Dublin Film Festival 2007

As previously mentioned, I spent a bit of time at a couple of film festivals recently, namely Glasgow and Dublin. Both are fairly new in the world of film festivals but are certainly beginning to establish themselves. Today's ramble concerns my movie intake in Dublin.

The first film I was due to see was ALL THE LITTLE ANIMALS however it was cancelled so I decided to wander the streets of Dublin for a while before popping into the Irish Film Institute to see the re-release of arthouse classic BELLE DE JOUR. Well, it's described as a classic anyway. Personally, I thought it was exceptionally dull, lovely though Deneuve may have been in the title role.

The first film I saw as part of the festival therefore was HALF NELSON. It's probably not one that I'd have normally gone out of my way to see but felt I should on this occasion since Ryan Gosling had picked up an Oscar nomination for his lead performance. You know me, I've got to try and check out as many of the Oscar contenders as possible.

Gosling plays a teacher with a drug problem in a school in a poor neighbourhood. Normally you'd think it's another of those inner city poor kids being shown the way by the loving teacher, etc. and you'd be forgiven since that's pretty much a staple of these movies when Hollywood churns them out. This low-budget number is a surprise however - the teacher also coaches basketball for example, and yet the old cliche of the misunderstood pupil scoring the winning basket in the last second of the game is never trotted out. The film subverts all expectations of the genre and actually makes the idea seem fresh. No mean feat after the number of times the formula has been used.

The following day began with a screening of the late-80s political thriller MELANCHOLIA, a post cold war suspense film that offers little suspense or thrills. As a mood piece it certainly lives up to the title but it's a drag of a movie.

Things improved a little with a screening of MERRY CHRISTMAS MR LAWRENCE, but I didn't find this film nearly as impressive as its reputation suggests. There's a lot of over-wrought amateur dramatics on display from all the cast members, the non-English speaking members of the cast struggle with their English lines, there's some really bad dubbing and some of the fight scenes look incredibly false. Despite all this, it's not actually that bad a film.

The first real gem came with the screening of Zhang Yimou's RIDING ALONE FOR THOUSANDS OF MILES. Although Chinese, the film is shot mainly in Japanese and concerns the efforts of an old man to make up with his dying son by travelling thousands of miles to film an opera. Trust me, it makes sense.

The film is a world away from Zhang's usual epic sword-fighting period pieces (HERO, HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS and the forthcoming CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER) but is still shot on an epic, breathtaking canvas. It gets its UK premiere as part of this month's Cinema China season at the Filmhouse in Edinburgh and will be touring the UK - you really should check it out.

The evening finished with RESCUE DAWN, the new film by Werner Herzog. The acclaimed documentary filmmaker had already given this film the documentary treatment, but here he returns to the story as a dramatic movie, with Christian Bale this time taking on the role of Dieter Dengler, a German-American pilot who was shot down and captured behind enemy lines in the Vietnam conflict and began to hatch an escape attempt.

There are some surprisingly bad special effects near the start and end of the movie but Herzog makes up for that with some of the most stunning jungle photography I've ever seen. That, added to the gripping true story and strong leads by the cast, especially Bale, make this movie a must see. I believe it's due to hit UK cinemas in April.

The first documentary I saw while in Dublin was LOST CHILDREN, a haunting portrait of the lives of children in Uganda who had been used as child soldiers by the rebel army. While some kids are happy to escape, it seems like some miss the life they had as a soldier. It's doesn't make for the happiest of stories, but it's a fascinating insight into one of the darker sides of the conflicts in Africa and presents a fairly balanced picture of the horror and despair as well as some hope for the future.

SMALL ENGINE REPAIR was the next real highlight for me. Although set somewhere in Northern Ireland, the location is pretty ambiguous (we never really see anything except forest and a few buildings) and, with its combination of country music, rugged men who spend all their time drinking, working and fighting, and the undercurrent of hostility, betrayal and revenge, it feels more like a modern-day western. It's not all grim though, as this tale of an aspiring middle-aged country singer offers hope, humour and reconciliation in abundance. I only hope it actually gets rewarded with a deserved UK theatrical release.

CATCH A FIRE is another interesting effort. Tim Robbins stars in this story set in apartheid-era South Africa, as an agent determined to crack down on the so-called terrorists of the ANC. The movie, directed by Philip Noyce, is a passable thriller and a gripping insight into the troubled South Africa but functions best as a mirror of today's society, taking a good look at why young law-abiding men would be driven to joining "terrorist" organisations.

