Ben & Joshua Safdie explore fatherhood for flakes in DADDY LONGLEGS

He's one mother of a father, that Lenny, the main character of Ben and Joshua Safdie's (shown below) Sun-
dance-premiered DADDY LONG-
LEGS (originally titled Go Get Some Rosemary, though neither name works particularly well).  In the film's first 20 minutes, Lenny gets into an embarrassing fight with the principal when he picks his kids up from school; does handstands on the sidewalk as they make their way home; teaches the kids handball at the gym (and gets propositioned in the changing room by another male member); meets a young woman in a bar, goes home with her, and then on to a little impromptu vacation to upstate New York with her, his kids -- and his new lady's boyfriend.

Were Lenny -- who is played exceedingly well by Ronald Bronstein (also also helped with this film's script and editing and is the writer/director/editor of the much-acclaimed Frownland) -- not so full of life and energy (and pretty cute, to boot), he might grate on us (and everyone around him in the film) much sooner than he does.  After the family's short vacation, during which we're treated to the seeing and hearing a singing water-skier, we're back in the city at work with Dad (he's a projectionist at what looks to TrustMovies like NYC's Cinema Village theater).

The kids, meanwhile, are back in a school that, from the looks of the math class, is definitely "alternative" but a lot of fun.  One of the teachers on view even sports a black eye.  The Safdie's hand-held camera (the cinematography's by Joshua and Brett Jutkiewicz) catches well many off-the-cuff moments & great facial expressions.

It's when, around halfway along, Lenny (above, left) makes a decision that could truly endanger his kids that the viewer's sympathy  -- mine, at least -- begins to wane badly.  (And yes, being a father myself, I know just how difficult it is to sometimes make the right decision.)  Worse, Dad's reaction to what he has done is almost as crazy and goes against any real, responsible fatherly feelings. And then he takes a further step into full-out stupidity.  (While the event in question is perhaps not as completely unfeeling as is the response of the Bradley Cooper character in The Hangover to leaving an untended baby in an apartment with a full-grown tiger, it comes awfully close.)

Now, this is perfectly OK: If that's who this guy is, let's call a spade a spade.  Yet the filmmakers, not to mention the actor, seem to love Lenny so much that they'll let him get away with just about anything -- which by the finale, he pretty much has.  (From what I can gather, Lenny's character is based somewhat upon the Safdie brothers' own father.)  We don't see the results of Dad's final fling, but if there's any justice in the world (yeah, right), he'll lose complete custody of those kids and be plagued with a bad back for the remainder of his life.

Daddy Longlegs is a constant fight between the male need to flake (and stay a child) and children's need to be cared for.  Unfortun-
ately flake wins, though were the film to continue for another day or two, he would not.  As talented a pair of filmmakers as are the Safdie's -- and they are! -- they've not quite nailed their movie.  What seems to be an ode to (or at least a look at) the plight of part-time-custody dads who balance work, kids and girlfriends is finally in thrall to such an aberrant personality disorder that the movie, good as are many of its parts, finally goes off-orbit. When Lenny pulls his final asshole number, only a few like-minded males will still be on board.

This film completes the trilogy of Sundance Selects titles (7 Days and The Shock Doctrine were covered earlier) that made their debut at the just-ended Sundance Film Festival and will now be available On-Demand from most major cable systems, including Comcast, Cablevision, Cox, Time Warner and satellite provider Direct TV until approximately the end of February.  To find the film, look at the directory of titles available on these cable systems' main movies-on-demand channel.

The Copti/Shani, Israeli/Palestinian AJAMI arrives, shortlisted for Best Foreign Film

Is AJAMI this year's Gomorrah? Every bit as bleak -- yet streaked with odd, dark, only occasion-
al and seemingly accidental poetry in its verbiage and visuals -- it is closer to art than its Ital-
ian counterpart, the roots of which re-
main firmly in jour-
nalism. What these two films hold in common is a strong sense that any kind of workable social contract has gone missing from the culture on view (if indeed it was ever present). Instead, when some sort of contract does crop up (the scene with the "judge," combining tradition and bargaining with gangland murder), it's so "local" and power-heavy as to seem almost beside the point.

