Anora

 

Sean Baker: Anora (US 2024) with Mark Eydelshteyn (Vanya) and Mikey Madison (Ani).

OPENING GALA

37th Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF) Rakkautta & Anarkiaa / Love & Anarchy

Opened by Outi Rehn and Pekka Lanerva.

US © 2024 Anora Productions.

Languages: English, Russian, Armenian. English subtitles.

Festival premiere: 21 May 2024 Cannes - Palme d'Or.

American festival premiere: 30 Aug 2024 Telluride.

Finnish premiere: 1 Nov 2024, released by Finnkinon elokuvalevitys with Finnish / Swedish subtitles by Taina Komu / Sophia Beckman.

Viewed at HIFF, Bio Rex, 19 Sep 2024

Program note at Telluride Film Festival 2024: Made possible by a donation from Linda Lichter & Nick Marck --- Larry Gross (TFF 2024): "Sean Baker's film begins as a sexually explicit PRETTY WOMAN. Ani (Mikey Madison), a lap-dancer, is not above providing extra services if the price is right. Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the spoiled, comically libidinous son of a Russian oligarch, can't get enough of her. Their impromptu marriage sends their relationship into wildly unpredictable territory. Though Madison (best known for the series Better Things) has been a working actress for a decade, nothing will prepare you for her pedal-to-the metal comic intensity and the raw street cred she brings to every scene. Baker (RED ROCKET) continues to display his mastery in depicting people leading unconventional lives on the margins of society. With ANORA, he adds outrageous slapstick comedy and a pulse-pounding crime story to his repertoire. Winner of Cannes Palme d Or, ANORA firmly positions Baker as a significant modern auteur."  LG (U.S., 2024, 138 min) In person: Sean Baker, Mikey Madison, Mark Eydelshteyn, Samantha Quan, Karren Karagulian, Alex Coco.

AA: I missed Anora in Telluride because my antennae alerted that I might not care for it. But I wanted to see Anora at the opening gala of Love & Anarchy the Helsinki International Festival, because it fits the "Anarchy" bill. 

There are special thanks in the end credits to Jess Franco and Soledad Miranda. Soledad Miranda was a Spanish flamenco dancer and singer who got her big breakthrough in Jess Franco movies like Nachts, wenn Dracula erwacht (with Christopher Lee) and Vampyros lesbos (as a Turkish lesbian vampire who chases new victims with her erotic nightclub act).

Anora belongs to the current of prestige movies channeling the genre energy of low budget pulp fiction. This has been a major trend since the 1970s and Star Wars. My own attitude is ambivalent to the upgrading of Buck Rogers and Jess Franco without a corresponding broadening of the spiritual perspective.

Anora has been seen as a satirical corrective to Pretty Woman. Disney World is planned as the site of the honeymoon of Ani and Vanya, and Cinderella is the explicit reference both in Pretty Woman and Anora. Anora turns into a parody, a farce and a slapstick comedy, but at the same time it is a tragic coming-of-age story for the protagonist.

Visually, Anora is powerful, juxtaposing strikingly its different worlds. The gaudy milieu of the Headquarters (HQ) sex wonderland, bathing in glowing red. The equally gaudy but expensive nouveau-riche world of the Zakharov family with luxury cars, private jets, Las Vegas suites and a New York penthouse - a lifestyle resembling that of a James Bond villain. And the counter-image: solid, gritty New York milieux on the other side of the tracks. All this has been caught memorably by the cinematographer Drew Daniels.

The performances are first-rate by Mikey Madison as Ani, Mark Eidelshtein as Ivan (Vanya) and Yura Borisov (Igor).

Anora is an original interpretation of the eternal theme of sex as commodity. It is about reification and objectification. Starting with the opening credits there is abundant footage of big bare bottoms, and many sex scenes. Some have warm emotion, but the general impression is loveless love, sexless sex. Another eternal theme: sex without love can be good but a fundamental void remains.

Because of the spiritual emptiness I cannot relate to Anora. Unfortunately the movie remains on a surface level.

The life of Russian oligarchs would be a magnificent subject for the cinema. Putin's oligarchs manage the biggest treasury of dark money in the history of the world, and it is growing in the archipelago of Western tax paradises in the City of London, Delaware, New York, etc. While we nominally subject Russia to sanctions because of its Feldzug against Ukraine, we in reality increasingly finance Russia helping it expand its treasury of dark money. This theme is absent from Anora. The oligarch family is portrayed in caricature, especially Ms. Zakharov and her idiot son Vanya. But Father Zakharov is performed straight by the great Aleksei Serebryakov, and I would have liked even fleeting references to his business dimension. I am not impressed by the caricature. We have underestimated Russia since the Fall of the Wall (and all the way since the Intervention Wars of 1918-1922) and are currently suffering the consequences.

