Blu-ray Review: First Reformed (2017)

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There's something immediately lonely about Robert De Niro in that Taxi Driver hallway, something so Christ-like about Last Temptation's man on the cross – Willem Dafoe – that you know in this world he must be a Light Sleeper, and something potent enough about Ethan Hawke's voice and speech rhythms that make you think he could've been a priest.

And it's a role the actor has said he wanted to play in real life, had – fortunately for us – he not received an altogether different calling to perform. It's also a thing that he has in common with his First Reformed writer/director Paul Schrader, who grew up as a self-described "church kid" and even entered the seminary (like Martin Scorsese, who directed Schrader's most iconic scripts) before he too left for a life in film.

Schrader's first screenplay aside from his adaptation of Christ and an unproduced transcendental work he penned forty years ago that deals with the struggles faced by a man of faith, in First Reformed, Hawke's Reverend Toller carries on the legacy of a Schrader leading man.

A loner, a light sleeper, a man in his room – at the start of the film Toller begins keeping a diary he intends to destroy in a year. Evaluating what we come to recognize as a Christ-like existential crisis of faith after Mary, a beautiful young, pregnant parishioner (played by Amanda Seyfried) asks him to counsel her troubled husband Michael (Philip Ettinger), we learn fairly quickly that Toller is one man upon whom life has indeed taken a toll.

Much like Robert De Niro's bickering traveler Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, Schrader has always loved using wordplay in his names. Film as a treasure hunt, sure enough in and beneath every frame, Reformed drips with enough symbolism that with only a mere two years of Catholic school more than twenty years ago, I was able to identify at least some of it.

From Seyfried's unexpectedly pregnant Mary to a reference to Joseph, a lustful Esther, and most crucially Michael – whose archangel-like fight to protect the environment from hypocritical corporations including the one that almost single-handedly keeps Toller's small historic church financially afloat raises revelatory, Revelations worthy reactions in Hawke's reverend – the excellent First must play even better on a second or third viewing.

In other words? It's Schrader's Stations of the Cross and a film about which the less you know going in the better.

With Hawke sharing a name with the German expressionist playwright Ernst Toller who met with tragedy (and whose life might help you see First Reformed's ambiguous ending in a different light), the unadorned, straightforward work is as old-fashioned as Toller's eponymous two-hundred and fifty year old, Dutch colonial First Reformed Church in Snowbridge, New York.

Using very little music and mostly static shots save for the glorious bookends of the film and one utterly thrilling, expressionistic sequence infused with transcendentalism (the kind the real Toller would've loved) which leads us perfectly into Reformed's third act, Reformed is a square framed Bergmanesque production. It's also that rare film where there is an actual reason for the wash of color and light visible in each shot.

Reminiscent of The White Ribbon in spirit and style, First Reformed is essentially a black and white film in color. Using all of the cinematic tools at Schrader's disposal to underscore First's questions of conscience and faith, the shades in Toller's formerly black and white but increasingly gray world are muted throughout, save for a few key moments when the ethereal Seyfried manages to throw back the shutters and let in the allegorical sunlight.

Anchored by Hawke, who like De Niro and Dafoe in Schrader's works before him at last gets a chance to turn up the dial in what was already inside of him, First Reformed makes the most of the brooding, wise beyond his years, pastoral philosopher that's been there since Reality Bites and Before Sunrise.

A quality that drives one of my best friends nuts but thrills his fans, while the thing I like to call Hawke's Hawkeness is on full display here, it's amazing to see – especially given the skills of the man penning the script – just how much isn't even spoken but instinctual, internalized, and evident in not Dafoe this time but Hawke's light sleeping eyes.

While the film itself might divide those looking for easy answers, it features not only one of the actor's most powerful performances but one on the opposite end of the spectrum from his delightful shaggy dog, laid back rocker turn in 2018's Juliet, Naked (which I also saw for the first time and reviewed this week).

Serving up an eye-opening commentary track with the helmer on the newly released Blu-ray (that's essentially film school in a box), Reformed is a daring American picture that you'll immediately want to discuss.

Schrader's strongest film as a writer/director since the underrated Affliction, while blessing his fans with another one of what Travis Bickle called God's lonely men (only this time literally), he's created a work that will be remembered as one of not just 2018's but Schrader's very best.

