The 37th annual Seattle International Film Festival closed this weekend after an impressive 25 straight days of film screenings: 257 features and documentaries were on display, in five different cinemas scattered throughout the city. Seattleites are notoriously devoted film fans, and there was an abundance of new international product to be sampled at what’s billed as the largest, highest-attendance festival in the United States. The festival wrapped with a gala screening at Paul Allen’s luxurious Cinerama Theatre of Kevin Macdonald’s Life in a Day, a moving documentary compiled of clips submitted to YouTube from around the world on July 24, 2010. With the festival’s multitude of films exploring dramatically similar moments, SIFF could justifiably have been subtitled Life in 25 Days.
With so many screening slots to be filled in a festival this size, the quantity vs. quality dilemma invariably comes up, though there’s no denying the impressive variety of films programmed this year. The multitude of choices available ensured that every festivalgoer’s experience would be unique. While most of the films I viewed were highly recommendable (with three firmly planted in my year’s top ten), I can’t help feeling that perhaps a two-week festival length, combined with a slightly more selective screening process, might be beneficial and raise the overall stature of the festival. Regardless, the cinematic gems were here to be had; it just sometimes took a bit more effort to find them amongst the surfeit of product in a festival this large.
The Opening Night film, The First Grader, a well-meaning drama not quite as inspirational as it wanted to be, follows an 84-year-old Kenyan man determined to complete his education at a local primary school. Although the sumptuous hors d’oeuvre and dessert spread at the white-columned gala after-party may have seemed a bit at odds with the film's subject matter, once the cocktails started flowing and the dance floor filled, thoughts on the travails of an elderly lone African soon dissipated. Although The First Grader’s message that the power of education is the greatest freedom of all was never less than obvious, I was surprised that a film of such ultimate uplift would also contain the harrowing scene of a man forced to witness his family's execution.
It seems that more and more often for a film to be noticed on the festival circuit, some element of it must act to shock an audience out of its passive torpor, and SIFF this year was no exception. Tom Tykwer’s 3, an unmemorable tale of a man separately insinuating himself into a married Berlin couple’s sex life, contained one such moment. I don’t suppose I really needed to see the result of testicular cancer surgery plonked into a metal surgical pan, and yet this is regrettably the image that stayed with me after the uninspiring drama ended.
Likewise in the multi-Goya winning Black Bread, the horrors and cruelty of the Spanish Civil War are visited upon those surrounding the 10-year-old protagonist, as friends, family, and even horses become victims of the barbaric regime. A castration-by-rope was one of the more unpleasant moments in the film (and not just for the character himself). More cinematic degradations await the female lead in Bibliothèque Pascal, as this imaginative and stunningly photographed Hungarian sex-slave mindbender grows increasingly dangerous and disturbing before ending in a curious, unexpected locale.
Eddie Marsan, so impressive in Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky, reaches new levels of loathsomeness as an all-too-real abusive husband in actor Paddy Considine’s directorial debut, Tyrannosaur. In counterpoint to his heartfelt, loopy performance in my favorite film of the festival, Submarine, Considine here piles degradation upon degradation on victim Olivia Colman (and unfortunately was awarded Best Director at Sundance a few months ago for this dirge). While Considine does well by his actors (particularly the raw, moving Colman), you know you’re in for a depressing haul when the murderers and dog killers are the characters you’re meant to root for.
Perhaps it was this glut of (seemingly unnecessary) cinematic bloodletting which helped me fully appreciate the handful of gentle, original romances which became my favorites of the fest. I was captivated by Richard Ayoade’s debut film, Submarine, a Welch coming-of-age comedy detailing the troubled transition of its 15-year-old, wide-eyed protagonist into the equally messed-up world of adulthood. Obvious comparisons to Wes Anderson’s Rushmore are not completely unfounded, though I found Ayoade’s anarchically alive filmmaking style closer to that of '60s romps like Tom Jones or The Graduate. Noah Taylor (Shine) and Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky) give two of the funniest, most touching supporting performances of the year as the adolescent’s confused, flailing parents. Ayoade’s assured, original debut should not be missed, and though it was the first film I viewed at the festival, it remained my favorite.
