i saw four movies yesterday at the film festival. a new record. i've always wondered if i have a limit--if there is a certain number of films in the theater that would just be too much for me. i've done three a bunch of times, and always felt like i could see another one when i came out. well, i think i reached my limit yesterday.
the four i saw were as different as different could be. first, i saw dear pyongyang. it was a slow-moving documentary filmed in the "home movies" style. in fact, i think it was just a home movie. the entire film was shot on a hand camera and the only characters are the filmmaker's family. despite how this sounds so far, i liked it a lot.
the basic idea is that the korean community in japan largely dates back to before korea was divided into north and south. because koreans do not have japanese citizenship, they have to choose which korea will be their "fatherland", and that choice is largely based on politics. the filmmaker's father was a true believer communist in the 1950s and chose north korea, even though his village is in what is now south korea. you see him, 50 years later, still loyal to his "fatherland" despite the reality of the situation. in the 1970s the father even sent his three sons to settle in north korea (they are called "returnees" even though they had never been there before). once the sons arrived in pyongyang, they were never allowed to leave. the camera includes interviews with the parents, and follows them for several visits to pyongyang. before the film i never had a glimpse of what life in pyongyang is like. it actually wasn't as bad as i imagined, but it is fascinating to see the filmmaker's father trying so desperately to believe in the country, and the filmmaker struggle to figure out why her father would remain loyal to such a place.
next i saw zozo, another strong movie, but very different. "zozo" is about a small boy in beirut during the lebanese civil war. the first half of the movie takes place in beirut, alternating between ordinary scenes of a kid growing up, and horrific moments when the war intrudes. meanwhile, zozo's grandfather lives in sweden and is trying to arrange to get the family to emigrate there. about a third of the way through the film, something really bad happens, and zozo is forced to make his way to sweden on his own. the second half of the film is about zozo's difficulties adjusting to life in sweden. i'm a sucker for any movie with arabic in it, but i still think you'd enjoy it even if you don't give extra points for the language. besides, the film really reminded me of another movie i like a lot, west beyrouth, which also looked at the lebanese civil war through they eyes of a child.
still not tired of all this, i moved on to the wedding party, which, unfortunately i didn't like that much. "the wedding party" is one of those films about a disagreement that escalates and escalates and then gets completely out of control. these kind of movies can be frustrating--they usually depend upon one or more unusually bullheaded characters, and i often spend the entire film wondering why they just can't work it out like grown-ups. the escalation film can be played either as a comedy or tragedy. "the wedding party," unfortunately, tries to be both and ends up being neither. it's not all that funny, and the characters are not sympathetic enough to be tragic. in the end, i never figured out what the whole point was
which brings me to the last film, the piano tuner of earthquakes. "piano tuner" is a surreal, mostly live action, but part stop-motion animation, fantasy film. some of the scenes were really gorgeous, and it was trying to be an edgy ambiguous sexually-charged fairytale. maybe it was because it was my fourth film of the day and i when i left the theater i had been awake for almost 20 hours straight, but it didn't really hold together for me--either because i didn't get it, or because it just doesn't hold together. it was like one of those artsy surreal shorts i sometimes enjoy watching, only stretched out over the course of two hours. as beautiful as some of the scenes were, they weren't enough to sustain the film over such a long period of time. and it's never a good sign when a fair number of people walk out after the first half hour.
so here i sit this morning, trying to decide what to do today. my ten movie pass is long spent. there are two films i want to see today, but i think after that i'm done with the festival. it ends on tuesday anyway. with mrs. noz gone i think i have finally answered the age-old question: can upyernoz overdose on film. the answer, it seems, is yes. maybe you have too with all these longwinded posts. almost done. bear with me.
