Telluride 2005 #3

It is very hard to do a good job of writing about a movie of such idiosyncratic brilliance as Neil Jordan's latest Breakfast on Pluto, which was the third of this year's Telluride @ Dartmouth features. Cop-out though it may be, I would like to quote the official Telluride blurb on this movie, as I think it is a great short review.

Neil Jordan (Crying Game, Mona Lisa) adapts Patrick McCabe's novel about a boy born to be different. Patrick Brady (Cillian Murphy) is abandoned as a baby in a small Irish town, escapes to London and, as a witty and deceptively tough young transvestite, searches for his mother and learns to navigate big-city life. Jordan captures the excitement and political turmoil of the 1970s in a film that's alternately hilarious, moving and magical. Murphy has quietly impressed audiences in films including 28 Days Later and Batman Begins, but nothing could prepare us for this stunning performance — it's certain to be his coming out.

The main thing to add is that Neil Jordan has a wonderful gift of matching music to scene and excellent taste in pop/rock music. Very few other directors seems to possess both; the Coen Brothers and Quentin Tarantino are the only names that spring to mind right away. Thanks to the music, what is already one heck of an entertaining and wild ride becomes a truly four-dimensional experience. Score: 9/10

Telluride 2005 #2

The second night of Telluride @ Dartmouth featured the French movie Caché (English title: Hidden), from the Austrian director Mihcael Haneke, known for his minimalism. The story is that of a successful TV host Georges Laurent (Daniel Auteuil) whose steady life and relationship with his wife Anne (Juliette Binoche) and son are sorely tested when a videotape is mysteriously delivered to him one day. The tape contains lengthy, boring, still camera footage of his own house but, more importantly, arrives wrapped in a paper containing a childlike, yet deeply disturbing, drawing of a boy with a triangle of blood gushing out of his mouth.

More such videotapes continue to arrive, often wrapped in similarly disturbing drawings, that obviously mean something to Georges that he refuses to share with Anne. Eventually, however, circumstances force Georges to reveal to Anne some dark secrets of his boyhood days. How will the movie now resolve things? Can it, even? No spoilers here; watch it and find out!

The best thing about this movie is that by using his minimalist approach, Haneke lets the viewers interpret the events on screen any way they like. Some read it as commentary on modern urban life, some as an allegory for current international events, especially terrorism and its connection to colonialism. Others, including me, simply see it as a story of comeuppance that brings out all the tense moments that its protagonist endures. Score: 7.5/10

Another year, another Telluride

It's a new year and I'm back... with my first impressions of five movies from the 2005 edition of Telluride @ Dartmouth, perhaps the finest cultural event in this town.

Having followed this event for three years now, I sense that the opening night features the movie most likely to become a mainstream hit. In 2003, it was Girl with a Pearl Earring, and in 2004, it was Being Julia. In hindsight, neither of these ended up being even close to the best mainstream movie of the year; in fact, each of these was soundly beaten by a Clint Eastwood movie: Mystic River in 2003 and Million Dollar Baby in 2004.

This year's opener was Capote, a movie based on the events in the life of Truman Capote that led to his landmark "non-fiction novel" In Cold Blood. As a movie, it is fairly ordinary, despite a terrific performance from Philip Seymour Hoffman in the title role. Having only seen him in throwaway sidekick-type roles before (such as in Magnolia and The Big Lebowski) I enjoyed the revelation of his considerable acting talents. But beyond his acting the movie does not have much going for it. Read the NYT's Capote obit from August 1984 and consider the wealth of aspects of Truman Capote that a great movie could have brought out. The present movie does only lip service to most of these. Score: 5.5/10