An equally impressive, and deeply moving exploration on the subject of falling in love can be found in Andrew Haigh’s deceptively simple Weekend. The trajectory of two young British men falling for each other on the weekend before one is to leave for America, is somewhat reminiscent of Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise couple. As in that film, the pair here slowly, tentatively open up to each other, almost literally talking themselves into love, and perhaps surprising each other that this depth of feeling can manifest itself in so short a time. The performances by the two leads, Tom Cullen and Chris New, are achingly honest and ultimately heartbreaking. One of the highest compliments I can give to a film is when it doesn’t feel like a film at all, but instead a peek into actual lives being lived, and Weekend brilliantly does just that.
Brits continued their preeminence at SIFF 2011 with a pair of wonderful comedies riffing on some very Sweeney Todd-like themes. That film’s Mrs. Lovett herself, Helena Bonham Carter, has one of her funnest roles yet as the competitive culinary stepmum to renowned chef Nigel Slater in the delicious biopic Toast. Peroxided and squeezed into lime green '60s frocks, Bonham Carter has rarely seemed so loose and slyly funny, perhaps a reaction to her recent tamped-down The King’s Speech performance. Particularly uproarious is her housecleaning montage set to Dusty Springfield’s "The Look of Love" … the best cinematic use of that song since its debut in the original Casino Royale.
Burke and Hare, a deliriously silly black comedy about a pair of entrepreneurial cadaver suppliers in 1820s Edinburgh, featured one of the most entertaining ensemble casts of the festival. Simon Pegg and Andy Serkis headline a troupe which includes Isla Fisher, Tom Wilkinson, Christopher Lee, Tim Curry and a raft of memorable supporting characters all having a morbidly ghoulish laugh. Rarely has an ostensible 'true story' seemed so historically disrespectful and such bloody fun.
One of Scotland’s best-known exports, Ewan McGregor, was honored during the festival’s first weekend with the ‘Golden Space Needle’ award for outstanding achievement in acting. Consistently daring in his choices, McGregor is often perplexingly overlooked when acting honors are meted out (last year’s European Film Award for The Ghost Writer notwithstanding). The tribute commenced with a screening of Mike Mills' film Beginners, in which Mills surrogate McGregor copes with the coming out and subsequent death of his 75-year-old father. In a part unlike any other he’s played in his lengthy career, Christopher Plummer sinks his teeth into the flamboyant role of the father, and McGregor matches him step-for-step in a less showy, more reactive performance (which may help to explain why McGregor’s awards shelf remains relatively empty). While I feel the film would’ve benefited from more screen time for the unconventional character of Plummer’s wife (stylishly played by Mary Page Keller) rather than McGregor’s budding relationship with Mélanie Laurent, overall it was a respectable, often moving effort.
After a brief compilation of clips surveying McGregor’s career screened to the sold-out audience, Ewan bounded to the stage to accept his oddly shaped blown-glass prize (previous Golden Space Needle honorees include Anthony Hopkins, Ben Kingsley, Spike Lee and Francis Ford Coppola). Sitting at the foot of the giant Egyptian Theatre screen, McGregor reminisced on his varied roles starting with his breakout performance in Danny Boyle’s Trainspotting, a role he felt he absolutely had to play. After craning his neck to watch that film’s infamous toilet diving scene, McGregor spoke of the challenges involved in its filming. The audience howled when he described the most troubling shot of the sequence, where he had to look back between his legs at the camera, with the close-up cameraman “looking right up my jacksie.”
McGregor comes across just as you might expect – a self-deprecating, good-natured bloke who you’d likely enjoy trading stories with over a pint or two. As a young boy, he said, he was inspired by his uncle Denis Lawson (who prophetically had a recurring role in the first Star Wars trilogy), even though Ewan had no idea what 'acting' really was at the time. Now he admits, “What I like about acting is that there are no rules about it.” Indeed, McGregor remains a fearless performer, a cinematic adventurer willing to go wherever a role takes him – from roles as varied as his Obi-Wan Kenobi, to those in cult films such as Velvet Goldmine or The Pillow Book. Like Spencer Tracy before him, you rarely see the gears working when McGregor acts, his ‘everyman’ style enabling him to become a natural audience surrogate.
One of cinema’s great romantic swooners, when McGregor gets a role like he did in Moulin Rouge!, he hits it out of the ballpark. After watching a clip from Baz Luhrmann’s frenzied musical extravaganza, McGregor seemed visibly thrilled, and wondered aloud why more musicals like that were not being made. Over a decade after filming, he recalled in detail his feelings of awe working on the breathtaking Moulin Rouge! sets, the almost overwhelming vibrancy of the experience.
