Megalopolis

Francis Ford Coppola: Megalopolis (US 2024) with Adam Driver (Cesar Catilina) and Nathalie Emmanuel (Julia Cicero).

Rakkautta & Anarkiaa / Love & Anarchy: Helsinki International Film Festival (HIFF) 2024.

Mega Gala: Megalopolis

HIFF: "R&A's first-ever Mega Gala features legendary director Francis Ford Coppola's highly anticipated and highly controversial passion project."

Francis Ford Coppola's Megalopolis. A Fable.

US 2024. PC: American Zoetrope - Caesar Film LLC. P: Barry Hirsch, Fred Roos, Michael Bederman, Francis Ford Coppola.

D+SC: Francis Ford Coppola. DP: Mihai Mălaimare, Jr. ED: Cam McLaughlin, Glen Scantlebury. M: Osvaldo Golijov.

C: Adam Driver (Cesar Catilina), Giancarlo Esposito (Franklyn Cicero), Nathalie Emmanuel (Julia Cicero), Aubrey Plaza (Wow Platinum), Shia LaBeouf (Clodio Pulcher), Jon Voight (Hamilton Crassus III), Laurence Fishburne (Fundi Romaine), Talia Shire (Constance Crassus Catilina), Jason Schwartzman (Jason Zanderz), Kathryn Hunter (Teresa Cicero), Grace VanderWaal (Vesta Sweetwater), Dustin Hoffman (Nush Berman).

Languages: English

138 min

Sci-fi, Urban spaces, Society, Fantasy, Tech

Distributor: Njuta Films

Festival premiere: 16 May 2024 Cannes

American festival premiere: 9 Sep 2024 Toronto

US theatrical premiere: 27 Sep 2024

Finnish premiere: 27 Sep 2024

Viewed at a HIFF press screening, Cinema Orion, 20 Sep 2024.

Linked: Francis Ford Coppola: Director's Statement on Megalopolis.

HIFF 2024: "Ohjaajalegenda Francis Ford Coppolan kohujen saattelema unelmaprojekti Megalopolis on röyhkeä mutta vilpitön utopia vallasta, korruptiosta, rakkaudesta – ja ennen kaikkea ajasta. Yhtä lailla elokuvaa voisi luonnehtia kirjallisuusviittauksia viljeleväksi scifi-fantasiaksi, turboahdetuksi (anti)supersankari-tarinaksi tai poliittiseksi hätähuudoksi. Tämä määritelmiä väistävä mammutti on koettava itse!"

"Adam Driverin näyttelemän kaupunkisuunnittelija Cesarin kautta valkokankaalle vyörytetään dystooppinen New Rome, joka näyttää New Yorkilta, mutta muistuttaa myös loistostaan kohti vääjäämä-töntä tuhoa rapistuvaa Rooman valtakuntaa. Cesar on vallan-himoinen visionääri, jolla on kyky hallita aikaa, mutta edes hän ei pysty kontrolloimaan ympäröivän yhteiskunnan kolisevia kulisseja. Ja kun imperiumi ympärillä murenee, mitä tekevät ihmiset? Tietysti juhlivat, juonivat, ahnehtivat ja irstailevat!"

"Megalomaanisen uran tehnyt Coppola on unelmoinut tämän elokuvan tekemisestä jo 40 vuotta. Alun perin hän haki varoja normaaleista lähteistä, mutta päätyi lopulta rahoittamaan noin 120 miljoonaa taalaa maksaneen eetoksensa itse myymällä omaisuuttaan, muun muassa osan kuuluisasta viinitilastaan. Cesarissa onkin helppo nähdä Coppolaa itseään: omaan erinomaisuuteensa rakastunut visionääri ei suostu kuuntelemaan ketään, eikä taivu kompromisseihin."

