CLOSE UP AUCKLAND FILM SOCIETY Vol 76 March - November 2021 - NZ FILM SOCIETY
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CLOSE UP AUCKLAND FILM SOCIETY Vol 76 March – November 2021
PREMIER CARD MEMBER BENEFITS
• FREE entry to all Auckland Film Society 2021 Season films
2021 open to the public – 12 titles, all tickets $10 (members free)
• 12-month membership from date of purchase Do the Right Thing • Clockers • Bamboozled • The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Where is the Friend’s House? • And Life Goes On…• Through the Olive Trees
• DISCOUNTS at Sweet Country • Mauri • Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen
Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story • Roman Holiday
Whānau Mārama New Zealand International Film Festival 2021
Show Me Shorts Film Festival
DATES AND TIMES – PLEASE NOTE
Academy Cinemas $14 tickets to regular sessions No screenings on public holidays. We screen on the following Tuesdays:
(excluding Special Events/$5 Wednesdays) Tuesday 06 April at 6:15 pm Brimstone & Glory
Rialto Cinemas, Newmarket $12 Mon – Fri, except 3D, Tuesday 27 April at 6:15 pm Dance, Girl, Dance (AFS AGM follows)
Beyond/Alternative Content, Film Festivals and Special Events Tuesday 08 June at 6:15 pm Through the Olive Trees
Tuesday 26 October at 6:15 pm Zombi Child
Lido Cinema $10 Mon – Fri, except Alternative Content
Early start – the following screening starts at 6:00pm
• FREE Close Up magazine. Collect your copy at any AFS screening. Monday 18 October Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains
2021 SAMPLER CARD MEMBER BENEFITS CAR PARKING
Greys Ave open-air car park: $11 flat fee after 6pm
• FREE entry to ANY THREE films in the AFS 2021 Season Victoria St car park: $2 per hour to a maximum of $10 after 6pm
Cardholder entry only – strictly non-transferable. Please note, no film Civic car park: $12 flat fee after 6pm
society, film festival or cinema discounts apply to 2021 Sampler Cards.
• Special offer! Buy your first 2021 Sampler Card for $25
Valid for one 2021 Sampler Card per person only. All subsequent 2021
Sampler Cards cost $30.
• The 2021 Sampler Card lets new members try out the film society and
allows you to pay for a Premier Card by instalments. Exchange six 2021
Sampler Cards in your name for a Premier Card and enjoy Premier Card
German Cinema screens
benefits.
in co-operation with French Connections screen in co-operation with
the Goethe-Institut the Institut Français & the Embassy of France
• Upgrade to a Premier Card before the end of the 2021 Season and receive
12-month membership from date of purchase of your first 2021 Sampler
Card. Cinema discounts apply at upgrade until your Premier Card expires.
• FREE Close Up magazine. Collect your copy at any AFS screening. Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains screens in co-operation with
the Confucius Institute Victoria University of Wellington
2CONTENTS PAGE
DO THE RIGHT THING* 3
SWEET COUNTRY* 4
COLUMBUS
BIRDS OF PASSAGE 5
BRIMSTONE & GLORY
BACURAU 6
THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO*
DANCE, GIRL, DANCE 7
MERATA: HOW MUM DECOLONISED THE SCREEN*
WHERE IS THE FRIEND’S HOUSE?* 8
SYSTEM CRASHER
AND LIFE GOES ON…* 9
MAURI*
THROUGH THE OLIVE TREES* 10
IN THE AISLES Monday 08 March at 6:15 pm
A HEAVY HEART 11
A MATTER OF LIFE & DEATH Do The Right Thing AFS thanks Time Out Bookstore
LOVE AND ANARCHY 12 USA 1989
ELEVATOR TO THE GALLOWS
Director/Producer/Screenplay: Spike Lee
THE SOUVENIR 13 Production co: 40 Acres and a Mule Filmworks
THE MURDERER LIVES AT NUMBER 21 Photography: Ernest Dickerson
Editor: Barry Alexander Brown
LEVIATHAN 14 Music: Bill Lee, featuring Branford Marsalis. ‘Fight the Power’ performed by Public Enemy
IN THE FOG
With: Danny Aiello (Sal), Ossie Davis (Da Mayor), Ruby Dee (Mother Sister), Richard Edson
Z 15 (Vito), Giancarlo Esposito (Buggin Out), Spike Lee (Mookie), Bill Nunn (Radio Raheem),
BLOODY MILK John Turturro (Pino), John Savage (Clifton)
BAMBOOZLED* 16 120 mins, Blu-ray. M offensive language
SCHOOL’S OUT
DWELLING IN THE FUCHUN MOUNTAINS 17 In all of the earnest, solemn, humorless discussions about the social and
ZOMBI CHILD political implications of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, an essential fact tends to
be overlooked: it is one terrific movie. From the sinuous and joshing solo dance
THE CLAN 18 sequence, which begins the fable on the dawn of the hottest day of the summer
CLOCKERS* in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant section, until the mournful fadeout 24 hours
BOMBSHELL: THE HEDY LAMARR STORY* 19 later, Do the Right Thing is living, breathing, riveting proof of the arrival of an
ROMAN HOLIDAY* abundantly gifted new talent.
*Open to the public, all tickets $10 (members free) Mr Lee has been edging up on us. First there was the slyly subversive comedy
She’s Gotta Have It, about a young woman who can be satisfied only by three
WELCOME TO AUCKLAND FILM SOCIETY men. Then there was School Daze, which examines intra-racial prejudice in the
terms of the old-fashioned college movie-musical, which, until Mr Lee came
Our 2021 season is a richly eclectic programme of special screenings, classic along, had always been Wonder Bread-white and utterly brainless. Each film was
features, documentaries and contemporary cinema from around the world. by way of preparation…
Auckland Film Society is a non-profit incorporated society and a registered Do the Right Thing is the chronicle of a bitter racial confrontation that leaves
charitable organisation. AFS is run by volunteers elected at our AGM (next one man dead and a neighborhood destroyed. The ending is shattering and
AGM is 27 April 2021). Visit us at nzfilmsociety.org.nz/auckland maybe too ambiguous for its own good. Yet the telling of all this is so buoyant,
Contact Auckland Film Society so fresh, so exact and so moving that one comes out of the theater elated by the
Mob 021 0235 5628 (answerphone) display of sheer cinematic wizardry. Do the Right Thing is a big movie. Though
Email aucklandfilmsociety@gmail.com the action is limited to one more-or-less idealized block in Bed-Stuy, the scope
Post PO Box 5618, Victoria St West, Auckland 1142 is panoramic. It has the heightened reality of theater, not only in its look but also
in the way the lyrics of the songs on the soundtrack become natural extensions
Like us on Facebook /aklfilmsoc Follow us on Twitter @aklfilmsoc of the furiously demotic, often hugely funny dialogue…
AFS Committee members are Alison Ashton, Simon Erceg, Robyn Harper, Mr Lee’s particular achievement is in building the tensions so gradually and so
Andrew Lockett, Gorjan Markovski, Jane McKenzie, Craig Ranapia, Carmel persuasively that the explosion, when it finally comes, seems inevitable. He
Riordan, Tayla-Rose Scully, Marjorie Sprecher and Dave Watson. Special doesn’t deal in generalities. The movie is packed with idiosyncratic detail of
thanks to Michael McDonnell at the New Zealand Federation of Film character and event, sometimes very funny and sometimes breathtakingly crude.
