SFIFF 55: Snows of Kilimanjaro

This is a heartwarming story about good people whose ethical mindsets have calcified in middle age and don't serve them so well when crisis hits.  Set in the port city of Marseilles among shipyard workers and their families, I was expecting something grittier by far, but this gentle drama about salt-of-the-earth types got progressively sweeter until a sort of cynical instinct in me began to reject it.  The film was inspired by Victor Hugo's How Good Are the Poor, which is a sentimental disaster of a poem and not to be read under any circumstances.  I'm not immune to feeling good about good people, and I enjoyed the film's many subtle moments, but it's impact was weakened by its excesses.

SFIFF 55: The Loneliest Planet

I wanted to like this US/German production because, 1. it was so beautifully shot, with gorgeous landscapes, 2. it was a chamber drama with only three characters, which usually makes for dramatic intensity, and, 3. it had Gael Garcia Bernal in it.  But the film was ruined for me by the horrible character of Nica, whose irritating and banal personality pushed its way into every scene, as well as the general insufficiency of the script, which was so lackluster I nearly fell asleep.  The concept was good, and it could have been a great film, but it wasn't.

SFIFF 55: Twixt

Francis Ford Coppola's latest film is a luxurious gothic romp, with vampires, mad preachers, dead children, damned souls, doomed virgins, Edgar Allen Poe, and a lot of mist on the lake, which thing is a problem for the blocked, haunted, alcoholic writer at its heart (you just have to see it) but wonderfully comedic for us.  Beautifully shot, with isolated spots of impossibly rich color in cool, moonlit ghost-scapes, bright small-town vignettes that reminded me of David Lynch, and odd 3-D scenes.  It's an extravagant spectacle, but Poe's refrain about the death of beauty is still tenderly explored, and there are layers of mystery and enigma as well.  It's not entirely beside the point to remember that Coppola, like the character at the center of this story, lost his own child in 1986.

SFIFF 55: The Source

The perfection of this film is due in large part to the great trove of raw footage at its heart.  It's fascinating to watch in such detail the magnetic effect this self-styled 70's guru had on his 100-odd beautiful 'Aquarian children', and thank God it found its way into the hands of filmmakers skilled enough to render its power intact.  The result is a fascinating anthropological document of people on the edge of society developing primitive instincts to worship and wield power that lie at our collective core whether we care to admit it or not.  Glamorous, hypnotic, and profound ...

SFIFF 55: The Last Gladiators

I don't know what this says about me, but I loved watching the tough guys in this excellent doc about sanctioned violence in the NHL beat the crap out of each other.  It was a complete adrenaline rush!  There will be people who laugh at rather than with these bruisers, but I so appreciated the quietly unapologetic, sometimes gleeful logic of the film's central character, Montreal Canadiens star Chris Nilan.  He's a sort of heroic archetype, and his profound maladjustment to ordinary life didn't change that for me.  It's a great film, funny, thrilling, and compassionate.

SFIFF55: The Double Steps

A brilliant and completely original feature from Spanish director Isaki Lacuesta uses the life of French painter Francois Augieras, who painted his own 'sistine chapel' in a bunker in the Mali desert and then concealed it under sand, as a jumping off point to explore themes of identity, legend and visual representation.  It is poetic, non-linear, charming, funny, and beautiful, and its characterization of modern Africa is completely sympathetic.  It's easy to see why it took grand prize at last year's San Sebastian Festival.

SFIFF55: Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present

A good documentary about an exceptional performance artist, this portrait focuses on her 2010 MoMA show in which she met the gaze of 750,000 gallery visitors one by one over a period of 3 months.  It was incredibly moving to watch individuals respond to her peculiarly open and vulnerable face with their own expressions of gratitude, curiosity, and pain.  Clips and interviews reveal her to be an extraordinary and charismatic personality whose creative feats of endurance challenge art world norms, audience passivity, and the limits of her own spiritual commitment to radical living and loving.

Quote: Joe Brainard

"I feel very much like God writing the bible.  I mean, I feel like I am not really writing it but that it is because of me that it is being written ..."

from a letter to Anne Waldman about his poem I Remember

Quote: Jackson Pollock

"I am nature"

Quote: Meister Eckhart

" ... we are made perfect by what happens to us rather than by what we do "