Tribeca Report: Of Stranded Socialists, Sad Skinheads, and Stuffed Hungarians

Along with an elevated pollen count, spring also heralds the annual arrival of the Tribeca Film Festival; those weeks in May where Manhattan lampposts decked out in brightly colored promotional banners compete with the blossoming magnolia and cherry trees to dot the post-winter cityscape with a splash of color. I've yet to come across any of the American Express free popcorn stands, but other festival festoonery has been spotted in various locations around the city. Once again the festival is taking great measures to make its presence known, and the planned weeklong event centered around Spiderman III makes last year's Tom Cruise multi-means-of-transport dash through Manhattan look like amateur hour. I haven't been bothered to read all the details, but I believe it includes non-stop blanket screenings of the "most expensive film ever made" projected into the night sky for the enjoyment of all New Yorkers. That Target has signed on as a signature sponsor of the festival makes this exercise in crass commercialism hardly surprising. (Don't even get me started on the ESPN-sponsored sidebar of sports-related films.) Yes, I'll admit to being both a crank and an elitist snob. Why, you may ask, shouldn't there be room in a festival for the likes of both Jia Zhangke and (sigh) Adam Carolla. Maybe it's the fact that Cannes is right around the corner (and I'm not going!), or simply a result of an extreme case of hay fever, but each year I find myself wondering why the TFF isn't quite like its brethren in Berlin, London, San Francisco, Pusan, etc. If pressed to choose one thing, I'd lay the blame at the festival's emphasis on world premieres. I'm sure there are many New Yorkers who would prefer a critically acclaimed "leftover" to an unknown, possibly awful, premiere. (Especially when ticket prices have gone up by 50%.) Still, buried between the Hollywood tripe and yet another Ed Burns film, there are some gems to be found at this year's festival, and I've been lucky enough to catch three of them so far.

1959's The Letter That Was Never Sent is one of two restored classics at this year's fest lensed by Russian master Sergei Urusevsky (the other being Grigori Chukhrai's The Forty-First.) One of four films that Urusevsky made with director Mikhail Kalatozov, it's sandwiched between 1957's The Cranes Are Flying and 1964's I Am Cuba. While nowhere near as powerful as either of those films, The Letter That Was Never Sent is an absolute must see for lovers of dramatic cinematography. The paper-thin plot revolves around four geologists, three men and one woman, who are sent to Siberia to search for a diamond mine. Driven not by dreams of personal wealth but rather for make benefit glorious nation of Russia, they drink a toast to the future funding of the space-race, and other examples of socialist pride. Though we do get a bit of backstory on all of the characters, and there are hints at sexual tension between alpha-male Sergei and the married Tanya, it's little more than a red-herring, for the bulk of the film finds the quartet fighting for survival after they are driven deep into the Siberian wilderness by an unexpected forest blaze. As the Siberian summer quickly turns to winter and the number of survivors thins, we learn of not one but several letters that remain unsent, as well as a thing or two about personal sacrifice for a greater good. Urusevsky's cinematography lends itself perfectly to this tale of man vs. nature, and visually there isn't a dull moment. It's been said the film influenced both the look of Tarkovsky's Stalker and Coppola's Apocalypse Now, and there are indeed elements here that can be found in both of those films. Urusevsky's camera is extremely fluid – from the opening shot taken from the back of an unseen helicopter as it rises upward, to the liberal use of hand-held shots as the group traipses through reeds and woods – there are scant few moments of stillness. Though not shot from a character's POV, the camera, at times, mimics the action we witness – swinging violently around when somebody is punched, or rapidly jerking up and down to the motion of an arm swinging a pickaxe. Though Urusevsky employs all sorts of Dutch and low angle shots, as well a handful of slow dissolves, they never feel overstated or overused, as they often can (and do) in lesser films. This new print from the Moscow film archives looks positively wonderful, and deserves to be seen on the big screen.

