Up and Down

Directed by Jan Hrebejk

Reviewed by Martin Tsai

“In The Children of Herakles, Euripides wrote about emigrants,” muses college lecturer Otto (Jan Tríska) in Up and Down, “and that theme runs through human history like a leitmotif.” That statement encapsulates the central thesis of this Altman-esque modern Czech saga from Divided We Fall director Jan Hrebejk, although the film encompasses many other social concerns. It examines various family structures: operational/dysfunctional, broken/surrogate, biological/adoptive. The film also contemplates the crises that erupt between inherited and desired identities.

Opening with a truckload of illegal South Asian immigrants getting past the Czech-Slovak checkpoint, the film soon launches into an exposé on the roots and manifestations of xenophobia. A missing wallet promptly triggers a panicked confrontation between humanitarian worker Hana (Ingrid Timková) and a foreign bystander. Mila (Natasa Burger) purchases a dark-skinned infant on the black market, which results in a fallout between her meathead boyfriend Franta (Jirí Machácek) and his bigot hooligan father figure The Colonel (Jaroslav Ducek). The film juxtaposes that pair of makeshift domestic relationships with Otto’s two households that haven’t been on speaking terms with one another. Only after a stroke does he finally summon estranged wife Vera (Emília Vásáryová) and offspring Martin (Petr Forman, son of Milos) to gather for the first time in two decades with long-term girlfriend Hana and 18-year-old daughter Lenka (Kristýna Liska-Boková).

The identity crises in the film permeate beyond familial roles. Immigrants endure arduous treks to seek better lives, but their ethnicities still elicit suspicion, discrimination and rejection in their land of hope and dreams. The sterile Mila obsessively yearns for motherhood. Due to a misdemeanor on his record, Franta must settle for being a security guard instead of a police officer. Martin once defied Otto’s wishes to pursue a career in photography, but eventually winds up working in a surf shop.

With all the secrets and lies beginning to mercilessly unravel in its final act, Up and Down is at once chillingly bleak and cautiously optimistic. Hrebejk executes this intricately multifaceted epic with authority, withholding judgment on its morally murky characters and also sparing viewers the P.T. Anderson-ish pretenses. The film’s representation of Australia as a paradise of racial harmony is probably a bit naïve. Still, this magnificent masterpiece is so universally relevant that it offers us much food for thought in reflection on our own immigration and diversity issues.

Reprinted from WestEnder. © Copyright 2005 Martin Tsai. All rights reserved.

Millions

Directed by Danny Boyle Starring Alex Etel and James Nesbitt

Reviewed by Martin Tsai

Even though this digitally-Botoxed family fare may seem like a drastic change of pace for Danny Boyle, Millions capitalizes on a premise in which the director has previously invested. Just like in Shallow Grave and Trainspotting, a duffle-bagful of money here is the root of all evil and does funny things to some people - as per The O'Jays. The most significant deviation here stems from the film's virtuous seven-year-old protagonist Damian (Alex Etel), who is the polar opposite of those callous, amoral sleazebags for which Ewan McGregor first earned attention.

Newly motherless Damian finds solace inside his corrugated cardboard rocket, as well as through imaginary friendships with various saints - such as the selflessly charitable Clare, Francis, Joseph, Nicholas and Peter - who provide him with ethical guidance. Uncertain whether the bag of pounds sterling fallen from the sky is one of his hallucinations, Damian informs his older brother Anthony (Lewis McGibbon) about it. Like a junior equivalent of those McGregor characters, the calculating Anthony quickly commissions a schoolyard gang and indulges in wretched consumerist excess. Damian ventures out to follow in the footsteps of his sanctified mentors by feeding the hungry and helping the poor. But with a scary stranger rummaging around for his plunder and only a few days remaining before England's changeover to the euro currency, the brothers' secret threatens to dissolve.

