To see 60 films at a film festival is mad. I’m only half way through my fourth day and I can already tell you that. Of course, having come down with the flu mere days before my experience as one of the Melbourne International Film Festival’s official blogathon participants hasn’t helped matters.
Within these brief few days – I will be reporting into here every few days as well as daily on my personal blog Stale Popcorn – I’ve experienced pretty much everything a film festival can offer. There have been amazing films, walk outs, technical issues, social interraction, mid-film sleeps and crazy patrons screaming for no apparent reason.
Robert De Niro in Martin Scorsese's King of Comedy
The festival began for me with a retrospective screening of Martin Scorsese’s forgotten classic The King of Comedy (1982). Long relegated to the second tier of Scorsese’s resume, I think it’s about time this brutal satire of celebrity was given the credit it deserves. With Robert De Niro acting, perhaps, the best performance of his career and Sandra Bernhard giving one of my own personal favourite performances of all time, I can’t recommend the film enough, even if it is only on DVD.
Another hit for the early days of the festival was the latest film by Danish provocateur Lars von Trier- Melancholia. Two years after the controversial horror play of Antichrist, he returns with this stunning science fiction film about a mysterious, newly-discovered planet that is on a destructive path towards Earth. On the human side, however, it is about two sisters played by Kirsten Dunst (in her Cannes best actress winning performance) and Charlotte Gainsbourg with differing grips on reality. Dunst’s Justine is clearly a depressed woman who does her best to hide it from her family and new husband (Alexander Skarsgård). It’s a splendid film and von Trier, who also wrote the screenplay, has really fascinating things to say about depression and I loved the way he weaves dramatic visual effects sequences into the film as if they’re common place.
Kristen Dunst in Lars von Trier's Melancholia
The other truly great film so far this festival has been Sundance and Cannes hit Martha Marcy May Marlene, the debut feature by Sean Durkin that explores the destructive force of a cult-like commune on a young girl. Played by Elizabeth Olsen (sister to Mary-Kate and Ashley, let’s get that out of the way), the character of Martha (the other names in the title are her alternate commune egos) is a troubled, disturbed enigma on the verge of cracking open. Haunted by paranoia from her time at the commune and worried her “family” will come to get her after a daring escape, Martha Marcy May Marlene is as brittle and deeply textured as the girl it frames. You can take the girl out of the cult, but you can’t take the cult out of the girl.
Elizabeth Olsen and Sarah Paulson in Martha Marcy May Marlene
Elsewhere, Richard Ayoade’s (The IT Crowd) Submarine is a delicately made British coming-of-age film set in the 1970s. With an utterly wonderful lead performance from Craig Roberts and lively supporting turns by Sally Hawkins (Made in Dagenham), Noah Taylor (Shine) and Paddy Considine (In America) as a hippy ninja, the film’s first half truly sparkles with a charming wit and brisk editing. Unfortunately a much darker second half makes for somewhat harder viewing. 13 Assassins, Takashi Miike’s Japanese samurai epic, on the other hand features a rather heavy backstory amidst its opening half that – and I will admit that the flu may have gotten the best of me here – was hard to follow (with opening subtitles that ran way too fast). Thankfully Miike’s film was enlivened by a bloody, fun and exhausting battle sequence that runs for around 30 minutes. It’s a great end to an otherwise familiar and overlong film.
Craig Roberts and Yasmin Paige in Submarine
Of the two documentaries I have seen there is definitely a clear winner. From Michael Epstein, a relative newcomer to feature documentaries, comes LennoNYC, an exhaustive and expansive look at the years John Lennon lived in New York City after fleeing the scrutiny heaped upon himself and wife Yoko Ono in the UK. Ono granted the filmmakers use of her exclusive video and audio tapes and the film proves to be a wonderful tribute to the man, the woman and the city itself.
Michael Epstein's LennoNYC
Technical difficulties are a fact of life at a film festival as expansive as MIFF, but the issues experienced on Saturday’s screening of Werner Herzog’s (Grizzly Man) 3D documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams caused a near riot in the cinema! It was like nothing I had ever witnessed before. As the film began and the sound was wildly out of tune, the near sold out crowd erupted into a mass of stamping feet, booing, hooting and chanting. The film eventually screened properly and turned out to be a rather drowsy look at historically important cave drawings with only occasionally noteworthy 3D to enliven the proceedings. Unfortunately for the crowd again, the film broke down twice within the final minutes resulting in walk outs and angry patrons.
An unfortunate incident that has made the storytelling rounds. “Did you hear about Cave of Forgotten Dreams?” they ask. Oops. Such is life. And now I must carry on. Until we meet again…
Great round up Glenn. Really looking forward to Melancholia!