More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
14 September
Not much to say about Salma and the Apple (2011), except that, as I was feeling, I'd probably have watched Salar the Salmon in preference to this story set in Iran, which I walked out of just now : Rafi Pitts' The Hunter (2010) (about which I have written elsewhere), rightly or wrongly, spoke to me far more about modern Iran at this festival two years ago.
Maybe if the subtitles had been more accessible - everyone wants to 'get off' the taxi, the wheelbarrow is a tricycle, and one sometimes had to read two full lines of text and yet follow the rest of the screen - it would have helped, but the cinematography, too, right from the opening shot with the son on the horizon at daybreak, is extremely variable. One shot is in sharp focus, the next (say, taking in the wider scene of the garden, or the tree with the eponymous fruit) not far short of fuzzy. (And the music is portentous in a way that draws attention to the over-reached pretensions of the story.)
In Habbib Bahmani's take on Pilgrim's Progress meeting Isaac Newton discovering gravity, I did my best to engage with Hadi Dibaji as Sadegh, suddenly back home from years away, but I just wanted to save myself for something better - and there will be much better things, even to-day - and not find out how all these chance encounters, laden with significance by the barrow-load, unfold.
PS Oh, and forgot to say that, which I could not put out of my mind, there was a resemblance in appearance, naivety and enthusiasm to James McAvoy as Valentin in The Last Station (2009), which did not help me...
PPS Just another poke at the subtitles: someone might just about be called, or describe himself as, a clergyman nowadays, but the words have a ring about them (the 'clergy' part) that makes it about as apt for him to be a cleric. If the translation did happen to want to catch at an archaic air, OK, but I doubt it...
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Showing posts with label The Hunter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Hunter. Show all posts
Friday 14 September 2012
Friday 27 January 2012
Self-parking garages at Writer's Rest
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
27 January
There's a discussion going on about cars that drive themselves (that age-old dream - of some, anyway!).
I have just posted this comment in a 'spin-off thread'* to the original posting:
Hmm. I'm not sure that this concept is a new one - if I am not raving, it originated in Japan (probably Tokyo), where, clearly, efficient use of the available space is of paramount importance. (It may be now in West Hollywood.)
In essence, I think that it is little more than a giant car-transporter (those huge things on the roads that look so dangerous on so many counts:
* What if the cars touch (in varying degrees of touching from a knock to a squash)?;
* What if the whole thing falls over?;
* What if a car - as in the films - tumbles off the back and into one's path, and would one's reactions be good enough?.
Self-parking garages are a mechanization of using storage space, as I recall, a bit like the capsule hotel - you get a bed for the night, but it's cheap and basic, as you're occupying a space not much larger than a coffin!
I believe that, with the self-parking concept, you leave the garage with fitting your car into the space available, rather than driving around and around a car-park, where a large surface-area is, of course, wasted in this search by providing the route for the cars to get around, and from floor to floor.
I think that it's computer-controlled mechanization, in fact, with hydraulics, sensors, etc. If I'm right, it's little different from the technology that we have already taken for granted with robots building vehicles for us in car-plants:
There's a very atmospheric scene in such a plant in The Hunter (2010) (write-up on my blog**, and the Cambridge Film Festival web-site), where Ali (writer / director / actor Rafi Pitts), who is a security guard on night duties, makes a patrol. There is no one around, but the robots are busy welding and the like.
Full blog at http://writersrest.com/2012/01/24/let-the-robot-drive/#comment-1108
End-notes
* Some such...
** Postings at: The Hunter re-emerges and Back to The Hunter.
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
27 January
There's a discussion going on about cars that drive themselves (that age-old dream - of some, anyway!).
I have just posted this comment in a 'spin-off thread'* to the original posting:
Hmm. I'm not sure that this concept is a new one - if I am not raving, it originated in Japan (probably Tokyo), where, clearly, efficient use of the available space is of paramount importance. (It may be now in West Hollywood.)
In essence, I think that it is little more than a giant car-transporter (those huge things on the roads that look so dangerous on so many counts:
* What if the cars touch (in varying degrees of touching from a knock to a squash)?;
* What if the whole thing falls over?;
* What if a car - as in the films - tumbles off the back and into one's path, and would one's reactions be good enough?.
Self-parking garages are a mechanization of using storage space, as I recall, a bit like the capsule hotel - you get a bed for the night, but it's cheap and basic, as you're occupying a space not much larger than a coffin!
