Sweet Sweetgrass' Baadasssss Ride!

I had long wanted to catch Sweetgrass, a documentary about the modern day dying American west that received minor attention upon its release in 2010 as well as screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival (I didn't see it there, sadly). It's hardly surprising that this film hasn't received a local release given documentaries that work in a strictly anthropological sense are an even harder sell than traditional ones that have been crafted around conventional narratives. Lacking narration, a musical score, or even on screen credits to inform the viewer of who is who, Sweetgrass comes from recordist Lucien Castaing-Taylor and producer Ilisa Barbash. Both work for Harvard and have a list of credits to their name that certainly sounds lofty and indicative of people who would have a film as boutique and yet wide-roaming as this (read the sixth paragraph of this New York Times review to see what I mean).

Filmed in purely observational manner, Castaing-Taylor and Barbash's film was filmed over three years - and took something close to nine years to complete, which sounds like a lot of time before considering their roles as educators - Sweetgrass covers the now defunct shepherd of thousands of sheep across the Montana summer grazing highlands. The film's final image is of an "in memoriam" tag, stating the Reisland-Allestad Ranch, the subject of this documentary, ceased to exist in 2004 after 104 years. It lends Sweetgrass (so named after Sweet Grass County, a part of Montana that this epic march covers) a pang of elegiac sadness, one that is accentuated by the beauty of the landscape. So beautifully filmed, a true environmental documentary about man and nature, it's made with as little interference as possible. Thanks to the blessed diegetic sound design of Patrick Lindenmaier and the refreshingly still camera, every shifting cloud creating a creeping shadow is amplified. With its ghost-like presence (only the occasional sheep seems to acknowledge the camera's existence) creating an almost ethereal atmosphere, the "last of America's cowboys" are given a farewell of heartbreaking simplicity.

I'd love to see this film on a double feature with Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff. Both together (or alone, really, but together even more so) would send most audiences into a tailspin of boredom given the aversion to what's considered "slow" and "boring". However, much like Reichardt's captivating post-western trip along the Oregon Trail, Sweetgrass raises many questions. Why do these shepherds do what they (no longer) do? One sequence shows one such man on the telephone to his mother as he holds back tears telling her of the arduous journey he partakes every year. "I'd rather enjoy these mountains than hate 'em," he says. The film also asks vital questions about man's interference in the circle of life, as well as our relationship to nature. All three - man, animal, nature - can be unforgiving, but the film's strength is in how it tells the tale of all of them, and does so with powerful simplicity.

The film is as rich in warm-heartedness as it is in heart-tugging sadness. Those gorgeous Montana mountains are as lush with beauty as always, and the way they have been photographed recall the work of a master landscape painter. Sweetgrass is the type of film where a highlight is a zoom in from a long shot into to that of a mountainside as the sight of a herd of sheep becomes clearer and clearer. It's a film where the action peaks with a bear hunt in the dead of night, in near pitch black. The images within are the kind that trains cinematographers and filmmakers would spend a lot of money to perfectly choreograph and lens (see below for examples), but here are as effortless as the spinning of the Earth. There's little that's conventional here for both fiction and non-fiction filmmaking, but what there is a sterling, evocatively made portrayal of a way of life that is all but extinct. A-

MIFF 2012 Review: Jayne Mansfield's Car

Jayne Mansfield's Car

Dir. Billy Bob Thornton

Country: USA / Russia

Aus Rating: N/A

Running Town: 122mins

War is hell, duh. Sadly, Billy Bob Thornton's first time behind the camera in some 11 years (Daddy and Them, unreleased on these shores as far as I am aware) isn't able to mustre many more ideas for Jayne Mansfield's Car, a 1969-set southern drama that looks at the effects of three wars on three different generations of one family. Surely attempting to be "sprawling", the impressively cast ensemble try hard to find tender nuances amongst Thornton and Tom Epperson's screenplay, but an unfocused structure that leaves many characters with nothing to do for long stretches (and sometimes, in Frances O'Connor's case, disappearing from the narrative entirely) makes for an ultimately disjointed affair. The title is a doozy, a reference to the piece of pop culture memorabilia that found itself in a touring macabre sideshow of celebrity worship, but is perhaps too evocative and colourful a name for a film that is so concerned with the more tight-knit confines of family.

