Daniel Di Grado's ALENA: The Swedes attempt to make a horror movie (and fall on their face)

Supposedly based on a graphic novel by Kim W Andersson, the movie ALENA offers just about all those "graphic novel" tropes, from utterly-obvious to simple-minded-in-the-extreme to piled-mile-high-with-cliches. Watching this film -- for anyone over the age of, say, 21 who has seen a few other horror movies in his or her lifetime -- is rather like serving out a prison sentence that at least offers up a few enticing visuals and lasts only 83 minutes. As co-adapted and directed by Daniel Di Grado, the film pretty much defines the word predictable.

Mr. Di Grado, pictured at left, hands us themes and scenes such as bullying, mean girls, the lonely outsider with a troubled history, deserted classrooms and showers, stalking, and a little lesbian sex and then stirs them all together for maximum effort and minimum fun. The only at all surprising thing here is that our "heroine," the titular Alena (played by Amalia Holm, shown below at Lacrosse) almost never seems in the least concerned about the bullying or possible harm that might come to her. And for good reason. To suggest that she can take care of herself quite well, thank you, is to put it mildly.

Our Alena has a "friend" -- the identity and actuality of which should be apparent from the second time we see her, if not the very first -- who helps (or maybe hinders) Alena along.

She is also surrounded by those mean girls (below), in particular one who proves so very entitled and nasty that you just know she going to get hers -- and big time!

And, yes, there is a new best friend, below, who maybe wants a bit more than mere friendship. As usual, the teachers are weak or foolish or not nearly enough concerned, and if there is a cliche in all this that Mr. Di Grado managed to leave unearthed, I missed it.

Surely the Swedes (the film was made in Sweden) can do better than this so far as something horrifying is concerned. Otherwise, please stick to just about any other genre.

From the KimStim Collection via Icarus Films, the DVD of Alena hits the street this coming Tuesday, May 9 -- for purchase and/or rental. You've been warned.

Russia's mammoth Oscar-shortlisted, LEVIATHAN, and a small American documentary, MENTOR, have a lot in common. Filmmaker Q&A

Normally, TrustMovies wouldn't think of comparing a nearly two-and-one-half-hour shortlist nominee for Best Foreign Language Film from Russia with a tiny little 78-minute American documentary about a high school in the town of Mentor, Ohio. But since both films were caught by me in the same week, and both deal heavily with bullying -- LEVIATHAN by the powers-that-be in a Russian coastal town, MENTOR by the entitled students of an upper-middle-class Ohio high school, abetted by the school's administration and further up the line by the state itself -- I can't help but want to cover these two interesting movies together.

Though Leviathan arrives laden with laurels (and freighted with symbolism) -- from film festivals, Cannes to Munich, Seville to São Paulo -- and is certainly a worthwhile movie, it is Mentor that proves the more important film. Bullying, it seems, is the watchword of our times. And though most folk imagine it has all to do with school kids and their peers, bullying is a behavior which, when rewarded -- as our modern world more and more tends to do -- simply carries right through the bully's entire life, whether he be Barack Obama, going after inconvenient whistle-blowers or Vladimir Putin going after just about anyone who disagrees with him. Strength and numbers create schoolyard bullies, access to power and resources create the adult variety. Once either type is allowed to flourish, the bully grows more difficult  to control. These days -- as both these movies demonstrate -- almost no one even bothers to try.

Or when they do try, as, again, both films show us, they are doomed to fail. If co-writer (with Oleg Negin) and director Andrey Zvyagintsev (shown at right) had decided to make a documentary film rather than the narrative he's created in Leviathan (and I am certain he could have, as more than enough incidents worth documenting exist in today's Russia), he would probably be in prison or dead just now, rather than tub-thumping the Oscar and Golden Globe circuits. So he chose, rather sensibly, to create a fictional tale of some lovely seaside property, coveted by the Mayor of the town, who uses eminent domain and his many lackeys (he seems to be in league with just about everybody we meet, from judges to churchmen to police) to wrest control of said property from its rightful owner, while paying him a pittance rather than market value.

In Mentor, filmmaker Alix Lambert (shown at left) who earlier made the Independent Spirit Award-nominated The Mark of Cain, takes us to the town of Mentor, Ohio, chosen in both 2006 and 2010 as one of America's ten top cities in which to live, and does a superlative job of indicting Mentor High School for failing to stop the bullying that has led, over several years, to the suicide deaths of five students. Ms Lambert concentrates on two of these deaths, as we meet the Vidovic family, whose younger daughter, Sladjana, killed herself in 2008; and the Mohats, Jan and Bill, whose son Eric killed himself the year previous.

