SAM KLEMKE'S TIME MACHINE: Matthew Bate offers up a sad, beautiful, profound bombshell

Every so often (more like few years), it seems, comes along a movie so original, so different from anything else you've seen that it seems to speak to something quite profound about our humanity, our strivings and our limitations. Back in 2014, it was a small documentary entitled Magical Universe; this year it would seem to be another small-budget-but-huge-in-its-concerns doc called SAM KLEMKE'S TIME MACHINE.

Sam Klemke, the film's "star," as well as one of the filmmakers here, is a rather ordinary fellow (that's he with cat, above in teenage days, and below, as an young adult) who hoped to become a well-known filmmaker when he was younger, back in the early 1970s. To this end he began filming himself and his surroundings from that time onwards (the invention of affordable home video equipment made this more possible and practical), and has ended up with what is perhaps the largest archive of film-about-oneself that exists today.

When Klemke posted a condensed YouTube video of his filming over the years that went viral, one of its viewers was Australian-based filmmaker/pop-culture excavator, Matthew Bate, who with his co-writer Sandy Cameron, made this 90-minute movie that distills Klemke's oeuvre into an amazing portrait of himself, his world, our world and humanity's strivings, foibles, needs and desires. Mr. Bate has assembled something so different and profound that it will be like little you've so far experienced from movies.

Someone -- I would guess this to be Bate, Cameron or both -- had the just-about-perfect notion of placing Klemke's story against that of the famous space probe, Voyager, with its Golden Records that supposedly demonstrate mankind's glorious achievements.

The Voyager was sent into space in the same year -- 1977 -- that Klemke began his filming and was sent, it was said, in hopes that some other life forms would eventually find it and learn all about mankind and what we have accomplished. (Conveniently left out, as the narration notes, were "accomplishments" such as The Holocaust.) Oh, the chutzpah! And I mean this in terms of both projects: the Voyager's and Klemke's.

To his everlasting credit, Bate had the good sense not to ram home the incredible differences in those Golden Records and Sam's home movies. He simply alternates the stories of Sam and Voyager, bringing up various facts and tales about each and letting us draw our own conclusions. Yet the manner in which all this is threaded and unfurled allows us to reach some pretty interesting assumptions on the way to being amused, moved and provoked into thinking about, oh, so many things.

One of the funniest and most telling of these involves the fact that the late scientist/entertainer Carl Sagan wanted to include photos on the voyager of a man and woman completely nude so that other life forms could see and understand how human beings of both sexes were built. Oh, the ruckus this began amongst Republicans and religious fundamentalists who felt that nudity was not to be tolerated. So the idea is scrapped, and guilt, shame, stupidity, hypocrisy and denial triumph -- as usual.

Contrast this with our Sam, who not only features himself nude and full frontal but with an erect cock -- both in his younger and his middle-age years. (From the look and size of his member, our guy might have had a more productive career making porno films.) The contrast here of western culture's hypocrisy and denial against an ordinary guy with a camera is breathtaking. As it is, almost consistently, all the way along in this fascinating film.

Whether Bate found (or had made) the soundtrack voice we hear narrating the Voyager footage, it was a brilliant notion to have it all in French, so that we can then take in the beauty of spoken French, even as we read the lovely, poetic subtitles that build a case for the importance of the voyager and its golden records. Without undue pushing, all this makes ever stranger, funnier and sadder the contrast with Klemke's life and "art."

So who is Sam Klemke and what has he achieved? On one level he is a sad and deluded young, then middle-aged, then finally elderly male. We meet, briefly, many of the women who pass through his life as an "entitled" man (patriarchy is ever-present). but it is not in Sam's interest to allow us to get to know them or their attitudes beyond the cursory.

Sam does not finally achieve much of anything -- he fails at everything except his knack for good caricature, which he markets at locals malls -- and he often has to move back in with his parents. (How mom and dad felt about all this goes mostly unexplored.)  And yet Sam persists. And endures. The movie may bring to mind Samuel Beckett -- but with a lot more blather than minimalist poetry.

