Roy Andersson is back -- and treading water -- with ABOUT ENDLESSNESS

They're all here, once again, those special pleasures of viewing a film by Swedish master Roy Andersson: the stationary camera, perfect compositions, elegance, ugliness, humor (dry, dark), and above all quietude -- even amidst what would normally be considered a terribly trying time (a modern-day Christ being persecuted as he carries his cross uphill in one of those uber-sanitary Scandinavian towns). 

Beginning with a Chagall-like image (above) of a man and woman floating in the sky, Andersson's newest, ABOUT ENDLESSNESS, is only his fourth full-length film in 20 years. None of these are what you'd call lengthy (maybe 95 or 100 minutes), and his new one lasts but 78. 

Yet for TrustMovies, this one seems the longest, thanks to a certain repetition and sameness that have clearly set in to the filmmaker's work (Mr. Andersson is shown at right). Not that his situations are the same (though they are often pretty similar), but his themes -- from religion, war, commerce, communication (or the lack of it), and a populace that is at best utterly brainwashed -- remain front and center, with little new to be said about any of these. 

What the filmmaker has done, I think, is to pare down each of his segments more and more to what is currently coming very close to the bone. (Andersson has always been a minimalist; he's simply more so now.)

He's right, of course, in that society is certainly not changing (except for the worse), but then neither is his own vision. And since there are usually a few years inserted between his last and the debut of his latest, we're more primed for yet another chapter of Andersson-ville.

And so as About Endlessness was unspooling, I found myself, as ever, engaged with the simultaneous beauty/ugliness of it all. At the same time, my mind wandered back to his first (and still best) full-length film, Songs From the Second Floor, and how much more deeply, movingly, often shockingly, these same themes were rendered.

Well, society certainly ain't changing ('cept for the worse), so can you blame a filmmaker for staying his course? (Even treading water, Roy Andersson puts most other movie-makers to shame in so many ways.) And if we perceive an awful lot of state-sanctioned, by-rote behavior here, I can also tell you that the likes of Adolf Hitler makes an appearance, as well.

The refrain, "I saw a man..." (or sometimes a woman) occurs often here, as do forms of love and even thermodynamics. And if I can detect any really special loathing of Andersson's, it just might be toward psychotherapy and its practitioners (maybe even toward the entire medical profession). 

I might suggest that it's time for Andersson to move on, but as the world appears to be arriving at its  end, in its own not-so-good time, perhaps it is this filmmaker who is the best choice to help us properly embrace it all.

From Magnolia Pictures, in Swedish with English subtitles (damn few, actually; fast, snappy dialog is not Mr. Andersson's thing) and running 78 minutes, About Endlessness opens theatrically this Friday, April 30 in limited release. (It will not be challenging Godzilla and King Kong for the box-office crown.) Click here for more information on the film and its theatrical and/or digital-viewing venues.

Meet the cult of conservative media in Jen Senko's THE BRAINWASHING OF MY DAD

OK: The liberal media probably has its cults, as well. But in my estimation there has so far been nothing in the annals of television and radio anything as nasty, bullying and scary as Fox News and the many "talk radio" creeps who spout hate and lies like there was no tomorrow. (And thanks to whom there may not be for much longer. Yes, assholes: climate change exists.) New to TrustMovies, however, is the fact that there are actually support groups now for folk who have lost loved ones to brainwashing by right-wing media.

If the above sounds like a bit of comic faux journalism right out of The Onion, the new documentary from Jen Senko (shown at right) entitled THE BRAIN-WASHING OF MY DAD will make you sit up and take notice that this has indeed happened to a multitude of dads, moms, and other relatives and friends. How and why Fox News and its minions and acolytes have been able to achieve and continue this is explained in all its tacky, unpleasant glory in this surprising documentary that will handily verify for many of us why certain people we know appear to have gone over to the dark side, while losing far too many of their marbles in the process.

How can a man (like Ms Senko's own father, shown in his middle years, above, and as seen last year, below), formerly a liberal Democrat who loved people and animals, over a rather short time become a raving right-wing nut? This is easier than one might think, but fortunately so is the deprogramming necessary to bring him back to reality. (We get this part shown to us toward the end of the documentary.)

Meanwhile, we get a not-bad history of American life from the 1950s through current times, with a most interesting look at the career of Roger Ailes plus a number of talking-head interviews with current and/or former right-wing prevaricators (that's the famous turncoat, David Brock, below, left) and the men and women who want to stop the planned take-over of American politics and life via this brainwashing.

