list http://www.spout.com/ Recent community activity around The Year My Parents Went on Vacation 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/The_Year_My_Parents_Went_on_Vacation/325356/default.aspx Title: The Year My Parents Went on Vacation
Year: 2008
Director: Cao Hamburger
Plot: A twelve-year old Brazilian boy who longs to see his team win out over Italy in the 1970 World Cup match finds his entire world turned upside down as his left-wing parents are forced into hiding and he is sent to live with his grandfather in Sao Paulo's Bom Retiro district. Though his country is being held in the grip of a military dictatorship and the war in Vietnam is raging abroad, young Mauro can't seem to think about anything else but the upcoming World Cup match between Brazil and Italy. If Jairzinho, Pele, and company can just win their third World Cup title, team Brazil will earn their third star on the strip - a feat that no other team in the history of the sport has ever managed to accomplish. When his Catholic mother and Jewish father are suddenly forced to go "on holiday," young Mauro is swept out of his middle class existence in Minas Gerais and taken to stay with his paternal grandfather in bustling Bom Retiro. A multi-ethnic district in which Jews, Arabs, and Greeks all live side-by-side, Bom Retiro begins to heat up with World Cup fever as things both at home and abroad all seem to be spiraling towards disaster. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Times Tagged: 42
Number of Lists: 16
Number of blog posts: 11
Number of discussion threads: 3
SpoutRating: 3
]]>Sat, 24 Jan 2009 16:40:45 GMTThe Year My Parents Went on Vacation2008Cao HamburgerA twelve-year old Brazilian boy who longs to see his team win out over Italy in the 1970 World Cup match finds his entire world turned upside down as his left-wing parents are forced into hiding and he is sent to live with his grandfather in Sao Paulo's Bom Retiro district. Though his country is being held in the grip of a military dictatorship and the war in Vietnam is raging abroad, young Mauro can't seem to think about anything else but the upcoming World Cup match between Brazil and Italy. If Jairzinho, <a href="http://www.spout.com/players/P____55818/default.aspx" style='text-decoration:underline'>Pele</a>, and company can just win their third World Cup title, team Brazil will earn their third star on the strip - a feat that no other team in the history of the sport has ever managed to accomplish. When his Catholic mother and Jewish father are suddenly forced to go "on holiday," young Mauro is swept out of his middle class existence in Minas Gerais and taken to stay with his paternal grandfather in bustling Bom Retiro. A multi-ethnic district in which Jews, Arabs, and Greeks all live side-by-side, Bom Retiro begins to heat up with World Cup fever as things both at home and abroad all seem to be spiraling towards disaster. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide42Tag Target (>10)161133http://www.spout.com/ProductImages/s325356.jpghttp://www.spout.com/films/The_Year_My_Parents_Went_on_Vacation/325356/default.aspxFilm http://www.spout.com/blogs/smooth_j/archive/2009/1/24/39862.aspx Post By: Smooth_J
Post To: Smooth_J Blog
Post Date: 1/24/2009 11:40:45 AM
Body: The Year my Parents Went on Vacation is a pretty involving little movie taking place during the military dictatorship in Brazil, with all things revolving around the impending World Cup. The second half of the movie is outstanding--it just took me a while to get there, because I was bored to tears with the first half. The slow beginning is a result of lingering upon well-trodden and predictable plot devices. We know that we are in dictatorial Brazil, and Mauro's (the kid, played magnificently by Michel Joelsas) parents are going on vacation and leaving him behind. They are nervous, anxious, agitated, and keep looking long and sadly at their son. And we are led, basically spoon-fed, to believe that Mauro's parents are probably radical leftists, fleeing repression and an almost certain arrest. This would be fine if it were not dwelled upon for 10 minutes--there are so many innuendos as to the parents' political affiliation and the fact that they probably won't return from their vacation that it's difficult to believe that Mauro wouldn't catch on. Cao Hamburger attempts to capture the naivete of youth and does so successfully, but he lingers upon it too long, and it becomes irrelevant. The next half an hour or so is spent resolving a sticky conflict that was made prominent when Mauro arrives at his grandfather's retirement community (I won't reveal it, but needless to say, you can see it coming). Everything is set up. Mauro is stuck at a mostly Jewish retirement community, with a reluctant old man named Schlomo (Germano Haiut, who also turns a solid performance) who is aloof about the boy for a while, but then later has a the Gratuitous Change of Heart and searches endlessly for the boy's parents. The second half of the film abandons the cliched, unnecessarily emotional set-up for some politically charged and genuinely moving scenes. The characters are finally drawn to full potential. The plot finally thickens. The nostalgia of childhood is finally captured, making the finale all the more haunting. It is a great finish to an otherwise unimpressive movie.
]]>Sat, 24 Jan 2009 16:40:45 GMTSmooth_JSmooth_J Blog1/24/2009 11:40:45 AMThe Year my Parents Went on Vacation is a pretty involving little movie taking place during the military dictatorship in Brazil, with all things revolving around the impending World Cup. The second half of the movie is outstanding--it just took me a while to get there, because I was bored to tears with the first half. The slow beginning is a result of lingering upon well-trodden and predictable plot devices. We know that we are in dictatorial Brazil, and Mauro's (the kid, played magnificently by Michel Joelsas) parents are going on vacation and leaving him behind. They are nervous, anxious, agitated, and keep looking long and sadly at their son. And we are led, basically spoon-fed, to believe that Mauro's parents are probably radical leftists, fleeing repression and an almost certain arrest. This would be fine if it were not dwelled upon for 10 minutes--there are so many innuendos as to the parents' political affiliation and the fact that they probably won't return from their vacation that it's difficult to believe that Mauro wouldn't catch on. Cao Hamburger attempts to capture the naivete of youth and does so successfully, but he lingers upon it too long, and it becomes irrelevant. The next half an hour or so is spent resolving a sticky conflict that was made prominent when Mauro arrives at his grandfather's retirement community (I won't reveal it, but needless to say, you can see it coming). Everything is set up. Mauro is stuck at a mostly Jewish retirement community, with a reluctant old man named Schlomo (Germano Haiut, who also turns a solid performance) who is aloof about the boy for a while, but then later has a the Gratuitous Change of Heart and searches endlessly for the boy's parents. The second half of the film abandons the cliched, unnecessarily emotional set-up for some politically charged and genuinely moving scenes. The characters are finally drawn to full potential. The plot finally thickens. The nostalgia of childhood is finally captured, making the finale all the more haunting. It is a great finish to an otherwise unimpressive movie. http://www.spout.com/blogs/mercurial/archive/2008/11/24/37594.aspx Post By: mercurial
Post To: a filmblog
Post Date: 11/24/2008 6:51:58 PM
Body: The Year My Parents Went On Vacation follows the emotional journey of a child hastily abandoned by his parents that is forced to adapt to the unfamiliar surroundings he now finds himself transplanted to. In the weeks leading up to the 1970 World Cup, Mauro is moved from his comfortable home to the noisy and alien streets of São Paulo, Brazil to stay with his grandfather while his parents go on a spur of the moment 'vacation.' Left standing with suitcase in hand on the curb of his new home, Mauro is immediately confronted with the death of his impromptu caretaker and left to forage for himself in an empty apartment. Days turn to weeks and an unlikely friendship forms between Mauro and the elderly Jewish neighbor that begrudgingly views the child's situation as an exercise in faith. The simplistic nature of the film allows for a heartwarming adventure about the naiveté of youth and the struggle of maintaining ones religious and political convictions in the face of hardship. A more dramatic companion to such films as Home Alone and Persepolis.
]]>Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:51:58 GMTmercuriala filmblog11/24/2008 6:51:58 PMThe Year My Parents Went On Vacation follows the emotional journey of a child hastily abandoned by his parents that is forced to adapt to the unfamiliar surroundings he now finds himself transplanted to. In the weeks leading up to the 1970 World Cup, Mauro is moved from his comfortable home to the noisy and alien streets of S&atilde;o Paulo, Brazil to stay with his grandfather while his parents go on a spur of the moment 'vacation.' Left standing with suitcase in hand on the curb of his new home, Mauro is immediately confronted with the death of his impromptu caretaker and left to forage for himself in an empty apartment. Days turn to weeks and an unlikely friendship forms between Mauro and the elderly Jewish neighbor that begrudgingly views the child's situation as an exercise in faith. The simplistic nature of the film allows for a heartwarming adventure about the naivet&eacute; of youth and the struggle of maintaining ones religious and political convictions in the face of hardship. A more dramatic companion to such films as Home Alone and Persepolis. http://www.spout.com/blogs/jscott/archive/2008/10/6/35954.aspx Post By: JScott
Post To: JScott Blog
Post Date: 10/6/2008 7:48:22 PM
Body: Director Cao Hamburger tells an almost Truffaut-like story of childhood, impossible love, abandonment and ultimately being found. This film reminds me a lot of The 400 Blows as children occupy the main space of this film. The actors give an almost neo-realist performance as characters who could be anyone you know. They are played to perfection and very relatable. The writing is humorous in the right places while choosing to remain classy instead of raunchy. I appreciate the extra effort taken to make this film approachable for all ages while being sophisticated at the same time. The somewhat whimsical story doesn't hold back on dealing with political issues and world events of the 1970s in Brazil. I feel that this is a very powerful tale of finding out that home and family are what you make of it. You could miss what isn't there but then you are just missing what is. Perhaps thats an overly optimistic view of it. If you enjoy films by Francois Truffaut, Roberto Rossellini or Pedro Almodovar I would think you should enjoy this film. Its a masterpiece.
