Enough grumbling: time for details.
BOB MARLEY: FREEDOM ROAD
At only 54 minutes, this brief doco about reggae superstar Bob Marley's life, death and career was, unfortunately, the most unsatisfying film I've seen at the festival so far. Its reverential tone never dipped far beneath the surface of the man's life and music; an impression unfortunately bolstered by a series of personal testimonies from those close to Marley, none of whom seemed to have anything bad to say about the man. In short, Bob Marley: Freedom Road felt like a clumsily-produced piece of filler for a cable TV channel, and I regret wasting an hour on it.
Even more frustratingly, the accompanying doco, Upsetter: The Life and Music of Lee 'Scratch' Perry, was by far the better film: imformative, engaging, detailed and analytical, or so it seemed in the 10 minutes I had to appreciate it before racing out of the session to get to the opening of the Melbourne Art Fair 2008... dammit!
OTTO, OR UP WITH DEAD PEOPLE
Buoyed-up by the sublime experience of a Sigur Rós gig at Festival Hall that had ended just half-an-hour before this session started at 11:30pm last Friday, I was in an excellent mood when the latest schlock opus from Bruce LaBruce (Hustler White, Raspberry Reich) started; and being perfect fodder for a late night slot at the festival, Otto; or, Up With Dead People didn't disappoint. This story of a recently reanimated gay zombie, who falls in with the cast and crew of a strident politco-porno underground zombie movie while trying to reassemble the fragments of his former life, is certainly not for everyone. However, if your tastes extend to deliciously observed irony juxtaposed with low-budget gore, some dead sexy boys (excuse the pun), and a dash of relatively serious commentary about a) the environment and b) the painfully unaware foibles of the self-consciously avante-guard, then Otto is for you.
ALONE IN FOUR WALLS
While not outstanding (I accidentally caught a short film, the name of which escapes me at the moment, at MIFF two years ago which explored a similar premise with considerably more finesse) this feature-length doco by Alexandra Westmeier is certainly not without merit. It's a quiet, contemplative film which dispassionately (at times almost too dispassionately: some more vigor might have made for a structurally more engaging film) and non-judgementally documents the day-to-day lives of a group of Russian teenagers in a boy's reform school over the course of a year.
Some of the boys - all of whom were aged 14 and under at the time their crimes were committed - have been sentenced for two years remand for petty theft; others are serving three years for murder. Over 89 minutes, Westmeier allows these boys to tell their own stories, complete with tears in some cases, and laughter in others. We see the daily routines which may help some of the boys - the majority of them from dysfunctional and impoverished families - develop something akin to normal lives. We also hear occasionally from their bewildered parents, and in one instance from the mother of a teenager who one of the film's softly-spoken subjects violently battered to death. While the uncomfortable seating of the Greater Union Theatre didn't help my appreciation of this film, overall I'd had to describe it as solid rather than especially
WORDS OF ADVICE: WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS ON THE ROAD
Another documentary which suffered from an excess of adulation syndrome, ie a lack of critical engagement with its subject, was this Danish feature about the late Beat Generation writer and author of Junkie, Queer and Naked Lunch, William S Burroughs. That said, it mostly made up for the flaw, in part through its engaging collection of interviewees (including one particularly odd character who, without qualms or self-consciousness, proudly showed us one of Burrough's turds which he'd found floating in the man's sewerage-flooded basement and kept in a jar).
The focus of the film is primarily the author's later years from the 1970s onwards, including his development as a pop culture icon and spoken word performer (though frustratingly, the director failed to acknowledge that Burroughs was an accomplished performer and raconteur as early as 1944, while sharing a house with Joan Vollmer Adams (who he would later marry, then kill) and Jack Kerouac in New York City). The centrepiece around which the doco has been constructed is an array of previously unseen footage from Burroughs' 1983 European tour, specifically his appearances in Denmark.
Fans of Burroughs will enjoy this doco to a degree, but for a Beat Generation devotee such as myself, it was a little lacking in substance, and could perhaps have done with more editing to trim it down to a leaner, sharper running time. An hour would have been ideal; at 74 minutes, I felt this particular doco slightly outstayed its welcome.
More capsule reviews in my next blog entry, hopefully tomorrow...
3 comments:
My experience of MIFF is entirely vicarious, but I’d be interested to hear what you think of Let The Right One In which I read an abbreviated review of elsewhere (the reviewer fainted and had to leave).
Otto was great, with interesting crowd reactions too. Do you think that there are regional styles to the zombie shuffle? The German zombies had some distinctive moves - and yes, those dead northern lads were a lot cuter than your average US zombie...
How cool was Otto. With the silent girlfriend to the wound fucking scene... priceless!!
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