What makes this film and its documenting so appalling is that while the bullying was apparent to the student body and to many of the teachers and the administration, nothing -- and I do mean nothing -- was done by those in charge of the school to prevent it. Mentor, by the way, is a much stronger film than the more-talked-about but all-over-the-place Bully.

While the Mowats (pictured above) did not know about the bullying their son was going through because the boy chose to keep it from his family, the Vidovics (below) knew just about everything, as Sladjana would come home day after day with horror stories that drove the parents to visit the school often to plead for help. None was ever given.

There is a section of the film in which Ms Lambert chooses to simply show us, one after another after another, the daily printed records of visits to the school nurse because of physical bullying incidents. This section is shocking and finally devastating. The girl was once pushed down a flight of stairs by one of the school's top football players. The reason given has got to be among the most offensive and stupid I've ever heard.

Mentor, Ohio, evidently wanted to keep secure its reputation as one of America's top cities, which meant sweeping any untoward behavior under the proverbial carpet. The children of its upper middle class bourgeoisie feel entitled, and that entitlement has grown into a kind of class warfare between the entitled and the outsiders. Mentor has a fairly large Croatian population, too, of which the Vidovics are a part, who are considered "lesser" by their wealthier and/or less-speech-accented counterparts.

What happens to the law suits of the two families is indicative of the manner in which these suicides were handled right down the line. As usual, power makes its hold over the individual known, so that nothing can be addressed and no justice achieved. (The Mowats note that they were shunned by former friends, once they pursued their lawsuit.) Also, as usual, in documentaries of this sort, no school official or representative would agree to be interviewed by the filmmaker. If the film ends up one-sided, there was hardly much recourse. The side shown, in any case, is clearly pro-justice. (The photo below is of Eric Mowat.)

In addition to visiting at length with the two families, Ms Lambert also corrals three very intelligent and knowledgeable experts: Dorothy Espelage, Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an expert on the study of Bullying; Kenneth D. Myers, the attorney who represented both families in their suits against the school; and Meghan Barr, a reporter for the Associated Press, who became interested in the story after reading about the Mentor suicides and then exploring further. The information and evidence that these three offer is more than conclusive. It would have been interesting, too, to know more about the other three suicides. But perhaps those families weren't talking. (You can read more about this in the Q&A at the bottom of this post.)

If the last few minutes of the film seems a bit repetitive and overly sentimental, Mentor will still leave you about as angry as a documentary can. You -- and certainly your children -- won't want to get within five hundred miles of this disgusting school and its surrounding community, unless, of course, you're one of those duly entitled who enjoy pushing girls down the stairs or get your jollies from appearing at her funeral and laughing aloud with your friends over the dress she's wearing in her casket. Yes, the bullies did that, too. (The photo above is of Sladjana Vidovic.)

Mentor -- from Garden Thieves Pictures and running 78 minutes -- was released to DVD last week, and can also now be seen via Amazon Instant Video, for sale or rental, and on SnagFilms and iTunes.

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Interestingly enough, if Leviathan were set here in the USA, its bullying mayor (acted by Roman Madyanov, shown above) might have played football for and then graduated from Mentor High School, taking with him a slew of his pals and gals to fill various slots on his town's payroll. But Leviathan takes place in a coastal corner of modern Russia, from which we expect little but corruption and drunkenness. The film delivers both --
in spades.

Filmmaker Zvyagintsev (Elena, The Return) understands how to weave corruption, bullying, love, infidelity, parenting, some deep psychological problems and a good dose of metaphor and symbolism into his mix and keep us glued to the screen. He refuses to explain everything, however, or even to allow us to know with any certainty what has happened at some major moments.

We accept all this, I think, because so bleak and unforgiving is what we are viewing that it really doesn't finally matter much what did occur: Might will overcome decency in every case, for this being Russia, it's all just business as usual. And, as good as Leviathan is, this is also its biggest problem: the sense of been there/done that that hovers over the movie in its entirety. Whether it's a throw-away American spin-off like A Good Day to Die Hard, an excellent documentary such as Khodorkovsky, or Leviathan, we've seen it and seen it and seen it all again.

You could hardly ask for better performances from the fine cast assembled here, however. They go a long way toward making the movie so watchable. Aleksey Serebryakov is terrific as our put-upon hero, with so many problems of his own (he's a hot-headed drunk) that he barely needs this additional one. Ditto Elena Lyadova as his spouse, a second wife unloved by the family's problemed son, a sad disturbed boy given unsettling resonance by young actor, Sergueï Pokhodaev.