I believe that, with the self-parking concept, you leave the garage with fitting your car into the space available, rather than driving around and around a car-park, where a large surface-area is, of course, wasted in this search by providing the route for the cars to get around, and from floor to floor.
I think that it's computer-controlled mechanization, in fact, with hydraulics, sensors, etc. If I'm right, it's little different from the technology that we have already taken for granted with robots building vehicles for us in car-plants:
There's a very atmospheric scene in such a plant in The Hunter (2010) (write-up on my blog**, and the Cambridge Film Festival web-site), where Ali (writer / director / actor Rafi Pitts), who is a security guard on night duties, makes a patrol. There is no one around, but the robots are busy welding and the like.
Full blog at http://writersrest.com/2012/01/24/let-the-robot-drive/#comment-1108
End-notes
* Some such...
** Postings at: The Hunter re-emerges and Back to The Hunter.
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Sunday 18 December 2011
Back to The Hunter
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
19 December
* Contains a goodly number of spoilers *
As planned, I watched The Hunter last night, but this time on DVD - how some of those scenes cried out for a cinema screen! That apart, however well people receive it (the trailer is intriguing, but I assume that it was made for cinema release, but I never saw the film announced after last year's festival, or I would have watched it again), they cannot escape the fact that it is well lit and photographed.
How they receive it depends, I think, on how much they are content with the film's pace (I think that it needs to unfold as it does, but I have read that others differ and are quite irritated with what they get for the time spent), and with being left with an abiding enigma, rather an unwinding and, maybe, some sort of resolution.
What partly goes with this, I think, is that there is very little heard dialogue, and its absence is apparent: we are the other side of the glass, for example, witnessing the transaction, when Ali Alavi (Rafi Pitts), takes a hotel room, and only come inside when he is going to the room, with what turns out to be a spectacular view. (Not to divert too much, we are only too aware, in the same way, of the limitations of what we are being shown, because we could not have known, from the scene at the hotel, what it gives onto, just as, when Ali first goes to his flat, we could not have known in front of what he was parking, or what its living area gives onto at the front.)
All in all, this means that we have to make inferences (because we will never know what Ali hunts in the woods, or whether it is just the difficulty of the shot that makes him stand down from it, before we see him, at a later point entirely, going for a kill and shooting), and that there are very few facts. These are those facts:
* Ali has been in prison, but we will never know why (some sort of crime, or for political reasons - he is always listening to the political debate going on, but never appears to react to it), where, or for how long
* The term of his sentence is only consistent with having believed (as he may still believe) that Saba is his daughter, and thus with Sara's having being impregnated by him before his imprisonment and found to be with child during it - but that may not be a fact, as he somehow sees her as she pleads with an unseen official (or officials), presumably if not for AI, then for adoption, because of what she says that she said to Ali to give him hope
* The police contact him to report Sara's death
* He learns that there was a conflict between protesters and police (and later goes to the scene, where we see the positions of fallen bodies drawn on the ground), and that fire from one side or the other seems to have hit her accidentally
* Ali seems to have no notion of what the protest was or why (as he is told, alone, without Saba) Sara would have been there
* He finds the officer's questioning about his working nights and when he sees Sara and Saba intrusive - they appear to be interested in the strength of the relationship, as if he might have had a motive himself, perhaps because, as we know, they have not yet identified the gun that fired the shot
* He appears to identify the body - it is a long shot, from another room (maybe even the doorway of that far room), and he says nothing in words, but the police take Sara to have been identified from how he reacts (when he is asked to identify a body that may be Saba, it is the same scene and camera angle, but his reaction is even more ambiguous) - the police, of course, would know what he was later signing about identifying the bodies, but we do not, and that is part of the fog in which Rafi Pitts deliberately leaves us
* He visits and lies to Sara's mother (who is unaware of her own daughter's death) about why his daughter is not with him to see her on her (Saba's) birthday, leaves the family cat with her (supposedly at Saba's request), and takes off - he has made preparations to leave, by taking care of the remainng thing in the flat, the cat
* Having driven around and chosen a vantage-point (after a helicopter has been flying over), and taken out his hunting-rifle, he takes a bead on a car through his telescopic-sights until it passes
* When a police-car shortly after comes along the same stretch of road, he does the same, and he shoots - it seems as though it may have been a mistake, but he shoots again in what we realize is confirmation of his intent, and then kills the passenger, when he gets out (on the side facing us)
* After staying the night in the hotel, a helicopter is again in evidence, and, seemingly acting on its presence, Ali goes to a scrap dealer and changes his car
* The only other fact, important or not, is that when the two officers chase and catch him, the one who does not want to shoot him as a cop-killer (and who claims to be a fellow human being) says that the other officer has killed other prisoners whom he didn't like, and is going to try to frame him, if he kills Ali, too
Time, now, to see the interview from the DVD with director / Ali, Rafi Pitts...