In any case, this juxtaposition of Klemke and Voyager is a brilliant move. Even as the documentary draws inward into Sam's tiny world, it simultaneously opens out into so much else. (The few moments in which we experience 9/11 through his and his girlfriend's eyes are remarkable.)

Again and again we are drawn up short and made to think, contrast and compare. Sam Klemke's Time Machine is a singular experience, one that should not be missed by thinking/feeling adults and very probably by their teenage children, as well. It has been a long, long while since I have witnessed a movie so ripe for discussion and exploration, both during and after its viewing.

From Virgil Films and Visit Films and running just 90 minutes, the movie is available beginning tomorrow, Tuesday, March 29, on DVD and Digital HD -- for purchase or rental. To view the movie (via either rental or purchase), simply click here and then click on WATCH NOW.

From Basque country: Garaño and Goenaga's quiet, thoughtful, deeply moving FLOWERS

Back in 2010 TrustMovies viewed and covered, during the FSLC's sorely missed annual series, Spanish Cinema Now, a wonderful film from writers/directors Jon Garaño and José Mari Goenaga titled 80 Days (80 egunean). That film unfortunately never saw theatrical release here in the USA, so it pleases me no end to be able to cover the theatrical debut of the pair's latest work, FLOWERS (Loreak). This marks the first time a Basque-language film has been submitted by Spain as the country's nominee for Best Foreign Language Film at the upcoming Oscars. (Language enthusiasts and foreign film buffs alike will discover that the Basque language, Euskara, sounds little like Spanish.)

The talented pair of writers/directors, Garaño and Goenaga (above, with the latter on the left), here abetted in the writing department by Aitor Arregi, have created a quietly complicated tale of lives entwining in a most unusual way. Oddly entwined lives are nothing new to cinema (consider Paul Haggis' Oscar winner Crash and his much-better, though less seen, Third Person), but what distinguishes the world of these filmmakers is how beautifully they avoid melodrama, despite their film being about some of the very things -- love, possible adultery, death and family squabbles -- most prone to bring this out in a movie.

Instead, the filmmakers -- via elegant, composed-but-never-showy cinematography (by Javier Agirre) and a tale that holds our attention by virtue of its complicated and beautifully wrought characters -- draw us in and manage to keep us focused on the bigger picture, even if we don't know for some time what that picture will include.

The story involves an early-middle-aged woman (a lovely, smart, and very subtle performance by Nagore Aranburu, above) who gets some surprising news from her physician, after which she begins receiving weekly delivery of flowers -- with no note or name-of-sender attached.

Another woman, Lourdes, a wife and mother who works as a toll collector (Itziar Ituño, above) is in an unhappy relationship with her mother-in-law, Tere (Itziar Aizpuru, below, who was so fine in the filmmakers' earlier 80 Days).

What connects all three women is a man -- surprise! -- Beñat (played by Josean Bengoetxea, below), who proves the filmmakers' ace-in-the-hole: a character who bonds the others -- and the movie itself -- even though we never really know him nearly as well as we come to know these women. In the film's finest scenes, we follow along with what happens to one of these characters -- as a corpse! -- and the movie touches profundity without ever seeming pretentious.

Garaño and Goenaga's great accomplishment, in addition to avoiding the expected melodrama, is to make mysterious -- even as they show us the connections and characters -- the workings of this thing we call life. And while they do not leave any "loose ends," how events work out, and why, is full of the unexpected made entirely credible.

Flowers is so very fine a film, in fact, that I would hope to see it among the finalists for that Oscar. Probably not, however, because the Academy usually proves more receptive to melodrama over real drama or films of particular subtlety. But we'll see.

Meanwhile, you see this film, please -- if possible on the big screen, where it's wide-screen cinematography is best appreciated. From Music Box Films and running 99 minutes, it opens this Friday, October 30, in New York City at the Paris Theatre, then goes to Washington DC on November 6, to Philadelphia on November 20, and to Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal on November 27. Click here, then scroll down and click on THEATERS to see all currently scheduled playdates.  