Ajami actually offers us two cultures -- Arabic and Israeli -- or more precisely Israeli and several "outsider" cultures within the framework of that which we opposing outsiders (including the Israelis) might call "Palestinian." That the film has joint directors, one Israeli (Yaron Shani, shown above, right), the other Palestinian (Scandar Copti, shown above, left), just makes this project all that much unusual and fascinating. What we have in place of any social contract understood by the populace, are multi-cultures rubbing up against each other until bleeding occurs, struggling for whatever power can be gained and held, with the stakes constantly raised and the territory continually shifting beneath the participants' feet. Betrayals, big and small, are
simply a matter of course.

The film's title, the directors explain in their press notes, refers to a district controlled by Israel that is melting pot of cultures, nationalities and opposite perspectives.  To the Ajami area come the illegal immigrants from neighboring countries looking for work.  They find it -- but also find themselves under the thumb of the "legal" Palestinians in control here.  Above them all, of course, are the Israelis. Yet even the poorest and least powerful can find ways to get ahead, the consequences of which, as is often the case, prove as much unintended as intended.

The film begins with a narration accompanied by strong, sudden and bloody visuals.  A gang member demands, via threat and gunshot, some protection money from a small businessman who repays  the gang member in kind, setting off a chain of revenge killings.  Elsewhere, a young illegal labors for a  powerful Palestinian to raise funds to pay for his mother's operation. We discover that these two stories are marginally linked, and then we meet a wide cast of supporting characters -- Arabs and Israelis -- in particular a group of dirty cops (or perhaps these are simply typical Israeli cops), one of whom's brother, a soldier, has gone missing. Some of these Arabs, despite what Allah might say, like to go clubbing and drugging, and this, too, has consequences.

We think we know what's going on here, and indeed we do.  Sort of.  But the movie, which goes back and forth regarding time and location, keep unraveling, and with each roll of that ball of yarn we discover more and at the same time have many of our assumptions upended.  The movie, Copti & Shani's first, is more sophisticated than it initially appears.  The filmmakers have cast entirely non-professionals in all the roles, and they claim to have chosen actors who were close as possible to the characters they play.  While this means, I would think, that the cast is rather unsavory in many ways (the director himself plays a drug addict: whoops!), the resulting film looks about as real as you could want.  Copti & Shani shot in chronological sequence -- so that their novice actors would be able to experience (and then communicate) the reality of their stories. They then edited their film to create the kind of mystery concerning event, relationship and character that they had originally planned.

All this works -- and works so well, in fact, that the movie has been shortlisted for Best Foreign Language film in this years Academy Awards.  I cannot imagine that it will not make the final cut -- and perhaps go on to win the "Oscar" -- because it offers so much of what Academy members seem to want: It moves, surprises and enlightens; comes from a country and culture much in the news; offers a story with which mainstream audiences can connect but does this is an extremely sophisticated manner. Plus it's dual directorship of Israeli & Palestinian is just too good to pass up (the Academy prides itself on noble intentions that bring us together).

The only fly in the ointment may be the dark -- you might posit hopeless -- quality the film possesses. Its ending, however, veers very close to the sentimental. It manages to avoid this, but coming as near as it does may be just what the doctor ordered for Academy members who, if they can't feel good, can at least feel something -- and strongly. The film offers this in spades.

Ajami, released through Kino International, plays tomorrow, January 31 only, at the Spokane International Film Festival, and then opens Wednesday, February 3, for a two-week run at New York City's Film Forum, as well as at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas on Friday, February 5 -- before setting off for playdates around the country.  You can check the cities and theaters here (click the link and then click top, right, on Playdates).

Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross tackle Naomi Klein's SHOCK DOCTRINE

Rumor and reportage has it that author/
activist Naomi Klein was not entirely pleased with the "con-
tent, tone and structure" of the filmed version of her non-
fiction book THE SHOCK DOCTRINE: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, co-directed by Michael Winter-
bottom (below, left) and Mat Whitecross (below, right). Are we surprised?

When a novel makes its transition to the big screen, we expect god-know-what from its adapters, but when a non-fiction best-
seller arrives on screen, I suspect we somehow anticipate more from the movie-makers -- though why this should be true, I am not certain.  Perhaps we believe filmmakers will honor the truth of a "true" tale more readily than they would the truth of a fictional one.

