The Rake Magazine

Author: Peter Schilling

  • The Joy of Insignificance

    Poor Eran Kolirin. When I spoke with the director of The Band’s Visit a few weeks ago, he had been traveling so much that his jet lag kept him from even an hour’s sleep. Then, just minutes before this interview, he managed to whack his head against the door frame of the car that brought him to the Nicollet Island Inn. Despite all this, he was a gracious interviewee.

    I loved this movie. The Band’s Visit is funny, touching, and filled with performances so subtle and sweet, it makes you swoon. When I emerged from the theater, I ached to spend a quiet evening over tea with these characters, talking about nothing, and talking about everything.

    The Rake: The film opens with "Once, not long ago, a small Egyptian police band got lost in Israel. Not many people remember this. It wasn’t that important." Why is the "unimportant"… important?

    Eran Kolirin: Some of this came in this book by Ali Salem, famous Egyptian playwright, the only one who ever came to Israel. He wrote this lovely book about his trip called Journey Into Israel. At the beginning of his book he describes how he lost his way in his car when he came from being a bit stressed and scared from visiting Israel for the first time. Instead of getting to Tel Aviv he got to Netanya. Not a small town like the movie, but it wasn’t where he was heading. So he has to stay there, but he describes a conversation between himself and this girl at the front desk of his hotel. And this tension between this very big premise of history—an Egyptian writer in Israel—and suddenly life throws you into something unexpected and unintentional. The tension between the big story in the background and the small story out front, I found very interesting.

    Rake: The Band’s Visit reflects a rich understanding of every character, even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant people. Like the man on the phone. Are any of these people from your life?

    Kolirin: You have to find yourself in every character that you write. When my wife and I lived in an apartment in Tel Aviv, there was this guy sitting in his car waiting for hours and hours. We used to call him "The Waiter", because that’s all he would do. Finally, one day I saw him in his car passionately kissing this woman. I think this guy was just waiting for this woman. He waited and waited and something finally happened.

    Rake: Tell me how you ended up composing this film. Did you just read Salem’s book and think about a being lost…

    Kolirin: The process is always this: First you have this Egyptian band. Then you ask why? Why is this important? Then I can go back and think of my influences, the Egyptian films that I used to enjoy as a child, which influenced me. In fact, so much that I originally wanted Omar Sharif in the starring role. But your first impulse just comes to you. Then you analyze it backwards.

    Rake: There’s a political undertone, but a distinct lack of religious undertone. None of the Egyptians, for instance, are ever seen stopping to pray. Was this a conscious effort on your part?

    Kolirin: That’s an interesting question. In my life I’m very religious in certain ways, but not with the exterior stuff. There’s something religious in the movie in you insist on looking at it this way—but not in the way the characters act. The conflict is religious, but on a very big scale, but not when a Muslim meets a Jew, not on this level.

    Rake: There seems to be a wonderful spontaneity in the film. Like the scene in the restaurant, it felt very real…

    Kolirin: Well, it wasn’t spontaneous, it was completely controlled. I don’t know how to improvise. It’s funny that you say that because it’s real—I hope it’s real!—but actually it’s very unrealistic. It’s not naturalistic, it’s very slow acting with precise gestures. Like the scene in the rollerskating rink, with dramatic gestures. But sometimes you have to be very unreal to get something real.

    Rake: The Band’s Visit seems to be a call for peace, though a very subtle one–it certainly doesn’t hammer you over the head with a message. But it does focus on the lovely, small things that unite us–food, conversation, music. And if you look at that dinner table scene, with the family staring down the musicians and arguing among themselves, it even suggests that our family strife and our squabbles are the same.

    Kolirin: I don’t go it thinking I have this message of peace. The movie likes these characters and is OK with them. That’s something peaceful. Just to let people have the time to think for themselves, to communicate with each other, to share emotion with each other is necessary.

    Rake: In an interview with Filmmaker Magazine you said that you don’t think peace is achievable in the Middle East. And yet the film suggests otherwise.

    Kolirin: Oh, yeah [Laughs]. If you ask me on a realistic level if I look at what’s happening and do I have any clever solution, unfortunately all I see is bloodshed. Again, there’s reality and there’s the movie that you make, which can yearn for some other kind of existence. That doesn’t mean that in real life if I observe our politics I think it’s very bad.

    Rake: I read that there was hope this would be shown at an Egyptian film festival…

    Kolirin: No. There’s no way it can be shown in Egypt.

    Rake: At all? Anywhere in the country?

    Kolirin: Formally, no. There’s a ban against any kind of cultural relationship with Israel. And it was accepted at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival, but it was rejected at the last minute due to political pressure. It’s shown in film festivals where I’ve met many audience members from the Arab world. But not formally in any Arab state. It’s a shame, really.

