AFI Fest Recap, Part Three — Life, Lessons
By William J. Hammon, ActuallyPaid.com
Part of what makes a film festival like AFI Fest essential — and really cinema itself as an artform — is its ability to hold a mirror up to ourselves as a people. It shows us who we are, who we’ve been, and who we have the potential to become. The human animal has evolved over hundreds of thousands of years, and as our capacity to learn grows, so too does our quest for betterment.
These final five films embody that exact concept, albeit through different approaches. Each of these entries is about either the figurative or literal act of teaching, and how we educate ourselves either through lived experience or practical structure. No matter our reaction to how the stories are presented, there’s value inherent in the lesson itself, as each one helps to hone our sensibilities and fine tune how we perceive the world around us.
About Dry Grasses
The ninth feature film by Nuri Bilge Ceylan — and the sixth to be submitted by Turkey to the Academy to compete for International Feature — About Dry Grasses is a very slow, contemplative work about unrealized potential and the walls we put up around ourselves which metaphorically double as hurdles to our own dreams. An intriguing fable about seeing the good in the life you have versus the one you want, there’s poignancy in how Ceylan depicts the mundane, but I think the story itself also succumbs to the trappings of its own rote nature.
Deniz Celiloğlu stars as Samet, an art teacher in a small mountain village, coming off the holiday break for the long winter term. He shares a small house with history teacher Kenan (Musab Ekici), and is desperate for his current assignment to end so that he can apply for a transfer to Istanbul (exposition details that government-employed educators are sent where there are shortages for predetermined periods of time before they can request relocation). His life is very humdrum, but he makes the most of it, as he’s considered a friend and advisor to pretty much all the disparate influences of the town, including the military and anti-establishment protestors. He’s also very popular with his students, particularly the overachieving Sevim (Ece Bağcı), who he sees as the one kid with a chance to make it out of the village and see the wider world.
Two major events threaten to scuttle Samet’s escape plans. On the positive side, he’s set up on a blind date with Nuray (Merve Dizdar, who won the Best Actress prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival for her performance), an English teacher in a neighboring village and partially disabled veteran (she lost a leg in an explosion). Initially disinterested, Samet introduces her to Kenan, but after they hit it off, he becomes jealous and makes his own moves on her, questioning his own desire to leave if being with her is an option.
On the much darker side of the equation, after a surprise inspection of the students’ belongings by the school’s administration, it is revealed that Sevim has written a love letter. Samet confiscates it from the other faculty, who giggle at the young girl’s infatuation (no clear reveal as to whom it’s directed, but there’s an implication that it’s Samet himself), and hides it for her protection. When she asks for it back, he lies and says he destroyed it. This leads Sevim and another student to file complaints with the new principal against Samet and Kenan, accusing them of inappropriate touching. This allegation is eventually quashed by higher-ups in the government who believe the principal overreacted and that the girls were being childishly vindictive (there’s an early scene where Sevim complains that Kenan is too boring and that she wishes someone would get rid of him), but ultimately meaning no harm. That doesn’t stop Samet from retaliating in a very ill-advised fashion, jeopardizing his reputation and his ability to leave if authorities conclude he has in fact done something wrong.
Both of these storylines have their merits, but they take far too long and end up going basically nowhere. It might be thematically appropriate for the film’s setting of a snowbound rural landscape (seriously, I got flashbacks to my high school winters in upstate New York on more than one occasion), but things drag on in ways that just aren’t satisfying. There are multiple scenes where Samet, Nuray, Sevim, Kenan, and others just talk in rhetorical circles that fail to advance the proceedings, particularly a dinner date between Samet and Nuray that includes several rounds of “What did you mean?/About what?/What do you mean about what?/About anything…” and a semi-climactic sequence where Samet tries to elicit an apology from Sevim without revealing that he knows she was the one who reported him. All of this pads the runtime out to over three hours, which would be fine if the story had more than an hour’s worth of content. It’s still beautifully shot and well-acted across the board, but I do wish I could have hit a fast-forward button at a few points.
American Fiction
American Fiction is a deliciously biting satire of patronizing and pandering in American culture, where well-meaning but still disingenuous people seek to amplify minority voices while still keeping them confined to pigeonholes and stereotypes, in this case, black people.
Jeffrey Wright shines in a nomination-worthy performance as Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, a novelist and literature professor who can’t get his most recent book sold to publishers, because even though he’s black, they believe his work isn’t “black enough.” His rage is made manifest in the form of Sintara Golden (Issa Rae), another well-off, highly-educated writer like him, who has just struck it rich with a novel about life in the ghetto, something she herself has never experienced. To watch her give a dramatic reading at a book festival is one of the funniest scenes in all of 2023 cinema.
Frustrated with this perception that black stories have to be reduced to issues like poverty, crime, racism, and victimhood — and at his wit’s end dealing with family drama courtesy of his sister (Tracey Ellis Ross), mother (Leslie Uggams), and brother (Sterling K. Brown), Monk sits down one night and hastily writes his own ebonics-laced modern minstrel book, which he eventually names simply Fuck!, under the wonderfully clever pseudonym Stagg R. Leigh. He does this purely to make a point about how white people profess to want to hear from minorities but only in contexts they deem appropriate, but of course, the idea backfires, and Fuck! becomes an overnight success, the best-selling novel he’s ever written, forcing him to further expand the lie and create the living character of Stagg R. Leigh as an ex-con poet of the streets.
Not only is the social commentary off the charts hilarious, along with the angst that many great artists have where their most popular work is the one they come to despise the most, but the underlying core issue is handled with intelligence and grace through the comedy. I remember having classes back in my college days 20-plus years ago where shows like Family Matters, The Jeffersons, The Cosby Show, and The Proud Family were used as part of a discussion as to whether or not there was a “proper” way to depict black people — or any demographic minority — in popular culture and media. This film, I feel, is the next step in that crucial conversation. The most damaging thing you can do to any marginalized group is characterize them as a monolith, but at the same time, if that depiction is profitable — and if it eventually leads to better opportunities for underrepresented groups — is there some good to come of it? The fact that Cord Jefferson is able to balance these weighty intellectual issues with some laugh-out-loud moments showing the absurdity of the very system he works within just goes even further to make this one of the best films of the year!
Inshallah a Boy
The kingdom of Jordan is one of our strongest allies in the Middle East, but that doesn’t mean they’re as progressive as we like to think we are. Case in point, its official Oscar entry, Inshallah a Boy. A testament to human resilience as well as a statement on how far we still need to go for true equity in society, Inshallah (meaning, “God willing”) is a heartfelt, intimate character study about a woman who only thinks she’s lost everything until someone else tries to take even more.
Nawal (Mouna Hawa) is a relatively happy woman in a stable household, even though she’s far from financially secure. She works as an in-home nurse and carer for a wealthy Christian woman with dementia, maintaining a kind of professional acquaintance with her patient’s daughter Saoud (Salwa Nakkara) and granddaughter Lauren (Yumna Marwen). She’s trying to have a second child, but all those plans are dashed when her husband dies suddenly in his sleep. Stricken with grief, Nawal’s pain is only worsened by the usurious insistence from her brother-in-law Rifqi (Hitham Omari) that she make good on her late spouse’s debts, particularly for a pickup truck he was paying off and the mortgage on their apartment.
Rifqi is initially polite in asking for money that Nawal doesn’t have, but becomes increasingly threatening and belligerent, to the point that he involves the courts to compel Nawal to give up all her worldly possessions, and possibly even her daughter, Nora (Celina Rabab’a). As it turns out, while Jordan is relatively liberal in some aspects of society, it is officially an Islamic state under Sharia Law in matters of inheritance. As Nawal only has a daughter, that means there is no male heir to her husband’s estate, and therefore everything is divided evenly, meaning Rifqi is legally entitled to half of his late brother’s assets. Rifqi uses this legal leverage to make ever more insane demands, even going so far as to low-key kidnap Nora so he can sue for custody.
Nawal’s only defense is to claim that she is pregnant, as she was trying to conceive at the time of death, though no test has yet come back positive. If the unborn child is a boy, then he becomes the sole heir, and Nawal is safe, hence the title. There’s a ton of irony in this piece, particularly the fact that a potential fetus has more rights than a living woman in a supposedly advanced society, and the fact that in order to help secure this long shot delay, Nawal must assist Lauren in getting an illegal abortion, the latter becoming pregnant accidentally through her own abusive ex. The power of Hawa’s performance, along with the timeliness of the issue, makes this a story that will resonate with audiences who are fortunate enough to get to see it.
The Peasants
65,000 individual oil paintings in his style, casting actors like Saoirse Ronan because they looked photorealistically similar to the subjects of Van Gogh’s work. It was a lovely, intriguing story rendered as no one had before. It was eventually nominated for the Oscar for Animated Feature.
This same team is back once again with The Peasants, Poland’s official entry for International Feature, and the bar has been raised. Based on a Nobel Prize-winning tome that has become standard curriculum in Polish schools, the Welchmans used artistic teams in four different countries to create even more paintings to bring the story to life. Initially filmed in traditional live action with the real actors, the paintings — this time evoking the styles of several early 20th Century Polish artists — change the film into a living dreamscape, with cleanup animators using brush strokes and fine lines to create a false depth of field, making the movie feel like it’s in 3D in some scenes. More importantly, the detailing is so realistic that promotional stills make it all look like a heavy color saturation filter on real photographs rather than animation cells. It’s so gorgeous to behold that you shouldn’t be surprised if your eyes water from the sheer beauty of it all.
From a story perspective, it’s even more compelling. Kamila Urzędowska stars as Jagna, a young woman living in a small farming village in the early 1900s. Vivacious and pretty, she’s captured the eye of every man in town, including the married Antek (Robert Gulaczyk) and his father, Mr. Boryna (Mirosław Baka), a recent widower who is also the richest and most influential man in town. Jagna has an affair with Antek but eventually marries Boryna when a sizable dowry is offered. The scandal, as well as the superstitious gossips of the town, turn Jagna’s good fortune and caring personality into sins of the flesh, casting her as a pariah and a scapegoat (not to mention the town whore), blaming her for every problem the town has, from an underwhelming harvest to invasive logging from land poachers. Sort of playing out like a Polish version of The Scarlet Letter, it’s amazing how quickly, brutally, and almost gleefully the people of this village are willing to demonize a woman for daring to have sexuality and a will of her own, an important reminder that progress is slow, but regression can be instantaneous, just like with Inshallah.
Perfect Days
And yet, at this year’s AFI Fest, he came out firing from both barrels, with this film and the 3D documentary, Anselm. I didn’t get to see the latter, but just this movie alone is dazzling enough to slake your thirst for Wenders’ wonderfully artistic style.
A slice of life character study, Perfect Days features a week in the life of a middle-aged man named Hirayama, played by Kōji Yakusho ( Memoirs of a Geisha, 13 Assassins), who won the Best Actor prize at Cannes for this role. Hirayama is a janitor who cleans public toilets for a living. He operates on a strict schedule of waking up in his small apartment before dawn, tending to his plants, and riding out in his van (after getting a can of iced coffee from a vending machine) to make his rounds. Once done, he goes to a local bathhouse to wash up, has a meal at a bar, a drink at another bar, and reads a book before turning in.
What makes this performance — and this story — so compelling is in the small deviations from Hirayama’s routine, where he simply observes the small joys of life. He acts as a mentor to his hormone-fueled ronin co-worker Takashi (Tokio Emoto). He helps a young boy lost in a park find his mother. He takes photographs of trees, and when a sapling sprouts near the roots, he adds it to his collection. He takes in his niece Niko (Arisa Nakano) for a few days when she runs away from home. In between stops in his work, he pops old cassette tapes of classic rock (Heart, Patti Smith, Van Morrison, etc.). A small piece of paper is surreptitiously slid into a crack in one of the walls in a stall containing an incomplete tic-tac-toe game, so Hirayama anonymously plays with the person who stuck it there.
All of these vignettes (which contain some of the most beautiful cinematography of the year) hint at a painful past that Hirayama has escaped by simply extricating himself from Tokyo’s version of the rat race, and we get clues here and there as to why he has chosen this bottom rung existence. And that’s where the truest lesson of the film lies. This is not a man who has been beaten down, but one who has learned the real value of his own life, and has taken it into his own hands, deciding that if he’s going to suffer, it’s going to be on his own terms, and at the same time he will relish the little moments that make it all worth it. A good book, the kind words of strangers, a tasty sandwich, the satisfaction of a hard day’s work, a game of “shadow tag,” all these things are worth well more than the sum of their parts to him, and that’s what brings him true happiness. My mother used to brush off her own misfortunes by musing that “Life gets in the way sometimes.” This wondrousl film is the zenith of that philosophy, as Yakusho and Wenders show through Hirayama (even more impressively when you consider that for the first two acts he’s largely silent, conveying everything with his eyes, face, and movements) give us a character who has opted to step aside and just let life happen, a peace of mind most of us can only dream of.
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Of these films, three have confirmed release dates. The Peasants will be in limited release beginning December 8th, American Fiction comes out on December 15th, and About Dry Grasses will have a domestic theatrical run beginning February 23rd. As for the other two, Perfect Days has a tentative limited release date of November 10th (as in this Friday) according to Rotten Tomatoes, while AMC has it listed for February 7th. Either way, some sort of release is highly likely, as the film is being distributed by Neon and MUBI. Similarly, Inshallah a Boy is penciled in for January 12th according to RT, but I don’t have solid confirmation.
Originally published at http://behindtherabbitproductions.wordpress.com on November 8, 2023.