"Megalopolis on pamfletti, testamentti ja hätähuuto. Painava sanoma on kääritty ylenpalttisuuteen ja yllätyksiin, joista herttaisin lienee talent-realityohjelmasta elokuviin päätynyt laulaja-lauluntekijä Grace VanderWaal." Saija Holm

"The word “opus” feels custom-designed as a descriptor for a film such as Francis Ford Coppola’s self-conscious folly-to-end-all-follies, Megalopolis. It’s a rare bird indeed in that it’s a work of art that actively practices what it preaches, a celebration of unfettered creativity and farsightedness that offers a volcanic fusion of hand-crafted neo-classicism while running through a script of toe-tapping word-jazz that merrily dances between the raindrops of logic and coherence. . . It’s a film from the man who made The Godfather. And it’s a film from the man who made Dracula. And it‘s also a film from the man who made One From the Heart. And it’s definitely a film from the man who made Twixt. On a macro level, there should be no surprise when it comes to discovering what this film ended up being, but on a micro level there are images and ideas that are completely surprising and new." David Jenkins, Little White Lies

"With Megalopolis, he crams 85 years worth of artistic reverence and romantic love into a clunky, garish, and transcendently sincere manifesto about the role of an artist at the end of an empire. It doesn’t just speak to Coppola’s philosophy, it embodies it to its bones." David Ehrlich, IndieWire

AA: What is Megalopolis? A film that evades classification. A visionary epic fantasy poem, simultaneously futuristic and historical. The basic concept is time, and like Christopher Nolan's time plays (such as Tenet) it moves forward and backward, yet seems to be anchored into an imaginary present, the year MMXXIV. Megalopolis is a succession tragedy inspired by Roman Antiquity and a science fiction yarn, at once utopistic and dystopian. 

It channels Metropolis in its vision of the city of the future - both Metropolis and Megalopolis having New York City as their inspiration. There is also a bit of The Fountainhead in the mix - the megalomania. Megalopolis is a magnificent dream play and a fantasmagoria. Francis Ford Coppola belongs to the rare masters of the Georges Méliès lineage of fantasy spectacle, in films including Finian's Rainbow, One From the Heart and Apocalypse Now. 

The computer generated artificial paradise is in continuation to the experimental One From the Heart. Megalopolis is Coppola's last word in this current. As a testament film its parallel is Fanny and Alexander: a colossal farewell party of an old master.  A drop of The Game of Thrones may have been inserted in the visual cocktail. It is both about the society of the spectacle and an embodiment of that very condition.

Whatever Megalopolis is, it is different, original and unique. It needs to be revisited. As for my personal verdict: too early to say. Just random remarks: Adam Driver carries his leading role with grandeur. It may seem bizarre to incorporate extended Shakespeare dialogue in Megalopolis, but Driver makes Hamlet's most familiar monologue sound new. Time is out of joint. Some of the female characters are seen with a surprisingly old school stereotyped sexist gaze. 

Megalopolis is long and incoherent judged by the criteria of a well-made story-driven play. But there is a fascinating groove, and a compelling musical drive throughout. Something profoundly dream-like and dance-like. Something Wagnerian, something deranged, something like late Eisenstein (Ivan the Terrible). The counterpart in Shakespeare might be the romantic mystery fairy-tale The Tempest. The stuff that dreams are made of.

...

Films enter into dialogue with each other via soundtrack selections. Ludwig van Beethoven: II Satz: Allegretto from: 7. Sinfonie in A-Dur op. 92 (Entst. 1811/12, Urauff. 1813) I was listening to three months ago as the main theme of The Long Night. Here it is heard in the finale as the gates of Megalopolis open and arrows shot by Hamilton Crassus III (Jon Voight) are removed from the ass of the scheming Clodio Pulcher (Shia LaBeouf).

Cast in the role of Vesta Sweetwater is Grace VanderWaal who graces the movie with two of her own songs: "My Pledge" and "No Turning Around".

Francis Ford Coppola: Director's Statement on Megalopolis

Francis Ford Coppola: Megalopolis (US 2024) with Adam Driver, Nathalie Emmanuel, Giancarlo Esposito, Jon Voight, Shia LaBeouf, Laurence Fishburne, Aubrey Plaza and Dustin Hoffman. Please click on the image to expand it.

