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By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Friday, January 18th, 2008 - 3 Comments »
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Sundance Day One – Pt 2 – Alone In Four Walls

I was blown away, with some restraint appropriate to the material, by Alone In Four Walls, Alexandra Westheimer’s shockingly beautiful and shockingly apolitical documentary about a juvenile hall in Russia.
The film really feels like a Kubrick documentary. The images are so stark, and well framed, and powerful that it is almost hard to believe at times that this isn’t staged… though I don’t think it is. The steady hand behind the camera is Westheimer’s husband and co-producer, Inigo. And he proves once again the power of a human face and a simple steady frame.
The film doesn’t really explore the juvie system itself, so much as a handful of boys who are in it. And even then, with a 100% absent narrator and a visual style that never feels like Q&A, you feel a bit like you are in the confessional with these boys.
It has to be 20 minutes before you actually see an adult anywhere in the film. The boys go through various aspects of their day like machines, perfectly tuned to the actions they are doing. They confess crimes to us as we see them going through the paces, no one watching too closely, no guards screaming and cursing. Of course, we will eventually see some supervision. But there is an almost creepy sense that these boys completely get that they have done wrong and that they like the discipline, once they get used to it.
But will they actually make it in the world?
As we ultimately meet some parents, spend time with the camp dentist, and watch one kid get his pillow just right on his perfectly made bed, just what we ARE seeing is not 100% clear. We are, I think, being invited to really let it seep in… to wonder… to hope… to fear.
The film doesn’t have the dramatic flourish of Born Into Brothels or Deliver Us From Evil, but it is complex documentation. And the images… my God… some of those images are the kinds that feature film makers dream of creating. Two boys washing a floor… it could have been The Shining.
It is one of the true oddities of the last few years that Ms. Westheimer did this film and another Alexandra, Alix Lambert, made The Mark of Cain, a fascinating look at prison tattoos in the Russian culture that was used by David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen as a guide to that world for Eastern Promises. For female filmmakers to put themselves in the situation of being so close to dangerous men is not to be discounted. And to get these results… to be applauded loudly. It’s like they can see past the machismo… even if we are being a little manipulated… amazing.
As for the rest, there are still two more films on today’s schedule for me… and a 1:30am Lunch With David interview with a living legend. Yippee Kay Yo!

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3 Comments »

3 Responses to “Sundance Day One – Pt 2 – Alone In Four Walls”

  1. Hopscotch says:
    January 18, 2008 at 5:58 pm

    I’m guessing Redford.

  2. lazarus says:
    January 18, 2008 at 6:32 pm

    “Hey kid…how good are ya?”

  3. scooterzz says:
    January 18, 2008 at 7:41 pm

    dp — another nice spot on ‘aots’ (it looked like you might have flummoxed pierera with the olivia / cancer line)….. why don’t you promote these appearances here?….just wondering…..

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon