This year’s New York Film Festival (NYFF) has plenty of films from filmmakers who have slowly curated their own unique style and directorial techniques. Some of them, you know them by heart, others via their piercing scenes or images. But you recall their work, even if you don’t know much about the conductor behind that cinematic orchestra. In these capsule reviews, I will discuss three films from the Main Slate selection that have unique voices at the helm and have spent decades reworking and polishing their abilities. These are Lisandro Alonso’s long-awaited follow-up to his 2014 feature, “Eureka,” Agnieszka Holland’s Venice Film Festival Special Jury Prize-winning “Green Border,” and Angela Schanelec’s poetic (albeit to a fault) and modern retelling of the Oedipus myth, “Music.” Some were disappointing, and others got fascinating as they continued; let me tell you all about them.
‘Eureka’ (Dir. Lisandro Alonso)
A scene in “Eureka” (Photo: New York Film Festival).
Argentine director Lisandro Alonso was one of the few directors who more or less started the resurrected “slow cinema” movement when he released his debut in 2001, “Freedom” (“La Libertad”). This helped him find his distinctive and experimental eye, translating into some fascinating (albeit narratively fractured) contemplative pictures. They express their respective ideas, wandering through each’s settings, which cover beautiful plains and backdrops. I believe he has an excellent eye for images, and he connects them with respectful narrative strands. However, in his latest work, “Eureka” (the long-awaited follow-up to his 2014 film, “Jauja”), he slightly loses his grip (and arrives out of focus). Its title suggests that this is a brilliant discovery by Lisandro Alonso, a return to form. Yet, the opposite happens. A forced connective tissue to these individual yet interlinked stories inside the narrative got the best of the director.
Time, space, mind, and nature intertwine with one another. They connect several intertwining stories that come out as perplexing, beautifully shot, and self-indulgent. “Eureka” begins with a black-and-white sequence. We see a cowboy (Viggo Mortensen) out on a quest in an unnamed old Western town. This introductory scene gives a significant push to the film. It feels slightly different than what Alonso has offered in his past works. However, it contains a strict visual composition that helps create piercing images that stay on your mind for an extended period. This is a glimpse of an old film. Meanwhile, that’s playing in the background, Alaina (Alaina Clifford) plays as she prepares for work. The world is now full of life and color. The story shows its first glimpses of the intertwining tales and the blend of fantasy and reality.
We meet various characters played by talented actors such as Chiara Mastroianni, Luisa Cruz, and Maria de Medeiros, undergoing their trials and tribulations. Everything is shaped into a collage-like creation. It is collapsing on itself as these tales keep getting tangled and how they match with one another thematically. Each segment topples the next one, leaving little room for it to breathe. But, most importantly, their connection doesn’t work. These tales about the past, present, and future don’t fit together in the slightest. That doesn’t mean “Eureka” is a complete catastrophe. The ambitiousness and indulgence sometimes translate into some daring sequences that are somewhat odd yet enjoyable. You get something out of the unusual demeanor it takes as its runtime goes. Yet, the main focus on why these stories should be connected is lost amidst the pursuit of meaning and profoundness.
Grade: D
‘Green Border’ (Dir. Agnieszka Holland)
A scene in “Green Border” (Photo: New York Film Festival).
Since the beginning of her career, Agnieszka Holland has been crafting quite a unique and compelling filmography that crosses plenty of genres and variety in stories. She has acclaimed works like “Europa Europa” and “The Secret Garden.” But then, further into the last couple of years, you see a television-series remake of “Rosemary’s Baby” (touching that film is a big mistake since nobody can replicate it), a fictionalized tale about Beethoven, and even more political-centered pictures that reflect on the secrets that the government hides from the people, as well as the crimes they put upon them. Some might not work to their fullest. Regardless, I still find something interesting lingering in them, one speck containing a lean muscle of engrossing cinema.
The latter half of her career contains more pictures that relate to this political and social aspect. She seeks to make audiences know about these tragic things happening on the other side of the world. That’s where her Venice Film Festival Special Jury Prize-winning “Green Border” comes in. And it has somewhat divided audiences on the front of its depictions of true-to-life scenarios. Some thought it was a return to form from the Polish filmmaker. Others believed it somewhat exploitative instead of its narrative operating by itself. I stand between the two sides. There are intriguing and thought-provoking (piercing, one might add) images and scenes that capture the impact of that ongoing social and humanitarian crisis in Poland. It tethers between exploitation and necessary viewpoints to present its message to the world.
Shocking and cruel as it may be, “Green Border” gets its message across quickly. However, on the other hand, I think Holland, lays her filmmaking hand way too much on the miserabilism of such a topic when she doesn’t need to. I believe the story by itself already deserves much time in the spotlight. It is being delivered by a director who has spent most of her time depicting some societal issues in history, which her most acclaimed works tend to do. But, the main gist for me was that when you look at each act in contrast, there’s some discrepancy in the approach.
While its beginning may be angsty, and deservedly so, to make people who are unaware of how the Polish government is handling Ukrainian, Syrian, and African refugees, the other half feels like it doesn’t have much going for it in comparison. You can have those types of moments scattered across your film to portray these situations as they indeed are—vile, inhuman, and evil. There needs to be a certain point at which the audience needs to breathe. And that may be the point, that there isn’t much time to do so in these situations. “Green Border” is incendiary yet too reliant on miserabilism to feel most engaging and piercing.
Grade: C+
‘Music’ (Dir. Angela Schanelec)
A scene in “Music” (Photo: New York Film Festival).
The German Film and Television Academy Berlin GmbH, better known as the DFFB, is one of the legendary film schools available in Europe. That school had legendary alums like Thomas Arslan and Christian Petzold. One other alumnus who stands out in an equal measure as the aforementioned filmmakers in terms of her storytelling vision is Angela Schanelec. They all came up with the same roots but departed from one another regarding their fortes and skills. Although I believe Petzold has the most potent directorial form out of the three, Schanelec doesn’t fall that much behind if you ask me. She addresses Germany’s current social predicaments, yet with a particular visual language and beauty that bathes in melancholy and life’s fragility to create a poetic feat that’s both divisive and gripping.
Some of her works are laborious to connect with from a first viewing or glance, as Shanelec often takes oblique, complex, creative, and innovative paths in her stories. From the work I have seen, they may have started as such. However, they culminate as touching and mystifying works. And the more you think about them (which is more than you’d think), you are left even more impressed at what she was able to do, even with such an angled procedure. On her latest cinematic venture, the German filmmaker wants to take a step further into the realm of the quiet and melancholic with a modern retelling of the classic Oedipus myth titled “Music“.
This is not the first time this tale has been presented in the cinematic format. Pier Paolo Passolini and Julie Taymor have made their reworkings. Schanelec wants to take a more cryptic (for better or worse) and methodical approach to accompany the style we are accustomed to seeing. Describing the plot is no easy task and not even worth it. Not because of its “difficult to transcribe” manner but due to the breadth and brio of the German filmmaker’s vision and artistic intertwining of despondency and hope. She takes plenty of liberties to tell her version of Oedipus’ tale. She switches the soliloquy of forthcoming calamity to pre-determined fate with a sense of liberation and freedom—the possibility of escaping something perceived as “etched in stone.”
It is all being captured more so by the images than the words spoken, which aren’t many. The soothing sounds of the nearby shore later are heard on a different note. The same thing happens with the shots of the plains, mountains, or even the prison’s walls. Like Alonso’s “Eureka,” many aspects of the “slow cinema” realm make their way toward “Music.” However, not in total and of the same degree. The difference between “Eureka” and “Music” is that the latter’s visual language helps to connect the dots within the cryptic persona of its narrative. However, both Alonso and Schanelec forcefully try to connect each story or vignette. An example of such is adding resplendent images that don’t add anything to how these characters intertwine.
“Music,” as most of Schanelec’s work, relies on pauses and long, uninterrupted takes. They are seen as a catalyst to build its beguiling (and occasionally frustrating) atmosphere. The film feels dream-like or covered in a haze, peeling away the humanistic emotions for something more mythical. That aspect that arrives from the cast’s performances does take away from the overall impactfulness of the images. Compared to her previous work, this one is hard to decipher by just a glance. You need to revisit it several times to piece the puzzle together. And that might be the breaking on why sometimes it becomes a frustrating and puzzling watch. When you finish the film, there’s an immediate obligation to go back to it again. There will be many gaps in the understanding of what Schanelec wanted to tell.
Grade: C
“Eureka,” “The Green Border,” and “Music” are currently playing at the New York Film Festival. The festival goes from September 29th – October 15th. Join us for continual coverage.
