THE VANISHED ELEPHANT: Javier Fuentes-León's art film about love and identity arrives

It's being marketed as some kind of "thriller," with mentions of movies on the order of Tell No One and The Secret in Their Eyes tossed in for good measure. Comparisons, as they say, are odious, and so far as the new Spanish-language film from Peru/Columbia/ Spain, THE VANISHED ELEPHANT, is concerned, these do the movie little justice and, in fact, just might sink it once this comparative word-of-mouth gets out. Tell No One was a hugely intricate and fast-moving thriller, and one of, if not the most-successful-at-the-boxoffice foreign language film of its decade. More slow-moving, The Secret in Their Eyes, was also a kind of mystery thriller that built to a whopping and surprising conclusion (in addition to walking away with Best Foreign Language Film that year).

As written and directed by Javier Fuentes-León (shown at left, who gave us the bisexual drama about death and the closet, Undertow, some years back), The Vanished Elephant comes much closer to a genuine "art" film -- a kind of puzzle about the artistic process, identity, love and narcissism -- which poses as a mystery only in the sense that all of our identities are, finally, mysterious. This is also quite a beautiful film to view, one of the most visually compelling I have seen in the past year or so. I believe Señor Fuentes-León means this visual beauty to be part of the puzzle, as well as the film's fun. It is, in both cases.

We come back again and again to visuals that remind us of former visuals and/or begin to fill in certain blanks -- sometimes literally, at other times symbolically. As our hero, a cop-turned-mystery-writer, Edo (a commanding, encompassing performance by Salvador del Solar, above) tries to unravel the disappearance of his girlfriend (played by Vanessa Saba, below), some years previous, he comes up against quite an arsenal of oddities.

Chief among these is a man who appears to be impersonating the leading character, Rafael Pineda (Lucho Cáceres, below, right), in the series of popular mystery novels that Edo writes. There is also a District attorney set on proving that Edo was the person responsible for his girlfriend's disappearance, a photographer who has organized a new exhibit around Edo's famous novels, and other possible red herrings.

The "elephant" of the title is found in a museum painting that doubles as a rock sculpture relic somewhat destroyed during a famous earthquake that took a huge death toll just at the time of that Edo's girlfriend went missing.

Deaths begin to pile up, and yet the movie never seems to become any kind of realistic mystery. Instead the clues lead back and back again to our Edo, and Señor del Solar's quiet charisma and persuasive acting keeps us both on point and on hold as the mystery continues to be revealed.

As is sometimes the case, it's the journey rather than the destination that makes The Vanished Elephant as intriguing as it is. When we reach the finale, it is probably del Solar's handsome, troubled face that counts for most, making this movie about identity and losing oneself in grief and fantasy so unusually compelling -- even, finally, quite moving and sad.

From Oscilloscope Laboratories and running 109 minutes, The Vanished Elephant opens here in South Florida this Friday, March 4, at the Bill Cosford Cinema in Coral Gables and the Cinema Paradiso in Hollywood. To see further playdates, cities and theaters, click here then scroll down.

In BECAUSE I WAS A PAINTER, Christophe Gognet tackles the Holocaust via its inmates' art

If you imagine that you've now seen The Holocaust from just about every possible angle, think again. Here's a new one -- from Christophe Gognet, the writer and director of BECAUSE I WAS A PAINTER: ART THAT SURVIVED THE NAZI CAMPS -- that gives us the horror all over again via the art created by concentration camp victims, some of these survivors who are, or were until very recently, still with us. (The film was made a few years ago and was first viewed art the Rome Film Festival in 2013.)

M. Cognet, shown at right, begins his film on the site, I believe, of one of the concentration camps on which has been placed row after row of jagged stones. These appear to be gravestones, and this is clearly some kind of memorial. Then we hear an artist tell us that the beauty here comes from the pain-ter, not from the corpse. Next we view a painting of many corpses, as the artist explains, "We've all seen a dead person. Even children have seen this. But heaps of dead people? This fascinates you."