The Zakharovs have managed to raise an heir with no character or integrity. Igor the bodyguard is right when he congratulates Anora for having become liberated from the family.

There has been a turn in the accounts of sex workers in the cinema. Paul Verhoeven's Showgirls was derided at the time, but now there are interesting movies on the milieu, often directed by women such as Hustlers by Lorene Scafaria and À mon seul désir by Lucie Borleteau. The female look provides a new perspective. About Anora I have to make up my mind: is it mainly a case of glorified exploitation? 

While Mikey Madison's performance is great, her character has not much scope - and the world of the movie is desolately empty in spiritual dimension and transcendence. The extremely limited range of the vocabulary in the dialogue may be due to Anora's Uzbek-Russian background. Expletives dominate to such an extent that the audience was roaring in laughter to its slapstick stupidity. I wanted to cry.

Peter von Bagh memorial: "Writing on Films Now - What's Up?" (Decennial of Peter von Bagh's death)

"Writing on Films Now - What's Up?" arranged by Risto Jarva Society at the Rosebud Sivullinen Bookstore. Panelists: Tuukka Hämäläinen, Satu Kyösola, Antti Alanen, Jari Sedergren, Jouko Aaltonen (moderator). 17 Sep 2024. Please click on the photo to expand it.

On Tuesday 17 September 2024, the tenth anniversary of Peter von Bagh's death, Risto Jarva Society celebrated the grantee of the the annual Peter von Bagh Stipendium, established to promote Finnish film writing.

The recipient this year was Tuukka Hämäläinen, currently writing a book called "Leffaharrastajan käsikirja" ["Handbook for the Film Buff"] and who has recently published together with Tero Mielonen the acclaimed "Tiedettä valkokankaalla - enemmän kuin Frankensteinin perintö" ["Science on the Screen - Beyond Frankenstein"] (Art House 2024, 388 pp). Hämäläinen (born 1987) is a writer, poet, editor and singer-songwriter. Besides films and music his expertise also includes games.

Our panel discussion focused on writing on films in the turbulence of today's rapidly changing media landscape. We agreed that writing on films (including all moving images) is more important than ever. I emphasized the importance of fair compensation for writers in the age of internet when the public expects everything to be free online. And also the challenge of preserving film criticism published online only. I also gave an update on the project of editing Peter von Bagh's posthumous works online.

My remarks on 

Cynthia Lucia and Rahul Hamid: Cineaste on Film Criticism, Programming, and Preservation in the New Millennium (a book, 2017). 

Gerald Peary: For the Love of Movies: The Story of American Film Criticism (a movie, 2008).

H. K. Riikonen: Klinge (a book)

H. K. Riikonen: Klinge (FI 2024). The cover illustration: Edmond Dantès discovers the treasure of Abbé Faria in Alexander Dumas's Le Comte de Monte-Cristo, gravure by Gustave Staal, Jean-Adolphe Beaucé, Edmod Coppin, etc.

H. K. Riikonen, Klinge : Kirjoituksia tutkijan, tarkkailijan ja muistelijan 2000-luvun tuotannosta [Klinge : Writings on the Work of the Scholar, Observer and Memoirist in the 21th Century]. 362 pp. Illustrated. Soft cover. ISBN 978-952-215-912-0. Printed at: BoD - Books on Demand, Norderstedt, Germany. Helsinki: Ntamo, 2024. 

Matti Klinge (31 Aug 1936 - 5 March 2023) was a major Finnish historian and a towering figure on our country's intellectual sky over seven decades. He conducted solid research and indispensable work in key areas such as the University of Helsinki and the history of Helsinki. He made original contributions to our understanding of Finland's destiny with Sweden and Russia. He was an expert of the history of the Baltic Sea and ventured to imaginative historical speculations in Muinaisuutemme merivallat [The Sea Empires of our Ancient Past]. He was the editor-in-chief of the magnificent Finnish National Bibliography. He was a major representative of the French essay style in Finnish culture. He wrote a series of memoirs in six volumes and published 23 volumes of diaries from the last decades of his life, "in search of lost time" in honour to Marcel Proust. They are an invaluable contribution to Finland's intellectual history.

H. K. Riikonen's book is unique and original. It consists almost exclusively of Riikonen's previously published reviews of Klinge's books in this century, but because complete sets of Klinge's memoirs and diaries belong to this period, Riikonen's work grows into a comprehensive biography and meta-biography. Despite such genesis it is an organic whole and a page-turner.