The developments that bring the Bedford family - John Hurt, Ray Stevenson, and O'Connor - from their home in England all the way to Alabama certainly pique initial interest. As Hurt and the ex-husband of his now deceased wife, played with typical externalised gruff by Robert Duvall, duke out their own decades-old argument, his children and grandchildren all have their own heavy stuff to deal with. Thornton's Skip is deeply wounded (both mentally and physically) from his time in WWII, the same war that has turned Kevin Bacon's Carroll into a peace-loving hippy. The third brother, Robert Patrick's Jimbo, didn't go to any war and yet carries scars all of his own. Bacon has perhaps the most interesting of the film's many characters, having to deal with the shame he puts upon his decorated WWI hero father's image as well as a son who, quite tellingly, thinks enlisting for the Vietnam War would be a "rock and roll" thing to do. What they would all think of soldiers lip syncing to Carly Rae Jespen's "Call Me Maybe" on YouTube is never broached.

Thornton imbues his film with the same rustic, southern gothic sensibility that he gave his debut, Sling Blade, in 1995. Perhaps Jayne Mansfield's Car was his attempt to return to safer territory after the much-noted debacle of All the Pretty Horses in 2000. Sadly, this more expansive tale never reaches any of the lofty heights it is clearly aiming for. It looks lovely, and and an electric twang-heavy score plus references to era-defining moments in time mean there's usually something to be paying attention to, but for a film that appears to be trying to say so much it never really gets above that initial statement of "war is hell".

The fingerprints of a scissor-happy editor are there on screen as well as off. O'Connor's "The Charge of the Light Brigade" reciting step-sister seemingly vanishes for a couple of days with nary a mention of her name to remind audiences of her whereabouts. She's the highlight of the film - "It's like Gone with the Wind!" - and her vanishing act is truly a mystery. Meanwhile, the film's Wikipedia page (which humorously implies Duvall, Bacon and Thornton play the three central brothers) cites Tippi Hedren as the wife who fled Alabama for the UK, and yet she never once appears on screen. I can't imagine the bulk of the tiresome "old man takes LSD, LOL!" segment was more important, but there you go. Even the collage-style poster appears to feature images that didn't make the final product.

War is hell, duh. That's still all I can figure Thornton's film amounts to. Perhaps if he'd focused on one of the story lines over this more mosaic structure he could have truly buried deeper. As it ends - quite bizarrely might I add - it feels like Thornton hasn't used the themes and the setting in any particularly unique way, with little idea of how to maximise the potential of his big moments. It's deep-fried Americana, but all a bit tasteless. C+

Review: Buck

Buck

Dir. Cindy Meehl

Country: USA

Aus Rating: PG

Running Time: 88mins

“I’m not helping people with horse problems, I’m helping horses with people problems.” So declares Buck Brannaman in Buck, an affectionate documentary look at a man whose midwestern fusion of animal hero and Americana legend endears him to horse lovers around the globe and inspired novelists and filmmakers who coined him “The Horse Whisperer”. If Steven Spielberg’s War Horse got on your nerves as much as it did mine, then consider Buck the alternative. Simple and pristinely told with nary a manipulative music score or peach-stained sky to wring tears from even the most unflappable of equine fans, this is a charming – if occasionally too thin – look at Buck’s fascinating life.

Read the rest at Trespass Magazine

MIFF Blogathon: Day 5 (Pianos and Chess in Littlerock)

This blogathon is an initiative of MIFF for their 60th anniversary year. I am one of six bloggers given the mission of seeing 60 films in 17 days and writing, reporting, reviewing and wrangling my way through the tiredness and hunger to bring the festival experience to your computer.

The Piano in a Factory

Dir. Zhang Meng
Running Time: 105mins

China's answer to the American indie quirk genre, Zhang Meng's The Piano in a Factory [Gang de qin] is a surprisingly charming and goofy examination of a band of performers living amidst a dying industrial town as they go about building a piano for their leader's daughter. After divorce has left this troubadour, Wang Quin-yuan's Chen, with no money, the only way to buy the affections of his daughter over those of her materialistic mother, is to build a piano alongside his band mates in a disused factory. Wonderfully lensed by Shu Chou in a series of steely greys, the wintery landscapes of snow and mud are fabulously intertwined with the factories, pipes, tunnels, pillars and traffic sounds of this industrial wasteland.

