New York Film Festival 2020

[Chris Knipp]

GARRETT BRADLEY: TIME (2020)




A woman waits eighteen years for her husband to get out of prison

Time by documentarian Garrett Bradley is an amalgam. Focused on a black mother whose husband is in prison for nearly twenty years and her six sons, it blends a mixture of film footage. The most plangent and vivid, sometimes clumsy, is home footage shot by the mother herself of the boys for her husband. The rest was made by the filmmaker's cameramen of the family. The whole is joined together by conversion of all to black and white. The period footage is purposely jumbled up in time, to be not just documentation but the haunting of memory. The result is perhaps intentionally disorienting - a "vibrant cubist portrait," as Shri Linden puts it in her Hollywood Reporter review.

Sibyl Fox Richardson, known as Fox Rich, the center of the film, is the wife of Rob Richardson, sentenced to sixty years in Louisiana State Prison for a failed bank robbery. It was an act done out of "desperation," Fox Rich says. They and another were trying to start a hip hop clothing store, in Shreveport but an investor pulled out, and they were poor. Fox Rich was involved in the crime too, as the driver. She agreed to plea bargain and wound up doing 3 1/2 years. Rob wouldn't, and he got the big sentence.

The point of the jumping around is what? To make us feel the same powerlessness, perhaps, as Fox Rich and enter into her memories. The whole point is her struggle, her pain, and her determination, as she raises the boys, with help from her mother, into what looks like an impressive, good-looking brood. Fox Rich is a powerful, steadfast, determined woman, who we see often as an inspirational speaker in her self-defined cause talking to wives and families of prisoners about how incarceration of black people in America is slavery, and she is an abolitionist. At some times we see she has a car dealership, and recording a filmed advertisement, presumably for television. This is Fox Rich's portrait and that of her six sons, especially the twins, Freedom and Justus, born after Rob was imprisoned because she was pregnant when he went in.

The time-mix makes a dizzying continuum of the near twenty-year wait, reduced to only two visits to her husband a month, and the thousands wasted on lawyers who come up with nothing, while the boys go from chirping kindergarteners, junior high schoolers and high schoolers to college kids, and back again, and Fox Rich waits and controls her anger and pain as year after year she calls the white judge's office to find out what his response is to the latest appeal of the sentence.

As is often the case, I appreciate the artistry of this film, and above all the immediacy of its vivid personal portraiture, while still wishing it had at least sometimes been also framed in a more conventionally explicit form or included more conventionally explanatory material, more facts. But there are many strong moments here. Fox Rich is eloquent, and fascinating. All the different hair styles! The dignity, and the passion! