ADAPTATION
EVERYTHING Is ILLUMINATED
(12A) 105min COO
Liev Schreiber does a clever thing in his adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer's over-acclaimed novel — he ditches most of the book. This movie is entirely about Foer's journey to the Ukraine to search for the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. Sohreiber. one of America's most talented but least heralded actors (you may have seen him in The Manchurian Candidate or Kate and Leopold) chose not to cast himself and he also refused Foer's request that he be allowed to play the character who bears his name. Instead he opted to have Elijah Wood essay Foer in what emerges as his quirkiest role to date. As with the book. however, the best character in the film is the reluctant Ukrainian tour guide Alex (Eugene Hutz. the lead singer of gypsy punk bank Gogol Bordello). It's Alex's punchy voiceover that gets the film off
to a raucous start and by and large retains its rhythm throughout. Not since the opening credits of Trainspotting has a warped phiIOSOphy on life sounded this good on celluloid. As a filmmaker. Schreiber is clearly influenced by the new primitivism of the cinema of Emir Kusturica. and pays a certain degree of homage to the Balkan director with several irreverent musical interludes. However. in this film's strengths also lie its weaknesses. When Hutz is off- screen Everything is Illuminated is zapped of energy and stagnates. The lead character of Foer is not sufficiently developed as a character to give this lateral lesson on the Holocaust the dramatic impact necessary to placate fans of the book. (Kaleem Aftab)
I General release from Fri 25 Nov.
DRAMA
SOPHIE SCHOLL: THE FINAL DAYS
(PG) 120min om
According to a 2003 German television programme. Sophie Scholl and her brother Hans are well within the top ten of the greatest Germans who ever lived. The poll puts them alongside Marx. Luther. Bach. Goethe and Einstein. but Scholl's name is more likely to draw a blank with the average English speaking
DRAMA/ADAPTATION FACTOTUM (15) 93min 0000
Chinaski, you’re fired! The great German/American writer Charles Bukowski has always enjoyed a fairly promiscuous time when it comes to adaptations of his work, from Marco Ferreri’s underrated 1981 film Tales of Ordinary Madness and Barbet Schroeder’s Barfly to Dominique Deruddere’s brilliant
1987 film Crazy Love (all worth seeking -
if you can find them) but no one has
ever attempted to adapt any of the six Henry Chinaski novels that he wrote between 1969 and 1994. The reason is superficially easy to see. Why would anyone want to watch a movie about an uncompromising writer whose main activities are drinking, whoring and gambling? My answer would be just about everyone I know but the world don’t move to the beat of just one drum
(the film went straight to DVD in the US).
Chinaski (Matt Dillon) is keeping it real (well, boozy hazy at least). Every
week he posts a few short stories to the
Sparrow Press). The rest of the time he humiliates himself with a series of low
only publisher he respects (Black
paid jobs and has loads of sex with fellow lush Jan (Lili Taylor).
Keeping the taciturn, mildly surreal tone of the original books - Bent Kitchen Stories Hamer’s beautifully judged adaptation drags the viewer along Bukowski’s raw, contradictory, relentlessly nihilistic journey as he picks up the mantle that was left for him by Celine and John Fante (his favourite writers). Simply but shambolically structured and underpinned by Kristin Asbjornsen’s oddly effective Hans Zimmer-style soundtrack, the film really allows Dillon and Taylor the space to produce the kind of subtle, detailed
performances they are rarely allowed to.
jobs and many joys. (Paul Dale)
Factotum is a catalogue of many
I Selected release from Fri 78 Nov. See feature. page 24.
person. All that is about to change. but probably not because of this film. SOphie Scholl was a member of the non-violent White Rose resistance movement in Nazi Germany. She was arrested on 18 February 1943 while distributing leaflets at the University of Munich. Four days later. Sophie. her brother Hans and their friend ChristOph Probst were executed by guillotine in the convict prison Munich-Stadelheim. This. the third attempt to do justice to her heroic tale (after versions in the 1980s from filmmakers Michael Verhoeven and Percy Adlon) gets a year‘s lead on White Rose. a big Hollywood epic starring Christine Ricci as Scholl. Made for what was probably the cost of hiring an illegal Mexican toilet cleaner on that film. this low key drama is based almost entirely on transcripts from Scholl's interrogations and trial. This is a powerful. unsentimental and simple investigation into the potency of ideals and cowardice of faltering powerbases. Undermined by very low technical values and a certain TV movie feel but emboldened by fantastic performances all round. this is well worth seeking out. (Paul Dale) I Cinewor/d. Glasgow from Fri 78 Nov.
RECONCILIATION DRAMA THE NIGHT OF TRUTH (15) 100min 000
Recent events in Rwanda are echoed in Fanta Regina Nacro's first feature film. an account of reconciliation between the president's Nayak army and the Bonande rebel forces of a fictional West African country. As the president and Colonel Theo meet to cement their peace agreement the two groups attempt to trust one another. It transpires that the genocide they have witnessed must at first be understood before words and gestures can take meaning.
In the hands of a male director this might have been a film about justice or dignity. but Nacro's female perspective allows her to express the frustration of the women who. having been forced
Film
into a war by men. must now accept an imposed peace. Naky Sy Savane. one of film's few professional actors. is commanding as the president‘s wife — a grieving mother distraught with her lust for revenge.
The buoyant note on which the film draws to a close is disappointing after engagement with such complex issues but this is nonetheless a perceptive debut that well deserved the Best Screenplay award at the 2004 San Sebastian International Film Festival. (Alisa Mandrigin)
I Fi/mhouse. Edinburgh from Fri 78—Mon 27 Nov only.
CLASSIC GODZILLA (PG) 98min 0000
This first ever UK release of the original. uncut version of the Japanese monster movie restores two thirds of the film's running time previously excised for its US release. With the restoration of those 36 minutes of film the once laughably dumb creature feature new plays as the dark anti- nuclear warfare parable it was originally intended to be in 1954 by director lshiro Honda (who was Kurosawa's second unit director on Seven Samurai. which came out in the same year).
Godzilla was released the year the crew of a Japanese tuna boat developed radiation sickness following a nuclear test explosion by America on Bikini Atoll two years earlier. With its scenes of the destruction of Tokyo by a giant radioactive. fire-breathing. pre- historic creature and. moreover. references to the then still all-too recent bombing of Nagasaki. black rain. bomb shelters and all. the anti- weapons of mass destruction message (completely cut Out in the US) is painfully clear.
The film struck a chord in Japan. where it was a huge hit for Toho Studios. spawning over 20 sequels as well as numerous rip-offs and remakes. including the dim-wilted 1998 Hollywood blockbuster. While the original God/illa was Japan's own and first blockbuster. it remains a suspenseful. scary and thought- provoking film, and ultimately a deeply disturbing one. Amazingly for a man- in-a-monster—8uit mowe. the climactic confrontation between the creature and a scientist with yet another apocalyptic invention generates immense pathos. (Miles Fielder)
I GFT. Glasgow from Wed Bil—Sun 27 Nov. FI/lll/TOUSO. Edinburgh from Mon 2— Thu 5 Jan 2006.
1 i' Nov 1 Dec 2005) THE LIST 45