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Blu-ray Review: The Insult (2017)

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Back in high school I served as a peer mediator and while a majority of the issues we dealt with were pretty typical of the setting, once we received a case involving perceived difference of religion which snowballed so spectacularly - including off campus vandalism and violence with others in the community - that during the entire session, we had police on standby right outside the door.

Thankfully nobody was injured but it taught me an early real-world lesson that insults involving religion could escalate with such severity and speed, not just in our history books or on the evening news but even in the suburbs of Minnesota.

But if you transfer the conflict to the Middle East where there's been so much pain, suffering, and unrest involving all religions throughout the region's history, the potential for chaos is magnified to the extent that it wouldn't take more than a mere spark to erupt a volcano with the potential to envelop everyone in its path.

And with the action set in contemporary Beirut, that's precisely the situation in which we find ourselves over the course of director and co-writer Ziad Doueiri's powerful 2017 Oscar nominated Best Foreign Film, The Insult which revolves around an insult between Lebanese Christian Tony (Adel Karam) and Palestinian refugee Yasser (Kamel El Basha) that quickly evolves from words to fists to an all-encompassing lawsuit.

Using the power of cinematic point of view to great effect, The Insult first introduces us to Tony, a married mechanic and small business owner whom we immediately identify with simply because he was the first one onscreen.

So devoted to his faith and the Christian Party that he keeps a photo of the president in the room of his unborn child (much to the chagrin of his expectant wife), we watch stunned when, upon refusing construction foreman Yasser’s polite request for access to fix the drainpipe off his balcony by instead telling them to use the street, Tony destroys their work without a word.

After shouting out an obscenity at Tony, the proud, hard-working Yasser is reminded by his boss that since they’re in their (Christian) neighborhood, “you can’t talk to them like that,” and shortly thereafter, we learn that Tony has demanded an apology.

However the attempt at reconciliation goes horribly wrong when Tony insults Yasser’s religion and people in a horrific way, causing Yasser to throw a punch which ricochets many times over that it leads to the legal case at the heart of the film.

Quickly discovering that this is much bigger than he said/he said, both of the men (as well as their loved ones) are put under a public microscope that examines their pasts, prejudices, and how they got there today and predictably grow to realize that they might have more in common than they'd initially believed.

As the two men's story begins to light up TV screens across Lebanon, the people of Beirut begin taking up the increasingly divisive fight, which winds up leading to the type of chaos and violence sadly all too familiar to viewers in Trump’s America where insults have become official presidential statements and hate crimes have been on the rise.

Emotionally and intellectually thrilling, although admittedly a few of the film's plot twists feel slightly satirical and forced by the time we move into the third act, The Insult is still an extremely timely legal drama that easily adheres to Roger Ebert’s belief that “movies are machines for empathy.”

An extremely impressive work from Doueiri, The Insult would not only be a terrific selection to show high school students studying ethics but it's also sure to cause thrilling post-film discussion, including some from the filmmaker which is included as part of this technically stellar Cohen Media Group Blu-ray release.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Blu-ray Review: Calvary (2014)

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Named after the hill by Jerusalem where Jesus was crucified, Calvary, from playwright turned filmmaker John Michael McDonagh begins as a psychologically driven whodunnit thriller before quickly and rather disappointingly devolving into an allegorical, avant-garde version of High Noon.

And while that might sound interesting, ultimately you get the feeling that – at least conceptually – the unorthodox approach utilized by McDonagh would’ve translated much better on the stage of an experimental theatre company than it does on the movie screen.

Surprisingly emotionally frigid given its subject matter, Calvary holds viewers at an arm's length and a long arm at that as we feel even further away from its characters than those who fill the frames of fellow provocateurs Lars von Trier and Michael Haneke.

Yet this time around the sacrificial lamb isn't Jesus as suggested by the title, nor a woman as is so often the case in von Trier's work, but instead a by-all-accounts good priest named Father James (Brendan Gleeson), who had joined the church later in life following the death of his wife.

Nonetheless, in Calvary's startling opener, the life of Father James is threatened in the confessional by an unseen parishioner who informs him that he'll be killed as symbolic payback for the sins of an evil man of the cloth who'd raped the victim as a child every other day for five years.

Told he has one week to get his house in order, the unflinchingly calm and determined voice of the parishioner never wavers for a moment before he leaves the confessional with the promise that they’ll meet again—for the final time – on the beach near the hill the following Sunday (in a setting that subtly acknowledges the symbolic title).