  • Fly Me To The Moon: Animation for All Ages

    Once again, the library’s very own cinema sprites, Deb Girdwood and Isabelle Harder, bring your lucky kids some of the finest animation in the world—and we’re not talking Saturday-morning corporate fare, either. Drag the offspring to the library for such inspired lunacy as “Petalocity,” a story of “a little girl who goes to extremes of bravery in order to keep her potted plant safe.” These shorts could very well rouse your children to write, draw, sing, and maybe even embark on their own heroic endeavors. And that’s far better than further inflaming their desire for Happy Meals, no? Part of the Childish Films series, this show will be introduced by local animator Ben Bury.

    Central Minneapolis Library, 300 Nicollet Mall; 612-630-6000.

  • Funny Games

    Word has it that controversial director Michael Haneke (The Piano Teacher, Caché) simply remade his original 1997 shockfest shot by shot. But who cares? The original Funny Games is hands-down one of the most disturbing films ever made; and if this one has Naomi Watts in the lead we’re, well, game. With the story of a bourgeois family who, while vacationing at their lake home, are attacked by a pair of young men clad in what appear to be Wimbledon tennis outfits, Haneke managed not only to raise the tension, ever so slowly, to unbearable levels; he also made us, the audience, feel culpable. The ’97 version is a masterpiece and possibly the worst date movie ever. The remake promises to be equally unsettling.

    Lagoon Cinema, 612-825-6006.

  • Arranged

    Here’s an interesting show for you and the kids: Arranged, a tale of two Brooklyn teachers—Rochel, an Orthodox Jew, and Nasira, a Syrian Muslim—both of whom are in the process of being set up in arranged marriages. Somehow they manage to become close friends. By setting the film in a public grade school and forcing these two characters to endure the unquenchable curiosity of their young charges, the directors, Diane Crespo and Stefan Schaefer, have created a film that invites dialogue without battering you over the head. This sweet little movie is full of fascinating characters and plenty of fine moments, especially those illuminating the painfully awkward steps toward meeting the men with whom these women will spend the rest of their lives. Watch to see that an arranged marriage has many of the same pitfalls as today’s conventional courtships. This screening is part of the Sabes Foundation Minneapolis Jewish Film Festival.

    Sabes Jewish Community Center, 4330 S. Cedar Lake Road, St. Louis Park; 952-381-3400.

  • The Counterfeiters

    Told in flashback, The Counterfeiters is the exciting true story of Salomon Sorowitsch, who, in the years before World War II, was the world’s greatest counterfeiter. Arrested in Berlin, Sorowitsch is sent to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp—as both Jew and habitual criminal he’s considered doubly threatening. But the Germans find a use for Sorowitsch, putting him to work on “Operation Bernhard,” the Nazi plan to counterfeit U.S. dollars and the British pound, flood the market, and subsequently wreck the Allies’ economies. The prisoners involved in the operation—an uneasy mix of bankers, printers, and criminals—are given preferential treatment over the other Jews. Nevertheless, their actions have devastating consequences. As Sorowitsch, Karl Marcovicks is simply brilliant: At once a charmer and a rogue, you can’t take your eyes off him.

    Edina Cinema, 3911 50th St. W., Edina, 651-649-4416.

  • The Band's Visit

    "Once, not long ago, a small Egyptian police band arrived in Israel. Not many people remember this. It wasn’t that
    important." So begins The Band’s Visit, an understated little film from Israeli
    director Eran Kolirin. When no one is at the airport to meet the eponymous
    band, the musicians, dressed in baby blue police uniforms and lugging their
    instruments through the village streets, are forced to split up and crash at
    the homes of the bemused inhabitants. But like many unimportant moments in our
    lives, The Band’s Visit is really about those quiet minutes spent connecting
    with fellow human beings, sharing observations, memories, pain, suffering, and,
    of course, love-moments we remember forever. There is little to say about this
    beautiful picture other than that it succeeds marvelously at making us feel
    profoundly happy, a feat that eludes almost every movie out there. ‘

    Edina Cinema, 3911 W. 50th
    St., Edina; 651-649-4416.

  • La Bohème

    What better way to spend your Valentine’s Day than
    taking in La Bohème, a silent, melodramatic classic at the beautiful and, dare
    we say, sexy Heights Theater. This 1926 film, based on the Puccini standard,
    has all the usual suspects: the tragic
    Mimi, a consumptive, and her jealous lover, the Bohemian poet Rodolfo. Their
    love affair and eventual separation unfolds in all its emotive glory to the
    luscious sound of the Wurlitzer organ. Lillian Gish, then one of the cinema’s
    brightest stars, personally chose the great King Vidor to direct, and the
    result is a beautiful and touching movie that will send you and your beau home
    in each other’s arms.

    Heights Theater, 3951 Central Ave. N.E., Columbia Heights; 763-788-9079.

