list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around Manda Bala on Spout Copyright 2005-9 Spout, LLC Spout RSS http://www.spout.com/images/SpoutLogoRSS.jpg http://www.spout.com/ 136 30 http://www.spout.com/films/Manda_Bala/314987/default.aspx Title: Manda Bala
Year: 2007
Director: Jason Kohn
Plot: Brazil is a nation where political and economic corruption and violent crime are a way of life for many, and filmmaker Jason Kohn examines some of the more unusual ways they manifest themselves in this documentary. In Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), Kohn's subjects include a plastic surgeon whose practice is dominated by the victims of kidnappers who lost their ears to their captors; a political figure who uses his frog ranch as a cover for illegal business operations which have made him a multi-millionaire; and an auto customizer whose specialty is bullet-proofing luxury cars. Manda Bala (Send A Bullet) won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 29
Number of Lists: 14
Number of blog posts: 17
Number of discussion threads: 6
SpoutRating: 4
]]>Tue, 30 Dec 2008 02:46:40 GMTManda Bala2007Jason KohnBrazil is a nation where political and economic corruption and violent crime are a way of life for many, and filmmaker Jason Kohn examines some of the more unusual ways they manifest themselves in this documentary. In Manda Bala (Send a Bullet), Kohn's subjects include a plastic surgeon whose practice is dominated by the victims of kidnappers who lost their ears to their captors; a political figure who uses his frog ranch as a cover for illegal business operations which have made him a multi-millionaire; and an auto customizer whose specialty is bullet-proofing luxury cars. Manda Bala (Send A Bullet) won the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide29Tag Target (>10)141764http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/s314987.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/Manda_Bala/314987/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/jimbell/archive/2008/8/26/34387.aspx Post By: JimBell
Post To: JimBell Blog
Post Date: 8/26/2008 3:09:31 AM
Body: Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) (2007) is a documentary portrait of Brazil. The most important question to ask about any such portrait is “How accurate is it?” I don’t have a clue! Do you? A secondary question is “What qualifies the film-maker to make a movie—and a serious, judgemental movie—about Brazil?” The film does not say. I think this is a weakness. Taking a cue from Aristotle, when making a public speech to persuade people about something, one of the most important things to establish is your “ethos”—this usually translates as “character” but more accurately means your qualifications to speak on the topic. It is not my job as a viewer to spend hours researching the film makers, but a quick look suggests that the driving force behind the sweeping assessment of Brazil is a young (!), American (!), making his first documentary (!), who visited Brazil several times (!). None of these characteristics prohibit him from producing a devastatingly accurate portrait of Brazil. But I wonder. But is the film itself convincing? That is, even if you don’t know much about Brazil, and even if you don’t know who is making the argument, does the film itself convince you that it is accurate? Good documentaries instil that confidence. Who Killed the Electric Car? leaves you feeling there was a travesty of environmental justice even though you do not have an electrical engineering degree as a basis to judge the cars’ effectiveness. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room leaves you disgusted with corporate America even though you do not know the percentage of corrupt versus ethical companies in the country. Manda Bala does not convince because we know something exists besides class warfare and ubiquitous corruption. My only personal connection with Brazil is a good friend who has adopted the country, speaks intermediate Portuguese, and has nothing but good to say about the Brazilian people as opposed to the system. Where was that in the film? My only intellectual knowledge of Brazil is of its tremendous economic clout in the Western hemisphere. How can a dysfunctional country that should be put out of its misery (send a bullet) be an economic powerhouse? Where was that addressed in the film? This may be too much for the film to address. But it creates these expectations. The film fails to convince because it is already too wide ranging. Who Killed the Electric Car? focuses on the introduction of the electric car in California; Enron focuses on one company. But Manda Bala features a corrupt frog farmer, an apparently wealthy young woman who had her ears chopped off by kidnappers, an English-speaking businessman who bullet proofs automobiles, a masked kidnapper and murderer, an outrageously corrupt national politician, several members of the legal system, and the list goes on. We don’t get to know these people. For one thing there is not time. With some of them, you get a sense that they would be wonderful to get to know. I felt the rich girl with artificial ears showed signs of great maturity and elements of quirky humour, but when her story was done, so was she. Similarly, the kidnapper and murderer was interesting in the blasé way he went about his business, but we never go beyond his persona, in fact ending with some of his statements about financing ghetto development which sounded like grandstanding. Although some viewers have praised the interviewer’s questioning technique, I thought it failed to probe. For example, as the third or fourth question put to the major corrupt politician, the interviewer mentions the frog farm scandal, and the politician gets up and leaves the room. How is that scintillating interviewing? We already know the politician is guilty. This film’s claim to fame is winning the 2007 Sundance Film Festival documentary award. I do not know what politics go into that award or what the competition from other films was, but I hope and I know that we can get a lot better documentaries than Manda Bala..
]]>Tue, 26 Aug 2008 07:09:31 GMTJimBellJimBell Blog8/26/2008 3:09:31 AMManda Bala (Send a Bullet) (2007) is a documentary portrait of Brazil. The most important question to ask about any such portrait is “How accurate is it?” I don’t have a clue! Do you? A secondary question is “What qualifies the film-maker to make a movie—and a serious, judgemental movie—about Brazil?” The film does not say. I think this is a weakness. Taking a cue from Aristotle, when making a public speech to persuade people about something, one of the most important things to establish is your “ethos”—this usually translates as “character” but more accurately means your qualifications to speak on the topic. It is not my job as a viewer to spend hours researching the film makers, but a quick look suggests that the driving force behind the sweeping assessment of Brazil is a young (!), American (!), making his first documentary (!), who visited Brazil several times (!). None of these characteristics prohibit him from producing a devastatingly accurate portrait of Brazil. But I wonder. But is the film itself convincing? That is, even if you don’t know much about Brazil, and even if you don’t know who is making the argument, does the film itself convince you that it is accurate? Good documentaries instil that confidence. Who Killed the Electric Car? leaves you feeling there was a travesty of environmental justice even though you do not have an electrical engineering degree as a basis to judge the cars’ effectiveness. Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room leaves you disgusted with corporate America even though you do not know the percentage of corrupt versus ethical companies in the country. Manda Bala does not convince because we know something exists besides class warfare and ubiquitous corruption. My only personal connection with Brazil is a good friend who has adopted the country, speaks intermediate Portuguese, and has nothing but good to say about the Brazilian people as opposed to the system. Where was that in the film? My only intellectual knowledge of Brazil is of its tremendous economic clout in the Western hemisphere. How can a dysfunctional country that should be put out of its misery (send a bullet) be an economic powerhouse? Where was that addressed in the film? This may be too much for the film to address. But it creates these expectations. The film fails to convince because it is already too wide ranging. Who Killed the Electric Car? focuses on the introduction of the electric car in California; Enron focuses on one company. But Manda Bala features a corrupt frog farmer, an apparently wealthy young woman who had her ears chopped off by kidnappers, an English-speaking businessman who bullet proofs automobiles, a masked kidnapper and murderer, an outrageously corrupt national politician, several members of the legal system, and the list goes on. We don’t get to know these people. For one thing there is not time. With some of them, you get a sense that they would be wonderful to get to know. I felt the rich girl with artificial ears showed signs of great maturity and elements of quirky humour, but when her story was done, so was she. Similarly, the kidnapper and murderer was interesting in the blasé way he went about his business, but we never go beyond his persona, in fact ending with some of his statements about financing ghetto development which sounded like grandstanding. Although some viewers have praised the interviewer’s questioning technique, I thought it failed to probe. For example, as the third or fourth question put to the major corrupt politician, the interviewer mentions the frog farm scandal, and the politician gets up and leaves the room. How is that scintillating interviewing? We already know the politician is guilty. This film’s claim to fame is winning the 2007 Sundance Film Festival documentary award. I do not know what politics go into that award or what the competition from other films was, but I hope and I know that we can get a lot better documentaries than Manda Bala.. http://www.spout.com/blogs/unclefestering/archive/2008/8/16/34075.aspx Post By: unclefestering
Post To: unclefestering Blog
Post Date: 8/16/2008 3:30:27 PM
Body: Directed by Jason Kohn. Starring Jader Barbalho, Claudio Fonteles, Helbio Dias, Juarez Avelar, Paulo Lamarao, Mario Lucio Avelar. Manda Bala is an incredible indictment; almost a cheerfully sad story of degradation on all levels of Brazilian society. In the documentary’s opening, we hear a prosecutor explaining how corruption is the source from which all other crimes flow. Over the next 85 minutes we see how the crimes of the rich are connected to the crimes of the poor. Don’t be worried that you’ll find this a dull and boring documentary. Director Jason Kohn sarcastically mixes his tales with such lush, dazzling cinematography and happy, peppy Brazilian pop songs that you almost don’t mind hearing about the kidnappings and mutilations. Kohl begins with the frog farmer who started with a $300,000 grant from the government. What’s wrong with that? Well, the government paid $9 million on this project alone. The other $8.7 million went into the pockets of corrupt politician Jadar Barbalho, only a small part of the estimated $2 billion he siphoned off the government. What do the poor do without the money that is supposed to build their economy? They move to the slums of Sao Paolo and kidnap wealthy and middle class Brazilians. To prove that the victims are in danger, it has become a common practice to cut off an ear and send it to the family with the ransom demand. The problem has become so widespread that dealing with kidnapping has become its own sector of the economy. Kohl looks at the companies that teach defensive driving and those that bulletproof cars to companies that are developing computer chips to implant into people so they can be tracked after they have been kidnapped. Kohl spends a lot of time with a plastic surgeon who specializes -- and glories -- in reconstructing severed ears. The quality of the interview he gets are amazing from the frog farmer who is happy to get his piece of the pie, and the anti-kidnapping police who are overwhelmed by the extent of the crime, and the prosecutor who looked like he was going to be able to send Barbalho to jail. All are happy to tell how they are working to improve their country whether by economic or legal means. The best, incredible interviews are: with one of the kidnapping victims who had both of her ears sliced off; the jittery businessman who lives in constant fear that he will be kidnapped soon; and with a man who makes his living as a kidnapper because it is easier and more profitable than robbing banks. All of these people would be worthy of a full documentary of their own. It is to Kohl’s credit that he is able to get such engaging interviews that he always has you wanting to hear more of their stories. I have a couple of minor criticisms of the movie. Kohl leaves it to the viewer to make several important connections between the stories and the gaps are sometimes confusing. Also it is dishonest to try to make one man entirely responsible for all the social and economic problems of one country. Also some of the symbolism of the frogs becoming cannibals when they are underfed is a little too on the nose for my taste. Overall, Manda Bala is an incredibly well done documentary; one that should have gotten much more attention at the time of its release. This movie is always engaging.