Conflicted by the sanctity of the seal of confession and the horrors endured by the victim, James is further troubled by the realization that – given the man's voice and his closeness to the community – he knows precisely who threatened him from word one.

As Calvary alludes from the start, there are far more than a mere Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that roam this otherwise sleepy little (albeit spiritually bankrupt) seaside Irish village.

Every character it seems is a victim, a villain, and/or a witness, and as McDonough takes us on what is purported to be a tour through the father’s seven stages of grief, we ascertain that every single one of its inhabitants (including the Father himself) is suffering from one or another form of PTSD obtained from a cruel twist of life – if not fate.

And this conclusion is only reaffirmed upon the arrival of another walking ghostlike figure in the form of the man's own, grown battle-scarred daughter, Fiona (played by Kelly Reilly), who appears on scene after traveling by train like a character out of a classic western.

Visiting her father to convalesce following a failed suicide attempt brought on by the never explained actions of an unknown man (which serves as a thematic metaphor around which the entire film revolves), Fiona is as troubled as the rest.

Asking us to question issues surrounding the film's major obsessions of culpability, guilt innocence beyond their legal limits and definitions, McDonagh takes his thought-provoking setup and then proceeds to suck the life out of it as we encounter one over-the-top character after another in a production that is as existential it is nonsensical.

Boasting shock-filled monologues about everything from cannibalism to the desire to kill women as revenge for being a virgin as well as urinary vandalism and the offscreen slaughter of a pet, the abysmal characters we encounter along with Father James all battle to suck the life out of him as well like the allegorical vampires that they are.

Having completely overdosed on symbolism; by the time the screen fills with the orange hue of arson and our protagonist shouts up to the heavens "why didn't anybody see?" before another deliberately closes their eyes, we've begun to wonder if there's any viewer left watching Calvary that doesn't desperately want to do the same.

Although he starts out strong in a dark, barely lit corner from where he proceeds to shine a spotlight on religious, moral and existential hypocrisy, McDonagh begins losing his religion as the film continues.

Thus, despite a potent turn by Gleeson and the rest of Calvary's impressive though poorly utilized ensemble cast, Calvary suffers from a crisis of narrative faith that prevents it from following in the footsteps of other filmmakers who found their work at a similar crossroads but dared to venture on full speed ahead.

What could’ve had the potency of superior subgenre efforts such as Doubt, Priest, In the Name Of, The Jewish Cardinal, and/or Philomena as well as the power a two-man Sam Shepard play begins to crucify itself with excess as soon as the Father ventures beyond the parish’s walls.

Intriguingly, Calvary filmmaker John Michael McDonagh is the brother of In Bruges writer/director Martin McDonagh. And while it's evident that together and separately the two have an awful lot to say about priests as similar scenarios of churchly violence also occur in Bruges, if right now we were asked to follow just one filmic gospel involving Catholic anarchy and hypocrisy – I’d still have to go with Bruges – six years after its release in 2008.

An artistic free for all, Calvary may be gorgeously shot but it plays like an Irish Catholic avant-garde interpretation of High Noon as seen through the eyes of an unlikely trinity comprised of Haneke, von Trier, and David Lynch.

Instead of a dramatic mystery about forgiveness and revenge, Calvary is undone by its devotion to symbolic allegory as well as its old time religion-like love of fire and brimstone level speechifying. Thus, despite its predictable yet admittedly poignant conclusion, try as it might it, McDonagh just can't convert us into cinematic believers.

   

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Film Movement DVD Collection Review – Beyond Borders: Stories of Interfaith Friendship (Arranged; A Bottle in the Gaza Sea; Foreign Letters)

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Beyond Borders
Faces of Israel

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Released alongside Film Movement's Faces of Israel four-disc film collection of works which offer viewers a snapshot of the complexity and diversity of life in contemporary Israel, the companion box set Beyond Borders celebrates the differences that unite and divide us in a humanistic trio of titles set in the United States as well as the topical region.

But rather than take you through them alphabetically or chronologically, I'm taking a cue from the films included in Borders to go beyond the expected – serving up a review of the titles in the order I'd recommend watching them for the greatest cinematic impact.

 

Foreign Letters (2012)
Directed by Ela Thier

Although it’s included alongside A Bottle in the Gaza Sea, Ela Thier’s largely autobiographical effort Foreign Letters makes a first-rate companion film to the thematically similar, likewise female (co)directed tale Arranged which seems to continue on with the thesis of intercultural female friendship established in Letters.