Linked: my blog remarks on Megalopolis.

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT — FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA

The seeds for Megalopolis were planted when as a kid I saw H. G. Wells' Things to Come. This 1930s Korda classic is about building the world of tomorrow, and has always been with me, first as the ‘boy scientist’ I was and later as a filmmaker.

I wasn’t really working on this screenplay for 40 years as I often see written, but rather I was collecting notes and clippings for a scrapbook of things I found interesting for some future screenplay, or examples of political cartoons or different historical subjects. Ultimately after a lot of time I settled on the idea of a Roman epic. And then later, a Roman epic set in Modern America, so I really only began writing this script, on and off, in the last dozen years or so. Also, as I have made many films of many different subjects and in many different styles, I hoped for a project later in life when I might better understand WHAT my personal style was.

Always respecting the original writer in films I made, and always insisting that their names appear above the title, such as it was with Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, or Bram Stoker’s Dracula, it was only with The Rain People and The Conversation that it could have been permitted to have my own name as original writer on it; but then I was too insecure to present myself in such grandiosity. However, early on, I remember once I took 130 blank pages and put on a title page boldly announcing Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis and under that, All Roads Lead to Rome. I pretended it wasn't totally blank, weighing it in my hands so I could imagine what one day it would feel like, and believe one day it could exist. Then later, once I had a draft, I must have rewritten it 300 times, hoping each rewrite would improve it, if only a half percent better.

I considered many possibilities, becoming interested in an incident known as “The Catiline Conspiracy,” accepting that Modern America was the historical counterpart of Ancient Rome and that the Catiline Conspiracy as told by historian Sallust could be set in Modern America, just as Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness was set in the Vietnam War in Apocalypse Now.

I began with the essence of a plot: perhaps an evil patrician (Catiline) plotted to overthrow the Republic, but was thwarted by Cicero, the consul. I renamed Catiline to Cesar as suggested by Mary Beard because in Suetonius’s version, young Julius Caesar was very much in cahoots with Catiline, and Cesar would be more familiar to audiences than Sergius (which was historical Catiline’s name). I wondered whether the traditional portrayal of Catiline as ‘evil’ and Cicero as ‘good’ was necessarily true. In history, Catiline lost and was killed and Cicero survived. But since the survivor tells the story, I wondered, what if what Catiline had in mind for his new society was a realignment of those in power and could have even in fact been ‘visionary’ and ‘good’, while Cicero perhaps could have been 'reactionary' and ‘bad’.

The story would take place in a somewhat stylized New York City, portrayed as the center of the power of the world, and Cicero would be the mayor during a time of great financial upheaval, such as the financial crisis under former Mayor Dinkins. Cesar, in turn, would be a master builder, a great architect, designer, and scientist combining elements of Robert Moses as portrayed in the brilliant biography The Power Broker, with architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, Raymond Loewy, Norman Bel Geddes, or Walter Gropius.

Step by step with these beginnings, I researched New York City’s most interesting cases from my scrapbooks: the Claude Von Bulow murder case, the Mary Cunningham/James Agee Bendix scandal, the emergence of Maria Bartiromo (a beautiful financial reporter nicknamed ‘The Money Honey’ coming from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange), the antics of Studio 54, and the city’s financial crisis itself (saved by Felix Rohatyn), so that everything in my story would be true and did happen either in modern New York or in Ancient Rome.

To that I added everything I had ever read or learned about.

In this work, Megalopolis, I wouldn’t have been able to make without standing as I do on the shoulders of G. B. Shaw, Voltaire, Rousseau, Bentham, Mill, Dickens, Emerson, Thoreau, Fuller, Fournier, Morris, Carlyle, Ruskin, Butler, and Wells all rolled into one; with Euripides, Thomas More, Moliere, Pirandello, Shakespeare, Beaumarchais, Swift, Kubrick, Murnau, Goethe, Plato, Aeschylus, Spinoza, Durrell, Ibsen, Abel Gance, Fellini, Visconti, Bergman, Bergson, Hesse, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Cao Xueqin, Mizoguchi, Tolstoy, McCullough, Moses, and the prophets all thrown in.

