VENICE FILM FESTIVAL: ‘THE OTHER INDUSTRY.’
Venice, Italy, September 10, 2006
By Uli Schmetzer

Art must serve as a mirror of society.
This old cliché was confirmed once again this month during the 63rd Venice Film Festival when the coveted Golden Lion was won by a Chinese film carrying a political message about the destructive social and environmental effects of building huge dams, in this case China’s monstrous Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River.
Jia Zhangke’s film Sanxia Haoren (Still Life) not only detailed the negative impact of the controversial Three Gorges project but confirmed the Venetian Festival has become the foremost stage for innovative film-makers willing to speak out without fear of jeopardizing their personal safety or their commercial interests by being excluded from distribution networks controlled by the American studios.
The images of modern society reflected in the Venetian mirror this month were no always pleasant, sometimes difficult to understand and often struggling with the prominent theme of a generation haunted by broken or unstable relationships, the plight of immigrants searching for a better life and an overwhelming fear of a future filled with uncertainties and insecurities.
While European directors appeared fascinated by the fragility of romances and marriages American entries celebrated a come-back from self-imposed exile and patriotic silence with directors ready to take a poke at Washington and recent U.S. history.
Spike Lee led the charge. His analytical four-hour documentary about New Orleans concluded with an indictment of the Bush administration and American racism. The epic received a standing ovation at its premier here.
Lee’s perhaps overly long ‘I accuse’ entitled ‘When the Leeves Broke – A Requiem in Four Acts’ has already taken him to the documentary maker’s Hall of Fame. This is a masterpiece of a filmed autopsy of a massacre, in this case the devastation of New Orleans by the hurricane Katrina. The verdict can only be one, as expressed by experts and officials on screen: ‘Criminal negligence.’
‘When the Leeves Broke’ leaves no debris unturned to gather evidence pointing to official guilt in allowing a disaster-in-the-making to happen and then taking a baffling long time to react – and badly. In fact Lee’s film argues it was not the hurricane that caused the damage but years of official apathy and mismanagement. Officials admit they knew and warned high water would arrive one day with calamitous consequences for New Orleans and the city’s mainly ‘poor black’ suburbs.
The impact of the film was such that after the screening some critics labeled the city’s watery ordeal ‘the holocaust of the African-American people.’
A second American documentary ‘The U.S. verses John Lennon’ received another standing ovation. Its directors, David Leaf and John Scheinfeld, presented an impressive assembly of facts and comments from insiders, including Nixon’s inner circle and the FBI, making it clear President Nixon’s administration was determined – as one Nixon aide put it so succinctly on screen- to ‘neutralize’ John Lennon.
The ex-Beatle’s songs had converted him into an icon among anti-Vietnam War protesters. He was immensely popular in the U.S. and world-wide. His songs embarrassed the administration which used the FBI to tail him and allegedly tapped his phone. Immigration ordered him out of the country. Lennon stayed and eventually won his case.
The sensitively assembled documentary uses previously unseen footage provided by Lennon’s widow Yoko Ono. ‘The U.S. verses John Lennon’ not only comes at a time when another Lennon is badly needed to galvanize opposition to war-mongering in Washington but the documentary offers food for thought about the singer-songwriter’s death. Was it caused by the lethal bullets of a mentally disturbed fan or was it a well-planned and well-disguised assassination a la Lee Harvey Oswald (the man who allegedly shot John F. Kennedy)?
Whatever the correct answer the documentary offered a sinister new meaning to President Bush’ warning: “You’re either with us or against us.”
The third component of the American soul-searching came from Emilio Estevez whose nostalgic ‘what if’ film saw an America that could have been. But this America, solving its social problems at home rather then solving those of others abroad, was short-circuited by the bullets that killed Bobby Kennedy in 1968.
Called simply ‘Bobby (Work in Progress)” the film dwells on how the assassination affected people who had hoped and dreamed of another America under Bobby’s presidency. On that fateful day at the Hotel Ambassador in Los Angeles Estevez sees America at the crossroad of its destiny - and obviously walking away in the wrong direction.
The final component of the American anti-establishment quartet was supposed to be Oliver Stone’s feature film “The World Trade Center.” But the film, eagerly expected as a political statement by Stone, was roundly booed at its premier by an audience that could not forgive Stone for coming to Venice with yet another tale of American heroics at a time when America’s hero image is well below freezing point on The Old Continent.
Perhaps the most controversial film was Alfonso Cuaron’s chilling futuristic story ‘Children of Men’ playing in the year 2027. A plethora of activists run amok, armed to the teeth, fighting for their different versions of a revolution against a system that appears equally mad. In this world, seen through a metal gray doomsday atmosphere in an endless penumbra of pollution and gun smoke, illegal immigrants are caged and probably exterminated and a barren humanity has not seen the birth of a baby in a decade.
For those who believe the perpetuation of the human species is of paramount importance to the survival of the planet the film will be a rare vindication. After all survival and salvation in this film seems dependent on the birth of a dark-skinned baby and the endeavor of his mother and the male protagonist (a disillusioned former activist) to ferry the just-born baby safely through the killings and mayhem to some kind of oasis for the human species, an oasis aptly named Tomorrow. The problem with the film is this: It could all turn out to be just like that and, worse, there may be no ‘Tomorrow.’