Easily the best starting place in the Beyond Borders box set celebrating interfaith friendships from the Film Movement catalog, the work chronicles Thier’s own adolescent struggles to navigate life in a new nation where she could barely speak the language.

As the sweet, succinct, 1982-set story begins, the twelve-year-old Ellie (Noa Rotstein) writes what the audience quickly gathers is just the latest in an ongoing series of letters from America to her “best friend times infinity” back in her former Israeli home.

Charting the timeless struggle of not fitting in to not knowing where to sit at lunch, Thier takes a cue from the Peanuts specials of yesteryear by translating the English language instructions of Ellie’s everyday teacher (outside the ESL classroom) into veritable gibberish in her feature-length adaptation of her acclaimed short A Summer Rain (which is also included on the DVD).

Thier’s subtle portrait of coming-of-age in a brand new country slowly but steadily picks up momentum as Ellie finds a friend in a fellow outsider via the Vietnamese refugee Thuy (Dalena Le).

Shy and studious as well as just as self-conscious as Ellie, the two girls begin testing the waters of a fledgling friendship that was initially forged out of loneliness and necessity before they soon discover that their differences are nowhere near as important as their similarities.

Educating themselves about life in their new surroundings, the girls balance one another out while also giving each other the vital self-confidence they need to stop hiding in the shadows of a school that isn’t nearly as ready to accept them as they are ready to accept both each other as well as everyone else.

While it’s a bit structurally underwhelming as we get the feeling that Thier wasn’t entirely sure what to do with the production’s full ninety-nine minute running time (versus the original seventeen minute short which also utilized the same talented young leads), Letters nonetheless manages to overcome the bumps in the road to leave a lasting impression.

Furthermore, the film’s sheer authenticity elevates Thier's work as a timeless portrait of female adolescent existential angst that resonates as strongly today as we imagine it would've if released in its original 1982 time period.

Thus in spite of a floundering middle act that gets bogged down with somewhat episodic plotting, we're more than willing to take a cue from Ellie and give it some time to find its way.

A moving and sensitive salute to the importance of human connection as well as a completely preach-free reminder that we’re all humans with the same wants, needs, fears, laughter, and tears regardless of our language or homeland, Thier’s autobiographical cinematic journey results in one of the best family friendly offerings in the entire Film Movement catalog.

Reminding viewers of the rewards that await us when we dare to look past the popular lunch table of cliquish Twilight style commercial friendly studio fare, Foreign Letters serves as an excellent “starter” picture to introduce middle school students to the world of international filmmaking by way of characters they can relate to that likewise have something of quality to say.

 

A Bottle in the Gaza Sea (2011)
Directed by Thierry Binisti

Adapting a work from the “tell me” medium of literature to the “show me” medium of film is difficult enough as it is without even considering the fact that for the title in question, the story unfolds largely through the written word as the most pivotal sequences revolve around the sending and receipt of e-mail messages.

Of course, considering that the characters at the heart of A Bottle in the Gaza Sea are a French born seventeen-year-old Israeli girl (Agathe Bonitzer) and a twenty-year-old Palestinian boy (Mahmoud Shalabi) who found her cyber address included in the titular bottle, it’s safe to say that Gaza isn’t your typical pen pal saga.

Wanting to make sense of all of the suicide bombings that occur on her side of the water, the beautiful idealist Tal sends her query out to the unknown via her older brother who’s able to hurl the bottle into the Gaza Sea while carrying out his required military service.

What begins as a heated, blame-filled exchange of sarcasm and oft-heard clichéd generalizations gradually blossoms into something much more substantive as the two share their thoughts, typed snapshots of daily life, and later actual photographs that make them realize that if they’d met anywhere else under ordinary circumstances there’s a pretty strong likelihood that they would’ve become friends.

Part of the three disc Beyond Borders collection crafted to explore interfaith relationships, while Bottle might hold up well on its own, unfortunately when viewed alongside the other two vastly superior titles included in the set, it’s the weakest entry in an otherwise staggeringly impressive triple feature.

While the thematically similar Foreign Letters is much more natural in its approach, the admirable effort put forth by filmmaker Thierry Binisti to capture both points-of-view and likewise evoke empathy for each character (while simultaneously pulling you in two totally different directions) makes the film seem much better than it actually is in the end.