]]>Sat, 16 Aug 2008 19:30:27 GMTunclefesteringunclefestering Blog8/16/2008 3:30:27 PMDirected by Jason Kohn. Starring Jader Barbalho, Claudio Fonteles, Helbio Dias, Juarez Avelar, Paulo Lamarao, Mario Lucio Avelar. Manda Bala is an incredible indictment; almost a cheerfully sad story of degradation on all levels of Brazilian society. In the documentary’s opening, we hear a prosecutor explaining how corruption is the source from which all other crimes flow. Over the next 85 minutes we see how the crimes of the rich are connected to the crimes of the poor. Don’t be worried that you’ll find this a dull and boring documentary. Director Jason Kohn sarcastically mixes his tales with such lush, dazzling cinematography and happy, peppy Brazilian pop songs that you almost don’t mind hearing about the kidnappings and mutilations. Kohl begins with the frog farmer who started with a $300,000 grant from the government. What’s wrong with that? Well, the government paid $9 million on this project alone. The other $8.7 million went into the pockets of corrupt politician Jadar Barbalho, only a small part of the estimated $2 billion he siphoned off the government. What do the poor do without the money that is supposed to build their economy? They move to the slums of Sao Paolo and kidnap wealthy and middle class Brazilians. To prove that the victims are in danger, it has become a common practice to cut off an ear and send it to the family with the ransom demand. The problem has become so widespread that dealing with kidnapping has become its own sector of the economy. Kohl looks at the companies that teach defensive driving and those that bulletproof cars to companies that are developing computer chips to implant into people so they can be tracked after they have been kidnapped. Kohl spends a lot of time with a plastic surgeon who specializes -- and glories -- in reconstructing severed ears. The quality of the interview he gets are amazing from the frog farmer who is happy to get his piece of the pie, and the anti-kidnapping police who are overwhelmed by the extent of the crime, and the prosecutor who looked like he was going to be able to send Barbalho to jail. All are happy to tell how they are working to improve their country whether by economic or legal means. The best, incredible interviews are: with one of the kidnapping victims who had both of her ears sliced off; the jittery businessman who lives in constant fear that he will be kidnapped soon; and with a man who makes his living as a kidnapper because it is easier and more profitable than robbing banks. All of these people would be worthy of a full documentary of their own. It is to Kohl’s credit that he is able to get such engaging interviews that he always has you wanting to hear more of their stories. I have a couple of minor criticisms of the movie. Kohl leaves it to the viewer to make several important connections between the stories and the gaps are sometimes confusing. Also it is dishonest to try to make one man entirely responsible for all the social and economic problems of one country. Also some of the symbolism of the frogs becoming cannibals when they are underfed is a little too on the nose for my taste. Overall, Manda Bala is an incredibly well done documentary; one that should have gotten much more attention at the time of its release. This movie is always engaging. http://www.spout.com/blogs/rik_tod/archive/2008/7/27/33151.aspx Post By: rik_tod
Post To: The Cinema 4 Pylon: SpOutpost
Post Date: 7/27/2008 11:00:41 PM
Body: Cinema 4 Rating: 7Just like the once seemingly lost battle I fought for far too many years in the past regarding watching films in widescreen ratios (and because its the generally the same group of people griping about both), subtitles seem to vex a lot of Americans. They don't want to have to read when they go to the theatre, and it appears that most of them would really like to do it even less at home on a much smaller screen. (Hell, I think a lot of them just don't want to read, period.) Nix the subtitles then, my friends, and watch it dubbed. But please don't complain or mock the film when the dubbing doesn't sync properly or makes the film look cheap. You got us into this mess with your phobia of being forced to read off a screen. Or maybe you prefer the dubbing, Americans, so you don't have to hear someone speak a language other than English. Anything, you say, just don't remind us that there are other cultures outside (or even inside) our borders, or that there is anything going on outside of our increasingly sheltered country.My own knowledge of world cinema is, I hope, better than the average person, and I never shy away from subtitles. In fact, I adore them. But despite this, I must make an admission. The bulk of my foreign film watching is derived from seven places (I am not counting primarily English-speaking lands in this), in order: Japan, China, France, Russia, Germany, Sweden and India. Of late, Korea has been pulling up to the pack. But Brazil? One of the biggest countries in the world? What have I seen from there? I have four fingers on my right hand, and each finger accounts for a single Brazilian film that I have seen up until the point that Manda Bala landed in my mailbox late last week. The four fingers add up to City of God, which I think everyone with even the slightest interest in cinematic excellence should see, and three of Marins' Coffin Joe horror flicks, of which I feel the opposite (though, speaking for sick little me, I dig them). And that is it for Brazilian films for me. Comparatively, I've seen nothing at all.Of course, I have seen films which have taken place in Brazil (The Emerald Forest, for example), or involved the country in them for a handful of scenes or referenced in dialogue, often for people fleeing to the country for some nefarious reason. (I suppose that I could add Brazilian erotica into the mix, but then that wouldn't leave the fingers on my other hand free...) And I have seen the occasional television program dealing with the rain forest. But these images are fleeting, and except for City of God, no real sense of the people or the political workings of the country can truly be derived from them. (And for the last time, Gilliam's Brazil has nothing to do with anything in Brazil. It's just an old song...)Until Manda Bala showed up in the mailbox and became the thumb on my right hand. Though it is not actually a Brazilian film by creation -- it is a documentary directed and largely produced by Americans -- it has done just as much to allow me to see the true nature of Brazil in a way that only City of God has done for me. Not only did it open my eyes to concepts that I had heard fleetingly about but had never really considered deeply -- kidnapping as a business -- or concepts I had never considered at all -- the cottage industries, like bulletproof cars and plastic surgeons who specialize in building new ears for kidnap victims from their own rib cartilage, that spring up as a result of kidnapping becoming a business -- but it introduced to my crowded head the concept of frog farms. As in, farms that specialize in breeding frogs for eventual devouring by humans.Seriously, I knew people ate frogs (or at least, frog legs), but not on my watch. It's just something that has never happened around me. Not that I am against one of my friends eating a frog around me, and even last weekend at the OC Fair, there was an open opportunity for it to occur. It just hasn't happened, and frankly, it's not something which I am going to do myself. I'm at peace with amphibians of all stripes. I like holding them or petting them once in a while, but that's it. As a result, I had never really considered that anyone would make even a halfway decent living raising or shipping them, outside of the pet industry.Manda Bala not only starts us off at a pretty well-sized frog-farming outfit, and shows us details of the farming along with interviews with the slightly befuddled proprietor of the establishment, but it also uses the frog farm concept as an overall metaphor for the state of the poor in Brazil as a whole. It's a metaphor that you are going to have to sit through the credits to fully ingest, but it's a strong one for sure. I was slightly reminded during the frog butchering scene at a restaurant -- and please beware of it, my weaker-stomached friends, if the idea of seeing living frog throats cut, bodies stripped of skin, and the eventual weirdly composed shot of a trio of decapitated, almost smiling frog heads on a counter makes you feel wiggy -- of the rabbit-skinning scene in another more famous and equally provocative documentary, Michael Moore's Roger and Me.Though completely different in style, I was reminded of it in more ways than one, because like Moore's film, Manda Bala is also a tale of corruption and the deep and abiding rift between the classes. Here the similarities end, because this film is a far more violent tale in the end, and perhaps more complex. A tale of squandered opportunities and laundered monies. A tale where the rich take advantage of the poor economically, but the poor in turn take their own physically direct (and eventually, mental) advantage of the rich via the violence of kidnapping or outright murder, and where those in between often become the nouveau riche by taking advantage of the entire situation.To be fair, the film is stacked against one politician in particular, Jáder Barbalho, a lifelong mover and shaker from the state of Pará, who resigned from his role as President of the Senate to avoid impeachment after facing numerous corruption and embezzlement charges from his critics. Nothing major though... just the disappearance of, oh, I don't know, over a billion dollars from a federal developmental agency, SUDAM, with which Barbalho had major pull. One of the accusations against him is that he helped influence numerous phony SUDAM projects through which much of the missing money was laundered. And one of these projects -- surprise, surprise -- is a frog farm. (See? I never would have even thought to launder money that way.)I will go no further, for there is much to discover for those interested in delving into a deeply fascinating, though rather confusing, film. It sometimes does seem like director Jason Kohn has bitten off a little too much, but somehow it all pulls together. There are interviews with victims of the kidnappers, one of the kidnappers himself, and the people who profit from the violence. We see how bulletproof cars are built, the different steps in farming those omnipresent froggies, and get some amazing footage from the ear-replacement surgery. We see some of the harrowing footage sent by the kidnappers to their victims' families (themselves victims in all of this, now that I think of it), including one of the men getting a section of his earlobe lopped off. It might seem quaint with its gentle opening at a frog farm, but this is not a film for the weak of heart. It's is a film suffused with -- if not actually showing it in most cases -- the violence at the core of a culture which has found it necessary to turn deeper towards it for survival. Such is the history of man, I suppose. And Brazil’s history, more than ever, is everyone's history.And all the more reason for those that shun subtitles to quit complaining, brother, and shut up and read. Or learn to read. Or learn to speak Portuguese. Whatever you have to do to be able to see one of the most fascinating if not bizarrely constructed documentaries I have ever seen. (I won't bother to tell you it's in widescreen, too, because I wouldn't want to stack the deck against you seeing it.)
]]>Mon, 28 Jul 2008 03:00:41 GMTrik_todThe Cinema 4 Pylon: SpOutpost7/27/2008 11:00:41 PMCinema 4 Rating: 7Just like the once seemingly lost battle I fought for far too many years in the past regarding watching films in widescreen ratios (and because its the generally the same group of people griping about both), subtitles seem to vex a lot of Americans. They don't want to have to read when they go to the theatre, and it appears that most of them would really like to do it even less at home on a much smaller screen. (Hell, I think a lot of them just don't want to read, period.) Nix the subtitles then, my friends, and watch it dubbed. But please don't complain or mock the film when the dubbing doesn't sync properly or makes the film look cheap. You got us into this mess with your phobia of being forced to read off a screen. Or maybe you prefer the dubbing, Americans, so you don't have to hear someone speak a language other than English. Anything, you say, just don't remind us that there are other cultures outside (or even inside) our borders, or that there is anything going on outside of our increasingly sheltered country.My own knowledge of world cinema is, I hope, better than the average person, and I never shy away from subtitles. In fact, I adore them. But despite this, I must make an admission. The bulk of my foreign film watching is derived from seven places (I am not counting primarily English-speaking lands in this), in order: Japan, China, France, Russia, Germany, Sweden and India. Of late, Korea has been pulling up to the pack. But Brazil? One of the biggest countries in the world? What have I seen from there? I have four fingers on my right hand, and each finger accounts for a single Brazilian film that I have seen up until the point that Manda Bala landed in my mailbox late last week. The four fingers add up to City of God, which I think everyone with even the slightest interest in cinematic excellence should see, and three of Marins' Coffin Joe horror flicks, of which I feel the opposite (though, speaking for sick little me, I dig them). And that is it for Brazilian films for me. Comparatively, I've seen nothing at all.Of course, I have seen films which have taken place in Brazil (The Emerald Forest, for example), or involved the country in them for a handful of scenes or referenced in dialogue, often for people fleeing to the country for some nefarious reason. (I suppose that I could add Brazilian erotica into the mix, but then that wouldn't leave the fingers on my other hand free...) And I have seen the occasional television program dealing with the rain forest. But these images are fleeting, and except for City of God, no real sense of the people or the political workings of the country can truly be derived from them. (And for the last time, Gilliam's Brazil has nothing to do with anything in Brazil. It's just an old song...)Until Manda Bala showed up in the mailbox and became the thumb on my right hand. Though it is not actually a Brazilian film by creation -- it is a documentary directed and largely produced by Americans -- it has done just as much to allow me to see the true nature of Brazil in a way that only City of God has done for me. Not only did it open my eyes to concepts that I had heard fleetingly about but had never really considered deeply -- kidnapping as a business -- or concepts I had never considered at all -- the cottage industries, like bulletproof cars and plastic surgeons who specialize in building new ears for kidnap victims from their own rib cartilage, that spring up as a result of kidnapping becoming a business -- but it introduced to my crowded head the concept of frog farms. As in, farms that specialize in breeding frogs for eventual devouring by humans.Seriously, I knew people ate frogs (or at least, frog legs), but not on my watch. It's just something that has never happened around me. Not that I am against one of my friends eating a frog around me, and even last weekend at the OC Fair, there was an open opportunity for it to occur. It just hasn't happened, and frankly, it's not something which I am going to do myself. I'm at peace with amphibians of all stripes. I like holding them or petting them once in a while, but that's it. As a result, I had never really considered that anyone would make even a halfway decent living raising or shipping them, outside of the pet industry.Manda Bala not only starts us off at a pretty well-sized frog-farming outfit, and shows us details of the farming along with interviews with the slightly befuddled proprietor of the establishment, but it also uses the frog farm concept as an overall metaphor for the state of the poor in Brazil as a whole. It's a metaphor that you are going to have to sit through the credits to fully ingest, but it's a strong one for sure. I was slightly reminded during the frog butchering scene at a restaurant -- and please beware of it, my weaker-stomached friends, if the idea of seeing living frog throats cut, bodies stripped of skin, and the eventual weirdly composed shot of a trio of decapitated, almost smiling frog heads on a counter makes you feel wiggy -- of the rabbit-skinning scene in another more famous and equally provocative documentary, Michael Moore's Roger and Me.Though completely different in style, I was reminded of it in more ways than one, because like Moore's film, Manda Bala is also a tale of corruption and the deep and abiding rift between the classes. Here the similarities end, because this film is a far more violent tale in the end, and perhaps more complex. A tale of squandered opportunities and laundered monies. A tale where the rich take advantage of the poor economically, but the poor in turn take their own physically direct (and eventually, mental) advantage of the rich via the violence of kidnapping or outright murder, and where those in between often become the nouveau riche by taking advantage of the entire situation.To be fair, the film is stacked against one politician in particular, Jáder Barbalho, a lifelong mover and shaker from the state of Pará, who resigned from his role as President of the Senate to avoid impeachment after facing numerous corruption and embezzlement charges from his critics. Nothing major though... just the disappearance of, oh, I don't know, over a billion dollars from a federal developmental agency, SUDAM, with which Barbalho had major pull. One of the accusations against him is that he helped influence numerous phony SUDAM projects through which much of the missing money was laundered. And one of these projects -- surprise, surprise -- is a frog farm. (See? I never would have even thought to launder money that way.)I will go no further, for there is much to discover for those interested in delving into a deeply fascinating, though rather confusing, film. It sometimes does seem like director Jason Kohn has bitten off a little too much, but somehow it all pulls together. There are interviews with victims of the kidnappers, one of the kidnappers himself, and the people who profit from the violence. We see how bulletproof cars are built, the different steps in farming those omnipresent froggies, and get some amazing footage from the ear-replacement surgery. We see some of the harrowing footage sent by the kidnappers to their victims' families (themselves victims in all of this, now that I think of it), including one of the men getting a section of his earlobe lopped off. It might seem quaint with its gentle opening at a frog farm, but this is not a film for the weak of heart. It's is a film suffused with -- if not actually showing it in most cases -- the violence at the core of a culture which has found it necessary to turn deeper towards it for survival. Such is the history of man, I suppose. And Brazil’s history, more than ever, is everyone's history.And all the more reason for those that shun subtitles to quit complaining, brother, and shut up and read. Or learn to read. Or learn to speak Portuguese. Whatever you have to do to be able to see one of the most fascinating if not bizarrely constructed documentaries I have ever seen. (I won't bother to tell you it's in widescreen, too, because I wouldn't want to stack the deck against you seeing it.) http://www.spout.com/blogs/theworkingdead/archive/2008/7/23/32925.aspx Post By: TheWorkingDead
Post To: TheWorkingDead Blog
Post Date: 7/23/2008 2:36:03 AM
Body: This review is a long time coming. A very long time. It's been weeks since I saw, and loved, Manda Bala, and yet I haven't gotten off my ass(or, to be truthful of my actions right now, ON my ass) to write up a review, or even a collection of thoughts. Manda Bala was excellent, more than I expected in every way possible, and yet I find myself grasping for things to say about it. The movie speaks for itself so perfectly that I don't think I could add anything that would heighten the experience. Or maybe I'm just having trouble finding a way into the movie.Manda Bala is a documentary about... well... just what is it about? It opens with a man being interviewed about frog farming in Brazil, and he good-naturedly refuses to answer questions about some sort of scandal involving frog farming. So is it about frog farming and government corruption? Yes. The movie then shows us a young businessman who has invested thousands of dollars into protection, walks with a dummy wallet for random(and frequent) carjackings, and takes courses teaching how to outrun gunmen on the highway. So is this film about the insanely high rate of crime in Sao Paulo? Yes. Then we meet a woman who was kidnapped and held for ransom for 16 days, eventually having her ear cut off and sent to her father. So is Manda Bala about the human cost of corruption, violence and class distinction in one of the most impoverished parts of the world? Also yes. But wait there's more; the plastic surgeon with a surprisingly healthy God-complex who has made his name, and fortune, on reconstructing all of the dismembered ears of kidnap victims, the overworked and understaffed anti-kidnapping squad, the corrupt politician who has bilked millions- billions, even!- from his countrymen, and the masked kidnapper who sees himself as an urban Robin Hood, protecting and providing for his neighbors in the slums of Brazil.Manda Bala is a complex spiderweb of a documentary, a project much more ambitious than the filmmakers apparently set out to make, and completely unlike the more high profile documentaries that make it to theatres. There is no narrative here, and no narrator. What we get are a series of interviews, some instances of found news footage and a few uses of title cards. But really the focus is on the personalities at play, and the filmmakers let their subjects speak for themselves. Obviously there is some judicious editing here; someone chose exactly which statements would make the cut, and someone chose how to arrange them to make certain ideas more resonant, but overall the film feels more honest and real than any documentaries I've seen lately. And yet the film has a distinct theatricality to it, which would seem to play against the realism on display. For one, Manda Bala is shot on film stock, which gives it a theatrical, commercial sheen. For another, all of the shots are shamelessly set up in advance. How else to explain how locations are perfectly lit as characters walk through them, purportedly for the first time?The theatricality does not, as you would expect, detract from anything. Instead it lends Manda Bala a more exotic locale. The stories being told are all the more shocking with they take place in the middle of a postcard perfect color palette, and everyone is lit like a movie star. Perhaps I'm playing this up a bit much, since there would be no mistaking this for a Hollywood production. And yet, for all it's production values and manipulation of the image, the filmmakers don't attempt to create any sort of story out of this, other than what appears on screen. Obviously our natural inclinations will be to view the kidnapper(who has, presumably, disfigured victims, and has admittedly killed several cops) with disgust, the corrupt politician as a scumbag, and the plastic surgeon with the contempt we normally reserve for plastic surgeons. But think for a minute, and listen to their words. Sure the doctor seems like a prick of the first order, but he is helping people who more genuinely require his services than the average socialite. The kidnapper uses heinous acts of violence against strangers for money, but in his eyes he's fighting for survival, not just his, but his neighbors, in a country where the government and the wealthy are bleeding the life out of them. He has the most striking moments in the film, particularly when he talks of his own children. He has 9, and his wife is pregnant with number 10. He seems to view it as the only way out of the entire mess, and dreams that one of his children may grow up to be president and fix his country. And the politician... well... he's still a scumbag.The point being, none of these characters has any judgments cast their way. And that, as great as it is, leaves me a little lost. I'm not used to documentaries not telling me how to think. What is this new feeling? Is this what those public radio hippies call independent thought? It feels good. And I'd recommend it to anyone out there reading this.