We routinely hear of China being in an economic resources boom, so it's interesting to see this film's portrayal as less than so, with dank and decaying fashion. The director has thankfully used a light touch with the material and does a lot that stops it from descending into maudlin, depression territory, while skirting the twee, cloying tone that could come from using the Super Mario Bros theme music. The Piano in a Factory proves to be far less obvious and manufactured here than it would be in an American film of the same variety. Combined with utterly bizarre musical sequences, a fantastic lead performance by Qin Hai-lu make this film, despite being too long for sure, an endearing surprise. B+

Littlerock
Dir. Mike Ott
Running Time: 83mins

America through the eyes of two Asian tourists, Littlerock features an evocative sense of place mere minutes into its short running time, but a pair of strange lead performances dulls the experience. Atsuko Okatsuka stars as Atsuko, a young girl travelling through America with her brother. Stuck in Littlerock, California (not to be confused with the actual city of Little Rock, Arkansas), Atsuko finds herself enamoured with the small town Americana vibe (or perhaps just enamoured with anything that isn't a staunch Japanese upbringing) and chooses to stay on as her brother heads to San Fransisco. She makes friends with a curiously fey - yet staunchly heterosexual - drug pusher and wannabe model (Cory Zacharia as Cory), as well as Jordan (Brett L Tinnes), a cute boy who proves hipsters can be found anymore!

The camera of cinematographer Carl McLaughlin (also a co-writer) is the real star of Littlerock, as it latches on to the sights of America that so endear it to many travellers. Okatsuka's performance as Atsumo, unfortunately blank and empty as a tourist with no knowledge of the local language, is not one of the things that the camera appears in awe of. Occasionally piping up with flat narration in the form of letters written home to her father, Okatskuka never seizes upon any emotional reading of her face when given a close-up. She just sits there and she makes for a difficult entry into the story. The character of Cory is the opposite, as there is so much of him given to us that I actually wished they put him away. Why he was written as an obvious homosexual who's willing to pull Zoolander model faces and perform his runway walk at the drop of a hat is beyond me. Was Ott trying to say something about homosexuality in a small town? If he was, I think I missed it. C+

Bobby Fischer Against the World
Dir. Liz Garbus
Running Time: 90mins

Chess: It's not the most exciting sport, is it? Especially when your prime subject has a rule in his big matches that there be no filming allowed. So, what we have here with Liz Garbus' documentary Bobby Fischer Against the World is a movie about chess' greatest player and yet we never actually get to see the man play. Must be a joke, yeah? Unfortunately, no.

Bobby Fischer Against the World is what I called a "wikipedia film". It even goes so far as to divide its (thankfully brief) run time into separately themed chapters of easily digestible themes. Garbus' subject is an interesting one, that's for sure, but where is the punch, where is the excitement? Something to have enlivened this documentary would have been greatly appreciated. As it is it's a standard history lesson that doesn't dig all that deep. C

Michael
Dir. Markus Schleinzer
Running Time: 96mins

It's curious. The banality that I found numbing and dull in Michael is the exact virtue that many others (including fellow blogathon buddy Thomas Caldwell) found in the piece. Was debut director Markus Schleinzer's plan to show that not only are paedophiles evil, but they're also incredibly boring? Sadly, I suspect this was in fact the case, but Schleinzer has gone about the material with the vagueness of blanched brussel sprouts.

The daunting prospect of watching a film about a paedophile who keeps a child locked in the basement is blunted by Schleinzer's desire to do absolutely nothing with it. There isn't anything particularly shocking or daring going on here; we've heard far worse coming out of the mouths of actual dungeon abuse victims. All Michael has is a static camera that thinks its being observational about the world, but instead - from my perspective - came off as scared and uninterested.