An unapologetically hopeful work that’s bogged down by awkward performances and emotionless English language line-reads by its young actors (which should've been subtitled along with its foreign dialogue), Bottle is an otherwise well-intentioned attempt to translate Valerie Zenatti’s award-winning novel to the screen.

Though you wish the final result would've been far more compelling, Bottle stays afloat – getting better as it continues – which results in a surprisingly moving final sequence that’s guaranteed to stay with you.

Largely wordless and therefore much more effective at conveying the real unspoken bond between the characters as two kids who connected (versus the filmic opportunities to take advantage of politically correct speechmaking), the gorgeous depiction of idealism and acceptance butting heads with bureaucracy conveys everything the filmmaker was trying to say in its memorable conclusion.

As it stands, it’s a lovely throwback to the same spirit of youthful rebellion tempered by the futility of circumstance found in the final frames of ‘50s and ‘60s French New Wave cinema (followed by the British and American pictures it influenced for a majority of the late '60s and '70s).

Moreover it’s further proof of not only Binisti’s artistry but another reminder to those adapting novels in the future that there is indeed a better way to tell the story than through too many voice-overs and shots of inboxes on computer screens.
   

 

Arranged (2007)
Directed by Diane Crespo and Stefan Schaefer

Review: (Originally Published 5/1/08)

"Someone should be shooting a commercial for world peace," fourth grade teacher Nasira Khaldi (Francis Benhamou) jokes to her coworker turned friend Rochel Meshenberg (Zoe Lister-Jones) when the two women bump into one another in a New York park and encourage their younger relatives to play together.

It’s a recurring joke throughout the inviting, original and warmhearted American independent film Arranged that focuses on two young women in their early twenties who, despite their religious differences as a Muslim (Nasira) and an Orthodox Jew (Rochel), are both dealing with similar issues of parental pressure and familial obligation in the quest to marry the two teachers off.

In Rochel's case, this tradition calls for utilizing the talents of a matchmaker who pitches men to her client as if she’s selling automobiles by evaluating their job performance, sustainability and prominence. However for Nasira, it’s a bit more laid back as their father invites over a much older family friend in the hopes that his young daughter will find love with an uncouth gentleman prone to chatting animatedly with food in his mouth.

Meanwhile Rochel contends with a series of disastrous matchups including a painfully awkward first encounter with a man who acts as though he’d rather voluntarily show up for a root canal than a date, along with one man who lets himself into the place and proceeds to snoop through everything while running at the mouth his own sales pitch covering his accomplishments.

Both targets from their female principal who, in trying to compliment their beauty patronizes their beliefs by offering them money to go out and buy designer clothes and have a drink to start taking advantage of the women’s movement, the two modestly dressed new teachers sit singularly at tables away from the more daring and cliquish women their age at the school.

However, the film's leads really hit it off when children question whether or not they hate one another because of what they’ve heard on the news.

In offering the students a unity circle exercise, Rochel and Nasira conduct their own diversity celebration that seems to be far more accessible than the perfunctory district mandated training shown at the start of the film. Sure enough as the women begin spending more time together away from work, they realize they have far more in common than they first assumed.

Touchingly authentic and believably executed, directors Diane Crespo and Stefan Schaefer’s appealing film was a hit in the film festival circuit.

An official selection at the South by Southwest Film Festival and the Miami Jewish Film Festival, Arranged earned the audience award at Berkshire International Film Festival as well as the Grand Chameleon Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2007 Brooklyn International Film Festival before making its way to DVD from our friends at Film Movement.

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Film Movement Review: The Jewish Cardinal (2013)

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Known as Aaron to his father, Jean-Marie to Pope John Paul II and Monsignor Bulldozer to his old parishioners, while the rabbis in his native France call him a Christian, as a Jewish born child who was baptized after converting to Catholicism as a young teen to escape the fate of relatives who died at Auschwitz, Jean-Marie Lustiger considers himself a Catholic Jew.

While many consider that complicated at best and a contradiction at worst, in this powerful biopic from French filmmaker Ilan Duran Cohen, we’re given an extraordinary multilayered and largely objective account of the life of the controversial Jewish cardinal.

Quickly rising in the ranks to become one of the closest confidants of the pope (whom he simply calls Karol), Jean-Marie never seems divided in the slightest by his so-called dual identity or allegiance to one religion or another until he finds himself at a crossroads of his past and present.

When a group of Carmelite nuns set up a convent at Auschwitz, renovating the very building where his mother was murdered by the gas that was stored in the very room they’re occupying, Jean-Marie is faced with a crisis of conscience, culture and identity while confronting the role that both faiths play in his life.

