Harmony Lessons (2013).

Review. Interpretation. Observations. Spoilers.-

The last film I saw at CIFF 2013 was a character study called Harmony Lessons written and directed by Kazakh film-maker Emir Baigazin. The film revolves entirely about a 13-year old boy named Aslan who lives with his grandmother in a crime-ridden village in Kazakhstan. His school is shown to be run by its students. They work with each other through a certain heirarchy. And in this social code, we find Aslan to be a complete misfit.

Some kids at school trick Aslan into degrading himself unknowingly, only to laugh at him later. He is humiliated and ostracized. But the quiet and detached Aslan lets it slide, comfortably withdrawing into his own internal world. You don’t ever get to know Aslan well enough to be able to root for or empathize with him, but you are always intrigued by him.

Omar (2013)

Walking out of Omar at CIFF 2013, I didn’t think for a second that the Palestinian film had the potential to be an Oscar contender. Overall, the film worked for me. But not very well, I must add. It was engaging, eventful, evenly paced, and cleverly plotted. However, it fails to entice, enthral or reward the viewer emotionally.

Omar is part-time baker, full-time revolutionary. He scales Israel-Palestine boundary walls every other day and almost gets shot. But Omar treats it like just another day at the office. He belongs to a rebellion that wants to take on armed forces and evict them out of the country despite being vastly outnumbered. They consider themselves freedom fighters, going as far as ambushing soldiers from a distance. But we never see what Omar gets from all of this. His ideological stance on the war or people around him remains unknown. All we know is that he belongs to a rebellion that provides him a sense of group identity. Apparently, that is all it takes for Omar to risk his life everyday and eventually go to war. Film-maker Hany Abu Assad doesn’t believe he needs to show us what motivates Omar to live this daredevil life. That Omar lives it stone-faced further confounds the viewer. He acts as if he has nothing to lose, when in fact he’s shown to share a strong bond with his ever-smiling naivete lover Nadia.

Walesa. Man of Hope (2013)

Andrez Wajda’s biopic film “Walesa. Man of Hope” revolves around Lech Walesa (Robert Wieckiewics), a libertarian and revolutionary, who brought the first trade union to Poland during its communist regime. The film takes us through his life, his deeds and the driving force behind the two.

The film opens with a lady and her assistant in her car. They pull up in front of Walesa’s apartment and she introduces herself a famous journalist from the West. The two of them sit beside Walesa about to begin their interview. Walesa brashly asks her, “Is this interview going to hurt me or help me?” “That depends entirely on what you say,” she says composed. Meanwhile, we see that someone else is monitoring and recording their conversations. We learn later that this person is an official of the country.

The Priest's Children (2013)

The Priest’s Children directed by Vinko Bresan is one of the more mainstream films I saw at CIFF 2013. It was silly, comical, family-friendly and lacking in substance. However, I don’t feel strongly enough to trash it or dismiss it outright. A film experience like this doesn’t warrant such emotion. My feelings are mixed, somewhere between disappointment and annoyance. I’ll admit though, I was mildly amused.

The premise is plain as day. Set in futuristic Croatia, where the country’s death rate considerably outweighs its birth rate, a man confesses to a priest that he is a murderer. He kills people before they are born, that is, by working for a condom factory. Did that score a chuckle out of you? Then perhaps this is your kind of film. Petar goes on to state that he cannot afford to lose his job, but can’t help feeling guilty for sinning in this manner. The priest lets him in on an idea, one that allows him to eat his cake and have it too. He advises the man to prick a tiny hole in every condom before it is packaged. The two men conspire together on a quest- to reverse the death-rate-to-birth-rate ratio- with the help of an eccentric pharmacist who takes up the task of replacing contraceptives with vitamin pills.

Salvo (2013)

One of the dullest films I saw in 2013 was a film called Salvo directed by Fabio Grassadonia and Antonio Piazza. I looked it up before the screening, only to find that it received multiple awards at the Cannes film festival. This, I figured, was reason enough for me to choose it over the other five films playing simultaneously at CIFF 2013. However, this choice misfired terribly.

Salvo’s plot is wafer-thin. A gangster named Salvo and his boss go to another part of town to kill select people. Why they do it, what they have at stake, what this is in response to-- we are given none of these details. Instead, the film-maker chooses to focus on the more trivial details; like what time Salvo sets his alarm, what his servants think of him, whether his hostage girl is hungry and whether fish tastes better in a dog bowl.

The Whirlpool (2013)

“Not for the faint-hearted” was all I had to see to choose a screening of The Whirlpool at CIFF 2013 over one of Oh Boy, a European Film Award winning black-and-white comedy. I am naturally drawn to boundary pushing films that can stick a wrench in my gut and effectively reinforce my bleak world-view.

The Serbian film directed by Bojan Vuk Kosovcevic failed to adequately satisfy my cinematic appetite. However, I still remain in praise of what it set out to do and how it attempts to accomplish just that, even though I found the ending quite inconclusive and ambiguous. I couldn’t dismiss away such an ambitious film that has so much going for it. But I wouldn’t deem it a success either.

Michael (2011)

I first saw Markus Schleinzer’s Michael at the Chennai International Film Festival in December 2011. The festival was powered by obscure films from unsung directors and with respect to narrowing down my choices, I certainly had my work cut out. I don’t like going by plotlines. Stories don’t matter to me nearly as much as storytelling and characters do. Critical acclaim was the only deciding factor. But most of these films hadn’t even been released. Michael premiered ‘In Competition’ at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. I learnt of the premise only after the presenter said “The film is about a paedophile who locks up a kid in his basement.” My hopes were up. I like films that permeate into the dark depths of the human mind. Michael did that and more.

A half-bald man is just getting home from work. The house is a barren place. Empty. Quiet. Lifeless. You hear the sound of things being moved, things being dropped, things being carefully placed. The window blinds fall. He takes the stairs down to the basement and unlocks a heavy metal door. “Come on” he says. A little boy walks out of an unlit room. They share a silent dinner and watch TV hoping to inspire a hint of life into their lives. The boy is urged downstairs, back to the basement. The man follows shortly after and shuts the heavy metal door behind him. The film cuts to a visual of the man washing his genitals. Say Hello to our lead character, Michael (Michael Fuith). And his boy toy, Wolfgang (David Rauchenberger).