Reviews
DRAMA IT’S WINTER (1 81 min __ A H
The Egyptian writer Naguib Mahfouz once suggested that all modern Arabic literature (including his own) was ‘fourth or fifth rate’, proposing that non-first world countries, countries which aren’t advanced industrial nations, were generally incapable of producing first rate work. So how would we explain Iranian Rafi Pitt's third feature It’s Winter’? Sure Iran’s language is not Arabic but Farsi, and Pitt has chosen to return to work in Iran after studying film and photography in London. But what about all the other great Iranian filmmakers like Kiarostami and Mohsen Makhmalbaf’? Also, any country that happens to produce some half a dozen film magazines must have a pretty self- conscious approach to the art it produces.
lt’s Winter is a marvellous combination of advanced aesthetic style and decidedly non—advanced Middle Eastern lives. Stranger in a small town Marhab (Ali Nicksaulat) is a penniless ne’er do well who arrives in a semi-industrialised suburb near Tehran as another man leaves, desperately looking for work elsewhere. He befriends a hard-working, poorly paid mechanic and pursues Khatoun (Mitra Hajjar), the wife of the missing man.
Utilising sound through harsh industrial noises and poetic music, Pitts also carefully frames his characters against the wintry landscapes. The most trusted element in many western filrns — dialogue — is the least trusted here as Pitts tries to draw out the complexity of his characters’ lives at one remove but without sacrificing empathic feeling.
Though neorealist in intention lt’s Winter is also reminiscent of taciturn American cinema gems of the 70s, notably Fonda's The Hired Hand, Huston’s Fat City and Bate/son’s Five Easy Pieces — where inarticulate characters are contained by a cinematic imagination that more than compensates. If this isn't quite first rate filmmaking — one or two transitions seem a bit clumsy — it still easily counters Mahfouz’ self-deprecating claims. (Tony McKibbin)
I GFT, Glasgow, Fri 6—Sun 8 Apr.
HORROR THE MESSENGERS (15) 91 min 00
Asian filmmaking is the strongest theme in modern horror. Sleeper hit Bingu irrefutably changed the landscape and made US execs sit up and take notice. Here the Pang
brothers (Danny and the wonderfully named Oxide) are the latest victims wooed by the Hollywood system. Most famous for The Eye and Bangkok Dangerous (coincidently both of which are currently being remade in the US). the brothers take no chances with their first foray into American filmmaking as a family move to an abandoned farmhouse. where something nasty seems to be lurking in the cellar. Only mute toddler Ben seems to be able to sense the supernatural presence, with no one believing her claims, teenager Jess (Kristen Stewart) has increasingly frightening brushes with the dead.
If you are willing to suspend disbelief (and there are some fairly nonsensical leaps of logic) this will keep you entertained. The film’s most effective moments are unsurprisingly cribbed from far superior films (Poltergeist, The Shining, The Ring, even The Birds). This leads to a horribly cliched movie that desperately tries to please but forgets to bring any of these brothers‘ trademark inventiveness to the table. (Henry Northmore)
I General release from Fri 6 Apr
SCI FI SUNSHINE (15) 107min «u
Trainspotting director Danny Boyle enters a whole new dimension with this retina-ravishing, mind—bending sci- fi epic. Scripted, like 28 Days Later. . . by Alex Garland, it blends the intimate intensity of an ensemble drama with grand images and topical dystopian themes. So, while its conflict between arrogant science and the awe-inspiring power of the sun is staged on a cosmic scale, the film derives much of its emotional impact from the fraught group dynamics aboard the Icarus |I spaceship, which is manned by a tiny crew.
In an attempt to save the frozen Earth and its inhabitants from extinction, eight astronauts and scientists set the dials for the heart of the dying sun. Attached to the Icarus II is a nuclear bomb the size of Manhattan island, with which they hope to re-boot the life-giving star. But a distress signal from the Icarus I, which went missing during an abortive mission seven years before, presents the crew with a daunting moral choice.
INTERVIEW
Cillian Murphy, Rose Byrne) career towards a potentially life-giving oblivion, Alwin Kuchler's cinematography bathes the stunning sets in a blinding celestial light, while the CGI effects evoke the power of the glowing orb. The film owes an obvious debt to 2007: A
THE PRESIDENT’S MAN Legendary Italian filmmaker Nanni Moretti (pictured) talks about his new film, political satire The Caiman
‘The fact that five years have passed since I made The Son’s Room is partly because I have been involved in the Girotondi, which are grassroots political movements that exist outside the political parties. We were taking a stand against the Berlusconi government and against the passivity shown by the opposition parties. I’ve also been producing films made by other directors.
‘When I started to write The Caiman, I knew I didn’t want to take on the subject of Berlusconi head on. Even as a young man, I didn’t trust filmmakers whose objective was to change peoples’ lives and mindsets. And I didn’t want The Caiman to be about the ideological awakening of its main character Bruno [played by Silvio Orlando].
‘Bruno is a producer of very low-grade movies, who hasn’t made a film in ten years, and who’s breaking up with his wife Paola [Margherita Buy] with whom he has two young sons. When he’s given a script by this young director Teresa [Jasmine Trinca], he scans it and doesn’t realise it’s about Berlusconi, whom he voted for in the past. He gets caught up in the pre-production, though, partly because he can’t wait to get back on the film set and hear the words, “Lights! Camera! Action!” People have asked me why I didn’t play the part of Bruno myself: I think that Silvio was more suitable for the role, and that I have less energy in combining acting, writing and directing than I did 20 or 30 years ago.
‘The Caiman is composed of lots of different styles and materials, as Dear Diary was. There’s Bruno’s action B-movie that begins the film, and then there’s the family story. There’s also Teresa’s film-within-a- film, which is partly visualised by Bruno and in which different actors appear as Berlusconi. I also incorporated real-life footage of the latter when he insulted the German politician Martin Schultz at the European Parliament.
‘In a sense Teresa’s film is a biographical film about 30 years of a man who becomes a political animal. There are the questions about where the enormous wealth of Berlusconi comes from, which are concerns that have never been addressed. There are the beginnings of his control over commercial television, where he began to seduce or buy the electorate: those he doesn’t succeed in buying, he simply insults. Without spoiling the ending, I didn’t want to represent Berlusconi in the final scene in a way that imitated or parodied him. I was interested in giving back to the Italian public the very shocking words of Berlusconi that they have been accustomed to hearing from him, words which have lost their impact.’ (Interview by Tom Dawson)
I The Caiman opens at Fi/mhouse, Edinburgh from Fri 6 Apr.
Space Odyssey, Silent Running and Dark Star among others. Even so, Suns/tines visceral power and cosmic clash between ‘big bang‘ physics and religious mythology help it to achieve a mythic quality one seldom finds in I parochial British cinema. (Nigel Floyd)
l I General release from Fri 6 Apr.
Meanwhile the crew (Hiroyuki Sanada,
29 Mar-~19 Apr 2007 THE LIST 37