Though the dual faiths had never dueled before (at least in his eyes), Jean-Marie soon finds himself in a religious standoff. Sent to intervene and help mediate an agreement with Polish church leaders and representatives from the Jewish community alike, when politics soon come into play (as the pope is pushed to intervene and pull rank on his own country), Jean-Marie begins questioning not only his own identity but just how and why he was promoted so quickly by Karol.

Facing concerns and charges of hypocrisy leveled directly at him and by him at both communities, Jean-Marie goes through a major existential upheaval while taking inventory of the faiths and facts that guide his spiritual journey.

A terrific film that serves as a great double feature to Film Movement’s previous tale of a Catholic priest in crisis – In the Name Of – the helmer’s approach to The Jewish Cardinal is as journalistic as it is elegantly ornate.

Though lusciously photographed – with the obvious and understandable exception of the nuns and their cohorts at Auschwitz that took to pouring water on the heads of Jewish protesters – Cohen’s ability to keep an open mind and avoid imposing any kind of overt message or paint either religious group in a dominant, negative light is admirable indeed.

Admittedly, while the filmmaker presents everything with a cool, level head, I found myself torn by my initial reaction to our lead – not liking the often unsympathetic man who’d rejected his background and broken his father’s heart while at the same time finding myself admiring his dedication to following his own path regardless of which text had inspired him along the way.

However, the film deepens as it continues as we begin to learn more about our protagonist including what happened on a life-changing student exchange trip (that has haunted him for decades) which makes Cohen’s work that much more engrossing.

While given the contemplative nature of his profession, we’re left to deduce a great deal of Jean-Marie's rationale behind certain actions that may have been better conveyed by giving the cardinal someone to bounce more thoughts off of via a confidante of his own, all in all, it’s still a thoroughly riveting feature that stays with you long after it’s over.

In fact I couldn’t stop thinking about the movie as well as the man for days (namely the telling yet troubling decision to have prayers of two faiths said at his grave after denying his father the same courtesy).

One of those unfailingly humanistic features, the film puts reality above any desire to manipulate viewers into sympathizing 100% with its characters by instead daring to show us a flawed human being that plays his cards close to his prayer robes.

As such, Cardinal is as strengthened as it is occasionally weakened by its adherence to  “just the facts” rather than serving up a more dramatic interpretation of the events that shaped our subject's life.

Yet regardless of which Jean-Marie Lustiger we happen to encounter at different points in the film, the conflicted cardinal who (depending on the situation) was as soft spoken as he was prone to temper-ridden bulldozing is brought vivaciously to life by the stellar, convincing portrayal of With a Friend Like Harry actor Laurent Lucas.

A man whose identity meant something different to everyone, Lustiger is perhaps best understood as an enigmatic, flawed and ultimately ambiguous man. Yet even though his goal to be all of the above may have found him having to pick sides from time-to-time, thanks to Cohen’s compelling film we’re at least able to appreciate Jean-Marie Lustiger’s noble quest to remain faithful to his true self above all.

   

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Film Movement DVD Review: In the Name Of (2013)

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In her multiple award-winning career so far, Polish filmmaker Malgoska Szumowska has revealed a particular fascination with exploring the complexities of female sexuality onscreen, as evidenced in the controversial Elles starring Juliette Binoche (with whom she’s expected to reteam for 2015’s Sisters).

Yet as under-represented as women are on both sides of the lens (especially with regard to realistic portrayals helmed by female craftsmen), Szumowska changed her focus for her fifth feature In the Name Of by exposing the secrets, sex lives and double standards faced by another minority via her Catholic priest male hero, who just so happens to be a closeted homosexual.

Daring to take a humanistic look at terrain we haven’t seen even marginally explored with this degree of tenderness since Miramax’s likewise female helmed controversial ‘94 shocker Priest by filmmaker Antonia Bird, this Berlin Film Festival jury award-winner is as sensitively understated as it is powerfully contemplative.

A cinematic slice of life, Szumowska opts for a naturalistic, fly-on-the-wall approach while establishing our main character in the form of the conflicted, gentle priest Adam (played by an astounding Andrzej Chyra) who works with troubled teen boys at a village parish in the Polish countryside.

From coaching soccer to breaking up fights and intervening when the ignorant locals don’t know what to do for a young woman who falls into an epileptic seizure, Adam has quickly become a prominent community figure and something of a fascinating enigma to admirers of both genders.