]]>Wed, 23 Jul 2008 06:36:03 GMTTheWorkingDeadTheWorkingDead Blog7/23/2008 2:36:03 AMThis review is a long time coming. A very long time. It's been weeks since I saw, and loved, Manda Bala, and yet I haven't gotten off my ass(or, to be truthful of my actions right now, ON my ass) to write up a review, or even a collection of thoughts. Manda Bala was excellent, more than I expected in every way possible, and yet I find myself grasping for things to say about it. The movie speaks for itself so perfectly that I don't think I could add anything that would heighten the experience. Or maybe I'm just having trouble finding a way into the movie.Manda Bala is a documentary about... well... just what is it about? It opens with a man being interviewed about frog farming in Brazil, and he good-naturedly refuses to answer questions about some sort of scandal involving frog farming. So is it about frog farming and government corruption? Yes. The movie then shows us a young businessman who has invested thousands of dollars into protection, walks with a dummy wallet for random(and frequent) carjackings, and takes courses teaching how to outrun gunmen on the highway. So is this film about the insanely high rate of crime in Sao Paulo? Yes. Then we meet a woman who was kidnapped and held for ransom for 16 days, eventually having her ear cut off and sent to her father. So is Manda Bala about the human cost of corruption, violence and class distinction in one of the most impoverished parts of the world? Also yes. But wait there's more; the plastic surgeon with a surprisingly healthy God-complex who has made his name, and fortune, on reconstructing all of the dismembered ears of kidnap victims, the overworked and understaffed anti-kidnapping squad, the corrupt politician who has bilked millions- billions, even!- from his countrymen, and the masked kidnapper who sees himself as an urban Robin Hood, protecting and providing for his neighbors in the slums of Brazil.Manda Bala is a complex spiderweb of a documentary, a project much more ambitious than the filmmakers apparently set out to make, and completely unlike the more high profile documentaries that make it to theatres. There is no narrative here, and no narrator. What we get are a series of interviews, some instances of found news footage and a few uses of title cards. But really the focus is on the personalities at play, and the filmmakers let their subjects speak for themselves. Obviously there is some judicious editing here; someone chose exactly which statements would make the cut, and someone chose how to arrange them to make certain ideas more resonant, but overall the film feels more honest and real than any documentaries I've seen lately. And yet the film has a distinct theatricality to it, which would seem to play against the realism on display. For one, Manda Bala is shot on film stock, which gives it a theatrical, commercial sheen. For another, all of the shots are shamelessly set up in advance. How else to explain how locations are perfectly lit as characters walk through them, purportedly for the first time?The theatricality does not, as you would expect, detract from anything. Instead it lends Manda Bala a more exotic locale. The stories being told are all the more shocking with they take place in the middle of a postcard perfect color palette, and everyone is lit like a movie star. Perhaps I'm playing this up a bit much, since there would be no mistaking this for a Hollywood production. And yet, for all it's production values and manipulation of the image, the filmmakers don't attempt to create any sort of story out of this, other than what appears on screen. Obviously our natural inclinations will be to view the kidnapper(who has, presumably, disfigured victims, and has admittedly killed several cops) with disgust, the corrupt politician as a scumbag, and the plastic surgeon with the contempt we normally reserve for plastic surgeons. But think for a minute, and listen to their words. Sure the doctor seems like a prick of the first order, but he is helping people who more genuinely require his services than the average socialite. The kidnapper uses heinous acts of violence against strangers for money, but in his eyes he's fighting for survival, not just his, but his neighbors, in a country where the government and the wealthy are bleeding the life out of them. He has the most striking moments in the film, particularly when he talks of his own children. He has 9, and his wife is pregnant with number 10. He seems to view it as the only way out of the entire mess, and dreams that one of his children may grow up to be president and fix his country. And the politician... well... he's still a scumbag.The point being, none of these characters has any judgments cast their way. And that, as great as it is, leaves me a little lost. I'm not used to documentaries not telling me how to think. What is this new feeling? Is this what those public radio hippies call independent thought? It feels good. And I'd recommend it to anyone out there reading this. http://www.spout.com/blogs/analogzombie/archive/2008/7/13/32499.aspx Post By: analogzombie
Post To: analogzombie Blog
Post Date: 7/13/2008 6:25:31 PM
Body: Is a cold blooded gangster capable of becoming Robin Hood? When a government fails its people, does kidnapping the rich and holding them for ransom qualify as barbaric? Does a Senator who embezzles billions of dollars, yet manages to use their connections to escape justice deserve to remain in power if his people will it so? Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) is a look into a society that is in near collapse. It’s politicians look out only for themselves. The good and noble of the system run into numerous road blocks in their vain attempts to hold those in power accountable. The poor see no future except for crime. The middle class view the whole situation as somehow fated, and the upper middle class are looking to protect themselves by any means available through their privilege. Such is modern Brazil. From The City of God to Favela Rising, tales of the woes of the Brazilian people have become bankable subject matter. Manda Bala hones in on one very specific issue and uses that national experience to illuminate the lives of a cross section of modern society in Sao Paulo. Jader Barbalho, a powerful senator from the impoverished area of Para, is the core focus of Jason Kohn’s film. Barbalho came to power by dominating his region through the control of radio, television, and other media outlets. By bribing the populace with food, building materials and medical goods, he has found a way to maintain his position. In the late 1980’s Brazil developed a plan to help the poorest of it’s citizens. SUDAM was to be a grand investment project that would develop homegrown industries and small businesses with the intention of braking the cycle of poverty. The money never filtered down to the people that needed it. Through an elaborate series of faux companies, and laundering fronts, Jader Barbalho managed to steal over $2 billion in the course of a decade. Many of the companies Jader was responsible for investing the government’s money into only existed on paper. Others, like the frog farm the film spends a lot of time with, were fronts. Actually costing only $300,000, Barbalho pumped nearly $3 million into it. In a country in which elected officials are protected from prosecution in criminal courts can anyone expect someone like Jader Barbalho not to become a bandit? So to in such a place, can one honestly expect the poor and disenfranchised slum dwellers not to turn the tables on the rich and create a cottage industry out of kidnapping? These are the ideas Manda Bala raises. Through interviews with representatives from every facet of society Kohn explores the topic. Special police who have lost faith in their work, rich men who hide in bulletproof cars, judges who can only laugh at the state of events, and kidnappers using their ill gotten gains to build waterlines and health clinics in the slums, the film delves into the heart of their motivations and desperations. It is truly a sad state of affairs, but Manda Bala never over reaches itself. The film never proposes any answers. It merely shines a light on one of the greatest financial scandals in modern politics. It’s clear that Kohn is styling his film after the social conscious and entertaining films of Errol Morris. While he does capture the flow of Morris’ narrative, and the maestro’s penchant for colorful characters, one thing is missing from Kohn’s effort, namely the entertainment. While Manda Bala is insightful, sometimes humorous, and very timely, it manages to be bland for long stretches. The use of voiceover translation works in places, but more often than not, the speaker would have been better served by more traditional subtitles. It seems that translators weren’t always available as there are parts of the film in which subtitles are used exclusively. The immediacy of the images and body language of the interviewees are better conveyed in this fashion, and Kohn would have done better to stick to this method. It is the sometimes disjointed nature of speaker to translator, cut to imagery and stock footage, and then back to speaker and translator that can bring a sense of urgency to the translation that is not met by Kohn. It is these languid pauses of information that are Manda Bala’s greatest misstep. Slight misgivings aside, the film works. It works amazingly well. It would have been easy, and familiar, for the filmmakers to present the SUDAM scandal in a PBS style. The engaging personal interviews, rich South American color palette, and countless instances of humor work to disarm the viewer and give pause between revelations. Sometimes these pauses lean on the boring, but when they are executed well the effect is subtle. Between laughs the absolute terror and exasperation of all those involved begins to sink in. Understanding what happened is one thing, understanding the circumstances that would allow such a thing to occur, is different, and much more important. Director Jason Kohn manages to pull all his loose threads into a coherent and comprehensive look at the ills of a society in which the SUDAM scandal could happen.
