These Movies Matter
DVDS Worth Watching, Jan 12, 2007
How to Get the Films We Recommend:
Sources for the movie titles we recommend can be found by clicking the "read full review" link at the end of each critique below.
Welcome back after the holidays! I hope you are all refreshed and ready to tackle the New Year. If not, you'll get another chance on February 18 when buddhists from around the world and many Asian countries will celebrate New Year. Please be assured you haven't missed anything in the way of new releases due to the holidays, and we hope you continue to enjoy our Newsletter. Angela Pressburger Editor-in-Chief
Featured Title(s)
BLACK GOLD, 2006, 75 min., Subtitles, Color
Genre: Documentary
Release Data: January, 2007 (Canada Only)
Director(s): Marc and Nick Francis
Buy Now
What It's About: A documentary that explores the life-cycle of your cup of coffee. From coffee farmers in Africa – some of the poorest people in the world – through the six degrees that separate those beans on a coffee tree from the barista at your local Starbucks. Normally the beans move from the grower to a warehouse, an auction, a buyer/supplier, a roaster and finally a retailer. The story weaves between the marginal livelihood of Ethiopian coffee farmers, the story of Tadesse Meskela and the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-op Union, which encompasses 74 co-ops in southern Ethiopia selling Fair Trade coffee, and the chic Western coffee culture of baristas and their clients.
What to Look For: The price of coffee has fallen drastically in recent years. Some farmers are so desperate they are tearing out their coffee plantations and planting fields of “chat”, an illegal narcotic which brings a good price in the local market. Apparently, Africa is the only region of the world to have become poorer over the last 20 years and many country representatives feel this is a direct result of their growing dependence on aid rather than trade. As they get poorer, the African countries don’t have enough money to subsidise their farmers and therefore they can’t compete on the world market. For many, trade is currently only 1% of their economy. Aid, they say, doesn’t teach people anything but dependency; in Ethiopia alone, 7 million people depend on it. But if trade were to increase by 1% those countries would bring in five times the amount they now receive in aid. Cinematically, this is a very traditional documentary, but the story it tells is important; if you drink coffee, you should see it.
Why It Matters: The facts: coffee is the second most actively traded commodity in the world, after oil; since 1990, retail sales of coffee have increased to $80 billion from $30 billion and the market is dominated by just four multi-nationals. Globally, about 2 billion cups of coffee are consumed a day, 400 million of those in the United States. In Ethiopia 67 percent of the country’s export revenue comes from coffee, and 11 million people count on coffee for their survival.
Against this background we see the marginal subsistence of the coffee farmer, and through his children we learn of his dream for education for his children. We learn the tragedy of communities so poor they cannot pay for teachers and supplies and struggle to even keep what they have going. We meet the children who hope to become doctors, or even taxi drivers, anything if it will get them out of the slow downward spiral of coffee growing. And we see the long lines of women grading coffee beans for 50 cents per 8-hour day. We watch Tadesse work tirelessly to eliminate the middlemen who drive up the price and to bypass the commodities exchanges to sell his product directly to buyers. The African experience is juxtaposed with the World Barista Championships and a tour of Seattle Coffee Houses. And finally, the directors take us to the WTO talks in Mexico where we become aware of the implications of trade vs. aid.
Notes: For more information go to: http:// www.blackgoldmovie.com
Still in theatrical release in the US, but generally available on DVD in Canada. Just be careful to get the one about coffee and not the one about oil!
General Release in Canada Only
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ZEN NOIR, 2004, 71 min., Color
Genre: Drama
Release Data: January 2007 (US Only)
Director(s): Marc RosenbushBuy Now
Suddenly the whole thing gelled, and I knew what I wanted to do: I’d make a murder mystery where the murder was a koan for the detective, and the movie would be a koan for the audience…but I never expected that making the film and getting it out into the world would be a koan for me.