The latest in what have been a series of transfers that have pushed Adam further and further out into boonies away from the coveted parishes of the city (following inferences and incidences of homophobic paranoia and suspicion from the higher-ups), the uncertainty of his permanently temporary status has turned him into something of a wandering nomad.

Letting few people in -- some of the film’s most affecting scenes illustrate his sense of loneliness and isolation of a man always off to the sidelines, with frequent barriers like transparent windows or solitary shots of him juxtaposed with masses of others (in and out of mass) to help drive home the internal monologue of a man who doesn’t reveal much through dialogue.

The target of a crush by a determined young woman who plies him with homemade pies, Adam’s slowly evolving bond and slight flicker of a spark ignited in the shared gaze of a local villager (well-played by the filmmaker’s husband, Mateusz Kosciukiewicz) is threatened by the arrival of a sexually aggressive city boy whose gaydar may have picked up on the father’s true orientation.

Uninterested in the priest except to possibly pull at the strand of truth he can sense until it unravels and threatens to humiliate Adam among the villagers, the boy sets his sights on one of the country lads who’d confessed his own confusion in confession after a spontaneous erotic encounter.

Bringing the drama to a slow boil, events reach a dramatic climax as the film continues and Adam realizes that he must face his feelings and the truth that continues to be used as Catholic blackmail to push him from one post to the next.

While the film is gorgeously lensed by the director’s long-term co-writer and cinematic collaborator Michal Englert, there are a few disruptively abrupt editing hiccups that mess with the film’s sensual, cinema verite like flow (that reveal either errors in character blocking in an edit-on-action match cut or sloppily simple continuity mistakes) that pull you out of the graceful rhythm of the piece.

Nonetheless, while it could’ve been tightened up a bit as the pacing lags in the second act, the film’s problems on the whole are relatively and thankfully minor when compared to just how compelling it is overall.

For ultimately it’s the mood of the film (bolstered by the effective employment of “The Funeral” by Band of Horses as a recurring musical motif) and its conversation-worthy portrait of the church, countryside and characters that keep you invested throughout.

And while the ending may be slightly pat indeed, the questions the film raises about whether or not the church’s practices and policies are victimizing our lead rather than setting him free are sure to get open-minded viewers of all religions talking longer after the end of this Film Movement release.

Refreshingly keeping its focus on the father as a human being first as opposed to defining him by any number of characteristics, while a lesser director would’ve ventured into exploiting the church abuse angle, Szumowska is wise enough to keep that out of the equation. To this end, an obvious takeaway and message of the film is that Adam's orientation has nothing to do with how devoted he is to his duties and parishioners.

An altogether thoughtful, hypnotic filmic portrait of often-ignored screen territory by a woman who seems to derive cinematic inspiration from subjects most directors overlook, this Film Movement release finds the filmmaker stepping back from her female-centric explorations of sexuality.

However it only takes a few minutes into In the Name Of until we realize she’s done so “in the name of” the thematically similar purpose of investigating life, liberty, equality, humanity and our universal pursuit of happiness which manages to stay true to and push the boundaries of her oeuvre in all the right ways.

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Film Movement DVD Review: The Pope's Toilet (2007)

Now Available on DVD
From Film Movement

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Although John Patrick Shanley‘s recent five-time Oscar-nominated film Doubt was set in a 1960s Catholic school and church-- the film’s allegory about the danger of certainty and condemnation without proof seemed to be one that could have been transported to any date and location. Of course, it was the specific feel of a time and place in the movie’s setting that never let you forget that you were dealing with primarily a story about a priest, two nuns, and a mother in bringing the church aspect to the forefront despite Shanley’s admission that he was inspired to write the piece during the “run-up to Iraq.”

On the other hand, the presence of the “church” or rather the Pope is hidden from view until the conclusion of director Enrique Fernandez and Cesar Charlone’s brilliant Uruguayan work The Pope’s Toilet, as instead of a severe church and school we're transported to a Latin American border town. Nonetheless and even more than Doubt-- the Catholic church weighs heavily on our minds during every scene of this neorealist dramedy that screened as an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival.

Having previously seen and admired The Pope’s Toilet roughly a year ago in preparation to summarize the work for its inclusion in the guide for the Scottsdale International Film Festival (despite obviously, my admitted apprehension given the film's title), I was eager to explore it again in its stunning widescreen release from Film Movement. Likewise, I found that it made a perfect but unlikely companion to not just Shanley’s Doubt which I was also preparing to review (for the first time) but Bill Maher’s documentary Religulous as well.