Not everyone would agree. Certainly the next artist featured -- Samuel Willenberg, who survived Treblinka -- does not. "What beauty?!" he practically shouts. "There is none. Devoid." The filmmaker allows us to have plenty of time to judge for ourselves, as we see the work of both survivors and of many of the artists who died but managed to leave behind a surprising amount of their work. And as no photos were ever taken of certain camps, such as Sobibor, the single drawing extant of women being gassed there gives us the only semi-eye-witness account that we have -- even if it could not have been viewed by the artist from the inside-the-gas-chamber POV that is shown in the drawing. (More likely this came from accounts given by a guard or a kapo.)

Later in the film, an artist talks about one of his works, a staggering painting of a single young and pregnant woman shown in various stages: just prior to learning she will be gassed and then coming to terms  -- visceral and horrifying -- with what this means to her and her unborn child. I doubt you will be able to erase this piece of "art," once seen, from your mind. This and much else that we see is fascinating, yes, but creepily so. Like so much real art, it takes hold of you in ways that even -- especially, perhaps -- Hollywood movies such as Schindler's List can't manage. (For perhaps the best "art" film about the Holocaust, try the Hungarian masterpiece Fateless, from Lajos Koltai.)

Cognet's film gives us artists who were inmates of the concentration camps talking about their experience -- and the "art" of it. In between, the slow-moving camera sweeps over all -- from landscapes and camps (today and in their former days) to paintings and drawings of the faces (both drawn and photographed) of inmates and the artists. Along the way, these artists talk about the old days. "On Sundays, when we didn't work," (who knew that concentration camp victims got Sunday off?), "we'd talk about art," one of them explains. "The smell of linseed oil -- it was just the same as at home!"

We learn of the late Dinah Gottliebova, who drew portraits for Doctor Mengele, and demanded, once these were unearthed post-war, that they be returned to her. Why were they not is explained quite interestingly and thoroughly. We learn too of Franciszek Jazwiecki, the artist who managed to paint Holocaust victims in four different camps -- and what portraits (shown below) these are!

Overall, this documentary, a kind of dirge with occasional shocking and/or joyous moments, provides a new way of looking at the horror we already know -- and just possibly rising even a step above it. I mentioned earlier the slow-moving camera, and you will have to accept this slow pace. If the experience is not quite like, in the words of the character portrayed by Gene Hackman in Night Moves, "watching paint dry," it is something like watching a painting come slowly into being. Clearly this snail pace was a directorial choice, and we must honor this, though I think M. Cognet could easily have excised a good ten or fifteen minutes of footage and not made his movie any the lesser for it. What remains is still quite something: an original, important and thought-and-feeling-provoking addition to Holocaust history.

Because I Was a Painter --from The Cinema Guild and running 105 minutes -- open this Friday in New York City at the Lincoln Plaza Cinema and then expands next month to Santa Fe and Columbus. Click here and then scroll down to see all currently scheduled playdates.

An anti-hero of the art world drives Cullman, Grausman & Becker's brilliant ART AND CRAFT

Another first-class documentary arrives in theaters this week: ART AND CRAFT, the tale of a most unusual art forger that our current art world, I suspect, would rather keep under wraps. The product of a directorial trio -- Sam Cullman (below, right, and co-director of the Oscar-nominated If a Tree Falls), Jennifer Grausman (below, left) and Mark Becker (who, along with Ms Grausman, co-directed Pressure Cooker), the movie introduces us to a Virginia-born fellow named Mark Landis, a quietly self-effacing man nearing sixty years of age with a voice somewhat like that of the late Truman Capote and a skill for drawing and painting in multiple styles that is simply uncanny.

Mr. Landis pretty much tells us his own tale, with some prodding from a journalist or two hoping to get a good story out of all this. (They do, as do the moviemakers.) Such a quiet, non-threatening man is Landis, with his slight frame, large ears, bald head and near-apologetic attitude that he finally becomes one of the more endearing, if sad, narrators in the history of documentaries.

With some difficult family history, and problems both mental (he is said to be schizophrenic) and physical, the movie offers some extra suspense in regard to whether or not this odd little man will make it to the next frame of the film. Landis may be an art forger, but he is not, we are told, a criminal because he has never profited from any of his forgeries. He creates them and then "donates" them to various museum around the country -- who have proven only too willing to accept this "largess."

Landis, it turns out, is as adept at forging Watteau as he is Walt Disney, Daumier and Picasso, and he also excels at disguise of sorts (dressing up as a man-of-god, he claims to have learned how to do all this from the British TV series Father Brown) and at creating the special "provenance" that attends each piece of art that he donates.