]]>Mon, 06 Oct 2008 23:48:22 GMTJScottJScott Blog10/6/2008 7:48:22 PMDirector Cao Hamburger tells an almost Truffaut-like story of childhood, impossible love, abandonment and ultimately being found. This film reminds me a lot of The 400 Blows as children occupy the main space of this film. The actors give an almost neo-realist performance as characters who could be anyone you know. They are played to perfection and very relatable. The writing is humorous in the right places while choosing to remain classy instead of raunchy. I appreciate the extra effort taken to make this film approachable for all ages while being sophisticated at the same time. The somewhat whimsical story doesn't hold back on dealing with political issues and world events of the 1970s in Brazil. I feel that this is a very powerful tale of finding out that home and family are what you make of it. You could miss what isn't there but then you are just missing what is. Perhaps thats an overly optimistic view of it. If you enjoy films by Francois Truffaut, Roberto Rossellini or Pedro Almodovar I would think you should enjoy this film. Its a masterpiece. http://www.spout.com/blogs/joem18b/archive/2008/9/25/35552.aspx Post By: joem18b
Post To: joem18b Blog
Post Date: 9/25/2008 7:04:22 PM
Body: O Ano em Que Meus Pais Saíram de Férias (2006)***** SPOILERS *****The Year My Parents Went On Vaction tells the story of a pre-teen boy in São Paulo, Brazil, separated from his parents during a military coup in 1970. As the army takes over, the country is distracted in part by Brazil's successes in the World Cup of that year (sort of like following the pennant race or NFL football in the U.S. as the country's financial system implodes). The movie is pleasant, never dull, well shot, with a delicate score that adds to the feelings of sadness and loss inherent in the plot (the director threw out the first score written for the movie; Beto Villares then did it over and got it right).TYMPWOV begins with a mother and father taking their son to grandfather's house in São Paulo. The three are riding in a VW bug, '65 or earlier. A Brazilian friend suggests that for verisimilitude, they should have been in a Renault or Citroen, because the bug was the inexpensive car of youth and the lower middle-class; her family always drove French cars. Be that as it may, the movie's streets are rife with vintage bugs and VW buses, though I did spot a Renault or two. I mention this because the first car that I bought and paid for with my own money was a new '67 bug from Belmont Motors in Massachusetts, powder blue. It has been sitting since 1981 or so in a succession of company parking lots, progressively degenerating until, paint gone, wheels seized, flowering weeds growing from dirt caught in the chassis crevicles, it looks so bad that I was ordered to have it towed off the property because it had become an eyesore, at least to one sorehead in the company who remained anonymous - the bug's engine refusing to start, a hole in the floor threatening to release the battery under the back seat like a bomb dropped from its bay at the first speed bump, the windows opaque as my glasses in the Turkish bath down the street. Fortunately, my son stepped up and volunteered to restore the car as a hobby. He abstracted it on a flatbed towtruck via Raul's Towing Service to his driveway, where it sat, partially disassembled, for a week or two before the city, at the behest of neighbors or a cruising patrol car, ordered him to remove it. He rolled the poor thing into his garage, wheels now at least freed, out of sight behind closed doors, and since then he has ordered replacement parts from an unending list. He tells me that there are two sources from which to obtain these parts: (a) a quality manufacturer somewhere or other, or (b)Brazil. You want quality, you go to the quality manufacturer; you want cheap, you go to Brazil. I don't know if that's true or not but when I replaced a bumper a long time ago, it had a "Made in Brazil" sticker on the inside surface. One tap by another vehicle and the bumper folded up like an origami noodle. Also, curiously, '67 door handles are unavailable. But the point is, if you're a bug lover you might want to give TYMPWOV a little love for that reason if for no other.Director/writer Cao Hamburger and his co-writer, Claudio Galperin, were both born in São Paulo in 1962 and were eight years old when General Emilio Medici engineered his coup. Hamburger's parents "went on vacation" at that time, but only for a few weeks. In this movie, Hamburger and Galperin share some of their childhood experiences growing up in the cultural melting-pot of São Paulo. Hamburger's father came from a German/Jewish family that emigrated to Brazil before World War II. His mother was of Italian/Catholic stock, though both parents were non-religious scientists as he grew up. He says that he began thinking about São Paulo's mix of cultures and his roots while living and feeling like an outsider in London, another city where races and nationalities mingle. According to Hamburger (and my Brazilian friends), Brazil is deeply divided over socio-economic class issues (the rich, a small middle-class, and the poor) but is accepting of emigrants; he refers to Brazilian culture as Samba culture - "Samba" here meaning, roughly, "let's all dance together." In fact, Hamburger started out with all sorts of ideas for the movie, but while making it settled on the idea of enjoying the brief periods of sunshine in life on a cloudy day. The movie was made on a medium budget by Brazilian standards. Since the success of films like Central Station and City of God, Hamburger says, funding opportunities for cinema have gotten a lot better. He used professionals as well as non-actors from the community, which in the film is a conservative Jewish neighborhood. Today, Hamburger says, this neighborhood is Korean, but since he is exploring his own roots, for the purposes of the film it remains Jewish. Hamburger spent four months finding an empty apartment building to use for the shoot; the movie was filmed completely on location.So often in making a movie, the director starts out with an idea and massages it until a theme for the film is produced. This process can extend over years with input from editors, writers, friends, family, and assorted other sources while the director chases funding, as I describe in my review of Manda Bala. Hamburger's initial inspiration was to examine the mixture of cultures in Brazil, and from that grew the idea of examining a year in the life of a boy growing up in the same time and place that Hamburger and Galperin did. During the making of the movie, the military coup and contemperaneous world-cup excitement in the film emerged, according to the director, as metaphors for life. It seems to me that some of these metaphors crop up post-production but perhaps I'm just metaphor-blind or metaphor-averse. Does a movie metaphor count if it's discovered after the movie is finished? Does it count if a reviewer invokes it, rather than the director? I do like the way that Claudia Llosa, for example, disavows metaphors in her Maven-reviewed Madeinusa, a movie which could easily be weighed down with them. I'm guessing that Hamburger's military coup and World Cup would remain in the movie whether Hamburger deemed them metaphors or not. As it is, he has one more thing to talk about during interviews. Anyway, the coup represents a dark day and the World-Cup victory represents a shaft of sunlight breaking through the gloom of that day. The dark day is life under the military regime and the sunlight represents those moments in life that you must embrace in order to get through the bad patches - did I just nest a metaphor within a metaphor there? The life of goalies in general is also a metaphor in the movie, but if the victory is a bright shaft of sunlight, what is the goalie? A meteorite the size of Oshgosh? Who knows? The gray day/sunlight metaphor, applied to my own personal life, would be like at my work, where my boss would be dictator General Emilio Medici, and out of the grinding gray of morning I would emerge at lunchtime to sit down across from Izzy Vulvano and beat his pants off playing Magic and using my special red and black deck. Also the movie is about dealing with our loneliness and our connections to others, how we make them and break them and move on. Is the movie itself a metaphor for that, or just a movie about that? Also, the director does not agree that soccer is the opiate of the masses, exploited by the junta in this case to maintain calm. Hamburger is going for gray day/sunshine here, not gray day/opium. And having mentioned Manda Bala above, note that this whole movie unfurled without a kidnapping or fried frog in sight, but only because the whole country is under siege from an autocratic military dictatorship rather than a scourge of corrupt politicians and kidnapping-for-profit criminal thugs.Strangely, Hamburger's soccer metaphor gets turned on its head at the end of the movie. Irony? Another layer? Or just part of the movie that doesn't conform to a simple, stumbled-upon talking point? I thought about calling Hamburger and asking him, but nobody likes a wiseass.When the metaphorical army arrives in Michel's neighborhood and starts dragging young men out of their union offices in São Paulo, clubbing them and hurling them into vans while the boy's parents are in hiding, it occurred to me to wonder whether such scenes are automatically more powerful when filmed in the country where they are supposed to have happened, in the language in which they happened, by victims or the relatives of victims of the evils portrayed. Or, for a subtitle-hating country like America, could such a scene be made more visceral and moving if shot in Hollywood for U.S. consumption? For example, would Der Untergang or The Lives of Others have retained their energy or even gained some, if they had been made, shot for shot, in the U.S. with U.S. actors instead of Germans? Ennio De Concini tried it with xxAlec Guiness playing Hitler but I think we can agree that that didn't work as well as Bruno Ganz doing it. Being a cinema snob, I would say without cavil that it is intuitively obvious that the Brazilian version of the coup or the German version of Hitler's last days cannot fail to have an innate power, if well enough done, that a U.S. version could never match. But hold on. Summer Palace provides a dramatic take on Tiananmen Square and the events there in 1989, yet I've heard plenty of squawking (from round eyes) about its failure to do justice to that historic conflict. Would a movie about Tiananmen, made along the lines of The Last Emperor, fare better in the U.S? Could Gettysburg withstand a transfer to Japan; if Kurosawa made it, might it even improve in the eyes of the Japanese? Or in the eyes of American viewers as well? How to assign metrics to questions like these? It's easy to just say that the better the filmmaker, the better the film, for all informed viewers of taste. Do the French still love Jerry Lewis? Are Hollywood blockbusters still the biggest grossers all around the world? And children in movies - does the fact that the child is native to a country foreign to the viewer and speaks a foreign language have any