Sydney Film Festival - Film Review - Monsieur Lazhar

Fellag as Monsieur Lazhar

French Canadian director, Philip Falardeau's Academy Award nominated film brings to the screen a story filled with compassion, empathy and humour but without falling into maudlin sentimentality. The storyline follows an Algerian refugee, Bachir Lazhar, who obtains a teaching post in a Montreal Primary School following the untimely death of one of the teachers by suicide which has left her class of children badly shaken. Lazhar has his own trauma to overcome through the loss of his family in Algeria during the internal war and his precarious situation as his refugee status is being reviewed by the Quebec Authorities. Two of his young charges, Alice and Simon who witnessed the death of their teacher are profoundly affected and Lazhar is drawn to assist them as far as possible while struggling with his own  tragedy. This is an uplifting film with many humourous points despite its sad premise and has been adapted very successfully from a one person stage play by Philip Falardeau. Of trivia interest, the lead actor, Fellag, actually works as a comedian in France and he is of Algerian origin.

Sydney Film Festival - Film Review - On the Road

On the Road - Sam Riley (l) and Garrett Hedlund (r)

Film director, Walter Salles has brought Jack Kerouac's prominent novel to the screen with an excellent period piece set in America during the immediate years following World War II.  The story centres around aspiring New York writer Sal Paradise (actor Sam Riley) who meets and is befriended by the overly charming and beguiling ex-con Dean Moriarty (Garrett Hedund). Together with Dean's young wife Marylou (Kristen Stewart) they embark on a series of adventures to experience the world, other people and ultimately discover themselves. The format for the film is a well established 'road' movie with a recognised 'coming of age' tale. The character of Dean is one of ultimate narcissism and he uses, abuses and betrays all of his friends, lovers and associates including Sal. Prominent cast members include contemporary female acting favourites Kirsten Dunst and Kristen Stewart with the lead male roles expertly handled by Sam Riley and Garrett Hedlund. Although hard to follow at times due to constant location changes (are they arriving or leaving a place?), its a competent film although not to the same standard as Walter Salles other road film, The Motorcycle Diaries.   

Sydney Film Festival - Film Review - Amour

Jean-Louis Trintignant and Emmanuelle Riva

Amour provided Austrian Director, Michael Haneke, with a second and back-to-back Palme d'Or at Cannes for this insightful and sensitive film on old age and the end-of-life. The story revolves around an elderly couple, Georges and Anne, retired music teachers living in their twilight years. Cultivated and dedicated to each other, their relationship is tested when Anne suffers a stroke and Georges decides to care for her at home rather than rely on hospitals and aged care institutions. Their daughter, also a musician lives abroad with her family but returns on learning of her mothers plight. Georges is portrayed by veteran French actor, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Anne by Emmanuelle Riva and Isabelle Hubbbert is their daughter. This is quite a confronting, tell-it-as-it-is film but captures a couple's lifelong commitment to each other in an ultimate love story and finally the moment when it's time to say goodbye. A French language film with English subtitles.

Sydney Film Festival - Film Review - Rampart

Woody Harrelson - Still shot from 'Rampart'

Rampart features a quite violent story about veteran LAPD patrolman, Dave Brown (Woody Harrelson) caught on tape brutally beating a road accident suspect. Under investigation for the incident and already a suspect in an earlier murder of a felon, Dave Brown's life spirals out of control. The film suffers from an exceptionally narrow base for although the title refers to the actual police division ('Rampart') the focus is almost entirely on this single police officer operating in isolation to the rest of his colleagues. The Rampart police command in Los Angeles, California was the subject of extensive investigations in the 1990s for a variety of serious offenses committed by 70 serving police officers but forms only a vague background being cursarily mentioned in the film. Essentially there is little to find attractive or interesting about the lead character, his descent into illicit drug taking, alcohol abuse, narcissism, the two former wives and his two daughters.

The storyline in fact has elements of similar films such as 'Bad Lieutenant' (Harvey Keitel was the lead role) where rogue police officers fall off-the-rails and descend into a 'Leaving Las Vegas' scenario of drugs, alcohol and personal damnation. There is a good female supporting cast with Sigourney Weaver as the investigating Assistant District Attorney, Anne Heche and Cynthia Nixon (as the two ex-wives, who are also cast as sisters) and Robin Wright as a lawyer representing some of Brown's targets. Also in the cast are Steve Buscemi and Ice Cube. The film has several strengths in terms of scene setting and context however its limited focus is disappointing.