Forger or not, you're unlikely to find a "dearer," more soothing fellow on screen these days, and the movie-makers have surrounded him with some other very interesting characters, too. There are those journalists, a few of the museum folk he's fooled, and especially the man -- Matt Leininger (above, left), the former registrar at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art-- who first "cottoned on" to Landis' scams back in 2008 and has become, over the ensuing years, a tad obsessive about tracking him down and making sure that he can't continue on this forgery route.

We get to know Leininger, not as well as we do Landis, but well enough to identify with and enjoy him. The filmmakers, in their unobtrusive way, have managed to capture both men quite beautifully, particularly Mr. Landis -- who will almost immediately become, in the words of that old Readers' Digest phrase, one of the most unforgettable characters you have ever met.

We get enough of Landis' family history, in addition to seeing him with doctors and social workers, to realize that he is "off the grid" in certain aspects. This serves to keep us viewers just a little off balance, as we try to piece together how far off our artist/forger actually is. Is he schizoid, bi-polar, and just "different"? And what of the all those duped curators and registrars in the museums whom our guy fooled. Is "due diligence" not worth bothering about any longer?

By the time an actual art show of Landis' work is being organized for an opening at an Ohio museum, the ironies are flying so thick and fast that you'll have to take a breath. "Do you plan on continuing to 'gift'?"the artist is asked during the opening of the show. He pauses to consider, and then: "I'll have to think about it," he answers.

Art and Craft , from Oscilloscope, is surely one of the most graceful and sweet, endearing and enduring documentaries about an outsider and his world that we have yet seen. It opens in New York theaters -- at the Angelika Film Center and the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas -- this Friday, September 19, and will hit Los Angeles at the Landmark NuArt on Friday, September 26. In the weeks and months to come, it will play another 20-odd cities and theaters. For all currently scheduled playdates, click here and scroll down.

Manuel Martín Cuenca's Goya-laden CANNIBAL proves the Spanish answer to non-stop boredom

Possibly the slowest-moving movie ever made (other than the oeuvre of Andy Warhol), CANNIBAL, the latest from Spanish filmmaker Manuel Martín Cuenca, left us utterly unmoved and finally uninterested. "Well," noted my spouse post-viewing, "it was kind of interesting to keep waiting and waiting to see if something would happen." Unfortunately, nothing ever does. Though I enjoyed Señor Cuenca's earlier Malas Temporadas, this one -- for all its Goya awards and nominations, is a major dud. Even one of my favorite actors, the usually amazing Antonio de la Torre, is one-note and boring here. Considering how versatile and energetic this excellent actor always is, this is not an easy thing to achieve.

One of the dead (and deadening) give-aways here is how Señor Cuenca (shown at left) chooses to end his every scene: with a too-long pause before the screen fades to black. Over time this becomes expected, obvious and very tiresome. The filmmaker is clearly going for "art" here and is absolutely not about to give us -- even in movie in which our hero murders and then eats beautiful women -- any thrills, chills or gore. The single scene of blood-letting is so chaste and arty (and also quite derivative) that we can only sigh, Ah, lovely!

Why is our boy Carlos (played by de la Torre, above), the best tailor in Granada, doing these naughty deeds? The film gives us a hint now and then. Maybe it's religion. We get the "Take, eat, for this is my body" scene in church. But then why isn't Carlos killing and eating handsome young men in Jesus-type loin-cloths rather than preying on Virgin Mary stand-ins? Well, he's straight, of course. Psychology? Late in the movie we get an explanation laughably similar to the one given about the character played by Michael Caine in Dressed to Kill.

Really, it doesn't matter why. We're simply stuck with Carlos and his predilection, and because the movie moves like molasses in January (and lasts nearly two hours), it often seems we'll be glued to this guy forever.

There is a very nice turn from the leading lady -- Olimpia Melinte -- playing two roles: the very different sisters, Alexandra (above) and Nina (below), who come into Carlos' life and begin turning it upside down. But even that description might indicate that Cuenca allows a little action into things. Carlos and his life barely move at all. Even when this fellow is in the act of committing murder --with a car, at the beach-- the movie plods.