Marc Rosenbush, Director
What It's About: A nameless cipher of a detective drawn from a “noir” novel – complete with a whiskey, 3-day old stubble, homburg and trenchcoat – is awakened from his existential funk by a mysterious phone call asking him to investigate a death in a local temple. Surfacing from his attachment to the nightmare that continuously replays the death of his beautiful and pregnant wife, he discovers the temple is Zen Buddhist and the death inscrutable. Initially, he tries to deal with the situation through using his left-brained crime-solving skills, until he discovers they are useless in the intuitive, non-linear world of Zen. He falls in love with Jane, a self-described “committed lay practitioner” – until he discovers that her secret is that she, like his wife, is dying. He tries to harden his heart against repeating that experience; but then he realizes he’s already softened and is ready to listen to the master, to acknowledge impermanence and find the beginning of the path to release.
What to Look For: Despite its rough edges, this no-budget, minimalist movie is quite clever, and although it is sometimes pretentious it can also be amusing. The idea of taking the role of “detective” and flipping it on its head so that the lead character has to use his native talents to discover the dharmic path is basically smart. In the end, the master dies and the detective once again awakens at dawn – only this time he is only himself. Quite a rewarding little film if you can stick with it.
Why It Matters: The detective is trapped in his own mind, in his attachment to “Why?”. The voices in his head seem unceasing and, as the Master points out, he is “whichever ‘me’ the mind decides”. Slowly, all his preconceptions are stood on their head. Despite the initial experience of having found the Zendo so weird he couldn’t wait to get back to his little cocoon with his telephone, his whiskey, and his nightmare, he eventually finds that his once familiar outside world has become like stepping into chaos or off a tall building into the void. And finally he arrives at the point where “you wake up one morning and reality’s on fire, and you don’t know who you are”, and is ready to become a detective of the mind.
DVD from www.amazon.com or direct from www.zenmovie.com. Not available in Canada.
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Recommended Titles
THE SECRET LIFE OF WORDS, 2005, 115 min., Color
Genre: Drama
Release Data: January, 2007 (Canada Only)
Director(s): Isabel Coixet (My Life Without Me)Buy Now
What It's About: Hanna (Sarah Polley) is a mysterious and silent, partially-deaf young woman who works in a factory somewhere in England. She rarely speaks, eats the same meal every day, alone, and prefers turning off her hearing aid and retreating into silence to communicating with her fellow workers. After four years without a break, her boss decides to make her take a holiday. She goes to a coastal town in Northern Ireland and one day overhears a cell-phone conversation about a flash fire on an offshore oil rig that has killed one man and left another seriously burned and in need of care. Apparently, Hanna has been a nurse somewhere in her past and so is accepted as a volunteer to be flown out to the rig. There she meets the burn victim, Josef (Tim Robbins) who, as a result of corneal damage, is temporarily blind. Josef is a playful, flirtatious, life-loving roughneck with a big heart, and slowly he coaxes Hanna’s story out of her and reveals his own.
What to Look For: This film explores the insufficiency of language to encapsulate experience. Beyond words are deeper feelings, which have great eloquence of a different nature. As Hanna and Josef struggle to connect and heal in this deeper place, the film glows with humanity. This is the realm of empathy, that mysterious place where we are able to feel the other’s experience as our own.
Why It Matters: The exquisitely coordinated performances by Polley and Robbins which draw you into their empathetic catharsis; when Hanna’s self-imposed silence and Josef’s love of words meet, Hanna begins to speak, and Josef begins to sob. The “secret life” that lives beneath the surface has found a vent and broken through. Note he way Josef gentles Hanna into making her confession and how this is complemented by the score which intersperses muted jazz with songs by Tom Waits, David Byrne, and others. Experience the way the isolated location, in the middle of a gray churning sea, acts as a parallel world, a sort of limbo of uncertainty, where the characters wait for their future to be disclosed. And enjoy Julie Christie in a wonderful cameo role as the counsellor who worked with Hanna in the past and knows her story. The only thing that may break the mood are the irritating voice-overs which disturb the flow of the story.
Available on DVD through our listed on-line sources
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U-KARMEN E-KHAYELITSHA, 2005, Subtitles, Color
Genre: Drama
Release Data: January, 2007 (Canada Only)
Director(s): Mark Dornford-MayBuy Now
One of the most accomplished, original and entertaining film operas ever made.
