Paterson: NZIFF Review

Paterson: NZIFF Review

Jim Jarmusch's reflective and languid approach suits Adam Driver's rhythms in Paterson, a thematic companion piece to Ken Loach's I, Daniel Blake in its salutations of the common man.

Driver is Paterson, a routine bus driver in the burb of Paterson, who has a daily routine. His watch wakes him around 610am daily, he eats the same breakfast, heads to work at the bus depot and finds time to write poetry before his shift and during. Heading home every day at 6, he corrects a leaning post-box that moves daily, has dinner, walks his shared bulldog Marvin and goes to the local watering hole.

So far, so familiar as Jarmusch's patented loops play out over an 8 day period. But as the days progress, small variations crop up towards the end of the week in Paterson's life - from a girlfriend whose borderline OCD and creative obsession with black and white mean each return home is random to a cataclysmic moment involving his bus.

These are the beats of Paterson, where the ordinary is celebrated and the pace is languid to prosaic. As this ode to the mundane progresses, there are visual tics and tricks that Jarmusch throws into the mix to almost test as if you are paying attention to what's transpiring as the story's more lyrical edges wax and wane with time progressing.

Throwing in a cute scene stealing dog also helps proceedings (when the deliberate pace slows a little too much) as well with Marvin the bulldog (sadly RIP now) proving to be the juxtaposition to Paterson's life in a small way to many, but devastating to the celebration of the mundane. Driver's a relatively blank canvas throughout, with his small intrusions into life being catalogued more by the outre behaviour of others - from the bus depot boss whose life is full of dramas to the dreams of his cup-cake empire dreaming partner, his calmness gives the yin to everyone's extraordinary yang.

Blessed with dry humour and quiet reflections on life, Paterson's simplicity and gorgeousness is in its execution. Its rhythms and wry humour may not be for everyone, but for those who fall for the loops of life and the idiosyncracies within, this slow celebration of the mundanities of it all works wonders.

The Red Turtle: NZIFF Review

The Red Turtle: NZIFF Review

Studio Ghibli's latest sees Dutch British director Michael Dudok de Witt taking on the story of a castaway on an island.

As the film begins, in greying waters and stormy seas, the man is tossed asunder, his boat ripped from him. Clutching onto it, he makes it to shore - albeit on a completely deserted island. Woken the next day by a crab running up his leg, the man plots to escape, using bamboo canes to make a raft.

But his attempts are thwarted by something smashing the raft.... with desperation setting in, the castaway tries again; this time, his nemesis is revealed - a red turtle...

Mixing existentialism, some sumptuous hand drawn and painted animation, facials that look similar to Herge's Tintin executions and all scored to a lushly mournful and occasionally soaring soundtrack, the animation The Red Turtle is wordless and will leave you breathless.

While comedy of the occasion is provided by a clutch of crabs scuttling back and forth in the castaway's world, the soar-away visuals of the castaway's plight, his midnight delusions and what happens may have a propensity to hit where it counts - in the heartstrings.

As the survival tale plays out over its 80 minute duration, there's Laurent Perez del Mar's soundtrack to send you into orchestrated orbit as the simple story unfurls.

It's a meditation of existence and of soul-searching as the castaway adapts to the rhythms of the island and the machinations of survival - but some of this may go over younger minds heads even if they are willing to go with the animated flow.

Ultimately though, The Red Turtle is a film that has deeper meaning, and will be a personal tale to each member of the audience.

It's a rumination on our place in the world, and acceptance thereof; all beautifully encapsulated in a Studio Ghibli  hand-drawn co-production that once again hits the heart strings and engages the brain so much - even when it offers so little by way of execution.

Cameraperson: NZIFF Review

Cameraperson: NZIFF Review

Kirsten Johnson has spent her life working on films.

From working with Michael Moore on Fahrenheit 9/11 to CitizenFour, she's been a documentarian capturing moments of life within and committing them to screen.

In Cameraperson, she's collected and strung together some of the scenes which she claims have most marked her and created a tapestry of lives, with loose threads that appear random but are cleverly interconnected.

From the scenes of getting a newborn baby to breathe in Nigeria to getting a big baby boxer to breathe before exploding after losing a fight in New York, some of the threads are more obvious than others. From scenes of children playing in Bosnia with an axe after they return from ethnic cleansing fears to her own twins playing with the camera, these recoursive snapshots of life offer tempting insights into her world from the past 20 years.

There's no timeline - and nor should there be; but what emerges is a deeply personal timeline of a life lived in the world, and of moments captured for posterity (or perhaps B-roll) that ultimately stand out. Themes of life, death and justice recur, a tacit admission that these themes are universal, but in the end, Cameraperson becomes a study of how to make documentaries and of the form itself.

And yet at times, it feels like the scenes are tantalising glimpses into stories we want to know more of -specifically, the horror of the death of James Byrd Jr in Jasper New York, whose story is told briefly by scenes of attorneys being interviewed.  Admittedly these films already exist, and it's perhaps more a testament to the powerful snippets of choice and admission that these have haunted her that they still feel so raw and numbing.

As the strands pull together and more personal moments are revealed, Cameraperson becomes a real salute to those who work in documentaries, whose cameras are an extension of their body, an extra limb to help them in the world.

Cameraperson itself may be a humble title, and the images within may be humbling, but this prosaic documentary about the documentary form is nothing short of impressive.

Aquarius: NZIFF Review

Aquarius: NZIFF Review

Sometimes, the words tour de force are bandied around performances with gay abandon.

But in the case of Aquarius, Kleber Mendonça Filho's film, Sonia Braga deserves the accolade.

Braga stars as Dona Clara, a music critic in her 60s, who stands resolute in her apartment building when all else have moved out and the developers come to tear it down. Refusing to move on after a full life in the same building, Dona Clara digs in, but not by drawing battle lines - but by simply living her life.

Reflecting on her past and living in her present, Braga's extraordinary class in the role lends the whole piece a sort of innate charm. Broken up into 3 chapters, the story follows its own lyrical beats and pace as it demonstrates a life well loved and friendships well nourished. The enigmatic Sonia Braga is a commanding presence throughout, imbuing the ageing Dona Clara with a sheen of genuine feeling that this is a life well-lived as society has changed around her.

And Filho's film also impresses too.

From the stunning seaside vistas from the Aquarius apartment in Brazil to the casual reveals about health issues or deaths, this is a film that's masterful and takes its time while spinning its observations out. Building on the life of her aunt early on and how she set the trend, it's easy to see Dona Clara's blossoming into a similar role as she fends off demands from her children to sell up and the developers, insisting that she's better leaving.

If there's to be a flaw it's the tail end of the film where the fight with the developers comes to a head with an abruptness that seems crowbarred in. Certainly, the final scene leaves you feeling the story's incomplete and unfinished, which given what you've invested in over the past 2 hours 20 mins is frustrating to say the least.

Aquarius is a lesson in class from Braga - she's the reason to see this film, a reminder that great performances are central to film. It's a pinnacle performance.

Wild: NZIFF Review

Wild: NZIFF Review

From Germany, the film Wild is likely to press a few buttons of cinema-going audiences this festival, but when it all boils down to it, this is your tried and true fable of a girl's coming out party.

Directed by Nicolette Kreibetz and with a strong central performance by Lilith Stangeberg as Ania, a 20 something office worker who doesn't fit in at the office and doesn't fit in in the city. So far, so tried and tested tale of awkwardness.

However, one day, while heading home Ania clamps eyes on a wolf, roaming around. Exhilarated and obsessed, she concocts a plan to domesticate the wolf at home - but is her embracing of the feral all it's cracked up to be....?

Wild may have taboo busting scenes and moments that will polarise and shock some of the audience, but it's kept grounded by Stangeberg's nuanced turn as the plot progresses. Sure, there are allegories here about surviving as a lone wolf in the workplace, or out in society, but this at-times-confronting piece is also hauntingly shot.

Paced nicely, and with an eddying turn by Stangeberg, as well as the wolves, the descent into the feral is made even more compelling by its execution and by Kreibetz's desire to prod and provoke rather than to abuse and antagonise.

Thematically, we've been here a billion times before in terms of sexual awakenings, and a woman's journey to empowerment and of questions about sanity.

With a brooding OST and some quite starkly exciting animal training that's clearly taken place, what transpires is not only thrilling and exhilarating, it's what festival films should do at their very best - provoke reaction, discussion and challenge views long after the lights have gone up.

Tower: NZIFF Review

Tower: NZIFF Review

The sight of an animated pregnant woman being felled by an indiscriminate and undetermined sniper atop a building lays out the shocks of this visceral and electrifying documentary that looks at the University of Texas  campus shooting (released at the NZIFF nearly 50 years after it made headlines).

Pairing rotoscoping animation a la Waking Life with an oral history and interviewees from the shooting, this examination and reconstruction of the day is simultaneously compelling and horrifying, a study in the evil that men do and the way we rise and fall when tested.

