The Wind Will Carry Us: The Films of Abbas Kiarostami. Movies reviewed: Certified Copy, Like Someone in Love
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Is love real? Are we who we pretend to be? And what is the meaning of life? The great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami deals with giant topics like these in movies that appear to be small and simple. But they’re not.
The Wind Will Carry Us: The Films of Abbas Kiarostami is an extensive, curated retrospective of the director’s work. It’s on now through April at TIFF Cinematheque and the Aga Khan Museum, with screenings, exhibitions and lectures. If you’ve never seen his films before, now’s your chance. Most of his films were made in Iran, many 
involving children to avoid government censorship. His movies have an amazing international feel and a distinctive neo-realist look, full of road trips shot through windshields and off-screen voices.
But this week I’m talking about his two most recent features, both shot abroad with non-Iranian actors. There’s a May/December relationship in Japan that might only last a day, and a 15-year-old marriage in Tuscany that may not exist at all.
Certified Copy (2010)
James (William Shimell) is a British writer and cultural critic who’s in Italy to promote his book. It’s called Certified Copy, and asks: can reproductions of great paintings or sculptures be considered great works of art? But he shows up late for his own speech. And midway through the talk, in walks a beautiful woman with her young son. Elle (Juliette Binoche) sits right in the front 
row. Is she James’s wife? Or just a random passerby? She walks out again before he’s finished, but not before leaving her phone number on a piece of paper.
They meet again the next day. Elle offers James a ride through the lovely Tuscan hills, ostensibly to autograph some of his books. He tells her the meaning of life is having fun. But they use the ride to discuss the book’s meaning. 
She drives him to an old church to show him a painting on the wall. It’s a copy, she says, but one considered to be the original for hundreds of years. The church itself is a popular place for young couples to take wedding pictures, even though they weren’t actually married in that church. Are those wedding pictures real or fake?
Later, they stop in a café, where the owner, a woman, tells Elle, in Italian, how lucky she is to have such a good husband. (James speaks English and a little French). She gets him to play along, and whispers they’ve been married for 15 years.
The rest of the film consists of the two of them continuing their real vs fake art debate, but extending it to real life, taking on the roles of a married couple. But… has the movie been misleading the viewers all along, and are they, in fact, a long-time couple?
This is a fascinating film, the kind that makes you want to walk out of the theatre and talk about it for half an hour. Binoche is her usual fantastic self, and Shimell (a British opera singer), is credible as the husband/not husband.
Like Someone in Love (2012)
Akiko (Takahashi Rin) is a small-town University girl living in the big city. She’s wants to study sociology, but to survive in Tokyo she works as a paid escort. She has money troubles, and is fighting with her boyfriend Noriaki (Kase Ryo). Noriaki is a tough guy with a volatile personality who works in a garage.
Today’s the day her grandma is coming to town to discuss something important. But her boss says she has to meet a new client in Kanagawa who specially requested her services. 
And no matter how much she protests he won’t let her take time off. The best she can do is get the taxi driver to drive slowly past the train station so she might see her grandma.
Later, she meets Watanabe (Okuno Tadashi), a kindly old university professor at his home. With his white moustache, he looks like everyone’s grandpa. He even cooks her a meal, featuring her hometown specialties. He treats her like family, while she just wants to hop into bed and get it over with.
But things heat up the next day when he drops her off at school and waits in a parked car. Through the window he sees her argue with her abusive boyfriend. But Noriaki also sees Watanabe, and when she’s gone he climbs into his car for a chat. He’s clearly nervous to meet Aki’s “grandpa”, and wants to get his approval to marry Akiko. Clever Watanabe plays along, never exactly saying he’s her grandfather, but never denying it. Things get antsy when Akiko joins them for a long ride. She is forced to play along as the faithful 
granddaughter – a role she had rejected at his home. Will their impromptu role-playing lead to a happy ending? Or will it explode with serious consequences?
This is another great movie from Kiarostami with an intriguing story and a great cast. Even though this one is in Japanese and Certified Copy is in French, English and Italian, they are both unmistakably Kiarostami. The car trips, role-play and false relationships make for an intriguing pair of Iranian films far from Teheran.
Certified Copy and Like Someone in Love are two of the films playing at the Abbas Kiarostami retrospective. Go to tiff.net for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com
Greek Myths and Fables. Films Reviewed: Boris sans Béatrice, Chi-Raq, The Lobster
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Greek myths are not just kids’ stories; they’re full of sex, violence and magical transformations. This week I’m looking at plays, myths and fables from Ancient Greece interpreted by three great filmmakers. We’ve got two films — set in Chicago and Quebec – based on ancient Greek themes; and a futuristic fable by a modern Greek director.
