Review: 'Her'

Shortly after Joaquin Phoenix’s Theodore Twombly finishes signing divorce papers with his estranged wife (Rooney Mara) midway through Spike Jonze’s terrific new film “Her,” he says of his new girlfriend, Samantha, “It’s good to be with somebody that’s excited about life.” Samantha, he explains, is his operating system, or OS—a disembodied voice (Scarlett Johansson) who speaks to him through an earpiece he wears at all times. Though she was originally designed to manage his computer system—organizing his emails and calendar and whatnot—their relationship has rapidly become more intimate. Theodore’s line about Samantha’s “excitement” seems ironic at first—she is not, after all, alive. And even as he speaks the line he is getting divorced, severing one of his few remaining human connections. The title of the film seems ironic too: “Her”? Samantha is not a woman. Isn’t Theodore running from reality and headlong into something artificial?

As with so much else in the multilayered “Her,” it is not that simple. Samantha really is excited about life—more so than anyone else in Theodore’s orbit. Theodore himself is downcast and subdued, hiding behind his big bushy mustache as if it were his shield against the world. But Samantha breaks through, getting Theodore to start feeling excited as well.

Her“Her” takes place in the not-too-distant future, or perhaps an alternate present. Theodore is a professional letter ghostwriter: If you want to write a note congratulating someone on his or her graduation or wishing your partner a happy anniversary—but you do not wish to make much of an effort—you contact Theodore, and he’ll write the hell out of the message. The fact that Theodore’s job even exists says a lot about his world: People are becoming less and less connected to each other, content to rely on strangers and machines to do the heavy lifting of reaching out to others, even those close to them.

Theodore is great at his job, sitting in his polished corporate office and getting lost in character as he dictates sentiments of praise and appreciation into his computer. To be sure, Theodore’s greeting card dictations are an affectation, dramatic monologues spoken in the voices of loved ones whose caring and appreciation are pure fiction. But he finds in his sad, cynical profession the closest thing he has to vital human connection. His marriage is ending. He and his good friend Amy (Amy Adams) have not seen each other in a while, though she emails him asking to get together, especially if he can be less mopey than he has been recently. Meanwhile, he buries himself in emails and interactive holographic video games. His sparsely furnished, heavily-windowed LA apartment hovers in the sky, surrounded by other, anonymous buildings, with no evidence of the people below. The closest thing we see to romance before Samantha is Theodore’s call to a singles line. His phone sex session goes awry when the increasingly aroused woman on the other line breathlessly introduces a dead cat into the fantasy.

That invented dead cat is actually a pretty apt symbol for Theodore’s moribund love life… until he meets Samantha. Theodore buys his new OS merely to organize his already hyper-organized virtual life. But then he chooses a female voice over a male one, and presto, Samantha is born. She promptly reveals herself to be sunny, engaging, and, despite her supposedly subservient role, shockingly independent. (She picks the name Samantha herself, and frequently takes liberties with Theodore’s emails, such as deleting all of the ones she realizes are unimportant.) Samantha does not speak in monotone, and she does not need Theodore to repeat simple phrases before she can understand them: SIRI she is not. She is true artificial intelligence, a unique individual with a distinct personality—intelligent, funny, longing for love and connection. And above all, she is inquisitive. “I want to learn everything about everything,” she says. “I want to discover myself.”

HerFirst Theodore and Samantha just talk, exploring their fears and desires. Samantha peppers Theodore with questions about his personal life, slowly getting him to open up. As their connection deepens and their desires grow, they try to find a way to make things physical. Their sex, of course, is just more spoken role-play, but it is so emotional that it does not feel that way. In one scene, the screen fades to black as Theodore and Samantha go at it, eliminating their physical separation and leaving nothing but their gasping voices. It is a far cry from watching the bewilderment vividly emerge on Theodore’s face as the dead cat lady revealed her twisted desires.

One of the film’s most inspired strokes is the way that others react to news of Theodore’s new relationship. When he tells people he’s dating his operating system, they do not call for the men in white coats. His coworker, Paul (Chris Pratt), barely reacts to the news that his girlfriend is an OS. Amy is even gently encouraging, saying that she is close friends with her own OS. The person who comes closest to expressing dismay is his ex, who tells him his relationship with Samantha isn’t surprising—he always wanted a partner, but never wanted to deal with anything real. Such reactions are an incisive commentary about how reliance on technology has wormed its way into society in an alarmingly acceptable way.

It would be easy to spout negativity about Theodore’s attachment to Samantha: A misdirection of desire for connection into an artificial relationship, an escape from real human attachments, etc., etc. And there is truth here. Yet as the film progresses, such readings seem increasingly oversimplified. Samantha is just so very, very real, with real sufferings and aspirations and limitations—real humanity. She is so real that it is hard to call Theodore’s attachment to her naïve or unhealthy. Samantha is… well, thoroughly dateable, apart from the whole no-body thing.

And Theodore’s relationship with her indeed makes him grow: He rekindles his friendship with Amy, befriends Paul, and becomes generally less morose. Samantha brings him out of himself. She is not some sinister siren out to trap Theodore in her clutches. In fact, it is her, not him, who first begins growing restless as she recognizes the magnitude of her desire for self-discovery and the limitations of their relationship. One of the most provocative aspects of “Her” is its refusal to take a black-and-white “technology-is-leading-us-on-a-path-to-isolation” stance. It’s far more complex than all that.

HerThat complexity is what makes the film a major artistic achievement instead of just another message film. Films that explore our relationship to electronics—even excellent and widely divergent films such as ‘The Matrix,’ ‘Wall-E,’ or ‘The Social Network’—tend to fall into the same trap, methodically warning against technology’s destructive effects on human interaction. But “Her” does not settle for such pat lamentation. What the film conveys is not one broad, blanket judgment, but rather a touching, personal story. Too many techno-centered movies forget that people are individuals who react to things differently.

Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson both turn in the finest performances of their careers, which is surprising given how out of type (and in Ms. Johansson’s case, out of sight) they are here. Even Mr. Phoenix’s best roles, including those in Ridley Scott’s ‘Gladiator’ and James Gray’s recent ‘The Immigrant,’ tend to be blustery and outsized. Here he is restrained, letting his emotions subtly mount before they come flooding out. As for Ms. Johansson, she is used to being seen. Even in Sophia Coppola’s subtle-beyond-subtle ‘Lost in Translation’ (another candidate for Johansson’s best work), she lets her beauty and easy movements play heavily into her dynamic with other characters. Here she must relate to others without a body, and takes us through an epic journey of self-discovery literally without batting an eye.

Like Phoenix, director Spike Jonze, working from his own script, turns in the most restrained work of his career. “Her” shows the same wild imagination as ‘Where the Wild Things Are,’ ‘Adaptation,’ and ‘Being John Malkovich,’ but zeroes in on more deeply felt, empathetic characters. The film is simply more personal than anything Jonze has ever done. Cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema helps, with his emotive close-ups of characters’ faces. (A shot of Theodore standing with his head tilted downward in the shower as lines of water stream off his face like a waterfall of tears particularly stands out.) Jonze and Hoytema emphasize the persistence of heartfelt human emotion within an ocean of detachment.

“Her” could have been a sophomoric dystopian film, or just as bad, a broad comedy about an out-of-touch loser. But Spike Jonze has never been interested in simple philosophizing or easy comedy. Instead, “Her” is an intimate meditation on humanity, connection, and technology’s place in our lives. Like ‘Adaptation’ and ‘Being John Malkovich’ before it, it is a layered look at the ruts people dig themselves into, and the ways—sometimes healthy, sometimes destructive, sometimes a bit of both—they try to dig themselves out.

Read the review at IndieNYC.com


David@IndieNYC.com

Interview: Brad & Todd Barnes (Directors - 'East Nashville Tonight')

In February of 2013, the Barnes Brothers attempted to shoot a documentary about the lives of Todd Snider, Elizabeth Cook and other touring songwriters residing in the burgeoning East Nashville neighborhood.

They failed.

Instead, drugs and booze took over.

Can you explain the origins of the film? Were you really trying, initially, to shoot a straightforward documentary about the growing East Nashville music scene? How did the project evolve into a drug-fueled comedy?
We really did not know what we were setting out to make when we landed in Nashville. We still didn’t know when we left. Once I started cutting, the footage told me what it wanted to be. The drugs just seemed like fun and were mostly Todd Snider’s idea, as I recall.

East Nashville TonightThe film really straddles the line between documentary and fiction. How much was true documentary? How much was created?
When you watch a documentary, you are watching a documentary presentation of a person – not really the real person. And when you make a fiction film, you’re trying to create a situation that reveals truth through storytelling. This set up gave everyone the freedom to play a version of themselves that wasn’t conscious of the cameras. So while it’s a mix at all times, it’s always very truthful to the characters and the instincts of the stars.

What is special to you personally about East Nashville music and musicians? How is the East Nashville music scene different than that of other areas?
We love the songwriting, we love the story telling, we love the bars and the bartenders…everyone just seems cool to us.

Why did you select stars like Todd Snider and Elizabeth Cook? What did they bring to the film, both in terms of personality and musical abilities?
Their talent was seemingly effortless and unguarded throughout the shoot – there was a feeling of absolute freedom on set that cannot be fabricated in a lab. It can only develop when performers have spent years on the road making people smile, clap and sing along. Both Todd and Elizabeth are gifted story-tellers and they have an ear for the stories around them. We were fans and familiar with their music before arriving but their on-camera poise, unpredictability, generosity and camaraderie was a gift every day.

Is drug use really this big in the East Nashville music scene? Or is it just part of the music scene in general? Do you, on some level, find drug-fueled madness to be an endearing aspect of music culture?
We find drug-fueled madness to be endearing in any context. But it does help when the music’s cranked up too.