To call the lead character of Michael, played by Buster Bluth lookalike Michael Fuith, detached would be an understatement for the festival. As he keeps young Wolfgang locked in his basement, Schleinzer follows his mundane life as he goes to work, goes skiing, tries to have sex with a woman and fails, goes to hospital due to a car accident... and it all plays out in bland, Haneke-lite long shots with ambiguous beginning and end times. There is some interesting work done to imply that this boy has been there for quite some time and that Michael has helf other boys before, but it really does come off as a case of the director letting the subject matter do the heavy lifting and expecting some sort of meaning to bounce out because of it. Michael is arthouse filmmaking at its most maddening. Except, I guess, there's nothing particularly "maddening" about Michael. It just exists. Like brussel sprouts. D

MIFF TALES
I expected walkouts at Michael due to the nature of the plot, but the film's wishy-washy presentation - almost afraid to do or say anything about paedophiles or their victims - gave the large Tuesday night crowd nothing to get particularly huffy about, although I heard bad projection issues meant an earlier screening of Uzo and Scorsese's The King of Comedy meant viewers were left wanting.

Today at Bobby Fischer I had the pleasure of finally meeting Rhett Bartlett of Dial M for Movies. As we sat waiting for the movie to begin a lady began speaking to us. She had recognised me as one of the bloggers and began to explain how she thought it was a conspiracy as to who was chosen to take part. Apparently we'd all been published already (there's a difference between being published and making money, but I couldn't be bothered going into the depressing details right then and there) and how she wanted to be a blogger. Humourously, upon noticing me pull out a notepad and pen she all but screamed "I don't want to be blogger anymore! I don't want to be blogger anymore!"

Apparently all this "writing" stuff was a bit much for her. When I asked if she had been reading or following us on Twitter she said had not and then went about giving herself, Rhett and I popcorn related nicknames. The people you meet... :/

Review: Frozen River

Frozen River
Dir. Courtney Hunt
Year: 2008
Aus Rating: MA15+
Running Time: 97mins

It's a shame that Courtney Hunt's Frozen River is so good. It's unfortunate because now I will most likely be incredibly disappointed when this debut director falls between the cracks of the lead performance she helped create. Much like Kimberley Pierce, who took nine years to return after Boys Don't Cry, and Patty Jenkins, who has yet to direct another motion picture after Monster in 2003, Hunt's film is primarily getting attention for it's lead performance.

These three films do indeed have more in common with each than a mere powerful central female performance. Most importantly, all three have such an incredible sense of place, all revolving around the ubiquitous themes of woe in Small Town, USA. Whether it be the murky grotesqueness in the late 1980s of Monster (one of my very favourite films of that year), the endless horizons of the bigoted country town of Boys Don't Cry or the snow-covered regions of Frozen River, each of the films makes the landscape a vital part of the film. Without it there is no real understanding of the films or their characters. Hunt's opening shots are of iced-over rivers, muddy stretches of road and lands casually dotted with trailers all covered by gray clouds and it immediately sets a tone. One rich with texture and intrigue.


In the northern border region of New York state we meet Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) whose husband has skipped town with the money they were to use to purchase their new double-wide home. Scant of cash and in need of more than the part time wage the shopping mart provides her with she begins to ferry illegal immigrants over the border after an encounter with a young Mohawk woman (Misty Upham). Sounds bleak, but it's done in a similar way to the aforementioned films that really works. The final act effectively works as a thriller, but not in the traditional sense of the word and it ends in a way you wouldn't expect even if you see the general idea coming from the opening scenes (I did, so I imagine many others will too).

As for Melissa Leo, who has certainly been keeping herself busy lately, will surely have "broken out" after this and it's hard not to see why. While not as violently explosive as Charlize Theron or brutally moving as Hilary Swank, she feels equally as evocative as the desperate but not dispirited Ray. Upham is affecting in moments and Charlie McDermott is impressive as Leo's teenage son. I, too, thought the treatment of the Native American storyline was well-done. It was fascinating to me as somebody who knows almost nothing about this culture to see it so thoroughly portrayed with what I assume was respect and it's yet another vital contributor to the film's success.


Frozen River isn't as downbeat and depressing as it may appear, honestly. I'd hazard a guess and say this film isn't anywhere near as grim as others may like to paint it as, actually, thanks to Hunt's intuitiveness. It is a tough watch at times, sure, but it is also so powerfully acted and skillfully made - Reed Morano's cinematography and the minimal score by Peter Golum and Shahzad Ismaily need special mention - that you forget about all that and instead focus of the impeccably made film beneath. Frozen River is a very strong film and one that felt like a breath of fresh air in a year that has felt distinctively unimpressive and been-there-seen-that. A great story tell-told, is what I say. A-