The fly in the ointment, who initially looks more like the family's savior is Dimitri, Dad's best friend and even more to certain other family members. As played with understated strength and grace by a gorgeous hunk named Vladimir Vdovichenkov, "Dimi" proves a wild card in more ways than one. We meet this family's friends and co-workers, the religious crew, judges, police and more. And by the end of this often wonderful and always wearying movie, you may want to shrug and paraphrase those immortal, final words of the popular Polanski classic:
"Forget it, Jake. It's modern Russia."

Leviathan, from Sony Pictures Classics, in Russian with English subtitles, and running 140 minutes, opens tomorrow, December 25, in New York City at Film Forum and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema.  In the Los Angeles area, look for it on Wednesday, December 31, at Laemmle's Royal, and then on January 9 at the Playhouse 7 and Town Center 5. The movie will eventually play the limited release/arthouse circuit across the country.

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TrustMovies had a very quick telephone chat with filmmaker Alix Lambert, shown below, on Christmas Eve, just to ask a few question about her oh-so-necessary documentary, Mentor. My questions/comments appear in boldface, while Ms Lambert's answers are in standard type.

TM: I have to say that I liked your film even better than Bully, about which, only two years later, I can barely remember most of the specifics. Your film sticks so closely to the two families and what happened to them and builds its case against the school very well. 

Alix Lambert: Thank you.

TM: Why hasn’t this film been seen and covered more? 

AL: (she laughs) I would love to know the answer to that. When you make smaller independent films, you have a harder time because of funding. Making it is one thing, but getting it out there can be really frustrating. You finally finish it, you feel proud of it, and then it’s…. You just want to get it out to the world so that it can be used in a way that is educational.

TM: Did Ohio/Mentor try to sink it? 

AL: I don’t know about sinking the film. They certainly have been hostile toward me. I received a lot of threatening messages. But I have no reason to think that they are trying to sink it. On the other hand, I have also gotten a lot of emails from people who are really appreciative of the film but must remain anonymous because of their connections to the school or community.

TM: Your film mentions five suicides but you cover in depth only two of these. Did you try to reach or include the other families in your film? 

AL: I did contact other families but there were things that influenced my final decision to go with only the two. These were the two families that brought a lawsuit, so it was clear that they wanted their stories to be public and to be talked about. I always feel that one must err on the side of caution -- and not put someone through something when they’ve already been through something so horrible.

You want to make sure your people really want to participate. Also, the more you kind of spread things out among a lot of different people, you water them down. It's true that in The Mark of Cain you see many, many people. But in this one I am focusing on just two families. And because these other families were not sure they wanted to go public, I didn’t want to press them.

TM: Anything you want to say that you aren’t usually asked by journalists? 

AL: Hmmm... (She thinks) Well, just to say that what I would really like is to see people treat each other more kindly.
A little empathy can go a long way. 

Don't just stand there: DO something! Lee Hirsch's BULLY arrives on DVD & Blu-ray

If nothing else, the much-talked-about documentary, BULLY, which arrives this week on Blu-ray and DVD will make grateful those of us who grew up far outside small-town America. Not that we weren't bullied (I sure as hell was) but being from a big city like Los Angeles, where I lived in the Silver Lake area back in the 1950s, both my junior-high and high schools offered, even then, a diverse enough population that I could find at least a small group of kids with whom I fit in. In the America shown in Bully -- shot in Georgia, Oklahoma, Iowa and Mississippi -- the small minds and large bodies we see and hear are often enough to make you want to run screaming from the room.

Whether it's the bullying students, their parents, police officials or school administrators, most of these people appear as witless cretins who don't have a clue to what's going on -- or worse, have many, many clues and simply don't give a damn. The film's director and co-writer Lee Hirsch, shown at right, must have either appeared as a fly on the wall or ingratiated himself something fierce to let these people allow him to film what he did. Or maybe they're simply too stupid to understand how they come across. This movie's shocks come not so much from the bullying itself, which has always gone on, but from the uncaring attitudes of so many of the adults. Yes, there are some genuinely caring folks shown here -- at community meetings, and among the parents of the bullied kids, but much of what we see will have you wanting to toss tomatoes, if not hand grenades, at your TV screen and the crass sample of humanity displayed.