Boris sans Béatrice
Wri/Dir: Denis Côté
Boris Malinovsky (James Hyndman) is a self-made man. He owns a factory in Montreal, a beautiful country house, and his wife, Béatrice (Simone-Élise Girard) is an M.P. He’s tall, fit, rich and successful. He’s also self-centred, stubborn and arrogant. He can’t stand incompetence and lets everyone know it. Things are 
going well until Beatrice climbs into her bed and succumbs to melancholia. (Sounds like a 19th century novel.) Now she’s catatonic and requires Klara (Isolda Dychauk) a ginger-haired young Russian woman, to take care of her 24/7. Boris loves Beatrice, but what can he do to help her?
Enter a Deus Ex Machina: a mysterious man (Denis Lavant) dressed in gold brocade, who speaks an especially eloquent French. He arrives in an expensive black car, in a grassy field backlit by floodlights. He tells Boris that Beatrice’s illness is his fault. He must change his ways.
Boris changes his ways all right. He is sleeping with Helga, a work colleague (Dounia Sichov), and even flirts with young 
Klara. Beatrice continues to decline, until the Prime Minister (Bruce Labruce) drops by to check up on his member if Parliament; and even his estranged, left-wing daughter – who lives with toga-clad young men – tries to help. Will Boris ever change? Or will he end up like Tantalus, the demigod permanently punished for his hubris? And are his worries real or imaginary?
Boris sans Beatrice is a satirical look at life in a Quebec – a multicultural place where ambitious people can get ahead, but where success is always precarious. The cast, especially Hyndman, Girard and Lavant, are all terrific. I like this movie.
Chi-Raq
Dir: Spike Lee
It’s present day Chicago, a city wracked with gun violence that has killed more people than American soldiers killed in the Iraq War. There’s a real war going on between two gangs, the Trojans and the Spartans. Lysistrata (Teyonah Parris) lives with Chi-Raq (Nick Cannon) who wears the gang’s colours, while Irene (Jennifer Hudson) hangs with Cyclops (Wesley Snipes) their rivals. Fighting escalates until two things happen. An innocent schoolgirl is gunned down by a stray bullet and Lysistrata’s home is firebombed. Her neighbor, Miss Helen (the amazing Angela Bassett), grudgingly offers shelter and some
sage advice. Stop all this killing. The plan is for all the women in both gangs, in fact all the women in Chicago — even the sex workers — to say no more sex until you lose the guns. Or as they say in the movie:
No Peace, No Pussy.
This becomes an all-out protest that grinds the city to a halt, with women occupying a military base. But can they teach the men to put down their guns, take responsibility and do the right thing?
Does this story sound familiar? It should. It’s based on 2,400-year-old drama by Aristophenes. And like the original, it’s spoken in rhyme (this time in rap or in song with elaborate dance numbers) And there’s an omniscient, anansi-like narrator (Samuel L Jackson). It’s also a bit antediluvian. Is a woman’s primary role to provide sex for their male partners? Really? This is 2016. And the film could use an edit – it’s too long. Still, I quite liked Chi-Raq. A first-rate cast, with the spark of Spike Lee’s earlier films, missing for years.
The Lobster
Dir: Yorgos Lanthimos
It’s the future. Things are a lot like now except in this world two is good, one is bad. Loners – single people — are sent to an austere sanitorium where they have 45 days to couple up. Couples are given special privileges while singles are punished and humiliated. Anyone caught having “loner sex” must wear a chastity belt. And anyone still single 
after 45 days is transformed into an animal and let loose in the nearby forest. But the forest is also filled with runaway loner, humans who have escaped.
The movie follows the latest batch of woebegone singles all frantically searching for their perfect mate. It’s speed-dating hell. And they’re all insecure. The women are bossy or shy, the men walk with a limp 
or talk with a lisp. And everyone behaves like 12-year-old wallflowers at their first school dance. David (Colin Farrell) is a typical desperate single – he goes so far as to pretend he’s an A-type sadist just to attract a certain woman.
Things go wrong, and later he finds himself in the woods (as a human, not a lobster). He meets another runaway, a nearsighted woman (Rachel Weisz). The laws in the forest, laid down by their leader (Lea Seydoux), are a topsy-turvy version of the 
mainstream: only singles allowed with couples are absolutely forbidden. But what happens if you fall in love?