]]>Sun, 13 Jul 2008 22:25:31 GMTanalogzombieanalogzombie Blog7/13/2008 6:25:31 PM Is a cold blooded gangster capable of becoming Robin Hood? When a government fails its people, does kidnapping the rich and holding them for ransom qualify as barbaric? Does a Senator who embezzles billions of dollars, yet manages to use their connections to escape justice deserve to remain in power if his people will it so? Manda Bala (Send a Bullet) is a look into a society that is in near collapse. It’s politicians look out only for themselves. The good and noble of the system run into numerous road blocks in their vain attempts to hold those in power accountable. The poor see no future except for crime. The middle class view the whole situation as somehow fated, and the upper middle class are looking to protect themselves by any means available through their privilege. Such is modern Brazil. From The City of God to Favela Rising, tales of the woes of the Brazilian people have become bankable subject matter. Manda Bala hones in on one very specific issue and uses that national experience to illuminate the lives of a cross section of modern society in Sao Paulo. Jader Barbalho, a powerful senator from the impoverished area of Para, is the core focus of Jason Kohn’s film. Barbalho came to power by dominating his region through the control of radio, television, and other media outlets. By bribing the populace with food, building materials and medical goods, he has found a way to maintain his position. In the late 1980’s Brazil developed a plan to help the poorest of it’s citizens. SUDAM was to be a grand investment project that would develop homegrown industries and small businesses with the intention of braking the cycle of poverty. The money never filtered down to the people that needed it. Through an elaborate series of faux companies, and laundering fronts, Jader Barbalho managed to steal over $2 billion in the course of a decade. Many of the companies Jader was responsible for investing the government’s money into only existed on paper. Others, like the frog farm the film spends a lot of time with, were fronts. Actually costing only $300,000, Barbalho pumped nearly $3 million into it. In a country in which elected officials are protected from prosecution in criminal courts can anyone expect someone like Jader Barbalho not to become a bandit? So to in such a place, can one honestly expect the poor and disenfranchised slum dwellers not to turn the tables on the rich and create a cottage industry out of kidnapping? These are the ideas Manda Bala raises. Through interviews with representatives from every facet of society Kohn explores the topic. Special police who have lost faith in their work, rich men who hide in bulletproof cars, judges who can only laugh at the state of events, and kidnappers using their ill gotten gains to build waterlines and health clinics in the slums, the film delves into the heart of their motivations and desperations. It is truly a sad state of affairs, but Manda Bala never over reaches itself. The film never proposes any answers. It merely shines a light on one of the greatest financial scandals in modern politics. It’s clear that Kohn is styling his film after the social conscious and entertaining films of Errol Morris. While he does capture the flow of Morris’ narrative, and the maestro’s penchant for colorful characters, one thing is missing from Kohn’s effort, namely the entertainment. While Manda Bala is insightful, sometimes humorous, and very timely, it manages to be bland for long stretches. The use of voiceover translation works in places, but more often than not, the speaker would have been better served by more traditional subtitles. It seems that translators weren’t always available as there are parts of the film in which subtitles are used exclusively. The immediacy of the images and body language of the interviewees are better conveyed in this fashion, and Kohn would have done better to stick to this method. It is the sometimes disjointed nature of speaker to translator, cut to imagery and stock footage, and then back to speaker and translator that can bring a sense of urgency to the translation that is not met by Kohn. It is these languid pauses of information that are Manda Bala’s greatest misstep. Slight misgivings aside, the film works. It works amazingly well. It would have been easy, and familiar, for the filmmakers to present the SUDAM scandal in a PBS style. The engaging personal interviews, rich South American color palette, and countless instances of humor work to disarm the viewer and give pause between revelations. Sometimes these pauses lean on the boring, but when they are executed well the effect is subtle. Between laughs the absolute terror and exasperation of all those involved begins to sink in. Understanding what happened is one thing, understanding the circumstances that would allow such a thing to occur, is different, and much more important. Director Jason Kohn manages to pull all his loose threads into a coherent and comprehensive look at the ills of a society in which the SUDAM scandal could happen. http://www.spout.com/blogs/minerwerks/archive/2008/6/26/31722.aspx Post By: minerwerks
Post To: minerwerks Blog
Post Date: 6/26/2008 4:02:43 AM
Body: You may not have noticed, but this country seems to have been developing a bit of a cinematic obsession with Brazil over the past few years. Most cinephiles have affection for the spectacular 'Cidade de Deus,' ('City of God') which hit our shores in 2002 but took about a year to gain its due respect. In the meantime, a fascinating documentary about a hostage situation in Rio de Janeiro, 'Bus 174' made the festival rounds. Just last year, I had the pleasure of reviewing 'O Caminho das Nuvens' ('The Middle of the World'), a Brazilian film from 2003, released here through Film Movement. Later this year, another highly acclaimed Brazilian release, 'Tropa de Elite' ('Elite Squad') is due for limited release.The latest, greatest Brazilian film, however, turns out to not be from Brazil at all. 'Manda Bala' ('Send a Bullet') is an enthralling documentary by an American filmmaker, Jason Kohn. The film parallels the rise of kidnappings in the city of Sao Paulo with a history of political corruption within the country. The dynamic between the rich and the poor within Brazil is also the engine that drives all the films I previously mentioned, with an emphasis on the extremes that the desperate members of society will resort to. The new twist in 'Manda Bala' is the additional exploration of a corrupt system that used economic development in the northern part of the country as a cover to embezzle funds, providing a more explicit exploration of the cause and effect relationships that simultaneously affect the government and the citizens in complex ways.Instead of a broad survey of the situation, 'Manda Bala' takes the more elegant approach of presenting the stories of individuals to illuminate the larger issues. This is a more risky approach, but Kohn proves to be a natural at this. Perhaps this is related to Kohn's background as a research assistant with master documentarian Errol Morris. The result is reminiscent of Morris' best work, melding a flair for visuals with a compelling humanism. The film is filled with spectacular views of Brazil and inventively shot interviews, all presented in glorious widescreen. Add in a smattering of smart musical choices, and you have a documentary firing on all cylinders. It's not surprising that the film took the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance last year and received an Excellence in Cinematography Award to boot.The title, 'Send a Bullet' doesn't have a direct literal meaning in the context of these stories, but many of these people live in the shadow of violence. One subject is a police officer assigned to a unit exclusively devoted to kidnappings who has taken several bullets, another is a businessman who buys bullet-proof cars and takes courses on how to evade kidnappers. We also meet a former victim who lost an ear in a ransom plot as well as a doctor who is a specialist in ear reconstruction. Some of the stories (particular that of the kidnapping survivor) are harrowing, but others are hopeful. The commitment of some of the police and politicians to bring wrongdoers to justice, regardless of status, is heartening.By focusing on the human drama behind the headlines, 'Manda Bala' brings the documentary to the same level of the best fiction. This is a haunting film that I won't soon forget.
]]>Thu, 26 Jun 2008 08:02:43 GMTminerwerksminerwerks Blog6/26/2008 4:02:43 AMYou may not have noticed, but this country seems to have been developing a bit of a cinematic obsession with Brazil over the past few years. Most cinephiles have affection for the spectacular 'Cidade de Deus,' ('City of God') which hit our shores in 2002 but took about a year to gain its due respect. In the meantime, a fascinating documentary about a hostage situation in Rio de Janeiro, 'Bus 174' made the festival rounds. Just last year, I had the pleasure of reviewing 'O Caminho das Nuvens' ('The Middle of the World'), a Brazilian film from 2003, released here through Film Movement. Later this year, another highly acclaimed Brazilian release, 'Tropa de Elite' ('Elite Squad') is due for limited release.The latest, greatest Brazilian film, however, turns out to not be from Brazil at all. 'Manda Bala' ('Send a Bullet') is an enthralling documentary by an American filmmaker, Jason Kohn. The film parallels the rise of kidnappings in the city of Sao Paulo with a history of political corruption within the country. The dynamic between the rich and the poor within Brazil is also the engine that drives all the films I previously mentioned, with an emphasis on the extremes that the desperate members of society will resort to. The new twist in 'Manda Bala' is the additional exploration of a corrupt system that used economic development in the northern part of the country as a cover to embezzle funds, providing a more explicit exploration of the cause and effect relationships that simultaneously affect the government and the citizens in complex ways.Instead of a broad survey of the situation, 'Manda Bala' takes the more elegant approach of presenting the stories of individuals to illuminate the larger issues. This is a more risky approach, but Kohn proves to be a natural at this. Perhaps this is related to Kohn's background as a research assistant with master documentarian Errol Morris. The result is reminiscent of Morris' best work, melding a flair for visuals with a compelling humanism. The film is filled with spectacular views of Brazil and inventively shot interviews, all presented in glorious widescreen. Add in a smattering of smart musical choices, and you have a documentary firing on all cylinders. It's not surprising that the film took the Documentary Grand Jury Prize at Sundance last year and received an Excellence in Cinematography Award to boot.The title, 'Send a Bullet' doesn't have a direct literal meaning in the context of these stories, but many of these people live in the shadow of violence. One subject is a police officer assigned to a unit exclusively devoted to kidnappings who has taken several bullets, another is a businessman who buys bullet-proof cars and takes courses on how to evade kidnappers. We also meet a former victim who lost an ear in a ransom plot as well as a doctor who is a specialist in ear reconstruction. Some of the stories (particular that of the kidnapping survivor) are harrowing, but others are hopeful. The commitment of some of the police and politicians to bring wrongdoers to justice, regardless of status, is heartening.By focusing on the human drama behind the headlines, 'Manda Bala' brings the documentary to the same level of the best fiction. This is a haunting film that I won't soon forget. http://www.spout.com/blogs/leeroy711/archive/2008/6/18/31379.aspx Post By: leeroy711
Post To: leeroy711 Blog
Post Date: 6/18/2008 5:06:04 PM
Body: You're Gonna Miss Me (2005) *** 1/2 stars out of 5 Directed by: Keven McAlester Starring: Roky Erickson Running Time: 94 minutes Rated: NR Released: 2005 Language: English Synopsis: You’re Gonna Miss Me is a documentary that profiles the career and subsequent mental condition of Roky Erickson, lead singer for the influential sixties band, 13th Floor Elevators. Roky started his career at the top, gaining almost instantaneous fame with his band. He had a great rock and roll voice that is said to have inspired the stage presence of Janis Joplin. With interviews from ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, and Angry Samoans’ Metal Mike Saunders telling the professional side of the story and Roky’s five brothers, mother and two ex-wives telling the about his home life. You’re Gonna Miss Me is much more of a story of schizophrenia it’s debilitating effects on those who suffer from it than that of the lead singer from a psychedelic rock band. Review: I held on to this one for a while before I actually stuck it in and watched it. For some reason, the topic at hand and what I had read about it from the back of the case and other reviewers just didn’t seem to grab me. I was really expecting much more of a “Where are they now?” rock-doc, (VH1 style) than what it actually turned out to be. I was never really interested in the psychedelic rock scene and much less in the music that it produced. I would typically rather hear a hip-hop remix of Jefferson Starship than actually listen to the original track. But, I digress, it is kind of interesting to take a healthy dose of culture that my parents were into when they were my age. Roky’s life was actually quite tragic. He was the eldest of five boys born to an eccentric mother and emotionally absent father. He went from the severely broken home to the sixties music scene which was filled with booze, acid trips and heroin syringes. Roky dove in head first, slowly and steadily acquiring paranoid delusions and very unmanageable schizophrenia. It’s really hard to tell from this movie which aspect of his life contributed more to his illness. His home life was obviously a recipe for disaster, his drug abuse definitely permanently fried his brain, and his retirement was spent with the same neurotic and paranoid mother that had probably screwed him up in the first place. All of this is staged in the background of a bitter family feud being fought in court. His mother doesn’t seem to believe he should be on any medication and his brother, Sumner is petitioning for the control over his trust so he can get him back on his medicine and attempt to stabilize his ever fragile mind. It is pretty obvious in this film that his mother’s methods of helping her son with yoga and “good, healthy living” are not doing the trick. The largest obstacle this film had to overcome was in attempting to tell Roky’s story through Roky’s point of view. Although I don’t think it completely succeeded, I am not sure how it could have been done, considering his state of mind. I will say that the film may have been better if we could have heard from Roky directly a bit more. The time he spent in front of the camera was very limited. Ultimately, a documentary’s success is based mostly on how interesting the topic is. Much like in the case of Manda Bala, this one succeeds for one major reason: It took a topic that I knew little about and made me interested in it. I think that’s all I really care to ask of a doc. Give me something to think about.