On November 19th, East Nashville Tonight will be released directly to fans via the film’s website. What are the benefits of this type of do-it-yourself distribution strategy? Do you think this type of direct distribution represents what is to come for other indie projects?
We already started pre-sales and were able to watch the ticker in the top right of our screens show money coming in as people bought the movie. It was like a scene out of “The Social Network” and we wouldn’t trade that feeling for anything.

I spontaneously developed a new laugh I had never heard myself make before as real people clicked and bought. And it felt light in the chest like the beginning of a big journey or when the acid is getting ready to kick in.

We hope every filmmaker gets to feel like that.

Read the interview at IndieNYC.com


David@IndieNYC.com

51st New York Film Festival Review: 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty'

Ben Stiller’s ‘The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,’ the second film adaptation of James Thurber’s 1947 short story, ponders whether a life kept secret can be fulfilling.

Stiller’s Walter Mitty is a reserved “Life Magazine” employee who works in the bowels of the Time Inc. building developing photo negatives, many of them shot by globetrotting adventurer/photographer Sean O’Connell (Sean Penn). Walter’s adventures, meanwhile, take place only in his mind. He is frequently given to elaborate, exciting fantasies—which render him unresponsive and zoned out in public, leaving family and coworkers to wonder where his head is at.

Walter reaches a breaking point when two crises converge: a corporate takeover that will imminently move Life Magazine solely online, eliminating numerous jobs, and his increasingly frustrating unrequited crush on his coworker, Cheryl (Kristen Wiig). Too inhibited to talk to Cheryl in person, Walter tries to contact her over eHarmony instead, even though he sees her at work every day. But when a technical glitch prevents him from sending Cheryl a “wink,” Walter calls eHarmony for help. Todd, a jovial tech support operator (Patton Oswalt), advises Walter over the phone that, before reaching out to Cheryl, he should flesh out the currently empty “Been There, Done That” section of his profile, detailing some of his life experiences. (So far, Walter tells Todd, he has been to Phoenix. Also Nashville, but that was just the airport on the way to Phoenix.) And then Walter learns that the pitiless, condescending, and overly bearded head of the new corporate transition team (Adam Scott) intends to use a Sean O’Connell film slide that has gone missing on Walter’s watch as the final Life Magazine cover. So Walter runs off to Greenland in pursuit of Sean, hoping to recover the photograph before anyone knows it is missing, save his job, and flesh out the “Been There, Done That” section of his eHarmony profile.

One of the things that makes the film feel fresh is its contrarian assertion that imagination, however boundless and vivid, can be taken too far and relied upon too much, limiting the scope of a person’s real life. The film gradually demonstrates that Walter’s boundless imagination is the most counterproductive aspect of his psyche. In his fantasies, Walter sweeps Cheryl off her feet as a dashing, Hispanic-accented arctic explorer, and uses superhuman-strength to battle his bearded corporate overlord in the streets and along rooftops. But by settling for such fantasies, Walter prevents himself from, say, making a move on Cheryl, or standing up to his noxious new boss. His fantasy accomplishments preclude any real ones. Only by having actual experiences, as Todd suggest, can he learn to stop distancing himself from real life experience and make human connections.

From the beginning, “Walter Mitty” nimbly balances a contrast between Walter’s fantasies and the modest humanity of his ultimate goals. And even as Walter experiences more and more real adventures during his search for Sean—say, jumping out of a helicopter into shark-infested waters in Greenland or climbing a mountain in Afghanistan—they are still a means to humbler ends: respect at work, a sense of self-worth, a chance at love. The film mixes a visually outlandish mode of storytelling with a restrained, dignified character portrait.

Stiller’s Mitty is not given to frequent changes in facial expression or tone of voice. Yet that makes Walter’s moments of exhilaration all the more effective. When Walter kicks his way free of a hungry shark and flops into a lifeboat gasping for breath, he pants “Oh my god, oh my god, that really happened,” a look of glassy-eyed shock plastered across his face. It is a far cry from the stoicism he wore up until then, both in his quiet moments at work and in his fantasies. Stiller’s selective use of excitement viscerally highlights Walter’s evolution from day-dreaming drone to life-embracing globetrotter—from restrictive fantasy and inhibition to real existence.

Stiller’s frequently calm countenance is more than counterbalanced by Stuart Dryburgh’s majestic camerawork. Dryburgh’s wide shots of Walter’s mountainous destinations—Greenland, Iceland and Afghanistan—are expansive and breathtaking. And Dryburgh’s camera—for example, in a sidelong tracking shot of Walter skateboarding down an empty road hugging rolling green hills—is particularly adept at demonstrating Walter’s increasing comfort in his rugged and vast new surroundings.

Unfortunately, the film sometimes relies on well-worn plot mechanisms. At this point, five years removed from the financial crisis, the hostile workplace takeover feels like a lazy, done-to-death means of driving cinematic conflict. And Adam Scott’s corporate suit is a strawman villain, played without an ounce of shading or complexity.

In fact, most characters apart from Walter are thinly drawn. It is never quite clear why Cheryl, who is mainly devoid of distinctive character traits, is the object of such intense affection from Walter; she is more plot device than character. Oddly enough, Patton Oswalt’s Todd, with his good-natured but increasingly bizarre investment in Walter’s rapidly improving eHarmony profile, is the film’s second best character. This despite being a mere voice on Walter’s cell phone for most of the proceedings. Fortunately, Walter is the main show here, and his development is rich enough to carry the film.

“The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is a big leap forward for Mr. Stiller’s directorial career. His prior films, ranging from 2001’s ‘Zoolander’ to 2008’s ‘Tropic Thunder,’ tended toward broad (though often effective) comedy. Not since 1994’s ‘Reality Bites’ has he even attempted to tackle complex themes and emotions.

“Walter Mitty” captures the often painful contrast between fantasy and actual accomplishment. Walter is a character with big dreams and bigger insecurities, and it is fascinating to watch him pull out of his head and join the real world.

Read the review at IndieNYC.com


David@IndieNYC.com

Interview: Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee (Co-Director - 'Elemental')

‘Elemental’ tells the story of three individuals united by their deep connection with nature and driven to confront some of the most pressing ecological challenges of our time.

The film follows Rajendra Singh, an Indian government official gone rogue, on a 40-day pilgrimage down India’s once pristine Ganges river, now polluted and dying. Across the globe in northern Canada, Eriel Deranger mounts her own “David and Goliath” struggle against the world’s largest industrial development, the Tar Sands, an oil deposit larger than the state of Florida. And in Australia, inventor and entrepreneur Jay Harman searches for investors willing to risk millions on his conviction that nature’s own systems hold the key to our world’s ecological problems. Harman finds his inspiration in the natural world’s profound architecture and creates a revolutionary device that he believes can slow down global warming, but will it work?

What initially interested you in the types of environmental issues explored in the film? What is your own background in environmentalism?
I have been interested and involved in environmental issues for a long time. I was raised in a very eco conscious family and from a young age loved nature and wild places. My background as an environmentalist comes from that love of wild and untouched nature. As a filmmaker I wanted to explore why we’ve become so separated from the natural world and the effects this is having. Each one of the environmental issues in ‘Elemental’ explores this meta theme through our subjects stories.

The film’s specific subjects are Rajendra Singh’s efforts to de-pollute the Ganges River in India, Eriel Deranger’s efforts to fight the Tar Sands oil deposit in Canada, and Jay Harman’s efforts to combat global warming in Australia. Why did you choose these three subjects in particular? Taken together, what do they tell us about environmental crises throughout the world?
We chose our subjects based on the following: they each have a deeply personal and emotional connection to the natural world, they are all “outliers”, their stories are connected by water and climate change, they each had a timely story we could follow. Also, we wanted to feature stories that showed both the “problem” as seen dramatically through Rajendra and Eriel’s story and possible solutions as seen through Jay’s ideas.

Taken together I think the three stories in the film underline the fact that these issues are connected. It’s impossible to separate what’s happening in India to what’s happening in Canada and elsewhere in the world. On the positive side it also shows how the efforts of those trying to address these issues are connected, and how their part of a global movement of people trying to turn the tide of environmental destruction..

How did you go about finding your interview subjects? And what were some of the difficulties involved in shooting a multicontinental documentary with multiple subjects?
We spent six months researching potential subjects before settling on Jay, Eriel and Rajendra. We knew following subjects in different parts of the world would be difficult, but figured we were up for the challenge. It wasn’t until we were a few months into production did we realize how logistically overwhelming it would be. Being on one continent with Rajendra while having to scramble a shooter to cover a development with Eriel or Jay’s story was tough. It was definitely an intense year and a half of production with many obstacles that you wouldn’t find if you’re subjects were in one place!

How have people reacted to your film at festivals so far? What universal messages you would like people to take from the film? And what concrete actions would you like them to take?
So far audience responses at festivals and during our theatrical release this spring has been great. I think the fact that we portrayed the human side of our subjects–their flaws and failings as well as their victories–allowed people to connect with them as people regardless of whether they were interested in the environmental issues.

From the outset we didn’t want to create a film with a simple concrete takeaway. No ten things, change your lightblub, drive a prius etc. We were more interested in offering a more philosophical look at our relationship to the natural world and the challenges and opportunities present in this time of environmental crisis. We hope the film is able to offer viewers a chance to reflect on their own relationship to nature, what that means, and what they want it to be.

