The Times BFI London Film Festival 2008

[thirtyframesasecond]

15-29 October, full programme

I attended the members' preview last night, which included a clipreel of films that were showing, as well as a Q&A with Sandra Hebron, the artistic director and her team. The Q&A mostly consisted of slightly annoyed members that the festival was just a promotional tool for Hollywood, which most of the exposure and attention going to films that didn't need the publicity since they'd secure UK releases, at the expense of more interesting European and international films. They deflected the criticism though I doubt anyone was really convinced by it. Why do they need to show Quantum of Solace at a time when it'll monopolise all the UK's cinemas at the time anyway?

Can't say much jumps out immediately. Three Monkeys (Ceylan) and 24 City (Jia Zhangke), and the reissue of Dry Summer but that's it really. Maybe the second screening of Frost / Nixon. Last year I saw about 8 films.

[yoshimori]

Besides Desplechin, Egoyan, The Class, Jia, Ceylan and other stuff from Cannes, I was happy to see Indonesia's Kala, a new Honore, a new Figgis dv project, Benning's RR and the other experimental programs, Silence before Bach, the new Hashiguchi, Kore-eda, and Kitano films, a Ruiz, Un lac, and assorted other films. Certainly this is a far better line-up than you'd see in LA at the AFI or LAFF. And many more offerings than in, say, the NYFF.

Also, for those in London during festival time, there are two Robbe-Grillet films - Trans-Europe Express and The Man Who Lies, I believe - playing at the Riverside on 10/23.

[foggy eyes]

I attended the members' preview last night, which included a clipreel of films that were showing, as well as a Q&A with Sandra Hebron, the artistic director and her team.

Yes, what a colossal waste of time that was - at least I know never to go again. No idea why people were complaining about Quantum of Solace - if it brings the money and attention that the festival needs in order to show movies by people like Hong, Alonso, Serra, Straub/Huillet, Benning et al then I'm all for it. As you say, the film will be everywhere anyway, and the people forking out for overpriced gala screenings might as well contribute to something worthwhile. Thanks for creating this thread - I was planning to garner recommendations at some point. So far, I'm definitely getting tickets for:

24 City
A Christmas Tale
Three Monkeys
Wendy & Lucy
The Beaches of Agnes
Un Lac
Nucingen Haus
Birdsong
Delta
Liverpool
Night & Day
The Sky, the Earth and the Rain
Wonderful Town
RR
Nathaniel Dorsky
Le genou d'Artemide + Itineraire de Jean Bricard
The Exiles
Touki Bouki

Things that I noted down as intriguing: Parc (Arnaud des Pallières), Uprise/A Zona (Sandro Aguilar), Still Walking (Kore-eda), Silence before Bach, Ben Rivers. I'm going to give the new Dardennes and Hunger a miss as they will be much cheaper to see when they hit the arthouse circuit.

I'll heed your recommendations for Still Walking and Bach, yoshimori, although for some reason I have never really been a Kore-eda fan. Anything else? Zedz, could you impart some wisdom? Any help would be much appreciated.

[MichaelB]

I've seen 24 City and Blind Loves - both recommended, the latter a real find.

UPDATE: Yoshimori (below) reminds me that I've also seen - and reviewed - Delta.

[yoshimori]

I'll heed your recommendations for Still Walking and Bach, yoshimori, although for some reason I have never really been a Kore-eda fan. Anything else? Zedz, could you impart some wisdom? Any help would be much appreciated.

Just to clarify, I haven't see The Silence Before Bach, but have been looking forward to it. I saw most of the Cannes stuff and, though I cannot impart zedzian wisdom, I'd make these recs from among the movies I have seen:

"must-see": Christmas Tale, Birdsong, Night & Day
"intriguing": Adoration
"of interest": Che, The Class, Hunger, Of Time and the City, Silence of Lorna, 3 Monkeys, Tokyo, Wendy & Lucy, N Dorsky, Straub x 2, 24 City
"inoffensive": Waltz with Bashmir, Vicki Christina Barcelona, Lion's Den, Synecdoche NY, Tulpan, Liverpool, United Red Army, Wonderful Town
"underwhelming at best": Il divo, Good Bad Weird, Modern Life, Delta, Ben Rivers

Others will no doubt have had different reactions.

My buddies in Japan say the Kore-eda is his best. We'll see.

Thanks for the Blind Loves rec, Mr B. The "quirky" compositions on the linked page kind of put me off, but I do love anything that has to do with blindness, so ...