effect one way or the other on that viewer? Rather than approaching these questions from first principles, maybe the thing to do is to evaluate a hundred movies or so, make a call on each, and examine the results for trends.And speaking of children, how do they learn to act so well? Or isn't learning involved? Teens act in high-school drama classes and plays - they're learning something there, I guess. They act in community theater, especially in locations where drama in the schools is being cut. Adults go to drama school, but often act badly in films anyway. And yet I see movie after movie in which children act just fine (Mother of Mine, Wondrous Oblivion, Birth, Kabluey (where the kids are caricatures, but good caricatures.) On the other hand, that kid in The Dick Van Dyke Show... ouch.). Is aging an antidote to natural inborn talent? As we grow up, do we lose our ability to act? Or are these children, who seem to be acting so well, actually not doing much at all? In TYMPWOV, is the boy mostly just running around, looking upset, and playing with his tabletop soccer set, or is he interacting with others and... well, acting. I called the Stella Adler School in Manhattan to ask these questions, but the woman I spoke to told me that the youngest students they enroll are 14-year-olds (eight Saturday classes from 10 to 6, $800. No waiting list.) I asked the woman if the under-14s I see in the movies have been trained, or if whatever they show is just natural ability. She could only surmise. I asked if the Stella Adler Saturday classes have produced some success stories; she said yes, but didn't name anybody I've heard of. She didn't have much else to say about younger children and their appearances in movies, so I called a school out in the Valley (Sherman Oaks) which takes kids as young as 8. Sherman Oaks is up the 405 from Santa Monica, just over the hills from Hollywood. The fellow I spoke to told me flatly that every young person onscreen today has taken classes. He listed graduates from his school now appearing in Desperate Housewives, Everyone Hates Chris, etc., etc. (Classes from 10 to noon on Saturdays.) Agents and casting directors visit frequently, nominally as "class assistants," but actually trolling for talent; or maybe just trying to make a living. For example:****For Young actors:Howard MeltzerHannah Montana Casting DirectorTV Intensive - Saturday, October 4thIn each class session, the children work on a scene. In addition, there is instruction in preparation, auditioning, so forth. Camps and career-placement services are available. I asked the fellow whether children start out with talent and then lose it, or whether talent is distributed among children in the same proportion as among adults, and if so, what the classes might add to that. According to him, we're all natural-born actors. As children, we play-act all the time, but as we age, we forget how much fun that acting can be. Acting classes, like organized sports, are just a modern way of letting children continue to have fun. And just as you won't be playing in the NFL or NBA unless you associate yourself with an organized program, just so you won't break into Hollywood without connections. Plus, I'm now getting casting calls for some reason.Hamburger claims to have auditioned more than a thousand children looking for his stars in TYMPWOV. When he found the boy and girl that he wanted for the leads, Michel Joelsas and Daniela Piepszyk, he changed the script to fit them. Joelsas had never acted in a movie before (like Magaly Solier in Madeinusa, who had never even been in a movie theater when Claudia Llosa made her the lead in her movie). Hamburger says that Joelsas had talent and other characteristics of his personality that helped him to compose the character, such as "his shyness, his introspection, his curiosity about life, and his strength." And his "intelligence and a sense of observation. And he had strong charisma. He's also got a certain shyness and an inner strength." Hamburger introduced all the children in his movie slowly to the characters that they were to play, perhaps Mike Leigh-like. There was improvisation. None of the kids saw a script during the shooting of the movie. So no acting class there, unless you count Hamburger's direction; TYMPWOV argues for inborn talent, but only in one in a thousand or so. “The way I work with them is the most important element. I treat them as intelligent people. They are not children. They are spiritual, intelligent human beings. What I look for in casting children is charisma and talent, but, more than that, I want smart people. There is a very natural sense - especially the kids with their reactions...We worked a lot to have this very natural feel, but there is a lot of work behind it.” So roll the film of Michel's audition. What the heck did this kid have to do when he came through the door, number 1013, with Hamburger languishing there in his director's chair, in order to get picked boss boy? Bark like a dog? I coulda been a contender? Put on blackface, fall to his knees, and sing Mammy? We'll never know. Now my niece - those auditions are brutal. She crawls on her belly like a reptile. They badger her about her tattoos. Surely there were tattoos in Shakespeare's time, weren't there, even if they weren't coupling ferrets over You Suck! in red and green on her shoulder blades?When I say that the kids were fine in the movie, I just mean that I watched the movie and never found myself thinking, "This kid is acting." What they were actually doing onscreen, I wasn't exactly paying attention to. Sometimes in a movie I do think about what the child is up to: when Cameron Bright gets into the bath with a naked Nicole Kidman in Birth, I found myself speculating about how that was accomplished without breaking any laws. When Dylan Baker has a talk with his son in Happiness, about Baker's pedophilia and his abuse of the boy's sleepover friend the night before, I knew in advance that Baker was actually talking to the air and his son's reaction shots were filmed later. But in general, I don't sit watching for signs that actors are acting, child or otherwise. Mary Badham and Phillip Alford in To Kill a Mockingbird? How much were they given to do? Can't remember. Scout narrates the movie, but as an adult. Are kids mostly asked to just look worried, or angry, or confused? How often does a kid have to laugh in a movie? What's the story on kid monologs? 726,000 Google hits for "kid monologs," including the following from Henry V:BOY: As young as I am, I have observed these three swashers. I am boy to all three; but all three, though they would serve me, could not be man to me; for indeed three such antics do not amount to a man. For Bardolph, he is white-livered and red-faced; by the means whereof 'a faces it out, but fights not. For Pistol, he hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword; by the means whereof 'a breaks word and keeps whole weapons. For Nym, he hath heard that men of few words are the best men, and therefore he scorns to say his prayers, lest 'a should be thought a coward; but his few bad words are matched with as few good deeds, for 'a never broke any man's head but his own, and that was against a post when he was drunk. They will steal anything, and call it purchase. Bardolph stole a lute-case, bore it twelve leagues, and sold it for three halfpence. Nym and Bardolph are sworn brothers in filching, and in Calais they stole a fire-shovel. I knew by that piece of service the men would carry coals. They would have me as familiar with men's pockets as their gloves or handkerchers; which makes much against my manhood, if I should take from another's pocket to put into mine; for it is plain pocketing up of wrongs. I must leave them and seek some better service. Their villainy goes against my weak stomach, and therefore I must cast it up.Wow. Maybe Michel laid that one on Hamburger.When I think of "bad acting," am I just reacting to bad line readings? In Son of Rambow, the boys have a lot to say and every once in a while I'd raise an eyebrow. In TYMPWOV, Joelsas and Peipszyk and the other kids are required to show their chops as follows:First twenty-five minutes: Michel (Joelsas) is the only child in the first quarter of the movie, except for a brief interaction with Hanna (Piepszyk). He plays by himself, asks his parents questions, looks out the car window at the big city and, by the way, narrates the film creditably. Sustains hugs from his parents. (As a child, I was hugged by a woman in a play once and I had to stand there and take it with a smile.) This is a good-looking young man. The camera loves him. So he walks, runs, waits, frowns at strange food, pisses in a flowerpot. It all looks real to me. I guess that's acting.Second twenty-five minutes: Michel gets slapped, runs away, cooks in the kitchen, kills time around the house. Now some face time with Hanna - mild dialog - but since I don't speak Portuguese, how can I evaluate their line readings? Rats. (And by the way, watching the movie, I mostly couldn't distinguish Portuguese from Yiddish; be nice if the subtitles would indicate which was being spoken - and ditto for Swedish and Finnish in Mother of Mine). At 39 minutes (out of 100), Michel meets Hanna's friends, three boys. They refer to Michel as the goy. Ten minutes of ensemble child acting; all five seem a little stiff, but they're just meeting each other for the first time, so maybe in real life they would be stiff. Will the stiffness persist? Now Michel settles in with his neighbor, the elderly Shlomo next door, and makes friends throughout the neighborhood. He's not asked to say much by Hamburger, but he does a lot of worrying about his parents, running around the neighborhood, so on. At the halfway point in the film, the World Cup begins. Third twenty-five minutes: First World-Cup match with everyone watching; Michel spending time alone again in the apartment; then with a whole crowd of kids - minimal dialog; back home at the one-hour mark. Second match. Polish Jew, Italian Jew, Greek, African, German Jew, Hamburger really pushing the melting-pot theme. Local soccer game. Narration by boy. He wants to be a goalie. Another World-Cup match (sees first with Shlomo, second at the union, third with the old women. Local kids game with Michel as goalie. Piepszyk gives him a gift in a one-on-one scene with dialog. Michel goes to synagogue.Final twenty-five minutes: The kids do an excellent acting job at a bar mitzvah celebration. And then some acting by Joelsas, as he helps a young union member hide from the army and secret police. Emoting, face to face with an adult! Some intense moments. Then more alone time for the boy, now coping with his worries in a more mature way than at the beginning. And the final soccer match, and more perfect-pitch behavior from Joelsas. And drama to wrap up. The boy has charisma, for sure. I believed him, from start to finish, and the other kids too.And lest I forget, every time a goal was scored, everybody whooped and waved their arms in the air and I wondered if all the women in Brazil were shaving under their arms in 1970. According to a Brazilian I asked, the answer is yes. Looks come first in Brazil, she told me, and that includes proper underarm maintenance.