"To think is to think otherwise" was Klinge's motto, and there is hardly a page in his works that leaves me indifferent. They are always stimulating and often irritating. Let's register one of his most sympathetic features: he loved to teach and was committed to his students, also as the perfect guide on cultural visits to cities of Europe such as Paris. He understood the mission of the university not only as a site of research and teaching but a birthplace of warm lifelong friendships and networks for new generations.

Since the end of WWII in the 1940s Finnish culture has been predominantly marked by Americanism. Klinge was a refreshing dissident, always defending our Nordic, European and Classical roots. He was a Latinist and a Francophile but most of all a Continental Europhile.

His most eccentric feature was a narrow power-admiring Russophilia, an indifference towards Vladimir Putin's neo-imperialism and threat to Ukraine and the Baltic States. Equally incomprehensible was Klinge's irrational antisemitism which fatally marred his record as a public intellectual.

A keyword in Klinge's public persona is indolence, not in the meaning of laziness but in the special meaning of cool detachment. In great public catastrophes he was not swept with shock, but he empathized with the suffering of children, especially war orphans. 

Klinge's cultural interests were wide, and he was even interested in the cinema. He loved Jacques Tati and David Suchet as Hercule Poirot. Klinge was an excellent writer, always great to read. Many found him insufferably arrogant, but I registered his sense of humour and self-irony. He named his last book after an aphorism by Lichtenberg: "Ein Messer ohne Klinge, an welchem der Stiel fehlt" ["A knife without a blade and with a handle missing"].

Riikonen's book has been illustrated by vintage gravures from 1852 for Klinge's favourite book, Alexandre Dumas's Le Comte de Monte-Cristo by Gustave Staal, Jean-Adolphe Beaucé, Edmond Coppin, etc.

I often saw him walking on Tehtaankatu with his wife, always the perfect gentleman, impeccably dressed and with a cheery, brisk carriage. I had been reading his work since the 1970s, starting from his popular pocket books Vihan veljistä valtiososialismiin [From the Brothers of Hate to State Socialism, 1972] and Bernadotten ja Leninin välissä [Between Bernadotte and Lenin, 1975], but I only had one conversation with him, at the short-lived Fazer Kapteeninpuistikko Bakery on Tehtaankatu. Klinge was lamenting the downfall of public speech in America. I offered that Barack Obama's speeches are worthy of the classics of Antiquity. He said nothing but clearly found the idea preposterous.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: THE PUBLICITY BLURB OF NTAMO:

Miséricorde / Misericordia (American premiere in the presence of Alain Guiraudie)

Alain Guiraudie: Miséricorde / Misericordia (FR/ES/PT 2024) with Félix Kysyl (Jérémie Pastor). Please do click on the photo to expand it.

Misericordia

Loc: Sauclières, Aveyron. Also Millau, Nant and Saint-Jean-du-Bruel. Plus the Dourbie gorges, the Mont Aigoual forest and Suquet ridge.
Festival premiere: 20 May 2024 Cannes.

Made possible by a donation from Elizabeth Redleaf 

Viewed at Le Pierre, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 2 Sep 2024

In person: Alain Guiraudie, Charles Gillibert

...

Les Films du Losange

Special Medallion

Dedicated to Margaret Ménégoz

Michael Barker (TFF 2024): "In 1963, the aspiring German filmmaker Barbet Schroeder, a transplant to Paris, invited his hero, Éric Rohmer, to start a production company. In the 60 years since, this lean-but-mighty independent film company has become the home to many uncompromising film artists. Its first office was in Schroeder’s mother’s house. Its first film, THE BAKERY GIRL OF MONCEAU, was directed by Rohmer and starred Schroeder. In the 1970s, they were joined by the late, formidable Margaret Ménégoz, who set the tone with impeccable taste, a tough-minded approach to making deals and by standing strong and tall to protect the visions of her uncompromising, unpredictable, and unconventional filmmakers: Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Jean Eustache, Marguerite Duras, Jean-Marie Straub, Agnieszka Holland, Andrzej Wajda, Otar Iosseliani, Moufida Tlatli, Michael Haneke, Abderrahmane Sissako, Nicolas Philibert, Mia Hansen-Løve. The films have received multiple Oscar nominations, including for Best Picture, three Palme d’Ors, two Golden Lions, one Golden Bear, nine César Awards and more than 60 international prizes. Now under the guidance of Regine Vial and Charles Gillibert, the company remains a force in international sales and film distribution, with a library of 300 of the most important titles in world cinema, from the French New Wave to Denmark’s Dogme95 to the New German Cinema. The world of movies is in a transitional phase— both as art and in commerce—and the innovative Les Films du Losange continues to offer hope for cinema’s future." –Michael Barker

...

Misericordia

Bilge Ebiri (TFF 2024): "A young man (Félix Kysyl) returns home to a French provincial town for the funeral of the baker for whom he worked as a teenager. His arrival rouses the suspicions of the jealous, protective baker’s son (Jean-Baptiste Durand), the affections of the baker’s widow (Catherine Frot) and the curiosity of an odd local priest (Jacques Develay). Clearly, there are unspoken histories and desires at work here, but director Alain Guiraudie isn’t in the business of giving us conventional resolutions or explanations. Instead, he unfolds his film like a thriller, but, rather than grit and edge, MISERICORDIA proceeds with an earthy dream logic, along with Guiraudie’s characteristically playful approach to sexuality. Much as he did with 2013’s sun-drenched, unnerving queer mystery STRANGER BY THE LAKE, the director expertly mixes seemingly dissonant moods to create something all his own." –Bilge Ebiri (France-Spain-Portugal, 2024, 103 min)

AA: Alain Guiraudie's Miséricorde is a queer policier and a murky play about a young man, Jérémie (Félix Kysyl), returning to a small community in which the baker has just died. The closing of a bakery can have dramatic consequences as we know from Marcel Pagnol's La Femme du boulanger, but Guiraudie's yarn exists in quite a different sphere. The boulanger's widow is played by the irresistible Catherine Frot. She is the cordial focus of the community, in which men have lost their compass.

Jérémie wants to return to a place where he experienced a tranquil period of happiness in his turbulent teenage years. But you can't come home again. The men are morose, a child is glued to mobile apps. The film is about obscure objects of desire. Miséricorde is a bisexual story, but there are only approaches to relationships. Everything remains vague and undetermined.

As this is the 150th anniversary of Impressionism, I am struck by the Impressionist colour palette of the cinematographer Claire Mathon, recorded on location in Aveyron. Like The Trouble of Harry, Miséricorde is a film in autumn colours. Those colours are ambivalent. They shine bright and they spell death.

September 5 (American premiere in the presence of Tim Fehlbaum)

Tim Fehlbaum: September 5 (DE 2024). The ABC control studio at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

Festival premiere: 29 Aug 2024 Venice.

Language: English.

Made possible by a donation from the Nelson Family Foundation.

Viewed at the Werner Herzog Theatre, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 2 Sep 2024.

In person: Tim Fehlbaum, Peter Sarsgaard.

Larry Gross (TFF 2024): "When 11 Israeli athletes were taken hostage by a group calling themselves Black September at the 1972 Munich Olympics, it reshaped the world’s understanding of terrorism. Writer-director Tim Fehlbaum and co-writer Moritz Binder recount this often-told story from a fresh and absorbing perspective: We follow a team of ABC TV sports journalists as they struggle to deal with shocking, almost incomprehensible events unfolding in very close to real time. John Magaro (FIRST COW) plays an inexperienced lineproducer, Ben Chaplin his exhausted boss, Peter Sarsgaard the legendary ABC executive-producer Roone Arledge and Leonie Benesch (THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE) the colleague trying to get information from the German police. All four are superb. We know how it turns out, but Fehlbaum and his team work with a quiet precision and clarity that is riveting, and shattering, more than 50 years later." –Larry Gross (Germany, 2024, 94 min) 

AA: There have been several first rate movies about the 1972 Munich Olympics, but Tim Fehlbaum's September 5 is unique in its relentless focus on the television broadcasting control studio. We only know what the journalists know and follow the unbearable turns of the tragedy in tandem with them.

September 5 is interesting to watch right after Jason Reitman's Saturday Night seen two days ago. Reitman showed us the creative chaos preceding the birth and first telecast of the landmark Saturday Night Live show at NBC.

September 5 is about the first global live telecast of the Olympics, covered by the ABC Sports Division - the 1972 Munich Olympics, horribly disrupted by the massacre of the Israeli athletes' team by the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September, assisted by West German Neo-Nazis.

September 5 is one of the best films I know about journalism. Its approach to the questions of journalistic ethics is sound and professional, and I would recommend this movie to classes on journalism and mass communication. Here the team must learn by doing, because a situation like this has never happened before.

Tim Fehlbaum sums up key questions: "Can we share information before it is confirmed? Can a live broadcast include acts of violence? What is the role of media and journalism, and what is the line between news and spectacle?" And further: what is the responsibility of the media in a case where the main goal of the terrorists is media attention? Plus also: what can the media reveal when terrorists follow the broadcast, too? In September 5, ABC exposes in live transmission the German police's siege strategy which fails as a consequence.

The whole world is watching - more people see this than the landing on the Moon.