  • Our Man in Havana

    Unavailable on DVD in the U.S., this 1959
    British noir classic reunites director Carol Reed and writer Graham Greene, the
    sly duo who gave us The Third Man and The Fallen Idol, also classics. Here,
    Alec Guinness plays James Wormold, a British vacuum cleaner salesman stationed
    in Cuba who is enlisted as a spy for
    Queen and country. Concerned that he is going to lose this prized position,
    Wormold concocts a story about secret rockets, using vacuum cleaner circuit
    diagrams to fool the British Secret Service into believing he’s onto a Russian
    missile scheme. Shot entirely in Cuba-Castro’s government was, at the time,
    eager to encourage a film that portrayed a corrupt Batista regime.

    Parkway Theater, 4814 Chicago Ave. S., Minneapolis;
    612-822-3030.

  • What Is It?

    What is it? Debuting for the first time in
    Minnesota and unavailable on DVD, What Is It? is Crispin Glover‘s 2005
    directorial debut (lately he played Grendel in Beowulf). The movie is described
    by its director as "being the adventures of a young man whose principal
    interests are snails, salt, a pipe, and how to get home as tormented by an
    hubristic racist inner psyche." Starring Michael Blevis, a young man with Down
    Syndrome, and Mr. Glover as a deus ex machina in a fur trenchcoat and flowing
    locks, the film also features a fellow in blackface, a bevy of naked women in
    elephant masks, and snails aplenty. What is it? Armed with slideshow and
    commentary, Glover will be on hand to explain. No one under eighteen will be
    admitted.

    Oak Street Cinema, 309 Oak St. S.E., Minneapolis; 612-331-3134.

  • One Curmudgeon's Opinion: The Ten Best Films of 2007

    Ah, year’s end: the time to reflect on the bounty that was the 2007 movie year. There were many truly great films, one that I would actually call a classic, scores of excellent documentaries, and even a bunch of major studio flicks that are actually worth watching and only missed this collection by a hair (I’m thinking Sweeney Todd and Juno–which was the fruit of a major studio).

    Sadly, the Oscars are going to ignore some of the best, and it’s becoming apparent that, for the third year in a row, the Academy is going to ignore the finest performance by a male lead for the third year in a row. In ’05 no one, in my mind, was better than Jeff Daniels in The Squid and The Whale: a brutally honest portrayal of a man falling apart in his career and his watching his sons desert him. In ’06, Toby Jones was Truman Capote in Infamous (showing us both the joy and the despair of being Truman). That film was utterly destroyed by the inferior Capote a year earlier. This year, Tommy Lee Jones was perfect in the deeply flawed In the Valley of Elah. His examination of a soldier coming to grips with the death of his son–and, in essence, his faith in his country and the military that ostensibly protects it–was simply magnificent. Since he didn’t even get a Golden Globe nomination, there’s not a junebug’s chance on a windshield that Jones’ll get any recognition.

    Sadly, this was also a year that saw some of the finer big-budget films fall to the wayside, as garbage like 300 and Wild Hogs raked in the dough over Grindhouse and Zodiac. But them’s the breaks, I suppose.

    Without further bloviating, here’s my favorite from the year:

    10. Grindhouse One of the battiest and most enjoyable three hours you could spend in a theater. Real grindhouse fare is only fun if you’re dead drunk or stoned, and even then it’s damned tedious. Directors Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino know this, and made a pair of crack films that stand up to repeated viewing. The fake trailers, fake blood, awesome car chases and sexy chicks made Grindhouse a barrel of fun. Why Miramax didn’t release this in the summer–and during the drive-in theater season–is beyond me.

    9. INLAND EMPIRE Yes, it is supposed to be in all-caps. David Lynch’s most bizarre film (and that’s saying a hell of a lot), INLAND EMPIRE bookends his masterpiece Mulholland Dr. as the most thorough and damning examination of the nightmare that is Hollywood, the devourer of dreams (and dreamers).

    8. My Kid Could Paint That Sad, beautiful, and the most thought-provoking documentary of the year. Amir Bar-Lev’s little film about four-year-old Marla Olmstead, who may or may not have painted giant abstract paintings that have sold for many hundreds of thousands of dollars. Some people walk away from My Kid Could Paint That convinced Marla painted these, more come away feeling like her parents are charlatans. But everyone comes away conflicted about the nature of modern art, child rearing, and their own complicity in Marla’s damaging fame. Watch it with your children for an even more complex experience.

    7. Brand Upon the Brain! Read my review here. A wonderful film. I doubt fifty people saw this thing when it was in town. Soon to arrive on DVD, but where?

    6. Killer of Sheep Shot in 1977 in the Watts district of Los Angeles, and suppressed for these thirty years because director Charles Burnett had never secured the rights of the songs in the film. Worth the wait: Killer of Sheep is an unsparing look at the vicissitudes of poverty, how adults try to maintain their dignity and children try to find joy in the midst of such despair. Utterly heartbreaking.