Believing I had the basis of the project in 2001, I set up a production office in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and began to work. I did casting, table read-throughs, and had a 2nd unit led by brilliant photographer Ron Fricke, thinking it would be easier and cheaper to begin before we actually announced principal photography. The 2nd unit was shot with an early model Sony digital camera that I was risking would be of sufficient quality, to be shot through all seasons and of elements of vital activities of the city (food distribution, sewage, garbage disposal) for the rich and the poor. The script always had an element of an aging Soviet satellite falling out of orbit and falling to earth, so we needed some shots of destruction and cleared areas, but of course no one could have anticipated the events of September 11th, 2001, and the tragedy of the World Trade Center. As we were shooting our 2nd unit at the time, we covered some of those heartbreaking images.

My first goal always is to make a film with all my heart, so I began to realize it would be about love and loyalty in every aspect of human life. Megalopolis echoed these sentiments, in which love was expressed in almost crystalline complexity, our planet in danger and our human family almost in an act of suicide, until becoming a very optimistic film that has faith in the human being to possess the genius to heal any problem put before us.

I believe in America. Our founders borrowed a constitution, Roman law, and Senate for their revolutionary government without a king. American history could neither have taken place nor succeeded without classical learning to guide it.

It’s my dream that Megalopolis will become a New Year’s Eve perennial favorite, with audiences discussing afterwards not their new diets, or resolutions not to smoke, but rather this simple question: “Is the society in which we live the only one available to us?

Megalopolis Production Notes, 13 May 2024

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).

...

Obituary: Antti Alanen: Peter von Bagh in memoriam (for FIAF / Journal for Film Preservation), 24 Sep 2014

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

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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, Karla Sofía Gascón, Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldaña and Adriana Paz)

Jacques Audiard: Emilia Pérez (FR 2024) with Zoe Saldaña and Karla Sofia Gascón.

Zoe Saldaña, Adriana Paz, Jacques Audiard, Karla Sofia Gascón and Selena Gomez in Telluride. Herzog TFF51-VK. Photo: Vivien Killilea. Photo from the TFF 2024 website.

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.

Ainoa kotimaa (Yle Areena 3.3.2025-28.2.2027)

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).

Jason Reitman, Mohammad Rasoulof and Alfonso Cuarón in Telluride 2024. Photo: Pamela Gentile. From: Telluride Film Festival 2024 website.

Naomi Watts and Bill Murray at Camp Telluride, 2024. Photo: Paul Best. Photo from the Telluride Film Festival 2024 website.

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 original show - he become a SNL member 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 drama about a live broadcast, 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 unifying drive is missing)?

Apocalipse nos Trópicos / Apocalypse in the Tropics (American premiere in the presence of Petra Costa)

Petra Costa: Apocalipse nos Trópicos / Apocalypse in the Tropics (BR/US/DK 2024).

Petra Costa: Apocalipse nos Trópicos / Apocalypse in the Tropics (BR/US/DK 2024).

Language: Portuguese.

Festival premiere: 29 Aug 2024 Venice.

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

In person: Petra Costa interviewed by Mark Danner.

Mark Danner (TFF 2024): "In her extraordinary study of Brazilian politics and religion, director Petra Costa reminds us that “apocalypse” means not the end of the world but “unveiling, uncovering what is covered.” She tells a story of the evangelical forces taking over Brazilian politics, with a focus on the charismatic pastor Silas Malafaia, whom she dubs “The Kingmaker.” In 2019, Malafaia helped bring Jair Bolsonaro, the so-called “Trump of the Tropics,” to power. With unprecedented access, Costa introduces the viewer to Dominionism, the belief that religion should take over the “seven mountains” of the contemporary state. Brazil once proudly modeled progressive ideals; now, it’s torn by spiritual warfare between the moderate left and a reactionary front led by Evangelical pastors, who have already succeeded in putting one of their number on the Supreme Court. Costa, director of Oscar-nominated THE EDGE OF DEMOCRACY, has created a film with undeniable resonances of politics in the U.S. and beyond." –Mark Danner (Brazil-U.S.-Denmark, 2024, 110 min)

AA: Petra Costa's magisterial documentary Apocalypse in the Tropics is one of the key films of the year.