Societies, nzfilmsociety.org.nz
Every now and then Mr Lee pulls back from the narrative to present montages
This issue of Close Up was edited by Alison Ashton, Jane McKenzie and that characterize time, place and urban condition. Heat and noise are palpable
Andrew Lockett. Picture research by Michael McDonnell, NZ Federation of in the juxtaposition of images scored by the Steel Pulse number ‘Can’t Stand It’.
Film Societies At another point, blacks, whites, Puerto Ricans and Koreans come forward in
turn to recite a litany of bigoted epithets. At times, characters speak directly to
Auckland Film Society thanks Foundation North, the Goethe-Institut, the the camera, as if in desperation to vent their rage.
Institut Français and the Embassy of France and the Confucius Institute
Victoria University of Wellington. We are grateful for the support of Time None of this would have the impact it does if the film didn’t also possess a
Out Bookstore, The Surrey Hotel, Metropolitan Rentals, Whānau Mārama solidly dramatic center in the well-meaning but fallible Sal. As written by Mr
New Zealand International Film Festival 2021, Show Me Shorts Film Festival, Lee and played by Mr Aiello, he is the film’s richest, most complex character, his
Flicks.co.nz and Academy Cinemas downfall as harrowing as the events that bring it about. Mr Lee is almost as good
as a fellow who has been biding his time, good-naturedly slouching through life
QUIET PLEASE! until the events of this day change him forever. – Vincent Canby, New York Times
Please be considerate of others in the audience during film screenings.
3Monday 15 March at 6:15 pm Monday 22 March at 6:15 pm
Sweet Country Columbus
Australia 2017 USA 2017
Director/Photography: Warwick Thornton Director/Screenplay/Editor: Kogonada
Producers: Greer Simpkin, David Jowsey Producers: Andrew Miano, Aaron Boyd, Danielle Renfrew Behrens, Chris Weitz, Giulia
Production co: Bunya Caruso, Ki Jin Kim
Screenplay: David Tranter, Steven McGregor Photography: Elisha Christian
Editor: Nick Meyers Production designer: Diana Rice
Costume designer: Emily Moran
With: Bryan Brown (Sergeant Fletcher), Hamilton Morris (Sam Kelly), Thomas M Wright Music: Hammock
(Mick Kennedy), Ewen Leslie (Harry March), Natassia Gorey-Furber (Lizzie), Gibson John
(Archie), Matt Day (Judge Taylor), Anni Finsterer (Nell), Tremayne Doolan, Trevor Doolan With: John Cho (Jin), Haley Lu Richardson (Casey), Parker Posey (Eleanor), Michelle Forbes
(Philomac), Sam Neill (Fred Smith) (Maria), Rory Culkin (Gabriel)
113 mins, Blu-ray. R16 violence, sexual violence, offensive language & content that 104 mins, Blu-ray. M offensive language & drug references
may disturb. In English and Arrernte with English subtitles
The buildings rise up out of the grass and trees like relics of a mysterious
Like so many of the westerns to which it serves as a bold and compelling more sophisticated civilization. They are abstract, startling, sometimes anti-
corrective, Sweet Country contains moments of great nuance and richness gravitational. They are not monuments. They were built for utilitarian purposes:
alongside others that are about as subtle as a blow to the head from a rifle butt. banks, offices, a church, a library, a hospital. These geometric Modernist
The latter description may fit the film’s opening shot, the first of many fleeting, buildings pepper the landscape of the ‘Midwest Mecca of Architecture’,
achronological images whose full context and significance only become clear Columbus, Indiana, and were designed by some of the most innovative
at later junctures in Warwick Thornton’s third feature, which is based on the true architects of the 20th century: it’s no wonder people travel there from all over
story of an Aboriginal man arrested and tried for the murder of a white man to take architecture tours. Columbus’ architecture is the canvas for Columbus,
in central Australia in the 1920s. As the soundtrack fills with the noises of an the stunning directorial debut of Kogonada (mainly known up until now
offscreen conflict and an angry cry of “You black bastard!”, the camera directs as a video essayist, whose Vimeo page is a great archive of visual analysis).
the gaze downwards to a pot of water heating on a fire. Already turbulent, the What Kogonada has done with Columbus (along with cinematographer Elisha
liquid becomes more so with the addition of a handful of dark powder and then Christian) is to blend the background into the foreground and vice versa, so
another few handfuls of a white one. Evidently, the place this pot represents is that you see things through the eyes of the two architecture-obsessed main
just as ready to boil over. characters. Watching the film is almost like feeling the muscles in your eyes
shift, as you look up from reading a book to stare out at the ocean. From the
As a western that foregrounds matters of racial divide and tension within a very first shot, it’s clear that the buildings will be essential. They are a part of
period setting but with a contemporary sensibility, Thornton’s film is hardly the lives unfolding in their shadows. Sometimes it almost seems like they are
unprecedented. Nevertheless, most of the seemingly noble-minded Hollywood listening.
examples that acknowledge Indigenous peoples’ experience of colonial
conquests still prioritise the redemptive arcs of white heroes… Fred Schepisi’s There is a story in Columbus. What is remarkable is how intense it is, given the
The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978) could be seen as a partial model for stillness and quiet of Kogonada’s style, and the focus with which he films the
Thornton’s similarly ruthless story of a man of the wrong race on the wrong side buildings. A Korean-born man named Jin (John Cho) travels to Columbus to
of the law, but Sweet Country’s complexity and sophistication still mark it as a care for his father, who is in the hospital following a catastrophic collapse.