For Germany, this is a trial of fire, because this is the first Olympics in Germany since the 1938 Berlin Olympics, during the Third Reich. The shadows of the Holocaust loom large, Germans are committed to atone for the darkest moment of history. On the other hand, "Fortunate Son" on the soundtrack reminds us that the Vietnam War is not over, and ABC is committed to broadcast something elevating in contrast.

The worst possible happens. Like in Shoah and The Zone of Interest, we see nothing but understand everything by the soundtrack. For Marianna Gebhardt (Leonie Benesch), the German interpreter, this is the darkest day. Germany of all places should have been the safest haven for the Israeli team.

Santosh (2024) (American premiere in the presence of Sandhya Suri)

 

Sandhya Suri: संतोष / Santosh (GB/DE/FR 2024) with Shahana Goswani in the titel role.

संतोष

Made possible by a donation from Carol Bobo.

Language: Hindi. Also Urdu? English subtitles by Sandhya Suri.

Loc: Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.

Festival premiere: 20 May 2024 Cannes (Un certain regard).

Viewed at Le Pierre, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 2 Sep 2024.

In person: Sandhya Suri.

Larry Gross (TFF 2024): "After the shy, sheltered Santosh (Shahana Goswami) is widowed—her husband was a policeman killed during a riot—she assumes his job as a constable, thanks to a government policy: “appointment on compassionate grounds.” Mentored by Sharma (Sunita Rajwar), a tough older woman police inspector, Santosh is soon assigned a particularly brutal sexual murder case and finds herself torn between the excitement of a profound new challenge and the grim realization that the police force she works for is hopelessly sexist and corrupt. Writer-director Sandhya Suri (whose prior short film THE FIELD, TFF 2018, was an international sensation) skillfully fuses a tense police procedural with a perceptive drama of a woman’s spiritual awakening. Suri offers a clear-eyed, vibrant view of life in a rural Northern Indian village, and Goswami’s quietly luminous performance as a woman discovering her fierceness and resolve makes every step of her heroine’s journey poignant and memorable." –Larry Gross  (U.K.-Germany-France, 2024, 127 min)

AA: Sandhya Suri's Santosh is a masterpiece, one of the great films of the year 2024.

A detective story, a police procedural, a coming of age story of a young widow.

After the death of her policeman husband, Santosh, discriminated by his family, inherits his job and gets to investigate the murder case of a 15-year-old girl, Devika, belonging to the Dalit, the "untouchables", outside the main caste system.

Santosh rapidly proves skillful and finds out that Devika's boyfriend was the young Muslim Salim. Santosh tracks down the elusive Salim in the jungle of the city. 

Together with her senior policewoman partner Sharma they subject Salim to "enhanced interrogation methods" torturing him brutally and mercilessly to death. Santosh contributes with over-zealous whipping, probably becoming the one who finally kills him. 

Case closed? Santosh is disturbed by the ubiquitous anti-Muslim racism among the police, also in Sharma's attitude. Racism is present as heavily as a pervasive misogyny. The hard-boiled Sharma has learned to weather it and fights in her own brutal way (perhaps abusing her suspects as scapegoats for her feminist rampage of revenge), and Santosh seems to follow her in her Bildungsroman.

Back at the village well where the gang-raped and mutilated corpse of Devika was found, Santosh learns that the well is being constantly sabotaged by the power elite, and candid remarks of a little daughter of theirs help Santosh understand that Salim was innocent and she is staring in the eyes of the true rapists and murderers.

Meanwhile, Sharma has been fired. This was not the first time that a suspect of hers was found having "hanged himself". Santosh has become a celebrity detective. But she now leaves two rings (retrieved from the bodies of Devika and Salim) to Devika's family. In a gesture parallel to High Noon, The Chase and Dirty Harry where the sheriff / inspector drops his badge in the finale, Santosh leaves her police uniform (tailored from the one she inherited from her husband) and boards a train to a new destination.

As a detective story, Santosh succeeds, and the multiple issues of misogyny, racism and caste discrimination unfold organically from the plot. The characters are complex and compelling, and the performances are unique and original. This is the first fiction feature of Sandhya Suri, and she takes full advantage of her experience as a documentarist in creating a vivid picture of life in Lucknow.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: SANDHYA SURI INTERVIEW FOR CANNES:

The White House Effect (world premiere in the presence of Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk and Pedro Kos)

Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk, Pedro Kos: The White House Effect (US 2024).

Viewed at Le Pierre, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 1 Sep 2024.

In person: Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk, Pedro Kos.