Shane Meadows' This is England is a strong contender to replace Alan Clarke's 1982 Made in Britain as the definitive British skinhead film. Set in 1983, this semi-autobiographical tale tells of Sean (Thomas Turgoose), a tween whose father was killed in the Falklands War, and his relationship with a group of skinheads several years his senior. The film works brilliantly as both personal coming-of-age story and searing unrestrained portrait of life in Thatcher's Britain. Like Meadows himself was at that age, Sean is an outsider taken under the wing of a kind skinhead named Woody (Joseph Gilgun), whose gang is content to sit around, drink beer, get high, and listen to Ska. Trading in his ratty sweaters and flared jeans for Doc Martens, suspenders, and Ben Sherman shirt (not to mention a freshly shaved head), things begin to look up for the troubled Sean until the arrival of Combo (Stephen Graham), just back from a stint in prison and full of racial hatred and nationalist pride. Though Combo's sudden reappearance threatens to shatter the bliss of Sean's surrogate family, the impressionable boy can't help but fall under the spell of the charismatic racist, who plays into Sean's anger at losing his dad in a senseless war. It's not long before Sean starts attending National Front meetings and intimidating immigrants along with his new neo-Nazi pals. What separates This is England from other similarly themed films is Meadows' refusal to reduce matters to simply right versus wrong, or left versus right. He reminds us that the skinhead movement was traditionally multi-culti, where working-class English and West Indian kids bonded over Jamaican artists such as Toots and the Maytals and The Upsetters. Mass unemployment under Thatcher resulted in the working-class feeling threatened, which gave rise to the racist attitudes one often associates with skinheads. Combo's politics may be abhorrent, but Meadows takes great pains to show how his character is not necessarily a victim, but a product of the Thatcher era, a divisive time to say the least. Unlike the typical one-dimensional skinhead we've seen countless times before, Meadows exposes a few cracks in the facade, revealing a complexity of contradictions that shuns a simple vilification of the character. Looking like a pint-sized Winston Churchill (and commanding a similar presence) Thomas Turgoose is remarkable as Sean, and there's no doubt his own troubled childhood informs much of his performance. As Combo, Stephen Graham makes a strong case for entry into the pantheon of great modern English actors, and his performance ranks up there with the best from Tim Roth, David Thewlis, or Ray Winstone. My only gripe with the film is the third act, where an event leads to an epiphany in a way that feels a bit forced, or at least too conventional when compared to everything that preceded it, creating a moral center that isn't really necessary. Even so, the film's strengths are such that this minor contrivance doesn't diminish its power. With its unmistakable allusion to The 400 Blows, This is England is a superb coming-of-age drama that is probably the greatest English film since Mike Leigh's Naked.

Though I'd be hard pressed to qualify this statement, it's my belief that Hungarian director György Pálfi is some sort of genius. How else to explain his uncanny ability to present acts so utterly repulsive, yet with the poignancy of a philosopher? Imagine if Slavoj Žižek directed a film for Troma – that's just a hint of what you can expect from Taxidermia. Pálfi's second feature is a triptych that traces a single family over three generations of men, each with a particular quirk, to put it lightly. Morosgoványi is a masturbating voyeur who does odd things with fire and performs unnatural acts on a dead animal. His son Kalman is a champion speed-eater, the pride of Hungary who is eagerly awaiting the IOC to accept it as an Olympic sport. His twig-thin son Lajoska is a modern-day taxidermist who spends most of his time caring for his father, now an immovable colossus, while fattening cats with bricks of margarine. The obsession with the body, and the excesses it can sustain, are reminiscent of the works of David Cronenberg, though there's an added cynicism here that borders on misanthropy. Pálfi doesn't think too highly of humankind, but his films come off as more playful than vitriolic. That's not to say they're easy to watch – especially with food or drink in front of you – but there's still something poetic in his disgusting images. Taxidermia is a fascinating treatise on excess, desire, and the politics of the body. It contains images that aren't easily forgotten, though it's a film that almost begs multiple viewings. Don't miss this one.

Comments

[colinr]

I'm really looking forward to seeing This Is England. I've enjoyed a lot of Shane Meadows' previous films (Small Time; Where's The Money, Ronnie?; Twentyfourseven; A Room For Romeo Brass), and while he took a misstep with Once Upon A Time In The Midlands he more than made up for it with the amazing Dead Man's Shoes.

I'm glad that he is also a director managing to make films in Birmingham rather than having to cater purely to a London-based audience.

And also his previous films gave Paddy Considine his best roles!

Had you seen many of his earlier films Filmbrain? Did they get a wide release in the US?

