New pick for Dec. 9

Here's my pick to replace "Accident." Because of the delay, I hope no one will mind if we break an extra week and start again Dec. 9.

I've been meaning to see this for a few years. Sounds intriguing.




"A woman delves into the inner depths of her soul and resurfaces transformed in this 1962 film by French director Agnes Varda. Young singer Cleo (Corrine Marchand) strolls along the bustling Paris streets, pondering the meaning of life and her own existence as she awaits the results of her cancer biopsy. Cleo's observations offer a close look at Paris's rich street life, and desperation turns into hope when Cleo encounters a young soldier."

oooops

Folks, my pick for Dec. 3 is not out on DVD.

Participation seems a little lackluster. Shall we carry on?

Prequel and sequel

Do you have any desire to see the Elling prequel, Mors Elling (Mother’s Elling) or sequel, Elsk meg i morgen (Love Me Tomorrow)? Elsk meg i morgen, which had the same director as Elling, seems to have gotten okay reviews, but Mors Elling, which had a different director, was apparently widely disliked.

Norwegian politics

It seems like this film is saying a lot about Norwegian politics. One review I read said that Elling almost worshiped the head of the Labour Party partly because the Labour Party’s policies gave him his apartment. But I felt more like his love for the party must have come from his mother.

Did you get the feeling that someone who understands Norwegian politics would see a lot in this film that one would otherwise miss?

Acting

Per Christian Ellefsen (Elling) and Sven Nordin (Kjell Bjarne) played these roles in a stage version of Elling before the movie was made. One reviewer said this lent a “lived-in” quality to their performances. Do you agree?

Mental illness

Much of the negative criticism I’ve found on Elling centers around its treatment of mental illness. For one thing, it is unclear what is wrong with these two guys. In a sense, it seems like they have some unrealistic made-for-film mental illness.

On the other hand, much of the positive criticism of the movie is due to what it says about mental illness. Some reviewers thought it did a good job of using abnormal characters to show things about normal life. Other reviewers (ones who are perhaps skeptical of psychology and psychiatry) say that it says does a good job of teaching that the mentally ill “need a friendly kick in the pants.” (Yes, that’s an actual quote from a review by Ty Burr of the Boston Globe.)

What do you think of the film’s treatment of mental illness? Does it bother you that the film portrays it as inherently funny?

Comedy

Elling is clearly a comedy. But is it funny?

Christy's pick: "Accident"

Well, I watched what I thought would be my next Cinema Chatter pick ("Deathtrap") over the weekend, but I was pretty disappointed with the film. So I'm taking a gamble and going with a movie on my "must-see" list:



"Accident" was written by Harold Pinter and was a nominee for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, where it won the Grand Prize of the Jury.

And bonus, it doesn't look like anyone has seen it.

The bathroom scene

I know I'm the only one who was really crazy about this movie, so I'll do this one last post and then shut the hell up.

I thought the bathroom scene was very powerful and telling. It showed so many things, not the least of which was the absurdity of the entire situation. The poster mask was to hide her identity as a woman, and yet it brought to mind the Islamic veil — both meant to keep men's reactions in check and absurdly protect "virtue." The absurdity of the poster is the absurdity of the veil. The soldier, trained to be so concerned about virtue and propriety, couldn't keep track of his charge. He couldn't stop the onslaught of men in the bathroom as "nature" called. And his mind was so preoccupied with virtue and violations of virtue that he mistook the most innocent interaction (between the old man in the wheelchair and the boy) as something obscene that needed his intervention. It was a nice metaphor for how the women's simple desire to watch a game, to share in their country's glory, in its public life got twisted into something obscene, something that needed moral policing.

Freeheld

In case any of you have not heard about the short documentary film Freeheld, you should visit the website.

The mask

This is Ali Karimi, of the Iranian soccer team. His face is the one seen on the poster the girl is forced to wear to the bathroom (an important and fascinating scene we haven't talked about yet!)

Wiki says: Mohammad Ali Karimi Pashaki (Persian: محمد علی کریمی, born on November 8, 1978 in Karaj, Iran) is an Iranian football player. He was the Asian Player of the Year in 2004. He currently plays for Qatar SC, having left German giants Bayern Munich. He is often referred to as the "Asian Maradona" and is believed to be one of Asia's greatest players.

Any thoughts on why his face may have been chosen to hide the girl's?

The title

Here's an explanation of "offside" in soccer. It's kind of a difficult rule to understand and to call if you are a ref:

In outdoor soccer, an offside foul is called when an offensive player, or attacking player, is passed the ball and there are not at least two opponents between him or her and the goal line. Usually, these are the goalkeeper and one other defender, but not necessarily. The penalty for an offside foul is that the other team is given possession of the ball.