David Wilson: "Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk and Pedro Kos’ urgent new work converts the history of U.S. climate-change policy into a high-stakes political thriller. Using an astounding array of archival footage, they tell the story— complete with White House intrigue and political one-upmanship—of the environmentalist-turned-EPA-head William Reilly, who finds himself at odds with George H. W. Bush’s Machiavellian chief of staff John Sununu. The outcomes of their clashes will have truly planetary repercussions. Brilliantly constructed, with a cinematically unsettling score by Ariel Marx, the film will grab the attention even of audiences who think they’ve seen it all when it comes to impending global disasters—it’s an unprecedented peek behind the doors of institutional power. And, if we can understand the mechanisms of obfuscation and delay, maybe we can counter them?"  –David Wilson (U.S., 2024, 96 min) 

EPA = United States Environmental Protection Agency.

AA: The White House Effect by Bonni Cohen, Jon Shenk and Pedro Kos is a masterpiece of documentary cinema, a highlight of the film year 2024.

It is divided into chapters:

I  Willing to Make Some Sacrifices

II  Which George Bush?

III  Is Science for Sale?

IV  What Has the Nation Done to Us?

Out of a vast collection of material, the team decided to focus on a single period: the George H. W. Bush presidency in 1989-1993.

The oil millionaire and former Director of Central Intelligence ran for President in 1988, when the topics of the year were global warming and the greenhouse effect. Record heat waves made headline news. It was the warmest year on record. Everybody agreed on the sense of urgency.

George H. W. Bush was the first American President and the first global leader that was elected to his position as an Environmental President. "It can be done. We must do it." “Those who think we are powerless to do anything about the greenhouse effect forget about the White House effect.”

Bush was truly committed to the calling and the challenge and appointed William K. Reilly (also a Republican) as Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Reilly, a prominent authority and a man of high integrity, did play a leading role in ushering the US into a new era of environmental responsibility. In 1989, Reilly accompanied Bush to the Paris Economic Summit, the first environment minister to accompany a head of state to this meeting.

But John H. Sununu, White House Chief of Staff, turned into a formidable counterforce to Reilly, and their conflict grows into the main driving force of the film's dramaturgy. Sununu turned into "Bush's Bad Cop".

First running on the wave of a commitment to big change, the Bush administration starts increasingly to listen to the concerns of the Big Oil. In 1989 Sununu prevented the US from signing the commitment to freeze carbon dioxide emissions. To the film-makers, this is the moment when the "U.S. relinquishes its role as a world leader".

Bush asked Sununu to resign as White House Chief of Staff in 1991. In the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit in 1992, Reilly led the U.S. delegation. The aerial shot of Christ the Redeemer acquires tremendous power in the context.

The film provides a solid background of documentation, including from arctic observation centers with graphs from 1856 till 2024, the Mauna Loa Observatory and the long-term graphs of climatologist Stephen Schneider (1945-2010). Prognoses made decades ago prove accurate. The graphs do not grow steadily. They grow exponentially.

Scientists, industrialists, politicians and public personalities on record include also Ronald Reagan, Michael Oppenheimer, Tim Wirth, Jimmy Carter, Jack Bennett (Exxon), Al Gore, James Hansen, Alan Bromley, Patrick Michaels, Richard Lindzen, Rush Limbaugh, Saddam Hussein, Bill Clinton, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Michael Young and Dan Rather.

Cohen, Shenk and Kos document a turning-point in American history before tribalism, when there was bipartisan concern for an issue with planetary repercussions. They even appear to record the very moments when a change takes place in the mind of George H. W. Bush. 

The White House Effect is not a cheap propaganda film. The questions involved transcend the limits of everyday political understanding. The sincere drive is a reset of bipartisan commitment to save life on Earth.

...

Colin, Shenk and Kos give us the long perspective and reveal the turning-point in the U.S. environmental agenda. It was also the turning-point in the political history of bipartisan U.S.A. as a world leader.

I would add to the fabula the story of the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1961). He was the first President who faced the truth about climate danger. It was the beginning of a period of high environmental awareness. Frank Capra co-produced and co-wrote the first movie about global warming, The Unchained Goddess (US 1958). Capra's movie is a bit silly but the concern for climate change is genuine.

In the 1950s we had the same basic knowledge as today. Why didn't we act? Because you don't win an election by telling the truth about the measures necessary to prevent climate change.

Colin, Shenk and Kos show George H. W. Bush in the moment of insight in this existential tragedy.

Emilia Pérez (American premiere in the presence of Jacques Audiard)

Jacques Audiard: Emilia Pérez (FR 2024).

Viewed at Werner Herzog Theatre, Telluride Film Festival (TFF) 1 Sep 2024.

In person: Jacques Audiard, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldaña, Adriana Paz.