Sympathy-wise, it's the bullied kids themselves who register most strongly, the first of whom we see, Tyler, can no longer be helped, as he ended his life before the film began. The others -- Alex, Ja'Meya, Kelby, Devon and a couple more -- come to us and at us like the good kids they are, enduring the kind of pressure and abuse that, I think, can finally cause total flip-outs and school massacres. Alex in particular (above), with his gorgeous Angelina Jolie-like lips (don't give up, Alex: you're gonna be a heart-breaker in a few years!) will break your heart for more immediate reasons, as you watch him endure the kind of bullying on the school bus (even when this footage is shown to the school administrators, little seems to change) that no kid should have to countenance.

On the bus, in the hallways, classrooms, the school grounds in general, we see it happening, and the babble from the adults in charge is non-stop appalling. If Ja'Meya (shown above, with her mom) gets a little less bullying time that the others, the fact that she decides to do something about this on her own makes her behavior seem less criminal than a means of self-preservation. Of all the kids on view, it's Kelby (below) who, despite everything, seems to have the inner strength to somehow persevere. Watching this young lady think, communicate, or just "be" proves inspiring.

Instead of building, Mr Hirsch allows his film to deflate somewhat by the finale, trailing off into the feel-good story of groups springing up around the country dedicated to preventing bullying. Good luck; everything helps. Though attracting enormous media coverage for all sorts of reasons prior to its theatrical release (a hallmark of the fabled Weinstein ability to garner PR), the film did not come near setting the box-office on fire. It should be seen, however. Perhaps home viewing, where families can stop in the middle when necessary to discuss what they're watching, in an ideal venue for this hot-button subject.

Bully (not to be confused with the Larry Clark film of a decade back) from The Weinstein Company and running 98 minutes, hits the street on DVD and Blu-ray today -- Tuesday, February 12 -- for rental and sale.

Emil Chiaberi's MURDER BY PROXY looks at group killings in the workplace and school...

... and then connects the dots. It's the connection that makes this movie so fascinating and well worth one's time. Beginning with a look at the United States Postal Service, Russian-born first-time filmmaker Emil Chiaberi probes the condition known as "going postal" and, more important, the particular kind of workplace that spawned the phrase and why. Turns out, according to his new documentary MURDER BY PROXY, that at the bottom of many, maybe the majority, of cases of workplace violence is a condition much in the news these days -- but oddly sequestered as though it existed in only the school environment: bullying.

Bullying does not necessarily end with one's school days, though as adults in an environment with some choices, we can more often avoid it. The USPS, it turns out, was not and is not -- particularly from the time in which the postal service turned from a government agency into a wholly-owned government business -- a place safe from bullying. According to the several USPS employees present and former that Mr. Chiaberi (shown at right, who both wrote and directed the film) has brought together, it is rather the perfect place to raise this "art" to a nasty, full-time occupation.

One of the heroes of the documentary, probably the most heroic, is postal worker Charlie Withers (above, testifying), who tells a good deal of the story here. Once the USPS went full-throttle business, a combo of social Darwinism and roughshod Capitalism was the order of the day. And as usually happens, the people holding most of the power use that power badly. "They never stopped being on his back," one woman explains about how the men in charge treated the first of workplace killers whom we meet.

Of the second "gone postal" worker we hear about, Thomas McIlvane (who killed several people in Royal Oak, Michigan, before turning his gun on himself), one of his co-workers tells us "There was an overwhelming feeling of relief that those people (the murdered ones) were gone. I understand why he did it." This is very strong stuff.

It seems that those same bosses had done similar damage in the state of Indiana (without this type of repercussion) before coming to Michigan, where they did it all again. Their message was clear, notes a worker: "If we can do this to McIlvane, we can do it to any of you." Well, they did.  And then, so did he.

Postal worker Withers (center, above), whose presence and gentle demeanor helps hold the film together, is at his most dear as he speaks about his family and daughter. But it is also he who turns the workers' grievances into a petition and tries to get his day in court. Not surprisingly, the union turns a blind eye to his and the workers' entreaties. ("It seemed like they just wanted this whole thing to go away.") So he, along with some others, tries to get the state of Washington's legislature to turn this into a workers' protection law. We follow their efforts as the movie progresses.

A combination of re-enactment, stock footage, newscasts (below) and some very unsettling film from the massacres (above and further above and below), the documentary also uses some funny, clever propaganda films of past times for humor and ironic effect -- as well as scenes from mainstream movies that make their point (two photos down).