]]>Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:04:22 GMTjoem18bjoem18b Blog9/25/2008 7:04:22 PMO Ano em Que Meus Pais Sa&iacute;ram de F&eacute;rias (2006)***** SPOILERS *****The Year My Parents Went On Vaction tells the story of a pre-teen boy in S&atilde;o Paulo, Brazil, separated from his parents during a military coup in 1970. As the army takes over, the country is distracted in part by Brazil's successes in the World Cup of that year (sort of like following the pennant race or NFL football in the U.S. as the country's financial system implodes). The movie is pleasant, never dull, well shot, with a delicate score that adds to the feelings of sadness and loss inherent in the plot (the director threw out the first score written for the movie; Beto Villares then did it over and got it right).TYMPWOV begins with a mother and father taking their son to grandfather's house in S&atilde;o Paulo. The three are riding in a VW bug, '65 or earlier. A Brazilian friend suggests that for verisimilitude, they should have been in a Renault or Citroen, because the bug was the inexpensive car of youth and the lower middle-class; her family always drove French cars. Be that as it may, the movie's streets are rife with vintage bugs and VW buses, though I did spot a Renault or two. I mention this because the first car that I bought and paid for with my own money was a new '67 bug from Belmont Motors in Massachusetts, powder blue. It has been sitting since 1981 or so in a succession of company parking lots, progressively degenerating until, paint gone, wheels seized, flowering weeds growing from dirt caught in the chassis crevicles, it looks so bad that I was ordered to have it towed off the property because it had become an eyesore, at least to one sorehead in the company who remained anonymous - the bug's engine refusing to start, a hole in the floor threatening to release the battery under the back seat like a bomb dropped from its bay at the first speed bump, the windows opaque as my glasses in the Turkish bath down the street. Fortunately, my son stepped up and volunteered to restore the car as a hobby. He abstracted it on a flatbed towtruck via Raul's Towing Service to his driveway, where it sat, partially disassembled, for a week or two before the city, at the behest of neighbors or a cruising patrol car, ordered him to remove it. He rolled the poor thing into his garage, wheels now at least freed, out of sight behind closed doors, and since then he has ordered replacement parts from an unending list. He tells me that there are two sources from which to obtain these parts: (a) a quality manufacturer somewhere or other, or (b)Brazil. You want quality, you go to the quality manufacturer; you want cheap, you go to Brazil. I don't know if that's true or not but when I replaced a bumper a long time ago, it had a "Made in Brazil" sticker on the inside surface. One tap by another vehicle and the bumper folded up like an origami noodle. Also, curiously, '67 door handles are unavailable. But the point is, if you're a bug lover you might want to give TYMPWOV a little love for that reason if for no other.Director/writer Cao Hamburger and his co-writer, Claudio Galperin, were both born in S&atilde;o Paulo in 1962 and were eight years old when General Emilio Medici engineered his coup. Hamburger's parents "went on vacation" at that time, but only for a few weeks. In this movie, Hamburger and Galperin share some of their childhood experiences growing up in the cultural melting-pot of S&atilde;o Paulo. Hamburger's father came from a German/Jewish family that emigrated to Brazil before World War II. His mother was of Italian/Catholic stock, though both parents were non-religious scientists as he grew up. He says that he began thinking about S&atilde;o Paulo's mix of cultures and his roots while living and feeling like an outsider in London, another city where races and nationalities mingle. According to Hamburger (and my Brazilian friends), Brazil is deeply divided over socio-economic class issues (the rich, a small middle-class, and the poor) but is accepting of emigrants; he refers to Brazilian culture as Samba culture - "Samba" here meaning, roughly, "let's all dance together." In fact, Hamburger started out with all sorts of ideas for the movie, but while making it settled on the idea of enjoying the brief periods of sunshine in life on a cloudy day. The movie was made on a medium budget by Brazilian standards. Since the success of films like Central Station and City of God, Hamburger says, funding opportunities for cinema have gotten a lot better. He used professionals as well as non-actors from the community, which in the film is a conservative Jewish neighborhood. Today, Hamburger says, this neighborhood is Korean, but since he is exploring his own roots, for the purposes of the film it remains Jewish. Hamburger spent four months finding an empty apartment building to use for the shoot; the movie was filmed completely on location.So often in making a movie, the director starts out with an idea and massages it until a theme for the film is produced. This process can extend over years with input from editors, writers, friends, family, and assorted other sources while the director chases funding, as I describe in my review of Manda Bala. Hamburger's initial inspiration was to examine the mixture of cultures in Brazil, and from that grew the idea of examining a year in the life of a boy growing up in the same time and place that Hamburger and Galperin did. During the making of the movie, the military coup and contemperaneous world-cup excitement in the film emerged, according to the director, as metaphors for life. It seems to me that some of these metaphors crop up post-production but perhaps I'm just metaphor-blind or metaphor-averse. Does a movie metaphor count if it's discovered after the movie is finished? Does it count if a reviewer invokes it, rather than the director? I do like the way that Claudia Llosa, for example, disavows metaphors in her Maven-reviewed Madeinusa, a movie which could easily be weighed down with them. I'm guessing that Hamburger's military coup and World Cup would remain in the movie whether Hamburger deemed them metaphors or not. As it is, he has one more thing to talk about during interviews. Anyway, the coup represents a dark day and the World-Cup victory represents a shaft of sunlight breaking through the gloom of that day. The dark day is life under the military regime and the sunlight represents those moments in life that you must embrace in order to get through the bad patches - did I just nest a metaphor within a metaphor there? The life of goalies in general is also a metaphor in the movie, but if the victory is a bright shaft of sunlight, what is the goalie? A meteorite the size of Oshgosh? Who knows? The gray day/sunlight metaphor, applied to my own personal life, would be like at my work, where my boss would be dictator General Emilio Medici, and out of the grinding gray of morning I would emerge at lunchtime to sit down across from Izzy Vulvano and beat his pants off playing Magic and using my special red and black deck. Also the movie is about dealing with our loneliness and our connections to others, how we make them and break them and move on. Is the movie itself a metaphor for that, or just a movie about that? Also, the director does not agree that soccer is the opiate of the masses, exploited by the junta in this case to maintain calm. Hamburger is going for gray day/sunshine here, not gray day/opium. And having mentioned Manda Bala above, note that this whole movie unfurled without a kidnapping or fried frog in sight, but only because the whole country is under siege from an autocratic military dictatorship rather than a scourge of corrupt politicians and kidnapping-for-profit criminal thugs.Strangely, Hamburger's soccer metaphor gets turned on its head at the end of the movie. Irony? Another layer? Or just part of the movie that doesn't conform to a simple, stumbled-upon talking point? I thought about calling Hamburger and asking him, but nobody likes a wiseass.When the metaphorical army arrives in Michel's neighborhood and starts dragging young men out of their union offices in S&atilde;o Paulo, clubbing them and hurling them into vans while the boy's parents are in hiding, it occurred to me to wonder whether such scenes are automatically more powerful when filmed in the country where they are supposed to have happened, in the language in which they happened, by victims or the relatives of victims of the evils portrayed. Or, for a subtitle-hating country like America, could such a scene be made more visceral and moving if shot in Hollywood for U.S. consumption? For example, would Der Untergang or The Lives of Others have retained their energy or even gained some, if they had been made, shot for shot, in the U.S. with U.S. actors instead of Germans? Ennio De Concini tried it with xxAlec Guiness playing Hitler but I think we can agree that that didn't work as well as Bruno Ganz doing it. Being a cinema snob, I would say without cavil that it is intuitively obvious that the Brazilian version of the coup or the German version of Hitler's last days cannot fail to have an innate power, if well enough done, that a U.S. version could never match. But hold on. Summer Palace provides a dramatic take on Tiananmen Square and the events there in 1989, yet I've heard plenty of squawking (from round eyes) about its failure to do justice to that historic conflict. Would a movie about Tiananmen, made along the lines of The Last Emperor, fare better in the U.S? Could Gettysburg withstand a transfer to Japan; if Kurosawa made it, might it even improve in the eyes of the Japanese? Or in the eyes of American viewers as well? How to assign metrics to questions like these? It's easy to just say that the better the filmmaker, the better the film, for all informed viewers of taste. Do the French still love Jerry Lewis? Are Hollywood blockbusters still the biggest grossers all around the world? And children in movies - does the fact that the child is native to a country foreign to the viewer and speaks a foreign language have any effect one way or the other on that viewer? Rather than approaching these questions from first principles, maybe the thing to do is to evaluate a hundred movies or so, make a call on each, and examine the results for trends.And speaking of children, how do they learn to act so well? Or isn't learning involved? Teens act in high-school drama classes and plays - they're learning something there, I guess. They act in community theater, especially in locations where drama in the schools is being cut. Adults go to drama school, but often act badly in films anyway. And yet I see movie after movie in which children act just fine (Mother of Mine, Wondrous Oblivion, Birth, Kabluey (where the kids are caricatures, but good caricatures.) On the other hand, that kid in The Dick Van Dyke Show... ouch.). Is aging an antidote to natural inborn talent? As we grow up, do we lose our ability to act? Or are these children, who seem to be acting so well, actually not doing much at all? In TYMPWOV, is the boy mostly just running around, looking upset, and playing with his tabletop soccer set, or is he interacting with others and... well, acting. I called the Stella Adler School in Manhattan to ask these questions, but the woman I spoke to told me that the youngest students they enroll are 14-year-olds (eight Saturday classes from 10 to 6, $800. No waiting list.) I asked the woman if the under-14s I see in the movies have been trained, or if whatever they show is just natural ability. She could only surmise. I asked if the Stella Adler Saturday classes have produced some success stories; she said yes, but didn't name anybody I've heard of. She didn't have much else to say about younger children and their appearances in movies, so I called a school out in the Valley (Sherman