Gratefully most film makers today seem more concerned with the present and not our apocalyptic future.
Stephen Frears’ irreverent ‘The Queen’ is a prime example how a tragedy can be milked for political purposes. The movie, voted the most popular by audiences, takes a harsh look at the way the British royal household reacted to the death of Princess Diana. It suffices to say Her Majesty preferred to view the carcass of a 14-point stag to the corpse of the Princess. On the other hand a more politically astute P.M. Tony Blair gains valuable political mileage by dubbing Diana ‘the Peoples Princess’ while fanning the mass hysteria that follows her death through a more then willing mass media.
Helen Mirren won the Festival’s best actress award for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II.
Yet what seems to stir directors most these days (or perhaps what appears to them most commercially viable since the majority of their prospective customers can identify themselves with the theme) is the fragility of relationships between couples and the loneliness and desperation of those whose relationships failed or never took off.
In this category Italy’s Gianluca Maria Tavarelli’s produced a melodramatic masterpiece: “Don’t Make Any Dates Tonight,” a film that follows the psychological problems of a number of couples starting with the noise from marathon love-making next door which drives one couple to comparisons that cause them to split up.
This theme resurfaces again in an equally fine French film, Alain Resnais’ “Private Fears in Public Places’ which won the Silver Lion award as the second best film at the Festival. Resnais tells the tragic and comic tales of loneliness, a loneliness that mutates into sexual perversions for both men and women. These in turn create fears of being discovered which in turn mutate into timidity and excessive expectations from prospective partners.
Like in most movies with this motif it is no longer the women who suffer most after a separation but the far more vulnerable male who becomes inconsolable, deranged and lonely. Instead the female partner, economically independent, sexually liberated and emotionally more resilient, tends to adjust more successfully to dramatic changes in life.
|There is both a negative and socially critical element in European films this year. One of the best is the French film ‘Le Pressentiment (The Premonition)’ by Jean-Pierre Darroussin, a portrayal of a world consumed by egotism and materialism in which even a rich man’s generosity is immediately suspected of ulterior motives. This subtle drama plays among the petit bourgeoisie of Paris, among people who take innocence for guile and good manners for pretension. Only the knowledge of imminent death can offer an explanation for a rich man’s ‘strange generosity.’
And then there are the potboilers.
Feng Xiaogang’s Yeyan (The Banquet) is an imperial saga where crimson blood gushes in rivers and betrayal happens every few minutes during the 131-minute long epic. The saving graces of the film are the ballet-like battles of sword-fighting warriors wearing masks - as well as some spectacular photography. If nothing else this cinematic extravaganza leaves one message: Hiring film extras in China must still be very cheap.
More riveting is the Dutch World War II thriller Zwarthoek (Notebook), a Who Done It about the shadowy figure in the Dutch resistance who betrayed to the Gestapo rich Jews escaping from the Nazis. The film is a subtle warning not all heroes are kosher, not all villains deserve death.
Douglas McGrath’s brilliant drama “Infamous” strikes a blow against capital punishment with the argument even the worst killer, just as the terrorist, is a human being, conditioned by his past or his upbringing. The film tells the story of how author Truman Capote gathered the material for his best-seller ‘In Cold Blood.’ Actor Toby Jones puts in a memorable performance as the witty, skittish, egocentric and openly gay Capote. Bravo!
‘The Soldier’s Star’ by Christophe de Ponfilly, the story of a Soviet soldier sent to war in Afghanistan and captured by Afghan rebels, strikes out against the idiocy of war which creates more wars and more violence, as the world has witnessed over the last years. The film is partially a statement against the United States which financed the anti-Soviet Afghan war. The war created the fanatical Taliban who turned out to be a greater scourge to the U.S. then the Soviets. It was the Taliban that sheltered and fostered Usama bin Laden and his Al-Qaida network.
Italy’s Emanuel Crialese tackles the plight of Italians migrating to the U.S. at the turn of the century and his ‘Golden Gate’ wins a ‘consolation Silver Lion. His stark portrayal of the draconian entry tests for immigrants in New York 100 years ago includes intelligence tests, embarrassing health checks and strip searches (because, as one immigration official explained, stupidity is hereditary and we don’t want our people to be infected) is not far off the mark of today’s ‘anti-terrorist’ procedures for new arrivals to the U.S.
For cinema buffs it is clear now most of the celluloid industry exhibiting at the Venice Film Festival moves further and further from the one portrayed by tinsel-town Hollywood.
Take the Hollywood entry “The Devil Wears Prada.” A good theme of how young people in America must kowtow to bosses to keep their jobs is spoiled by a completely unlikely ending, but one that fits into Hollywood’s straightjacket for commercial success.
Sadly the films of this ‘other’ cinema industry shown in Venice rarely reach the viewing public because their producers cannot break into the distribution stranglehold of the American studios and American interests - one reason why the majority of the public still sees the world today through tinted made-in-USA spectacles. (ends)