As much as I've loved the works of de la Torre on many previous occasions (The Last Circus, Gordos, As Luck Would Have It, I'm So Excited to name but a few), here -- in this chic and arty, minimalist movie, he is forced to be so consistently closed-down that he can register little facially or in terms of body language.

Finally the film does not work on any level -- not as art, mystery, thriller, or even a decent exploration into our darker psycho-sexual leanings. The cinematography, however (by Pau Esteve Birba), is often very attractive, but the screenplay, co-credited to Cuenca and Alejandro Hernández, dawdles and feints when it ought to be pro-active and parry.

Still, the Spaniards seemed to go for it. Perhaps you have to be Spanish and Catholic to fully appreciate these goings-on. Cannibal -- released theatrically via Film Movement and its genre division, Ram Releasing -- opens this week in around 20 cities across the country, including Los Angeles (at the CineFamily) and New York (the Village East Cinema). Click here then scroll down to see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters.

Jessica Habie's unusual MARS AT SUNRISE tackles the Israel/Palestine problem via "art"

Movie-makers have approached the thorny and seemingly insoluble and unforgiving Israel/Palestine situation in so many different ways -- from unusual love stories like Thierry Binisti's A Bottle in the Gaza Sea to Elia Suleiman's marvelously elusive The Time That Remains to Lorraine Levy's poignant, kids-switched-at-birth movie The Other Son to Michael Mayer's fine GLBT thriller Out in the Dark (there are plenty of other good films simply too numerous to mention here) -- that it is both a pleasure and a surprise to welcome one that approaches the situation via art. MARS AT SUNRISE, the new film from Jessica Habie, is both about art and itself an "art film" -- full of symbols, mystery, impressionism and the surreal.

Ms Habie, shown at right and who also wrote the screenplay, offers up the "plot" situation in a fairly straightforward manner that gives us decent entry into things. An artist and school teacher named Khaled (the ubiquitous Ali Suliman, shown below and most recently seen here in Lone Suvivor and The Attack) is being displaced from his home and art studio in what is suddenly an "occupied-so-no-questions-asked" territory. He doesn't want to leave -- his explanation to his class  (below) regarding why he must go and the different colored visas that reflect this makes a wonderful scene -- and so he stays until he is forcibly ejected by the Israeli military.

The officer in command -- played as an angry, vicious and sad young man by talented newcomer Guy Elhanan, below -- begins by being rude and nasty to Khaled (and to his art) then goes on to imprison and torture the poor guy, after of course demanding that he work for Israel as a spy.

Yes, this situation sets up a rather definitive victim/aggressor scenario. But wait. While our sympathy rather must go with the displaced Palestinian, Ms Habie has more on her mind than simply this. By weaving into her movie so much art and "art," taking us from the real to the surreal, from fantasy to wish fulfillment, from the impressionistic to the hard-edged, she makes us understand that, no matter who seems to hold the power cards, we have two victims here.

The filmmaker's shots are often beautiful and usually meaningful; only occasionally do they fall into what might be seen as pretentious. I think we can live with a little pretension, in any case, when an artist -- which Habie definitely is -- attempts to come to terms with a subject this difficult. (She certainly hands us a better movie than did Julian Schnabel with his pretty dismal and ham-fistedly obvious Miral.)

Habie's combination of art, music and poetry, along with lush and beautifully framed visuals in service to a relatively simple story works well enough to divert us and make us think and connect during her film's short (just 75 minutes) running time.

Sure, there are a few things I'd like to have changed: I'd give Mr Suliman a better wig, for instance; and maybe have dubbed the rather unpleasant middle-eastern valley girl voice of the lovely actress seen at the film's beginning and then off and on throughout. (This young woman sounds as though she could greatly benefit from one of the Lake Bell character's vocal-training sessions seen at the conclusion of the fabulous In a World...)

But these are quibbles against what is a most worthwhile attempt to create art, meaning and change out of continuing injustice. Mars at Sunrise (which I take to be a title of one of Khaled's art works) is an unusual and engaging experience and one of the first of its kind to come out of the middle east that I, at least, have so far seen.

The movie -- from Canada/Palestine/USA, 75 minutes,  unrated, in DCP, in Arabic, English and Hebrew with English subtitles -- opens this Friday in New York City at the Quad Cinema, and elsewhere soon, I hope.