landmark work of Indigenous cinema… Accompanying him is an old friend (and possibly onetime lover), who was also
his father’s star pupil, played by Parker Posey. Jin has a distant relationship with
Working from a screenplay by Steven McGregor and David Tranter – the latter an his father. He can’t connect with the worry and sadness his friend is feeling. On a
Aboriginal sound recordist who worked on Thornton’s debut Samson & Delilah separate track initially, we meet Casey (Haley Lu Richardson), working as a page
(2009), and whose grandfather was the source of the details about the original at the Cleo Rogers Memorial Library (one of the most important interiors in the
case – Thornton presents Ewen Leslie’s rancher March as the unambiguous film). Casey has graduated from high school but has put off going to college
monster of the story. Yet the film invites a more varied consideration of its perhaps indefinitely because her mother is a former meth addict. (“Meth is
other Anglo-Australians. As Fletcher’s belief in his rightness is shaken both by really big here,” says Casey. “Meth and Modernism.”) She fears what will happen
an act of mercy from Sam and by his own softer feelings towards the woman to her mother without her. Casey and a coworker (Rory Culkin) have interesting
who tends the town pub, Brown allows his usual bravado to seep out in a slow discussions, sitting amidst the towering stacks, their conversations a blend of
leak. Though he initially seems just as brutal as March, Thomas M Wright’s tentative flirting, kindness, and gentle debate. One day, Jin bums a cigarette
white farmer Kennedy gradually adopts a more fatherly demeanour towards his from Casey. They strike up a conversation…
mixed-race son, a development that seems less positive when we witness the
boy assume his pa’s attitudes to the “blackfellas”… Columbus is a movie about the experience of looking, the interior space that
opens up when you devote yourself to looking at something, receptive to
Thornton’s film benefits from exceptional performances from the whole the messages it might have for you. Movies (the best ones anyway) are the
ensemble, but it owes much of its power to Hamilton Morris as Sam and same way. Looking at something in a concentrated way requires a mind-shift.
Natassia Gorey-Furber as the fearful, largely silent Lizzie. Try as they might to Sometimes it takes time for the work to even reach you, since there’s so much
hide their rising anxiety, their bodies betray them… They are even less able to mental ballast in the way. The best directors point to things, saying, in essence:
conceal the anguish they feel over their inability to protect one another from “Look.” I haven’t been able to get Columbus out of my mind. – Sheila O’Malley,
the indignities and cruelties that are their daily lot. Thornton makes sure that RogerEbert.com
viewers feel those blows. – Jason Anderson, Sight and Sound
4Monday 29 March at 6:15 pm Tuesday 06 April at 6:15 pm
Birds of Passage Pájaros de verano Brimstone & Glory
Colombia 2018 Mexico/USA 2017
Directors: Cristina Gallego, Ciro Guerra Director: Viktor Jakovleski
Producers: Katrin Pors, Cristina Gallego Producers: Erdem Karahan, Viktor Jakovleski, Antonio ‘Tonitzin’ Gómez, Casey Coleman,
Production co: Ciudad Lunar Producciones, Blond Indian Films Benh Zeitlin, Affonso Gonçalves, Kellen Quinn, Elizabeth Lodge, Dan Javey
Screenplay: María Camila Arias, Jacques Toulemonde. Based on an original idea by Production co: Court 13, Department of Motion Pictures
Cristina Gallego Photography: Tobias Von Dem Bourne
Photography: David Gallego Editor: Affonso Gonçalves
Editor: Miguel Schverdfinger Music: Dan Romer, Benh Zeitlin
Music: Leo Heiblum
67 mins, Blu-ray. PG some scenes may disturb
With: Carmiña Martínez (Úrsula), José Acosta (Rapayet), Natalia Reyes (Zaida), Jhon In Spanish with English subtitles
Narváez (Moisés), Greider Meza (Leonídas), José Vicente Cote (Peregrino), Juan Bautista
Martínez (Aníbal) The opening shot of Brimstone & Glory shows a lit firework in slow motion,
which is abstracted and nearly unrecognizable due to the image’s speed. It
125 mins, Blu-ray. M violence, offensive language & sex scenes
In Spanish, Wayúunaiki and English with English subtitles
looks almost like the movements of objects in outer space, but set on fast-
forward – the sparks are like hurtling stars; the little bursts of flame like nebulas
This is an absolutely extraordinary film… it unfolds as a kind of dynastic rise- being created and then just as quickly dying off.
and-fall story, a Colombian Godfather spanning the late ’60s and ’70s, divided
into 5 lyrically named chapters, or ‘cantos’: Wild Grass, The Graves, Prosperity, The Calling a film ‘meditative’ conjures up a certain set of expectations, many
War and Limbo. It starts, as do most such epics, with a young man who craves of which Brimstone & Glory doesn’t exactly match. Yet it presents its grand,
social betterment. Here it is Rapayet (José Acosta) the nephew of a respected pyrotechnical displays in such a way as to invite rumination, asking questions
‘word messenger’, who exists on the periphery of the Wayúu tribe of northern of ephemerality, beauty and danger.
Colombia, and wants to consolidate his standing by marrying the beautiful
Zaida (Natalia Reyes), a young Wayúu woman to whom we’re introduced in a The film is set in the city of Tultepec, Mexico, during its annual, week-long
glorious billow of blood-red silk and face paint during her ritual ‘coming out fireworks festival. The event is dedicated to San Juan de Dios, who is said to
party’. Reluctant to give Zaida’s hand in marriage to someone not in the inner have saved a group of sick people from a blazing hospital without getting a
circle, her mother Ursula (a blazing Carmiña Martínez… the best ruthless clan single burn. Two events make up the bulk of the festival: a ‘castillo’ contest
matriarch since Jacki Weaver in Animal Kingdom) sets a near-impossible dowry. and the ‘pamplonada’. In the castillo contest, teams from Tultepec and other
But Rapayet, along with his loose-cannon friend and business partner Moises neighboring towns construct towers of fireworks, lighting them for judgment
(Jhon Narváez) makes a deal with some Peace Corps soldiers, stationed in the in front of a mass of onlookers. During the pamplonada, firework-laden paper
area ostensibly as a bulwark against communism, but really just looking for a bulls are lit and brought through the crowded streets of the city.
regular supply of weed. And with a few quick flips, Rapayet has not only made
the money to meet Zaida’s dowry, he’s made the connections that will soon Though the film prefers to focus on the raw splendor of the proceedings, it
make his extended family the most powerful in the region… doesn’t shy away from the risks its participants take. In one scene, an old man
is constructing a firework with hands obviously mangled by past accidents, his
DP David Gallego finds explodingly colorful compositions that embody the left hand completely blown away and his right missing several fingers. During
tension between old and new, and between the often tacky trappings of the pamplonada, inside a medical tent, a man sports a bloody bruise over his
Western-style new money, and the untameable natural world with which the left eye after an errant firework hit him moments earlier.
