rie Col­ly­er). There’s anoth­er fine per­for­mance in The Ital­ian (Andrei Kravhchuk), from 6‑year-old Vanya Sol­nt­sev as a young orphan look­ing for his moth­er. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.

Ten min­utes into Deep Water (Louise Ormond, Jer­ry Roth­well) and you’re think­ing that they real­ly can make a doc­u­men­tary about any­thing these days — the 1968 Round The World Yacht Race of all things. Then it starts turn­ing mad, like the cen­tral char­ac­ter, and you’re hooked. Quite bril­liant, don’t let any­body tell you the sto­ry before you’ve seen it.

Oth­er doc­u­men­tary high­lights include a lov­ing and ten­der por­trait of the great Joe Strum­mer: The Future is Unwrit­ten (Julien Tem­ple). Strum­mer liked noth­ing more than gath­er­ing friends around a camp­fire and Tem­ple has done the same — wit­ness­es to Strummer’s life tell their sto­ries lit by flick­er­ing orange flames, accom­pa­nied by that famil­iar crack­le. Not pre­viewed, but on my list is The Bridge (Eric Steel), about jumpers from San Francisco’s Gold­en Gate, and Hel­veti­ca (Gary Hus­twit) which tells the sto­ry of the font (you might know its slight­ly deformed cousin Ari­al).

Don’t miss Al Barry’s lat­est roast­ing of the right, A Civilised Soci­ety. Bar­ry uses exem­plary research to tell the oth­er side of the bru­tal eco­nom­ic reform sto­ry, this time focus­ing on edu­ca­tion.

The Dev­il Came on Horse­back (Annie Sudf­berg, Ric­ki Stern) is already the most depress­ing film I’ll see this year. Not just for the doc­u­ment­ed Dar­fur atroc­i­ties which take up the first half, but for the world’s self-imposed blind­ness and the futile attempts at enlight­en­ment that are the sec­ond half.

The lat­est Van­i­ty Fair reminds us that few­er than half of one per­cent of the death rate in Africa is due to famine or war. A por­trait of a vig­or­ous, alter­na­tive life in Africa is found in the vivid Bamako (Abder­rah­mane Sis­sako) as the peo­ple of Mali argue their case for eco­nom­ic inde­pen­dence and respect.

Also notable: Matthew Sav­ille’s Noise is a hid­den gem with some fine char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion; the finest short sto­ry writer in the world (Alice Munro) is adapt­ed by Sarah Pol­ley in Away From Her; Lars Von Tri­er says he is retir­ing due to depres­sion — office com­e­dy The Boss of It All may well be his final fling; and the best title in the Fes­ti­val goes to No Mer­cy for the Rude — for every­one who feels the need to talk dur­ing the movie.

Print­ed in Wellington’s Cap­i­tal Times, Wednes­day 18 July 2007.

Cross-post­ed to Funer­als & Snakes.