GRAVITY WAS EVERYWHERE BACK THEN from experimental artist Brent Green

You gotta love that title, which sounds like we might be in for something kinda sci-fi/fantasy.  But no.  Or maybe yes.  Sci-fi, perhaps not, but there is certainly an element of fantasy here -- at least in the minds of the real-life protagonists on which the film is based: Leonard Wood (possible relative of Ed?), a humble Kentucky hardware store clerk, and his wife Mary, who seem to have had only a passing and short-lived connection with reality as most of us know it.  There is also an element of fantasy, I am afraid, in the mind of movie-maker and artist Brent Green that he has created a film that might its place in a theatrical venue in which an audience actually forks over money to watch something they'll enjoy.

GRAVITY WAS EVERYWHERE BACK THEN -- I just love repeating that title, though what it has to do with the movie at hand, I cannot say -- is a film about Mr. and Mrs. Wood, who met oddly, lived frugally and died sadly (don't most of us) and whose memorial perhaps is this weird film.  Throughout the 1970s Leonard built a wacky habitat for his ailing wife Mary in the hope that its very wackiness would somehow cure her cancer.  Though the house itself was destroyed, Green, shown at right, seems to have gotten a glimpse of it and, via Wood's original drawings, recreated it (sort of), along with some of its furnishings, for this film.  He then hired actors to play Mr. and Mrs., wrote them some dialog and let them go at it.  All to the accompaniment of rather discordant music.

The result, done in some of the weirdest stop-motion photography I have ever seen, does nothing for anything except make the movie one, non-stop piece of jerky film-making that grows continually more difficult to watch.  The film is (I suppose, deliberately) scratchy, and seems to keep bouncing back and forth from very light to way-too-dark.  The soundtrack is even worse.  Not only does one have trouble seeing what is going on properly, it is even more difficult to hear what's being said.  Is the point here to be "artistic"? Obfuscatory?  Is this deliberate "distancing of the viewer"? Or is someone simply having us on?  No?  Well, maybe doing the film in this stop-motion manner was much less expensive for Green (who is shown in the two photos above) than simply filming his actors with a video camera. If so, then OK -- even if the results stink.  If not, and this is supposed to be "art," then fie on the filmmaker.

From the outset, Gravity is so home-made looking that it initially reminded TrustMovies of Flooding With Love for the Kid -- Zachary Oberzan's bizarre homage to First Blood.  Both are examples of DIY filmmaking, but the latter is infinitely more fun, if too lengthy (the best thing Gravity has going for it is its 75-minute running time). Occasionally there is an interesting moment.  The movie-maker refers to his subject and his home construction as "building toward god."  And there is a lovely scene of some very nice animation, shown in the still above, having to do with a flood and some fish in the street.  But because, perhaps, Green and his actors had not enough genuine connection to the Woods, they're unable to create characters. Instead, we get no more than a jumbled collection of odd facts.

The most interesting part of all this might be the religious aspect of the Woods' lives, as it is clear that they had a very bizarre notion of that big guy in the sky. Trust Movies himself comes from what he considers to be one of the most goofy, if not outright detrimental, religions of all time -- Christian Science -- which, had it become as popular as Judaism or Catholicism, could have wreaked untold havoc.   But it was simply too ridiculous (The material world does not exist? And you can't go to doctors? That'll never fly!) to catch on big-time. So he was primed to discover more about the Woods' definition of god and/or their belief system.  But we learn almost nothing here, either -- just more odd, disconnected "facts."

I have certainly seen enough movies of all types at this point to understand that with experimental film, the viewer must try to find some point of entry -- a way to engage with the filmmaker.  And it's not that Green won't supply these. Yet, as soon as you have entered, he begins pushing you away.  He seems to have chosen the oddest and least affecting manner in which to film his story.  Other than his animation, I could find no reason to stay involved.  For me the most moving moments came toward the film's conclusion, during the simple reading of a letter written by Wood to his wife, 13 years after her death.  Some loves, it seems, never die.  And some movies never take shape.

Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then, a Nervous Films release (I should hope so: What could the box-office take possibly add up to here?), opens this Friday, May 7, at Manhattan's IFC Center, and will play daily at 3.30 and 7:30 pm.