Precious based on the novel by Sapphire

I had mixed feelings about the prospect of seeing Precious based on the novel by Sapphire (which from this point on will be referred to as Precious), when it first came out. The trailer itself made me tear up a few times, and who wants to go to the movies and be that depressed? A few tears are fine, but you have to be in a certain kind of mood to put yourself through that much emotional torture. With this in mind, I didn’t see the film when it came out. Instead I watched it for the first time over the weekend.
The trailer gives away 90% of the bad things that happen to Precious. She is 16, still in junior high school, her mother beats her, and she has two children from her father. After seeing the trailer, you would think they have already told you everything that has gone wrong in her life, so you enter the movie thinking you are going to see a character film about the way this young girl deals with all of these issues. You would be right for the first three quarters of the film. Then, director Lee Daniels hits you with one last blow, the killing blow, the point at which you begin to weep uncontrollably. This emotion is only perpetuated when Precious utters the exact word you are thinking, “Why?”. Only a film that spends the first three quarters building up this painful back story could put that much impact in that one word. The word that is every four year olds favorite, and every debater’s go to question. The word that we all ask ourselves when things begin to look bleak, but after seeing this movie, it will be hard to ask that question again unless your circumstances are really bad.
The style of the film was very in the face of the characters. At times I wanted the scene to switch to a medium wide shot to help relieve some of the tension, but the the scene wouldn’t have been as impactful if it had. There are points when the close-ups become almost too much to handle, constantly bombarding the audience with a claustrophobic feeling that pushes viewer’s to their emotional limits, and it seems that if there were 30 more seconds of close-up in the film, many of us would have hit our breaking point and simply stopped caring. It’s not a popular thing to say, but there comes a point when the audience just can’t take any more emotional abuse and they just shut down, and Precious tested that breaking point.
Overall I would recommend this film for that rainy night when you need a good cry. It’s great at pulling at your heart string and driving home the idea that other people have it much worse than you. It’s not something to watch on a sunshiny day, or one in which life looks bleak. Be careful when you choose to watch the film, but do watch it eventually.

Rules to Live By, According to Fight Club

As a self proclaimed film nerd, I have decided to define my life philosophy by films. The film itself does not have to be good, but the quote has to be something I can live by. The first film I decided to apply to my life is David Fincher's "Fight Club". In a not so surprising sequence of events, I found the first 9 rules for life:

1) 'This is your life and it is ending one minute at a time."

2) "With a gun barrel between your teeth, you speak only in vowels."

3) "First you have to give up, first you have to know, not fear, know that someday you are going to die.It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything"

4) "You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're no the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis."

5) "You are not special. You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake."

6) "On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero."

7) "Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken."

8) "You can swallow a pint of blood before you get sick."

9) "Now, a question of etiquette; as I pass do I give the ass or the crotch?"

Not sure what the next philosophy will come from. Suggestions are welcome, but you can't force inspiration, so I can't guarantee that anything will come of them.

Shut Up Little Man: An Audio Misadventure

The one venue at the True False Film Festival that has never sold out for any event is The Missouri Theater, so when I saw that Shut Up Little Man: An Audio Misadventure was playing there, I decided to queue up for it. I knew going in that it was about an underground movement in the late 1980s, which is something I have always been fascinated by, and nothing at True False has ever let me down, so I decided to go ahead and see it. I was not disappointed.

The "Shut Up Little Man" phenomenon started when Eddie Lee Sausage and Mitchell D began recording their bickering neighbors. When they gave copies of the tapes to their friends, the recording began to multiply through underground tape trading, and soon the neighbors had become infamous. As these things often do, the arguments began to inspire art in the form of comics, play, and movies. Before long, the story was being adapted into a film by three different groups of people.

While the film is interesting, witty, and hilarious, it also provides a sad commentary on our society. As the tapes play out, it becomes obvious that the two men are miserable, even if it is only when they are drunk, and you begin to wonder what kind of person laughs at this horrible misery, after which point you remind yourself that you too were laughing.

The film eventually boils down to a very honest portrait of Mitchell D and Eddie Lee Sausage, that shows them not as people seeking to take advantage of their neighbors, but instead as two young college graduates caught up in curiosity. The results of their curiosity have been wide spread and versatile, but they were not the intent of the boys recording the tapes late at night. The two were acting more as anthropologists than as manipulators, and thirty years after the fact they do feel sorry for all that has happened as a result of their tapes.

While the style is varied throughout the film, and the subjects are at times hard to watch, the film is ultimately an enjoyable one. The story is honest, and the filmmaker provides a fresh perspective on the situation. If you get the chance to see "Shut Up Little Man: An Audio Misadventure", I would highly recommend it.

La Bocca Del Lupo

Over the past four years I have come to the conclusion that there is no way to see every film at the True False Film Festival, so instead I have developed a method of seeing films based on their directors or subjects. This method has quickly become unusable because every time I meet a director or subject I want to see their film because they are all so interesting. The compromise is looking at the description of the documentary, my experience with the director or subject, and my schedule, and seeing which fits best. This year there were two films that, based on these criteria, I simply could not miss.