We are all one: another early "best" for 2015 -- on Blu-ray/DVD/digital -- the Spierig brothers' profound and nifty sci-fi, PREDESTINATION

Here's a movie that joins all of society -- men & women, young & old, good & bad -- in a manner that seems, on film at least, to be original. The new work from Australia's Spierig brothers, Peter and Michael (shown below, left to right, respectively), is their third full-lengther, after Undead (all about zombies) and then Day-breakers (all about vampires). PREDESTINATION (all about time-travel, and by far the brothers' best) touches the profound, then actually seems to go a bit beyond that into the mind-bending.

With a screenplay adapted (by the Spierigs) from a story by master sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein, the film features a cast of three lead actors who together manage almost all of the story between them. The remainder of the cast is just fine, but it is rare to see a movie with this big a budget (for an independent film, of course) that relies so heavily on the acting skills of just three people.

The threesome -- Ethan Hawke, above; Sarah Snook, at left; and Noah Taylor, below -- comes through on all counts.

Mr. Hawke keeps quietly growing as an actor from film to film; Ms Snook has what may be the role of her lifetime, and she runs with it all the way; and Mr. Taylor uses his dour face and thin body  to maximum effect, as the more-or-less leader of the pack.

All three performers, in fact, are so right for their roles that it is difficult to imagine other actors taking their place.

The story, at its beginning and well into things, seems like simplicity itself. Easy to follow yet constantly intriguing, it grows more and more complex as the elements of identity and time travel come to the fore.

Though the movie butts up against everything from a mad bomber and his relentless tracker to orphaned children and sex change, the less said about plot, the better -- for in its unravelling, Predestination appears to embrace the We-are-all-one theory, among other mind expansions.

Although there are action scenes and special effects, certainly, the movie's real pleasure derives from the quiet, thoughtful, almost tender and affecting tone with which it views its threesome. Going out of this movie, you'll have been taken places you could hardly have imagined going in.

Predestination -- released theatrically from Arclight Films, with DVD and Blu-ray via Sony, and running a just-right 97 minutes -- is available now. For genre fans, and even those who think they're not, this one constitutes a must-see.

Uberto Pasolini's profound, magical STILL LIFE: Has the best film of 2015 appeared already?

There were only two of us at last week's press screening of STILL LIFE -- it was a particularly cold, bleak winter's day -- and both of us were in tears by the film's amazing ending. As the lights came up, post-credits, the other fellow seemed taken aback. "Who is this Uberto Pasolini?" (the film's writer/director), he asked, and then quickly followed with, "Because nothing is his past history gives any indication that he could create this!"

Well, the man did produce the Award-winning and immensely popular, The Full Monty nearly twenty years ago, and he was involved with a few other pleasant little movies along the way. Still Life is only his second film as writer/director -- after something called Machan which I have not seen -- but if he does nothing else in his entire life, this film is enough to ensure Pasolini's place (the filmmaker is shown at left) in the pantheon of movie greats. Why? Because he has taken a grand and important subject, death -- and thus life and its meaning, at least for those of us living in western society today -- and explored it in an immac-ulate, moving, insightful and profound manner. The result is a humble little film that works on every level, and that will leave you in a state of grace.

His movie begins at a funeral. And then another. And another. These are empty of any mourners save one -- the fellow who actually organized the funeral, a British public servant named John May, whose job it is to try to find any relatives and or friends of those in the population who have lately died alone. As played by the great British everyman, Eddie Marsan (shown above and below), who may here be giving his finest performance from a versatile flock of them, this strange and obsessive man may be the most memorable character you've met in several movie years.

John May is as methodical and fastidious as the movie is quiet and assured. From the manner in which he collects and stores photos of the many deceased citizens he serves to the way he crosses the street, every-thing he does is careful and coordinated, and Marsan is a joy to observe: funny and so sadly human. He lives a life of stillness -- one indication of the movie's title -- and Pasolini captures this in truly wondrous ways.

May seems to have no family nor friends of his own, but his interactions with all the folk he meets are lovely and kind, never pushing, but always encouraging. Due to both downsizing and the great amount of time he spends on each new case, John is soon to be out of a job. His last case, however, so tweaks his concern that he must follow it through -- even if this is done on his own time and dollar (or, in this case, pound). Where this latest situation leads him, and us, is into a whole new level of engagement.

