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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 15 March 2003

It occurred to me that there’s an increasing number of foreign language films being released here in Brisbane.  Cinemas such as the Palace Centro and the Dendy are rewarding more discerning filmgoers with treats from all over the globe.  Later this month, the Centro is screening a range of unseen films as part of its French Film Festival.  So if you’re tiring of American culture, the opportunities are there to see something new.  Given I fit into this basket, I took the chance to see my first ever film from Brazil, City Of God.

The film begins in the late 1960s in a community outside of Rio De Janeiro known as the City of God.  It’s a housing project for the poor with tiny homes and few utilities.  Teenage gangs roam the streets day and night.  With nothing better to do, they steal from everyone and have established a roaring drug trade to generate power and money.

After establishing the characters, we move into the 1970s where the kids have become young adults but little else has changed.  A leader had emerged from the gangs, Lil’ Ze, and his influence had differing effects on this city.  Crime was down and people lived less in fear as no one dared go up against Lil’ Ze and his growing army of supporters.  Conversely, his rule was become something of a dictatorship and more and more people became disenchanted by his brutality.  He would slay meaningless people in the streets.  A rival group was building and a massive gang war was looming to reclaim control of the city…

Knowing nothing of its cast and crew, the film’s website provides a wealth of supporting information to this engrossing story.  City Of God is based on a true story and the actual city itself is still a troublesome area in Brazil.  In making the movie, duals directors Katia Lund and Fernando Meirelles used actual people from the city who had never acted before.  Over 100 children were used in feature roles and they all became close friends thanks to the numerous acting workshops that were held to help them prepare.  Their closeness to the story, and the fact the film is shot in the actual town, heightens the realism.

Subtitles will guide you through the Portuguese dialect and take you into a world you never knew existed.  The film is narrated by one of it’s characters who speaks from the present looking back on the scary past with the thankful joy that he lived to tell the tale.  A common film technique is used where we are given a sneak peak of the end at the beginning and then look back to show the lead up to this point.  The directors wonderfully use this method and tease the audience with hints of events to follow in the story.

The film only took nine weeks to make and has now become the highest grossing film to emanate from Brazil.  It featured on the top 10 lists from a host of overseas critics last year and the film seemed a virtual shoe-in for the Oscar for foreign language features.  But given the Academy’s heavily criticised policy on only allowing a select few to vote in this category, the film was overlooked and an outcry soon followed.  I’d advise you not to follow their trend in passing over this violently entertaining marvel.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 02 March 2003

Marisa Ventura (Lopez) is a divorced mother with one son, Ty (Posey).  For several years, she’s happily worked as a maid at an exclusive hotel.  There she has formed some valuable friendships who have encouraged her dream of moving into hotel management.  That opportunity arrives when decide to promote someone in-house but Marisa must compete against others interested in the position.

Cleaning out the suite of a wealthy guest, Marisa is asked to return a $5,000 dress on the guest’s behalf.  Before doing so, and encouraged by her friend, she tries the dress on and admires the beauty of it.  At the same time, her son Ty walks in with a man he had met in the elevator – politician Christopher Marshall (Fiennes) who is campaigning for the U.S. senate.  The 10-year-old Ty is interested in politics and asks if he can accompany Chris on a walk in the park with his dog.  But on meeting Marisa, Chris has fallen head-over-heels and asks Marisa to come with them.

The outing is perfect but there’s a problem in Marisa’s eyes.  Chris thinks she’s one of the hotel’s wealthy guests and not a mere housemaid.  Marisa then vanishes off into the sunset but Chris is using his contacts to track her down.  He understands the media is watching him like a hawk but he’s too much in love to let her get away and is willing to risk his political reputation.  Soon enough, all the secrets will be exposed and the two will confront each other to see if a future together awaits…

Mmm, we all know the answer to this question.  If you don’t, then start watching more movies.  Jennifer Lopez puts on her cute and innocent routine and its fine for a while but becomes tiring.  She’s such an unrealistic representation of a woman in that situation.  It makes no sense when you look at one with her looks, her persona and her intelligence.  The supporting cast are very ordinary and the subplots thin and cheesy.  Ralph Fiennes is the only player who impresses and it’s most likely because he’s chosen a role outside his usual range.

At bottom, Maid In Manhattan is a fantasy film crafted to give everyone hope that romance is well and truly alive.  They have their place in cinemas (to cater the audience I described above) but in my critical opinion, the screenplay just doesn’t perform.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 10 March 2003

It’s a swanky lifestyle which has suddenly found itself off balance.  Roger’s currently sleeping with his significantly older boss, Joyce (Rossellini), and you get the sense he feels something deeper.  She isn’t though and knowing the risks of an intra-office relationship, Joyce suggests they end their short-lived relationship.  Roger is upset by both this development and the fact that he’s lost the upper-hand against a woman (a rare occurrence in his life).

Out of the blue, his 17-year-old nephew, Nick (Eisenberg), arrives on the doorstep.  Apparently, he’s in town to look at prospective colleges but we soon understand he’s not paying Roger a visit out of courtesy.  The hormonally charged Nick hasn’t even made it to first base with a girl before and with campus life around the corner, wants Roger to teach him all the tricks to woo the ladies.

