Telluride 2005 #5

The fifth and final (for me) movie of this year's Telluride was the Arabic movie Paradise Now. This is a story of two young Palestinian men (who are childhood friends) who, one day, are recruited to carry out a suicide bombing attack in Tel Aviv. The operation is botched at the very initial stages by one of them, after which things go off plan and we end up with a tense thriller as first one, and then both, of the men try to salvage the operation while dealing with troubling questions of the immorality and pointlessness of it all.

This movie could easily have been politically shrill but it largely avoids that. I say "largely" because there are clear moments of see-this-point-of-view dialogue inserted into the movie and to the extent that they feel "inserted", the movie fails artistically. However, the taut suspense makes the movie worth watching. Score: 6.5/10

The Aristocrats: a movie impression

"Let me break the flow briefly here to describe a movie I saw more recently, that had nothing to do with Telluride."

"I don't have much time. I'm here to read about the Telluride movies. But get on with it and be quick."

"Well, calling it is a 'movie' is misleading. There is no story, no interesting camera work, no impressive visuals, no lessons to be learnt about life or the universe or anything at all, in fact. Instead, various well-known American comedians (and a few British ones) take turns at saying some of the most grotesque, nauseating, obscene and horrifying things that they can think of humans doing to themselves. Members of a family come on stage and display wild sex, father-on-daughter, son-on-mother, mother-on-daughter, threesies, whatnot. The family dog sometimes joins in the fun as well. And not satisfied with sticking to sex, they involve all sorts of bodily fluids, excretions and sometimes appropriately-shaped external devices as well. Before it was halfway done, several members of the audience left the theater and some others who were not wise enough to do so spilled the contents of their stomachs in response to the nonstop barrage of grotesquery. In fact I thanked heaven that I had chosen a seat in the very last row and so, was in no danger of being barfed upon from behind. As it is, on the way out I had to be really careful so as not to trip over any leftovers and slide all the way down the stairs..."

"But..."

"None of this grossfest is actually on display on screen, though. Instead we have comedians making this up impromptu as part of the telling of an elaborate joke whose sickness is exceeded only by its pointlessness."

"Wow, what is this movie called?"

"The Aristocrats."

Telluride 2005 #4

This weekend isn't really all that free, but it's probably not going to get much freer later and, well, I do have enough time to finish reviewing the movies I saw at this year's Telluride.

The fourth feature this year was the Hungarian movie Sorstalnaság (English title: Fateless). Regular readers of this rarely-posted-to blog (if any exist!) may remember that my favourite movie from last year's Telluride was a Hungarian movie: Kontroll. Apart from their common language, the two movies are utterly different. Kontroll had "indie" written all over it; Sorstalnaság is a big budget production enthusiastically funded by the Hungarian government, with Nobel laureate Imre Kertész handling screenplay and distinguished Italian composer Ennio Morricone handling the score (director Lajos Koltai is no unknown figure either, having impressed as a cinematographer before this). Kontroll was edgy, kinetic and unpredictable; Sorstalnaság is muted, deliberately paced and tells an all-too-familar story.

That familiar story that supplies most of the action in Sorstalnaság is that of concentration camp life during the Holocaust. However, do not try to fit this movie into a narrow category of "Holocaust movies", for this movie is really about the story of one teenaged Budapest boy, Gyuri, and his experience of the camps as a detached, introverted teenager. When the movie begins, towards the end of WW2, we see that Gyuri is a quiet kid, wiser than his age would indicate, whom adolescence has made not rebellious but cynical. A seemingly inconsequential decision to take the bus rather than the train, coupled with some very unlucky timing, puts Gyuri on an inexorable path leading to capture, detention, deportation, Auschwitz, Buchenwald and other concentration camps. What we, the viewers, see as a grotesque distortion of normality is, for teenaged Gyuri, simply continuing education about life. He simply takes it as his new reality and carries on, never once screaming or crying through the entire length of the movie. Yet, by the time the movie enters its extended coda where Gyuri returns from the ordeal, we realize that he has become a man we will never understand because there is absolutely nothing comparable in our life experience to help us understand him.

With a body count of zero, this is about the least explicitly violent movie ever to tackle any aspect of the Holocaust. Yet, there are two scenes so deeply disturbing that they haunted me for days afterwards. I won't reveal what they are; watch the movie and decide for yourself. Score: 8/10