Three short reviews

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13 October

My Beautiful Country (2012) is a German production whose German name translates as The Bridge on the Ibar, and the English title refers to a Serbian national song that a group of Albanians who have been captured are asked to sing. We see one of them, Ramiz, given the chance to escape, but he ends up on the Serbian side of the river, and Danica, who has been widowed, takes pity on him when she finds that he has broken in.

Both Mišel Matičević and Zrinka Cvitešić are very strong and natural in these roles, and we see Ramiz develop in relation to one of her sons (Danilo), who has not spoken since his father died, whereas his elder brother Vlado has disaffection for life, and ends up behaving dishonestly. Petty jealousy upsets things and sets in train a course of events that provides a fulcrum for the story in the shape of the bridge. It is a powerful film that makes one sees how destructive what divides us can be, but ultimately offers hope.


With Hawking (2013), we had a documentary about the 71-year-old Cambridge professor that received what must have been a premiere, but was not billed as one. After a t.v. film in 2004, it sets out to be Hawking’s own account of his life, based on his script or early writings about his diagnosis with Motorneurone Disease.

The film used actors to represent some scenes, as well as contemporary footage and stills. All in all, just as the expanding universe (the famous Big Bang) was represented schematically by shapes and whirls, so, too, are key moments, with shots of parts of faces, or faces or bodies out of focus.

Once Hawking’s marriage to Jane had been described as breaking down in the face of a private life very different from a public one, much of the nineties and beyond was passed over quickly. So much so that one might be forgiven for thinking that the last thing that Hawking did was write A Brief History of Time in the late 1980s, not that he has made more discoveries about black holes recently.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy presided over question session with Hawking and various people such as film-maker Stephen Finnigan, but Hawking did not seem to be put at the centre of that experience, with Guru-Murthy’s back to him much of the time. Some strategically left before the end, rather than watch what – no reflection on the Festival – was quite embarrassingly weak.


Finally, Woody Allen was in thoughtful mood with Blue Jasmine (2013), with Cate Blanchett striking as a character a little reminiscent both of Tennesee Williams’ Blanche Dubobis (from A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)) and of the mother in Allen’s own drama Interiors, from the late 1970s : though we did not always relate to some of Jasmine’s posturing, and maybe Sally Hawkins as Ginger was a little more uncomplicated (with Hawkins bringing a genuine enthusiasm to the role), Blanchett had a poise and a grace that made her the natural victim of Alec Baldwin’s duplicitous arrangements.

For his part, he was a man one could easily credit as pushing the boundaries of how to use apparent wealth to create businesses on top of businesses – and the film ably walked the tightrope between Jasmine’s memories of a hurtful past and how we see her try to extricate herself from acknowledging it. Ultimately, when she is confronted with it, we understand what she did when she felt herself humiliated, and Allen kept that moment for us : nothing is quite as it seems, and we gather what repercussions Jasmine’s instinct had for all.

There are laughs along the way, notably in the manner of Bobby Cannavale (as Chili), but no one should expect anything near as light as Midnight in Paris (2011) (or, though, as dark as Cassandra’s Dream (2007)).


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

I counted them all out...

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2013
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29 August

Sadly, I do not have the skills of a Brian Hanrahan, but, going through the Festival's Main Features (that link takes one to where the PDF brochure can be downloaded), I made it twenty documentaries*, and there may be others (there and elsewhere) - in former times, which was not necessarily better save from a bean-counting perspective, they were listed in a separate section from the feature films per se, but now they mingle.

I think that I spotted a score of the DOC logos. I was looking, because, in one of our chats the other day, Festival Director Tony Jones said that emphasis is needed on how many one can see - over the 11 days, however exactly they may be spread, that is around two per day, after all, so one can see his point. (I always like to make space for three or four in the course of my Festival viewing, but, as with the whole Festival juggling cum three-dimensional crossword, compromise is inevitable.)

Tony is a nice, level-headed guy, and always makes time to talk to me. A few weeks back now, he and I chatted as we negotiated Parker's Piece in Cambridge**, and I learnt for the first time that Hawking was coming to the Festival, and about negotiations for getting Hawking people over from the States for it.

This most recent time, it was the documentaries, and also exactly what hard work for Festival stalwarts from the Arts Picturehouse and from his family (and from his son's circle) it had been to put on twinned screenings on Grantchester Meadows***. As I said to Tony, not wishing to diminish that effort and to remind him of his great enthusiasm for outdoor screenings, he wouldn't do it, if he didn't enjoy it.

The previous time, a little word that - whatever it may be, and I do not think that I am being indiscreet - Surprise Film 1**** is a World Premiere. Famously, no one knows (though @JimGRoss always guesses) what the film is / films are except Tony, and the projectionist only gets it / them just in time to do the necessary...

And I remember, last of all, coming out of Cell 211 (2009), and Tony wondering, even though he was pleased that I thought that it was a powerful screening, how it would stand for getting distributed. (If you follow that link, you will see (on IMDb) that the film, after all, did pretty well for itself.)



End-notes

* Sadly, I am an idiot, and failed to appreciate the music-documentary nature of the 33 1/3 strand, which makes the sum around thirty !

** For those who do not know it, click on this link, book yourselves some films, and get over to Cambridge to see this square of land, criss-crossed by paths, bicycles and foreign language students, and home to cricket- and football-pitches and the like on your own scenic walk from the station...

*** A real place, known to many by virtue of Fink Ployed.

**** Last year, there were two (for the first time ?), and the first of this year's is on Saturday 28 September.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)