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
19 December
* Contains a goodly number of spoilers *
As planned, I watched The Hunter last night, but this time on DVD - how some of those scenes cried out for a cinema screen! That apart, however well people receive it (the trailer is intriguing, but I assume that it was made for cinema release, but I never saw the film announced after last year's festival, or I would have watched it again), they cannot escape the fact that it is well lit and photographed.
How they receive it depends, I think, on how much they are content with the film's pace (I think that it needs to unfold as it does, but I have read that others differ and are quite irritated with what they get for the time spent), and with being left with an abiding enigma, rather an unwinding and, maybe, some sort of resolution.
What partly goes with this, I think, is that there is very little heard dialogue, and its absence is apparent: we are the other side of the glass, for example, witnessing the transaction, when Ali Alavi (Rafi Pitts), takes a hotel room, and only come inside when he is going to the room, with what turns out to be a spectacular view. (Not to divert too much, we are only too aware, in the same way, of the limitations of what we are being shown, because we could not have known, from the scene at the hotel, what it gives onto, just as, when Ali first goes to his flat, we could not have known in front of what he was parking, or what its living area gives onto at the front.)
All in all, this means that we have to make inferences (because we will never know what Ali hunts in the woods, or whether it is just the difficulty of the shot that makes him stand down from it, before we see him, at a later point entirely, going for a kill and shooting), and that there are very few facts. These are those facts:
* Ali has been in prison, but we will never know why (some sort of crime, or for political reasons - he is always listening to the political debate going on, but never appears to react to it), where, or for how long
* The term of his sentence is only consistent with having believed (as he may still believe) that Saba is his daughter, and thus with Sara's having being impregnated by him before his imprisonment and found to be with child during it - but that may not be a fact, as he somehow sees her as she pleads with an unseen official (or officials), presumably if not for AI, then for adoption, because of what she says that she said to Ali to give him hope
* The police contact him to report Sara's death
* He learns that there was a conflict between protesters and police (and later goes to the scene, where we see the positions of fallen bodies drawn on the ground), and that fire from one side or the other seems to have hit her accidentally
* Ali seems to have no notion of what the protest was or why (as he is told, alone, without Saba) Sara would have been there
* He finds the officer's questioning about his working nights and when he sees Sara and Saba intrusive - they appear to be interested in the strength of the relationship, as if he might have had a motive himself, perhaps because, as we know, they have not yet identified the gun that fired the shot
* He appears to identify the body - it is a long shot, from another room (maybe even the doorway of that far room), and he says nothing in words, but the police take Sara to have been identified from how he reacts (when he is asked to identify a body that may be Saba, it is the same scene and camera angle, but his reaction is even more ambiguous) - the police, of course, would know what he was later signing about identifying the bodies, but we do not, and that is part of the fog in which Rafi Pitts deliberately leaves us
* He visits and lies to Sara's mother (who is unaware of her own daughter's death) about why his daughter is not with him to see her on her (Saba's) birthday, leaves the family cat with her (supposedly at Saba's request), and takes off - he has made preparations to leave, by taking care of the remainng thing in the flat, the cat
* Having driven around and chosen a vantage-point (after a helicopter has been flying over), and taken out his hunting-rifle, he takes a bead on a car through his telescopic-sights until it passes
* When a police-car shortly after comes along the same stretch of road, he does the same, and he shoots - it seems as though it may have been a mistake, but he shoots again in what we realize is confirmation of his intent, and then kills the passenger, when he gets out (on the side facing us)
* After staying the night in the hotel, a helicopter is again in evidence, and, seemingly acting on its presence, Ali goes to a scrap dealer and changes his car
* The only other fact, important or not, is that when the two officers chase and catch him, the one who does not want to shoot him as a cop-killer (and who claims to be a fellow human being) says that the other officer has killed other prisoners whom he didn't like, and is going to try to frame him, if he kills Ali, too
Time, now, to see the interview from the DVD with director / Ali, Rafi Pitts...
