Shifting the Blame

2013 European Union Film Festival coverage

Dear Darko Lovrinic, Produktionsleiter,

You can recognize a European film by the fact that most everything is made out of people. The heroes, the antagonists, the monsters, innocent bystanders—each one a person. I could not detect any CGI. There were no talking animals or extraterrestrials. And there’s something compelling about that these days.

Because of these unusual decisions, Shifting the Blame (Schuld sind immer die Anderen)* feels stripped down, raw, and genuine. But never easy. Though all the parts are played by people, the standard roles themselves were thrown out, and everyone simply is. The story revolves around uncomfortable layers of revealed…people.

This is a first film by director Lars-Gunnar Lotz, and all the more impressive for it.  It’s an intimate work: the camera keeps close, the sky hangs heavy and grey, and the whole thing takes place in and around a single geography, Stuttgart. People are trapped and bound, even in the open country. Screenwriter Anna Prassler has wrought a balancing act with the script that I don’t even totally understand. The acting always makes sense and feels honest, even as the actors play to multiple layers of tropes that flirt with becoming clichés.  It almost doesn’t matter what the movie is about. The style of telling and the skill of the script make the people and what they do fascinating.

The plot itself revolves around the anger, actions and resulting imprisonment of young Benjamin (played by Edin Hasanovic). He finds himself an unorthodox outpatient-style prison run by a complicated couple—Eva (Julia Brendler, brilliant) and Niklas (Marc Benjamin Puch, very very good). Benjamin’s past is a secret, and like all movie secrets, it is truly terrible. People lie. Others are tormented. And yes, it totally sounds like a made-for-TV movie. If you watch the trailer, you will probably doubt every true thing I have ever written (don’t watch the trailer). But despite, and because of all this, it is indeed an awesome little film.

Managing the production of a movie that doesn’t go far into space and has no detectable animatronics or scale models probably makes your job a little easier, too. You probably just had to worry about getting everyone on set so they could do their thing. And such things they did! Well done sir.

Sincerely,

Cory

Status: Air Mail (4/5)

I’m an Old Communist Hag

2013 European Union Film Festival coverage

Dear Nicolae Ceausescu, Former Dictator,

Your specter looms large over modern-day Romanian life in Stere Gulea’s new film I’m an Old Communist Hag. Televisions buzz and chatter with impending news of a DNA test that will determine whether the bodies buried in your gravesite indeed belong to you and your wife. Meanwhile, a documentary is being shot about life during The Golden Era of Ceausescu (as you, yourself, so demurely christened it), requiring hundreds of volunteers to recreate the scenes of state-orchestrated adoration that used to greet you each time your helicopter alit or your motorcade zipped through the streets. Thankfully, this film doesn’t have to strain nearly as hard to make an impression.

One of those volunteers is Emelia, a sixty-something woman living modestly in a Bucharest suburb with her vendor husband. When she receives word that her daughter and soon-to-be son-in-law will be visiting from Canada, she seeks a small loan to feed her guests for the week. And it’s at one of these dinners that Emelia is revealed to be the communist hag of the title; pressed by her daughter, she admits that, yes, she preferred your good old days of communism to the shaky free market that threatens each day to swallow her family up.

This is a surprisingly common sentiment. Democracy hasn’t been a cakewalk for Romania. And neither has membership in the European Union. Many who lived through your rule are nostalgic for its security and steadiness. Romania always seemed to be the most progressive of Eastern Bloc nations (at least from the West’s point-of-view), but while you were careful to distance yourself from Russia’s geopolitical influence, you were, perhaps, the leader who carried forth Stalin’s style of authoritarian rule most vigorously—what with the crippling economic policies and the brutal suppression of dissenting viewpoints and all.

Those aren’t necessarily the things Emilia is pining for in this film. Even she isn’t sure what she misses exactly. For all the talk of the halcyon years of stable housing and employment, Emilia recalls, in a series of flashbacks, being kept away from her family in the days leading up to one of your factory visits. The reason? It’s never clear whether it was your phobia of germs or your sense of paranoia that required her to be quarantined before shaking your hand, which makes the situation even more disturbing. There is no reason. But Emilia nonetheless complies.

As played by the renowned Romanian actress Luminita Gheorghiu, Emilia is stout and strong-hearted and also completely adrift in the contemporary world; she frets over the worldwide financial crisis; she goes to get her hair cut and comes back with a bright-red punkish do. This sort of incarnate performance is deserving of no small number of superlatives, though what those superlatives might be, I can’t quite say. All of the adjective and metaphors typically used to describe great acting all seem a little too pompous. And if there’s one thing her performance isn’t, it’s pompous.

See, that’s the problem with epithets, Nicolae: they don’t aggrandize a person; they obscure. You may have created around yourself the most impressive cult of personality in Eastern Europe when that part of the world was replete with big personalities, but the names you gave yourself – genius, demiurge, titan, Prince Charming – are heavy with their own meaning, and do nothing, today, to define what kind of man you were. They do, however, shed a bit of light on what kind of leader you were.