Lobster is a terrific off-beat comedy. I’ve been following Yorgos Lanthimos since meeting him when his second film, Dogtooth played at TIFF. His films are all highly stylized and uncomfortable satires. Characters speak like they’re reciting lines in a school play, and dress in dated and awkward clothes and hair. I loved his Greek movies but wondered if they would work in English. Not to worry. The Lobster is weird and quirky but totally accessible. You don’t need training in avant garde film to appreciate it. I recommend this movie.
Boris sans Beatrice and Chi-Raq open today in Toronto, check your local listings; and The Lobster starts next Friday.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber talks with Apichatpong Weerasathakul about Cemetery of Splendour at #TIFF15
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s present-day Northern Thailand, near the Lao border. Thai soldiers digging up the grounds of a school are all struck with a mysterious Tropical Malady: a sleeping sickness. Laid out in beds in a makeshift hospital on the site, they are cared for by a housewife and a young medium. By reading the soldier’s unconscious minds they discover this building was built on ruins of an ancient palace — also the site of great battles. And from the dreams of the sleeping soldier named Itt, via 
the medium Keng, Jen is guided through an invisible palace and a splendid cemetery.
Cemetery of Splendour is the latest film by master Thai Director Apichatpong Weerasathakul and it’s his funniest and greatest movie so far. It’s also his most accessible. It is filled 
with strange images — like glowing sticks intruding in people’s thoughts, an invisible palace, and goddesses who still wander their ancestral realms. It’s also a trenchant criticism of contemporary Thailand, which is currently under military rule. I spoke with Apichatpong Weerasathakul on site at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Cemetery of Splendour opens today (March 11th, 2016) in Toronto.
Photo by Jeff Harris
Action, Anarchy and Audacity. Films reviewed: Kanto Wanderer, Tokyo Drifter, 10 Cloverfield Lane
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Suzuki Seijun is a great Japanese director who made his mark in the 1960s as a b-movie director at Nikkatsu, specializing in low-budget yakuza “B” movies. Still directing movies, he’s known for his stylized images and experimental takes on traditional themes. A retrospective of his work — Action, Anarchy and Audacity — is now playing at TIFF. This week I’m going to talk about two of Suzuki’s early Yakuza films, as well as a psychological thriller from the US.
10 Cloverfield Lane
Dir: Dan Trachtenberg
It’s a present-day city in the Gulf Coast. Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is an aspiring young fashion designer with dark hair and a determined look. She’s leaving her husband and driving she knows not where. But out on the highway there’s a sudden boom! and her car rolls over into a field. She wakes up in a cell, cuffed to a metal bed in a cell. What happened? What was she doing there?
And there’s a young guy in the next room. Is this some sort of prison? She stages an 
elaborate escape only to discover she’s deep underground, in a hermetically-sealed bunker. It’s the home of Howard (John Goodman) a huge man with a child-like demeanour. He’s no kidnapper, he says; he’s a DIY survivalist. Apparently one with a “black belt in conspiracy theories”. He found her on the road and saved her life. There’s no reason to go back outside since everyone’s dead and the air is filled with poison gas. Emmet (the guy in the next room) says he helped build the place and he isn’t a prisoner — he fought his way *into* the cell when the invasion started.
They form an odd trio. Emmett (John Gallagher, Jr) who regrets not tattooing YOLO on his forehead; Howard, a budding dictator who loves being isolated with a young woman; and our resourceful heroin, Michelle. Is it safer inside or out? Can Howard be trusted? And are they really under attack, or is this just one of Howard’s fantasies?
10 Cloverfield Lane is a follow-up to Cloverfield but completely different. I’m not sure if it’s a sequel, a prequel, or an e-quel (a word I just made up meaning it takes place at the same time as the original). Cloverfield was a found-footage Sci-Fi thriller shot on a hand-held video camera. This one feels more like a stage play on a small set: part horror, part psychological thriller. Excellent acting with an interesting story but one that sometimes meanders. Not perfect but totally watchable.
Kanto Wanderer (1963)
Dir: Suzuki Seijun
It’s the 1960s in Tokyo. Three high school girls – one the daughter of a Yakuza godfather — are thrilled and fascinated when handsome Katsuta (Akira Kobayashi) a young bodyguard notices them. The three sneak into a shop to ogle another Yakuza 
enduring the painful, but exotic practice of tattooing. It’s Diamond Fuyu, (Hirata Daizaburo) from a rival gang. These short encounters help trigger a series of events of rivalry and revenge within the two groups. One of the young women – the one Fuyu likes — is determined to see the world, falls for a hood from Katsuta’s gang, who secretly sells her to a pimp.