The film is very similar to Shallow Grave in its depiction of how money motivates heinous greed, induces paranoia and threatens relationships. For both films, Boyle borrows the shadow play and stairs/attic motifs from Hitchcock. Grave remained convincing even when its increasingly unstable characters began violently stashing away corpses. But Millions withdraws too far from reality due to the fairytale tendencies and logistical holes in Frank Cottrell Boyce's screenplay. Even if they can suspend their disbelief in Damian's visions and imagination, skeptics may still find it difficult to buy scenarios like a mock rocket actually taking flight or Damian bestowing his generosity mostly on suburbanites. Where is the working-class underbelly that populates those Mike Leigh and Ken Loach films?

Millions is both cautionary and entertaining, but it may ultimately not be for kids. Boyle expertly cashes in on the story's thriller elements, but those are likely too frightening for youngsters. And the preachy moral stance might not pay off for adults, even if they find the film otherwise enjoyable.

Reprinted from WestEnder. © Copyright 2005 Martin Tsai. All rights reserved.

Downfall

Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel Starring Bruno Ganz

Reviewed by Martin Tsai

The legacy of Adolf Hitler still elicits morbid fascination half a century later, as people continue to grapple with the magnitude of atrocities committed under his rule. It is the source of thousands of published accounts, and also serves as basis for several films - including ones by Georg Wilhelm Pabst and Aleksandr Sokurov. Das Experiment director Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall claims to be Germany's first kassenschlager on the subject, but this tediously accurate endeavour doesn't shed any new light on this unfathomable madness that eclipsed basic humanity.

Partly based on Traudl Junge's memoir, the film is virtually déjà vu for those who've seen Blind Spot: Hitler's Secretary. Many of the same recollections by Führersekretärin Junge in the 2003 documentary also manifest themselves as re-enactments in Hirschbiegel's film. The story commences in 1942 with 22-year-old Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara) taking a stenographic test before Hitler (Bruno Ganz), and ends in 1945 as she makes her way past Red Army troops following the Third Reich's surrender. While it is meticulously detailed in its portrayal of her experience, the film lacks the nuance and perspective that Junge herself supplied during the Blind Spot interviews.

Downfall scatters its narrative among numerous other historical figures and fictional characters. Naively patriotic teen Peter (Donevan Gunia) defies his father and joins the Hitler Youth in street warfare. A cheerleading Eva Braun (Juliane Köhler of Nowhere in Africa) gathers people in the bunker for a dance party. Magda Goebbels (Corinna Harfouch) plans to kill her own children to save them from growing up in a world without National Socialism. Operating chiefly in two divergent modes, Ganz's twitchy Hitler alternately rants paranoid edicts like a mad demagogue or fatalistically laments unfinished grand plans. Although the film shows his relatively gentler private side, Hitler still seems like a caricature here - unlike in Menno Meyjes' Max, which broke ground with its speculative psychoanalysis of Hitler's motivations.

Besides its episodic chamber pieces, Downfall lacks tangible narrative structure and relatable characters. The various vignettes are of interest, but they don't amount to anything significant. With only a brief shot showing a pile of corpses, the film seems to address massacre and anti-Semitism merely in passing. This Moralität primarily cautions on the absurdity of brainwashed Germans' foolhardy trust in a maniacal despot, and the regime's blitzkrieg against its own people to make them pay for failing to defend their glorious Vaterland.

Reprinted from WestEnder. © Copyright 2005 Martin Tsai. All rights reserved.

Phil the Alien

Directed by Rob Stefaniuk Starring Stefaniuk, Joe Flaherty and Graham Greene

Reviewed by Martin Tsai

Even with its paranormal festival expeditions at Toronto and Slamdance, Phil the Alien seems otherworldly when probed alongside archetypical Canuck cultish sci-fi specimens such as Cube or David Cronenberg’s films, It somewhat resembles the campy Howard the Duck and Earth Girls are Easy for emitting that lame F/X and cheesy humour circa 1980s. The story concerns alcoholic extraterrestrial Phil (Rob Stefaniuk), who crashes into northern Ontario and the local populace of trailer-park boys and hookers. He befriends a beaver, hangs out at a tavern, and becomes frontman of a Christian rock band. Meanwhile, some deranged American special agents in fur coats are out to capture him.