Wayúu used to live in harmony. The greatest example is the folly of Rapayet’s
flashy mansion… standing white, spare and architect-designed on baked earth It’s easy to wonder during these moments why festival participants undergo
cracked like pottery glaze, with the hot, crazy-making desert wind blowing such peril for such a short-lived spectacle. However, the film provides an answer
ceaselessly though even its interior corridors. for us through its exhilarating tone – helped along by a remarkable, kinetic
score from Benh Zeitlin and Dan Romer, director and composer of Beasts of
By locating this story within the indigenous population who become as much the Southern Wild – and its lovingly shot sequences, celebrating the glory of
the architects of their own downfall as the Westerners they supply… [the fireworks despite their inherent danger.
directors and screenwriters] have written Colombia’s tribal history back into the
story of Colombia’s conflicted present. The Wayúu here are neither exploited After the film, director Viktor Jakovleski spoke about his next project, which
innocents nor backward savages, but flawed humans indulging recognisable focuses on an artist who is working and experimenting in the most lightning-
human instincts of greed and rapaciousness, and who have a hierarchical prone area in the world. It’s a hazardous subject to capture, but Jakovleski says
social system in place that is not so exotically alien that it cannot be easily his experience shooting Brimstone & Glory is what allows him to do it. Shooting
crossbred with Western-style wealth and corruption. And so Birds of Passage is at the fireworks festival showed him the allure of risk, and made him realize how
not squeamish about violence, and does not ignore the bigger sociological and instability can beget grandeur.
geopolitical forces at work. But it does march to its own, slow, chantlike rhythm,
depicting not a clash, but a continuity where colonialism seeded capitalism, In Brimstone & Glory, Jakovleski has created a powerful, joyous first feature, full
which in turn bred conflicts in which ethnic Colombians were as complicit as of the sorts of visuals that linger behind your eyelids long after the film is over.
they were victimized. The lack of sentimentality is startling. And that clear-eyed The fireworks themselves fade quickly, but the impression they make remains.
revision of accepted history has resonance far beyond the borders of Colombia. Alex Ransom, Vox
Jessica Kiang, Playlist
5Monday 12 April at 6:15 pm Monday 19 April at 6:15 pm
Bacurau The Last Black Man in San Francisco
Brazil 2019 USA 2019
Directors/Screenplay: Kleber Mendonça Filho, Juliano Dornelles Director: Joe Talbot
Producers: Emilie Lesclaux, Said Ben Said, Michel Merkt Producers: Khaliah Neal, Joe Talbot, Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Christina Oh
Production co: Cinemascópio Produçôes, SBS Productions Production co: Plan B Entertainment, Longshot Features, Mavia Entertainment
Photography: Pedro Sotero Screenplay: Joe Talbot, Rob Richer. Based on a story by Jimmie Fails and Joe Talbot
Editor: Eduardo Serrano Photography: Adam Newport-Berra
Music: Mateus Alves, Tomaz Alves Souza Editor: David Marks
Music: Emile Mosseri
With: Bárbara Colen (Teresa), Thomás Aquino (Pacote/Acácio), Silvero Pereira (Lunga),
Sonia Braga (Domingas), Udo Kier (Michael) With: Jimmie Fails (Jimmie Fails), Jonathan Majors (Montgomery Allen), Tichina Arnold
(Wanda Fails), Rob Morgan (James Sr), Mike Epps (Bobby), Finn Wittrock (Clayton), Danny
131 mins, Blu-ray. R16 graphic violence, sex scenes, offensive language & nudity Glover (Grandpa Allen)
In Portuguese and English with English subtitles
121 mins, Blu-ray. M drug use, offensive language & nudity
It was always likely that in his third feature Brazilian critic turned director
Kleber Mendonça Filho was going to take on his country’s new president Jair The astonishing The Last Black Man in San Francisco is about having little in
Bolsonaro. But as in his previous film, Aquarius, fascism works in mysterious a grab-what-you-can world. It’s the haunting, elegiac story of Jimmie Fails –
ways in his WTF western. Just like Lee Chang-dong’s Burning at last year’s playing a version of himself – a young man trying to hold onto a sense of home
Cannes, Bacurau bristles with anxiety and menace… in San Francisco. His parents are missing in action and someone else lives in
the family’s old house. Given to dreamy, faraway looks, Jimmie seems not quite
Bacurau is a small impoverished town in the arid Northeastern hinterlands of there, either. But he remains tethered to the city, somehow exalted by it. And
Brazil; but it’s also a utopia of sorts with its tight-knit community who stand firm when he slaloms down its hills on his skateboard, he doesn’t descend – he soars.
against exterior threats, be they the authorities who are trying to cut off their
water supply or a preening corrupt mayor looking to exchange out-of-date The movie was directed by Joe Talbot, a longtime friend of Fails’s, and together
food for votes. The first half of the film hangs out with the eccentric villagers like they came up with a story grounded in life. Like Jimmie’s family, Fails’s also lost
Sonia Braga’s raving doctor, and the sleepy rhythms and traditions going on in its home, and he and his father – played by Rob Morgan in a brief, piercing
the dusty strip of houses are well-observed by Mendonça Filho, co-directing for turn – bedded down in their car. It’s a plaintive American narrative that here
the first time with his regular production designer Juliano Dornelles. becomes an expressionistic odyssey, both rapturous and melancholic. In
moments it feels as if Jimmie and his faithful artistic friend, Montgomery
So far, so western as the village increasingly comes under siege: it bizarrely (Jonathan Majors, a mournful heartbreaker), are dreaming the movie into
disappears off the map, mobile signal disappears and corpses pile up. But throw existence, pouring its surrealistic jolts and hallucinatory beauty out of their
in psychotropic drugs, a drone that resembles a 1950s B-movie flying saucer, heads and straight into yours.
assassins in neon motorcycle suits and a posse of foreign mercenaries thirsty for
blood, and what emerges is a shape-shifting genre yarn with surprises aplenty The story drifts in, as if taking its cue from the fog. Jimmie works at a nursing
but maybe at times too much on its plate. home, but with no home to call his own, he flops at Mont’s grandfather’s house,
a proud and cramped relic facing a polluted bay. There is an ease to the men’s
The handbrake turns in tone, swinging gleefully between tragedy, comedy, intimacy, a feeling of refuge that wraps around them whether they’re talking or
surrealism and, later, delirious bloodbath, are well-handled when the film is watching old films with Mont’s blind grandfather (Danny Glover, a monumental
grounded in the villagers’ perspective. As friends and family members are presence). Early on, the three watch the 1949 noir DOA, raptly attentive as
shot down, realism takes over and the horror of the slaughter of innocent lives Edmond O’Brien reports a murder (his own!) in San Francisco, Mont narrating
lingers on, even when the film feels like it wants to show off. The directors are each beat for his granddad.
besotted with visual trickery (horizontal screen wipes and slow fades abound) The tiny audience basking in the flickering light makes for a charmingly
and affectionate vintage movie references. John Carpenter looms large, with eccentric tableau. In another movie, it might read as decorative filler, the
the village school named João Carpenteiro after him, and his throbbing kind filmmakers use to mortar together story-advancing scenes. Except that
electronic number ‘Night’ scores one memorably sinister scene. everything counts: the specter of death, Mont’s narration, Jimmie’s perch on
the floor. Each detail adds meaning to a story that builds associatively and
Time spent with the bickering, gung-ho gringos takes us too far away from the obliquely, and often through nods rather than shouts. Jimmie is safely huddled
villagers and kills the sense of dread that has accumulated, but at least Udo Kier in this room, but loss – of his parents, home and city – pervades his life, which
as their volatile devil of a leader compensates. He gets the film’s best lines and means that (just like Edmond O’Brien’s) his future might be lost too…
knows how to stay on the right side of unhinged as his fellow killing machines
awkwardly discuss their motives and racial superiority… In The Last Black Man in San Francisco, the desire for home is at once existential
and literal, a matter of self and safety, being and belonging. This is of course part
Fortunately Bacurau itself looms back in focus and the conflict is not a neat of the story of being black in the United States, which perhaps makes the movie
victim/aggressor set-up. As one shopkeeper reminds us, Bacurau is also the sound like a dirge when it’s more of a reverie. Or, rather, it’s both at once and
name of a big bird that hunts at night. By the end, the film is all-consumed with sometimes one and then the other. Much depends on Jimmie, who waxes and
brash and deranged blood-letting, but still balances flat-out genre fun with a wanes, sometimes rises and then falls in a city that – with this ravishing movie
reminder of the bloody legacy of the region. – Isabel Stevens, Sight and Sound – he insistently stakes a claim on, one indelible image at a time.