Although they’re three incredibly different works in essentially every way from structures to tone to setting-- it offered a fascinating glimpse (ironically coinciding right around the Christian holiday of Easter) of the way that religion and those involved can unite, divide, inspire, disappoint, and ultimately greatly affect the life of not just one individual but also an entire community, town, and country.

While Shanley’s film had its origins as a Pulitzer Prize winning play and Bill Maher’s thought provoking and comical work took a documentary approach, Pope’s Toiler was inspired by a real life neighbor of the film's first screenwriter Enrique Fernandez. Recalling the individual who would become his main character—Beto—as “the kind of neighbor who came by every morning, just to say hello,” and one who “hid underneath an un-tucked shirt,” whose “thin legs looked like toothpicks when he rode his big old bike that seemed to be on the brink of completely falling apart,” Fernandez later collaborated with the native Uruguayan but Brazilian resident turned award-winning City of God cinematographer Cesar Charlone for the final result.

Drawing from a real event—the film brings us over two decades into the past whereby-- upon hearing rumors that 20,000 Brazillian tourists will be flooding their tiny Uruguayan village for the 1988 visit of “The Traveling Pope,” (a.k.a. His Holiness John Paul II), the locals of Melo eagerly sell their land and take out enormous bank loans in preparation to erect nearly 400 food stands in the hopes that God will provide them with fortune.

While his neighbors opt for mouth watering recipes, long-time petty smuggler Beto (Cesar Troncoso)—weary from the lengthy treks he makes along into Brazil to bring back goods to sell to businesses while dodging a crooked customs officer—decides to put on his notorious thinking cap. Instead of going into the sausage racket, Beto works out an entirely different scheme, logically realizing that after one eats, the next requirement will find passersby looking for a suitable restroom. Taking it upon himself to make his dream a reality and become so wealthy that he can stop aggravating his meningitis and chronic knee pain with the arduous treks across the border, Beto launches into action.

Impulsively, he enlists the help of his devoted but frustrated wife and ambitious daughter who longs to escape her fate as a seamstress or fellow smuggler and become a journalist, by erecting an enclosed “pay toilet” fit for a Pope on Beto's property. However, when the expenses begin mounting, Beto finds himself struggling to make ends meet, not only to provide for his family but also to create what he deems will be the moneymaking answer to all of their problems, which he—along with his neighbors—feel will no doubt be solved by, if not by a Catholic miracle, then a visit from the Pope.

Alternately funny and melancholic, with an obvious homage towards classic Italian neorealist films such as The Bicycle Thief, this deceptively simple and quirky offering became Uruguay’s official entry to the Academy Awards. Additionally, it inspires you to take a cue from Beto and put on those thinking caps as the film also raises some vital questions about ethical and moral obligations and implications that arise when religious figures travel to poverty-stricken communities, leading to mixed results that are sure to have viewers chatting away, especially if you’re caught in public looking for just the right restroom.

In fact, catching it again following the visit of the Pope to America last year and seeing the stories on the news of people taking out mortgages and paying fortunes in a dire economy just to try and see the man in person makes it especially timely viewing. Intriguingly and bravely, the filmmakers never let their main characters off the hook presenting us with Beto’s unlikable characteristics very quickly and making us relate the most to his daughter by refusing to give into the Hollywood temptation of painting the work with a completely uplifting and lovable brush in telling us what we’re supposed to think and feel at every turn. No, we’re torn throughout—seeing all sides—and it makes the film that much more successful as an artistic work to avoid taking one particular moral stance.

Therefore, much like the doubt-struck Doubt and challenging speeches in Religulous, it’s ultimately up to the viewer to decide just what conclusions they’d like to come to given the socially conscious filmmaking of this striking Uruguayan work that is an ideal film for discussion for those interested in the ways in which cinema can be used as a springboard into the realm of humanities, sociology, and more.

Another dynamite find from Film Movement taken right out of the world’s top festivals and delivering it to viewers everywhere who normally would never have seen such a film—the DVD of Pope’s Toilet also features an extremely clever five minute German animated short film about a consumer who gets much more than he bargained for when he plugs in his new home entertainment device Video 3000.

Arriving in May from Film Movement:

Under the Bombs