Judging from its unmistakably Canadian setup, the film likely won’t abduct audiences outside our home and native land. Like the execrable Intern Academy, this shoddy production mystifyingly body-snatches some of the country’s iconic talents. The fact that Joe Flaherty lends his voice as the talking beaver will probably pique some interest. Graham Green here assumes the thankless role of a barkeep, while Seán Cullen briefly steals the show as another alien species. Even Ryan Malcolm makes a self-deprecating cameo. Sadly, these one-note gags quickly go sour.

Low-tech sci-fi B-movies aren’t all bad, and Mystery Science Theater 3000 has helped spawn some new geeky appreciation. Last year’s The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra smartly paid homage to the outdated subgenre and affectionately lampooned it. But it’s unclear what writer/director/star Stefaniuk tries to accomplish with Phil the Alien, which is even more misguided than Tim Burton’s Mars Attacks! Geared in Red Green/McKenzie brothers-style flannel shirt and quilted vest, his Phil whines and shrieks throughout as if he were Ray Romano/Zach Braff on helium. He embellishes the film’s Canadian quotient, only to have Phil’s mutation into a “rock-‘n’-roll evangelist” stick out like a sore thumb.

Stefaniuk fills the film’s vacuous sphere with irrelevant subplots. There’s a redneck (Boyd Banks) who treats his hard-drinking, shotgun-toting teenage son (Brad McGinnis) to a whore to prevent any homosexual leanings. Then there’s the intense Agent Jones (Bruce Hunter) who is traumatized by the memory of murdering two puppies with a cheese grater. This nonsense provides some much needed digression, as does the film’s ultraviolent finale. Still, there are too few moments like these to actually morph this poorly conceived, written and executed film into something watchable. Just please beam up Stefaniuk already, along with whatever he’s been smoking.

Reprinted from WestEnder. © Copyright 2005 Martin Tsai. All rights reserved.

The Jacket

Directed by John Maybury Starring Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley, Kris Kristofferson and Jennifer Jason Leigh

Reviewed by Martin Tsai

One of the buzzed-about titles at this year's Sundance, The Jacket is alarmingly reminiscent of the festival's '04 dud The Butterfly Effect. Aside from the obvious studio backing and marquee stars, the two films also share time-traveling protagonists who are mentally unstable and time-tattered twists designed to artificially dress up the torn and frayed plots.

The Jacket opens with a music-video-esque montage of various swathes of night vision footage supposedly set during the 1991 Gulf War. Adrien Brody stars as U.S. Marine Sgt. Jack Starks, whose critical combat wound earns him a ticket home. Fast-forward to a year later, and he is in Vermont on trial for a murder of which he has no recollection. A guilty verdict gets him sentenced to a mental institution, where the shady Dr. Becker (Kris Kristofferson) subjects him to a 1970s medical experiment involving injections, straightjacket restraints and hours of confinement inside a morgue drawer. Ensuing head trips take him to year 2007, where he learns that his death is to occur within nine days back in 1992 and he must mesh together some ill-fitting puzzle pieces to prevent it.

Even if those involved with this film have never heard of 12 Monkeys, they should know that the unreliable narrator is no longer a novel device after Psycho, The Usual Suspects and The Sixth Sense. Many recent films with that pattern woven into their plots have also padded that material: the backwards narrative of Memento, the metaphysical and nostalgic Reagan-era subtexts of Donnie Darko and the scientific jargon of Primer. Even 12 Monkeys - which similarly features a protagonist thrown from time voyage into the loony bin - boasts elaborate production designs that make it a visual spectacle. Unfortunately The Jacket doesn't sport any such inventiveness.

Stitched together with inconsequential subplots, Massy Tadjedin's screenplay becomes threadbare with each revelation. Intriguing initial setups eventually prove fruitless. Stylish trimmings by director John Maybury and cinematographer Patrick Deming of Mulholland Drive simply aren't enough to patch up the story's obvious flaws. Impressive turns by Kristofferson and Daniel Craig (as a Brad Pitt-esque mental patient) seem to deserve a better vehicle. Perhaps the biggest shocker here is the Touched by an Angel ending, since fans of this kind of sci-fi thriller wouldn't likely check out the film if they expected this payoff.