Sydney Film Festival - Film Review - Lore

Lore - Saskia Rosendahl

Australian film director, Cate Shortland directed and produced this joint Australian-German production  based on a book of fiction by Rachel Seiffert titled 'The Dark Room'. The storyline revolves around a group of German children at the conclusion of World War II who are attempting to cross the Allied occupied Germany from their home in the Black Forest (Southern Germany) to reach their Aunt's home in Hamburg (Northern Germany). Their father, an SS Officer, has been interned by the Allies and their mother has left to join him in captivity leaving their eldest daughter 'Lore' with instructions to lead the children to safety. The film is essentially a 'road movie' following the children's journey through the deserted countryside, abandoned farmhouses, an occasional corpse and rare encounters with patrolling  US soldiers. Along the way, the children are befriended and assisted by a young Jewish man, Thomas, also making his way across the country and it is the interaction between Lore and this man which is the thematic core of the film. Ostensibly  the film narrative is a coming of age story, however the film's director, Cate Shortland also saw the film as demonstrating the conflict between the children of the oppressors (with their latent racial ideology) and the oppressed (being the young Jewish man, Thomas). This film has numerous flaws which undermine its quality at various points. The most glaring is  the original premise of the film which is undermined by the plot structure itself -  the realisation by the children towards the conclusion of the film, that Thomas whom they thought was Jewish was in fact carrying identity papers which were not his own. He may not have been Jewish at all. The protagonist interaction therefore is based on a false premise and Thomas far from being offended by anti-Jewish comments, would have welcomed them as a reinforcement of his identity at a time when it gave him an advantage. He shows little sign of being perturbed by Lore's outbursts but more the children's lack of common sense in the lawless countryside.

On another level, the very possibility of children of an SS Officer being befriended by a Jewish survivor, however mutually convenient for survival, in 1945 was remote if not ludicrous. Technically the film spends inordinate periods of time with scene atmospherics - clouds, countryside, forest, hills - and Lore's face - and almost loses continuity with the emphasis on sensual cinematographic settings.  In 1945, Germany was in chaos and severely damaged from the air bombing campaigns and the ground warfare, yet little of this is apparent in the film with a few damaged buildings and a pristine countryside. With WWII dramas there is a threshold of believability which needs to be achieved and Lore does not manage to reach that measure despite its best intentions.    

Sydney Film Festival - Film Review - Once Upon a Time in Anatolia

Once Upon a Time in Anatolia from Turkish director Nuri Bilge Ceylan could be best be described as being as lost as the desolate Anatolian landscape in which it was shot. Wide panoramic landscapes, sweeping continuous takes, use of other atmospheric devices and some initial light-hearted dialogue for the principal characters, does not subsequently salvage a film which has a sparse and threadbare storyline. The film is centred on a group of men searching for the corpse of a murder victim in the Anatolian countryside. The group includes the Chief of Police, the Prosecutor, a court doctor, police officers, grave diggers and the alleged suspects being held in custody (who have ageed to lead the group to the location of the body). Almost half of the film covers the group's travels across the countryside mostly in the darkness of night. The is no doubt as to the guilt of the perpetrators so this is not a thriller or 'whodunnit' murder investigation. A mystifying element of the film is the abrupt switch from the group and its key leaders to an almost exclusive and narrow focus on the doctor alone with no indication or clues given for this change. Many minutes are spent with the doctor's brooding, contemplative face on screen without any dialogue. This creates a disjointed narrative without adding anything to the overall understanding of the story, such as it is. Perhaps more mystifying is the fact this film won the Grand Prix at Cannes.

Sydney Film Festival - Film Review - Beasts of the Southern Wild

Beasts of the Southern Wild - Hushpuppy

Beasts of the Southern Wild is not an easily classifiable film but rather carries a number of elements of storytelling, metaphor and messages. The film is set in the marshy, swamp Bayou country somewhere around Louisiana in the Southern United States within a small self-sufficient community who live defiantly away from mainstream society. The story is focussed on six-year-old Hushpuppy who lives with her father, Wink, in "The Bathtub", the swampy marshland where the community lives and which is under threat due to storms, rising water levels and the levees which protect the rest of society. Wink periodically disappears leaving Hushpuppy to fend for herself amongst the semi-domestic animals they keep. The community's children are taught in school about natural selection in evolution, global warming and the ecological shifts underway thorugh the melting of the icecaps. A massive storm comes, the icecaps melt, destructive prehistoric beasts are released and 'the Bathtub' is threatened with extinction. Wink is also terminally ill and this story about community is as much about the underlying powerful relationship between a father and his daughter. Benh Zeitlin's film is, at times, slow moving  and occasionally a bit baffling (with the appearance of prehistoric creatures) nonetheless it captures a community's fierce independence in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.