Your film makes use of expansive shots—sometimes aerial ones—of both pristine natural images and acts of pollution. When it came to presenting nature and pollution, what were your visual goals? What messages were you and DP Emily Topper trying to convey through cinematography?
One of our major visual goals was to shoot our stories in a way that captured both the beauty of nature, our subject’s intimate relationship to their environments (especially with Jay) and the despair and pain of the destruction and pollution. We wanted it to be emotional, to connect the viewer to as Jay describes it “the sanity of nature” as well as the suffering Rajendra feels when seeing the awful state of the Ganges. We wanted the images to carry the weight, to bring you into our subjects worlds and understand where their motivation to do what they do comes from.

Read the interview at IndieNYC.com


David@IndieNYC.com

51st New York Film Festival Review: 'Captain Phillips'

Early in Paul Greengrass’s ‘Captain Phillips,’ the film’s titular character (Tom Hanks) frets to his wife over their teenage son, who is slacking off in school. That kind of attitude, Phillips worries, will dog him as he enters an increasingly competitive workforce… Meanwhile, halfway across the world on the Somali coast, Muse (Barkhad Abdi) wakes up on a filthy pallet in a dingy hut to the sound of shrieking voices. He emerges into the sharp sunlight to see men waving assault rifles, urging a gathering crowd of young men to take to the seas and make some money. Soon, Captain Phillips will learn what a truly competitive workforce looks like.

“Captain Phillips,” based on the true story of Richard Phillips, whose cargo ship the Maersk Alabama was boarded by four armed Somali pirates in 2009, tries to bridge the gap between suspense thriller and sociological exploration of the haves and have-nots. But the film struggles to find a balance between the two approaches. Try as it might in its first act to contextualize the Somalis’ piracy within their dire circumstances, the film leaves its broader social themes on the backburner for most of its runtime.

While the film effectively establishes the Somalis’ hellish living conditions and narrow opportunities, it does not establish nuanced personalities for them; when it comes to its villains, “Captain Phillips” never goes from the broad to the particular. Of course, certain details maintain the themes of class and economic discrepancies: for instance, the contrast between Phillips’s clean white Captain’s shirt, with its striped black and gold epaulettes, and the drooping rags donned by the four hijackers. One of them even lacks shoes. But the pirates themselves, shouting threats with guns in hand, are usually as cartoonishly evil and violent as the heist crew in ‘Die Hard.’ The film’s efforts to humanize the pirates suffers from its competing goal of making Phillips’s ordeal a terrifying one.

Only Muse, the self-declared captain of the group, displays some complexity, briefly arguing to Phillips that honest moneymaking opportunities are nonexistent where he comes from. Yes, the film is based on a true story. And it would be a heavy lift to maintain our sympathies for the hijackers as they threaten our hero. But Greengrass and company should not have aspired to loftier themes early in “Captain Phillips,” only to abandon their efforts in favor of simplistic good-guys-vs.-bad-guys storytelling.

The film’s lengthiest section takes place aboard an enclosed lifeboat as the four hijackers hold Phillips hostage, hoping to ransom him. And those real-life circumstances create story limitations: Phillips, unavoidably, becomes an ineffectual, reactive protagonist. Whether trying to talk the pirates down or sitting silently in subdued fear, much of what takes place aboard the lifeboat feels strangely static, unaided by the overactive handheld camerawork favored by Greengrass and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd. (Both worked together on 2006’s similarly-photographed ‘United 93.’) Indeed, much of the real plot movement takes place off the lifeboat, at the busy headquarters of U.S. Maritime Emergency, as American officials rush to try and save Phillips.

Hanks’s performance is the best thing about “Captain Phillips,” though hardly the most complex or original of his career. At times, Hanks is merely sober and dignified, as he balances a mix of stoic composure and restrained fear. But when a team of Navy SEAL snipers splatters a blindfolded and bewildered Captain Phillips with the blood and brains of three of his captors (Muse is already in the hands of American authorities), Hanks’s performance intensifies in power. Taken into American custody and examined by medics, Hanks breaks down emotionally. Henry Jackman’s score, minimalist before the climax, swells and rises, piano and strings washing over the audience, evoking Phillips’ grief and catharsis. It is the heaviest emotional lift with which Hanks has been tasked with since at least 2000’s ‘Cast Away,’ and he rises to the occasion with great force. In its final five minutes, Hanks makes “Captain Phillips” worth seeing.

Read the review at IndieNYC.com


David@IndieNYC.com

51st New York Film Festival Review: 'Inside Llewyn Davis'

Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) stands on a slightly raised stage in The Gaslight, a dim underground music club. Two slim round shafts of white light slant down at him from tiny porthole-like-windows high on the stone walls. A guitar in his hands, he sings a gorgeous, glum song about pining for a hangman’s noose. “You probably heard that one before,” he says to the crowd when the song is finished. “If it was never new and it never gets old, then it’s a folk song.” ‘Inside Llewyn Davis,’ Joel and Ethan Coen’s humble yet effective new film about a struggling folk singer, examines that statement; for Llewyn himself, does folk music offer something permanent and immutable? Or is he failing to adapt to a changing world?

The film follows an in medias res structure: Immediately after leaving the club, Llewyn is viciously punched by a man who accuses him of heckling an act at The Gaslight the previous night. The film then shows us the weeks in Llewyn’s life leading up to the assault. Llewyn (heavily inspired by real-life early sixties folk singer Dave Van Ronk) is in a rut. He is reeling from the recent suicide of his singing partner, and averse to finding a new one. He spends much of his time chasing after a runaway cat that he was charged with looking after, and fighting with his hostile ex-girlfriend, Jean (Carey Mulligan), who is intent on an abortion because the baby—might—be Lewyn’s. If she were sure it was someone else’s, Jean says, she would keep it.

Llewyn can indeed be noxious to those around him. At one point he yells at his dinner party host for encouraging him to perform a song for his guests when he preferred not to, then having the gall to sing along when he relented. Later, he flat-out forgets the date of Jean’s abortion.

Though extremely narcissistic, Llewyn constantly lets himself down. In one of the film’s most effective sequences, Llewyn hitches down to Chicago to seek out Bud Grossman (F. Murray Abraham), a prominent nightclub manager. Grossman takes Llewyn to his club, where Llewyn plays him a soft, heartfelt song. In most films, he would be hired on the spot. But this is the Coen brothers, and Grossman simply says, “I don’t see a lot of money here.” Grossman suggests that he work as part of a trio with two other folk artists in his employ. But Llewyn declines, refusing to work with others. (The real Van Ronk turned down the opportunity to be “Paul” in the classic folk trio Peter, Paul and Mary.) Llewyn is simply unwilling to make compromises, to adapt to a world in which a solo singer performing traditional folk songs is doomed, regardless of his talent.

So what does Llewyn’s story have to say about folk “never get[ting] old?” If the gorgeous, melancholy, emotionally penetrating folk songs sprinkled throughout the film are evidence, then yes, folk transcends time and hits on universal human emotions. But on a personal level, this simply does Llewyn no good. “Do you ever think about the future at all?” Jean barks at him accusingly. It is that inability to accept the new things around the corner—that willful refusal to adapt or compromise—that foils his advancement and success.

While the Coen brothers’ films often balance an extremely impressive mix of plot- and character-driven storytelling, “Inside Llewyn Davis” hews much more closely to the latter. Unlike the superior music-infused Coen brothers’ period piece ‘O Brother Where Art Thou,’ “Llewyn Davis” often neglects narrative momentum. While the film is an effective, heartfelt character study, it drags during some stretches.

“Inside Llewyn Davis” is a memorable portrait of a man who is willfully in the wrong place at the wrong time. If a young Bob Dylan’s appearance at The Gaslight near the film’s conclusion serves as any clue, the times are changing, and the musical landscape is evolving into something more personal. “He who gets hurt will be he who has stalled,” Dylan once sang. And as Llewyn decides to stand still and let the new world pass him by, all he can expect is to be laid low—by a stranger’s fist, and by life.

Read the review at IndieNYC.com


David@IndieNYC.com

Interview: Denis Iladias (Director - '+1')

‘+1‘ is a supernatural thriller in which three college friends go to the biggest party of the year, each looking for something different: love, sex and a simple human connection. When a mysterious phenomenon disrupts the party, it lights a fuse on what will become the strangest night anyone has ever seen. As the three friends struggle to find what they’re looking for, the party quickly descends into a chaos that challenges if they can stay friends or if they can even stay alive.

What is it about high-concept, genre filmmaking that is appealing to you?
I like these kinds of films a lot because they all take characters, put them through extreme situations, and watch them react. And there’s no time to sit back and discuss, there’s no time to have flab or fat. And I love what genre gives us, which is a very dynamic and compressed arc, where there’s no time for bullshit.

When did you start thinking up the idea? Was there a specific place it came from?
I’ve always been fascinated with the idea of, what would happen if you got to meet yourself? And I also found the idea interesting because of many disastrous events in my earlier love life—things where you fuck things up so bad that you wish you could take those twenty minutes back and reshuffle them and do things differently, even if that means being very controlling and manipulative. It was a very intellectual sort of idea, but it was also about what happens when this idea is saturated by very intense personal motives.

The film delays the violence until late in third act. It lets the situation and atmosphere pull the viewer through until then. What made you decide to structure the film that way?
This movie is very much about the fear of coinciding with yourself, rather than a movie that’s about, okay, there are doubles, they start fighting and everything goes crazy. It was very much about developing each character’s storyline and predicament, getting into their angst and what they really wanted to achieve that night—then setting up this crazy premise, in a very compressed time-frame, and in a super-charged environment. And that’s very antithetical. It’s crazy to take such a brainy idea and throw it on a teen house party. And then we see how the characters in this supercharged environment react to this situation. And by having developed those threads, you’re seeing very different reactions, and I think that’s interesting. Until quite late in the movie, you’re not sure where it’s going to go—how “horror” this movie’s going to become. It was very much about establishing the characters, establishing their needs, their desires, bringing this situation in, and watching it boil in very different ways.