Katsuta, meanwhile, still crushes on Fuyu’s sister, who’s a con artist married to a much older cheater at cards. In this world, Yakuza members are told they should “only wear red or white”: Red means a prison uniforms, white means a corpse. What will Katsuta end up wearing?
Tokyo Drifter (1966)
Dir: Suzuki Seijun
Tetsuya (Watari Tetsuya) is a yakuza hood who protects and reveres the gang’s leader who owns a Tokyo nightclub. His gang is falling on hard times. He’s in love with Chiharu (Chieko Matsubara) a high-class singer. But when a rival gang try to takeover the club ownership, it leads to a gun battle. Someone dies. Tetsuya takes the fall for his boss. He and decides to “drift”, a modern-day ronin without ties to his gang. HE’s forced to flee to the southern city of Sasebo (a 
major US navy base). But chased by the cops and rival gangs, he’s a marked man: he’s going to die. Will he fight to the end or die quietly? And who sold him out?
There’s also a “meta” dimension to this movie. The title of the film is also the title of a song sung by the Chiharu the nightclub singer. The song is about a Tokyo drifter, just like Tetsuya. And in a crucial scene, he whistles that song about himself and about the movie he doesn’t know he’s in!
Kanto Wanderer and Tokyo Drifter are similar movies, both about yakuza members who are criminals, but also good, true and above all loyal to their boss. And they both have bosses who are corrupt, selfish and venal. Are they spending their lives defending men who don’t deserve to be defended?
The two films were made 3 years apart but what an incredible difference. Many people say the Tokyo Olympics (1964) was a turning point in modernizing Japan. Kanto Wanderer could be a traditional Samurai period piece with Katsuta wearing kimono and carrying a sword. His gamblers play traditional card games, with nothing modern about it.
Tetsuya, in contrast, is totally modern, western, dressed in a pale blue suit, and lives in a
world of pop art nightclubs with glass walls and yellow halls.
Following Suzuki’s films is like watching the stages of Picasso, developing from realistic to interpretive to almost cubistic. He hints at his future style in Kanto Wanderer in a scene where the backdrop turns instantly to an intense red the moment Katsuta commits a bloody crime. But by the time we reach Tokyo Drifter, the characters dress in pale blue or bright red, and most scenes are shot on enormous soundtages with vibrant yellow or snowy white backdrops and stairways going nowhere. Suzuki’s movies are a pleasure to watch and you should see them on the big screen while you have a chance.
10 Cloverdale Lane opens today in Toronto: check your local listings. And Action, Anarchy and Audacity: A Seijun Suzuki Retrospective is now playing; go to tiff.net for times.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Eurasia. Movies reviewed: Mountains May Depart, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Sing Street
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Europe and Asia, despite what some people think, are part of the same continent: Eurasia. This week I’m looking at movies set on the Eurasian landmass, from the far east to the extreme west. There’s a love triangle set in a rapidly westernizing China, a true story about expat journalists in Afghanistan, and a coming-of-age musical set in Ireland.
Mountains May Depart
Wri/Dir: Jia Zhangke
It’s 1999 and a mining town China prepares for the new millennium. Especially Tao (Zhao Tao) who is a pretty, young performer. She’s being courted by two men. Liangzi (Liang Jingdong) is a brash but nice guy, brimming with confidence. He works in the mine store. Equally confident, but self-centred and vengeful, is Zhang Jinsheng (Zhang Yi). He’s rich and Liangzi isn’t. She wants to be friends with both of them. But she has to choose, and she chooses the one with money over 
the one she loves.
They have one son they name Daole or “Dollar”, named after the US dollar, what Zhang desires most. Tao stays in the mining town, while her husband moves to the city to rule his burgeoning financial empire and satisfy his perverse obsession with guns. And their son, Dollar, is sent off to a private English-language boarding school in far-off Shanghai.
The second part of the movie jumps to the near future. Dollar lives in Australia now and only speaks English. He has distant memories of his country and his mother and transfers his feelings onto a rootless, Chinese-Canadian teacher named Mia (Sylvia Chang).
The movie then reveals what has become of Liangzi, Jinsheng and Tao – the original three characters.