]]>Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:06:04 GMTleeroy711leeroy711 Blog6/18/2008 5:06:04 PM You're Gonna Miss Me (2005) *** 1/2 stars out of 5 Directed by: Keven McAlester Starring: Roky Erickson Running Time: 94 minutes Rated: NR Released: 2005 Language: English Synopsis: You’re Gonna Miss Me is a documentary that profiles the career and subsequent mental condition of Roky Erickson, lead singer for the influential sixties band, 13th Floor Elevators. Roky started his career at the top, gaining almost instantaneous fame with his band. He had a great rock and roll voice that is said to have inspired the stage presence of Janis Joplin. With interviews from ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore, and Angry Samoans’ Metal Mike Saunders telling the professional side of the story and Roky’s five brothers, mother and two ex-wives telling the about his home life. You’re Gonna Miss Me is much more of a story of schizophrenia it’s debilitating effects on those who suffer from it than that of the lead singer from a psychedelic rock band. Review: I held on to this one for a while before I actually stuck it in and watched it. For some reason, the topic at hand and what I had read about it from the back of the case and other reviewers just didn’t seem to grab me. I was really expecting much more of a “Where are they now?” rock-doc, (VH1 style) than what it actually turned out to be. I was never really interested in the psychedelic rock scene and much less in the music that it produced. I would typically rather hear a hip-hop remix of Jefferson Starship than actually listen to the original track. But, I digress, it is kind of interesting to take a healthy dose of culture that my parents were into when they were my age. Roky’s life was actually quite tragic. He was the eldest of five boys born to an eccentric mother and emotionally absent father. He went from the severely broken home to the sixties music scene which was filled with booze, acid trips and heroin syringes. Roky dove in head first, slowly and steadily acquiring paranoid delusions and very unmanageable schizophrenia. It’s really hard to tell from this movie which aspect of his life contributed more to his illness. His home life was obviously a recipe for disaster, his drug abuse definitely permanently fried his brain, and his retirement was spent with the same neurotic and paranoid mother that had probably screwed him up in the first place. All of this is staged in the background of a bitter family feud being fought in court. His mother doesn’t seem to believe he should be on any medication and his brother, Sumner is petitioning for the control over his trust so he can get him back on his medicine and attempt to stabilize his ever fragile mind. It is pretty obvious in this film that his mother’s methods of helping her son with yoga and “good, healthy living” are not doing the trick. The largest obstacle this film had to overcome was in attempting to tell Roky’s story through Roky’s point of view. Although I don’t think it completely succeeded, I am not sure how it could have been done, considering his state of mind. I will say that the film may have been better if we could have heard from Roky directly a bit more. The time he spent in front of the camera was very limited. Ultimately, a documentary’s success is based mostly on how interesting the topic is. Much like in the case of Manda Bala, this one succeeds for one major reason: It took a topic that I knew little about and made me interested in it. I think that’s all I really care to ask of a doc. Give me something to think about. http://www.spout.com/blogs/joem18b/archive/2008/6/11/31136.aspx Post By: joem18b
Post To: joem18b Blog
Post Date: 6/11/2008 6:52:27 PM
Body: Spoiler Alert: If you want the ending of Summer Palace to be a surprise, read no further.After watching two hours and twenty minutes of cigarette smoking in yet another Asian movie (see also my comments on the subject in my review of Drifters), I finally bestirred myself long enough to fish up the following news bites:"Guiyang, China — Here's some exciting medical news from the Chinese government: Smoking is great for your health. Cigarettes, according to China's tobacco authorities, are an excellent way to prevent ulcers. They also reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease, relieve schizophrenia, boost your brain cells, speed up your thinking, improve your reactions and increase your working efficiency." "With annual sales of 1.8 trillion cigarettes, the Chinese monopoly is responsible for almost one-third of all cigarettes smoked on the planet today. Two-thirds of Chinese men are smokers, and surveys show that as many as 90 per cent believe their habit has little effect on their health, or is good for them. Even in China's medical community, 60 per cent of male doctors are smokers. Few are aware of the studies forecasting that cigarettes will soon be responsible for one-third of all premature deaths among Chinese men."“There is no market more important to the tobacco industry and no nation posing more challenges to tobacco control than China. With 350 million smokers and 1 million tobacco-caused deaths annually, China is the biggest challenge in international tobacco control."Summer Palace begins with its heroine Yu Hong (Lei Huo) at home in her village. Her boyfriend doesn't have much to say to her, but he does urge her to try his imported cigarettes. Now I know why; he's concerned about her health.Anyway.As much as I admire and respect Pauline Kael's reviews, which appeared in the New Yorker for years, nevertheless, I began to take some of them with a grain of salt as she approached the end of her career, because I had the feeling that by then she had simply seen too many movies. She began to dismiss the familiar too quickly, or so it seemed to me, and began taking an interest in the unusual instead, whether the unusual in question merited her interest or not. I was thinking about this while watching Summer Palace because the film is a staring-off-into-space-athon and I'm beginning to wonder whether I'm in the same boat as Pauline - seen too many - at least as far as this type of dialog-eschewing personal-interaction film is concerned. Have I seen too many anguished protagonists gazing moodily into the middle distance to react to the heroine Yu Hong as director Ye Lou would have me react? What is Yu Hong thinking, up there on the screen? Which way will she jump? Why the pain? Is that the thousand-yard stare of a stunned brain I'm seeing, or a portal into her seething emotions? Can I apprehend and empathize with and finally appreciate her internal struggles or will I just shrug them off, always assuming that I can figure out what they are in the first place?In American movies these days, the strong silent type is typically a man with limited acting skills who ends up pulling and using a gun or otherwise kicking major ass after being pushed too far. The problem with the silent stare in a movie with intellectual pretensions like Summer Palace is that as the film wears on, the protagonist can literally do or say anything and we're obliged to take it and like it. Consistency cannot be an issue, since we can't know for sure what the character has been thinking. The consequent action is the result of deep thought, we presume, or mental instability, or, as they say, whatnot. Or perchance the character will do nothing in the end, just continue to stare.I watched an episode of The Wire just before watching Summer Palace.Dense dialog, dense narrative. Corruption in a city where in the final analysis nothing is going to change. Meanwhile, in Summer Palace, one billion people undergo a decade of profound and radical change as the regime gradually opens into an authoritarian economic system. Scant dialog, scant narrative. Ironic.And speaking of not talking to each other - during sex, Zhou Wei (Xiaodong Guo), Yu Hong's main squeeze in the movie, wears earphones. Call me old-fashioned!Non-dialog reaches new heights in a scene where the lovers are floating on a lake in a rowboat. This is one of those couples-in-a-boat-wordless-montage scenes, only this time, after stretching out interminably, the scene goes no-dialog time-lapse into the night with a full moon rising. Yu Hong will probably tell her diary that she and Zhou Wei were talking into the night, after watching Zhou Wei rest on his oars for eight hours, smoking. And then, back at the hotel after languishing in the boat, sex. And then, "Zhou Wei? I think we should break up." "Why?" "Because I can't leave you." This is the signal to us that whenever things seem to be going well in the movie, Yu Hong will turn away and step off the curb into traffic, metaphorically speaking. An example of the viewer not knowing what is coming, not being a mind reader.I believe that Yu Hong was still a frosh at this point. When I was a frosh, I had a couple of painful wordless dates but they didn't end with me wearing headphones. Or not wearing them, either.Waiting for the dialog in a film like Summer Palace is like reading a Henry James novel. He doles out the spoken words most sparingly - dialog was the crest of the wave, I think he said - but most of the time I was deep under water, longing for any sign of a set of quotation marks, on pages of solid print often missing even a paragraph break. I'm speaking of his late novels.If director Ye Lou were making Casablanca here instead of Summer Palace, Ingrid Bergman would step into Rick's Cafe with her husband, sit down at a table, and smoke and drink beer without speaking to Paul Henreid or anybody else, while Bogart stood at the back of the room, alternately staring at her and looking away, smoking, wordless. Their eyes would meet once. Later, at the end of the movie, after a clinch, Bogart would stare into her eyes and say "What next?" and Bergman would drag on her cigarette and look away, and he'd look away, and she'd look back but he wouldn't, and she'd reply, "What next?" Then she'd look at him looking away some more and then one or both of them would turn and walk away. Lights up.Lei Huo does a nice French inhale or two (or Irish waterfall, if you prefer) in the movie, while not talking, I'll give her that. And there is a scene in a car where she and Zhou Wei drive, with lots of staring. He stares ahead. She stares ahead. Then she stares at him while he stares ahead, and that was good, her staring at him. That scene had some juice, wordless or not. Plus, they were filmed dead-on from in front of the windshield with the car vibrating from its motion, the most realistic such scene that I can remember seeing. Director Ye Lou, a 43-year-old from Shanghai, graduated from the Beijing Film Academy as one of its "Sixth Generation" or "Urban Generation" group of directors (the Fifth Generation, growing up during the Cultural Revolution, was more familiar with the rural than the urban), which also includes, for example, Jia Zhangke (Platform, 2000), Xiaoshuai Wang (Drifters, 2003), and Zhang Yuan (Seventeen Years, 1999). There is a definite trend in many Chinese Sixth Generation movies to skate over narrative and dialog (see, for example, The Wayward Cloud). Obviously, I need to be in the mood for this.In Ye Lou's case, the lack of dialog seems to grow out of his philosophy of film."I want Lei Huo to be the character, not pretend to be the character. If she's just pretending, even if she's a very competent actor, she'll still harm the character, because the audience will just see her as a very good actor." Not so. That's why they're called actors.This reminds me of Olivier's reply to Hoffman, who was using The Method in Marathon Man to get into character and asked Olivier about the technique that he used to do the same. "Dear boy," Sir Lawrence replied. "It's called acting."Because to ensure that Lei Huo will "be the character," Ye Lou provides her with virtually no dialog - he can't presume, you see - and, unlike in a Mike Leigh film, she doesn't trouble herself to develop any herself. Which leaves us to divine what's going on in her noggin by the expression on her purposely expressionless face. Lei Huo says "the character is like me in real life. She's going to break my heart" but this doesn't help me, since I don't happen to know Lei Huo personally. She's a force though, with her nose often a little red.But. Having said all that. It's true that throughout the movie, once she gets to university, Yu Hong tells us what she is thinking by reading excerpts from her diary in voice-over. However, her thoughts as verbalized do not illuminate; they merely reiterate the non-look on her face. Viz, after meeting her one true love for the first time and dancing with him to "Seven Little Girls Sitting in the Backseat" (neither of them speaking, needless to say):"Had I not viewed my life in the light of the ideal, its mediocrity would have been unbearable. That's how I saw things when we met. You came into my life. You are my most refined friend. It's very simple. I knew the moment I saw you that we were standing on the same side of the world. And then we talked the whole night long. For all that, there are troubling aspects to our relationship which can't be reduced simply to pleasure or lack of it. I want to live more and more intensely. It's clear to me, nowhere more so than in our relationship, because there are times when I'm clearly imposing my will on you. If one takes desire lightly, action will be constricted. It was through love that I understood this. There's no getting around it. There are only illusions. Illusions. Those lethal things."This load is dropped on us at one go, intercut with tracking shots of Yu Hong and Zhou Wei (Xiaodong Guo), her new university lover, walking and gazing but not speaking. Perhaps they talked the night away and we never saw it, but more likely all the talking is being done directly into the diary. The message: the course of love never did run smooth. I think I can say with assurance that I never dated and danced and talked the night away with a girl who had these thoughts running through her mind.The dictum is "Show, don't tell." Here we have the opposite. The silence doesn't show and the voice-over diary reading tells constantly.Later from the diary, we get the likes of:"As soon as love touches you, life is knocked off balance.""True love can only appear at the most intense moments of anguish and suffering."Later one of Yu Hong's lovers says, "You're so simple. You're different from other women. You're simple and straightforward." He obviously did not get his hands on the diary.Of course, there are language and cultural issues here. In the absence of a gloss for the subtitles, this is where you pause the movie and turn to your spouse or significant other, if he or she happens to be from China, to solicit some cultural and linguistic input that might help you pick up on the nuances in those diary entries and in the dialog and action in general. Because these are our fundamental hints about what is going on in the minds of the characters and the hints are just enough but not more than enough to mute any surprise we might feel when, at the apparent height of their happiness, as they lie full-frontal (a Chinese first. Fifteen years ago, kissing was hardly allowed), staring up at the ceiling with the camera aimed down at them, Yu Hong suggests that Xhou Wei get circumcised. Why? he asks. (Xiaodong Guo speaks as quietly throughout this movie as anyone I can remember speaking on film without actually whispering.) Yu Hong replies, Because it would be less painful. Who told you that? he asks. My professor, she says. Why did he tell you that? Because, she says, we were making love. This puts an immediate damper on the couple's romantic outing. Yu Hong follows an old romantic convention and walks away from happiness whenever she chances to encounter it.Another quick scene that might benefit from a little cultural interpretation: Yu Hong is sitting in a public park next to a basketball court, waiting for her boyfriend to arrive. He's late. She's watching some young men play a pickup game. Her boyfriend rides up on his motorcycle, hops off, and apologizes for being late. Suddenly, an outcry. He's parked on the court or on a part of the street serving as the court. Immediately there is a struggle and he gets a shiner and scraped cheeks. The young woman joins in the fracas. The problem is, the conflict is instantaneous and obliquely shot, so that it is impossible to tell what's happening, exactly. The scene feels clunky and staged, which is strange considering that it follows several quiet and evocative scenes that open the movie. Surely this doesn't mean that Ye Lou doesn't have the chops to handle a little action, action as majorly simple as this? He obviously isn't a fan of Hong Kong movie brawls, but I'm thinking that I've missed some cultural nuance in the scene that might help account for its amateur feeling.And one more word about taciturn actors: we don't even get diary entries from Zhou Wei. He drives away from Yu Hong at the end of the movie without a word but with, we presume, extreme regret (though his face doesn't show it). Who knows why?Earlier, hanging out in Berlin because that is what the director did after he got out of school, separated now from Yu Hong, his true love, Zhou Wei sits next to a young Polish woman. The two are gazing out at a Berlin wasteland. One presumes, on the evidence of the movie so far, that they are casually intimate, perhaps lovers."What is Warsaw like?" Zhou Wei says.Pause for some gazing and brow-wrinkling by the girl."It's ok," she says. Mutual space-gazing."And Beijing?" she says back.Gazing in tandem. I like it that the man from China and the woman from Poland are conversing quietly in German. Xiaodong Guo continues