Larry Gross (TFF 2024): "Rita (Zoe Saldaña), a lawyer with career frustrations, has a fantastically cinematic way of expressing herself: a minute into Jacques Audiard’s film, she explodes eloquently into song. When the entire courtroom starts singing and dancing with her, you know you’re watching something entirely new. Audiard, who wrote the screenplay, initially imagined EMILIA PÉREZ as an opera and everything about it is oversized in the most vital way imaginable. As the film begins, Manitas del Monte is a terrifying drug cartel honcho who offers Rita a fortune if she’ll find the surgeon who’ll help him with a delicate procedure. Jessi (Selena Gomez) is Manitas’ abandoned young wife; Epifania (Adriana Paz), a victim of drug cartel violence, is Emilia’s new love; and Karla Sofía Gascón makes an unforgettable impression. The actresses shared the best actress award at Cannes, and Audiard regular Édgar Ramírez also appears in a small but important role." –Larry Gross (France, 2024, 132 min)

AA: Jacques Audiard's Emilia Pérez is big and bold and transgressive - also transcending the director's own boundaries. The protagonist experiences a sex change. It's in Spanish. It's an opera. It is perfectly ok for an opera film to be operatic. But loud voices, strong colours and shock value can turn tiresome. Audiard demonstrates convincingly that he can do something completely different, but an irresistible inner drive is missing.

No Other Land (US premiere in the presence of Basel Adra and Yuval Abraham)

 

Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal, Rachel Szor: No Other Land (Palestine/NO 2024). In the photo: Basel Adra puts his life in danger documenting feral settler violence, all recorded by Rachel Szor.

Viewed at Le Pierre, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 1 Sep 2024

In person: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham

Mark Danner (TFF 2024): "Since last October, as all eyes have focused on the ongoing carnage in Gaza, the quiet war in the West Bank has continued. This is a war intended to push Palestinians off their land. Home demolitions, settler attacks, arrests: since October 2023, more than 600 Palestinians have died in violence in the West Bank. NO OTHER LAND intimately records this quiet war. A young Palestinian filmmaker, Basel Adra, and a young Israeli reporter, Yuval Abraham, along with codirectors Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor, captured the story of the villages of Masafer Yatta in the southern West Bank, as the Israeli army exerts growing pressure to push the Palestinians from their land. We see homes demolished—one family moves its tiny heap of belongings into a nearby cave—a young Palestinian shot and paralyzed. The filmmakers have crafted a matchless, intimate portrait of the day-in, day-out cruelty of a military occupation that has lasted more than half a century." –Mark Danner (Palestine-Norway, 2024, 95 min)

Premise from Wikipedia: "A young Palestinian activist named Basel Adra has been resisting the forced displacement of his people by Israel's military in Masafer Yatta, a region in the West Bank, since he was a child. He records the gradual destruction of his homeland, where Israeli soldiers are tearing down homes and evicting their inhabitants. He befriends Yuval, an Israeli journalist who helps him in his struggle. They form an unexpected bond, but their friendship is challenged by the huge gap between their living conditions: Basel faces constant oppression and violence, while Yuval enjoys freedom and security."

Yuval Abraham in Variety: "Basal’s family and neighbors had a huge archive of videos that were filmed over the course of 20 years. And then we as activists, we were there on the ground together, working together for almost five years, and we filmed a lot. We had Rachel, the cinematographer and co-director of the film, who was shooting us. So there was an abundance of footage. The military entered Basal’s home twice and confiscated computers and cameras. So we were always very, very stressed. It was complicated logistically and quite stressful, but in the end we managed."

AA: No Other Land is one of the greatest films of the year 2024.

This devastating account of war and occupation in Masafer Yatta in the West Bank is a collaboration between two Arab and two Jewish film-makers, the directors-screenwriters-editors Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor.

Although No Other Land has been filmed in almost impossible circumstances, under constant mortal threat from Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and brutal settler violence, the result is eloquent and convincing. The footage has been caught in hectic situations, in the heat of the moment, but the film is coherent and controlled.

The cellphone footage of the present is deftly linked with the historical video archive kept by Basal's family and neighbours over 20 years. The IDF and the murderous settlers threaten to destroy both the journalists and the family archive, but they fail. Instead, No Other Land and the footage from which it derives turn into evidence for international courts on war crimes, crimes against humanity and first degree murders of innocent demonstrators and other civilians.

The razing of a children's playground, the destruction of a school, the eviction of a family from land they have cultivated for 120 years, their turning into cave-dwellers, and a Bazinian plan-séquence of a settler killing an old unarmed farmer point blank belong to the unforgettable views.

No Other Land emerges also as a document of a Wile E. Coyote moment in the history of West Bank occupation violence. "With their strength they fail", states an old Arab farmer.

BEYOND THE JUMP BREAK: DATA FROM WIKIPEDIA:

Saturday Night (2024) (world premiere in the presence of Jason Reitman)

 

Jason Reitman: Saturday Night (US 2024) with Emily Fairn (Laraine Newman), Kim Matula (Jane Curtin), Gabriel LaBelle (Lorne Michaels), Rachel Sennott (Rosie Shuster) and Matt Wood (John Belushi).

Centenary of Columbia Pictures.

50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live in 2025.

Made possible by a donation from Roger Durling.

Viewed at Palm, Telluride Film Festival (TFF), 31 Aug 2024.

In person: Jason Reitman, Gil Kenan. Surprise guest: Bill Murray.

Larry Gross (TFF 2024): "It’s backstage at 30 Rockefeller Center, and the clock is ticking. Two young TV producers, Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) and Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman), with the writers Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott) and Michael O’Donogue (Tommy Dewey), along with their unruly ensemble of twentysomething actors (including Andy Kaufman, John Belushi and Gilda Radner), are attempting something new: live sketch comedy, broadcast to the world. But there’s not enough time, too many vulnerable egos, a resistant old-school production team and a corporate overlord (embodied here by Willem Dafoe) that is at best indifferent to the show. Will their dream be crushed before it begins? Or will the show go on? Writer-director Jason Reitman (JUNO, UP IN THE AIR), co-writer Gil Kenan and the gifted cinematographer Eric Steelberg, who makes nearly every shot an elaborate Steadicam composition, have reconstructed a famous night in inventive, often poignant, often hilarious, dream-like fashion." –Larry Gross (U.S., 2024, 104 min)

AA: Hosted by the festival director Julie Huntsinger, Jason Reitman received a hero's welcome. Reitman in turn introduced a surprise guest, Bill Murray, to standing ovation. 

Murray does not appear in "Saturday Night", nor did he participate in the premiere of the show - he become a SNL member a bit later in 1977-1980. Murray is in Telluride because of another movie, the dog story The Friend by Scott McGehee and David Siegel. 

There is an emotional connection because Murray appeared in several films directed by Jason's father Ivan Reitman (1946-2022). The Centenary of Columbia Pictures logo in the start is also meaningful because Columbia distributed films directed by Ivan Reitman and with Bill Murray, as well as other SNL-launched stars.

I have been a Jason Reitman fan since Thank You for Smoking and Juno, and Saturday Night is a labour of love for him. (The show was known in 1975 as "NBC's Saturday Night", and since 1977, "Saturday Night Live").

The film unfolds in real time in the 90 minutes before the first show. The production looks like a catastrophe. But there is calm in the eye of the storm - the producer-creator-showrunner Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle). He is unable to explain the concept of the show to anyone, but the vision is clear in his mind. The chaos seems so extreme to David Tebet,  NBC's vice president of talent (Willem Dafoe), that to the last minute he is ready to postpone the show and broadcast a Johnny Carson videotape instead.

There is a plot similarity with Fly Me to the Moon, where a representative of the Nixon administration (Woody Harrelson) prepares a soundstage simulation of the Apollo Moon landing in case the real operation fails.

Films are in dialogue with each other at festivals, and in Telluride, we see another live broadcast drama, September 5, about the 1972 Munich Olympics. The ABC Sports Division was in charge of the first global live telecast of the Olympics - disrupted by the massacre of the Israeli team by the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September assisted by West-German Neo-Nazis.

It takes a great cast to personify the fantastic team that revolutionized comedy - and Jason Reitman succeeds in recreating such an ensemble. When David Tenet is about to run his dread videotape, the whole team launches in a chorus of "I am Saturday" as in "I am Spartacus". The generation gap seems unbridgeable, and that is the most fundamental theme of the saga. "We are the first generation who grew up watching television" - and therefore there is a new metalevel in everything.

As Larry Gross states in his program note, the contribution of cinematographer Eric Steelberg is dizzying in his extended takes. And Jason Reitman's mise-en-scène is breathtaking in keeping score of the multiple storylines. It all adds up to great momentum.

The final indispensable contribution is the live perfomance of the band of Billy Preston (Jon Batiste). Like a magician, he brings unity to the chaos - reminding us of the Billy Preston impact in the Get Back / Let It Be project filmed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg and re-edited by Peter Jackson.

While I love the thrill of the Billy Preston element in the finale, I find the preceding hyper-energic score overdone - a precaution for what I call "the pandemic-phlegmatic syndrome" (when in a pandemic year's film all elements are perfect but an engrossing irresistible drive is missing)?