News flash: Peter Liechti's award-winning doc THE SOUND OF INSECTS is no doc at all

Marketing, I guess, really is all. Being billed as some kind of a documentary (it won the 2009 European Film Award in that category), THE SOUND OF INSECTS: Record of a Mummy -- a film from Swiss filmmaker Peter Liechti (shown below) who, in this case has adapted, written, directed, produced, and handled the cinema-tography -- is not a documentary at all. Not since On the Bowery -- which at least had a true documentary feel, was shot on location and used actual "alkies" as its actors -- won its doc award, has anything so dead-wrong occur-red in the land of the fête. (OK: The Blind Side was nominated for Best Picture. But Liechti's film actually won.) Before seeing the movie and imagining that it had anything to do with the documentary format, I'd considered the European Film Awards to be a cut above our own. That notion has now been laid to rest.

According to its press release, The Sound of Insects "blurs the line between documentary and fiction," a phrase we've been hearing more and more of late. But surely this is true only if someone has no idea of the meaning of the words "blur," "line," "documentary" and "fiction."  This film is based on a novel.  A novel! (Speaking of meanings.) And a novel
written by a Japanese man, at that (and set, I imagine, in Japan): so much for verite of location. It's subject: a man who takes to the woods and commits suicide. (No spoiler here: the film begins with the removal of his corpse.) So this is a documentary? Then one might think our filmmaker would by now have been arrested. But of course not. This movie is about as "fictional" as you can get.

Even if you consider the movie to be "a profound inquiry into the art of representation" that "probes the ever-elusive and mystifying line between life and death" (that press release again), all movies -- good, bad and indifferent -- makes a stab at the former, while countless one (most recently Hereafter, Shutter Island and several films in the ongoing Spanish Cinema Now series) are happily probing the latter. OK: So much for the marketing of the movie. How is it as cinema? Interesting. Not bad. Though not particularly award-worthy, either, TrustMovies thinks.

Using (yes!) a heavy-duty documentary style -- which is hardly the same thing a being a documentary -- Liechti introduces us to his protagonist, a fellow of middle-age determined to starve himself to death over a period of, he hopes, a very few weeks.  Death, it turns out, takes longer. We see parts of him, as he himself would, looking at his own hands and legs. We become acutely aware of the world around us/him, particularly of sounds, as the symptoms of starvation becomes more intense. There's a nod to eastern culture, spirituality and the like, but this seems not nearly thought out enough by the character nor the filmmaker.

We learn very little about our fellow -- who does not seem to have led a particularly fascinating life -- and this helps drag the film down. I'd have preferred spending my hour-and-a-half with someone more interesting -- but then that person would have been a good deal less likely to commit suicide at this relatively young age. The visuals are rudimentary -- much is as they would be if we were there in the tent that the protagonist has built -- and the attempts by the director to go into fantasy and heightened states of reality are not very successful. You certainly see what Liechti is trying for, but that's about it.

The film does encourage you to consider what its protagonist is attempting and how this might play out, together with what dreams, thoughts and feelings would arise as death draws nearer. This, of course, is enough to send the majority of most audiences running for the hills. But a few fearless souls may opt for the ride. We don't get this kind of film all that often, so attention must be paid. Just don't expect a documentary.

The Sound of Insects, from Lorber Films, is opening at a Manhattan cinema venue I've never before mentioned: the Rubin Museum (150 West 17th St. between 6th and 7th Avenues), beginning Wednesday, December 22, at 7pm.  Click here for all screening dates and times (there are only ten of these, so if this post has piqued your interest, reserve now).

German whimsy about France: Angela Christlieb's URVILLE opens at the AFA

"A poetic dream voyage along the boundaries of fiction and documentary" is one way that its press materials describes URVILLE, the 2009 film from Angela Christlieb.  Because Ms Christlieb also co-directed a film that TrustMovies treasures (Cinemania: a double-edged testament to crazy New Yorkers and the cinema-obsessed), I may be treating her new film more kindly than I otherwise would, for it struck me as the height (no, depth) of pointless European whimsy about... what, for Christ's sake? Maybe Utopia. Or maybe not. As director, writer and editor, Ms Christlieb (the filmmaker is shown below) must shoulder the praise (or blame) for this very odd film that seems to see Urville as an imaginary construct, but also -- since three actual villages in France bear this same name -- as a real place with real people, who are visited by our plucky filmmaker and her crew.
They do not enchant.

This lack of enchantment is not the fault of the villagers but more about what they are asked (and not asked) to do. The filmmaker seems to have set her mind on exploring what isn't, rather than what is, so everything we see and hear melds into one big, silly cacophony. Why are we here? I don't mean this in any existential sense, but rather, why has Christlieb decided to romp from village to village to village and back, while bab-bling on about a bunch of faux statistics that serve to bear out a non-theory about an imaginary town? You got me.

Along the way there are some delightful, if extraneous, moments (well, come on: the whole movie is extraneous): pigs eating some delicious-looking loaves of French bread, which I hope were at least day-old), cows gazing out at us fondly, the mayor (shown at bottom) of one of these Urvilles playing with his dogs. These moments may be funny, or pretty, or sweet. But they, like the movie they inhabit, are all over the place.

We spend (too much) time with one fellow dressed as an Indian (above), who evidently enjoys running for public office (and, so far, losing), and his "squaw" (or is that term out of favor these days?). And no, that squaw is not a certain past President, pictured in cutout form, above.  Our Indian simply likes to carry Clinton around with him. (The squaw is shown below, from quite a distance.)

As the randomness builds, eventually the movie seems to coalesce around the idea of death. But no, this, too, dissipates. "People in Urville," the narrator -- a rich-voiced Maud Piquion (is this the Berlin gallery owner, perhaps) -- tells us, "are not afraid of death."  Well, good for them. Of course, she might be referring to the imagined Urvillians rather than any of the real ones. Who knows? Who cares? I guess you can tell that TrustMovies just didn't "get" this film, which certainly does not bear comparison with much else that he's seen. (Points for originality, then?  Hmmm....)

You may have better luck. And if you want to try that luck, Urville opens Friday, October 15, at Anthology Film Archives. Check out its day-and-hour screening schedule from the AFA calendar here. You'll find directions to AFA here.