Roger’s somewhat pleased by the challenge and takes Nick to a nightclub with the specific intention of getting both of them laid.  They meet two girls, Andrea (Berkley) and Sophie (Beals), and Roger starts showing his moves.  But it’s Nick’s innocence the girls seem most attracted to and Roger’s forced to adapt his style to get the job done…

Roger Dodger has a rough, documentary feel as it was filmed entirely with one hand held camera.  The cast remained “in character” for extended periods of time as there were few cuts from first-time writer/director Dylan Kidd.  It’s also a very dark film but I’m not talking about the subject material.  With the film shot in indoor locations with minimal lighting, there’s a lot of black on screen and at times characters are only recognisable from their shadows and voices.  An effective technique that brings the setting alive.

Campbell Scott has received rave reviews for his performance.  He’s accustomed to playing nice guys (in films such as The Impostors, The Spanish Prisoner and Big Night) but relishes the chance to extend his range with this freshly raw character.  His evilly smug personality brought back memories of Christian Bale’s depiction of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.

A few scenes drift on too long but some wonderful one-liners keep this adventurous film on the rails.  For better or worse, you’ll learn a lot about the real Roger Dodger’s that are out there.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 01 March 2003

Set sometime in the future, the film begins with Kelvin (Clooney) getting a phone call from a friend, Gibarian, on a space station above the planet of Solaris.  He speaks cryptically of problems, says that Kelvin is the only person who will be able to understand and then asks him to join them on the station.  Space authorities had previously sent security patrols to rescue those aboard but they had not returned.

Kelvin travels to Solaris and on boarding the station, finds it eerily silent.  There’s no greeting, not a word to be heard and smearings of blood lining the floors, walls and ceilings.  He finally meets two “survivors”, Gordon (Davis) and Snow (Davies), who like Gibarian, aren’t direct about what happened.  They inform Kelvin that Gibarian committed suicide.  They also give the impression there’s no point talking about what happened because he wouldn’t believe them.  Instead, they’re going to let him see for himself.

Kelvin goes to bed that night and dreams of his late wife, Rheya (McElhone).  He recalls the time they first met and the romantic courtship that led to the marriage.  He awakes.  His wife is lying right next to him, hugging him.

No more I’m sorry.  That’s because I don’t want to spoil it and also because I didn’t really understand it.  This film deserves an award for the worst film to take popcorn to.  There is not a hell of a lot of dialogue.  There are scenes which stretch up to five minutes where not a single word is spoken.  The background music score from Cliff Martinez (which reminded me of the score he composed for Traffic) is incessantly repetitive almost to the point where it’s hypnotising the audience.  Which such silence in the theatre, it can be a very uncomfortable experience.

I love a film where things aren’t handed to you on a silver platter but these characters bored me to the point where they became unlikeable.  It’s not a thriller.  It’s a sappy love story woven against the mysteries of space.  Kelvin was dull and so was his wife.  The creepy Jeremy Davies was the only interesting character of the bunch but he’s given few scenes.

The reception for the film has been mixed.  Critics have called it everything from “thoughtful” and “astonishing” to “incoherent” and “shapeless”.  At the recent Berlin Film Festival, a journalist at a news conference for Solaris described the film has “boring”.  George Clooney, who is clearly passionate about the film (more so than his character) then gave the journalist a huge serve by saying “What a jerk!  I mean honestly, you know, what a shit thing to say!”  It seems this film is generating more interest outside the theatre rather than in it.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 09 March 2003

The 14 person jury was headed by director David Lynch (Mulholland Drive) and included Martin Scorsese (the director of Gangs Of New York), Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Tilda Swinton (The Deep End) and Sharon Stone.  They would decide the winner of the Palm D’Or.  Recent winners included Dancer In The Dark, Secrets & Lies, Pulp Fiction and The Piano.  After deliberation, their selection as winner of the Palm D’Or was… The Pianist.

Adrien Brody shines in his role as Wladyslaw Szpilman.  He is the only featured actor in the film and he appears in almost every scene.  Living in Poland, he was a beautiful pianist who was well known and played regularly on the radio.  Then World War II began.  The film isn’t directly about the war and its horrors, it’s more about Szpilman’s place within the war.  We only see things from his perspective and I enjoyed this decision made by the filmmakers.  There’s a part in the film where he lives in a locked apartment for several months with a view overlooking a hospital.  In the cinema, that’s all we see too.  We don’t know the progress of the war, we don’t understand what’s going on outside and it’s as it should be.

The Pianist plots Szpilman’s quest to stay alive.  When the war begins, he and his wealthy Jewish family are forced to leave their home and move into a Warsaw ghetto where all Jewish people are ordered to live.  As conditions deteriorated and numbers grew, families were rounded up and sent to Nazi labour camps and other places of horror.  His family would perish but with the help of a police officer, Szpilman was able to escape.  There would be many more years of suffering and many close shaves but Szpilman continued his fight for survival.

Director Roman Polanski (Chinatown) has made a great film but the real star is Adrien Brody.  His performance is incredible and you can he is devoted to the cause of this movie.  He looks terrible in the later scenes and it’s not just from make-up.  His Oscar nomination for best actor is well deserved and I’ll be rooting for him when the winners are announced in two weeks.  Polanski has been nominated in the best director category but won’t be able to attend the ceremony since he’s wanted in America on a statutory rape charge from 1977.  I won’t comment any further on that matter.

There are a few minor luls but generally, it’s a very interesting film given the way it is told.  There’s an abundance of films showing stories of war heroism but this is uncommercial and different.  It’s based on Szpilman’s own biographical novel and Polanski’s own parents lived in Poland and were taken to German concentration camps (his mother died there).  The Pianist is a film you won’t easily forget.