Along the way, the movie -- which knows all about the life of the lonely and how they manage -- covers everything from the way in which animals fill our need for love and connection to how even angry, short-tempered people can manage to form a bond with others.

Signore Pasolini's storytelling skills are fluent, while his sense of visual style is simply stunning. Frame after beautiful frame seems like still life photos given enormous immediacy and feeling via the talented cast the filmmaker has assembled. The movie is a kind of mystery -- initially regarding what is happening and why and then about how our hero will finally piece together all he needs to find the friends and/or family of this final case.

Chief among the actors is the recent Golden Globe award-winner Joanne Froggat, above and above, as a young woman who figures into the last case (she is, as usual, wonderfully compassionate and winning) and Andrew Buchan as May's immediate boss, who fills the bill perfectly as a man who understands the need for efficiency but has not an empathetic bone in his body.

Still Life builds and builds, but always quietly and gently, until it reaches its stunning conclusion. And just when you imagine that you have experienced and understood its meaning and concerns, Pasolini pulls a kind of coup de cinéma that reaches right into you, probing the deepest part of your spirit and mind, leaving you amazed, moved, chastened and spent. It's like nothing I've yet experienced on the screen. It left me literally sobbing -- for what we've just seen, of course -- but also for the whole of humanity: the wonders of life, and connection, and death.

From Tribeca Film and running just 93 minutes, the movie opens this Friday at New York City's Quad Cinema  and in Geneva, New York, at the Smith Center for the Arts.  In the weeks to come it will open in another dozen cities around the country. Click here and then scroll down to see the list of playdates and theaters.

The Wachowskis/Tykwer CLOUD ATLAS: Ignore critics, go see it, watch, listen, wait

We were never for a moment bored during the first half of the eight-minutes-short-of-three-hours  CLOUD ATLAS. The half-dozen stories, together with the dozen actors who, among them, play maybe 40 to 50 roles, are simply too interesting, bizarre, colorful and compelling not to keep us riveted to the screen. Yet I admit to being somewhat flummoxed as to "what this all means." I did not read the novel upon which the film is based, and I am told it is much better than its film (when is this not true?), yet the film is plenty good enough. It's great, maybe: challenging but not impossibly so, and when its meaning slowly comes together in the second half, possessing a payoff that is profound and moving.

If TrustMovies were to pick three filmmakers to collaborate on a project such as this, it would not have been Lana and Andy Wachowski and Tom Tykwer (the three are shown above with Lana, center, and Tom at right).  Yet so well have the three worked together to produce something seamless that I am most impressed. What they (and their work) have in common is a striving for something better, not always achieved. Their reach exceeds their grasp, even here to an extent, but it is, as they say, close enough for jazz.

What you, as an audience, need to do, I believe, as I suggest in my headline above is to simply go see the film, settle in for that three-hour period, open up, look, listen and wait.  The movie, and its meaning, will arrive. And as it does, you'll be treated to a batch of good actors and a battery of star power -- from Tom Hanks and Halle Berry (above) to Jim Broadbent and Ben Whishaw (below, left and right, respectively).

Also on board are Jim Sturgess (below, right), Doona Bae (below, left) and Hugo Weaving (shown at bottom). Don't waste time and effort distracting yourself from the stories and themes by trying to identify the actors. Just follow and process. The rewards are great.

Along the way, you'll also be treated to some splendid visuals -- from the beautifully exotic (above) to the special-effects worthy below. (The time frames here are past, present and future.) As quickly as things move, you'll still have time to consider ideas like slavery and fascism, freedom and creativity, need vs greed, and a lot more.

Cloud Atlas has opened wide and reportedly flopped at the box-office over its first weekend. No matter. Real movie-lovers will seek it out, probably more than once. I'll watch it again, too, but not until it appears on Blu-ray, with subtitles, so that I can pick up some of the "odd dialect" dialog between Hanks and Berry that I missed the first time around.

This movie, from Warner Brothers, has and will continue to divide audiences. But its very jumping around and ability to condense and combine themes and time frames gives it a light touch that enables it to render something like slavery with more meaning and art than did Spielberg with his Amistad. So consider this one a must-see. Click here, then click on TICKETS AND SHOWTIMES, to learn where it's playing near you.