to speaks in a too-cool quiet voice."It's ok," he says.I figured that that was going to be it for the scene but after another bit of gazing, she asks him if he has a girlfriend. He says that he does. We feel the painful significance of this terse reply. Where is she? the girl asks. Somber piano notes."Very far away," he says in German with a Beijing accent."In China?""Perhaps.""Where are we right now?" the girl asks. Zhou Wei exhales cigarette smoke. She says, "In Berlin?"What she means by this, I have no idea. The first time I watched the scene I rolled my eyes. By the fifth time I was liking it. At least they were saying something to each other, even if it didn't make any sense.The director wanted to make an organic movie that grew, as if alive, and that involved the actors. What are the implications of this for the movie's story? Is "organic" code here for "no plot," or "no narrative," or "juryrigged narrative arc"? The makers of Manda Bala, which I just reviewed, went on a five-year hunt for a story with limited success. Ye Lou didn't take that long, unless you count the fact that he's been thinking about this film since his graduation from film school in 1989. His struggle is evident, though, in the same way that Jason Kohn's was in Manda Bala - nurturing a hope that something will crop up. A failure of ability or imagination or no failure, but simply the constrictions on storytelling imposed by the original vision. The suicide in Summer Palace (wordless), and its wordless aftermath (serious staring off), and the abortion (wordless), and Yu Hong getting hit by a car, and some of the sex, and most of the rest of the staring-off-into-space in this film could have been eliminated, to the film's benefit, by replacing it all with a little sharp dialog. Having said that, the movie never dragged for me; the two hours and twenty minutes it ran felt like less."I don't want a construction, with a clear beginning, middle, and end," says the director. In his opinion, the story would naturally end with the events in Tiananmen Square in '89, which occur halfway through, but he must show the consequences of Chinese economic and political development with respect to the students during the ten years that follow. He wants his film to live and it appears that in his view, forcing it into the straightjacket of a story would kill it. "One of the challenges in the narrative is that the climax of the story is actually in the middle of the film and not at the end. But it wasn't possible for the story to end there. That moment had to be in the middle of the film." I've mentioned elsewhere that I'm oblivious to metaphor in film. To the extent that the lives of the students in the decade after Tiananmen stand in for the economic and political developments in the country, the film doesn't work for me. The director says that it's a melodrama, not a political statement; some commentators think that Western viewers will take the movie as a melodrama while Chinese viewers will react to the representation of China ten years ago. I got the melodrama and not so much the mood of that country in the 90s.Regardless of my issues about dialog and narrative, I have nothing but respect for Ye Lou as a maker of movies. He made Weekend Lover in 1995 and then Suzhou River without permission, in 2002. Suzhou River won prizes and was praised as "exhibiting the most eloquent and effortless command of the post-Wong Kar-wai pop idiom yet." The Chinese government then put him out of business for two years. Ye Lou takes his movies seriously. After making Purple Butterfly in 2003, he did Summer Palace and was hit with another suspension by the government in 2006, for five years this time, because he entered the movie at Canneswithout permission. A sacrifice like that requires us to take second and third looks at his filmmaking philosophy. As does the praise for Summer Palace from the likes of A.O. Scott and David Denby. "I'm just a director. I'm not a politician. I don't want to get into boring politics in my films. Many Chinese directors practice self-censorship because of the tight controls. But I think this is fatal. Directors must be free. So I say to everyone when we are working, 'Let's forget censorship.' That's why there are always so many troubles after the film. But while I am shooting, I am very happy... In my opinion, in its current condition, we still have a lot of problems. First and foremost, Chinese cinema still isn't free, either in terms of creativity, management, or regulations. If you can't express your opinions freely, you can't accurately judge the value of other people's words. We need to be able to express what we really think before we can judge the form or soundness of another expression." Summer Palace was withdrawn by the producers at Cannes after the Chinese government's reaction to its release.The movie had more film-making resources available to it than most Chinese films. Scenes were shot in six different cities, through four seasons, with rain, wind, and summer heat. (Do Asian movies do rain best? It can come down in buckets. Rashomon - now that was rain.) To make this romance about the youth of his generation, Ye Lou returned to the same dorm rooms he had lived in at university. If I returned to the dorm rooms that I lived in at Occidental and Tufts and dressed them to match the time that I was there, and then filmed moments of political, cultural, and physical awakening in them that matched my own, I expect that the results would resonate powerfully with me. Wow. But probably not with anybody else. Would this cloud my judgment around the dramatic and esthetic issues that arise while making a film? I know nothing about Beijing University and the Summer Palace next door to it, other than that the school's interior looks a lot like a hard-used middle school I used to know in the toughest neighborhood in Detroit.Similarly, after college the peregrinations of the students reflect the director's own post-graduate travels. Zhou Wei hies off to Germany (Ye Lou met his wife in Berlin), Dong Dong to the U.S., the others to large cities in south China. We see the wall in Berlin coming down, Gorby, Hong Kong reverting to china. But there are two hundred cities in China with a population over one million and I can't name three of them; the director's scheme of moving south city by city to indicate, metaphorically, the opening of Chinese economic policy in the 90s (it having always been easier to operate in China the farther south you went) was lost on me. Perhaps if these students had started in Detroit and headed down to St. Louis, and then Nashville, Texarkana, Santa Fe, and Venice Beach, and Italy instead of Germany, I might have registered more fully the zeitgeist presented in the movie. I was talking to a couple of young people the other day who are working in online data acquisition in Boston. They've been having the feeling lately, after a couple of years in private industry following a lifetime in school, of "This is it? This is what it means to finally be an adult?" Questions which anyone in this movie would understand. At university in Beijing in '89, everything seemed possible. The world could be changed. In the second half of Summer Palace, the former students learn that this feeling was an illusion, something that Yu Hong realized much sooner.The '90s were a time of confusion for many twenty-somethings in China. The characters in Summer Palace spend a lot of time acting confused. I take the point. There is old China here but there is also Coca Cola in the big red bottle on the ferry, and this is the first time I recall seeing a mainland China gas station. It wasn’t self-serve. Just off the freeway. Had a mini-mart. The thing about character confusion is that, in the absence of dialog, it can edge into boredom, aimlessness, and ennui, which can then translate into boredom for the viewer, especially if the viewer doesn't knit. It occurred to me to wonder at one point about the difference, if any, between the boredom of childhood, the boredom of adolescence, that of young adults, of parents, of the middle-aged, of seniors, and of pet dogs. And whether the boredom engendered by a bad action flick is the same as or different than the boredom caused by an art movie with a bad case of the longeures. These are questions to pursue in a later review, when a truly boring movie comes along.Mick LaSalle in his podcast the other day said that the key to an effective romantic sex scene (as opposed to the other types of sex scene) is to make sure that longing precedes it. This is a forte of current Chinese filmmakers. They tell love stories, with all the difficulties so often attendant to them, and they seem to specialize in longing. Consider the movies I've mentioned above, or any movie by Wong Kar-Wai, or Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or Brokeback Mountain. Summer Palace begins with an entry in Yu Hong's diary: "There is something that comes suddenly like a wind on a warm summer's evening. It takes you off guard and leaves you without peace. It follows you like a shadow and it's impossible to shake. I don't know what it is, so I can only call it love." Love blows in like a wind, and it's an ill wind that blows no good. With fifteen minutes left in the movie, Zhou Wei learns that Yu Hong is married. The longing on his part takes a final, major step up.You've got to look long and hard to find this kind of movie in the West. Romantic comedies, sexual-attraction movies, historical romances like The Age of Innocence from time to time, but modern longing and romance? Not so much. This is not to say that most of Yu Hong's sexual activity is meant to be romantic. Instead, she says in her diary, "It's only when we're making love that you realize that I'm gentle." She teaches a number of men that she's gentle by using this direct method. She has tried countless other ways but has chosen this special direct method as the most efficacious. I have a feelingthat the word "gentle" does not do justice to Yu Hong's original conception, but one way or another, it's all about her trying to be accepted as good and tender. Thinking back, I'm wondering if any of those women I knew were just trying to show me that they were gentle. Question: Does longing for one person make sex scenes with someone else work? Yu Hong, for example, while longing for Zhou Wei, finds love with Wu Gang (at least until "material poverty can only lead to resentment"). Hmm, now that I think of it, most of the sex in the movie involves longing for someone absent.Li Ti (the suicide) wouldn't allow anyone to love her for fear of hurting them. "Love is like a wound in the heart. When it heals, love disappears. Or never existed."Ye Lou calls Summer Palace a melodrama, not a historical study. Most of its two-and-a-half hours is spent examining love, watching young men and women in love, trying to explain love.Ye Lou: "Then love is like a leaf in the universe. if the universe were a tree, love would be a leaf on the tree. And we can glimpse at the shape of the universe by looking at just one leaf. So I can just depict the love. Once I've protrayed the love, I've portrayed the universe."Well, if I see an elm leaf, I can't tell you what the trunk of the tree looks like. Does Ye Lou succeed in explaining love, or are we simply peppered with notions?"Why was it that nothing he had said to me or done to me could prevent my heart from going out to him," Yu Hongs says. I never spotted Zhou Wei actually saying or doing anything in particular to her, so I take the question to actually be a statement. The director has said that love is uncontrollable, that is goes beyond events, that it can't be restrained, that we can't demand anything of it. We can't expect it to bring happiness, or marriage, or a long and happy life together. He says that emotional torment takes time, a lot of time, to resolve. For Ye Hong and Zhou Wei to come back together and stay together, the director says, would have taken them another decade of longing and would have taken him another hour of screen time. Now I don't feel so bad that they didn't get back together.So, a movie about love. What do I take away from it? If you're in love and you have sex repeatedly, it doesn't lead to boredom, as in real life, but to unhappy longing for your absent partner. Or vice versa. I hope the director has had better luck with love than his characters in Summer Place, because, in this movie, not to lower the tenor of the review, if love strikes, you're f**ked.
]]>Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:52:27 GMTjoem18bjoem18b Blog6/11/2008 6:52:27 PMSpoiler Alert: If you want the ending of Summer Palace to be a surprise, read no further.After watching two hours and twenty minutes of cigarette smoking in yet another Asian movie (see also my comments on the subject in my review of Drifters), I finally bestirred myself long enough to fish up the following news bites:"Guiyang, China — Here's some exciting medical news from the Chinese government: Smoking is great for your health. Cigarettes, according to China's tobacco authorities, are an excellent way to prevent ulcers. They also reduce the risk of Parkinson's disease, relieve schizophrenia, boost your brain cells, speed up your thinking, improve your reactions and increase your working efficiency." "With annual sales of 1.8 trillion cigarettes, the Chinese monopoly is responsible for almost one-third of all cigarettes smoked on the planet today. Two-thirds of Chinese men are smokers, and surveys show that as many as 90 per cent believe their habit has little effect on their health, or is good for them. Even in China's medical community, 60 per cent of male doctors are smokers. Few are aware of the studies forecasting that cigarettes will soon be responsible for one-third of all premature deaths among Chinese men."“There is no market more important to the tobacco industry and no nation posing more challenges to tobacco control than China. With 350 million smokers and 1 million tobacco-caused deaths annually, China is the biggest challenge in international tobacco control."Summer Palace begins with its heroine Yu Hong (Lei Huo) at home in her village. Her boyfriend doesn't have much to say to her, but he does urge her to try his imported cigarettes. Now I know why; he's concerned about her health.Anyway.As much as I admire and respect Pauline Kael's reviews, which appeared in the New Yorker for years, nevertheless, I began to take some of them with a grain of salt as she approached the end of her career, because I had the feeling that by then she had simply seen too many movies. She began to dismiss the familiar too quickly, or so it seemed to me, and began taking an interest in the unusual instead, whether the unusual in question merited her interest or not. I was thinking about this while watching Summer Palace because the film is a staring-off-into-space-athon and I'm beginning to wonder whether I'm in the same boat as Pauline - seen too many - at least as far as this type of dialog-eschewing personal-interaction film is concerned. Have I seen too many anguished protagonists gazing moodily into the middle distance to react to the heroine Yu Hong as director Ye Lou would have me react? What is Yu Hong thinking, up there on the screen? Which way will she jump? Why the pain? Is that the thousand-yard stare of a stunned brain I'm seeing, or a portal into her seething emotions? Can I apprehend and empathize with and finally appreciate her internal struggles or will I just shrug them off, always assuming that I can figure out what they are in the first place?In American movies these days, the strong silent type is typically a man with limited acting skills who ends up pulling and using a gun or otherwise kicking major ass after being pushed too far. The problem with the silent stare in a movie with intellectual pretensions like Summer Palace is that as the film wears on, the protagonist can literally do or say anything and we're obliged to take it and like it. Consistency cannot be an issue, since we can't know for sure what the character has been thinking. The consequent action is the result of deep thought, we presume, or mental instability, or, as they say, whatnot. Or perchance the character will do nothing in the end, just continue to stare.I watched an episode of The Wire just before watching Summer Palace.Dense dialog, dense narrative. Corruption in a city where in the final analysis nothing is going to change. Meanwhile, in Summer Palace, one billion people undergo a decade of profound and radical change as the regime gradually opens into an authoritarian economic system. Scant dialog, scant narrative. Ironic.And speaking of not talking to each other - during sex, Zhou Wei (Xiaodong Guo), Yu Hong's main squeeze in the movie, wears earphones. Call me old-fashioned!Non-dialog reaches new heights in a scene where the lovers are floating on a lake in a rowboat. This is one of those couples-in-a-boat-wordless-montage scenes, only this time, after stretching out interminably, the scene goes no-dialog time-lapse into the night with a full moon rising. Yu Hong will probably tell her diary that she and Zhou Wei were talking into the night, after watching Zhou Wei rest on his oars for eight hours, smoking. And then, back at the hotel after languishing in the boat, sex. And then, "Zhou Wei? I think we should break up." "Why?" "Because I can't leave you." This is the signal to us that whenever things seem to be going well in the movie, Yu Hong will turn away and step off the curb into traffic, metaphorically speaking. An example of the viewer not knowing what is coming, not being a mind reader.I believe that Yu Hong was still a frosh at this point. When I was a frosh, I had a couple of painful wordless dates but