Tim Robbins also stars, along with darling of the indie film Sarah Polley, in THE SECRET LIFE OF WORDS, a low-budget movie about a former Balkan refugee (Polley) who gets a job on an oilrig tending to Robbins, who has been seriously injured in a fire. Love blossoms, but the horrors in the young deaf girl's previous life make it difficult for her to relate to anyone. The film is a small-scale intimate effort that feels not unlike something Lars Von Trier might have come up with (aside from the oilrig setting, it has a similar feel to BREAKING THE WAVES) but isn't afraid to look at big issues.

The next film was another highlight. The makers of 2:37 must surely have seen Gus Van Sant's ELEPHANT as the similarities are more than superficial - an over-the-shoulder camera prowls a high school showing overlapping scenes from the lives of the students in the build-up to a tragic event.

2:37 however, takes a slightly more cinematic approach and breaks up the fly-on-the-wall look with sporadic interviews with the pupils. The plot begins with the discovery of a pupil's suicide. We then rewind to the start of the day and follow each of the students, learning of their problems and issues, as the film tries to keep us guessing who it is that finally takes their own life.

While there are some cliched aspects of the story (guess what, one of the homophobic jocks turns out to be a closet gay), the film makes a good job of incorporating a lot of teenage problems and is aided by terrific turns by the largely unknown cast of youngsters. It could be said that there is a lot of misdirection involved in pointing to the eventual victim, but in hindsight there was actually a major clue, which I won't list here for fear of spoiling the film. Let me just say that while the film owes a huge debt to ELEPHANT (which employed the same technique in the build-up to a Columbine-style massacre) I actually thought this film was better. The ending is both achingly tragic and difficult to watch, but it's a rewarding experience, which I urge anyone to seek out if they get the chance.

When funding fell apart for a movie that European cinema legend Wim Wenders was working on, he quickly put together this low-budget quickie about a slightly unhinged Vietnam vet who prowls the streets of LA watching for terrorist activity, and the girl who comes back to America to find him, being his only living relative. It's shot on video and looks pretty cheap but it's a haunting movie about the state of America in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. It's one of those films that didn't really register with me when I first watched it but played on my mind a lot afterwards. Whether you'll get much of an opportunity to see it remains to be seen - it was made in 2004 and has not been seen until this year.

The next documentary I saw was GHOSTS OF CITE SOLEIL, about gang warfare and political misbehaviour among the streets of the ghetto in Haiti that the UN has described as the most dangerous place on Earth. It's an incredible view of a country in chaos and one wonders how the filmmakers managed to piece it together without being killed themselves. Fascinating though it is, it tends to wander a bit and doesn't really focus on any one issue or character long enough to build up momentum. Instead, it ends up a montage of gruelling an unpleasant imagery and situations which just leaves you feeling a bit miserable and, at the same time, thankful.

My time at the Jameson Dublin International Film Festival 2007 came to a close with one classic and one last documentary.

After a delightful burger in the IFI's bar, I headed up the stairs to take in the original version of THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR. I love a good heist movie and this is certainly that; large parts in the middle of the film are heist-free and taken up with Steve McQueen's attempts to outfox Faye Dunaway, the insurance investigator determined to prove him guilty of the opening heist while falling slowly in love with him. When there's no crime caper going on, the chemistry between the two leads is enough to keep the film ticking over. And I just love the split-screen look.

Lastly, just before hopping on the bus back to the airport, I took in WHY WE FIGHT, Eugene Jarecki's documentary about America's war in Iraq, its history of wars in foreign lands and how warnings delivered by Eisenhower as he departed office have been totally ignored in the years since. The documentary seems to be driving at the fact that military might has governed a lot of US policy and lifestyle but it drifts about between topics and interviewees to the point where it's difficult to remember what the film's talking about. It's full of fascinating interviews and footage, to be sure - but when the titles roll it's difficult to say just what you've learned.

That's all for now. Still to come is my roundup of the Glasgow Film Festival, but first I just have to say that as much as I enjoyed my time in Dublin and at the various cinemas there, I can't finish without mentioning the pre-screening music in the auditoria of the Screen Cinema. Dear God, the music... if you've ever heard Boney M's cover version of "King of the Road" and thought it couldn't get any worse, think again. The Screen seems to have unearthed a version that sounds like a 13-year-old was playing it on a £30 synthesiser. Nice cinema though.