McGregor, commenting on how prolific he’s been of late, mulled over the idea of taking a small break from filmmaking to recharge the batteries and regain the spark. In addition to his lead role in Beginners, McGregor was also on display at SIFF in the romantic thriller Perfect Sense, about a couple that meet as the world slowly, inevitably shuts down. Starring opposite ravishing Eva Green, one had to wonder why exactly any sane person would even contemplate a break from ‘work’ like that, particularly when sharing a bathtub with Miss Green is part of the job description. Perhaps another of his trans-global motorcycle trips might be in order instead. Actually, as McGregor noted, people on the street tend to ask him more frequently about those bike documentaries than about any of his other films. Regardless of his next eventual career move, it was gratifying right now to see one of cinema's most reliable workaday actors finally getting a bit of well-deserved and overdue recognition.
For me, one of the cinematic highlights of the festival was the special presentation of Raúl Ruiz’s ravishingly enigmatic Mysteries of Lisbon (reviewed here by my colleague Jaime Esteve Bengoechea). This epic undertaking, which encapsulates Life, Love, Fate, and Death in 19th century Portugal, comes to us via the precise, cameo-like portraits of its many intertwined characters. Ruiz’s hypnotic camerawork sways side-to-side before locking down on a character, capturing it as a great painter would a portrait subject. Even with the 4 ½ hour running time (intermissionless, on a hard wooden seat), I felt completely transported into another world, one of beauty and intrigue where history became thrillingly alive.
A great benefit of a festival this large is the rare opportunity to see many new documentaries up on the big screen. As a student of film, one of my favorites was These Amazing Shadows, an overview of the U.S. National Film Registry and the dedicated film preservationists working to secure this nation’s cinematic heritage. The documentary is laden with classic clips from the anointed films, plus insightful interviews with preservationists, scholars and filmmakers (including perennial hopeful John Waters, whose Pink Flamingos may one day be the ultimate litmus test of the Registry’s inclusiveness).
It was also interesting to see footage in the documentary of James Stewart testifying before Congress on the rights of filmmakers to keep their films unaltered, specifically un-colorized. Especially in contrast to a great film that had screened a few days earlier, in slightly altered form. Douglas Fairbanks’ amazing 1924 fantasy The Thief of Bagdad has been 're-imagined' by radio personality Shadoe Stevens, which essentially meant overlaying a new soundtrack of wall-to-wall Electric Light Orchestra songs onto the film. While there’s no denying that at times ELO’s music matched up almost magically with the imagery on the screen, more often than not the songs drew attention to themselves, which seemed to pull me out of the film’s fantastic world. Stevens took to the stage after the screening, almost apologetic for his ever-evolving decades-long obsession of tinkering with the film. He then spoke of his desire to colorize the Raoul Walsh classic in the palette of Maxfield Parrish, praising the evolution of colorization technology, and was quite enthusiastic with the results on the film frames he’s tested. While I applaud Stevens' passion for Fairbanks’ indelible The Thief of Bagdad, and welcome any opportunity to see it again on the big screen, I couldn’t help but side with Jimmy Stewart and his plea for a film’s artistic integrity. Sometimes leaving well enough alone really is the right thing to do.
Luckily though, SIFF enabled me to catch two amazing cinematic works of art up on the big screen just as their filmmakers had intended. Powell and Pressburger’s ravishing 1947 Technicolor classic Black Narcissus was screened, looking as fresh and radiantly crisp as the day it opened 64 years ago. (Additionally, itsgreat cinematographer was featured with a screening of Cameraman: The Life and Work of Jack Cardiff.) The results of the never better state-of-the-art digital projection on display at this year's festival have truly made me a believer in the technology, even though until recently I’ve been somewhat of a 35mm purist.
As great as many of the films were at SIFF 2011, in my opinion none could top Federico Fellini’s 1960 masterpiece La Dolce Vita. I’d missed seeing the film a month earlier at TCM’s Classic Film Fest, so it was a distinct pleasure to awake early to see this beautifully restored print in all its black-and-white glory, with Nino Rota’s thrilling original score, and Anita Ekberg, a kitten, and Marcello Mastroianni frolicking about the Trevi fountain. Pure cinematic bliss, just as Fellini intended.
So whether it was life in 1960s Roma or 1920s Hollywood, Life in a Day or 25 … the breadth and diversity on display at this year’s SIFF really did offer something for every cinematic taste. Although SIFF 2011 has now ended, I’m sure there are many devoted Seattle film lovers who wish it continued still, concurring with Jayne Mansfield when she cried, “Too much is never enough!”