Klein's tome (the author is shown above) happens to be one of the only books TrustMovies has read cover to cover over the past few years, and so he feels able to make a comparison between the page and the screen (rather than his usual "unread by me" com-
ment when covering a book made into a movie).  In general he finds the Winterbottom/Whitecross adaptation good enough in getting across Klein's thesis: that the late Milton Friedman and his gang of Chicago School economists/acolytes have done horrible damage to our world, particularly the third world and Latin America by plying their abysmally nasty and wrong-headed notions of free-
market Capitalism following a "shock" to the country in question.

This shock might come from war, regime change or a natural disas-
ter.  Whatever the source, it offers a chance for the fast-moving zombies of the "free market" to descend upon that country, take over and effectively loot it of everything from cash and capital to natural resources, leaving its populace in a new kind of slavery or sometimes, in cases of dissent, dead.  Beginning with the theories of "scientific torture," spawned in the laboratory of Canada's Ewen Cameron in the 1950s and which leave their patients in a state in which almost anything can be done to them with little or no resist-
ance, Klein connects this to its later use by the CIA which then ex-
ported it abroad for use by dictatorships such as Chile's Pinochet.

The author covers "Thatcherism" in Britain, Poland post-Communism (Russia, too) and South Africa post-Apartheid, the USA after 9/11, Iraq, the economic uses of a Tsunami, Israel as a standing model of comfort-in-disaster and more.  The movie, however, lasts 82 minutes, and while I will admit to the old saw about a "picture being worth a thousand words," this certainly depends somewhat on the picture and the words.  In any case, the movie's running time is hardly enough to encompass Klein's dense 466-page book (plus nearly another hundred pages of notes, acknowledgments and index).  A three-part (or more) series for the BBC or our PBS would have fleshed out things considerably.  But movie-makers (as do we viewers) generally take what we can get.

Winterbottom, a prolific filmmaker (he's directed some 36 projects for movies and TV over a 20-year career), is smart, fast and usually able to make much out of a small budget, and he was probably a good choice to spearhead this project. Whitecross, younger and less prolific, has worked as editor and co-director with Winterbottom on The Road to Guantanamo, as well as on a number of his own projects. Together, they've served Klein's thesis and back-up facts pretty well. Inevitably, certain subjects are left out of the film and others short-shrifted. What remains is enough to make the point, however, and to leave the viewers thoughtful, if not shaken, and definitely angry.

Klein discredits Friedman -- the man, the "thinker" and the econo-
mist -- rather thoroughly.  Apologists might say he was misinformed or led astray.  I find him vicious, evil and finally cowardly: afraid, unwilling or unable, as are so many right-wingers, to own up to any mistakes.  To Klein's credit (and to that of the filmmakers), she nails the bastard, while creating a theory that makes perfect sense.  This shock doctrine will continue to be true and oft-used as long as power and resources remain securely in the hands of a few.  In fact, as Klein has recently pointed out, we'll soon be seeing the latest results of the doctrine in the tiny country of Haiti.

The Shock Doctrine made its debut at this year's Sundance Film Festival and began its On-Demand run last night, Thursday, January 28. It is part of the new Sundance Selects theatrical and video-on-demand film label, in which three films of very different style and content from this year's festival are making their debut simultaneously On-Demand from most major cable systems, including Comcast, Cablevision, Cox, Time Warner and satellite provider Direct TV. Each film will be available for 30 days on the cable systems' main movies-on-demand channel.

TrustMovies covered another Sundance Selects title -- 7 Days -- earlier this week and hopes to  review the last of the three (the Safdie Brothers' Daddy Longlegs) very soon.

WORD IS OUT is back: Mariposa Group's doc, more timely than ever, opens at AFA

Had the camera ever captured gays and lesbians so thoroughly and professionally than did the  landmark documentary WORD IS OUT?  Probably not, and certainly not in this direct, honest, surprising (even now) manner, with all the variations in age, type and color. ("I am not the black lesbian," the woman shown below notes, as she explains why she had to consider at length her decision to participate in the film. "I am a black lesbian.")

Call it "early talking heads" if you must. But see it -- if only for another woman, now a senior citizen, who explains why, growing up, she didn't much think about her outsider status: "We moved from England to Canada, and when you have something like poverty to work out of, you perhaps don't pay that much attention to certain other things."  Other things? Our identity maybe -- yet one that for many of us played second, if not third or fourth, fiddle to so much else.