Jia Zhangke is one of the best filmmakers in China, and a personal favourite. He has a unique style and feel that exposes the flaws and idiosycracies of modern China. But always in a funny satirical or shocking way. What other Chinese director would start his movie with people dancing on a stage to the Village People? It looks like one of his first movies Platform (2000). That said, this isn’t his best work. The first half is a good classic Chinese melodrama, but the second half, with its prediction of China’s future, feels empty in comparison.
Whiskey, Tango, Foxtrot
Dir: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa (based on Kim Barker’s memoirs)
It’s the early 2000s. Kim Baker (Tina Fey) is a network TV newswriter whose career is going nowhere fast. So she jumps at the chance to relocate to a place grabbing all the headlines: Kabul, Afghanistan. She says goodbye to her boyfriend and takes off. But as soon as she arrives she sees it’s not what she expected. She’s shocked by the unvarnished crudity of the other expats. But she also exalts in her new status. She has, at her disposal, a buff kiwi bodyguard, a smart Afghan translator, and a local fixer, to name just a few. A blonde Aussie reporter named Tanya (Margot Robbie) takes her under her wing. She says, “In New York City you’re a 6 or a 7, but here you’re a borderline ten.” Tanya also tells her who to get to know, and who to avoid. And above all, to watch out for
the womanizing lush Iain (Martin Freeman: The Hobbit) a Scottish journalist.
Aside from drinkin’, dancin’, cussin’, and screwing around, she also has to file stories. She’s embedded with a Marine battalion, under the misogynistic General Hollanek (Billy-Bob Thornton.) But she manages to find some real news, even venturing out of the insular, foreign enclave in Kabul (or “Ka-bubble” as Tanya calls it). Will her new digs bring her fame and fortune? Or is it a bottomless pit that swallows journalists whole?
This movie is a fictionalized account of print journalist Kim Barker’s stint as an expat in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It’s an enjoyable movie and Tina Fey and company give a good sense of what it’s like to live there as a foreigner. What it doesn’t give is what it’s like to be an Afghan. There are some good scenes of an Afghan wedding, and she has a bit of professional contact with locals like Sadiq (Alfred Molina) a sleazy government minister, but nothing that challenges existing stereotypes.
And the Afghan women in burqas? Completely silent.
Sing Street
Wri/Dir: John Carney
Cosmo (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo) is a middle-class kid at a private Jesuit school in Dublin in the 1980s. He lives at home with his parents, his little sister and older brother Brendan (Jack Reynor) a pothead who dropped out of college. But when his family falls on hard times he is sent to a rougher school run by the Christian Brothers. (Canadians know the name from the Mt Cashel orphanage in St John’s, Newfoundland, notorious for its horrific abuses.) The school is run by men in black priestly gowns from neck to feet, 
and who are not adverse to corporal punishment. They make it their goal to crush every hint of non-conformity. Cosmo gets bullied from day one, especially by a skinhead. But all is not lost. Because across the street he sees a beautiful girl who looks like a model who just stepped out of a Duran Duran video. She even has a proper model’s name: Raphina (Lucy Boynton). Thinking quickly, he invites her to star in his band’s video for their next song – and she agrees. Only problem is, there’s no video, no song, and no band. Somehow Cosmo has to make it all happen. He meets Eamon (Mark McKenna) and together they start writing songs. Soon, they turn into new wave rock stars complete with appropriate make-up and frosted hair. But will they have it all ready in time for the school prom and before Raphena leaves for London?
Something about this movie grabs me – I really like it. It’s your basic boy-meets-girl/ coming-of-age story, and it’s set in the 80s, but there’s nothing old or tired about it. Sing Street feels fresh and new featuring young actors and musicians who are all amazing.
Sing Street, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, and Mountains May Depart all open today in Toronto: check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber talks with filmmaker Amber Fares about Speed Sisters
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Try googling the term Palestine or Palestinian — you’ll find lots of history, geography, and politics.
But what about race car drivers? Or female, Palestinian race car drivers?
Pretty sure it will not show up. But it is the subject of a new documentary,
called Speed Sisters.
Speed Sisters is a personal, in-depth look at five Palestinian women and their newfound fame as competitive car racers. It follows them toward their goal of competing in the championships in Jordan… and beyond. It’s directed by the award-winning Canadian filmmaker Amber Fares and it opens in Toronto next Friday.
I spoke with Amber by telephone.
culturalmining.com 
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