Oaks) which takes kids as young as 8. Sherman Oaks is up the 405 from Santa Monica, just over the hills from Hollywood. The fellow I spoke to told me flatly that every young person onscreen today has taken classes. He listed graduates from his school now appearing in Desperate Housewives, Everyone Hates Chris, etc., etc. (Classes from 10 to noon on Saturdays.) Agents and casting directors visit frequently, nominally as "class assistants," but actually trolling for talent; or maybe just trying to make a living. For example:****For Young actors:Howard MeltzerHannah Montana Casting DirectorTV Intensive - Saturday, October 4thIn each class session, the children work on a scene. In addition, there is instruction in preparation, auditioning, so forth. Camps and career-placement services are available. I asked the fellow whether children start out with talent and then lose it, or whether talent is distributed among children in the same proportion as among adults, and if so, what the classes might add to that. According to him, we're all natural-born actors. As children, we play-act all the time, but as we age, we forget how much fun that acting can be. Acting classes, like organized sports, are just a modern way of letting children continue to have fun. And just as you won't be playing in the NFL or NBA unless you associate yourself with an organized program, just so you won't break into Hollywood without connections. Plus, I'm now getting casting calls for some reason.Hamburger claims to have auditioned more than a thousand children looking for his stars in TYMPWOV. When he found the boy and girl that he wanted for the leads, Michel Joelsas and Daniela Piepszyk, he changed the script to fit them. Joelsas had never acted in a movie before (like Magaly Solier in Madeinusa, who had never even been in a movie theater when Claudia Llosa made her the lead in her movie). Hamburger says that Joelsas had talent and other characteristics of his personality that helped him to compose the character, such as "his shyness, his introspection, his curiosity about life, and his strength." And his "intelligence and a sense of observation. And he had strong charisma. He's also got a certain shyness and an inner strength." Hamburger introduced all the children in his movie slowly to the characters that they were to play, perhaps Mike Leigh-like. There was improvisation. None of the kids saw a script during the shooting of the movie. So no acting class there, unless you count Hamburger's direction; TYMPWOV argues for inborn talent, but only in one in a thousand or so. &ldquo;The way I work with them is the most important element. I treat them as intelligent people. They are not children. They are spiritual, intelligent human beings. What I look for in casting children is charisma and talent, but, more than that, I want smart people. There is a very natural sense - especially the kids with their reactions...We worked a lot to have this very natural feel, but there is a lot of work behind it.&rdquo; So roll the film of Michel's audition. What the heck did this kid have to do when he came through the door, number 1013, with Hamburger languishing there in his director's chair, in order to get picked boss boy? Bark like a dog? I coulda been a contender? Put on blackface, fall to his knees, and sing Mammy? We'll never know. Now my niece - those auditions are brutal. She crawls on her belly like a reptile. They badger her about her tattoos. Surely there were tattoos in Shakespeare's time, weren't there, even if they weren't coupling ferrets over You Suck! in red and green on her shoulder blades?When I say that the kids were fine in the movie, I just mean that I watched the movie and never found myself thinking, "This kid is acting." What they were actually doing onscreen, I wasn't exactly paying attention to. Sometimes in a movie I do think about what the child is up to: when Cameron Bright gets into the bath with a naked Nicole Kidman in Birth, I found myself speculating about how that was accomplished without breaking any laws. When Dylan Baker has a talk with his son in Happiness, about Baker's pedophilia and his abuse of the boy's sleepover friend the night before, I knew in advance that Baker was actually talking to the air and his son's reaction shots were filmed later. But in general, I don't sit watching for signs that actors are acting, child or otherwise. Mary Badham and Phillip Alford in To Kill a Mockingbird? How much were they given to do? Can't remember. Scout narrates the movie, but as an adult. Are kids mostly asked to just look worried, or angry, or confused? How often does a kid have to laugh in a movie? What's the story on kid monologs? 726,000 Google hits for "kid monologs," including the following from Henry V:BOY: As young as I am, I have observed these three swashers. I am boy to all three; but all three, though they would serve me, could not be man to me; for indeed three such antics do not amount to a man. For Bardolph, he is white-livered and red-faced; by the means whereof 'a faces it out, but fights not. For Pistol, he hath a killing tongue and a quiet sword; by the means whereof 'a breaks word and keeps whole weapons. For Nym, he hath heard that men of few words are the best men, and therefore he scorns to say his prayers, lest 'a should be thought a coward; but his few bad words are matched with as few good deeds, for 'a never broke any man's head but his own, and that was against a post when he was drunk. They will steal anything, and call it purchase. Bardolph stole a lute-case, bore it twelve leagues, and sold it for three halfpence. Nym and Bardolph are sworn brothers in filching, and in Calais they stole a fire-shovel. I knew by that piece of service the men would carry coals. They would have me as familiar with men's pockets as their gloves or handkerchers; which makes much against my manhood, if I should take from another's pocket to put into mine; for it is plain pocketing up of wrongs. I must leave them and seek some better service. Their villainy goes against my weak stomach, and therefore I must cast it up.Wow. Maybe Michel laid that one on Hamburger.When I think of "bad acting," am I just reacting to bad line readings? In Son of Rambow, the boys have a lot to say and every once in a while I'd raise an eyebrow. In TYMPWOV, Joelsas and Peipszyk and the other kids are required to show their chops as follows:First twenty-five minutes: Michel (Joelsas) is the only child in the first quarter of the movie, except for a brief interaction with Hanna (Piepszyk). He plays by himself, asks his parents questions, looks out the car window at the big city and, by the way, narrates the film creditably. Sustains hugs from his parents. (As a child, I was hugged by a woman in a play once and I had to stand there and take it with a smile.) This is a good-looking young man. The camera loves him. So he walks, runs, waits, frowns at strange food, pisses in a flowerpot. It all looks real to me. I guess that's acting.Second twenty-five minutes: Michel gets slapped, runs away, cooks in the kitchen, kills time around the house. Now some face time with Hanna - mild dialog - but since I don't speak Portuguese, how can I evaluate their line readings? Rats. (And by the way, watching the movie, I mostly couldn't distinguish Portuguese from Yiddish; be nice if the subtitles would indicate which was being spoken - and ditto for Swedish and Finnish in Mother of Mine). At 39 minutes (out of 100), Michel meets Hanna's friends, three boys. They refer to Michel as the goy. Ten minutes of ensemble child acting; all five seem a little stiff, but they're just meeting each other for the first time, so maybe in real life they would be stiff. Will the stiffness persist? Now Michel settles in with his neighbor, the elderly Shlomo next door, and makes friends throughout the neighborhood. He's not asked to say much by Hamburger, but he does a lot of worrying about his parents, running around the neighborhood, so on. At the halfway point in the film, the World Cup begins. Third twenty-five minutes: First World-Cup match with everyone watching; Michel spending time alone again in the apartment; then with a whole crowd of kids - minimal dialog; back home at the one-hour mark. Second match. Polish Jew, Italian Jew, Greek, African, German Jew, Hamburger really pushing the melting-pot theme. Local soccer game. Narration by boy. He wants to be a goalie. Another World-Cup match (sees first with Shlomo, second at the union, third with the old women. Local kids game with Michel as goalie. Piepszyk gives him a gift in a one-on-one scene with dialog. Michel goes to synagogue.Final twenty-five minutes: The kids do an excellent acting job at a bar mitzvah celebration. And then some acting by Joelsas, as he helps a young union member hide from the army and secret police. Emoting, face to face with an adult! Some intense moments. Then more alone time for the boy, now coping with his worries in a more mature way than at the beginning. And the final soccer match, and more perfect-pitch behavior from Joelsas. And drama to wrap up. The boy has charisma, for sure. I believed him, from start to finish, and the other kids too.And lest I forget, every time a goal was scored, everybody whooped and waved their arms in the air and I wondered if all the women in Brazil were shaving under their arms in 1970. According to a Brazilian I asked, the answer is yes. Looks come first in Brazil, she told me, and that includes proper underarm maintenance. http://www.spout.com/blogs/indieabby88/archive/2008/8/24/34315.aspx Post By: indieabby88
Post To: Bloggish review blog
Post Date: 8/24/2008 8:42:35 PM
Body: The Year My Parents Went on Vacation is a movie about many things. It's about the process of growing up. It's about soccer, it's about politics, and it's about judaism. Somehow, all of these elements come together to make a touching movie that's just as beautiful and haunting as other South American politically and culturally charged dramas, such as "The Motorcycle Diaries." Our main character is young Mauro, a 12-year-old sent to live with his grandparents when his own parents flee Brazil's totalitarian regime in 1970, under the pretense of "going on vacation." Upon his arrival, Mauro finds that his grandfather has just died, and it's up to an elderly jewish neighbor, Shlomo, to take care of him. Turns out that Mauro's family is supposed to be jewish, too, but the boy was raised outside of the faith, something Shlomo finds to be highly disturbing. Fortunately, during the course of his stay in Sao Paulo, Mauro forms a sort of family with Shlomo, a group of kids in the building, and other members of the synagogue and the neighborhood where they live. The scenes in which the whole community comes together, for bar mitzvahs, funerals and (of course) world cup soccer matches, are particularly touching. It's sweet to see how much the people in the film's neighborhood care about each other and their country. Mauro's confusion over what has happened to his parents is equally touching, although it's more heartbreaking than joyous. He is always hopeful, but continually disappointed, angry and sad. Michel Joelsas, the actor who plays Mauro, is a real find. He's earnest, sweet and utterly convincing. Daniela Piepszyk, who plays Mauro's fiesty friend Hannah, pulls off a clever, charming performance. It's not often I find child actors very praiseworthy, but these kids have really got it going on. Engaging and lovely in every sense of the word, Cao Hamburger's "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation" is a movie that should have gotten a lot more buzz than it did. Apparently it was Brazil's entry for the foreign film academy award, and deservedly so. There are very few movies I've recieved from Spout that I'd want to watch again. "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation" is definitely one that will be making its way back into my DVD player soon.