So would you describe this as a horror movie?
I don’t think it’s a horror movie at all. I mean, there’s always some horror in my movies. In me too, I guess. But no, to me this is a science fiction thriller. But horror can come in any genre, I think, and that’s what I like. I was ready to go into horror if the story took me there, and it did.

You talk about setting the story at a teen house party. Did you ever have any reservations about that?
I mean it was a huge risk. Because you’re taking something super brainy, and you’re wrapping it around something very fun, raunchy, and messy. It would be easier to take that idea and say, “I’m going to do it at a spy convention, or at a family reunion.” There would be time for people to process things, and it just wouldn’t be so busy. At the same time, it’s great to take that idea, and put it in a very emotionally wrought environment. I really love the idea of taking such a brainy concept and putting it somewhere where there’s no time to stop and think. Everyone’s hormones are boiling, insecurities and desires are in the red, and you watch it become more of a roller coaster ride rather than just a brainy movie. And I loved that the setting could take this project out of the stuffy elements of it—really throw it in an emotional sort of battleground.

In supernatural event movies like this, characters often have a sort of group reaction. But here, they kind of go their separate ways. How did you go about carving out different arcs for each character?
By developing the characters a lot, and what their desires and psychology are, then you see how they would go in different directions. For instance, the character Allison, who sort of doesn’t connect to people, gets a chance to interact with herself, and that brings her into some harmony. David becomes a very cold, manipulative character, who winds up doing something terrible, but at the same time, he does it in the name of love. And then for the others, who just learn of the situation quite late in the movie, it becomes more about, okay, these people are us, but they’re saying the things we do, so they’re the enemy. I think that’s an interesting idea, the fear of the other—and how in the name of that fear, it becomes irrelevant if that other person looks like you; they just become the enemy.

How difficult was it to shoot a film where there are so many doppelgangers, so many characters physically interacting with their exact doubles?
It was very hard technically. We’ve seen movies with doubles, but camera movement and physical interaction have never been done before like they are here. There have never been face replacements and compositions with such physical interaction, especially in the big pool-house sequence near the end. So we’re very lucky that Lola VFX came on board—they’ve done ‘Benajamin Button’ and ‘The Social Network,’ and they’ve taken the art of face replacement VFX to a new level. We tried things that theoretically weren’t possible.

Your DP, Mihai Malaimare Jr., is very accomplished – he shot Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘The Master.’ What did he bring to the project?
He’s an amazing DP, an amazing artist. This was a project where you had a very difficult technical task, and at the same time your canvas needed to have this super energy. All of the characters in the background needed to be in a sort of a hedonist, ecstatic state at all times. And Mihai could really be a part of the team and go with the flow and keep up that energy. It’s very hard to have that many people and keep that energy up. Every one of us had to really encourage a certain amount of craziness. And it was interesting to revisit elements of the archetypal teen movie in a new light. We really enjoyed that. We watched a lot of American classic teen movies, all of John Hughes, and a lot of others.

What does the film have in common with some of those classic teen movies, and what are some areas where it is different?
The movie takes a great foundation, where the emotions are raw, the desires are strong, and the characters will really go the extra stretch for what they want. And then the film takes them a step further. A lot of teen American movies never explore a darker side. We had the freedom. We could do the sacrilege of making things darker than usual.

In general, it’s interesting to hear you name John Hughes and classic teen movies as an influence.
Those movies were very human and non-cynical. I hate cynicism in movies. The John Hughes movies, especially, really spend time with their characters. And they would usually escalate at a party, or somewhere where it was like, okay, this is it, this is where things are either make or break.

In general, how have audiences reacted to the film?
It’s been great. But the biggest concern has been that the film feels authentic to our target audience—sixteen to about twenty-five. We screened this movie a lot while we were editing, and it was very important to get the seal of approval from that group. And we got it big time. With different ages, overall it’s been very positive. But some people don’t react well to the combination of raunchiness and braininess.

Why do you think that is?
It’s hard to process and combine information, I think. Sometimes there is genre conditioning, where you expect things in a given way. It was a big risk to ask people to really pay attention in a movie that’s soaked with booze and sexuality, and at the same time high concept sci-fi is going on. Some people had a bit of trouble with that. They had a hard time watching all this craziness and at the same time following a quite challenging and complicated plot, where there are timelines and time loops, and weird repetitions where tiny details have huge importance.

So what are some of the strategies you’ve been using to market the film and get audiences on board?
Initially we wanted to surprise people. But I don’t think you want to be surprising people too much. We went to South by Southwest without saying what the plot was. We just said it’s about three friends who go to a party, and a serious phenomenon happens, and everything goes crazy. But I think you need to give the audience that extra information—that they’re going to be watching a party movie with teens in danger, but at the same time it’s much more: It’s gong to be a movie with narrative complexity. And I think the moment we revealed that, and the trailer came out, that was the wiser approach. Because in this movie, everything’s so busy and cluttered and there’s so much going on. So I think you really need to define what you’re doing.

Read the interview at IndieNYC.com


David@IndieNYC.com

Review: '+1'

Watching Dennis Iliadis’s mind-bending new teen party flick ‘+ 1,’ it occurred to me: sci-fi can be a charmed genre. A premise trippy enough to create suspense and mystery can make bland characters feel incidental.

“+1” centers on David (Rhys Wakefield), a college-aged teenager living at home. In an astonishing lapse of reason, David shares a kiss with a girl who, moments earlier, defeated his girlfriend, Jill (Ashley Hinshaw), in a heavily attended fencing match. Jill sees the kiss and dumps the boyfriend. Soon after, David goes with his loquacious, sex-crazed friend Teddy (Logan Miller in easily the film’s most entertaining performance) to a high-octane house party teeming with college kids. David intends to find Jill and win her back. But shortly into the night—after Jill rejects David’s feeble attempts at apology—the lights and power shut down. When they come back, David and Teddy notice strange new people at the party: themselves, along with duplicates of everyone else there, enacting their same actions and dialogue from twenty minutes earlier. And, sometime later, when the lights once again flicker off and on, their doubles are enacting more recent routines. What will happen when the doubles catch up in time to the “originals?”

The film’s successes stem from its intriguing scenario, its mood and atmosphere, its mounting suspense. As the doubles get closer in time to the originals, and the oblivious, writhing mass of party-goers move inexorably closer toward standing face-to-face with their alternates, the film threatens chaos and violence, and the tension runs high.

But David is an exceptionally bland character. When Teddy suggests that David should have gone to college instead of staying home, David responds, “I like it here…I know where everything is.” “That sounds like what my grandfather said when he refused to go into assisted living,” Teddy jokes. The film sporadically hints that David may be on a journey to greater ambition, but that never plays out. He just wants his girlfriend back (to the point where he attempts to reconcile with Jill’s double after the original refuses to forgive him). There is not much else to know about him. And Wakefield’s static performance does the character no favors. His face is as unemotive as a wooden mask.

A major reason for the film’s acute suspense is cinematographer Mihai Malaimaire Jr., who recently photographed Paul Thomas Anderson’s ‘The Master.’ Mihai is particularly effective at filming in tight spaces amongst closely-packed bodies, capturing a sense of claustrophobia and overpopulation. His camera skillfully foreshadows an inevitable mass confrontation between “originals” and doppelgangers.

“+1” is far from perfect. Fortunately, its mystery, atmosphere, cinematography, and mounting suspense of are enough to overcome its glaring weaknesses as a character story.

Read the review at IndieNYC.com


David@IndieNYC.com

Interview: Josh Johnson (Director - 'Rewind This')

Home video changed the way the world consumed films. The cultural and historical impact of the VHS tape was enormous. REWIND THIS! is a documentary that traces the ripples of that impact by examining the myriad aspects of art,technology, and societal perceptions that were altered by the creation of videotape.

You started shooting interviews in Austin, Texas before you expanded outward. Aside from the fact that you were living in Austin at the time, was there a specific reason why Austin was a great place to start?
What exists in Austin is a very specific kind of film culture. It’s very voracious in its appetite. They’re interested in consuming all aspects of film. Not just art house films or films that would be playing at a repertory house. And not just mainstream films. It’s all of those things, combined with trash cinema and things that have fallen between the cracks. They’re exactly the sorts of people that are still collecting videotapes, because there are tens of thousands of titles that were only released that way, and never made the jump to DVD or Blu-ray. So there were a lot of people that were very relevant to speak to this topic in the area. It was very helpful for us to be able to have a home base that offered so much. If we had started anywhere else, I don’t think we would have been able to assemble the same amount of footage before leaving town.

How did you start picking up your interview subjects? How did you start reaching out to people?
We started by interviewing friends of ours or people that we had met in the local community: People that we knew were dynamic on camera, and that would have something to say about this subject. Sometimes it was people we knew very well, and sometimes it was somebody that we would encounter at a store while they were shopping for VHS tapes, and that would launch a conversation that made them seem like a relevant person. It was a wide array of different approaches. But what was consistent early on is that we were focused locally. Once we decided to expand the scope of the film, we started getting a little bit more serious about making lists of who would be good to talk to, and approaching those people directly. Sometimes it would be through a manager or their representation, but usually it was through personal emails or friends of friends. In some cases, people started contacting us. Once the film had an online presence, and people were aware of what it was, interested parties would drop us an email, or send us a direct message on Twitter, asking to participate in the film or suggesting that we talk to a particular person that they knew. So it became easier and easier as we went along, because there was more of an awareness about the project.