As part of my Italian Cinema class, I was introduced to Pietro Marcello, the director of La Bocca Del Lupo (In the Mouth of the Wolf), and as the class went I on discovered he had very interesting views on cinema, views that I also have. The more he spoke about film, the more passionate he became, and the more I wanted to see his film, just to see how much of that passion had extended into it. The film did not disappoint.

After working a six hour shift as a volunteer, I stood in the queue line for the Forrest Theater, which is the venue located in the Tiger Hotel during the festival. I got there over an hour early and was still number 20 in line, and with only 180 seats available I was not expecting to get in, so when I did, I was overly excited.

The venue was not the ideal one for a film with subtitles. All of the seats were level, so for those sitting farther back, it was hard to see the lettering at the bottom of the screen, but if you were dedicated, it could be done. The nice thing about the film, however, was that it didn't rely as much on interviews or narration, but instead was a very visual piece. A story could be drawn from the imagery on the screen. It may not have been what the director intended, but it was enough to keep you interested if you couldn't read the subtitles.

The film told two stories. In the Question and Answer part of the showing, Marcello revealed that he had been asked by the city of Genoa to make a documentary about the city, but since he is not from Genoa, he used archival footage to allow the history of Genoa the opportunity to tell its story. The other part of the film was based on Enzo and Mary, and while I won't give away their story, the story of how the director found them is just as interesting. Outside of a baker, Marcello saw a man who had what described as "the face of cinema," so he approached him and asked to tell his story. What he got was one of the greatest discoveries in documentary filmmaking that I have seen.

The film is structured in a way that entwines the story of Enzo and Mary with the story of the city, using clips from tapes they sent to each other while Enzo was incarcerated, mixed with narrative written by the director. There is suspense in the film, as well as a neat circular structure that gives the audience just enough guidance to keep the film from becoming an art film, but still allows them to draw their own conclusions.

Something I found interesting was the way in which Marcello revealed the story of Mary and Enzo. While the audience was introduced to the two through their tapes, they hadn't been visually introduced to them before the "confession" scene. The scene is called a confession because Marcello asked them to simply speak to the camera nd say what they felt needed to be said. He did this for seven months before getting the segment he used. Once he got the story on tape without coaxing it from his subject, he put it onscreen in one large segment. There is no intercutting and very little b-roll. He allows the subjects and their body language to intrigue the audience, and he lets it go on just long enough to keep the audience interested without letting them zone out. There are so many undertones to the story being told that come through when watching the people who tell it, and none of them would be noticed if the confession wasn't presented in such a straight forward manner.



The visual style of the film was perhaps my favorite aspect. It was like watching Amelie, but knowing that it was a documentary. The coloring and lighting of the shots were gorgeous, and the incorporation of archival footage was motivated and seamless. There were two voices telling two stories, but visually they were all one.

All in all, this was one of my favorite films of the entire festival. It was gorgeous, it was well told, and it was honest. The filmmaker acknowledged his limits, and instead of trying to do it anyways, he found a way to allow the people of Genoa to tell their story. It is clear that he respects his subjects and his art form, something that can sometimes be lost in any form of cinema, so when a director clearly cares about these things, it is refreshing.

Buck

I will be the first person to admit that I wasn't overly excited about Buck (2011). My teacher had given me three choices of films that she could get me tickets to and the only one that wasn't political and didn't sound like it was going to depress me was Buck. I told a friend of mine who is a barrel racer about the film and decided if I was going to recommend it, I should at least watch the trailer. After I did, seeing the film became a priority.

The film was a beautiful portrait, not just of a man and his passion for horses, but of the human soul. Buck is a person unlike any other that I have seen in my life. He is the perfect combination of sensitivity, honesty, and understanding. He loves his work because he loves riding horses and helping people ride them without abusing them.

While the horses in this film are beautiful and make you want to go out and ride a horse, the film is not about them. As the title implies, the film is about Buck. There is something about him that pulls at your emotions immediately, and it doesn't let go through the entire film. While he makes you laugh quiet often, Buck also makes you cry. Not because something bad has happened, but because he has truly touched you. There were countless instances where I wanted to cry simply because a small task was accomplished that meant so much. There were also points where you could see pure happiness and joy on screen, and it was so real that it made you wonder if you had ever seen that yourself. Buck is truly happy when he works with horses and more importantly when he spends time with his youngest daughter and horses. There is a look and a calm that comes over him that I don't think most people ever feel, but it is magical.

I can't really criticize the making of the film because I'm not a documentary filmmaker and I don't know a lot about what makes a good documentary. I can say that Cindy Meehl achieved her goal of making a cinematic masterpiece that looks like a feature length production (that was in the post film Q&A that Buck was also at). It represents a complicated and unique man in a kind and loving light. The film does not seek to humiliate or flatter its subject, but instead portrays him exactly as he is. It was beautiful, it was heartbreaking, it was perfect. Buck, the man and the film, was an inspiration.