]]>Mon, 25 Aug 2008 00:42:35 GMTindieabby88Bloggish review blog8/24/2008 8:42:35 PMThe Year My Parents Went on Vacation is a movie about many things. It's about the process of growing up. It's about soccer, it's about politics, and it's about judaism. Somehow, all of these elements come together to make a touching movie that's just as beautiful and haunting as other South American politically and culturally charged dramas, such as "The Motorcycle Diaries." Our main character is young Mauro, a 12-year-old sent to live with his grandparents when his own parents flee Brazil's totalitarian regime in 1970, under the pretense of "going on vacation." Upon his arrival, Mauro finds that his grandfather has just died, and it's up to an elderly jewish neighbor, Shlomo, to take care of him. Turns out that Mauro's family is supposed to be jewish, too, but the boy was raised outside of the faith, something Shlomo finds to be highly disturbing. Fortunately, during the course of his stay in Sao Paulo, Mauro forms a sort of family with Shlomo, a group of kids in the building, and other members of the synagogue and the neighborhood where they live. The scenes in which the whole community comes together, for bar mitzvahs, funerals and (of course) world cup soccer matches, are particularly touching. It's sweet to see how much the people in the film's neighborhood care about each other and their country. Mauro's confusion over what has happened to his parents is equally touching, although it's more heartbreaking than joyous. He is always hopeful, but continually disappointed, angry and sad. Michel Joelsas, the actor who plays Mauro, is a real find. He's earnest, sweet and utterly convincing. Daniela Piepszyk, who plays Mauro's fiesty friend Hannah, pulls off a clever, charming performance. It's not often I find child actors very praiseworthy, but these kids have really got it going on. Engaging and lovely in every sense of the word, Cao Hamburger's "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation" is a movie that should have gotten a lot more buzz than it did. Apparently it was Brazil's entry for the foreign film academy award, and deservedly so. There are very few movies I've recieved from Spout that I'd want to watch again. "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation" is definitely one that will be making its way back into my DVD player soon. http://www.spout.com/blogs/leeroy711/archive/2008/8/17/34089.aspx Post By: leeroy711
Post To: leeroy711 Blog
Post Date: 8/17/2008 2:31:30 PM
Body: ***** Stars out of 5 Directed by: Cao Hamburger. Starring: Michel Joelsas, Germano Haiut and Daniela Piepszyk Running Time: 104 minutes Rated: PG Released: 2007 Language: Portuguese with English subtitles Synopsis: The year referred to in the title of this film is 1970. Brazil is being held by a totalitarian regime. The great soccer player, Pele has just scored his thousandth goal and the national team is preparing for the World Cup. Mauro (Joelsas) is like any 12 year old Brazilian boy at the time. He thinks only of soccer and girls. Unfortunately for him, his political parents have to leave him with his Grandfather while they go “on vacation”. Review: I can’t really say anything bad about this film. It seemed interesting from the box and I had pretty high hopes for it. I am very pleased to report: it did not disappoint. The only challenge I had to get past was the fact that I am not particularly familiar with the history of the backdrop of this film and it doesn’t do much to fill you in. I believe I made a similar comment about Summer Palace, but in the case of this film, you don’t really need to know the history behind the struggle. I actually think it may have worked out better knowing less in this movie. Keep in mind, you are trying to empathize with a 12 year old that knows and cares nothing about politics. I tend to make a comment about the cinematography of every film I review so why should this one be any different. It was actually shot beautifully. We never see the same camera angle twice throughout this movie. And, I really liked a lot of the angles that this was shot from. Many times we see what’s happening from behind an obstruction of some sorts, giving the viewer almost a mischievous “peeking in” feeling. The acting was very well done as well. The lead character, Mauro was played by Michel Joelsas. I wasn’t sure about him at first, but by the end of the movie, he had convinced me. This performance was by far the most critical to the film. On several occasions, he gets his heart broken and the audience really needs to feel that with him for the film to be even remotely successful. I also really enjoyed the performance of Hanna, as played by Daniela Piepszyk. She was the street wise, neighborhood girl that befriends Mauro. One of the themes that runs through the veins of this film is that of a community pulling together when someone is in need. This is another reason that it felt unnecessary to get into too much depth in regards to the politics of the conflict. Within that neighborhood, it just didn’t seem to matter which philosophy you subscribed to, everyone was in the same boat and the compassion they showed the new Mauro took precedent over everything. Well, everything except soccer of course. I think the country’s passion towards the sport was the one true common philosophy of Brazil. My favorite aspect of this film was that although the underlying plot was heartbreaking, there were plenty of subtle comedic moments designed to break the tension and keep audience light hearted. I laughed out loud at one particular scene in which Mauro is being served breakfast by one of the old women in the building. He has to constantly reposition his plate and cup because she is apparently blind as a bat and is spilling everything onto her kitchen table. This is the type of film that grows on you as you watch it. At first, I was only mildly interested but as I got deeper into it, I fell more and more in love with the characters. I would give this one my full recommendation.
]]>Sun, 17 Aug 2008 18:31:30 GMTleeroy711leeroy711 Blog8/17/2008 2:31:30 PM ***** Stars out of 5 Directed by: Cao Hamburger. Starring: Michel Joelsas, Germano Haiut and Daniela Piepszyk Running Time: 104 minutes Rated: PG Released: 2007 Language: Portuguese with English subtitles Synopsis: The year referred to in the title of this film is 1970. Brazil is being held by a totalitarian regime. The great soccer player, Pele has just scored his thousandth goal and the national team is preparing for the World Cup. Mauro (Joelsas) is like any 12 year old Brazilian boy at the time. He thinks only of soccer and girls. Unfortunately for him, his political parents have to leave him with his Grandfather while they go &ldquo;on vacation&rdquo;. Review: I can&rsquo;t really say anything bad about this film. It seemed interesting from the box and I had pretty high hopes for it. I am very pleased to report: it did not disappoint. The only challenge I had to get past was the fact that I am not particularly familiar with the history of the backdrop of this film and it doesn&rsquo;t do much to fill you in. I believe I made a similar comment about Summer Palace, but in the case of this film, you don&rsquo;t really need to know the history behind the struggle. I actually think it may have worked out better knowing less in this movie. Keep in mind, you are trying to empathize with a 12 year old that knows and cares nothing about politics. I tend to make a comment about the cinematography of every film I review so why should this one be any different. It was actually shot beautifully. We never see the same camera angle twice throughout this movie. And, I really liked a lot of the angles that this was shot from. Many times we see what&rsquo;s happening from behind an obstruction of some sorts, giving the viewer almost a mischievous &ldquo;peeking in&rdquo; feeling. The acting was very well done as well. The lead character, Mauro was played by Michel Joelsas. I wasn&rsquo;t sure about him at first, but by the end of the movie, he had convinced me. This performance was by far the most critical to the film. On several occasions, he gets his heart broken and the audience really needs to feel that with him for the film to be even remotely successful. I also really enjoyed the performance of Hanna, as played by Daniela Piepszyk. She was the street wise, neighborhood girl that befriends Mauro. One of the themes that runs through the veins of this film is that of a community pulling together when someone is in need. This is another reason that it felt unnecessary to get into too much depth in regards to the politics of the conflict. Within that neighborhood, it just didn&rsquo;t seem to matter which philosophy you subscribed to, everyone was in the same boat and the compassion they showed the new Mauro took precedent over everything. Well, everything except soccer of course. I think the country&rsquo;s passion towards the sport was the one true common philosophy of Brazil. My favorite aspect of this film was that although the underlying plot was heartbreaking, there were plenty of subtle comedic moments designed to break the tension and keep audience light hearted. I laughed out loud at one particular scene in which Mauro is being served breakfast by one of the old women in the building. He has to constantly reposition his plate and cup because she is apparently blind as a bat and is spilling everything onto her kitchen table. This is the type of film that grows on you as you watch it. At first, I was only mildly interested but as I got deeper into it, I fell more and more in love with the characters. I would give this one my full recommendation. http://www.spout.com/blogs/belladonna2054/archive/2008/8/16/34078.aspx Post By: belladonna2054
Post To: belladonna2054 Blog
Post Date: 8/16/2008 9:55:14 PM
Body: Mauro (played by Michel Joelsas) is like all ten-year-olds. He loves his parents, his friends, but most of all soccer. However innocence is only granted to the children of Brazil in 1970. Unbeknownst to Mauro, his parents are in trouble. They all quickly pack their things and take Mauro to his grandfather’s place. His parents continue to say that they are only ‘going on vacation’ and they should return soon. When Mauro asks when they would return, they say they will return by the World Cup. This sets the stage for Cao Hamburger’s The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (2007). 1970 is a tumultuous year in Brazil. The political climate is changing with a dictatorship taking over which creates a militant state for those who are opposed to the new regime. Mauro, left in care of his grandfather, Motel (Paulo Autran), in a Jewish town of Sao Paulo or so they thought. He waits for hours until Motel’s neighbor, Shlomo (Germano Haiut) comes home and finds Mauro on Motel’s doorstep. What Mauro doesn’t know is Motel died earlier that day. Shlomo takes him in and when Mauro tells him that his parents are on vacation, Shlomo doesn’t believe it. Seeking advice on what to do with him, Shlomo goes to his Rabbi and the community elders. They tell him to take care of the boy and wait for his parents until the World Cup. Shlomo follows this advice, but Mauro and he have a difficult time adjusting to each other as Mauro was not raised Jewish as his father was. But both learn to adapt to each other. Meanwhile, Mauro discovers the other children that live in the neighborhood and quickly becomes friends with Hannah (Daniela Piepszyk). At first Mauro rejects her and the others afraid to leave the telephone, but eventually he becomes brave enough to do so and joins Hannah and her gang of boys as they play soccer and pay her admission to her mother’s clothing shop to see the young women undress. Hamburger’s portrayal of innocence in a chaotic world is priceless. He essentially asks the question: ‘When should a child know the full truth? Or do they know the full truth already?’ But these questions are left to the viewer to decide as it is never fully answered in the film. In the end innocence never ends, it continues on in a dualistic life outside reality. The only unifying aspect of this world is the World Cup where everyone bands together in hopes that Brazil wins. Everyone from the children to the Rabbi gather in groups in the diner, in their own homes, to cheer on the team to victory. Michel Joelsas does a excellent portrayal of Mauro, but when the subject of his character’s parents’ ‘vacation’ comes up he handles the denial that the possibility that he was abandoned wonderfully. In response to any discussion, he delves back into the one thing he loves: soccer. Soccer is a refuge for him to cope with life without his parents. Germano Haiut also does well portraying Shlomo. He is a man who never really handled children before and at first he is hesistant, but sympathic to Mauro’s situation. As time passes by he grows fond of Mauro to call him his own. The movie is a great independent foreign film that deals with a child’s point-of-view of a chaotic world. Usually this is not my type of film, but on occasion a film does change my perspective. This film is recommended for those who enjoy The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (2004) and The Sixth Sense (1999).