The rule was created to prevent offensive players from "cherry picking" near the opponents' goal. Without the rule, offensive players could hover near their opponents' goal even when the play is on the other side of the field, with the hope of a long pass and an easy goal. The offside rule still allows for the chance to score.

It's also important to note that offside applies at the moment the ball is passed, not at the moment the ball is received. Therefore, if the offensive player that will receive the pass is "onside" at the time the ball is passed, but then runs behind the unsuspecting defender before receiving the pass, the receiving offensive player is not offsides.

Why do you think Panahi titled his movie "Offside"?

The ending

I think the conclusion of the film was just breathtaking — the way all the turmoil simply dissolved into celebration, the way the captors and captives, after this long day of strife, just spilled out of the bus into the beautiful, jubilant crowd, into the freedom and anonymity of the urban night, all worries dissipated, all obedience to irrational authority evaporated. I touched on this — and the significant playing of the Persian national anthem — earlier as one of my favorite things about the movie, but I think it bears consideration in its own right. The ending is so right for me that I can hardly imagine it ending in any other way. I can see why the filmmaker was praying for victory. Do you have any thoughts on the film's resolution?

Here, there and everywhere

What did you make of the regionalism in the story? We have people from Iran and People from Bahrain in the game, of course. And in the cast of characters we have a soldier from Azerbaijan, a soldier from Mashad and a soldier from Tehran. There are also plenty of rural/urban references. The whole cast could have been from Tehran. What was the purpose of varying it?

The Firecracker Kid

What did you make of this little hooligan? Why was he introduced into the film? What did you make of his interactions with the women?

I don't know about you

But when I saw this movie, I thought, "I'll be damned. He's right. There are no gay people in Iran."

Ben’s pick

Isn’t it time we did a Norwegian film?

Favorite things

My two favorite things about this movie:

(1) The triumph of joy. At the end, the celebration consumes all worries, fears, repression. The Persian national anthem is playing; as Panahi notes, it's a song redolent of Persia's renaissance, its golden days before the Islamic invasion. (The Iranian author Marjane Satrapi also observes how the playing of this long-banished song stirs the people — not to nationalism, but to humanism).

(2) The intelligent mixing and balancing of issues and individuals. I think Panahi ran a high risk as he used the documentary style of making a purely "political" film, an "issue" film, but it went so much deeper than that. The rural soldier (what a great character) yells at one of the women, "Don't you know the difference between men and women?" And the question just hangs throughout the movie, dumb and irrelevant.

What did you like most about the movie?

A documentary?

Did you like the documentary feel of this film? Panahi talks a lot in the special feature section of the DVD about how it was made and why the documentary "style" was important to him. One thing he said that I found very interesting was that all his movies are oriented toward public life, with a preponderance of street shots, because women cannot be filmed in domestic settings without the hijab, even if they are alone in the house with their family or sleeping or in some other situation where it would not be illegal for them to have their hair uncovered. Panahi refuses to film "a lie," so he reoriented himself and his cameras artistically. Similarly, the women at the game could not actually see the game, so in an effort to align himself with their point of view, the movie contained no game shots except for what the women themselves could see (on the way to the bathroom, for example, or on the TV on the street). To make this movie he had to present it to the Iranian film authorities as something other than what it was. His crew submitted a fake script and the authorities did not know of his involvement in the project until very late in the day. He used a very small camera, not a 35 mm, so he would blend in at the stadium with news reporters. His film was largely made in real time. Most of the stadium shots were from the actual game, as was the celebration shot at the end, and he did not know the outcome of the film until the game was over. He also noted that the movie is the same length as a soccer game. ... Did all this work for you? Or would you have preferred something a little more featurey and less documentary?

Special features

Most special features on DVDs are enlightening in some way, but this one — the interview with director Jafar Panahi — is really a must-see for insights into how and why the film was made. He says an experience with his daughter inspired the film, and he tells about how it was made in 39 days, his battles with censors, and how the film's outcome, marvellously, really depended on the outcome of the game. So, if you have the chance, check out the interview! It will also give you a glimpse into what a truly fine gentleman and humanitarian Panahi is.

Iran

Iran is one of those countries, thanks to decades of bad relations between our governments — and, let's be honest, a lot of uninformed rhetoric — about which there are innumerable misconceptions and stereotypes. Watching a film made in Iran by an Iranian, did you find yourself questioning any preconceived notions you had about the country and its culture. Did anything surprise you?