These would include everyone from author Claire Conner to Steve Rendall (of FAIR) whose explanations of what's happening and why prove thoughtful, direct but more understated than you might expect. How do all those right-wing "think tanks" figure into things? You'll see....

There is also quite a bit of colorful, stylish and smart animation (above), courtesy of Bill Plympton, which helps make the film's 90 minutes go by relatively quickly. Though the documentary focuses on Ms Senko's dad, we don't probe too deeply into family history. Instead we learn (once again, for some of us) about the infamous Lewis Powell memorandum and Ronald Reagan's gift to the rich of supply-side/trickle-down economics.

The few times in life that this critic has encountered rabidly angry brainwashed right-wingers, he has quickly given up trying to reason with them or change their ideas. Yet, as pictured here, this is not an impossible task. To learn how, you'll have to experience the movie -- which is, of course, preaching to the choir. But, hell, the sermon's a pretty good one.

The Brainwashing of My Dad (that's dad again, with mom, above) opens this Friday, March 18, in New York City (at the Cinema Village) and Los Angeles (at Laemmle's Music Hall 3) and simultaneously via digital release on iTunes and nationwide VOD. To see all currently scheduled theatrical screenings, with cities and theaters shown, click here.

Soon-Mi Yoo's SONGS FROM THE NORTH: Exploring North Korea--with the usual caveats

SONGS FROM THE NORTH indeed! You will not have seen in a long, long while a movie in which songs and singing play this large a part in the character of the land and its people (and its dictators and their power to brainwash). As the filmmaker, Soon-Mi Yoo, tells us via titles cards early on, "This longing all my life for a place I was not permitted to go until recently. How do you explain it? It was a land of evil and yet as sacred as your mother's womb." Wow. And just where is this fabled place? Ah: North Korea.

With this poetic opening, as well as via the combo of music, light show and space travel that actually begins her film, Ms Yoo (shown at left) has pretty well trashed most of The Interview, which was trash anyway (the part set in North Korea, at least; the early section of the movie was quite original and funny). The filmmaker was at last able to visit that strange, lopped-off land (Korea's official division took place in 1948) to the north of her birthplace in South Korea -- first in 2010, and then again in 2011 and 2012.

So: Has Ms Yoo been able to crack the facade and find out more about the enigma that has long been North Korea? After all, its dictator family has seen to it that the outside world stays out, while the populace inside remains thoroughly brainwashed into a rather frightening first-family fealty. And even when a representative or two from that outside world gets inside, they are faced with silence from the populace, no chance at asking questions or getting answers, and kept under strict control by the "guides" who accompany them everywhere. Ms Yoo tell us that that, as usual, she, too, was unable to ask probing questions.

In her Director's Statement in the press notes that we critics received, the filmmaker admits that she was unable to ask a single person the question she most wanted to: How do you manage to survive? (See Francine M. Storey's great poem, Instructions for Search to experience the full strength of that simple but profound question.) Instead, Ms Yoo had to look for answers in the footage she brought back of the people she'd photographed and also in the songs, publications, archival footage and examples of North Korean cinema she researched. "The longer I stared at the images, the longer I listened to their voices," she explains, "I no longer saw the propaganda. What remained were the beauty of their faces and the melodies of the songs which carried a genuine emotion that I found consoling."

Well, I'm sorry, but I found all this pretty paltry, offering little more than I've seen before in the few docs to have come out of North Korea. And while her images are often poetic, I find Ms Yoo's explanation more sentimental than anything else. When she adds that she has come to understand that these are people who would rather die than be humiliated and subjugated, we are again pulled up short. Plenty of North Koreans have already died, but those left are surely subjugated still, and might very well be humiliated, were they not brainwashed into constantly singing about how they revere their great leader.

If this sounds like a dyed-in-the-wool Capitalist speaking, let me demolish that idea completely. I have no love for Capitalism as it has been practiced in the USA or most of the western world, but I am not a Communist, either, since no country has ever been able to make that philosophy work in practice. (I'm a Socialist, sure, but who in his right mind in these days of ever-expanding inequality would not be?)

So much of what we see in this film looks like "planned hagiography," beginning with footage of the populace, grieving at the death of their great leader. Ms Yoo's camera concentrates for quite a spell on a seemingly grieving male citizen, above (maybe her guide), who is saddened --- but by what?. He won't say so we never know. The most interesting part of the film is her interview with her father (he's a South Korean and thus allowed to speak), who tells us of the history of his family, friends and country.