]]>Sun, 17 Aug 2008 01:55:14 GMTbelladonna2054belladonna2054 Blog8/16/2008 9:55:14 PMMauro (played by Michel Joelsas) is like all ten-year-olds. He loves his parents, his friends, but most of all soccer. However innocence is only granted to the children of Brazil in 1970. Unbeknownst to Mauro, his parents are in trouble. They all quickly pack their things and take Mauro to his grandfather&rsquo;s place. His parents continue to say that they are only &lsquo;going on vacation&rsquo; and they should return soon. When Mauro asks when they would return, they say they will return by the World Cup. This sets the stage for Cao Hamburger&rsquo;s The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (2007). 1970 is a tumultuous year in Brazil. The political climate is changing with a dictatorship taking over which creates a militant state for those who are opposed to the new regime. Mauro, left in care of his grandfather, Motel (Paulo Autran), in a Jewish town of Sao Paulo or so they thought. He waits for hours until Motel&rsquo;s neighbor, Shlomo (Germano Haiut) comes home and finds Mauro on Motel&rsquo;s doorstep. What Mauro doesn&rsquo;t know is Motel died earlier that day. Shlomo takes him in and when Mauro tells him that his parents are on vacation, Shlomo doesn&rsquo;t believe it. Seeking advice on what to do with him, Shlomo goes to his Rabbi and the community elders. They tell him to take care of the boy and wait for his parents until the World Cup. Shlomo follows this advice, but Mauro and he have a difficult time adjusting to each other as Mauro was not raised Jewish as his father was. But both learn to adapt to each other. Meanwhile, Mauro discovers the other children that live in the neighborhood and quickly becomes friends with Hannah (Daniela Piepszyk). At first Mauro rejects her and the others afraid to leave the telephone, but eventually he becomes brave enough to do so and joins Hannah and her gang of boys as they play soccer and pay her admission to her mother&rsquo;s clothing shop to see the young women undress. Hamburger&rsquo;s portrayal of innocence in a chaotic world is priceless. He essentially asks the question: &lsquo;When should a child know the full truth? Or do they know the full truth already?&rsquo; But these questions are left to the viewer to decide as it is never fully answered in the film. In the end innocence never ends, it continues on in a dualistic life outside reality. The only unifying aspect of this world is the World Cup where everyone bands together in hopes that Brazil wins. Everyone from the children to the Rabbi gather in groups in the diner, in their own homes, to cheer on the team to victory. Michel Joelsas does a excellent portrayal of Mauro, but when the subject of his character&rsquo;s parents&rsquo; &lsquo;vacation&rsquo; comes up he handles the denial that the possibility that he was abandoned wonderfully. In response to any discussion, he delves back into the one thing he loves: soccer. Soccer is a refuge for him to cope with life without his parents. Germano Haiut also does well portraying Shlomo. He is a man who never really handled children before and at first he is hesistant, but sympathic to Mauro&rsquo;s situation. As time passes by he grows fond of Mauro to call him his own. The movie is a great independent foreign film that deals with a child&rsquo;s point-of-view of a chaotic world. Usually this is not my type of film, but on occasion a film does change my perspective. This film is recommended for those who enjoy The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things (2004) and The Sixth Sense (1999). http://www.spout.com/groups/Spout_Mavens/Re_The_Year_My_Parents_Went_on_Vacation_2007/366/33607/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: rik_tod
Post To: Spout Mavens
Post Date: 8/6/2008 12:16:22 AM
Body: My review here: http://www.spout.com/blogs/rik_tod/archive/2008/8/6/33606.aspx
]]>Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:16:22 GMTrik_todSpout Mavens8/6/2008 12:16:22 AM My review here: http://www.spout.com/blogs/rik_tod/archive/2008/8/6/33606.aspx http://www.spout.com/blogs/rik_tod/archive/2008/8/6/33606.aspx Post By: rik_tod
Post To: The Cinema 4 Pylon: SpOutpost
Post Date: 8/6/2008 12:13:11 AM
Body: Cinema 4 Rating: 7I never went out and actively looked for a job in soccer. It never even occurred to me that one would ever want a job in soccer. And yet, I have one. I stumbled upon it absolutely by accident, and it has meant the world to me. I have learned so much through this stumble -- not necessarily about soccer -- and I hope that others perceive that I am the better for it, because that is certainly how I feel about it.Before I took this job, though, I never imagined just how fully vested the rest of the world outside the U.S. was in this simple sport, what has been termed "the beautiful game" by people far more knowledgeable about these things than I am. Me, I always assumed that the game which had trademarked beauty was my beloved baseball -- you know, the one with the spitting, crotch-grabbing, often yokel players and the brushback pitches and mound-charging brawls. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that eye just beheld some chin music...Hell, as a kid, I never even saw anyone play soccer until I was in high school. I didn't play it until then. Little League baseball, Pop Warner football and Pee Wee hockey were it as far as I can remember. You did them all or you did one, in my experience. I did one -- the obvious one -- and I did it badly... epically badly. But I was obsessed by the center of my failure. I ignored my failure and still embraced "my" beautiful game. Unable to play the game physically in a proper manner, I took it to the table. I invented my own baseball dice game, and even though eventually, I would move to Strat-O-Matic baseball and other professional versions into my adulthood, I never loved any of them as much as my own stupid tabletop invention. I memorized thousands of baseball cards, and then used those same cards to hold each player's position on the table, and I spoke in what I imagined were the voices of the players as they swung at each pitch of the dice ("boxcars" meant "home run," by the way), and acted out the play according to those rolls of the dice. I kept scorecards too (I still have some of them in my files), and I was very careful to choose a proper lineup based on each player's stats on the backs of their cards, even if the chance of the dice completely drove away any purpose to my doing this. I was kid, and I was in love with my sport -- what did I know?In The Year My Parents Went On Vacation, young Mauro is in love with his sport, soccer, too. And he, too, has taken it to the table. Playing with a pair of tiny goals and poker-style chips, along with a pair of matchboxes decorated to portray the individual goalies, Mauro spends his idle hours quietly holding his own World Cup, with his beloved home country Brazil and its amazing star Pelé bringing all challengers to their knees. Unlike me, though, Mauro can play his beautiful game -- perhaps he is even as good as most of the kids in his neighborhood -- but on the tabletop, he is truly obsessive, and the master of his world. However, in this quiet, emotionally rewarding Brazilian film, we never get the chance to see just how good Mauro is against those neighborhood kids in street ball, because no sooner do we meet the lad, than he is whisked away from his home to São Paulo, the home of his grandfather, a beloved barber in a small, tightly knitted Jewish community.The year is 1970, and Mauro's parents are involved with a communist organization that is under intense pressure from the military dictatorship which controlled Brazil over parts of three decades. They leave Mauro at the stoop of his grandfather's apartment building and drive off, telling their son to tell everyone that asks that they "went away on vacation." They promise their young son, who in his innocence has no real way of comprehending how his world is possibly falling apart around him, that they shall return in time for the World Cup. We know upon hearing this that it is likely nothing more than a little white lie, but Mauro not only believes it, but practically builds his own religion around the statement. His every action from this point on, no matter how it affects those around him, will center around his belief in his parents' timely return.What no one could have figured into the equation is that Mauro's grandfather will perish from heart failure the very afternoon of Mauro's arrival. Mauro is discovered waiting sadly for his grandfather to appear by a kindly neighbor. The neighbor, Shlomo, a Polish Jew, despite his initial protestations to his synagogue, is convinced to to take care of the boy until the return of his parents. But Mauro is not a quiet little innocent. He is sullen and pouty and given to temper tantrums due to his obsessiveness. He is also remarkably independent, even living by himself in his grandfather's place for a while, surviving through the intervention of a cute, smart neighbor girl named Hannah, healthy meals with the chatty women of the apartment building, and some surprising friends he meets on his exile from his parents. (One touch I really enjoyed was the way in which there weren't any subtitles anytime that Shlomo would say something in either Polish or Hebrew that Mauro himself wouldn't understand. We are kept as much in the dark as he is over what is being said.)And always around all of this activity, there is the reality of the political struggle in the streets and the growing anticipation surrounding what every citizen, no matter where they stand politically, assumes will be a sure victory for Brazil in the World Cup. Every character's immediate side thought, outside of their own lives and survival, is for the game. Who will play where, who will team up best on the pitch, and what teams will match up best against Brazil. Like myself searching for an elusive Pete Rose card in 1977 while my parents drove us crazy with their battle for custody in a messy divorce, Mauro loses himself in packs of soccer cards, which he stores in a beloved notebook, all the while searching himself for that one special card. It was through my own parallels with Mauro's mindset at a roughly similar age that I was able to identify with this movie.And yet, despite the general overall excellence of the piece, I found myself drifting. I am now at the age where I am caring less and less about identifying with a single sports franchise, and care not at all for any form of nationalism. As Mauro becomes more frustrated through the film waiting impatiently for his never-returning parents, like a pair of coupling Godots, so did I begin to lose some small interest. I don't even like to celebrate sports victories with people who are cheering for the same side as I am. So, as the whole of São Paulo buries themselves deeper and deeper into a nationalistic fervor over their beloved team -- which is supported throughout via vintage footage of the great Pelé and his compatriots scoring one unbelievable goal after another -- I began tuning out somewhat. Eventually, you are just watching other people watching television, and while there are a couple of interesting or clever exchanges that occur between characters during these sections, I grew as impatient as Mauro, joining him in his wish that his parents would just show up and get this thing over with already. It really didn't affect my opinion of the film in the end, but it does need to be pointed out that it can be a little tedious awaiting resolution.And then I realized that so much of what happens in this film, and what happened in my own childhood at that age, arrived out of tedium and confusion. Likely, I became immersed in my tabletop baseball game for many of the same reasons that Mauro does with his game. His parents, deep in their political leanings and obviously important enough cogs within their own machinery that they have to flee the country, though loving parents, probably unintentionally drove Mauro deep into his fantasy soccer world through being too busy with their real one. Likewise, my game was grown out of frustration with the goings on in my home life, and it was just easier to tune everything out with a self-created and managed baseball game of my own. That both of us had to grow up and take what lessons we could from our experiences was all that we could do. Both too young to deal with the real world in these terms; both unable to avoid it either.Often the reason why people band together to cheer for a single team or hero can be a form of group catharsis. It doesn't have to be so much a warlike brutishness -- though many times it can be -- but rather a shared relief. Those that people The Year My Parents Went on Vacation -- Mauro and his neighbors in the Jewish neighborhood -- all come together through sport, and it is easy to see how one game can capture much of the globe, especially one as mired in poverty and war as ours. My troubles have never even come close to equally those in both this film and in the real world that largely worships soccer. But we have all found that sweet relief that sport can often bring to the psyche.It is fortunate for all of us, despite the differences in our individual preferred sports, that these sports can all share the same "beautiful" aspect: as a small form of blessed, temporary escape from a world too cruel and uncaring to handle sometimes.
