What Did You See at SIFF This Week?

Here we are, watching our way through the last week of SIFF, seeing as much as we can before the sun and World Cup vie for our attention. All of us at The SunBreak weigh in with our picks and pans of the festival films we saw so far this week.

It seems like everyone saw 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, with varying levels of affection for the film and the live score composed & performed by Stephin Merritt. Once I came to accept it as the LOST of its time (with its intersecting storylines, mysterious island, characters with unclear motivations, multiple flashbacks, abrupt entry of characters and set pieces, and dramatic special effects), I allowed myself to appreciate the serialized drama and its showcase of undersea cinematography. Still, with high expectations from his other work and some of the other overwhelming experiences from past SIFF presentations, I didn't think that Merritt's fairly minimal score added as much as it might have.  

Don: Organ melodies, synthesizer bleeps, a tuba, a trumpet, and vocals through two megaphones provded the background to the invention of underwater filming. Watching was a lot like flying: a few moments of sheer terror, separated by long stretches of boredom. Except it was more like a few moments of audible or visual humor, separated by long stretches of repetitive melodies backing a couple fish swimming in a grey ocean. A couple remarked that it was "hilarious" on the way out and two people rose for a standing ovation. I thought the organ looked cool.

Tony: Film purists probably balked at its irreverence and more than one of my eminent SunBreak colleagues were nonplussed, but I enjoyed this SIFF archival presentation with musical accompaniment. Merritt's playful music included some hummable melodies, and I found the bits of atmospheric texture scattered throughout to be pretty immersive. As for the film itself, it's a dated but fascinating artifact--really the Avatar of its day (1916) what with its underwater cinematography and lavish production values. For a very early silent, it also sports an impressively ambitious structure containing three intersecting stories and flashbacks from multiple sources--pretty heady stuff for a movie that's older than your great-grandparents.

MvB: agreed with the previous assessments.

Reactions to other films after the jump.

MvB: Secrets of the Tribe exposed how anthropologists studying the Yanomami's every word and gesture failed to remark on their own signal contributions to this "virgin" culture: bribery with modern weapons and tools, rapacious pedophilia, exposure to new diseases. But any outrage gets watered down by bitchy talking-head sequences that reduce things to anthro-politics.

The Wedding Cake is a droll French comedy that skewers the fetish for "perfect" wedding days, marriage itself, class pretension, youthful infatuation, and new car smell. It's fun, but even the young lovers (*Harry Potter*'s Fleur Delacour stars) aren't that likable or mature, and by the end you begin the share the elder participants' "You kids stay off my lawn" sentiments. (screens again tonight, June 10, 9:30 p.m. @ Uptown; June 13, 4:00 pm @ Uptown)

Josh: Saw mostly documentaries this week. I also felt a sense of flummoxed admiration for Secrets of the Tribe and its portrayal of a frustrating absence of answers spewing from an academic viper pit of accusations of misconduct and bad behavior. It didn't help that the chief accuser looked as if he had been basted in butter for a week of heavy tanning and wrote a book about married life with a child bride from the tribe. I went in expecting an expose from tribe members on how incorrectly the anthropologists had interpreted their society. Instead we found out about some horrible things that happened in the course of their studies, though the less black-and-white accusations illuminated some of the most challenging issues in observational sciences. 

8, the Mormon Proposition was rough but impassioned doc on the insidious reach of the Church of Latter Day Saints against gay rights in general, and in overturning marriage equality in California. The filmmakers were self-admittedly one-sided, gathering emotional stories in support of their argument. While I share their outrage, it would have been interesting to get a more nuanced perspective not only on why Proposition 8 won, but why its opponents lost the political battle (beyond one monolithic, well-funded adversary).  

My numerical documentary week concluded with General Orders No. 9. Watching it felt like being awake for someone else's dream. In this case, the hypnotic dream collage formed a lament on the indignity of being alive in a post-interstate urban era. I tried to allow myself to succumb to his incantatory narration and long shots of nature, urban sprawl, and animated maps, but kept returning to the conflict that the filmmaker was working with a medium that wouldn't have been possible had his anti-technology sentiments been granted. 

Tony had a doc-heavy week, too:

Strange Powers: Stephin Merritt and the Magnetic Fields: Gail O'Hara's and Kerthy Fix's documentary doesn't exactly lay its drily humorous genius subject (yes, I am a fan) bare, but it's a smart and engaging glimpse into Merritt's career, and the love/symbiosis between the songwriter and his bandmate/de facto manager/den mother Claudia Gonson is fascinating.

Disco and Atomic War: This Estonian doc about how clandestine signals from an extra-tall Finnish TV tower titillated and liberated citizens of communist-ruled Estonia kinda charmed the hell out of me. It's also one of those rare documentaries where the re-enactment scenes actually entertained in their own right.

William S. Burroughs: A Man Within: I have eternally been enthralled by Burroughs' raggedly brilliant and powerful words, and by his gravel-tinkling-over-sheet-metal voice, so this documentary on his life and work was an enrapturing view for me. Well-researched and packed with heartfelt reminiscences and testimony. (screening again on June 12, 6:30 p.m. @ Harvard Exit)

Garbo the Spy: The amazing story of Juan Pujer Garcia, a Spanish counter-agent who basically duped the German army into their crushing defeat in Normandy on D-Day, is so surreal and hilarious you'll swear someone made the shit up. (catch this discussion-provoking favorite again June 13, 8:30 p.m. @ SIFF Cinema)

Audrey had fun with The Wild Hunt, about a Viking-themed LARP game that gets a little too real.  Yet another fine festival film from Quebec!  More pls.  I also enjoyed bootlegging heist flick Reykjavik-Rotterdam and already dread the Mark Wahlberg-fronted remake, which will surely involve smuggling black tar heroin Boston-Philly.  Say hi to your mother for me.

Now it's your turn--what did you see?