Manohla Dargis, New York Times
6Tuesday 27 April at 6:15 pm Monday 03 May at 6:15pm
Dance, Girl, Dance Merata: How Mum Decolonised the Screen
USA 1940 New Zealand 2018
Director: Dorothy Arzner Director: Heperi Mita
Producer: Erich Pommer Producer: Chelsea Winstanley
Production co: RKO Radio Executive producer: Cliff Curtis
Screenplay: Tess Slesinger, Frank Davis. Based on a story by Vicki Baum Creative producer: Tearepa Kahi
Photography: Russell Metty Associate producer: Manutai Schuster
Editor: Robert Wise Photography: Mike Jonathan
Music: Edward Ward Editor: Te Rurehe Paki
Consulting editor: Annie Collins
With: Maureen O’Hara (Judy O’Brien), Lucille Ball (Bubbles), Louis Hayward (Jimmy Harris),
Virginia Field (Elinor Harris), Ralph Bellamy (Steve Harris), Maria Ouspenskaya (Madame With: Merata Mita, Rafer Rautjoki, Richard Rautjoki, Rhys Rautjoki, Awatea Mita, Eruera
Lydia Basilova), Mary Carlisle (Sally), Katharine Alexander (Miss Olmstead), Edward Brophy ‘Bob’ Mita, Heperi Mita, Taika Waititi, Alanis Obomsawin, Bird Runningwater
(Dwarfie Humblewinger), Walter Abel (judge)
95 mins, DCP, colour and B&W. Exempt
90 mins, Blu-ray, B&W. PG In English and te reo Māori with English subtitles
Judy O’Brien, a ballerina working in a burlesque show to make ends meet, has By the time the pioneering indigenous filmmaker and activist Merata Mita
finally had enough. In the middle of an especially humiliating performance, died suddenly in 2010, she had packed an extraordinary amount of action
the audience’s jeering reaches such a peak that she stops, walks down center into her 68 years. If her youngest son Heperi Mita became a film archivist
stage, hands on hips, and faces the hecklers… Now her outrage boils over and and a filmmaker in order to discover the stories she did not live to tell him,
she addresses the stunned crowd: “Go ahead and stare. I’m not ashamed. I know then we in Aotearoa have something new to thank her for. His first film is a
you want me to tear my clothes off so you can look your fifty cents worth. Fifty remarkable accomplishment, a compelling Great Woman portrait that speaks
cents for the privilege of staring at a girl the way your wives won’t let you.” intimately from personal experience. He has an abundant archive of film and TV
appearances to draw on, beginning with his mother’s mesmerising testimony as
This rightly famous speech comes near the end of Dance, Girl, Dance… Judy a Māori woman bringing up children alone in the 1977 TV documentary Māori
– played by Maureen O’Hara with a whisper of an Irish brogue – attacks the Women in a Pākehā World. By 1979 she was making landmark documentaries
audience: “the way your wives won’t let you” is so contemptuous that the words herself, most notably Bastion Point: Day 507 (1980) and Patu! (1983) which
sound dipped in poison. The layers of metacommentary are striking. Judy calls rattled Kiwi complacency by so clearly identifying the violation of Māori rights –
out not just the fictional audience sitting in the burlesque house but the real the latter film explicitly tying New Zealand’s record to apartheid in South Africa.
audience watching Dance, Girl, Dance. She calls out the dirty secret of what In 1988 her film Mauri, deftly quoted in this one, was the first feature written
looking is all about, reminding everyone that the looked-at know exactly what’s and directed by a Māori woman.
going on, and may have some feelings of their own about the exchange. Judy
shatters the unspoken contract between audience and performer. The scene Heperi is the first to acknowledge that he grew up in the best of times, when
has a fourth-wall-breaking power to this day… Merata and his father Geoff Murphy lived in Los Angeles and Hawaii. He turns
to his older siblings to learn about earlier days when living was often hand-to-
The story is of two very different dancers’ attempts to take control of their mouth and police raided the house in search of Patu! footage. They are a loving
careers, all while navigating the often prickly relationship between them. Judy whānau whose testimony reverberates with the conviction that their mother’s
has serious training and is eager to enter the ballet world, and maybe even fierce maternal instinct was integral to her work as a fighter, mover, shaker,
create her own work. Bubbles – a dazzling Lucille Ball – is Judy’s polar opposite, mentor and artist of abiding international significance. – NZIFF
a wisecracking showgirl (“I ain’t got an ounce of class, sugar, honest”) who has
what we would call the ‘it’ factor. Arzner’s script changes centralize the women In How Mum Decolonised the Screen director Heperi Mita takes us through a
in the film, particularly the relationship between Judy and Bubbles. This is a whānau journey that brings to the fore the many experiences that both shaped
movie about dance, and there’s a lot of dance in it, but Arzner understood it and motivated his mother’s life and work. When whānau share their stories of
was really about these two women, so she pared away distractions from that… those they love it is layered, like a well recited cultural, genealogical template
that is our whakapapa. Whakapapa is both identity and stories. It is a cultural
Bubbles gets a job in burlesque, where she unsurprisingly graduates to framework through which we come to recall who we are, where we are from,
headliner status, renaming herself Tiger Lily White. She brings Judy along as her the collectives to which we are connected and to whom we are responsible.