[Filmbrain]

I've seen several of his previous films on DVD only -- not sure which (if any) received a theatrical run here in the States.

I enjoyed Twenty Four Seven, A Room for Romeo Brass and Dead Man's Shoes. Never saw Once Upon a Time in the Midlands. Why was it a misstep? It always looked a bit twee, but I seem to recall it receiving critical praise.

[JackTheL]

“Imagine if Slavoj Ziek directed a film for Troma”

Haha! Too bloody right! I saw this in Hungary, and even though my girlfriend had to translate all the lines I thought it was a damn near perfect film, but not for the easy-queasy types!

[Jay]

colinr

I think his movies are spread across the Midlands rather than just being Birmingham based. He is from Nottingham, DH Lawrence country, and the East Midlands accent and landscape (both urban and country) seems to be a major part of his work.

[flixchick]

You are a crank, 'Brain, but I hear ya about the TFF. Why does it seem that the volunteers get younger and younger each year? I swear a kid answered a question for me this afternoon whose voice hadn't yet dropped.

As for This is England, I would go so far to say the film really fell apart in that final twenty minutes. That whole sequence stank of made-for-tv movie. But you're right in that it doesn't diminish the film, for so good is the rest of it.

[Jay]

I watched ‘This is England’ over the weekend, enjoyed it, concur with much of Filmbrain's review. Just wanted to throw in another movie that it seems descended from to a certain degree, and that is Ken Loach's 'Kes', both stylistically and thematically.

As luck would have it, last night 'The South Bank Show', a weekly arts programme, devoted an hour to Shane Meadows to coincide with the release of 'This is England'. After watching it, I admired Meadows even more, both personally and artistically. Some fascinating insights into his personal life.

He was the archetypal sensitive white working class kid, born and raised in Nottingham, neglected by the school system and a society that wrote off his aspirations. The milieu of ‘This is England’ is the world in which he grew up, council estate, poverty, petty crime. When he was about ten years old his father, who was a truck driver, discovered the body of a Scottish girl who had been kidnapped and sexually abused then murdered on a lay-by of a motorway. He was in the newspapers, on the TV news, and even though he was innocent and had discovered the girl, he was a suspect for a while, and this brought an early intimation of death and the darkness that lurks out there in the world. He was also tormented by other youths when cruel rumours went round that his father was responsible for the murder. He also remembers, at this very young age, his disillusionment with the nationalism surrounding the Falklands war when he saw the bodies of dead Argentinian and British soldiers on the news, and 16 year old Argentinian conscripts shivering with fear as POWs, this created an immense sadness in him. He remembers watching a man being beaten half to death by skinheads, and this also led to his disillusionment with the world he grew up in.

He wrote poetry and plays, managed to get to college, made a short when he was 21 or 22 which he entered for a prize. Stephen Wooley was impressed by his work and awarded him the prize. The £5000 he won went into making his longer short film called ‘Small Time’, a witty slice of life of petty criminals in Nottingham, starring Meadows himself. That got him funding for ‘Twenty Four Seven’

The most fascinating part was when he discussed how scripts come about. They gestate for quite some time in his mind, and emerge from conversations with his friends and creative soul-mates --- Paddy Considine is a close friend and creative partner, conversations with him led to ‘Dead Mans Shoes’, and his ideas come from unlikely sources. The script will be loose in the sense that room is left for changes during filming and improvisation too.

Martin Scorcese’s ‘Mean Streets’ was a key influence on him, it showed him a way of entering the world of working class petty criminals that he grew up around and was fascinated by, a way of approaching character and the themes he has engaged with through his career. A really interesting line he used about the close naturalism of his style, and the way that his characters and narratives are rooted in events that happened to him or that he has observed; ‘My work is in that midway point between cinema and documentary’.

I hope ‘This is England’ does well, it deserves to, and Shane Meadows is a filmmaker who deserves the confidence and backing to pursue his talent wherever it takes him. It’s great to witness and track a talent mature and bloom like this.

[Filmbrain]

Jay --

Thanks for sharing that. All through the film I got a strong sense of how personal this was for him.

I'm curious as to how the film will play in the States, given how specific it is to a place and time, and with events that didn't mean all that much over here. (It doesn't open until July, I believe.) I hope people aren't put off by that.