Probably the first thing that hits you after watching a few minutes of Word Is Out will be simple shock at how effortlessly well-spoken, alert and intelligent are all of these people.  Were any more proof needed of the dumbing-down of America, this documentary delivers it.  Thirty-five years, it appears, is long enough to see a noticeable decline in standards of speech and the ability to communicate extemporaneously. Of course, you say: these people were chosen somewhat on the basis of their ability to be coherent.  But then, so are those chosen for today's documentaries, as well. (One of the rare recent examples that offers intelligent, well-spoken people is this week's Off and Running from Nicole Opper.)

And, oh, the variety on display. One lipstick lesbian (before that moniker became popular) talks about looking feminine and going against the grain of the day. Another (above) serves us up a history of women in the military during the 40s and 50s.  Yet another, who found it terribly difficult to appear to be different, tells of finding herself suddenly aghast at marching for the Vietnam War.  "Everything was based around trying to hide my lesbian self.  It was not safe to be vulnerable and so a lot of life had to do with hiding."

The men get their licks in, too, and there are all kinds of them on display, from the nellie to the naughty, seniors to sports lovers.  One blames religion. "Not Jesus: He was the savior.  It's the churches that are ruining things."  Another (below) speaks of his incarceration in a hospital where he underwent shock therapy (one of the women spent a similar stay but managed to avoid the shock).  They did it willingly, they tell us, to please their families.  Shock treatment!  How did you handle that, asks the interviewer?  "I had to make a secret, safe place in my life -- without any help from anybody else,"  he explains and then considers for a moment. "Except perhaps from my dog."

The movie is divided (unnecessarily, it seems to me) into three sections.  Part Two covers growing up, although the first part provided plenty of insight into that realm, too. This second section seems to offer more humor than its earlier counterpart, though one particular young woman (shown below), so sad-eyed and quiet and that she can barely look into the camera, talks of eventually finding another job, perhaps becoming a plumber.

While it is the attraction to a sexual partner of the same gender that gets us crucified, Word Is Out spends little time on the subject of sex.  It's rather a given, really.  Finding a relationship, comfort, love over the long-term is much more important to these people.  An occasional song by gay and lesbian groups breaks up the interviews (one duo of young women sings a particularly beautiful number in harmony). After a time, you realize how much you really like all these people on view.

In Part Three -- titled From Now On -- we sense the interview-
ees struggling with change: feminism, liberation and coming to terms with, as one person puts it, "the ways in which we hold each other down." Indeed.  Among the salutary effects of this fine documentary, both of its time and ahead of it, is that, thirty-five years later, we can simultaneously marvel at how much has changed -- and how little.

Word Is Out (the first feature-length documentary about lesbian and gay identity made by gay filmmakers) was directed by the Mariposa Film Group, consisting of Peter Adair (a photo of the late filmmaker is shown above), Nancy Adair, Veronica Selver, Andrew Brown, Robert Epstein and Lucy Massie Phenix -- some of whom have gone on to very nice careers.  Distributed by Milestone Films (Dennis Doros & Amy Heller ), it has been newly preserved to 35mm by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.  It opens tomorrow, Friday, January 29 for a one-week run at New York City's Anthology Film Archives., playing daily at 6:30 and 9:15pm, with 3:45 pm matinees on Saturday and Sunday.

19th NYJFF ends WITHIN THE WHIRLWIND and a Q&A with director Marleen Gorris and writer Nancy Larson

A long but hopeful cancellation line waited -- with some success -- for last-minute tickets to today's initial and sold-out screening of Marleen Gorris' biographical film about imprisoned poet/professor Evgenia Ginzberg WITHIN THE WHIRLWIND. The film was shown at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater, where there will be two more screenings of the movie tomor-
row, Thursday, January 28, at 3:45 and 8:45. Although both showings are sold out, if today's was any indication, you might have some luck procuring seats.

Gorris' film (the director is shown at left) is worth the extra trouble, and although the filmmaker told her audience at the Q&A following the screening that her producers were currently in talks for possible U.S. distribution, you never know. Over the years, TrustMovies has found that seeing a film at the Walter Reade often becomes one's best and last chance -- and prevents frustration and disappointment later on.