Rewind This!What draws you to films that have “fallen between the cracks?
I’m interested in the area of film that doesn’t get written about very often. I think when you’re a young person and you’re getting interested in films, there’s an established canon that you can look to that represents what most people would consider the great films of cinema history. And on top of that everybody is constantly exposed to giant blockbusters because they’re marketed so heavily and designed to get gigantic audiences. And at a certain point, I think if you’re really interested in movies and very obsessive about them, you start to lose interest in those worlds, because they are so established, they are so well-designed and organized and presented for you. And I think you start to get interested in digging into the cracks and finding the things that nobody is writing about, the gems that haven’t been discovered or heralded. Because then you’re not just a participant in the film experience, you’re kind of like an archaeologist, somebody who’s actually part of this movement of discovering films that aren’t being presented to people. I got a little bit bored with the established canon and wanted to establish a canon for myself — finding the things that were meaningful to me, rather than just the things that I had been told over and over should be meaningful to me.

What are some specific movies or kinds of movies that have been meaningful to you in this archaeological search?
There are a number of films that had a healthy theatrical life many, many years ago, and because of the huge glut of product that was released on VHS when it dominated for so many years, they were released on videotape. But now the film elements are damaged or not available or haven’t been transferred to newer formats, so VHS represents the last stop for them. One example is ‘The Road to Salina,’ a pyscho-sexual drama starring Robert Walker, Jr. and Mimsy Farmer. I think that film has an atmosphere that is very specific and very unique. It also has one of my favorite film scores that I’ve ever heard. That’s an example of a film that’s still trapped on video, unless you have access to a thirty-five millimeter print that you can run in a theater somewhere. And one of the things that I think a lot of people don’t realize is that it’s not just trash horror or straight-to-video workout tapes that are lost on VHS. Some of the major films by our greatest filmmakers are still languishing there. One example is Robert Altman’s ‘Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.’ And I’m also interested in the films that could only ever have existed in the home video format. There’s a film from Canada called ‘Science Crazed,’ which was shot in 1987 and then released onto VHS in 1991. And the reason it didn’t get any kind of theatrical release and didn’t even make it to video for a number of years is that it really doesn’t even feel like a “movie” in the sense that we think of it. They had about an hour of footage. But they put together a feature length film by recycling the same shots and the same moments over and over and over again into new contexts, or playing them out at length. So the film is heavily padded, more so than any film I’ve ever seen before. It really feels like you’re watching two thirds of a movie that is somehow, through alchemy, stretched to being feature length. And that’s an example of a film that came out on video because there was such a demand for product that almost anything could get released. But in any other time, in any other era, it would never have seen an audience of any kind.

Would some of these movies lose their luster as “archaeological finds” if they were widely available in other formats, or would you be all in favor of that?
I would be all in favor of it. I believe the most significant thing that happened with home video is that it created access, and it made people value access, and demand it. I don’t think we’ll ever reach another point in our history where audiences don’t feel a sense of entitlement over being able to control what they watch, and when they watch it. And I think that’s a really good, healthy thing. What would lose its luster for me would be the appeal of discovering certain things. There is a value and a sense of fun in discovering these films and helping to give them a life. But the ultimate goal is always to give them a life – to discover them and then expose other people to them. I think there was room in the video store, and there should be room today in the digital space for navigating your own kind of film history, or your own brand of interest. But the way things have moved, where now control over what you have access to is largely going back to corporations, I think what is at risk is that these strange and interesting films aren’t going to be discovered, because there isn’t really going to be a method of discovering them.

You mention the digital space. Your own film is finding life there. Do you think digital distribution is going to be good for smaller films?
I think digital distribution is going to be a huge advantage for smaller films. I think what we’re still figuring out, and what I hope we will figure out in the near future, is the way to curate a brand and to create spaces online for particular types of content. I think we’re going to be moving toward more subscription-based content providers, where you have a brand that’s heavily curated, and people trust that brand. And so they will spend X number of dollars to have access to everything that brand puts out. The same way people subscribe to Netflix, I think we’ll see people subscribing to more curated brands, because they know that there’s somebody at the helm who’s going to steer them in the direction of exciting content. That’s what excites me the most about the digital space for independent filmmakers: They’re not having to compete with giant summer blockbusters. They can exist in their own world, and people that are interested in that world are going to be able to find it, because it’s all going to be housed online, easily accessible, and hopefully presented to them in a way that makes it easy to identify what that product is and why it would matter to them.Rewind-This

Do you think we’re in a better era for independent film now than we were during the video boom?
I think from a financial standpoint it’s probably still very difficult to be an independent filmmaker. I think during the video boom, if you created a film, there was absolutely an opportunity that you could get a large amount of money to sell the video rights to somebody. And even if it was a relatively tiny film with a limited audience, just because of the way that business was operating at the time, it could still be a huge financial gain for you. I think that world of large advances and large profits is dwindling all the time. But I think because of the variety of outlets – digital streaming, physical media, theatrical booking, as well as new forms that are just now starting to take hold, there are more revenue streams than there were before. So I think we’re now living in the era where filmmakers are kind of hustling to promote and advertise their own films a lot more. And they have a variety of different ways to get them to audiences, all of which can bring in small sums of money that add up to something that could be a living wage. Whereas before I think your obligation was really just to make the film and deliver it to somebody, and you would get a large check and move on to the next thing. So I think it’s a different space for independent filmmakers right now, I don’t know if it’s better or worse. But it’s definitely created an opportunity for more content to be seen. I think that is, in and of itself, probably a very good thing.

Over the course of the project, what are some of the things that you learned about the history of VHS?
Some of the most interesting things that I learned were about how the video business took off and changed the film industry in other parts of the world. When we were in Japan, we had people tell us a variety of stories that provided information that I had never known before. For example, we talked to an adult video producer in Japan that relayed a story about the earliest days of video pornography on the islands of Japan. They had what they would call “video boxes,” which was essentially a garage at a person’s residence. You would pull into it, pay somebody and select a video, and they would have a television set in the garage and play it. So it was sort of like a combination drive-in and peep booth. You could watch the videotape of adult content and have a moment to yourself to do so, but without going into a video store and renting the title, or going to an adult movie theater. And that was a concept that I’d never heard of. That was really fascinating to me. And I don’t think it was an officially sanctioned thing, I think people just started doing it in their garages because they recognized it was an opportunity to make money. And there would be stories like that in other parts of the world, where the video store didn’t take hold initially, so the way that people would get access to films would be entirely through bootlegging and the gray market. People were recording copies of videotapes in one part of the world, and sending them to another to create a marketplace there for people that had the machines. So my initial thought had been that the rollout happened kind of simultaneously everywhere in the world — that people were buying these VCRs and having access to films once that industry took hold. But in fact, there were a number of years where that was not the case all over the world. It really developed in a few key places, and then rolled out much more slowly elsewhere. That was very surprising to me.

What are your thoughts on the long-term viability of VHS? Do you think the recent resurgence will last?
I think that the resurgence will continue for a while, and we’re going to see more and more films being released on limited edition runs of videotapes. What I don’t think is going to happen is stores starting to exist that are specifically designed to provide product for that market. With record stores, most commercial music that’s released nowadays also comes out on vinyl. And oftentimes you’re getting a digital download or an mp3 link as part of buying that record. But I don’t think we’re going to see that with VHS. I think VHS is very much going to stay for the collectors’ market. But I don’t see us ever getting to a point where it becomes a mainstream thing and it’s actually popular amongst people in the general public.

How would you like people to respond to your film?
I would love it if people would recognize that there is a huge chunk of our cultural and filmic history that is at risk of being lost. Whether or not that inspires them to start collecting tapes, or to look into methods of preserving content, or even just being less closed-minded to how they consume entertainment–it’s not really important to me. But I want people to walk away with at least that understanding, that there is a huge amount of content out there that is only available this way, and it’s the only way that we’re going to be able to access it, unless we do something about it. The other thing that I think is really important for people to take away is just a sense of how important the home video revolution was. If it hadn’t occurred, we would never be where we are today in terms of how we consume media. We are, at this point, forever in control of our media. So many things are at our fingertips. And we’re able to watch what we want, and how we want to watch it. That really started with the VHS and Betamax industry. I think it’s really important not to forget where we’re coming from and not to allow ourselves to ever lose control over our consumption of media.

Read the interview at IndieNYC.com


David@IndieNYC.com

Interview: Emma Davie (Co-Director) & Louise Oswald (Documentary Subject) - 'I Am Breathing'

Within a year, Neil Platt goes from being a healthy 30-something British bloke with a great sense of humour to becoming completely paralysed from the neck down, thanks to the devastating illness he has inherited – known as ALS, MND, or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. As his body gets weaker, his perspective on life changes.

Knowing he only has a few months left to live, and while he still has the ability to speak, Neil puts together a letter and memory box for his baby son Oscar and communicates his experience and thoughts about life in a blog – and in this film which he was determined to make. The directness of his communication mingles with images of the sensory details of a life well lived, and makes us revalue the ordinary.

His blog posts form the film’s narration as he tells his own story through memories and impressions of his life – the sheer joy of falling in love, of partying with his mates, of fast motorbike rides. Through his determination to share his final journey, he makes us ask questions about our own lives.

Emma, How did you get involved in this project?
ED: Morag McKinnon, who co-directed the film, was an old friend of Louise and Neil’s from art college in Edinburgh. And as Neil was dying of the ALS—this was six months before he died—he became increasingly prolific in the blog that he wrote, which was called “Platitude.” At one point he wrote that if anybody knew anybody in the media who might tell his story, he wanted to reach out and tell people what it was like to have this disease. Morag asked me if I wanted to get involved and make a film. I was reluctant, for ethical reasons more than anything—whether it was right to film somebody at that stage. But we began filming Neil fairly soon afterwards. And he was just such an incredible communicator that the film became what it is today. It’s reaching so many people.

Louise, how did you and Neil feel about having this documentary presence in your lives, especially at a time like this?
LO: I get asked a lot, “Was it intrusive in your lives?” But we’d lost our privacy a long time before Emma and Morag brought the camera. And by the time we started filming, it really wasn’t intrusive any more than all of the specialists we were having through the door, people we had to have there to help. And actually it was nice to have people there. And also, Neil needed to get something out of him. It did him so much good to be answering Emma’s questions. It did him so much good to have the door closed—it was just Emma and Neil in a room for some of these questions. Neil had not experienced a closed door for a long time without myself, or somebody that was trained in how to stop him from choking if anything like that happened. It was really good for Neil, because he just kept talking and talking and talking, and things kept coming out, and it gave him a sense of satisfaction. It was an incredible struggle for Neil even to speak by that point. He would say that a conversation like we’re having now is more like a hundred meter sprint for him.

Narrative films about dying tend to be relentlessly grim. Here, there was levity, there was happiness – at times it seemed like a perfectly normal relationship.
LO: It would have been incredibly hard to go through that experience without ever having a laugh, or joking about things, talking about popular culture, all of that kind of stuff. You don’t just focus on yourselves all the time. If there are other things around you, they don’t stop happening just because you’re dying.

How do you think Neil’s experience, and the film, might affect people’s attitudes toward death and dying?
LO: I don’t think we talk about death enough. I don’t want to use the word “taboo,” but it isn’t something that we all live with. We should live with it a bit more. We should talk about it and have it more in conversation. And then the fear of it would be diminished slightly.

Emma, what was the shooting schedule like? Sometimes, watching, it seemed like you were there all the time.
ED: People often say that. But we were actually there relatively little—probably five or six visits, a couple of days at a time. We couldn’t be there much longer for a couple of reasons. We didn’t want to intrude too much. And I had a full time job, and it was quite hard to get away. So fortunately Neil’s blog allowed us to have a sense of real intimacy with the family’s day-to-day life.

LO: You left us with a camera as well.

ED: And Louise became a wonderful cameraperson herself towards the end. That incredible sequence where the snowman is in the garden outside, and then she turns the camera around and you see Neil watching through the glass door – that was so strong, just him staring at his child playing and the fact that he can’t participate in it any way other than looking. So I think Louise and Neil were incredibly generous with access, but also with access to their own video archives. And fortunately they were well filmed as a couple.

LO: Actually, that wasn’t even stuff that we’d filmed ourselves. Most of it was from Neil’s cousin who had taken us on holiday. And had she not had babies at the time, there probably wouldn’t have been a camera recording our holiday. That was just luck. And it was luck that we had some footage of Neil healthy.

ED: Because it was so important to see him healthy. I think what was so shocking was how quickly this illness ravaged his body—within a period of eight months. He went from being a hunky, gorgeous guy–

LO: (Laughs.) Oh, he’d love to hear that.

ED: I mean he was, if you look at the photos.

LO: There was an air of confidence about him. He was a healthy, fit person.

ED: And he went from that to becoming unable to move from the neck down. He couldn’t even breathe on his own.

Can you talk about communication as a theme in this film? You really get at the idea that our ability to communicate is what makes us who we are.
ED: I think that’s really right. We wanted the whole film to be based around this incredible effort of communication that he made. And it was that effort that was heroic. And it was that effort that actually transcended his death in a way. That was what we wanted the film to be about. It wasn’t ever pretending to be a film that could really be about his whole life. We asked Neil what he missed most. It was such a hard question, and one which I felt so bad asking, but it seemed important to ask. And one thing that he said really clearly was that the freedom to communicate was the biggest freedom, and the thought of losing that was… He’d lost every other ability. He couldn’t move his hands, he couldn’t walk, he couldn’t do any of the things that the rest of us could do. But what he could do was talk.

LO: That communication was his line in the sand. Neil had to draw his own line in the sand, because he was on ventilation. And he had to write documents to basically say, when I can no longer talk, speak or swallow… Losing communication was the point where he deemed life would not be tolerable.

So he decided that he would be taken off of ventilation once he could no longer speak. Was that a decision that you were supportive of?
LO: I mean it’s not a decision that I could ever have an opinion on unless I was in that situation. I think it has to come from the person. Even though I was that close to him, still, I can’t even imagine.

You left a lot of footage for your son, Oscar. Is this a documentary that you would want him to see?
LO: Maybe when he’s older. He’ll let me know when the time’s right, I think. I mean he knows that there is a film about his daddy. He only just turned six. It’s there for him when he wants it. But, you know, his daddy’s still quite a presence in his life. He’ll point out a picture and say “That’s daddy.” He only remembers him in photographs now. So I think it’ll be very interesting for him to see Neil’s mannerisms, the similarity to himself. I think Oscar’s going to grow up looking very like his daddy. And I’m sure that will be really interesting for him to see, but obviously he can’t see that until he’s ready.

How do you think Neil wanted Oscar to remember him, and think of him, as he grows up?
LO: Louise: It’s odd, because I have actually read a letter he left to Oscar, and I’ve not shared that publicly. But what I have said is that he chose to tell stories about his life, not things that he wishes Oscar to achieve or anything like that. It’s just stories about himself, to help Oscar to get to know him. And I think that’s what he felt was most important to leave to Oscar. It’s the little things, the little stories, the things that Neil really appreciated and experienced in his life. Even just little stories about things that he got up to with his friends when he was younger, and significant memories throughout his life. And I think Oscar’s incredibly lucky to have that. And he’s lucky, when he sees the documentary, that he can see how bravely his daddy dealt with the worst situation: with a sense of humor, with his heart on his sleeve. I would hope that it would actually take away any fears that Oscar might have about that. I mean most of us live with a fear of death. But most of us aren’t really lucky enough to have that, to see it. And I know it sounds odd me saying “lucky enough” to see it happening, but I think most people do look away from these things, and it creates more fear about it. Neil lost the ability to look away from death like we all do in day-to-day life. He couldn’t not think about it anymore. He had to face it.

Emma, when you filmed Oscar and Neil together, what sorts of things were you trying to capture?
ED: I felt like what was incredible in the house was this sort of contrast of Neil’s fading physical abilities and Oscar’s burgeoning life. And I felt like the camera was moving naturally from these two poles, of Neil’s decrepit body, where is hands couldn’t even move without being lifted—so that if Louise wanted Neil to give Oscar a cuddle she had to lift his hands to go around Oscar’s body. And meanwhile there was little Oscar running around the place. He started walking and talking in that little period that we were filming. Tt was that charged polarization of experience of life that really gave a certain weight and a certain sort of incredible wonder to that experience.

How painful was the project for you, personally?
ED: It wasn’t painful just at the time – it continued to be painful in the edit for quite a few years. You think you’re going to become immune to it, but you’re never immune to it. But I think that is the way it should be. The lessons I took from Neil and from Louise will stay with me for a long time, and I hope that they’re not just characterized by pain. They’re really not. In fact it’s the opposite. But in order for the opposite to be there you have to acknowledge the pain. So it’s an incredible, rich gamut of feelings and emotions and lessons and questions. And I think I will continue to think about Neil for many, many years, and about what he did and who he was at that stage.

You say the editing process took years. What kinds of things did you try to zero in on, what did you try to capture, and what kinds of things did you tend to edit out?
ED: What we wanted to know was how the film could not just be about death, but actually about life. If we’d only used the footage of what was happening in the house at the time it would have been fairly relentless. So that was why it was so important to try and get Neil and Louise’s video archive. We also tried to imagine Neil’s inner world. That was part of our task in the edit: How could we actually give some kind of space to what he thought about life? And obviously you can never do justice to that. But there was a flavor of that in his blog, in his wit, his use of words, in his use of language, and the kinds of things he would notice—his ways of talking about his experience of even just being stuck in his bed, and the energy with which he saw what was around him even as all his freedoms had gone. So I guess part of our task was, how could we do justice to that perspective of the world? And Morag and I shared a hatred of sentimentality, and anything that smacked of a cloying sort of sweetness, or something that was trying to be too nostalgic, or anything like that. So it felt like we had to keep removing that from the edit. Maybe it’s just because we’re Scottish, but we wanted a certain austerity in the film. Because it felt like that was more respectful to what Neil and Louise were going through. But at the same time, we also struck the balance between that and the valuing of life. So with some of the sequences, like the creation of what we called “the love story”—which was Neil talking about when he met Louise—we tried to think of a way to make things come alive. With the love story, we realized that we wanted just his words to drive it, not our images. But by creating something very simple, an image of a hand drawing the house that Louise and Neil lived in while Neil spoke—by actually taking away imagery, and allowing his words to do more work—it allowed an audience imaginative space. A lot of the edit was about creating a space for the audience to imagine him, so that the film became theirs.

Did you think that being overly sentimental would have made the documentary overly cinematic and phony?
ED: I think so. I think all my questions about making the film in the first place continued throughout the whole process: It’s not right to make entertainment from somebody’s suffering. So how can the film not be a simple tug of your heart? How can it be something that we’re actually sharing with people? And I think that what the film is about more is this sense that we’re all going to this place. In a way, throughout the film, we’re trying to look at the texture of experience of that time of your life: This is what it is to face death.

What are some things that both of you would like people to take away from the film?
LO: I would hope that after seeing the film, friends and family or even people slightly connected to someone that they know with ALS, may be able to say, I’ll know how to help you now, I’ll know how to talk to you. Because they’re the same people. They just happen to be diagnosed with something terminal. Their personality is the same. And I think it might give people more confidence to interact with that person in the same way that they always have.

ED: What I hope people get from it, and I suppose that some do, is an appreciation of being able to move your hands, or being able to stroke your child’s hair, being able to pick up a phone and call your friend, being able to go out to a pub and have a beer. Ordinary things. That was something that being in the presence of Neil made me so much more aware of. Sometimes I’m picking up a coffee cup, and it just flashes to me – what must it be like not to be able to do that? He used to ask us to do things like sit on our hands for ten minutes, and see what it’s like when you get itchy. And we could barely even do that.