[foggy eyes]

Excellent. Michael, I'm intrigued by Delta (especially as it's co-written by Yvette Biro), so thanks for linking to your review. Yoshimori, many of the others you mention (Che, Hunger, Of Time and the City) are getting UK distribution, so I'm in no rush - although, saying that, I am planning to shell out for A Christmas Tale. I'll check out the Kore-eda, and at the moment am most looking forward to Birdsong, Liverpool, 24 City & RR. I loved Serra's Honour of the Knights (which, as yet, seems to be not so much underrated as underseen), and can't wait to see how his style will evolve.

[foggy eyes]

All booked up. I had to scrap The Silence Before Bach in the end because of scheduling clashes, but thanks for the recommendation all the same, yoshimori. Rather painful to have to fork out over £10 to see the new Desplechin and Wendy & Lucy, but I guess that's the price one has to pay for sheer impatience (the whole lot has left me almost £200 poorer). If anyone has any other recommendations, I'm still open...

[zedz]

OK, stand by for "zedzian wisdom" (yeah, right). I haven't seen many of these, but:

The Silence Before Bach - light and lovely. Thoroughly pissed off several Bach connoisseurs in the audience who were quite unprepared for something so irreverent and playful.

Night and Day - Good solid Hong. If you like his stuff you can't go wrong. I'm much fonder of his more structurally ambitious early work, but it's pretty impeccable and pretty funny.

Wonderful Town - Really impressive, going from relaxed pseudo-Apichatpong Weerasethakul ambling to much darker territory.

Three Monkeys - Really disappointing. Ceylan is at least trying new stuff - this is a sort-of noir - but without that autobiographical edge he seems adrift from his characters and mired in mere style.

Lorna's Silence - Exhibits many of the virtues of the brothers' previous work, but this time the naturalism is saddled to a rather pulpy and borderline preposterous plot and a central character that is drastically under-conceived. I'm no fan of Rosetta either, and I don't think the Dardennes have ever come up with a convincing, rounded female character. They're all marginal madonnas, and placing their Catholic handpuppet centrestage this time around, darting this way and that to fulfil her narrative obligations, doesn't work at all for me, even though the game actress does the best she can with the role.

The Sky, the Earth and the Rain is an interesting film, well worth seeing for several moments of great cinematic beauty (a search in the early morning mist, for example). It's very diffuse and oblique, however, and I don't know if it actually adds up to more than the sum of its parts, but stylistically it's very seductive if you like slow and limpid. Plenty of walkouts when I saw it, which may or may not be a recommendation.

Waltz with Bashir - Meh. I seem to be in a tiny minority with this, but I was not that impressed. It does suggest some interesting new directions for documentary, but I can't get over the bump of an Israeli film lecturing me about how terribly the Palestinians have been treated by non-Israelis.

Lake Tahoe - Superb widescreen, ultra-deadpan, shaggy dog comedy. A big advance on the very good Duck Season by Eimbcke in terms of his filmmaking chops.

Hunger is fantastic, but I expect you'll have plenty of chances to see it.

I've heard great things about the Serra, but haven't seen it. I loved Honour of the Knights, but that was a real acquired taste (made Tarr look like Tarantino).

Nathaniel Dorsky, you say? I haven't seen any of his films for several years, but he's a great filmmaker: intense and lyrical.

I also found Ben Rivers' recent work impressive. This isn't the collaborative programme with Ben Russell, is it ("We Can Not Exist In The World Alone")? If so, there are a couple of Russell films in there that are really fantastic (Black and White Trypps 3 and 4) - much more exciting than Rivers' stuff, I'm afraid.

EDIT: I checked and it's not. Of the films here I've only seen Ah, Liberty!, which is sort of a highlands Emperor Tomato Ketchup - interesting mood to it, anyway.

[Nothing]

Hunger is very far from fantastic, try insincere, simplistic, over-explanatory and dishonest, but anyway.

[zedz]

Hunger is very far from fantastic, try insincere, simplistic, over-explanatory and dishonest, but anyway.

Oh wow, you're right! The scales have fallen from my eyes! Must have been your subtle and well-reasoned argument that did it.

[domino harvey]

Hunger is very far from fantastic, try insincere, simplistic, over-explanatory and dishonest, but anyway.

Oh wow, you're right! The scales have fallen from my eyes! Must have been your subtle and well-reasoned argument that did it.

So his criticism failed to live up to the high bar set by "is fantastic"?

[zedz]

Hunger is very far from fantastic, try insincere, simplistic, over-explanatory and dishonest, but anyway.

