Weaving a Cinematic Thread

If you didn't catch these foreign films at SIFF, catch them later
Jon Reinsch

Isn't it all a blur? This is the question every hard-core attendee of the Seattle International Film Festival is asked again and again. The short answer is "no." Still, seeing 43 feature films over 25 days (by some standards, a pathetic performance) at times seems less like a festival than a trial by cinema. Looking back on the experience, as voices and images come floating up from the subconscious, one is sometimes confused about which film they came from. Seeing many films in a compressed time, it's as if they're all one continuous movie. In a sense, maybe they are.

Let's begin with two films from China: Zhang Yuan's Seventeen Years and Zhang Yang's Shower. Each has to do with estranged parents and children, and the potential for reconciliation. At the same time, both wonder about the pace of change in China--for good and ill. The painterly Seventeen Years, full of pensive, gray skies, impressed me with its unsparing look at the shortcomings of family life. The sentimental comedy Shower, however, was the audience favorite, winning the Golden Space Needle for Best Picture.

Shower and The Lady offer contrasting views of loosely defined families. In Shower, the characters frequenting the neighborhood bathhouse may quarrel, but they're basically lovable buffoons. In The Lady, an upper-class, childless woman surrounds herself with a makeshift family of grotesques, some of whom are downright dangerous. Directed by Iran's Dariush Mehrjui, the film was made in 1992 but censors prevented its release until 1999. It's a far grittier, more biting work than Mehrjui's elegant Leila, with which it nevertheless has many parallels.

But wait, we might just as easily link The Lady and Laurent Cantet's Human Resources. Both concern themselves with characters who try to do good by straddling two worlds, two classes. In The Lady, the title character's sacrifices may in reality be aimed at some kind of personal catharsis. In the French film, a labor leader attacks the straddling approach, saying "it's not about negotiation; it's a battle." As it turns out, she's right.

Human Resources and Spellbound revolve around themes of economic disruption that might seem unlikely sources of absorbing cinema. They succeed in part by structuring their stories around family conflict. In Human Resources, the disruptive impetus is the 35-hour work week. No, really! Apparently, the change to the shorter work week is not yet cause for celebration in France, because it brings all labor contracts up for renegotiation. Spellbound is the suspenseful story of... corruption in a Japanese bank. Director Masato Harada keeps you on the edge of your seat--even in a scene depicting the annual meeting. This guy could make the building code thrilling.

In Spellbound, Harada asserts his boomer generation's values--in business and filmmaking--against those of the old. Still, he regards the late Akira Kurosawa as a mentor--as does longtime Kurosawa collaborator Takashi Koizumi. Koizumi's When the Rain Lifts is from a screenplay mostly by Kurosawa. Tatsuya Nakadai, veteran of many Kurosawa films and other milestones of Japanese cinema, appears in both Harada's and Koizumi's films.

Suzhou River, a brilliantly stylish riff on Hitchcock's Vertigo

For our next pair, consider the meteorological titles When the Rain Lifts and The Cloud and the Rising Sun. The former concerns a ronin, or masterless samurai. Setting the story apart, this samurai has a wife. Early in the film, she gently reproaches her husband for his uncompassionate misunderstanding of another woman's behavior. In Cloud, a woman with a penetrating gaze shares a cab with her loquacious fiance and an old man. Her silence stands as an indictment of the easy words of others. In these films, when a Japanese woman with downcast eyes speaks, or an Iranian woman says nothing at all, you'd better be paying attention.

The Cloud and the Rising Sun is the first directorial effort of Mahmood Kalari, the preeminent Iranian cinematographer (Leila, A Moment of Innocence). As in so many Iranian films, this one is in part about filmmaking. An actor rushes to his sick wife's bedside, chased all the way by a heartless film crew eager for the final shot. Suzhou River might be said to deal with the limitations of film as well. Chinese director Lou Ye's brilliantly stylish riff on Hitchcock's Vertigo is narrated by a "videographer," a man who views everything through the lens of his camera. So in a way he's also Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window. Perhaps, for a film of real passion, we'll transform ourselves into its ideal viewer.

In a long festival, one thing you grow to appreciate is brevity. Suzhou River shares this admirable quality with Seventeen Years, with which we started this chain of movies. Both come in at a lean 85 minutes or less. It's a rare discipline to leave good, but inessential footage on the cutting room floor. Few films would not benefit from shortening. Perhaps the same could be said of film reviews.

SIFF Fans Hiss at Corporate Logos

At this year's International Film Festival, for the first time I noticed filmgoers--several at least--hissing at the corporate sponsor logos on screen preceding each movie. Is this just a passing WTO fad, or will it continue? Perhaps people are getting tired of these sorts of tacky corporate intrusions, like "Safeco Field" and "Colgate-Palmolive Seafair Parade". If corporations want to help out, it doesn't mean they should spray their grafitti tags all over. --DC.