You'll probably remember Ms Gorris (shown above) as the filmmaker whose movie Antonia's Line (for my money one of the great films of all time) won a deserved Oscar for 1996's Best Foreign Film.  She also made the interesting, if not totally successful, Mrs. Dalloway; The Luzhin Defence and the film that put her on the map, A Question of Silence.  Now, in Within the Whirlwind, Gorris is working at very close to her best, using her star, the very fine Emily Watson (who worked with the director previously on Luzhin) to excellent advantage.  Watson has her finest role since her film debut in Breaking the Waves, and this new movie is even better than what she made for the jokey Mr.von Trier.

Within the Whirlwind is a relatively conventional biopic, but one done with immaculate intelligence,  plenty of creativity and the kind of good taste that seems to know innately what and what not to stick up there on the screen. Written by Nancy Larson, from Ms Ginzburg's own memoir, the film tosses us, almost from the first, into the paranoid purges of Russian dictator Joseph Stalin and his apparatchiks (Ginzburg's chief adversary is played by Ian Hart, below). We quickly learn that Evgenia's husband is going to be of little help.  Whether he is frightened for his own skin or that of their children, Evgenia is soon on her own.  If you know history at all, you'll also know that few of the Russian intelligentsia of the time escaped these purges.  Imprisonment was preferable to death, and Ginzburg manages the former -- in the Siberian gulag.

For a film that deals mainly with a time of captivity in a place of wretched deprivation, Gorris and Larson contrive to show us a fair amount of small, kind -- sometimes quite surprising -- moments.  From a bowl of raspberries handed by a peasant girl into the boxcar in which our prisoners are being shipped to a dinner in the home of Russian camp commandant and the many acts of kindness between the women prisoners -- one of whom steps in front of a guard's rifle to protect her friend -- these tiny fragments build slowly, helping the women to survive and the audience to thrive.

Gorris has always been intensely interested in women and how they fit into the world. And if her men range from craven (the father of Evgenia's children -- though what else could he do when so few of his ilk got out alive) to barbaric (the prison guards), they can occasionally (like the German prison doctor, beautifully played by Ulrich Tukur, of yesterday's North Face post) be a source of joy and help.

As a writer and poet, Ginzburg is sustained through her imprisonment by the art of poetry.  One of Gorris' achievements is to give this poetry its proper place, along with the politics of the time, the horror of prison life and the sustaining love Ginzburg finds from both her women co-prisoners and her doctor.  That the filmmakers manage to honor all these with intelligence and feeling adds up to a quiet triumph.

************

At the audience Q&A following the screening, Ms Gorris and Ms Larson were asked some thoughtful questions which they answered with equal thought.  One viewer wanted to know how the director had become interested in this subject.  Gorris explained that her interest went back quite a long while.  Financing for the film took a very long time to raise, but this gave the director and the writer the chance to keeping working on the script while learning more about Ginzburg's life.

"You find out what you're really interested in, and then you pursue it," explained Larson.  For her part, Gorris was particularly intersted in how political paranoia could lead to something as awful as what we see here, in the process discovering also how one could find some humanity present.

"This was a particularly difficult script to get right," the director explained.  "So many people died in these labor camap, and yet, extermination did not seem to have been the goal.  So how to portray all this?  It demands a different focus, without placing too much empahsis on politics, or horror, or romance or even poetry.  So I hope the film did come out well, with the right balance," she told us.  At which point, via applause, the audience assured her that it had.

How did she incorporate the poetry so well?   "Poetry was so important to Evgenia, so it was equally imortant to us that we use the correct amount -- and make it fit within the film."

How did she come to choose Emily Watson for the role?   "I had worked with Emily on The Luzhin Defence and had loved her work ever since Breaking the Waves. Emily really wanted to be here with us today but could not come because she is making a film in Australia -- which is a long commute."

Will there be distribution her in the US?  "It looks like we will have US distribution -- and then of course a DVD."

Where was the film shot?  In Russia, perhaps?  "We shot the film in Poland and Germany.  We attempted to use Russia: I spent a fruitless weekend there, and our producer was arrested at the border for some very small reason and then had to pay an entire new air fare to get back home.  I don't think the authorities would have been helpful, had we have even been able to reach them.  But, of course, you never know."