onstage ‘stooge’ – that is, a performer whose sole purpose is being booed off
so that the main attraction will appear. A man named Jimmy (Louis Hayward) Decolonising and indigenising the screen has never been solely about image,
hovers around both Judy and Bubbles, and Jimmy’s wife, Elinor (Virginia Field), or the narrative. It is about telling those stories, framing those images and
hovers around him. Dance, Girl, Dance doesn’t have a love triangle, it has a shaping our understandings in ways that align to our cultural, spiritual,
love square, which then morphs into a love pentagon. And a love pentagon emotional and intellectual ways of being as Māori and indigenous nations. It is
downgrades love’s importance, giving space to all kinds of other subjects. about our right to be self-determining in all spaces, including film. What is clear
There’s a tension here between low art and high art, burlesque and ballet, that is that for our stories as Māori and indigenous peoples to be heard we must
reflects the revolution going on in modern dance at the time, the push-pull tell them ourselves. We must see ourselves and we must create those images
between tradition and the new. The film ends not with a man and a woman through our own lens. That has always sat at the centre of the decolonising
falling into each other’s arms but with two very different women coming to a intent of Merata’s work. An intent that has been honoured in this documentary
deeper understanding of their friendship and themselves. – Sheila O’Malley, by those that most count: her children. – Leonie Pihama, The Spinoff
Criterion Collection
7Monday 10 May at 6:15pm Monday 17 May at 6:15 pm
Where is the Friend’s House? Khaneh-je doost kojast? System Crasher Systemsprenger
Iran 1987 Germany 2019
Director/Writer: Abbas Kiarostami Director/Screenplay: Nora Fingscheidt
Producer: Ali Reza Zarrin Producers: Peter Hartwig, Jonas Weydemann, Jakob D Weydemann
Photography: Farhad Saba Production co: Kineo Filmproduktion, Weydemann Bros, Oma Inge Film
Editor: Abbas Kiarostami Photography: Yunus Roy Imer
Set designer: Reza Nami Editor: Stephen Bechinger, Julia Kovalenko
Costume designer: Hassan Zahidi Music: John Gürtler
Music: Amine Allah Hessine
With: Helena Zengel (Benni), Albrecht Schuch (Michael Heller), Gabriela Maria Schmeide
With: Babek Ahmed Poor (Ahmed), Ahmed Ahmed Poor (Mohamed Reda Nematzadeh), (Mrs Bafané), Lisa Hagmeister (Bianca Klaass), Melanie Straub (Dr Schönemann), Victoria
Khodabakhsh Defaei (Teacher), Iran Outari (Mother), Ait Ansari (Father), Sadika Taohidi Trauttmansdorff (Silvia, foster mother), Maryam Zaree (Elli Heller), Tedros Teclebrhan
(Perzian Neighbour), Biman Mouafi (Ali, a neighbour), Ali Djamali (Grandfather’s Friend) (Robert, teacher)
87 mins, Blu-ray. G 125 mins, Blu-ray. M violence, offensive language & content that may disturb
In Farsi with English subtitles In German with English subtitles
One of the most critically acclaimed and influential filmmakers of the past There’s certainly something about Benni. And it’s not just that this troubled
twenty-five years, Abbas Kiarostami (1940–2016) is the equivalent of a Godard, nine-year-old German girl – the dynamic protagonist of writer-director Nora
Kurosawa, or Fellini – a director whose films have given new direction to world Fingscheidt’s powerful, desperately moving debut System Crasher – is prone to
cinema. Honing his craft as a documentary filmmaker concerned with the fits of uncontrollable rage that have seen her removed from her mother’s care
lives of children in Iran, he later gained a following in the West with a series of and shunted around a variety of social institutions. More affecting is the fear
remarkable films that were at once documentary and fiction, ‘real’ and created and confusion that lurk behind Benni’s hard-edged defiance, her heartbreaking
(And Life Goes On, Close-Up, Through the Olive Trees, and Where Is the Friend’s search for understanding and acceptance from a society that is simply unable,
Home?)… Working with his actors in their own milieux, Kiarostami created if not always unwilling, to support all those fighting for survival on its fringes.
layered, mercurial, funny, and only incidentally tragic characters. Each film
stands on its own, but when seen as part of a trilogy, each succeeding film It’s an astonishing central performance from the blonde-haired Helena Zengel,
reveals the truth, which is to say the lies, of the last, as in the embedded layers who veers from feral ferocity to desperate vulnerability with whiplash speed.
of the traditional Persian art of storytelling. – Pacific Film Archive Working from Fingscheidt’s sensitive, balanced screenplay, Zengel celebrates
Benni’s highs (such as they are) as well as laying bare the lows. Moments in
The first film in Abbas Kiarostami’s sublime, interlacing trilogy of films set in which she runs with abandon through the forest with social worker Micha
the northern Iranian village of Koker takes a premise of fable-like simplicity – a (Albrecht Shuch) or takes joy in ice-skating are just as important as those in
boy searches for the home of his classmate whose school notebook he has which her overwhelming feelings of rejection – particularly at the hands of
accidentally taken – and transforms it into a miraculous, child’s-eye adventure her barely coping mother Bianca (Lisa Hagmeister) – turn into terrifying fights
of the everyday. As our young hero zigzags determinedly across two towns which put her in the hospital, or see her shipped off to the next care home.
aided (and sometimes misdirected) by those he encounters, his quest becomes While it is clear that Benni is at the mercy of a system ill-equipped to help her,
both a revealing portrait of Iranian society in all its richness and complexity and System Crasher is careful to show how social workers like Micha and Frau Bafane
a touching parable about the meaning of personal responsibility. Shot through (a wonderful Gabriela Maria Shmeide) do their best but are limited by a lack of
with all the wonder, beauty, tension, and mystery one day can contain, Where is resources and their own human fallibility…
the Friend’s House? established Kiarostami’s reputation as one of cinema’s most
sensitive and profound humanists. – Janus Films And it’s not just Benni who suffers from the seeming inevitability of failure. “I’m
having rescue fantasies,” admits a distraught Micha at one point, who dreams
The film is a heartbreaking neo-realist adventure with faint elements of magical of saving Benni even as he knows that that is totally beyond him. Later, after
realism that brings Koker to the screen as a model of the small calamities and fighting her way through a series of futile placement meetings, Frau B breaks
modesty of country life… To many adults in the modern Western world, the down in unstoppable tears after Benni’s hopes of being reunited with her
stakes of Where Is the Friend’s House? might seem trivial, but Ahmed’s trek feels mother are dashed yet again…
colossal because Kiarostami never lets the viewer forget the moral urgency that
Ahmed feels. In the first scene, the boys’ school teacher berates Mohamed for DOP Yunus Roy Imer, editors Stephan Bechinger and Julia Kovalenko, and
always forgetting to use his notebook, making the child bawl in shame. Ahmed, composer John Gürtler work in harmony to effectively underscore Benni’s
seated right beside him, watches in helpless unease, and Kiarostami captures fractured sense of self. Her outbursts are filmed in extreme close-up with sharp,