they didn't end with me wearing headphones. Or not wearing them, either.Waiting for the dialog in a film like Summer Palace is like reading a Henry James novel. He doles out the spoken words most sparingly - dialog was the crest of the wave, I think he said - but most of the time I was deep under water, longing for any sign of a set of quotation marks, on pages of solid print often missing even a paragraph break. I'm speaking of his late novels.If director Ye Lou were making Casablanca here instead of Summer Palace, Ingrid Bergman would step into Rick's Cafe with her husband, sit down at a table, and smoke and drink beer without speaking to Paul Henreid or anybody else, while Bogart stood at the back of the room, alternately staring at her and looking away, smoking, wordless. Their eyes would meet once. Later, at the end of the movie, after a clinch, Bogart would stare into her eyes and say "What next?" and Bergman would drag on her cigarette and look away, and he'd look away, and she'd look back but he wouldn't, and she'd reply, "What next?" Then she'd look at him looking away some more and then one or both of them would turn and walk away. Lights up.Lei Huo does a nice French inhale or two (or Irish waterfall, if you prefer) in the movie, while not talking, I'll give her that. And there is a scene in a car where she and Zhou Wei drive, with lots of staring. He stares ahead. She stares ahead. Then she stares at him while he stares ahead, and that was good, her staring at him. That scene had some juice, wordless or not. Plus, they were filmed dead-on from in front of the windshield with the car vibrating from its motion, the most realistic such scene that I can remember seeing. Director Ye Lou, a 43-year-old from Shanghai, graduated from the Beijing Film Academy as one of its "Sixth Generation" or "Urban Generation" group of directors (the Fifth Generation, growing up during the Cultural Revolution, was more familiar with the rural than the urban), which also includes, for example, Jia Zhangke (Platform, 2000), Xiaoshuai Wang (Drifters, 2003), and Zhang Yuan (Seventeen Years, 1999). There is a definite trend in many Chinese Sixth Generation movies to skate over narrative and dialog (see, for example, The Wayward Cloud). Obviously, I need to be in the mood for this.In Ye Lou's case, the lack of dialog seems to grow out of his philosophy of film."I want Lei Huo to be the character, not pretend to be the character. If she's just pretending, even if she's a very competent actor, she'll still harm the character, because the audience will just see her as a very good actor." Not so. That's why they're called actors.This reminds me of Olivier's reply to Hoffman, who was using The Method in Marathon Man to get into character and asked Olivier about the technique that he used to do the same. "Dear boy," Sir Lawrence replied. "It's called acting."Because to ensure that Lei Huo will "be the character," Ye Lou provides her with virtually no dialog - he can't presume, you see - and, unlike in a Mike Leigh film, she doesn't trouble herself to develop any herself. Which leaves us to divine what's going on in her noggin by the expression on her purposely expressionless face. Lei Huo says "the character is like me in real life. She's going to break my heart" but this doesn't help me, since I don't happen to know Lei Huo personally. She's a force though, with her nose often a little red.But. Having said all that. It's true that throughout the movie, once she gets to university, Yu Hong tells us what she is thinking by reading excerpts from her diary in voice-over. However, her thoughts as verbalized do not illuminate; they merely reiterate the non-look on her face. Viz, after meeting her one true love for the first time and dancing with him to "Seven Little Girls Sitting in the Backseat" (neither of them speaking, needless to say):"Had I not viewed my life in the light of the ideal, its mediocrity would have been unbearable. That's how I saw things when we met. You came into my life. You are my most refined friend. It's very simple. I knew the moment I saw you that we were standing on the same side of the world. And then we talked the whole night long. For all that, there are troubling aspects to our relationship which can't be reduced simply to pleasure or lack of it. I want to live more and more intensely. It's clear to me, nowhere more so than in our relationship, because there are times when I'm clearly imposing my will on you. If one takes desire lightly, action will be constricted. It was through love that I understood this. There's no getting around it. There are only illusions. Illusions. Those lethal things."This load is dropped on us at one go, intercut with tracking shots of Yu Hong and Zhou Wei (Xiaodong Guo), her new university lover, walking and gazing but not speaking. Perhaps they talked the night away and we never saw it, but more likely all the talking is being done directly into the diary. The message: the course of love never did run smooth. I think I can say with assurance that I never dated and danced and talked the night away with a girl who had these thoughts running through her mind.The dictum is "Show, don't tell." Here we have the opposite. The silence doesn't show and the voice-over diary reading tells constantly.Later from the diary, we get the likes of:"As soon as love touches you, life is knocked off balance.""True love can only appear at the most intense moments of anguish and suffering."Later one of Yu Hong's lovers says, "You're so simple. You're different from other women. You're simple and straightforward." He obviously did not get his hands on the diary.Of course, there are language and cultural issues here. In the absence of a gloss for the subtitles, this is where you pause the movie and turn to your spouse or significant other, if he or she happens to be from China, to solicit some cultural and linguistic input that might help you pick up on the nuances in those diary entries and in the dialog and action in general. Because these are our fundamental hints about what is going on in the minds of the characters and the hints are just enough but not more than enough to mute any surprise we might feel when, at the apparent height of their happiness, as they lie full-frontal (a Chinese first. Fifteen years ago, kissing was hardly allowed), staring up at the ceiling with the camera aimed down at them, Yu Hong suggests that Xhou Wei get circumcised. Why? he asks. (Xiaodong Guo speaks as quietly throughout this movie as anyone I can remember speaking on film without actually whispering.) Yu Hong replies, Because it would be less painful. Who told you that? he asks. My professor, she says. Why did he tell you that? Because, she says, we were making love. This puts an immediate damper on the couple's romantic outing. Yu Hong follows an old romantic convention and walks away from happiness whenever she chances to encounter it.Another quick scene that might benefit from a little cultural interpretation: Yu Hong is sitting in a public park next to a basketball court, waiting for her boyfriend to arrive. He's late. She's watching some young men play a pickup game. Her boyfriend rides up on his motorcycle, hops off, and apologizes for being late. Suddenly, an outcry. He's parked on the court or on a part of the street serving as the court. Immediately there is a struggle and he gets a shiner and scraped cheeks. The young woman joins in the fracas. The problem is, the conflict is instantaneous and obliquely shot, so that it is impossible to tell what's happening, exactly. The scene feels clunky and staged, which is strange considering that it follows several quiet and evocative scenes that open the movie. Surely this doesn't mean that Ye Lou doesn't have the chops to handle a little action, action as majorly simple as this? He obviously isn't a fan of Hong Kong movie brawls, but I'm thinking that I've missed some cultural nuance in the scene that might help account for its amateur feeling.And one more word about taciturn actors: we don't even get diary entries from Zhou Wei. He drives away from Yu Hong at the end of the movie without a word but with, we presume, extreme regret (though his face doesn't show it). Who knows why?Earlier, hanging out in Berlin because that is what the director did after he got out of school, separated now from Yu Hong, his true love, Zhou Wei sits next to a young Polish woman. The two are gazing out at a Berlin wasteland. One presumes, on the evidence of the movie so far, that they are casually intimate, perhaps lovers."What is Warsaw like?" Zhou Wei says.Pause for some gazing and brow-wrinkling by the girl."It's ok," she says. Mutual space-gazing."And Beijing?" she says back.Gazing in tandem. I like it that the man from China and the woman from Poland are conversing quietly in German. Xiaodong Guo continues to speaks in a too-cool quiet voice."It's ok," he says.I figured that that was going to be it for the scene but after another bit of gazing, she asks him if he has a girlfriend. He says that he does. We feel the painful significance of this terse reply. Where is she? the girl asks. Somber piano notes."Very far away," he says in German with a Beijing accent."In China?""Perhaps.""Where are we right now?" the girl asks. Zhou Wei exhales cigarette smoke. She says, "In Berlin?"What she means by this, I have no idea. The first time I watched the scene I rolled my eyes. By the fifth time I was liking it. At least they were saying something to each other, even if it didn't make any sense.The director wanted to make an organic movie that grew, as if alive, and that involved the actors. What are the implications of this for the movie's story? Is "organic" code here for "no plot," or "no narrative," or "juryrigged narrative arc"? The makers of Manda Bala, which I just reviewed, went on a five-year hunt for a story with limited success. Ye Lou didn't take that long, unless you count the fact that he's been thinking about this film since his graduation from film school in 1989. His struggle is evident, though, in the same way that Jason Kohn's was in Manda Bala - nurturing a hope that something will crop up. A failure of ability or imagination or no failure, but simply the constrictions on storytelling imposed by the original vision. The suicide in Summer Palace (wordless), and its wordless aftermath (serious staring off), and the abortion (wordless), and Yu Hong getting hit by a car, and some of the sex, and most of the rest of the staring-off-into-space in this film could have been eliminated, to the film's benefit, by replacing it all with a little sharp dialog. Having said that, the movie never dragged for me; the two hours and twenty minutes it ran felt like less."I don't want a construction, with a clear beginning, middle, and end," says the director. In his opinion, the story would naturally end with the events in Tiananmen Square in '89, which occur halfway through, but he must show the consequences of Chinese economic and political development with respect to the students during the ten years that follow. He wants his film to live and it appears that in his view, forcing it into the straightjacket of a story would kill it. "One of the challenges in the narrative is that the climax of the story is actually in the middle of the film and not at the end. But it wasn't possible for the story to end there. That moment had to be in the middle of the film." I've mentioned elsewhere that I'm oblivious to metaphor in film. To the extent that the lives of the students in the decade after Tiananmen stand in for the economic and political developments in the country, the film doesn't work for me. The director says that it's a melodrama, not a political statement; some commentators think that Western viewers will take the movie as a melodrama while Chinese viewers will react to the representation of China ten years ago. I got the melodrama and not so much the mood of that country in the 90s.Regardless of my issues about dialog and narrative, I have nothing but respect for Ye Lou as a maker of movies. He made Weekend Lover in 1995 and then Suzhou River without permission, in 2002. Suzhou River won prizes and was praised as "exhibiting the most eloquent and effortless command of the post-Wong Kar-wai pop idiom yet." The Chinese government then put him out of business for two years. Ye Lou takes his movies seriously. After making Purple Butterfly in 2003, he did Summer Palace and was hit with another suspension by the government in 2006, for five years this time, because he entered the movie at Canneswithout permission. A sacrifice like that requires us to take second and third looks at his filmmaking philosophy. As does the praise for Summer Palace from the likes of A.O. Scott and David Denby. "I'm just a director. I'm not a politician. I don't want to get into boring politics in my films. Many Chinese directors practice self-censorship because of the tight controls. But I think this is fatal. Directors must be free. So I say to everyone when we are working, 'Let's forget censorship.' That's why there are always so many troubles after the film. But while I am shooting, I am very happy... In my opinion, in its current condition, we still have a lot of problems. First and foremost, Chinese cinema still isn't free, either in terms of creativity, management, or regulations. If you can't express your opinions freely, you can't accurately judge the value of other people's words. We need to be able to express what we really think before we can judge the form or soundness of another expression." Summer Palace was withdrawn by the producers at Cannes after the Chinese government's reaction to its release.The movie had more film-making resources available to it than most Chinese films. Scenes were shot in six different cities, through four seasons, with rain, wind, and summer heat. (Do Asian movies do rain best? It can come down in buckets. Rashomon - now that was rain.) To make this romance about the youth of his generation, Ye Lou returned to the same dorm rooms he had lived in at university. If I returned to the dorm rooms that I lived in at Occidental and Tufts and dressed them to match the time that I was there, and then filmed moments of political, cultural, and physical awakening in them that matched my own, I expect that the results would resonate powerfully with me. Wow. But probably not with anybody else. Would this cloud my judgment around the dramatic and esthetic issues that arise while making a film? I know nothing about Beijing University and the Summer Palace next door to it, other than that the school's interior looks a lot like a hard-used middle school I used to know in the toughest neighborhood in Detroit.Similarly, after college the peregrinations of the students reflect the director's own post-graduate travels. Zhou Wei hies off to Germany (Ye Lou met his wife in Berlin), Dong Dong to the U.S., the others to large cities in south China. We see the wall in Berlin coming down, Gorby, Hong Kong reverting to china. But there are two hundred cities in China with a population over one million and I can't name three of them; the director's scheme of moving south city by city to indicate, metaphorically, the opening of Chinese economic policy in the 90s (it having always been easier to operate in China the farther south you went) was lost on me. Perhaps if these students had started in Detroit and headed down to St. Louis, and then Nashville, Texarkana, Santa Fe, and Venice Beach, and Italy instead of Germany, I might have registered more fully the zeitgeist presented in the movie. I was talking to a couple of young people the other day who are working in online data acquisition in Boston. They've been having the feeling lately, after a couple of years in private industry following a lifetime in school, of "This is it? This is what it means to finally be an adult?" Questions which anyone in this movie would understand. At university in Beijing in '89, everything seemed possible. The world could be changed. In the second half of Summer Palace, the former students learn that this feeling was an illusion, something that Yu Hong realized much sooner.The '90s were a time of confusion for many twenty-somethings in China. The characters in Summer Palace spend a lot of time acting confused. I take the point. There is old China here but there is also Coca Cola in the big red bottle on the ferry, and this is the first time I recall seeing a mainland China gas station. It wasn’t self-serve. Just off the freeway. Had a mini-mart. The thing about character confusion is that, in the absence of dialog, it can edge into boredom, aimlessness, and ennui, which can then translate into boredom for the viewer, especially if the viewer doesn't knit. It occurred to me to wonder at one point about the difference, if any, between the boredom of childhood, the boredom of adolescence, that of young adults, of parents, of the middle-aged, of seniors, and of pet dogs. And whether the boredom engendered by a bad action flick is the same as or different than the boredom caused by an art movie with a bad case of the longeures. These are questions to pursue in a later review, when a truly boring movie comes along.Mick LaSalle in his podcast the other day said that the key to an effective romantic sex scene (as opposed to the other types of sex scene) is to make sure that longing precedes it. This is a forte of current Chinese filmmakers. They tell love stories, with all the difficulties so often attendant to them, and they seem to specialize in longing. Consider the movies I've mentioned above, or any movie by Wong Kar-Wai, or Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon or Brokeback Mountain. Summer Palace begins with an entry in Yu Hong's diary: "There is