Reprinted from WestEnder. © Copyright 2005 Martin Tsai. All rights reserved.

Bride & Prejudice

Directed by Gurinder Chadha Starring Aishwarya Rai and Martin Henderson

Reviewed by Martin Tsai

Bollywood's mushy melodrama, lavish designs and glorious performance numbers have become institutions in their native India, while its aesthetics and sounds have also cast a spell over Western pop culture. The influence has been multimedia and far ranging, from Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! to Truth Hurts' hit song "Addictive." But B-wood musicals remain mostly veiled to North American moviegoers, and their local runs at Raja Cinemas perpetually fail to make the review and listing sections of the mainstream press. Fresh off the sleeper success of Bend It Like Beckham, director Gurinder Chadha seems like a promising matchmaker to properly introduce Hindi sense and sensibilities to Western audiences. Unfortunately, her seemingly ingenious bhangra-song-and-kathak-dance update of Jane Austen's classic Pride and Prejudice dilutes that piquant masala flavour to cater to the food-court palette.

In Bride & Prejudice, Bollywood's reining queen Aishwarya Rai of Devdas stars as Elizabeth Bennet - oops - Lalita Bashki, one of the prized daughters for whom her traditional Indian family eagerly wants to find a suitor. Martin Henderson plays pompous American hotel-empire heir "Will" Darcy, who accompanies his pal Bingley - sorry - Balraj (Naveen Andrews) to the rural Amritsar to arrange a monsoon wedding. Mr. Darcy's nemesis Wickham (Daniel Gillies) happens to be vacationing at a local beach resort where Ashanti is conveniently plugging her new track.

Other than trimming an hour off the typical three-hour-plus running time, the film follows most of Bollywood's wet-sari, no-kissing traditions step by step. Still, its various concessions aimed at kid-gloving Western audiences are decidedly underwhelming. Not only are its musical interludes few and far between, but the film frequently cuts away from the convoluted choreography so characters can relay English lyrical translation and poke fun at peculiar dance moves. Quite a number of scenes - such as the opening montage - scream for musical treatment but fall on Chadha's deaf ear. Rai bears a bizarre resemblance to a younger and slimmer Kirstie Alley here, while the director must have explicitly instructed Henderson to imitate Tom Cruise. His Mr. Darcy even sports a haircut and a tan jacket seemingly fallen from Vanilla Sky. All this attention to trifling detail quickly becomes tedious, and Bride & Prejudice ultimately does as much justice to the satin allure of B-wood as does The Guru. Since Harvey Weinstein handily makes a cameo during the end-credits outtakes, you get the idea who's to blame.

Reprinted from WestEnder. © Copyright 2005 Martin Tsai. All rights reserved.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon

Directed by Niels Mueller Starring Sean Penn, Don Cheadle, Jack Thompson and Naomi Watts

Reviewed by Martin Tsai

Boasting impressive credentials including stars Sean Penn, Don Cheadle and Naomi Watts, as well as producers Alfonso Cuarón, Alexander Payne and Leonardo DiCaprio, last year's award-season leftover The Assassination of Richard Nixon must have been promising on the drawing board. Based on a real-life botched plot to crash a hijacked plane into the White House, it has an eerie post-9/11 timeliness. But it ultimately unfolds as a pretentious by-the-numbers Taxi Driver rip-off. In fact, first-time director Niels Mueller demonstrates a blind ambition for superfluous acclaim rather than probing social commentary.