Vancouver International Film Festival, 2005
What It's About: A version of Georges Bizet's 1875 opera, Carmen, this time set in a contemporary South African township. Carmen, as played by singer Pauline Malefane – also the film’s co-writer and translator – is a mesmerizing woman who respects no law yet falls in love with a policeman, with tragic results. The tension plays out in the music's struggle to control the heroine’s independent voice. The production follows the Greek convention of bloodshed taking place offstage while still evoking the violence central to this tale of love, jealousy, revenge and madness.
What to Look For: This is an utterly original Carmen, unlike any you have heard or seen before, and presenting a stunning cultural immersion in the music and rhythm of black South Africa. Not to be missed.
Why It Matters: Set in present day Khayelitsha, one of South Africa's largest townships, approximately 20 km outside of Cape Town, this is Carmen reborn through the experiences of post-Apartheid township life and sounds. Sung in Xhosa, the music is complemented by traditional song, rhythm and dance, creating a remarkable and surprising synthesis of Xhosa culture and European grand opera. The core cast members are all from the internationally acclaimed ensemble lyric theatre company Dimpho Di Kopane.
General Release, Canada Only
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WEEPING MEADOW, 2004, 170 min., Subtitles, Color
Genre: Drama
Release Data: January, 2007
Director(s): Theo AngelopoulosBuy Now
What It's About: This is the first part of a proposed trilogy about the Greek experience from 1919–1949. It opens in 1919 with a band of black-garbed refugees from the Russian Revolution, who are returning to the Thessaloniki area of Greece after years of exile in Odessa. Their leader, Spyros, is accompanied by his family – a wife and two sons – and the film’s heroine, Eleni, a young orphaned girl. Eleni soon falls in love with Spyros’s younger son, Alexis, a talented accordion player, and the affair produces twin sons. When Spyros’ wife dies, he seeks to marry Eleni, but she and Alexis flee on the day of the wedding, linking up with a group of vagabond musicians – who will go on to provide much of the film’s music. Subsequently, they all end up living in an opera house, which has become a refuge for the homeless. Thus begins the sufferings of one emblematic, almost mythical family whose lives are ripped apart by World War II and the ensuing Greek Civil War. Eleni and Alexis are set on a course of wandering as a result of living in an atmosphere of constant conflict which culminates in Eleni’s almost unbearable suffering at being separated from Alexis, who is imprisoned for many years, and the news that her two sons are dead.
What to Look For: The director has described his film as an “elegy on human fate”, and indeed it is
a poetic summary of the 20th century, which owes much to the classical Greek dramas of Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and Aeschylus’ Seven Against Thebes. It’s focus is on the quintessential Greek tragedy of wandering, passion and exile. In interviews, Angelopoulos describes his heroine as “the Eleni of myth, the Eleni of all the myths who is pursued... but who also pursues absolute love”. Don’t worry if your knowledge of Classical Greek culture and myth is sketchy; it will not prevent you from entering this beautiful and devastating meditation on war, history and loss.
Why It Matters: This is a slow-paced, long and serious film is relieved by a stately procession of enigmatic, starkly beautiful images that point to the mythological world that exists beneath and beyond the personal story of its characters. Water is a crucial motif, pointing up history’s resemblance to a force of nature, a force that when unleashed can shatter societies and arbitrarily sweep away human lives. From a vast floating funeral procession with black flags attached to a line of row-boats, to the moment when floodwaters almost close over an entire village, the camera maintains a purity and pace that perfectly suits the epic quality of the director’s vision. In keeping with this vision, the director lets the most harrowing events take place off-screen, focusing instead on the increasingly grief-stricken Eleni who comes to be wandering the world, separated from everyone she loves.
Available on DVD through our listed on-line sources
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Classics
SIBERIADE (Sibiriada), 1979, 206 min., Subtitles, Color
Genre: Drama
Release Data: January, 2007
Director(s): Andrei Konchalovsky (Uncle Vanya, Runaway Train, Tango and CashBuy Now
An ambitious film that weaves an engrossing tale of three generations of two Russian families during the chaotic period from the Russian Revolution to the end of the World War II. Set in the tiny and remote Siberian village of Elam, the Ustyuzhanins are foresters and shepherds - working people – while the Solomins, who live across the way, are gentrified merchants who buy and sell livestock and have some wealth put by. The Ustyuzhanins, always on the edge of economic disaster, are looking for social change, while the Solomins fight desperately to maintain the status quo – which primarily means not intermarrying with the Ustyuzhanins. Nonetheless, life proceeds and marriages, feuds, love affairs, even a murder, take place as each family seeks to find fulfilment in their lives, even as they learn to reconcile themselves with the ever-changing political landscape of modern Russian history. Expect wonderful performances and a certain amount of melodrama alongside wonderful cinematography of the vast, mystical landscape, which must eventually be ravaged for the progress of the motherland.