There's an urgency to director Keith Maitland's story that's sickening and upsetting. Compounded with the honesty of the interviewees, it's real heart in your mouth kind of viewing.

But it's the little details which make Tower so viscerally powerful; a student goes to his friend's place with a Spider-man comic wrapped around his books, a sign of a more innocent world that was once lived in. Another talks of finding love with a boy she met after starting her sixth month of pregnancy before the inexorable evil touches their lives - it's a stark testament to this film's execution that it lingers long within the viewer.

With top drawer animation from Minnow Mountain, the whole thing flickers between shots of those on campus and archival footage of the day and gives you such a sense of being there, it's almost as claustrophobic for viewers as it is cathartic for those who were there. This is never about anything more than the victims, and an insight into their lives then and now.

However, in among all of Tower, it's the devastating honesty and candid nature of the interviewees that rings true. 

Some talk of being unable to feel like they could help victims for fear of their own deaths, while others fear nothing and run in, believing this is the moment that could define them. It's these peeks into humanity which hold Tower high (even if the back end of the film feels a little like it's hugging at heartstrings with flashes of real life) and the fact the shooter is never shown or humanised is an incredibly salient move by those involved.

Ultimately, Tower will be viewed with a poignancy in light of recent American shootings (and the decision to include those at the end seems to be a minor misstep in the film's power - it's not that a reminder isn't needed, but more that it's unnecessary, particularly since the film's worked so strongly to give voices to the victims and then at the end resorts to montages of faceless anonymous victims) and will provide an insight for those never expecting to experience something so shocking.

What's truly impressive about Tower though, is how hauntingly effective it is and how a clever execution of a difficult subject matter can be sensitively handled to leave audiences devastated so long after the fact.

The Greasy Strangler: NZIFF Review

The Greasy Strangler: NZIFF Review

Best suited to a midnight screening rather than a more temperate Thursday afternoon's viewing, Jim Hosking's The Greasy Strangler is definitively lurid and trashy.

But it's also a test of an audience's patience, with repetitive scenes, oft-repeated dialogue (from arguments) and looped soundtrack interludes.

It's a conventional story about an unconventional father and son relationship - of co-habiting Big Ronnie and Brayden, the pink wearing disco tour kings of a small town. By day, the duo lead people on tours of areas claiming that's where parts of disco were invented, or where "The Earth, The Wind and The Fire" set up shop.

But by night, Michael St Michaels' Big Ronnie has a secret - he likes to get slopped down in grease and go on a killing spree...

And things are further complicated when Sky Elobar's Brayden falls for Janet....

The Greasy Strangler certainly has the power to leave speechless and will polarise audiences.

With its lo-fi feel, its schlocky gross-out edges and its penchant for older male nudity, it's certainly there for pressing the buttons.

Coupled with the repetition of the lo-fi dialogue that taps into the clear streams of consciousness rhythms that Hosking is clearly aiming for with some of it feeling like it's barely being delivered with any hint of anything other than over-acting, there's potentially something meta going on here.

And yet, this is a film that clearly knows what it is, how low it can go and how its audience will react - either embracing all of this with puerile chutzpah or being turned off completely. There's no middle ground in this polarising piece which doesn't bother to give you such trivial things as to why this greased up monster is killing, preferring to settle for scatalogical laughs that really do mine the essences of relationships in many ways.

Slopped down in congealed gloop, St Michaels' Big Ronnie is a Swamp Thing type creature, that exerts such force, his victims' eyeballs literally pop out. When his killing's done and before heading home, he takes a trip to a local car wash run by a blind guy to clean up.

If that doesn't tell you all you need to know about The Greasy Strangler, nothing will.

Scenes dovetail into the next with the dialogue of a teen argument and always culminate in a who can shout the loudest and the rudest; if you're on board with that, then this surrealism and silliness is for you to lard it up over everyone else. It has to be said though, the romance between Brayden and Janet has a sweetness and the triangle that forms is quite cleverly put together - with more being said under the surface than is fully put on screen.

The Greasy Strangler is a perverse film in many ways, and one suspects its film making team (including gonzo supremo Ant Timpson and Elijah Wood) takes a perverse pleasure from the fact it's designed to leave you speechless. It's also probably destined for cult status with large swathes of its dialogue being written solely  for being ripped out and hurled at fans by other fans as wanton catchphrases.

It's a singular NZIFF experience, of that there is absolutely no doubt.

And given what the film-makers probably set out to do, this unconventional rom-com, typical boy meets girl, boy suspects dad is greased up killer, delivers everything it sets out to in the trashiest way possible.