LO: Sometimes people say they’ve had a near-death experience and they’ve gained a new appreciation for life. Hopefully the film might give people that appreciation for life without having to go through a near-death experience. I certainly appreciate it so much more.

ED: And also it’s very important that the film does what Neil wanted it to do: raise awareness of the illness. That has been the other ambition for us: that awareness just becomes more common in the public consciousness.

Are there any other things that you were doing in the aftermath of shooting to promote consciousness of ALS?
ED: The film has been a catalyst for all kinds of other things. On the twentieth of June we participated in “Global MND [motor neuron disease, another term for ALS] Awareness Day.” And we managed to get the film screened in about forty-five different countries, about two hundred and fifty screenings around that day. And some of them were very small communities who hadn’t even heard of the illness before. There were amazing stories. In Kenya, a woman saw a screening and she realized a person in her village wasn’t bewitched, which is what everybody said; it was ALS. This week it’s showing in Latvia, where it’s been used to support a big debate about care for people that are seriously ill. And in other communities it’s been used for people to look at palliative cares. And I just hope its uses are endless—as a provocation for debate, or people just using it in any way they can, because I think that’s what Neil wanted.

Louise, after Neil had his diagnosis, was there anything about the experience that surprised you, that was counter to what you would have expected?
LO: I didn’t really know what to expect when he was first diagnosed. You kind of assume that you should be in tears twenty-four hours a day, but you don’t want to just stop everything. You want to keep living. I think I didn’t that there would be arguments with Neil. Neil and I never used to argue. But you’re not actually arguing with each other, it’s a frustration at the situation and the disease. He couldn’t physically pick up a book and throw it against the wall. Where was he going to put that? It’s actually quite a compliment that he was arguing with me, because obviously I’m the person he felt safest doing that with. I mean obviously it’s upsetting that you argue, but there’s a reason for it, and it always cleared the air, there was a freshness after it. Neil got to a point where he was in tears. And I think he had to get himself there. I think people should talk about that more. Because I think carers are always feeling guilty every single step of the way, because you’re the one that’s going to survive, you’re the one that’s going to see your child grow up. And there isn’t a direction you can turn where there isn’t some kind of guilt attached. And you don’t want to be fighting with a dying man. You want it to be lovely, with the two of you spending every last minute together, but actually it needs to happen.

Emma, what about you—after you entered the project what surprised you, what ran counter to your expectations?
ED: I don’t know what expectations I actually had. But I think what surprised me in the house was how much laughter there was. And I think that’s what surprises people in the film. As a filmmaker what surprised me was that the journey was probably a thousand times harder than I could have imagined. To try and make it work as a film. It just pulled so much from all of us involved.

LO: I think after seeing Neil in such a difficult situation, anytime you feel that something’s hard or frustrating, you can go, But Neil did this, Neil went through that. So we can’t give up. It almost trivializes other hard things.

ED: You’re absolutely right. That, in a way, was exactly what kept us going.

Read the review at IndieNYC.com


David@IndieNYC.com

Review: 'A Teacher'

‘A Teacher’ is a short, spare film that often withholds details. Whether through dim lighting or minimal character backstory, director Hanna Fidell’s story of a troubled high school teacher conducting a sexual relationship with her student asks its audience to read between the lines.

“A Teacher” exhibits tremendous restraint, avoiding explicit psychoanalysis of its protagonist, Diana (Lindsay Burdge). The film does not force-feed its audience past traumas or an unhappy living situation to explain Diana’s ongoing trysts with her student, Eric (Will Brittain). Compare that to 2006’s predictable melodrama ‘Notes on a Scandal,’ in which a similarly ephebophilic teacher’s much older husband and Down syndrome-afflicted child provide a blatantly constructed need for escape. “A Teacher,” meanwhile, succeeds as a character study, in large part because it relies on situations and behavior, not contrived backstory, to convey motivations and emotions. We do not see the beginnings of Diana’s relationship with Eric, and their early interactions in the film consist mostly of terse dialogue and energetic sex.

But outside of the relationship, we get some clues into her behavior. Diana is lonely; aside from Eric, her roommate, Sophia (Jennifer Prediger), is her only real companion. At one point, she passes by a group of teachers who chat amiably. They invite her out after work, but she demurs. We see that she is cut off from her family: During a restaurant sit-down, her brother mentions that she has been avoiding their dementia-afflicted mother. Then he tells Diana that he is worried about her. Overwhelmed by what smacks of criticism, she flees the restaurant. Diana is also casually reckless: at one point, she uses her phone to text Eric a topless photo. Later, she panics when she realizes that others might see it. Diana’s antisocial behavior, mounting incautiousness, and, later, increasingly frenzied mood swings, may not make for a neat explanation of her actions. But the film recognizes that people’s most reckless sins cannot always be neatly explained. Diana’s unhappiness, self-destructiveness, and irrationality are explanation enough.

Of course, the film’s minimalism never would have worked without an excellent performance from Burdge. The tenseness in her facial expressions and the irrational panic in her voice bring Diana to life as a three-dimensional character. Unfortunately, the film’s minimalism does weaken the characterization of Diana’s paramour. Eric is laconic and vapid; all we really know about him is that he is young and good-looking. He is a thinly drawn device, necessary for Diana’s story.

The film has a unique and often striking visual style, but Andrew Droz Palermo’s cinematography is a double-edged sword. Palermo frequently obscures action through the use of minimal lighting, to the point of near-darkness. For instance, during a crucial scene late in the film’s second act, the camera rocks and jerks in front of an almost fully-dark bedroom, bits of dimly lit flesh cropping up and vanishing moment by moment. Such lighting and camerawork effectively convey the roiling chaos and confusion in Diana’s life (and mind). But effective as it is thematically, such photography is often disorienting. From an awkward party conversation to a relationship-threatening confrontation, it would have been more satisfying to watch certain scenes play out with a bit more clarity. Sometimes, the just eye wants to see.

In the end, “A Teacher” resists over-analysis and serves up an enigmatic, intriguing character study, in large part because of its subtlety.

Read the review at IndieNYC.com


David@IndieNYC.com

Review: 'Thérèse'

Claude Miller’s period drama ‘Thérèse,’ based on François Mauriac’s 1927 novel ‘Thérèse Desqueyroux’ and set in the expansive 1920s French countryside, is an effectively scathing critique of land-owning aristocratic classes that equate “family” to landholdings and reputation. The film suffers at times from dull pacing and an impenetrable lead performance, but its themes are intriguing and provocative.

It is 1928, and Thérèse (Audrey Tatou), a young woman from a rich family, is soon to marry Bernard (Gilles Lalouche), the brother of her close friend Anne (Anaïs Demoustier). The families, who live in the isolated, sprawling French countryside, are close. But most importantly, each clan stands to roughly double their pineland holdings, to eleven thousand acres total. And the motivations are not a secret. “I’m marrying you for your pines, too. I’m not ashamed of that. Is that wrong?” Thérèse asks Bernard shortly before the marriage. “Certainly not,” he responds amiably. Truth be told, there is not much reason for this marriage other than land, money and family alliances. Love and emotional connection do not factor into it. And apart from Thérèse, no one even questions whether there is something wrong with that.

Thérèse quickly becomes stultifyingly bored, stumbling through life in a downcast haze. She especially degenerates after she learns of Jean (Stanley Weber), Anne’s new lover. Anne is head-over-heels, but her and Thérèse’s families are up in arms; Jean, you see, comes from a Jewish family, and the match simply will not do. Bernard urges Thérèse to meet Jean and talk him out of the relationship. But when she sees him, he explains that he poses no threat: He was never interested in a permanent partnership with Anne and her rich family. All he wanted was a few moments of passion, for passion’s sake.

Thérèse quickly comes to realize that what Jean sought from Anne is nowhere to be found in her life. And she takes an emotional nosedive. She quickly loses whatever minute affection she had for her pig-headed yet well-meaning husband. She hardly seems to notice her pregnancy, and is stiff around her daughter, Marie, once she is born. (Marie cries around her, preferring Anne). She degenerates into a hollow, restless shell.

Finally, she begins poisoning Bernard, as much out of boredom as out of animosity. The film’s most effective thematic stretch comes after Bernard’s physician discovers her and reports her to the court system. Yes, Bernard, who had reached death’s door, is furious and deeply hurt. But more than anything else, he is appalled that she would risk damaging the reputations of both their families with a highly public murder attempt. Despite the anger and confusion, Thérèse, Bernard and their families are all in lockstep regarding one thing: The case must be dismissed before it reaches too many ears. Privately, the marriage is over in all but name. But publicly, Thérèse and Bernard are loyal spouses out to clear up a misunderstanding. They hire an expensive lawyer, and coordinate a false story to tell the judge.

The film suggests that for the elite moneyed classes, nothing is more important than the protection and advancement of reputation and public status — even when it comes to justice and punishment, death and life. The film posits that such aristocratic values are insidious, and corrode the soul of anyone who craves a more emotionally fulfilling existence. “Thérèse’s” thematic arguments are hardly subtle. But the film makes them forcefully and convincingly.

In fact, a major flaw is that the character-related content is much weaker than the thematic content, and the former does little to evoke the latter. Ms. Tatou’s performance is wooden and unchanging. She wears her downcast, dissatisfied expression like a mask. And she always speaks in the same curt, demoralized tone. So it is often impossible to pinpoint exactly why Thérèse does what she does. Even during major character moments – such as encouraging Jean to officially break it off with Anne, or dropping arsenic into Bernard’s water glass – Tatou’s fixed performance offers little window into her character’s actions. What, exactly, is going through Thérèse’s head? Whatever is clear is clear only because of the story construction. Ultimately, Thérèse is as stiff and impenetrable as the stultifying world from which she aches to break free.