Oh wow, you're right! The scales have fallen from my eyes! Must have been your subtle and well-reasoned argument that did it.

So his criticism failed to live up to the high bar set by "is fantastic"?

I've already gone on at length about the film elsewhere on the forum, so didn't feel the need to repeat it all, since this thread is supposed to be about recommendations, not parade-raining.

But if you insist:

Hunger (Steve McQueen, 2008) – One of the most impressive debuts I’ve seen in years. The first half or so is the kind of tour-de-force of intelligent effects you’d hope to see in the first film of an important new filmmaker, with brilliant evocations of an entire generation of great British filmmakers: the punchy, analytical formality of Alan Clarke; the close-up kinaesthesia of Bill Douglas; the poetic visual storytelling of Terence Davies; even, at times, the painterly lighting of Peter Greenaway. The long extended dialogue scene in the middle of the film, starting with a rivetting static two-shot that’s held for an entire reel, elevates the film into another realm. It’s the kind of scene that very few filmmakers can pull off at all, but McQueen makes it the most compeling thing we’ve yet seen in a brilliant film. So not only can he ‘do’ imaginative visual storytelling, but he can extract stunning performances and make 20 minutes of dialogue without movement completely cinematic. The long, bleak denouement (nodding to Terence Davies’ Death and Transfiguration – there aren’t a lot of films that tackle the process of dying so directly) is superbly realised as well, and shows McQueen shifting into – and mastering – yet another register.

[franco]

The Silence Before Bach - light and lovely. Thoroughly pissed off several Bach connoisseurs in the audience who were quite unprepared for something so irreverent and playful.

Again, Zedz is being quite lenient. This is one of those "shoot scenes that look poetic to match the music" movies. A completely worthless experience and an insult to Bach. You'd feel more connected to Bach by revisiting Tarkovsky.

As for Delta, I haven't heard one single positive word about the film.

[MichaelB]

As for Delta, I haven't heard one single positive word about the film.

Oh, there was lots of positive buzz about the film in Sarajevo - I met at least one person who thought it was a flat-out masterpiece and couldn't understand why I was so lukewarm about it.

And it has a lot going for it visually, aurally and musically - it's just dramatically that it falls flat, not least because it largely recycles the same archetypes and situations that underpinned Kornél Mundruczó's earlier Johanna. I simply didn't care about any of the characters as human beings, and for a film that's largely a four-hander set in a somewhat minimalist environment, that's a fatal flaw.

[foggy eyes]

The Silence Before Bach - light and lovely. Thoroughly pissed off several Bach connoisseurs in the audience who were quite unprepared for something so irreverent and playful.

Clashes with other stuff unfortunately, but franco makes me feel a lot better about having to miss it - I think we were both in the same camp about the totally limp Times and Winds, which seems to have been very well-received everywhere else.

Night and Day

Check.

Wonderful Town - Really impressive, going from relaxed pseudo-Apichatpong Weerasethakul ambling to much darker territory.

Very much looking forward to this - it's been picked up by Soda so will get a small run over here too.

Three Monkeys - Really disappointing. Ceylan is at least trying new stuff - this is a sort-of noir - but without that autobiographical edge he seems adrift from his characters and mired in mere style.

Decided to catch it now as there's no release date on the cards. I have mixed feelings about Ceylan, but he seems to be getting better as he goes along - Climates is amazingly unsympathetic as a loose autobiographical portrait (it runs on a a kind of inverse narcissism), and I liked the fact that the 'seriousness' occasionally gives way to some very odd sequences (such as all that business with the nuts).

Lorna's Silence

Gets a UK release a month after the festival, so I'm not that desperate.

The Sky, the Earth and the Rain is an interesting film, well worth seeing for several moments of great cinematic beauty (a search in the early morning mist, for example). It's very diffuse and oblique, however, and I don't know if it actually adds up to more than the sum of its parts, but stylistically it's very seductive if you like slow and limpid. Plenty of walkouts when I saw it, which may or may not be a recommendation.

Sounds right up my street. I need to see everything 'slow' anyway because I'm supposed to writing a thesis about this type of thing.

Lake Tahoe - Superb widescreen, ultra-deadpan, shaggy dog comedy. A big advance on the very good Duck Season by Eimbcke in terms of his filmmaking chops.

Hmm. It clashes with RR, so no dice - Yume have picked it up so there shouldn't be a problem further down the line.

Hunger is fantastic, but I expect you'll have plenty of chances to see it.

Yup.