Notes: This film works well alongside Theo Angelopoulos’ Weeping Meandow, a Greek epic covering the same time period.
Available on DVD through our listed on-line sources
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Worth a Mention
BEAUTY ACADEMY OF KABUL, 2004, 74 min., Color
Genre: Documentary
Release Data: January, 2007
Director(s): Liz MerminBuy Now
A traditional documentary which is mainly worth seeing for what it reveals about the culture clash of women in Afghanistan, who have been hidden away, at home and under burkas by the harsh Taliban regime, and the new world order which has arrived along with American aid on their doorstep. Here we see how America’s giant cosmetic industry discovered a new, untouched market and responded by sponsoring a cosmetology school in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan. The result is an often hilarious, always moving meeting of two very different cultures: one that has suffered unimaginable horrors and one that believes that a good hair day, helped along by the right perm, of course, is the answer to happiness. America’s cultural insensitivity on some of the issues may shock you but there is no doubt that a certain amount of healing is also taking place as Afghan women discover they can be as enthusiastically vain as any of their western sisters. And, a good stylist can earn enough to support her family, so by offering a means of economic independence – as well as living examples of women bossing around men on a daily basis – Kabul’s beauty academy is proving not so light-weight after all.
Available on DVD through our listed on-line sources
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DRESS REHEARSAL: THE BRAVE HURR'S TA'ZIEH, 2006, 64 min., Subtitles, Color
Genre: Documentary
Release Data: January 2007 (US Only)
Director(s): Nasser Taghvai (Tales of KishBuy Now
One of the original Iranian New Wave directors offers this documentary on the “ta’zieh”, an ancient Iranian version of the medieval passion play that, in this case, celebrates the glory of martyrdom for the sake of justice as exemplified by the martyrdom Imam Hussein, grandson of the prophet Muhammad, in the desert, at Karbala. Each of Imam Hussein’s comrades-at-arms has a specific tale or “ta’zieh”, rather like the individual stories of King Arthur’s knights. This particular ta’zieh tells the story of Hurr, who was originally an enemy but who experienced a change of heart upon meeting the Imam in person. As a result of that meeting he gave his loyalty and fealty to fight only for Hussein. The director tells us that the ta’zieh, which is generally performed on the streets or in other open venues, "is the only original dramatic art of the Islamic world," Traditionally, the content is based on the life stories and fables of the Prophet Mohammad and his family, but is also much influenced by traditional Persian folklore. The tales based on Imam Hussein and his comrades have taken precedence since the rise of the Shiite sect in much of the Islamic world.
General Release in the US Only
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Better Mainstream
Mentioned but not reviewed – these popular titles don’t really need us to publicize them, but we want you to know they’re now available on DVD.
THE ILLUSIONIST, 2006, 110 min., Color
Genre: Drama
Release Data: January, 2007
Director(s): Neil BurgerBuy Now
Available on DVD through our listed on-line sources
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LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE, 2006, 101 min., Color
Genre: Drama
Release Data: January, 2007
Director(s): Jonathan Dayton and Valerie FarisBuy Now
Available on DVD through our listed on-line sources
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THE PROMISE (Wu ji), 2005, 128 min., Subtitles, Color
Genre: Drama
Release Data: January, 2007
Director(s): Chen Kaige (Farewell My Concubine, Killing Me Softly, The Emperor and the Assasin)Buy Now
Available on DVD through our listed on-line sources
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QUINCEAÑERA, 2006, 90 min., Color
Genre: Drama
Release Data: January, 2007
Director(s): Richard Glatzer and Wash WestmorelandBuy Now
Available on DVD through our listed on-line sources
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