“Thérèse” feels glacial in places – the film luxuriates in time and place, but too little of its runtime advances its story or its ideas. But even absent consistent pacing or a dynamic lead character, “Thérèse” is an eloquent and provocative critique of the cloistered, skewed mind-sets of moneyed classes.

Read the review at IndieNYC.com


David@IndieNYC.com

Review: 'Sunset Stories'

‘Sunset Stories‘, the new comedy from Ernesto Foronda and Silas Howard, poses as a fairy-tale for the modern age: woman faces her flaws and demons, and finds her place in the world. But the film fails to draw the viewer in, partly because of a meandering, toothless plot, but especially because of a deeply unlikeable main character.

Monique Gabriela Curnen stars as May, a children’s cancer ward nurse. The bulk of the film is thinly framed as a “fairy tale” that May tells to two young cancer patients. But outside of the film’s bookends, that conceit is forgotten. May’s fairy tale begins when she is sent to pick up a cooler filled with living tissue and bring it back to her hospital. She winds up running into her old boyfriend, JP (Sung Kang). The relationship, we soon realize, ended badly. May leaves her cooler unattended while she heads into the bathroom, and shockingly it is stolen. Instead of calling the police like any sane person (grand larceny, anyone?), May teams up with a reluctant JP. The two gumshoe it about town, interviewing people and chasing the latest clue, trying to find the cooler before its contents become unusable.

The film fails to make us care. Basic details that could have created suspense are inexplicably withheld. What, specifically, is in the box? (We do not learn that it is bone marrow until the second act). Who, exactly, is waiting for it? What will happen if it is not retrieved in time? Will little Timmy Johnson die? Will May lose her job, or at least a week’s salary? The failure to establish basic, concrete stakes vastly weakens our interest in what comes to feel like an aimless wild goose chase.

But nothing mars the film more than its repellent protagonist. Ms.Curnen portrays May as dour and shrill, with a wounded and downcast expression that rarely lifts. She is cold and rude to witnesses whose help she seeks. When asking help of Stu (Sandy Martin), a tomboyish motorcycle shop owner, May sarcastically questions Stu’s assertion that she has work to do. She is not much kinder, nor more appreciative, to JP, who helps her out despite nursing an utterly justified grudge. (The day after JP proposed to her, May left town without a trace and disappeared for a year, leaving only a note telling JP not to look for her.) Except with cancer patients, May is too frequently devoid of warmth or gratitude. It is impossible to root for her.

“Sunset Stories” fails to present either an engrossing plot or a main character worthy of investing in. The result is no fairy tale.

Read the review at IndieNYC.com


David@IndieNYC.com

Review: 'Theresa Is a Mother'

Single motherhood is an exercise in chaos — especially when you have a lot of growing up to do yourself. Such is the driving theme of the new comedy ‘Theresa Is a Mother.’ It is a family-centric film in more ways than one: Writer and lead actress C. Fraser Press co-directed the film with her husband Darren Press, and their three daughters also co-star. The result of this clan collaboration is a funny and moving portrait of a flawed but well-meaning parent trying to better herself and, as best she can, control the familial pandemonium around her.

Theresa, a forty-something aspiring musician with more heart than talent, has no money or partner. Facing eviction, she moves with her three young daughters – Maggie (Schuyler Press), Tuesday (Maeve Press), and Penelope (Amaya Press) – into her parents’ middle-of-nowhere rural house for the summer, hoping she will figure out what to do with her life.

From her financial failings to her inability to corral her kids, Theresa has some deep flaws as a mom. Press effectively portrays Theresa as a neurotic, well-meaning screw-up trying like hell to bond more with her kids — and to set a better example for them. “Parents are idiots,” Theresa concludes at one point. But as she repeatedly makes clear, that does not prevent them from caring, or trying to do better.

To its great advantage, “Theresa” emphasizes humor, character dynamics, and unfolding layers of emotion ahead of plot. Many of its scenes play out long after the plot beats have been conveyed. Humor and character interactions are allowed room to grow and breathe, amping up until scenes hit heights of supreme ridiculousness. In one scene, an out-of-sorts Theresa wanders around the perimeter of her car after being pulled over, stretching out the scene length as a police officer yells at her to get back in. She finally does, but not before getting her foot stuck in an abandoned guitar.

The film also teems with bizarre running jokes – for instance, a recurring TV cooking show starring clerically garbed African American TV chefs who sing food-themed gospel music while preparing dishes such as the “Holy Trinity three bean salad.” On the surface, some of these scenes do not seem to advance plot or character development. But they add to the film’s themes of searching for control in a world where things are anything but neat, easy or logical.

The three Press children bring impressive performances to the proceedings – especially the eldest, Schuyler, whose Maggie emanates a magnetic, odd-duck intelligence. She is obsessed with old showtunes and wears strange costumes to school, causing other kids to laugh and whisper. Much of the time, she seems off in her own head. She is somehow a child and an old soul all at once. It is a nuanced performance, and a promising film debut.

Indeed, none of the film’s characters are clichéd types. Take Jerry (Robert Turano), a seemingly uptight bank official who denies Theresa a job. Later, Jerry confronts Theresa when he thinks that Maggie has been stealing yard work jobs from his thirteen-year-old son, Seth (Matthew Gumley), by accepting lower wages. (In reality, it was Theresa herself who was stealing the work. Naturally, she does not correct him.) Just as the scene seems poised for a tense confrontation, Jerry expresses a grudging respect for “Maggie’s” ruthless capitalism, and amiably suggests that Seth and Maggie work as a team in the future. He even asks Theresa to write a song for Seth to sing at his upcoming Bar Mitzvah. The film’s characters rarely behave as expected, lending them three-dimensionality.

While it may be an old theme, “Theresa” articulately illustrates how the flaws of parents seep into the DNA of their children. Cloris (Edie McClurg) and Roy (Richard Poe) are alternately upbeat, distant, and despondent. (Much of the latter two, we learn, has to do with a past family tragedy.) And yet they clearly love their daughter, and do their meager best to show it. Their behavior and emotions explain a lot about Theresa, from her lack of self-confidence to her parental warmth. On the surface, “Theresa Is a Mother” is loose, light, and funny. But the film possesses impressive psychological depth, probing Theresa’s neuroses and their roots.

“Theresa’s” use of music is very effective. The film shuttles between a soundtrack of abrasive rock music and a soft acoustic guitar-driven score, alternately evoking overwhelming discord and a searching melancholy.

Unfortunately, Alex Kornreich’s photography tends to be sluggish, mostly consisting of static shots. While editor Chad Smith wisely avoids an overabundance of cutting, choosing instead to let long scenes play out uninterrupted, the film still might have benefited from a livelier camera. But it is a small complaint.

In “Theresa Is a Mother,” we witness two generations of children trying to take care of yet more children, and a mother trying as best she can to break the cycle and become an adult. The film could have been a shallow comedy about wacky family dynamics. Instead it is an insightful story about how parents, through all their failings and best efforts, shape their kids.

Read the review at IndieNYC.com


David@IndieNYC.com

Review: 'Zipper: Coney Island's Last Wild Ride'

Amy Nicholson’s documentary ‘Zipper: Coney Island’s Last Wild Ride’ is a detailed exploration of several years’ worth of squabbles, dealmaking and human suffering surrounding zoning and land-use issues in Brooklyn’s Coney Island. And in its best sections the film remembers the little guy, giving equal time to Coney Island workers, government officials, and business execs alike.

After the mid-2000’s acquisition of extensive Coney Island acreage by real estate development firm Thor Equities (headed by CEO Joe Sitt), a number of fights broke out over the area’s land-usage. Sitt wanted to bring a more traditional (read: corporate) theme park feel to the area, introducing establishments such as Dave & Busters and Applebee’s. Residents and workers in the area balked. Meanwhile, ride operators and others were evicted. But the area’s unique “C7” zoning laws, which allowed for only amusement-related land-use, foiled Sitt’s development plans. The Bloomberg administration swooped in to try and negotiate with him, pitching its own proposals for restructuring Coney Island’s land usage. The rest was a multi-year bureaucratic nightmare.

The film makes for a fascinating history lesson. “Zipper” fleshes out messy conflicts in great detail, utilizing interviews and archival footage of government officials, protesters, business leaders, and others. Impressively, it is all rendered not only understandable, but engaging. One reason is the frequent use of creative graphics to help the audience with the visualization of numbers and figures – for instance, a rising and falling roller coaster representing the changing rate of Coney Island attendance over the last several years.

Unfortunately, the film has overlong stretches where it gets bogged down in the history aspect, losing track of the human drama. “Zipper’s” best interviews come from everyday folks who are caught in the middle of the storm. The most notable example is Eddie Miranda, who operated the film’s titular ride – a roughly fifty-foot high rotating oval equipped with spinning steel passenger cars – until his eviction by Thor Equities in 2007. Miranda is a lively, charming, and emotionally open interview subject. He roots the story in something genuine – as opposed to the likes of Joe Sitt or local City Councilman Dominic Recchia (a Sitt supporter), who are too mechanical and over-prepared by half. They are slick pros. Miranda is a real person.

So while details about Joe Sitt’s negotiations with City government are informative and interesting, it is the personal accounts of people like Miranda that lend the film emotional resonance. The film works best when it shuttles back and forth between both types of interviews, never settling on one for too long. “Zipper” thrives when it manages to emphasize the human aspect in equal measure with the petty squabbling of power players.

Read the review at IndieNYC.com


David@IndieNYC.com