In her opening remarks, Petra Costa dedicated this screening to Tom Luddy who inspired her ten years ago, also by sending her photographs of Tarkovsky in Telluride.

Apocalypse in the Tropics is an electrifying epic documentary about Brazil's fateful progress between democracy and autocracy / theocracy, fuelled by the formidable new political force of Evangelicalism.

Costa covers the mighty movements of Brazil in stunning crowd scenes and amazing aerial shots. Even more moving are her candid interviews with the major players. Jair Bolsonaro is open and transparent about his goals and methods. The big revelation of the movie is the astounding influence of the televangelist Silas Malafaia, also jovially on display in in-depth interviews. Lula da Silva cooks some coffee for Petra Costa and lets us witness his human touch at close range.

The film is divided in chapters. In the prologue we learn that the spread of Evangelicanism of the Silas Malafaia school is the fastest religion change of all times.

In Chapter I The King-Maker we get acquainted with the Anti-Feminist Club of Silas Malafaia, on a warpath against "Cultural Marxism and the Frankfurt School". "Brazil above all - God above everything".

In Chapter II God in the Time of Cholera we see shocking epic scenes of the pandemic casualties. Over 700.000 died of Covid in Brazil, the second highest death toll in the world. The footage of the graveyards is stunning. On the soundtrack: J. S. Bach: Violinkonzert E-Dur BWV 1042, Adagio, with the most heartbreaking violin solo ever composed (the long continuous melody line of Trauerarbeit). The theme of the Apocalypse is introduced. A central place in the faith of the Evangelicalists has the final book of the Bible - the book of Revelations (Apocalypse) - the foundation book of the new creed. War leads to peace and freedom as Messiah comes to save us.

In Chapter III Dominion the protagonist is Silas Malafaia whose tv sermons have been dubbed into 120 languages worldwide. The pastor is a media oligarch, influencer and cultural warrior. He stands for Prosperity Gospel, fights for a Christian state / theocracy and against abortion law and queer rights, his net worth is USD 150 million. His popularity is "thanks to the left", "Glory to God". In his mass revivalist meeting people are speaking in tongues, including Michele Bolsonaro.

In Chapter IV Genesis we go to the roots of this movement - Billy Graham's crusade against Communism. His was a manichean battle of Communism vs. Christianity. The original sin of today was Communism - "the Ghost of Communism" according to Petra Costa. The fear of the Ghost gave the excuse to repression in a society designed to keep the people poor. One of the most stunning passages in the movie is an archival clip of a Billy Graham revival meeting at Brazil's largest sport stadium. Against Billy Graham rose Liberation Theology with figures such as Ernesto Cardenal, the compassionate Jesuits. Kissinger warned Nixon that the Catholic Church was no longer a reliable ally. We follow Lula's imprisonment under Bolsonaro's regime and his release when the corruption of justice is exposed. "The first step is to kill democracy" when the military coup is in recent memory. But despite loud "authorize" [military intervention] choruses, Lula leads in all polls and is re-elected.

In Chapter V Holy War Bolsonaro keeps trying to demonize Lula as a "Candomblé Catholic". I missed the end of the movie due to an overlap with the next screening. I need to revisit it at the earliest instance.

As Petra Costa said in her opening remarks, this film about Brazil is equally about the United States. Billy Graham inspired the authoritarian movement of Silas Malafaia / Jair Bolsonaro, which in turn has inspired the Donald Trump / U.S. Evangelicalist union. Last week, Trump declared that he had found a new ally: God.

The "drill, baby, drill" agenda is also consistent with the emphasis on the Book of Revelations. We sin, destroy, burn the rain forest, ignore indigenous rights and splurge on fossil fuels, but Jesus saves us in the end to a better world.