this in close-up as though it were a supreme revelation about the meaning of disorienting cuts; the camera takes a step back in calmer moments, framing
responsibility and consequence. – Colin Fitzgerald, PopMatters her small form against looming trees, cavernous hospital rooms. The score,
too, speaks to Benni’s unique blend of fragility and ferity; impulsive and often
overwhelming, it is the perfect expression of her emotions when she lacks the
words to articulate her feelings. And, in a wry nod to the traditional femininity
Benni so viciously rejects, pink is a recurring motif; her bright jacket, the way in
which in her anger is depicted as a pink mist descending over the screen. That
her fantasies about being reunited with her beloved mother are also tinged
with pink effectively highlights the lingering devastation wrought by childhood
trauma. – Nikki Baughan, Sight and Sound
8Monday 24 May at 6:15 pm Monday 31 May at 6:15 pm
And Life Goes On… Zendegi va digar hich Mauri
Iran 1992 New Zealand 1988
Director/Writer: Abbas Kiarostami Director/Producer/Screenplay: Merata Mita
Producer: Ali Reza Zarrin Production co: Awatea Films, New Zealand Film Commission, Radio Hauraki
Photography: Homayun Payvar Photography: Graeme Cowley
Editor: Abbas Kiarostami, Changiz Sayad Editor: Nicolas Beauman
Costume designer: Hassan Zahidi Music: Hirini Melbourne, Amokura
With: Farhad Kheradmand (Film director), Buba Bayour (Puya), Hocine Rifahi (Hocine), With: Anzac Wallace (Rewi Rapana), Eva Rickard (Kara), James Heyward (Steve), Susan D
Ferhendeh Feydi, Mahrem Feydi, Bahrovz Aydini, Ziya Babai, Mohamed Hocinerouhi, Ramari Paul (Ramari), Sonny Waru (Hemi), Rangimarie Delamere (Awatea), Willie Raana
Hocine Khadem, Maassouma Berouana, Mohammad Reza Parvaneh, Chahrbanov Chefahi, (Willie Rapana), Geoff Murphy (Mr Semmens), Don Selwyn (old cop), Temuera Morrison
Youssef Branki, Chahine Ayzen, Mohamed Bezdani, Benefshah Behioudi, Mohamed (young cop), Ana Hine Aro Kura Thrupp (Hinemoa), Anthony Angell (Tawa)
Hassen Pour, Ferhed Kadimi, Maha Bano Chikfouad, Kalsim Sada, Fartkiss Darabi, Leila
Nourouzi, Kassil Fefa 90 mins, DCP. PG
In English and te reo Māori with English subtitles
91 mins, Blu-ray. PG
In Farsi with English subtitles It was a quietly satisfying moment to enter the theatre on the opening night of
Mauri and see the pride of so many brown faces. I am very proud to have made
This is both a subtle study in the ethics of film-making, and a compassionate something for us, so relentless and uncompromising, and for me it was another
(but never mawkish or depressing) portrait of courage and determination in the brief fulfilled. – Merata Mita
face of overwhelming grief and hardship. – Time Out London
Merata Mita’s first feature, Mauri, is a brave attempt to fuse film genres into an
Soon after international buzz for Where Is the Friend’s House? had reached epic story with recurring themes of birth, life and death… At one level Mauri
its zenith, Iran was struck by the catastrophic Manjil–Rudbar earthquake of is suspense, Rewi (Anzac Wallace), on the run from prison, finds refuge in a
1990, which left tens-of-thousands dead and all but levelled many small, rural Māori community. His presence is mysterious and ambiguous, even though
communities like Koker. In the wake of the earthquake, Kiarostami travelled he professes kin connections. An old woman, Kara (Eva Rickard), befriends him
from Tehran with his son to the village in order to discover the fate of the without too many questions, and Ramari (Susan Paul) falls in love with him even
people he came to know during production of the film. The trip resulted in though she is determined to marry a European, Steve (James Heyward). On
a partially-dramatized version of the events for the next film in the trilogy, another level Mauri is about a rural Māori community under pressure, facing the
And Life Goes On, in which a film director (Farhad Kheradmand as Kiarostami’s threat of loss of land and the impact of its young people migrating to the cities.
persona) and his son Puya (Buba Bayour) drive to Koker in search of the child
actors who starred in Where Is the Friend’s House? On their trip, they encounter The most profound intent of Mauri, which means life force, is to evoke the ebb
many strange and familiar faces, all touched by the tragedy of the earthquake, and flow of a community, and the individual lives that comprise it, through
and they witness the spirit of life that pulls the people through in the aftermath. the eyes of a young girl Awatea (Rangimarie Delamere) who lives with Kara.
The film combines real footage of destroyed homes, stores, and roads, partially Juggling these elements of thriller, love story, psychological drama and epic
fictionalized stories from local residents, and re-enactments of Kiarostami’s real- documentary, the story ends with the recapture (but personal redemption) of
life pilgrimage together in a metanarrative that delves equally into exploratory Rewi, the death of Kara and new awareness for Awatea. The greatest strengths
docufiction and understated human interest… of Mauri lie in its visuals. Cowley’s camera tracks the coastal landscape of the
setting and delivers big gestures – the sudden pulling of a blind, the swoop of
Kiarostami calls direct attention to artificial fragments in the film in order to a heron – often with stunning effect. – Nic, Variety
emphasize that which is authentic about it. For example, when the father and
son meet up with an old man who played a prominent role in Where Is the Disconcertingly, Mauri’s central theme of birthright is most thoroughly
Friend’s House?, he takes them back to his home, mumbling under his breath expressed through a man, Rewi, whose claim on it is insecure. The true nature of
that it’s only his “movie house” and that his real house was destroyed in the his spiritual transgression is the secret that is held in suspense until the end and
earthquake. True or not, Kiarostami spends And Life Goes On teasing reality and gives the film its peculiar edginess. As played by Zac Wallace, the mysterious
quantifying the realness of his films beyond their fictionality. His stars are actors Rewi is a force-field of jumpy, bottled-up energy. The other young Māori man
only in that they are acting; they are more importantly genuinely human, each in the film, Willie, leader of a city gang who visit the marae, is also spooked,
of them touched by the tragedies and triumphs surrounding them… under threat. Female power in the film is not so clouded. Eva Rickard, as Kara,
represents the ideals of a Maori woman’s courage, wisdom and harmony with
It’s most evident in the small acts of kindness that take place throughout the the natural world to perfection: her performance is richly informed by her own
movie almost as a matter of instinct. Kheradmand’s director character watches great personal mana. She calmly dominates the film as she imparts a sense of
over a baby while the mother is gone, hauls a gas tank up a hill for a passerby, their mauri, their ‘life-force’, to the troubled younger characters – and, it may
and removes an old woman’s kettle from the rubble of her house… The film be hoped, to us as well. Women in this film embody nothing less than destiny:
is slow and occasionally silent, wholly devoted to contemplation of the value this is strikingly true of Kara’s niece Ramari whose actions absorb conflicting
of life. As the director says, “Every road leads somewhere.” – Colin Fitzgerald, forces in her world and restore harmony to the land and the people. There are