Visually, we move from pools hall to skyscraper, while mostly concentrating on the faces and voices of the people. The little real information we get comes via more title cards that tell us things such as, "For the North Korean elite, Germany is a cautionary tale. Above all, they want to know what happened to their East German counterparts." For good reason, too, as the East Germans have now been pretty much swallowed up by West Germany and its preoccupations, just as North Korea would surely be, once North and South eventuallly reunite.

Our filmmaker is told that she is "filming too long," or simply asked to "Go away" or "Get out of here." The archival footage she finds seems to make clear that the west's two most important "gifts" to the east, so far as North Korea is concerned, have been movies and nuclear testing. Toward the end we watch what looks like a school program being performed for officials and full of song and tears and propaganda -- all at the service of the state.

Songs From the North is a highly personal movie, for which Ms Yoo did the writing, directing, cinematography and editing. Whether or not it will translate to you is questionable, I think. It worked for me only in fits and starts, and even then, what it left me thinking and feeling seems to go counter to what the filmmaker herself thought and felt. You can sympathize, maybe even empathize with these North Koreans, certainly. But getting a clue to what might be going through their minds?
Sorry. No can do.

The documentary, from Kino Lorber, opens this coming Friday, September 18, in New York at Anthology Film Archives and in Los Angeles at RedCat on November 23.

In John Martoccia's religious melodrama, DEATH OF A TREE, faith goes bonkers -- yet again

It begins with a seemingly endless round of preach, preach, preach, and closes with a climax of gun-fueled melodrama followed by a denouement of more preaching (and immediate conversion, of course, as most of these faith-based films allow for zero doubt). In between, DEATH OF A TREE, the second movie from John Martoccia, ambles along with scene after scene intended to show us how foul our current life style really is: How women wear clothes that are far too skimpy (never mind that our leading man is almost constantly seen in a tank top that reveals his arms and torso in all their glory: let the ladies take the blame, as usual); how one's reputation is far more important than what that person believes (wives, of course, are the culprits here; hus-bands do the right thing); and how abortion is the biggest crime imagin-able, while god, the Catholic Church and the Bible are the only true law.

If all this strikes you as the gospel to live by, you're gonna love the movie. If not, there may be a few problems, since Mr. Martoccia (pictured at right), as both writer and direc-tor, has saddled his film with characters who would rather yak about everything than probe their own behavior in more than cursory fashion or -- heaven forfend -- behave in a way that is more than cliché. This man is old school, for sure, and while this in itself could prove interesting if he were willing to go deeply into things, instead he relies on tried-and-true Catholic dogma to solve everything.

Further, he has his characters behave in ways that are simply too stupid to countenance, unless he intentionally wants to hand us a movie that keeps threatening to descend (then finally falls utterly) into the realm of camp. To give just the main example: He has his hero, the hot-looking Ronnie Marmo (above), keep placing temptation in his own way, despite the warning of friends and priest -- again and again and again -- until he falls for it.  Wow: That's a shockeroo.

Further, his leading lady, Gracie Tyrrell (above, left), exhibits most of the signs of a woman genuinely in love -- until his hero's narrow-minded obsessions or her own sudden mental instability do her in. Which is it, Mr. Martoccia? Is there simply no hope for anyone on this earth unless they bow down to patriarchy and Catholic dogma and "do the right thing"? (I suspect, on the basis of Death of a Tree, that the filmmaker is no fan of the current Pope.)

The movie begins with a poem written on the screen, and we see a man praying while being screamed at and threatened by another man. Then that prayerful one starts preaching -- at himself, at the other characters, and of course at us in the audience, and this simply never ends. The film turns out to be one long sermon by people who seem so limited in their understanding of life, human nature, and especially the enormity of that creation called god, that this constricts them and their movie entirely.

More poetry occurs now and then throughout, and we eventually discover that our hero is an artist. The surprisingly sophisticated art shown here looks actually pretty good, but the nitwit dialog given our hero to spout about it makes it seems nearly impossible that this guy could have created that art on his own. The dialog, in addition to the preaching, is full of male prerogative and scriptural cliche ("The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak), with a villain who, in addition to all else, is grammar-challenged. Says he: "There is a lot of girls I could bang."

Oddly, if audiences manage to sit through this debacle -- which, at only 79 minutes, is still far too repetitive -- they may actually emerge chastened, cleansed and finally understanding that, thanks to the stranglehold of religion on some brainwashed minds, no one in this movie has a chance in hell of leading an intelligent, fulfilling life.

Death of a Tree opens today at Manhattan's Quad Cinema, with a Q&A taking place by both John Martoccia (writer/director/producer) and Ronnie Marmo (lead actor) after the 7:45pm screenings on Wednesday April 8th and Thursday April 9th.