I've heard great things about the Serra, but haven't seen it. I loved Honour of the Knights, but that was a real acquired taste (made Tarr look like Tarantino).

Can't wait. I think there's something very different going on in Honour of the Knights - Tarr seems to be all about time-pressure and the 'event of the shot', whereas Serra is experimenting with techniques of 'applied reduction' and extreme de-dramatisation without turning the shot into an event. He's one of the handful of filmmakers around who appears to be genuinely striving for a sense of the Bazinian (or ontological) real - see also Apichatpong (Blissfully Yours) and Alonso (La Libertad & Los Muertos).

Nathaniel Dorsky, you say? I haven't seen any of his films for several years, but he's a great filmmaker: intense and lyrical.

Check.

I also found Ben Rivers' recent work impressive. This isn't the collaborative programme with Ben Russell, is it ("We Can Not Exist In The World Alone")? If so, there are a couple of Russell films in there that are really fantastic (Black and White Trypps 3 and 4) - much more exciting than Rivers' stuff, I'm afraid.

Might give it a go anyway.

Thanks!

[Nothing]

Re: Hunger. The direction is reasonably strong for a British film, but in service of questionable aims. The film sings the line that the IRA are 'good' and the British government 'bad', drawing cheap comparisons to Guantanamo Bay, in full knowledge that this will play well to unthinking liberals and ignorant Americans with no real concept of the complex mix of nationalism, religious sectarianism, thuggishness and criminality that still blights Northern Ireland from both sides of the divide. In other words, it sacrifices depth and rigour in service of a crowd-pleasing 'message'. Worse, one feels no real sense of commitment from McQueen, let alone any personal investment in the material, rather that he is jumping on the soapbox of his Irish Republican co-writer as an excuse to craft his 'visual art'. Yes, some of these images are striking - the urine running beneath the doors of the cells, the patterns smered into the excrement, the bloody knuckles in the snow. Given his existing reputation in the art world, McQueen also seems to have retained final cut over his film, a rarity in mainstream British cinema, and this gives the film a sense of formal structure also rare in said circles. But. A coherent / complex / committed work of cinema this still does not make. Then we have the dialogue scene - formally effective, but textually unnecessary, a classic case of over-explanation, something that the British film industry does so well (whilst attempting, ridiculously, to turn Bobby Sands into some kind of intellectual). Worst of all, the unbelievable cliches of the death scene, which really drag the film down a peg or three - Sands as a boy staring into the sun; flocks of birds fluttering from a tree, etc... Really, we've devoted enough space to his over-hyped film already.

I've also no idea how anyone can prefer Une vieille maîtresse to Breillat's masterpiece, A ma soeur!, but that's for another thread...

[zedz]

Thanks for the more detailed reply. I can see where you're coming from with the tropes in the final section, which I did think was the most conventional of the three. I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree on whether this is a 'message film'. (And, if it helps, A ma soeur! is my second-favourite Breillat film - with everything else I've seen a long way behind)

[foggy eyes]

A very lazy round-up in order of preference (perhaps I'll come back and annotate later):

Birdsong
---
Winter / Sarabande (Dorsky)
A Christmas Tale
Still Walking
Night & Day
The Beaches of Agnes
---
RR
Liverpool
Le genou d'Artemide + Itineraire de Jean Bricard
The Exiles
The Sky, the Earth and the Rain
Wonderful Town
---
24 City
Un Lac
Three Monkeys
Wendy & Lucy
---
Nucingen Haus
Delta

[brunosh]

Thanks for this summary list, foggy eyes. The similarity between our orders of ranking of the five I saw has helped me think that perhaps I didn't miss out too much due to doing things with the family during the half-term holidays rather than sneaking off to the festival. My order was:

Night and Day
Still Walking
Birdsong
---
Liverpool
---
Wonderful Town

Night and Day and Still Walking were the most pleasurable viewing with the former's probing of base temptations just edging it for me over the latter's gentle and humorous testing of a few aspects of Japanese mainstream self image. But I keep coming back to thinking about Birdsong which, despite being tough going at the time, may, patience rewarded, in due course come to seem a greater achievement than either of the others, determined to be a "work of art" but an effective one.

I came out of Liverpool thanking God that I live in London and not in a remote settlement in Tierra del Fuego. Stylistically interesting, although not very involving. I've got nothing against Wonderful Town but I thought it was a bit gauche, quite good at hesitant attraction, not good at the other moods suggested by the narrative, never really recovering from the cringe-worthy motorcycle ride to accompaniment of some pappy pop song better suited to an early 70s sappy TV movie.