The movie may jump around a lot but it never goes far afield from its theme. And when Chiaberi begins connecting what has happened across America over the past few decades -- the cruelty toward workers that has long been a part of the our system but that has increased since the 1970s; Ronald Reagan's breaking of the air traffic controllers' strike that has led to the sickness-unto-death of our unions; how the scale of CEO pay to workers' pay has risen from 35 to 1 up to 425 to 1; religion's role in all of this and so much more -- the movie really takes off. And though the documentary does not mention this, our Supreme Court's Citizens United decision would seem to be the very apotheosis of this trend.

You will realize how much has gone on that is connected to workplace violence in which the media, perhaps unwitting pawns of the powers-that-be, has treated each incident (which have grown enormously since the 1980s) as an event, something to blame on the "crazy shooter," rather than addressing the same problems that lie behind almost each one. How can the aggression of the bosses toward the workers not find some release? It does, finally, in aggression by the workers -- not only in multiple killings, but in various forms of sabotage, as well.

Accountability -- and the halting of abusive management -- would seem to be the key to progress. But the bullying continues, everywhere, and there is little indication of a move in a better direction. Until there is, I would wager, for all the supposed drop in individual crime across the country, we'll see a continued rise in workplace/school violence. Next time you read of another incident, do a little legwork and find out what lay behind the violence.

Murder by Proxy (from RF Releasing, 75 minutes) is being screened now in cities around the country, beginning at the scene of one of the crimes, Royal Oak, Michigan, at the Landmark Main Art Theatre. Unfortunately that screening occurred yesterday only, and I apologize for not getting this post up sooner.  The film will next be seen in Washington DC on Tuesday, March 20, at the Landmark E Street Cinema, and then in New York City at the Landmark Sunshine Cinema on Tuesday, March 27.  Click here then scroll down to check for further screenings or to purchase the DVD.

Straight-to-DVD: Dave Rodriguez's AMERICAN BULLY embarrasses badly

American Bully? More like a psychotic asshole who needs to be incarcerated forth-with. The original title of this shock-ingly unnecessary movie was Anytown (click on the link for the original poster), which should pretty much alert you to the subtlety-level on display through-out. (You mean, it could happen here? Sure could, kids!) Still, the movie is timely. Just this weekend, the new Mr. Norway snuffed out around 100 lives on the basis of some loony-tune political non-thinking. In his "new" film (made two years ago), director/co-writer (with Zak Meyers) Dave Rodriguez, pictured below, pulls out all the stops regarding bullying, immigration, terrorism, 9/11, the "Muslim menace" and America the ugly, and in the process creates so much noise and nonsense that you'll soon cry uncle.

Yes, bullying in high school can certainly lead to some nasty stuff, both at the time and later on, and you might even take our lead character (played with pretty much a single grim expression by Matt O'Leary, below) as a metaphor for the "red" half of our country. But so what? You'd still have to come up with a story that contained more than one thud-dingly obvious cliche after another in order to keep your audi-ence half-satisfied.

Here, the set-up is all bully, all the time, and Mr. O'Leary is as yet nowhere near an interesting, versatile or charaismatic enough actor to carry off a role like this. Consequently, his three friends (below) and the two girls who go off for a fuck-fest/trash-talk-the-immigrants afternoon are so poorly conceived that no real people can be developed. Lines of dialog are dropped into their mouths with little regard for consistency or character.

What we get for the first half of the movie is the usual boys behaving (very) badly scenario, followed by a second half that hands us kidnapping, murder, suicide, betrayal, the works. Except that, since we haven't remotely believed what's come before (except as a primer of cliche's seen in earlier, better films), putting us through the horror of what follows is like a near-constant slap in the kisser.

Technically, and construction-wise, the movie is a wasteland, too. The opening scene, involving an uncredited John Savage and a couple of sleek, lawyer-looking broads, seems inserted only to let us immediately know that something horrible has happened so we'll hang on through the slop that follows. Night scenes are so dark as to be a complete mystery, through which we have only some bad dialog to guide us. And the deserted house (below)? Is there a building in the movies of late that has called more attention to itself?

I cannot claim to fathom the motives of the people who made this movie, perhaps with what might be called the best of intentions. I can say, however, that what they've ended up giving us is a "kill-the-immigrants" movie that will most appeal to folk who want to do exactly that and who will happily watch and shout, "Right on!  But we're a lot smarter that these bozos, so we'll get away with it."

From Green Apple Entertainment, American Bully makes its straight-to-DVD debut this Tuesday, July 26 -- for sale or rental.