By Leonard Klady Klady@moviecitynews.com
Confessions of a Film Festival Junkie: AFI 2014
Gary Essert spent close to a decade raising money and fighting industry resistance before the curtain rose on FilmEx back in 1971. It was the first truly international and substantial celebration of global cinema in the city that thinks of itself as the movie capital of the world. Now Los Angeles has two such events (and myriad specialty/niche movie showcases). AFI Fest gets underway Thursday with the world premiere of A Most Violent Year kicking off the show. For the record AFI connects back to FilmEx as the institution came aboard shortly after the latter’s board forced Essert out and that panel proved incapable of running the operation.
AFI Fest is slightly more international and glitzier than the LA International Film Fest that unspools in the summer. The differences between the two extravaganzas don’t appear to reflect mandate, constituency or gestalt. It’s simply about the calendar.
The summer positioning of LAIFF has provided the inclusion of several summer blockbusters to pump up attention. It’s sandwiched between Cannes in May and pre-fall behemoths Toronto and Venice resulting in that most of the vaunted Cannes titles prefer to wait until the Canadian festival to launch a North American offensive and the other yet to premiere anticipated films do likewise.
The current festival is in some respects the first major salvo of Los Angeles’ award season. It’s dotted with the likes of such critical darlings as Inherent Vice, Mr. Turner and closing night selection Foxcatcher. There are also several handfuls of Oscar foreign-language submissions and many documentary entries that clearly hope to find favor with the Academy membership.
All the above, regardless of the quality of selection, invariably tilts AFI FEST toward a festival of festivals rather than a festival of discovery sensibility. It’s not so much a bias as an inevitable perception. There are a sufficient number of films arriving with a pedigree or a marquee value that acts like a magnet for the media and public. And that just makes it a little bit harder for the selections from yet unheralded filmmakers and national cinemas to emerge from the fray.
One can persuasively argue that the local audience (neither event attracts much of an out-of-town crowd) isn’t as adventurous about film as similar events in Seattle, San Francisco or Chicago. It therefore follows that it’s wise to program pre-tested movies and keep one’s fingers crossed that the tom toms will beat melodiously for a few films yet to have gained a reputation.
AFI Fest runs simultaneous with the American Film Market and there have been frustrating attempts in the past to marry these respective purveyors of “show” and “business.” However with one situated in Hollywood and the other in Santa Monica there’s no convenient method of bringing the two together or reducing a commute of more than an hour during peak traffic periods.
On a more positive note the event is putting a bright spotlight on Sophia Loren and that’s certainly a warm and deserved celebration. In the coming days there will be tips and anecdotes that hopefully will make the event a slighter smoother ride.
DAY 2
Feast or famine?
Far from the worst thing you could do today is plunk down in cinema 6 of the Chinese and catch a triple bill beginning at 2 p.m. with Gett, The Trial of Vivianne Amsalem. Israeli’s Oscar submission is a gripping yarn of a woman seeking divorce and thwarted in her pursuit by her faith’s rabbinical laws.
It’s followed by the comparably depressing Two Days, One Night, the story of woman whose job is on the line when the company she works for downsizes. From Belgium’s exemplary filmmakers Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne and starring Marion Cotillard it truly makes you wonder about that country’s labor laws. The workers are given the choice of either taking a bonus or forfeiting the money in favor of allowing Cotillard’s Sandra to retain her position. She has the weekend to plead her case to her fellow employees prior to the vote. It’s not the Brothers best work and the actress’s presence is sometimes distracting in light of their penchant to use non-professionals. Nonetheless its facility to convey outrage, humiliation and pathos packs a real wallop.
Thankfully the trio’s conclusion is the Argentine Wild Tales (also Oscar submitted), as black a black comedy as one would hope to savor and outrageously hilarious. It’s comprised of a handful of vignettes that begin in the most ordinary or idyllic of circumstances with each tale evolving as matters go radically askew. Pedro Almodovar is one of the film’s producers and one can just feel him encouraging writer-director Damian Szifron to fly without a net.
Saturday’s other prospects include ’71, a late edition from the United Kingdom that focuses on a young soldier posted in Belfast in that fateful year. It was recently nominated for major awards including best feature at the British Independent Awards.
And there is, of course, P.T. Anderson’s Inherent Vice that premiered at the recent New York Film Festival. Based upon the novel by the reclusive Thomas Pynchon the 1960s-set film noir is unconventional as one would anticipate from both the filmmaker and the enigmatic writer.
Sunday’s slate also provides some choice options including Mike Leigh’s sublime Mr. Turner on England’s masterful 19th century landscape painter J.M.W. Turner. Timothy Spall deservedly received top acting honors at the most recent Cannes festival and has to be considered for an Oscar. Focusing on Turner’s life after he achieved acclaim it’s a masterful meditation on class and taste and the mores of the day and arguably the filmmaker’s career masterwork.
Echoing Saturday one could camp out at the Chinese 1 and enjoy a trio of treats. Leviathan—Russia’s Oscar submission—is a refreshingly frank drama set in a small coastal town where a less than peerless protagonist is facing expropriation. In the throes of personal dilemmas, the rampant corruption of local authority soon melds into an absorbing nightmare that threatens to turn tragic at every turn.
Then stay put for The Salt of the Earth, Wim Wenders and Juliano Salgado’s unconventional and penetrating portrait of the great photographer Sebastiao Salgado. It’s difficult to explain but the visuals and narrative and Wenders’ laconic, elliptical approach manage to capture the soul of an artist in a most potent fashion.
Wrapping up the day is Haemoo (yes, South Korea’s Oscar submission), based on a real life incident involving a smuggling operation that seriously went wrong. Set in a small fishing village circa 1998 it centers on a trawler captain who can’t make ends meet legitimately and takes the job of coyote for Chinese immigrants. Anchored by a variegated performance by Kim Yun-seok, the film conveys a quiet desperation and an inevitable cataclysm from the consequences of bad decisions.