The film re-imagines assailant Samuel Byck as Sam Bicke (Penn), an all-around loser struggling to get a grip on his failed career and personal life. With his idealist conscience often eclipsing work-a-day-world practicality, he is unable to hold a steady job and support his family. Unrelenting motifs of American-dream-fulfillment Cadillacs, ruthless Dale Carnegie/Norman Vincent Peale mantras, racial repression and televised Watergate coverage endlessly divulge his sense of disenfranchisement. As his slimy boss (Jack Thompson) suggests Tricky Dick as a model salesman who twice closed the deal with American voters pitching identical plans to end the Vietnam War, a target emerges in Bicke's quest for prominence and social justice.

Though few Scorsese homages have managed to make the riveting impression of Gaspar Noé's teeth-gnashing I Stand Alone, that path still serves as a shortcut for novice filmmakers starving for attention. In spite of Mueller's repeated denial in the Assassination press notes of any Taxi Driver influence, parallels between the two films go beyond the thematic and the protagonists' names. His film similarly relies on voice-over narrations - lent by Bicke's reverential messages to Leonard Bernstein that evoke Eminem's "Stan." Bicke's clinging to his estranged wife (Watts) emulates Travis Bickle's stalking of campaign aid Betsy, just as Bicke's rehearsals of the hijack are reminiscent of Bickle's "You talkin' to me?" routine. A strip joint also serves as a flippant replacement for the porn theatre Bickle frequented.

Although Taxi Driver lacked Mamet-esque white-collar disaffection in its pathology case study, Mueller's treatment isn't exactly novel after Falling Down. Assassination chokes on its aesthetics deep throat, with excessive non-diegetic sound, jittery camera and Steven M. Stern’s pseudo-Philip Glass score rescinding any sense of alienation. The most remarkable element is Penn's dependably intense performance, which is always something to behold.

Reprinted from WestEnder. © Copyright 2005 Martin Tsai. All rights reserved.

Born Into Brothels

Directed by Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski

Reviewed by Martin Tsai

The Oscar-nominated documentary Born Into Brothels wades into the suffocating squalor of Calcutta's infamous Sonagachi red-light district to meet the prostitutes' children, all between the ages of 10 and 14. Surrounded by poverty, filth, negligent parents and vulgar neighbours, they cope with being the dregs of a rigid caste system, endure deadening dawn-to-dusk domestic toil, and face a grim future in which teenaged girls have little choice but to join the family business. Their tragic existences in this clandestine underworld undeniably make a compelling feature.

Photojournalist - and the film's co-director - Zana Briski initially lived in a brothel to capture the lives of prostitutes, and ended up supplying photography lessons, point-and-shoot cameras and film stock to their kids. They each assembled a portfolio of arresting, vibrant, spontaneous and layered snapshots, for which Briski then worked hard to attain exposure through various exhibitions, an Amnesty International calendar and a Sotheby's auction. Convinced that a boarding-school education was the children's only ticket out of the Sonagachi sewer, she raised tuition money selling their work.

Briski's noble efforts emerge as the film's dominant narrative. She thanklessly cuts through bureaucratic red tape to secure a passport for the prodigious 12-year-old Avijit to attend a World Press Photo conference in Amsterdam, persuades boarding schools to admit the kids, and takes them to a clinic to get STD tests. The film's arguably more significant and riveting accounts from the children's own perspectives unfortunately lack focus and take a back seat. This presents a curious contrast to the segment in The Five Obstructions, during which Lars von Trier sought to challenge Jørgen Leth's detachment as a documentarian by sending him to shoot in Bombay's Falkland Road red-light district. Briski and co-director Ross Kauffman have considerably more access to the brothel and its inhabitants than Leth did, and she even becomes a major figure in the daily lives of her subjects. Yet with Briski's own viewpoint overpowering those of the children, Born Into Brothels emanates that adverse sense of detachment. It's possible to misconstrue this as subconscious colonialism on the part of the directors, since the kids here seem more like Briski's charity cases than subjects she's recording.

Despite its flaws, the film renders some truly heartbreaking vignettes in which the children grapple with their bleak reality. Briski provides a few practical examples to assuage their predicament, and perhaps some viewers will find her efforts inspirational.

Reprinted from WestEnder. © Copyright 2005 Martin Tsai. All rights reserved.