[celinejulie]

This is the first time I comment here. I’m glad you like TAXIDERMIA. I also like it a lot. Personally, I also think that the phrase “there's still something poetic in his disgusting images” that you use to describe TAXIDERMIA can also be used to describe “4” (2005, Ilya Khrzhanovsky) and A BATTLE IN HEAVEN (Carlos Reygadas). These three films should be shown together.

I also wrote something about TAXIDERMIA in my blog here:
http://celinejulie.wordpress.com/2007/04/09/hungry-for-hungarian-films/

As for Shane Meadows, I only saw A ROOM FOR ROMEO BRASS and ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE MIDLANDS. I like A ROOM FOR ROMEO BRASS very much, because it gave me a great surprise. At first I assumed that the film would be about the warm relationship between an adult and a child, but, fortunately, the film turned the other way. ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE MIDLANDS gave me no surprises like that.

Films about the making of skinheads seem to be very interesting. As for films about British skinheads, I haven’t seen MADE IN BRITAIN, but I like MY BEAUTIFUL LAUNDRETTE, but it doesn’t explore the skinhead problem deeply.

I wish I could see THIS IS ENGLAND, ROMPER STOMPER (1992, Geoffrey Wright), which is about Australian skinheads, and FUEHRER EX (2002, Winfried Bonengel), which is a true story about German Neo-Nazis. I guess these films can make people understand the problems better. However, I don’t know if Russia, which has the most alarming skinhead problems, has any films dealing with this issue yet.

[Jimmy]

Don't get Filmbrain started about Romper Stomper.

FB, you lament the TFF's focus on Hollywood features like Spider-Man 3, but I recall in recent years seeing shameless promotion of similar things at Cannes. Didn't they have Will Smith riding around on a jet ski at one point? I don't recall the films being promoted, but I think one was an animated Disney thing. Do you think the difference is a matter of degree? Is the barrier between commercial and independent film eroding?

[Jay]

My Beautiful Launderette was more about British South Asians in the middle of Thatcher's rule than an examination of skinhead culture. The great thing about Hanif Kureishi's script is how it subverts our expectations --- the two gay lovers in the film are the young British Pakistani guy and the former skinhead played by Daniel Day Lewis who used to racially abuse him.

[Jurgen]

I agree that TAXIDERMIA is repulsive, but I failed to see the poetry. It's interesting that you compare it to BATTLE IN HEAVEN, celinejulie, because I found both movies equally unpleasant and pointless.

[colinr]

Whoops, you're right Jay, I got the area mixed up! I also watched that South Bank Show episode and thought it was a very good piece. The Mean Streets inspiration was nice - I remember when his first two shorts were shown on British television for the first (and so far only) time in 1998 they were part of a 'Gangsters' season which included Once Upon A Time In America and the Japanese film The Most Terrible Time Of My Life. It was a mark of his talent that the shorts, although rough, were able to hold their own in such company.

The interview with Meadows also picked up on some of the reasons why Once Upon A Time In The Midlands felt like a misstep in that he was using bigger name actors that led to a certain artificiality compared to his other work - although Bob Hoskins remains the biggest name he used in Twentyfourseven, he was surrounded by unknowns. In Midlands the name actors had other name actors to play off against which, while having its own pleasures, didn't create the same atmosphere of realism. Perhaps this might be more of a problem for British audiences than international ones where Kathy Burke, Ricky Tomlinson, Vic and Bob and even the talk show host Vanessa Feltz have a certain baggage the audience has to get over (along with the somewhat forced western allusions)

celinejulie, a good short film I've seen on the subject of racism and skinhead is Skin Deep (imdb: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0298154/ ), which focuses on a young, light skinned Pakistani man who falls in with a group of racist skinheads through encountering them at his garage job. It is quite interesting, with the tension between the culture of his family and of his friends and of hiding his heritage from his gang pushed to the limit when he is expected to join in with attacks on people. It has an amazing final image of the young man shaving his head in front of his bathroom mirror, less as an acceptance of one side or the other but of his own rebellion against all the expectations everyone is forcing on him.

I'm also looking forward to The Letter That Was Never Sent, Filmbrain - I was very impressed by The Cranes Are Flying. When you say Letter is restored was the film previously unavailable or lost, or was it relatively well known but has now been cleaned up?