PopMatters passages in Mauri that are more passionate in their feeling than anything else in
New Zealand cinema. The emotion is so raw at times that it doesn’t seem ready
for public consumption. – Bill Gosden, Wellington Film Festival
9Tuesday 08 June at 6:15 pm AFS thanks Metropolitan Rentals Ltd Monday 14 June at 6:15 pm
Through the Olive Trees Zir-e darakhtan-e zeyton In the Aisles In den Gängen
Iran 1994 Germany 2018
Director/Writer: Abbas Kiarostami Director: Thomas Stuber
Producers: Alain Depardieu, Abbas Kiarostami Producers: Jochen Laube, Fabian Maubach
Assistant director: Jafar Panahi Screenplay: Clemens Meyer, Thomas Stuber
Photography: Farhad Saba, Hossein Jafarian Photography: Peter Matjasko
Editor: Abbas Kiarostami Editor: Kaya Inan
Production designer: Abbas Kiarostami Production designer: Jenny Roesler
Costume designer: Hassan Zahidi Costume designers: Juliane Maier, Christian Röhrs
Music: Chema Rosas
With: Sandra Hüller (Marion), Franz Rogowski (Christian), Peter Kurth (Bruno),
With: Mohamad Ali Keshavarz (Film Director), Farhad Kheradmand (Farhad), Zarifeh Shiva Andreas Leupold (Rudi), Michael Specht (Paletten-Klaus), Steffen Scheumann (Norbert),
(Mrs Shiva), Hossein Rezai (Hossein), Tahereh Ladanian (Tahereh), Hocine Redai (Hocine), Ramona Kunze-Libnow (Irina), Henning Peker (Wolfgang), Matthias Brenner (Jürgen),
Zahra Nourouzi (Kouly’s Daughter), Nosrat Bagheri (Achiz), Azim Aziz Nia (Azim), Gerdy Zint (Tino)
Ostadvali Babaei (Teacher), N Boursadiki (Tahra), Khodabakhsh Defaei (teacher), Ahmed
Ahmed Poor 126 mins, Blu-ray. M violence
In German with English subtitles
108 mins, Blu-ray. PG
In Farsi with English subtitles Sandra Hüller found world-cinema stardom on account of her performance
in the black comedy Toni Erdmann; now she makes a very stylish appearance
Through the Olive Trees is usually described as the concluding feature in a in this utterly engrossing and richly humane workplace drama In the Aisles,
trilogy, preceded by Where Is My Friend’s Home? and And Life Goes On… but it’s from Thomas Stuber. Franz Rogowski (Victoria, Transit) plays Christian, a quiet,
important to note that each film was conceived and planned separately… In watchful guy who has just started work in a gigantic cash-and-carry megastore.
any event, you don’t need to have seen any of the preceding features for this He mostly works the night-shifts, after the customers have gone home,
one to register fully; the important thing to bear in mind is how organically, wheeling motorised pallets and driving forklifts in the aisles, getting crates
logically, yet unexpectedly Kiarostami’s oeuvre develops from one film to the of food and other things down from shelves as high as buildings – difficult,
next, each work containing the seed of its successor… Three years after the potentially dangerous work. Christian keeps himself to himself, and is keen to
release of Where Is My Friend’s Home? a major earthquake devastated the region, cover up evidence of a more delinquent past: pulling up his collar and rolling
and a few days later Kiarostami drove there with his son in an effort to find down his sleeves so his tattoos don’t show. An older man has been tasked with
the child, a nonprofessional, who starred in that film; And Life Goes On… is a showing Christian the ropes: this is the worldly, phlegmatic Bruno (Peter Kurth)
fictional re-creation of that journey, filmed in the same memorable landscape, for whom driving forklifts is a sad decline from his glory days at the wheel of a
again largely with nonprofessionals. Through the Olive Trees, which is again shot truck, relishing the freedom of the open road. And Hüller is Marion, who works
and set around Koker and again uses many nonprofessional actors, is either a on the confectionery section; as she drolly reminds everyone, she is in charge
fictional re-creation of an incident that occurred during the shooting of And of “süsswaren”: sweet stuff. She takes a distinct shine to Christian, and he to her.
Life Goes On… or an invented anecdote grounded in the real experience of As Bruno says gleefully to Christian: “You’re forklifting like a lunatic because
shooting that film. I’m not sure which it is, but I’m not sure it matters. you’re in love!”
Either way, the film affords Kiarostami yet another chance to reflect on the In the Aisles is a movie on that overwhelmingly important but rarely filmed
encounter between the world of cinema and the lives of ordinary people – subject: work. We behave as if the workplace is somehow not real to us, and
without in any way repeating himself. After a young actor playing a newlywed that hearth and home is where our authentic experience and identity are to be
husband keeps blowing his lines, in a hilarious extended sequence of fumbled found. But is it the other way around? – Peter Bradshaw, Guardian
takes worthy of Truffaut’s Day for Night, the director – Mohammad Ali Kershavarz,
ostensibly playing himself but clearly standing in for Kiarostami – replaces him There’s just enough chemistry between the winsome, vulnerable Hüller and
with an illiterate local mason who happens to be madly in love with the woman Rogowski… But that’s not really what Stuber’s movie is about… Stuber’s
playing the wife, a young woman from a well-to-do family who refuses to understated, slow-moving drama nicely captures the world of overnight jobs,
speak to the mason in between takes. Most of the comedy is in the mason’s the perils of ‘semi-skilled’ work (a forklift can kill you) and the loneliness that is
dogged, obsessive efforts to propose marriage to her despite her refusal to both an on-the-job hazard and a German stereotype. There’s a sad romance to
speak to him, and in the ambiguous roles played by the filmmakers and the the late hours, a poetry and music to the routine and nobility in taking pride – if
film they’re shooting in this process… In And Life Goes On… a filmmaker and that’s the word – in a menial, repetitive job competently done. – Movie Nation
his son learn something about surviving a disaster from ordinary people, and
Stuber opens as he means to go on, counter-intuitively, with a gorgeous
in this film ordinary people learn something about how to conduct their lives
introduction to the empty store at night, accompanied by the dawn chorus of
from filmmakers…
Johann Strauss’s ‘Blue Danube’… Jenny Roesler’s production design captures
the forced jollity of this hermetic world, with its palm tree wallpaper and a sign
Once again Kiarostami’s use of the surrounding mountainous landscape is
over the staff mirror that says, “This is how the customer sees you”, contrasted
visually as well as dramatically breathtaking, culminating, as his previous film
with the grimness of Christian and Bruno’s homes. The film is at its most
did, in an extended take that films the actors from such a vast distance it
optimistic through Peter Matjasko’s roaming cameras, whether the birds-eye
becomes a kind of comic and cosmic overview of the world – a vision that calls
shots that suggest the determined, ‘show must go on’ sense of community, or
to mind that of Tati’s Playtime transposed to a rural setting. This shot reveals an
the mobile pursuit of the forklifting Christian’s ever-more confident passage
almost mystical, open-ended sensibility that carries the film to a deeper, more
through the aisles. – Demetrios Matheou, Screen Daily
mysterious level. – Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader
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