Were the tensions between Evgenia and her husband also apparent in her memoir? "Not so much," Ms. Larson told us, " but they are there if you read between the lines."

The Anti-Semitism was not particularly underscored in the movie.  "No, it was certainly present, but Evgenia does not speak much about that.  I think she saw this as more directed against the intellectuals.  In the camp itself, there was a strong differentiation between the criminal prisoners and the intellectuals, and the latter were at the bottom of the pile and were preyed upon terribly by the criminal element."

Was the "I have a body" poem by Osid Mandelstam referred to in her memoir?  "No," explained the director, "but I felt it was so right and was necessary to have in the film."

Was the burying of the piece of candy also referred to in the memoir?  "No, that was not there, either. We just imagined it!"

Philipp Stölzl's gripping and gorgeous NORTH FACE opens via Music Box

While TrustMovies tends not to place films about mountain-climbing high on his list of favorites, the new German film NORTH FACE (Nordwand) directed by Philipp Stölzl (shown below) has changed that. For now, at least. This amazing movie -- jumping off from fact -- is all about the attempted conquest of the then unclimbed north face of the Eiger mountain in Switzerland.



The film begins as a woman turns the pages of a scrap-
 book. We don't see her face, just the photos she uncovers, and then we're thrust back in time to a pair of smart and handsome young mountaineers Toni Kurz (Benno Fürmann, be-
low right) and Andi Hinter-
stoisser (Florian Lukas, below left). Soon we're deep in the delights of mountain ranges, greenery, rathskel-
lers, family scenes, newspa-
per offices, romance, charm, and humor. It's like taking a swell vacation -- except that we're here in the Third Reich, with heroes who are good little Nazis.

I cannot vouch for how true it is that, because the young men were not given leave to climb (Nazi propaganda urged young German mountaineers to conquer the intransigent Eiger), they resigned from what looks like a kind of pre-military-service Hitler Youth.  But this certainly frees them from the cloud of Nazidom -- and frees us to root for them, too.

Once we're climbing up the north face of the Eiger with our German twosome, as well as two more climbers from Austria who are hellbent on being the first to reach the top, the movie becomes as gripping and suspenseful, shocking and moving as any mountain-climbing movie I've ever seen. Director Stölzl and his cinematogra-
pher Kolja Brandt have accomplished something stupendous by making us part of the climb: the elements, the nearly flat sheet of rock and ice that is the mountain's face, the sheer effort of lifting the body up and up.  No apologies to Avatar: This is the movie that put me in a place no other film has yet managed.

Part of the reason for my being put off my movies that deal mainly with mountain climbing is that, often, once we're up there, just as for the actual climbers, there's no relief or change of scene.  North Face does not make this mistake.  Granted, any movie that forces us to endure nonstop peaks and chills, falls and spills is to be commended, I guess, for realism and verité. But if you are looking for entertainment, you're going to want a break now and then.

North Face provides plenty of these, and they're all interesting and often lovely to watch, taking place as they do in a posh hotel (above) at the base of the mountain. The non-climbing scenes also bring us the history of the day: from the place of women at the time to the manner in which newspapers kowtowed to Nazi protocol. The cast includes the always-fine Ulrich Tukur (above, right, from Séraphine and The White Ribbon) and, in the role of the Kurz's enamorata, a most interesting actress named Johanna Wokalek (above, left, from The Baader Meinhof Complex). Much less beau-
tiful than most "movie stars," she lights up the screen in her own manner: via sheer intensity and commitment. You can easily under-
stand why a "looker" like Fürmann would find himself in her thrall.

Movies based on historical events run the risk of audiences already knowing the outcome. American audiences, however, will be unfamiliar with this one, so the finale will retain every drop of suspense and surprise. Along the way, you'll see some interesting sights (a funeral that takes place during a climb) and thought-provoking encounters (what comes first, the photo journalist or the human being?). The award-winning screenplay and camerawork combine to make some rather incredible logistics understandable. Finally, it's the little things you'll marvel over: the difficulty, for instance, of getting frozen hands to move a rope.

North Face, from Music Box Films, opens in New York City Friday, January 29, at the Beekman, Lincoln Plaza Cinemas and Landmark's Sunshine. Additional playdates -- theaters and cities -- can be found by clicking here then scrolling down.