...

Petra Costa interviewed by Mark Danner in Film Watch 2024, the Telluride Film Festival magazine.

Apocalypse in the Tropics: Petra Costa in conversation with Mark Danner (in Film Watch 2024, the Telluride Film Festival magazine)

Petra Costa (born on 8 July 1983 in Belo Horizonte, Brazil) at Venice Film Festival, 30 Aug 2024. Next day we met her in Telluride.

 
From Film Watch 2024, the Telluride Film Festival magazine:

THE REVELATION

DEEP INSIDE BRAZIL'S EVANGELICAL MOVEMENT

How does a democracy end and a theocracy begin? The Oscar-nominated Brazilian director Petra Costa (Edge of Democracy) investigates the growing political power of the evangelical movement of Brazil, one of the world's largest Christian nations. She spoke with Mark Danner about Apocalypse in the Tropics.

MARK DANNER: I'm fascinated by the title of your film, Apocalypse in the Tropics. We think of it as the end of the world, but you point out that the Greek meaning of the word is "unveiling". What does your film unveil about Brazil?

PETRA COSTA: For Brazil, the apocalypse was on our minds during the pandemic. Similar to the United States, we had a president that was going against any norm of sensibility. I started to dig deep to find the essence of why.

    At first, it seemed that [President Jair] Bolsonaro was at the center of our catastrophe, but as we dug deeper, it became clear that there was a religious shift - a tectonic shift - that was even more important than Bolsonaro. Brazil is becoming an evangelical nation, a type of religiosity that is focused on taking over the three branches of power.

MD: Brazil had such faith in modernity. Has the progressive philosophy weakened?

PC: The working class does not identify with the language spoken by progressives. That's one reason for the rise of these movements.

    No one believes the current form of capitalism will improve our lives. It's this kind of savage capitalism, with billionaires who don't pay taxes. Even Adam Smith would be against this form. Everybody feels that. There's a huge crisis of democracy.

    Religion is still one of the strongest mobilizing forces in the world.

MD: You are saying that a collapse in moral structures on the left has allowed evangelism to make great strides among the working class.

PC: Progressives don't look at religion with respect. In the 60s and 70s the civil rights movements were led by religious figures. That's not the case today. The far right has much more energy than the left.

    It's as if the left doesn't know what to propose. They lack, as it's said, the fire of Prometheus. That's with the far right at this moment, and the left has resigned itself to become manager of the crisis of capitalism.

MD: Let me ask you about the televangelist Silas Malafaia, whom you call the kingmaker. How did you begin to document him? Do you think his ambition is distinct from his evangelical beliefs?

PC: We told him that we would love to film with him. He gave us a lot of access during four years. We filmed hours of him giving services. We saw his archival material.

    He thinks that the evangelical religion should take over the seven mountains of influence [family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, buiness and government]. If that's one of his main tenets, there's no contradiction in being ambitious. One of his strengths is that he's transparent about what he wants and how he's going to do it. That's what I find most fascinating - it's rare to find people who explain their methods in politics.

MD: The film is about a spiritual war that's going on. It's not about a single election. That very much reminded me of what's happening in the United States now. What do you think when you compare them?

PC: One is the mirror of the other in a very uncanny way. The number of parallels continues to surprise me every day. What happened to Trump with the attack and the bullet he received in his ear was almost identical to what happened to Bolsonaro in 2018 when Bolsonaro was stabbed.

    The interpretations of their followers were the same: it was a miracle. For Bolsonaro, it was the moment when he became the Messiah, a person anointed by God. Many of his followers believe this to this day.

MD: Do you have words of admonition to progressive forces about what they must do to repair this gap that they let evangelical slow through?

PC: We need to find a common language with people that share similar beliefs. We have to diminish our differences so, at minimum, we can secure our rule of law and our democracy. We have to find what unites us. The most dangerous pandemic of our times is this pandemic of fascism and fundamentalism.

MD: When you say "to find what unites us," what are you talking about?