something that comes suddenly like a wind on a warm summer's evening. It takes you off guard and leaves you without peace. It follows you like a shadow and it's impossible to shake. I don't know what it is, so I can only call it love." Love blows in like a wind, and it's an ill wind that blows no good. With fifteen minutes left in the movie, Zhou Wei learns that Yu Hong is married. The longing on his part takes a final, major step up.You've got to look long and hard to find this kind of movie in the West. Romantic comedies, sexual-attraction movies, historical romances like The Age of Innocence from time to time, but modern longing and romance? Not so much. This is not to say that most of Yu Hong's sexual activity is meant to be romantic. Instead, she says in her diary, "It's only when we're making love that you realize that I'm gentle." She teaches a number of men that she's gentle by using this direct method. She has tried countless other ways but has chosen this special direct method as the most efficacious. I have a feelingthat the word "gentle" does not do justice to Yu Hong's original conception, but one way or another, it's all about her trying to be accepted as good and tender. Thinking back, I'm wondering if any of those women I knew were just trying to show me that they were gentle. Question: Does longing for one person make sex scenes with someone else work? Yu Hong, for example, while longing for Zhou Wei, finds love with Wu Gang (at least until "material poverty can only lead to resentment"). Hmm, now that I think of it, most of the sex in the movie involves longing for someone absent.Li Ti (the suicide) wouldn't allow anyone to love her for fear of hurting them. "Love is like a wound in the heart. When it heals, love disappears. Or never existed."Ye Lou calls Summer Palace a melodrama, not a historical study. Most of its two-and-a-half hours is spent examining love, watching young men and women in love, trying to explain love.Ye Lou: "Then love is like a leaf in the universe. if the universe were a tree, love would be a leaf on the tree. And we can glimpse at the shape of the universe by looking at just one leaf. So I can just depict the love. Once I've protrayed the love, I've portrayed the universe."Well, if I see an elm leaf, I can't tell you what the trunk of the tree looks like. Does Ye Lou succeed in explaining love, or are we simply peppered with notions?"Why was it that nothing he had said to me or done to me could prevent my heart from going out to him," Yu Hongs says. I never spotted Zhou Wei actually saying or doing anything in particular to her, so I take the question to actually be a statement. The director has said that love is uncontrollable, that is goes beyond events, that it can't be restrained, that we can't demand anything of it. We can't expect it to bring happiness, or marriage, or a long and happy life together. He says that emotional torment takes time, a lot of time, to resolve. For Ye Hong and Zhou Wei to come back together and stay together, the director says, would have taken them another decade of longing and would have taken him another hour of screen time. Now I don't feel so bad that they didn't get back together.So, a movie about love. What do I take away from it? If you're in love and you have sex repeatedly, it doesn't lead to boredom, as in real life, but to unhappy longing for your absent partner. Or vice versa. I hope the director has had better luck with love than his characters in Summer Place, because, in this movie, not to lower the tenor of the review, if love strikes, you're f**ked. http://www.spout.com/blogs/the_american_dream/archive/2008/6/3/30450.aspx Post By: The_American_Dream
Post To: The_American_Dream Blog
Post Date: 6/3/2008 11:35:28 PM
Body: A truly rare and unique documentary. "Manda Bala" has about everything good about it. Everything from in depth interviews from everyone involved with the wide range of topics this documentary approaches, to just plain old good filming. But about the movie. "Manda Bala" takes an unflinching look at an ugly subject. Interestingly enough, the subject of this movie is not really one you see people yelling about in the park. "Manda Bala" is about corruption and violence in Brazil, particularly Sao Paulo. The movie makes it very clear just how broad this topic is, but this does not stop the film makers from putting together this extraordinary film. I say film for a reason, this film is more than just a documentary, I would go so far as to say that this is a stand out in its field movie, it brings together facets of documentary and marries them with cinematic principals that are easily lost in the making of documentaries. "Manda Bala" stands out as a documentary for several reasons. It has in it a few simple topics that it it calls our attention to, corruption and street violence, and presents them without fooling around or going in circles over and over again. Poignant interviews and on-the-spot photography bring the viewer into the causes and effects of the corruption and violence in Brazil. Movies in general take these themes upon themselves all the time. "Syriana", although a decent and compelling drama on a similar subject, seems to loose focus on these themes, and not just because it is a fictional movie with drama and characters. "Manda Bala" has characters and drama in the sense that there are real people that the audience follows on journeys in their lives. There is even a sense of connection, compassion even, for people concerned, all the while stressing the brutality with extreme vividness. And finally, "Manda Bala" brings the good, the bad, and the ugly right on the screen so the audience can see it. The cruelty of politicians and murderers, the compassion of doctors and police. As a strait-up movie, "Manda Bala" also excels. Brazil lends itself to some cinematic qualities, vast cities with skyscrapers reaching out of sprawling slums, mountains covered in rain-forest, all under azure skies. This imagery abounds in "Manda Bala", blues and greens of nature splashed with the ochre tones of the slums and the skyscrapers. But there is also simply good filming, the way shots are set, the juxtaposition of interviewers and translators. Beautiful photography, with even quirky scenarios. It is strangely elegant. The film also uses its status as a documentary to punctuate this beauty with stark, edgy, stock footage. It is good to have these qualities in a documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth", even though it is a good documentary, gets boring. "Manda Bala" also holds its own. "The Fog of War", another great documentary, it just one interview. Both of these movies are equally insightful, but "Manda Bala" has them beat in some way as documentaries, in addition to its cinematic qualities. Also as a documentary, "Manda Bala" is not for the fait of heart. It is one that can turn your stomach, but the audience of a documentary knows that this is the world. The audience faces the brutality of a movie like this for a reason. The fact that this movie pulls it off is truly a mark of great documentary film making. This is something to look for in the best of movies, stories, and particularly, documentaries. This is a great film. Well worth the while of any audience. But part of this fact is that it cannot be taken lightly, even when this movie has irony or dark-humor. "Manda Bala" is a wonderful portrait of the world we sometimes have to face. Directed by Jason Kohn Not Rated
]]>Wed, 04 Jun 2008 03:35:28 GMTThe_American_DreamThe_American_Dream Blog6/3/2008 11:35:28 PM A truly rare and unique documentary. "Manda Bala" has about everything good about it. Everything from in depth interviews from everyone involved with the wide range of topics this documentary approaches, to just plain old good filming. But about the movie. "Manda Bala" takes an unflinching look at an ugly subject. Interestingly enough, the subject of this movie is not really one you see people yelling about in the park. "Manda Bala" is about corruption and violence in Brazil, particularly Sao Paulo. The movie makes it very clear just how broad this topic is, but this does not stop the film makers from putting together this extraordinary film. I say film for a reason, this film is more than just a documentary, I would go so far as to say that this is a stand out in its field movie, it brings together facets of documentary and marries them with cinematic principals that are easily lost in the making of documentaries. "Manda Bala" stands out as a documentary for several reasons. It has in it a few simple topics that it it calls our attention to, corruption and street violence, and presents them without fooling around or going in circles over and over again. Poignant interviews and on-the-spot photography bring the viewer into the causes and effects of the corruption and violence in Brazil. Movies in general take these themes upon themselves all the time. "Syriana", although a decent and compelling drama on a similar subject, seems to loose focus on these themes, and not just because it is a fictional movie with drama and characters. "Manda Bala" has characters and drama in the sense that there are real people that the audience follows on journeys in their lives. There is even a sense of connection, compassion even, for people concerned, all the while stressing the brutality with extreme vividness. And finally, "Manda Bala" brings the good, the bad, and the ugly right on the screen so the audience can see it. The cruelty of politicians and murderers, the compassion of doctors and police. As a strait-up movie, "Manda Bala" also excels. Brazil lends itself to some cinematic qualities, vast cities with skyscrapers reaching out of sprawling slums, mountains covered in rain-forest, all under azure skies. This imagery abounds in "Manda Bala", blues and greens of nature splashed with the ochre tones of the slums and the skyscrapers. But there is also simply good filming, the way shots are set, the juxtaposition of interviewers and translators. Beautiful photography, with even quirky scenarios. It is strangely elegant. The film also uses its status as a documentary to punctuate this beauty with stark, edgy, stock footage. It is good to have these qualities in a documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth", even though it is a good documentary, gets boring. "Manda Bala" also holds its own. "The Fog of War", another great documentary, it just one interview. Both of these movies are equally insightful, but "Manda Bala" has them beat in some way as documentaries, in addition to its cinematic qualities. Also as a documentary, "Manda Bala" is not for the fait of heart. It is one that can turn your stomach, but the audience of a documentary knows that this is the world. The audience faces the brutality of a movie like this for a reason. The fact that this movie pulls it off is truly a mark of great documentary film making. This is something to look for in the best of movies, stories, and particularly, documentaries. This is a great film. Well worth the while of any audience. But part of this fact is that it cannot be taken lightly, even when this movie has irony or dark-humor. "Manda Bala" is a wonderful portrait of the world we sometimes have to face. Directed by Jason Kohn Not Rated http://www.spout.com/blogs/indieabby88/archive/2008/6/1/30275.aspx Post By: indieabby88
Post To: Bloggish review blog
Post Date: 6/1/2008 6:07:27 PM
Body: During this last year, I had the interesting experience of living in a house with two girls from Brazil. One of them had a fiancee still living there, and every week it seemed like she had some wild story about some close call that either she or her intended had experienced. She once told me that she wouldn't even think about going to the bakery two blocks from her house without getting into a car. It was just too dangerous to walk. I've heard lots of stories from many different sources about the high rates of crime, especially kidnapping, in Brazil, but I never knew very much about it until I watched "Manda Bala," a fascinating and sharp documentary that looks at corruption and the criminal element in Brazil from many different angles. "Manda Bala" starts out investigating a corrupt politician's failed program to help poor Brazilians in the north of the country, in a state called Para, which includes part of Brazil's Amazon region. It turns out that the politician, who has held every elected office in Brazil save that of the president, was using this employment program to embezzle money from the government. Director Jason Kohn examines some of the effects of the country's imbalance of wealth on the citizens of Para and also in Sao Paulo, a city famous for its' kidnappings. Kohn interviews victims, police officers and even a kidnapper and gives us a portrait that is creepy, troubling, and surprisingly neutral. Two of the most interesting characters Kohn interviews are a plastic surgeon who does reconstructive surgery for kidnapping victims (the audience is treated to pretty visceral, but still really interesting footage of reconstructive ear surgery) and the kidnapper, who claims to have been born in a slum in Sao Paulo, and started stealing when he was nine. The kidnapper, who also moonlights as a bank robber, seems to think of himself as some kind of Robin Hood character. The juxtaposition of a man who thinks very little about the many cops he kills and victims he maims while he still claims to have the best interests of his friends and family at heart was surprising and, oddly enough, a little heartwarming, too. I do wish that Kohn had tied the political situation and the social issues of the film together more than he did. For most of the film, the corrupt politician's scandal and the stories of kidnappers and victims in Sao Paulo seem rather isolated, but Kohn manages to kind of tie the two together, although the connecting thread seems kind of weak. Otherwise, with its' nearly perfect cinematography, hip score (I want that soundtrack!) and enthralling subject matter, "Manda Bala" is 85 minutes well spent.
]]>Sun, 01 Jun 2008 22:07:27 GMTindieabby88Bloggish review blog6/1/2008 6:07:27 PMDuring this last year, I had the interesting experience of living in a house with two girls from Brazil. One of them had a fiancee still living there, and every week it seemed like she had some wild story about some close call that either she or her intended had experienced. She once told me that she wouldn't even think about going to the bakery two blocks from her house without getting into a car. It was just too dangerous to walk. I've heard lots of stories from many different sources about the high rates of crime, especially kidnapping, in Brazil, but I never knew very much about it until I watched "Manda Bala," a fascinating and sharp documentary that looks at corruption and the criminal element in Brazil from many different angles. "Manda Bala" starts out investigating a corrupt politician's failed program to help poor Brazilians in the north of the country, in a state called Para, which includes part of Brazil's Amazon region. It turns out that the politician, who has held every elected office in Brazil save that of the president, was using this employment program to embezzle money from the government. Director Jason Kohn examines some of the effects of the country's imbalance of wealth on the citizens of Para and also in Sao Paulo, a city famous for its' kidnappings. Kohn interviews victims, police officers and even a kidnapper and gives us a portrait that is creepy, troubling, and surprisingly neutral. Two of the most interesting characters Kohn interviews are a plastic surgeon who does reconstructive surgery for kidnapping victims (the audience is treated to pretty visceral, but still really interesting footage of reconstructive ear surgery) and the kidnapper, who claims to have been born in a slum in Sao Paulo, and started stealing when he was nine. The kidnapper, who also moonlights as a bank robber, seems to think of himself as some kind of Robin Hood character. The juxtaposition of a man who thinks very little about the many cops he kills and victims he maims while he still claims to have the best interests of his friends and family at heart was surprising and, oddly enough, a little heartwarming, too. I do wish that Kohn had tied the political situation and the social issues of the film together more than he did. For most of the film, the corrupt politician's scandal and the stories of kidnappers and victims in Sao Paulo seem rather isolated, but Kohn manages to kind of tie the two together, although the connecting thread seems kind of weak. Otherwise, with its' nearly perfect cinematography, hip score (I want that soundtrack!) and enthralling subject matter, "Manda Bala" is 85 minutes well spent. http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/violence/MemberTagFilms.aspxviolence
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]]>Tue, 05 May 2009 13:12:46 GMT1491925Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/ransom/MemberTagFilms.aspxransom
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Number of people who tagged: 9

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]]>Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:03:04 GMT255913Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/ear/MemberTagFilms.aspxear
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Number of people who tagged: 7

Number of times used: 8

]]>Wed, 14 Jan 2009 06:08:07 GMT478Tag http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/frogs/MemberTagFilms.aspxfrogs
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Number of people who tagged: 7

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]]>Tue, 17 Mar 2009 17:56:56 GMT678Tag