framing device

A few hours after seeing Secret Sunshine, Darren Hughes asked me what I thought of it. I remarked that I’d have to wait a couple days before answering; I was still trying to process it. And I’m still processing the film a couple days later. It’s not that the film is particularly difficult to follow. It focuses on a woman and her young son who move to her dead husband’s hometown as some kind of memorial. There she sets up a piano school and prepares to buy a home. But tragedy strikes (the kind that happens much more in the movies than in real life), and we spend the rest of the film watching her wrestle with her own emotions and grief. That wrestling includes turning to faith as well as despair.

The movie is obviously well done, with Jeon Do-yeon giving a towering performance as the mother. Her facial expressions in one scene when she confronts a man are almost terrifying to watch. Just as good in a much less showy role is Song Kang-ho, who plays a middle-aged car mechanic who pursues the mother romantically. Both a source of comic relief and, strangely, the moral center of the film, the character is one of the most interesting I’ve seen at the festival, and Song gives a rich performance. My problem with the movie is that I kept resisting the narrative, never quite able to give myself to a story that deals in extremes. The wildly shifting emotions are draining and not always for the right reasons, as we try to keep up with the mother’s perspective. I’m fully willing to admit that I need to process the film even more and that I eventually might come around. But for now, it’s a film I admire more than I like.

I have the opposite reaction to In Memory of Myself, a film I like more than it might “deserve.” A movie about a young candidate for the monastery, it’s one part mystery, another part meditation on faith. The mystery revolves around a different candidate who goes missing. The mediation on faith comes from discussions the protagonist has with his superiors and another candidate over whether love or truth should be preeminent. Other themes include how we deal with suffering and accountability.

Director Saverio Costanzo undergirds those discussions with a thoughtful sound design (mostly silence but every once in a while we hear noises from the outside world). And while it’s somewhat stereotypical in a movie like this, I still appreciated his contrast of light and dark, particularly how he uses silhouettes in the long hallways of the monasteries. The silhouette points to an emptiness that is both a goal of a candidate and also a danger. Those uninterested in films about spirituality probably won’t enjoy it, but it held my attention.

Buddha Collapsed out of Shame is another movie that has a limited audience, but again that includes myself. It’s a simple Iranian film about children with implications for the larger world. Set in the area of Afghanistan where the famous large Buddha statues were blown up by the Taliban, the movie opens and closes with footage of that explosion. In between, it follows the story of a little girl trying to go to school. At first, she has to buy a notebook, which means trying to sell four eggs in the market. This allows director Hana Makhmalbaf (daughter of Mohsen, the famous Iranian director) to show what a rural Afghan village is like, which I found fascinating. Once she has her notebook, then she has to find the school. Along the way, she drops in on a boys school and then a bunch of boys playing war.

The long sequence of the girl and the boys is the centerpiece of the film. Both a shocking allegory (Ken Morefield, whom I saw the film with, equated it with Lord of the Flies) and a reflection on what children in Afghanistan are really learning, it’s absolutely riveting and makes up for any awkwardness in Makhmalbaf’s writing and direction. The last third of the film isn’t quite as good, and one scene involving lipstick goes on way too long. Nonetheless, the movie’s overt political content is bracing, and Buddha provides a window on a world we know far too little about.

I had one of those experiences that remind me “it takes all kinds.” I was standing in line at the Cumberland for my last film of the evening. And because I try to avoid the Cumberland–a musty pseudo-multiplex with horrible sightlines and poor sound–this was actually the first film I had seen there. The Cumberland does have one advantage: standing outside to wait in line provides some great people watching. As I was doing just that, I couldn’t help overhear a group of women behind me talking. What were they talking about? How much they like the Cumberland. I was stupefied. How could anyone like the Cumberland?? But before I could turn around and ask them why, the line started to move and we went inside.

My last film was a standout (another in a festival full of them). I was able to get a ticket to the Israeli film Jellyfish, a movie with several stories and a heavy emphasis on visual symbols and metaphors. The primary character is a young woman who has just broken up with her live-in boyfriend when a little girl walks out of the sea and wordlessly begins following her. There’s also newlyweds who have to alter their honeymoon when the bride breaks her leg at the wedding, and a Philippino woman working as a caregiver who calls her little boy back home almost every night.

The film is able to be both genuinely funny and sad, often at the same time. Co-directors Shira Geffen and Etgar Keret (both making their debuts) have a wonderful way with visual imagery, creating scenes that are funny and quirky without ever becoming overly twee. An old photograph begins to move; an apartment slowly floods, leaving the answering machine under water; a bride’s writing gets mixed up with that of another woman. These simple elements take on great power in the context of the rich characters Geffen and Keret have drawn, and the familiar theme of parents and children is explored in vibrant new ways. “We’re all second generation of something,” one character remarks, and that truism crackles with the light of revealed insight. And lest this sound too esoteric, the rest of the audience enjoyed it as much as I did.

Tomorrow brings another masterpiece and a fun Toronto story.

Secret Sunshine: three stars, out of five
In Memory of Myself: three 1/2 stars
Buddha Collapsed out of Shame: three 1/2 stars
Jellyfish: four stars