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Friday 14 October 2011
The Hunter, one year on
More views of - or after - Cambridge Film Festival 2011
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
14 October
I have been reminded of a film from last year's Festival, The Hunter (2010), whose main character, Ali Alavi, is played by its director, Rafi Pitts. At the time (a bit like Kosmos at this year's Festival), it seemed likely to be too subtle to be readily understood (though not quite as the film's official wording would suggest):
In an act of vengeance, a young man randomly kills two police officers. He escapes to the forest, where he is arrested by two other officers. The three men are surrounded by trees, the woods. They are lost in a maze, a desolate landscape, where the boundaries between the hunter and the hunted are difficult to perceive (edited for punctuation).
On the Rotten Tomatoes web-site (www.rottentomatoes.com), Jason Wood (in Little White Lies) is quoted as saying 'Seemingly destined to go largely under-appreciated, this is a work of precision and complexity'. (Given that someone - presumably by mistake - has posted a review of the film from 2011 of the same name on IMDb's web-page for this film (www.imdb.com/title/tt1190072), there is evidence of under-appreciation that it even exists as a separate entity!)
Looking at what both who Wood is (or appears to be?) in relation to the film's distribution and what has written (www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/theatrical-reviews/the-hunter-12001), he is clearly not going to give away exactly what happens or, more importantly, the rationale behind it. But there are two short sections (amongst others) that I think most worth quoting, the first for where the film is, the second for where it may have come from:
[...] And yet the film also feels incredibly universal. In its sense of intrigue, unrest and corruption in high places, it perhaps has more in common with a number of iconic American films of the 1970s.
[...] Minimalism has been a watchword for this confident, intelligent and distinctive filmmaker, and in his pared-down aesthetic, introspection and nominal dialogue Pitts exhibits echoes of Jean-Pierre Melville and recalls Walter Hill’s The Driver (edited for punctuation).
At the screening, I definitely felt as Wood does in the first quotation - it was a very intelligent take on those earlier films, with a good dose of redneck lawlessness thrown in for good measure.
As for the specific echoes that he identifies, I will need to consider them, and also to look at obtaining my own copy of The Hunter. What I will say is this, by way of indicating my own thinking about the film: what is it that we are told about how Ali's wife comes to be killed?
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
14 October
I have been reminded of a film from last year's Festival, The Hunter (2010), whose main character, Ali Alavi, is played by its director, Rafi Pitts. At the time (a bit like Kosmos at this year's Festival), it seemed likely to be too subtle to be readily understood (though not quite as the film's official wording would suggest):
In an act of vengeance, a young man randomly kills two police officers. He escapes to the forest, where he is arrested by two other officers. The three men are surrounded by trees, the woods. They are lost in a maze, a desolate landscape, where the boundaries between the hunter and the hunted are difficult to perceive (edited for punctuation).
On the Rotten Tomatoes web-site (www.rottentomatoes.com), Jason Wood (in Little White Lies) is quoted as saying 'Seemingly destined to go largely under-appreciated, this is a work of precision and complexity'. (Given that someone - presumably by mistake - has posted a review of the film from 2011 of the same name on IMDb's web-page for this film (www.imdb.com/title/tt1190072), there is evidence of under-appreciation that it even exists as a separate entity!)
Looking at what both who Wood is (or appears to be?) in relation to the film's distribution and what has written (www.littlewhitelies.co.uk/theatrical-reviews/the-hunter-12001), he is clearly not going to give away exactly what happens or, more importantly, the rationale behind it. But there are two short sections (amongst others) that I think most worth quoting, the first for where the film is, the second for where it may have come from:
[...] And yet the film also feels incredibly universal. In its sense of intrigue, unrest and corruption in high places, it perhaps has more in common with a number of iconic American films of the 1970s.
[...] Minimalism has been a watchword for this confident, intelligent and distinctive filmmaker, and in his pared-down aesthetic, introspection and nominal dialogue Pitts exhibits echoes of Jean-Pierre Melville and recalls Walter Hill’s The Driver (edited for punctuation).
At the screening, I definitely felt as Wood does in the first quotation - it was a very intelligent take on those earlier films, with a good dose of redneck lawlessness thrown in for good measure.
As for the specific echoes that he identifies, I will need to consider them, and also to look at obtaining my own copy of The Hunter. What I will say is this, by way of indicating my own thinking about the film: what is it that we are told about how Ali's wife comes to be killed?
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
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