PC: Jesus is one of the main proponents in the West of a universal human right - the idea that every human being deserves the love of the Lord. The love of God is not just for the chosen ones; it's for everyone.

    It's one of the most revolutionary things about Jesus' thinking. That's the common language. We want every human being to be respected. That's the principle of Christianity and the principle of democracy.

...

Petra Costa in conversation with Mark Danner (Film Watch 2024, Telluride Film Festival magazine)

My blog notes on Apocalypse on the Tropics the movie.

Nickel Boys (world premiere in the presence of RaMell Ross)

RaMell Ross: Nickel Boys (US 2024).

MGM Centenary logo.

Made possible by a donation from Alan & Caroline McConnell.

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

In person: RaMell Ross, Ethan Herisse, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Brandon Wilson.

Robert Daniels (TFF 2024): "A stirring follow-up to his directorial debut HALE COUNTY THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING, RaMell Ross’ adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel is a biting, visually adventurous coming-of-age story set in Jim Crow-era Florida. Elwood (Ethan Herisse) is an idealistic Black high schooler whose aims of attending college are upended when racist law officials falsely accuse and then convict him of a crime, pulling him away from the loving arms of his grandmother (Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor). At Nickel Academy, an abusive reformatory school, Elwood befriends a world-weary Turner (Brandon Wilson). Arrestingly gorgeous and daringly immersive, Ross effortlessly switches decades—the story spans the 1960s to the 2010s and changes perspectives. As it swims through memories, traumas, friendships, archival footage, and moments of defiance, Ross’ film offers a radical gaze at the perils of Black boyhood." –Robert Daniels (U.S., 2024, 140 min)

AA: RaMell Ross has created an experimental film based on the Pulitzer-winning novel by Colson Whitehead. "The story takes place in Jim Crow era Tallahassee, Florida. It is about the ordeal of the young African-American Elwood Curtis who is falsely accused by the police of being an accomplice in a car theft. He is sent to a segregated reform school called Nickel Academy. There he forms a close friendship with a boy named Turner as they try to survive the abuse by the school and its corrupt administrators" (from the admirably concise premise in Wikipedia). 

The narration is highly elliptical. More than story-driven, Nickel Boys is image-driven, based on an approach of the immediate experience. It is largely conveyed in a subjective camera point-of-view, made famous in Hollywood by Lady in the Lake but introduced in Somewhere in the Night, also imagined by Orson Welles in his unrealized Heart of Darkness plan, but the first major instance may have been The Man with the Movie Camera.

The unique and striking insight of RaMell Ross in his subjective camera approach is to portray how it is to be looked at as a person of colour. "Race is this really bizarre thing, and it's a dominant, meaning-making social construct. I wanted to cinematically iterate the experience of being a person of colour" (RaMell Ross in conversation with Robert Daniels, in Film Watch 2024, the Telluride Film Festival magazine).

The achievement is extraordinary. Although the duration is 140 minutes, there is a feeling that each shot is special. The ratio is Academy. There are oblique angles, sideways angles, gratuitous angles, ultrasound images, point-of-view shots of a baby, reflections in an iron, flipbooks, archival inserts, vintage television footage. The general experience resembles a fever dream. We approach altered states of consciousness. RaMell Ross enters the cinema as a visual inventor. One of his most memorable compositions is an extreme high angle overhead reversed two-shot of Elwood and Turner.

Ethan Herisse as Elwood and Brandon Wilson as Turner are great, but the heart of the movie belongs to Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as Hattie, Elwood's grandmother.

The soundscape is as revolutionary as the visual universe. It is an essential element of the stream of consciousness, sometimes alarmistic, sometimes hypersensitive, sometimes evoking ADHD.

From extreme subjectivity the film opens to the big wide world.  The times they are a-changing. We are aware of the Civil Rights Movement and the Space Age. The vision expands to the cosmic in a view of the night sky. The end credits are based on the aesthetics of the flicker film.

The visual world is unusual yet not gratuitous. The experience is so formidable that I need time to digest - and revisit this remarkable movie.