Director Stere Gulea is a survivor of the lean artistic years under your rule – he made several films in the 70s and 80s, during the Communist studio system – and whether or not he shares Emilia’s conflicted feelings about Romania’s past, this much is for certain: he knows better than to give you credit for her wistfulness. It’s herself that she misses. The innocence of her daughter. The simplicity of youth. But not you. Sure, your specter looms large over this film. But that’s all you are, anymore: a ghost.

Sincerely,

Jared Young

Status: Air Mail (4/5)

Living Images

2013 European Union Film Festival coverage

Dear Tambet Tasuja, Editor

As an editor, you probably appreciate a film with a solid organizing principle. An idea to which you can return, a theme that keeps things cohesive when dramatic events threatens to pull everything apart. Fortunately for you, Living Images  keeps all of its action well-contained. Literally contained. The entirety of this multi-decade story is told from within the confines of a large estate in Tallinn, Estonia.

That’s not to say the house itself is the main character. As the narrative traverses the 20th century, it’s used to create different microcosms of Estonian society. The actual main characters are Julius and Helmi, both born in the old house to servants of the Baltic nobles who own it (each both played by a number of actors who depict them at various ages). Their stories weave through history as the house changes owners (and purposes) while Estonia is occupied by Germany, becomes an independent state, is once again occupied (this time by the Russians), and, finally, gains its independence once again, only to fall under the spell of capitalist greed.

That greed is the framing device for the film: Estonia’s estates have become valuable in the new economy, and Helmi’s grandson Paul wants to sell the old house to a foreign investor. Also valuable is the old cinema attached to the house, which Julius runs until its final showing (ominously enough, of the apocalyptic blockbuster Terminator 2: Judgement Day); the various owners of the house always find ways to use the small theatre as it suits them.

As an editor, this aspect of Living Images must have appealed to you; the history of cinema informs the style of the film itself. Director and co-writer Hardi Volmer shoots each episode of the story in a style representative of the era we find ourselves in: from scratchy silents, to silky black and whites, to garish technicolor. I can only imagine how fun it must have been to splice together and age  the elements to achieve this effect. And it’s a good thing Volmer decided on this technique, because storytelling-wise, Living Images is a bit of mess. Relationships (apart from Julius’ unrequited love for Helmi) are not always clear, and this creates confusion as the years stack up. But maybe this isn’t unintentional; these memories are codified by the popular storytelling medium of the time, and memories don’t always adhere to logic.

At times,  Living Images threatens to break under the weight of its story. There’s a lot of Estonian history crammed into these past hundred years—so much that characters are sometimes simply describing what’s happening outside the house. But Julius’ two loves – Helmi and the movies – creates a foundation that is strong enough to support it all, and adds an emotion that, unlike the tumultuous events heap pending around them, snuck up on me in the final moments of the film.

To editors, the idea that “the whole is greater than the sum” is more than a cliche. But worse than using a cliché is not using the right words. And here they certainly fit.

Checking my math,

Casey

Status: Air Mail (3.5/5)

Miracle

2013 European Union Film Festival coverage

Dear Kamila Zlatusková, Associate Producer,

There’s no murkier job description on a film set than that of the Associate Producer. How you personally earned this title, and what your responsibilities included, are anyone’s guess. Maybe you’re an up-and-coming big shot, or a bona fide number cruncher, or a valued creative partner, or a local string-puller, or someone the director just needed to pacify by slapping a label on you. If it’s the latter (as is often the case), I’m going to imagine you as a troubled Slovakian 15-year-old girl willing to do terrible, terrible things to get that title you desire – be it “associate producer” or simply “girlfriend”.  

I really hope I’m wrong. Drawing that parallel between you and Ela (Michaela Bendulova), the main character in Miracle, is far-fetched, right? Surely you would be smarter than selling yourself to human traffickers just so some asshole guy that you like can get himself out of debt. Because – spoiler alert for idiots – that might not go so well. Even if your plan is just to eventually “escape”.

Luckily, the way co-writer and director Juraj Lehotsky tells the story, I couldn’t help but feel sympathetic to Ela’s plight. Much like his main character, we as audience members are taken straight to a female re-education centre without any proper explanation. The resulting friction between the girls we meet there reveals more than enough for us to piece together what’s ailing Ela. Her father is not in the picture, her mother (Katarina Feldekova) is tired of dealing with a troubled teen, and there’s a mysterious man whose name is tattooed on her knuckles named Roby (Robert Roth). When Ela finds out she’s pregnant, she runs away to find Roby, but he’s hardly happy to see her, even before she breaks the news. In fact, she seems more like a forced-upon intern pushing for a full-time position than she does an actual girlfriend. 

Still, my sympathy rested squarely on Ela’s shoulders, since few other characters even register. And as the story skips quickly between scenes and seasons, brevity may be the film’s greatest virtue. At 78 minutes, Miracle manages to make a strong enough impression to recommend it as at least a cautionary tale to young stubborn women. Which, again, I’m sure you’re nothing like.

Making false associations,

Christopher

Status: Standard Delivery (3/5)