    5. The Lives of Others This tale of an East German Stasi officer who finally becomes a human being was made even more poignant with the death of its star, the great Ulrich Muhe, who died this last spring from stomach cancer. No doubt he was suffering when the film was being made. A wonderful movie about the power of art to wreck the calculating evil of the state.

    4. Great World of Sound This sweet, melancholy little comedy never made it to Minneapolis–it’s amazing that the damn thing ever saw the light of day. Less a comedy than a thorough and uncompromising look at the life of snake-oil salesmen: in this case, losers with the Great World of Sound company, a so-called recording studio whose one goal is to fleece aspiring musicians. The director, Craig Zobel, could have taken the easy route and made the myriad auditions of amateur singers into fodder for cheap laughs or American Idol parody. But no one in Great World of Sound gets off easily, though everyone–even the rip-off artists–emerge with their dignity intact. A fascinating movie, less funny than moving, and anchored with a wonderful performance by Kene Holliday. When this finally hits DVD, put it at the top of your NetFlix queue.

    3. There Will Be Blood (opens at the Uptown on January 4) As epic and weird as Moby-Dick, Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood is bound to be a big, fat flop, box-office wise. The story of an oil man who inherits a son, meets a mad evangelist, and, of course, strikes oil and sticks it to both the major corporations and, in a sense, God. The insane ending is making everyone fidget, the movie is long, uncomfortable, filled with disagreeable characters who look as if they’re going to rip one another’s heads off, and has a screeching soundtrack reminiscent of Stravinsky‘s most disturbing work. This is one strange masterpiece that will haunt you for days.

    2. Zodiac Sadly, no one knew quite what to do with this movie. Zodiac looked like another great serial-killer thriller from David Fincher, the guy who gave us Seven, and the studios tried their level best to market it as such. But it’s far from a bloody slasher: Zodiac is instead a movie about frustration, about paranoia, and its nearly three hours leave you exhausted. And that’s great. The story of the men–police officers, journalists, and even a political cartoonist–who tried desperately to catch California’s Zodiac killer, and lost their lives (figuratively) doing so. These men are obsessives, following one lousy lead after another, and the movie does the same. Fincher’s direction
    is perfect, as obsessed with detail as the detectives who must search every nook, cranny, and dust mote at the scene.

    1. Ratatouille In reviewing Evan Almighty, The Onion brought up an interesting point: "Historically, throwing money at a comedy has never made it funnier, because there’s nothing more cost-effective than a joke, and nothing more ruinous than a spectacle trampling all over it." However, I can think of two exceptions to that rule: The General, Buster Keaton’s Civil War comedy that used the spectacle of soldiers, cannons, and a train crashing into a river to great comic effect (and could not do without it). But in sending a real locomotive crashing into the drink, Keaton made The General the most expensive silent film of all time, and might have ended his career. Then there’s Ratatouille. Now, Ratatouille’s budget, well over a hundred million dollars, is not so much the result of spectacle, but the cost of labor. See, this isn’t the 1930s, and you can’t hire animators to make a cartoon that’s as good or better than Snow White and Pinocchio and pay them in pennies, dirt, and empty promises the way Uncle Walt used to.

    But I digress. Ratatouille is sweet to look at, and could be the finest animated movie in history. Look at that kitchen–the reflections in the copper kettles, the crumbs under the stove, the way the marble steps are worn out just so. You could stare at the far corner of the screen, away from the action, and get an eyeful of rich detail. Director Brad Bird moves his camera through this crowded kitchen with the dexterity of Keaton leaping through windows and ladders. Ratatouille works on so many levels: the film is a feast of good humor, rich characterization, with a witty script and dynamite direction. It is slapstick and screwball mixed together (one is violence, the other sex), and is a touching examination of the sticky relationship between artists and critics. The vocal talent is spot-on, Patton Oswalt simply perfect as Remy, the rat who so yearns to cook that he’ll risk his life. Of course you should watch this delight with a child: the stuff they won’t get they’ll ache to understand, and maybe, just maybe, you can get that picky eater to chow on the titular–and vegetarian!–dish.

    Once again I have to gripe: Ratatouille garnered rave reviews across the board, and yet critics have seemed squirmish to place this on their year-end lists. Why? Cartoons don’t rate? Children’s films don’t rate? Rest assured, Ratatouille, which deserves every Oscar and accolade there is, will instead get its sole nomination in the Best Animated Feature category, along with Bee Movie and other lousy fare (even Persepolis, which will probably be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film, will be spared that indignity). I guess it doesn’t matter. Ratatouille ranks up there with the greats: His Girl Friday, Bringing Up Baby, and Sullivan’s Travels to name a few. All of which were ignored by critics and academies as well.