]]>Wed, 06 Aug 2008 04:13:11 GMTrik_todThe Cinema 4 Pylon: SpOutpost8/6/2008 12:13:11 AMCinema 4 Rating: 7I never went out and actively looked for a job in soccer. It never even occurred to me that one would ever want a job in soccer. And yet, I have one. I stumbled upon it absolutely by accident, and it has meant the world to me. I have learned so much through this stumble -- not necessarily about soccer -- and I hope that others perceive that I am the better for it, because that is certainly how I feel about it.Before I took this job, though, I never imagined just how fully vested the rest of the world outside the U.S. was in this simple sport, what has been termed "the beautiful game" by people far more knowledgeable about these things than I am. Me, I always assumed that the game which had trademarked beauty was my beloved baseball -- you know, the one with the spitting, crotch-grabbing, often yokel players and the brushback pitches and mound-charging brawls. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and that eye just beheld some chin music...Hell, as a kid, I never even saw anyone play soccer until I was in high school. I didn't play it until then. Little League baseball, Pop Warner football and Pee Wee hockey were it as far as I can remember. You did them all or you did one, in my experience. I did one -- the obvious one -- and I did it badly... epically badly. But I was obsessed by the center of my failure. I ignored my failure and still embraced "my" beautiful game. Unable to play the game physically in a proper manner, I took it to the table. I invented my own baseball dice game, and even though eventually, I would move to Strat-O-Matic baseball and other professional versions into my adulthood, I never loved any of them as much as my own stupid tabletop invention. I memorized thousands of baseball cards, and then used those same cards to hold each player's position on the table, and I spoke in what I imagined were the voices of the players as they swung at each pitch of the dice ("boxcars" meant "home run," by the way), and acted out the play according to those rolls of the dice. I kept scorecards too (I still have some of them in my files), and I was very careful to choose a proper lineup based on each player's stats on the backs of their cards, even if the chance of the dice completely drove away any purpose to my doing this. I was kid, and I was in love with my sport -- what did I know?In The Year My Parents Went On Vacation, young Mauro is in love with his sport, soccer, too. And he, too, has taken it to the table. Playing with a pair of tiny goals and poker-style chips, along with a pair of matchboxes decorated to portray the individual goalies, Mauro spends his idle hours quietly holding his own World Cup, with his beloved home country Brazil and its amazing star Pel&eacute; bringing all challengers to their knees. Unlike me, though, Mauro can play his beautiful game -- perhaps he is even as good as most of the kids in his neighborhood -- but on the tabletop, he is truly obsessive, and the master of his world. However, in this quiet, emotionally rewarding Brazilian film, we never get the chance to see just how good Mauro is against those neighborhood kids in street ball, because no sooner do we meet the lad, than he is whisked away from his home to S&atilde;o Paulo, the home of his grandfather, a beloved barber in a small, tightly knitted Jewish community.The year is 1970, and Mauro's parents are involved with a communist organization that is under intense pressure from the military dictatorship which controlled Brazil over parts of three decades. They leave Mauro at the stoop of his grandfather's apartment building and drive off, telling their son to tell everyone that asks that they "went away on vacation." They promise their young son, who in his innocence has no real way of comprehending how his world is possibly falling apart around him, that they shall return in time for the World Cup. We know upon hearing this that it is likely nothing more than a little white lie, but Mauro not only believes it, but practically builds his own religion around the statement. His every action from this point on, no matter how it affects those around him, will center around his belief in his parents' timely return.What no one could have figured into the equation is that Mauro's grandfather will perish from heart failure the very afternoon of Mauro's arrival. Mauro is discovered waiting sadly for his grandfather to appear by a kindly neighbor. The neighbor, Shlomo, a Polish Jew, despite his initial protestations to his synagogue, is convinced to to take care of the boy until the return of his parents. But Mauro is not a quiet little innocent. He is sullen and pouty and given to temper tantrums due to his obsessiveness. He is also remarkably independent, even living by himself in his grandfather's place for a while, surviving through the intervention of a cute, smart neighbor girl named Hannah, healthy meals with the chatty women of the apartment building, and some surprising friends he meets on his exile from his parents. (One touch I really enjoyed was the way in which there weren't any subtitles anytime that Shlomo would say something in either Polish or Hebrew that Mauro himself wouldn't understand. We are kept as much in the dark as he is over what is being said.)And always around all of this activity, there is the reality of the political struggle in the streets and the growing anticipation surrounding what every citizen, no matter where they stand politically, assumes will be a sure victory for Brazil in the World Cup. Every character's immediate side thought, outside of their own lives and survival, is for the game. Who will play where, who will team up best on the pitch, and what teams will match up best against Brazil. Like myself searching for an elusive Pete Rose card in 1977 while my parents drove us crazy with their battle for custody in a messy divorce, Mauro loses himself in packs of soccer cards, which he stores in a beloved notebook, all the while searching himself for that one special card. It was through my own parallels with Mauro's mindset at a roughly similar age that I was able to identify with this movie.And yet, despite the general overall excellence of the piece, I found myself drifting. I am now at the age where I am caring less and less about identifying with a single sports franchise, and care not at all for any form of nationalism. As Mauro becomes more frustrated through the film waiting impatiently for his never-returning parents, like a pair of coupling Godots, so did I begin to lose some small interest. I don't even like to celebrate sports victories with people who are cheering for the same side as I am. So, as the whole of S&atilde;o Paulo buries themselves deeper and deeper into a nationalistic fervor over their beloved team -- which is supported throughout via vintage footage of the great Pel&eacute; and his compatriots scoring one unbelievable goal after another -- I began tuning out somewhat. Eventually, you are just watching other people watching television, and while there are a couple of interesting or clever exchanges that occur between characters during these sections, I grew as impatient as Mauro, joining him in his wish that his parents would just show up and get this thing over with already. It really didn't affect my opinion of the film in the end, but it does need to be pointed out that it can be a little tedious awaiting resolution.And then I realized that so much of what happens in this film, and what happened in my own childhood at that age, arrived out of tedium and confusion. Likely, I became immersed in my tabletop baseball game for many of the same reasons that Mauro does with his game. His parents, deep in their political leanings and obviously important enough cogs within their own machinery that they have to flee the country, though loving parents, probably unintentionally drove Mauro deep into his fantasy soccer world through being too busy with their real one. Likewise, my game was grown out of frustration with the goings on in my home life, and it was just easier to tune everything out with a self-created and managed baseball game of my own. That both of us had to grow up and take what lessons we could from our experiences was all that we could do. Both too young to deal with the real world in these terms; both unable to avoid it either.Often the reason why people band together to cheer for a single team or hero can be a form of group catharsis. It doesn't have to be so much a warlike brutishness -- though many times it can be -- but rather a shared relief. Those that people The Year My Parents Went on Vacation -- Mauro and his neighbors in the Jewish neighborhood -- all come together through sport, and it is easy to see how one game can capture much of the globe, especially one as mired in poverty and war as ours. My troubles have never even come close to equally those in both this film and in the real world that largely worships soccer. But we have all found that sweet relief that sport can often bring to the psyche.It is fortunate for all of us, despite the differences in our individual preferred sports, that these sports can all share the same "beautiful" aspect: as a small form of blessed, temporary escape from a world too cruel and uncaring to handle sometimes. http://www.spout.com/groups/Spout_Mavens/Re_The_Year_My_Parents_Went_on_Vacation_2007/366/33135/1/ShowPost.aspx Post By: tadiv
Post To: Spout Mavens
Post Date: 7/27/2008 2:00:36 PM
Body: My review is in my tadiv blog. The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (2007)
]]>Sun, 27 Jul 2008 18:00:36 GMTtadivSpout Mavens7/27/2008 2:00:36 PMMy review is in my tadiv blog. The Year My Parents Went on Vacation (2007) http://www.spout.com/members/0/tags/friendship/MemberTagFilms.aspxfriendship
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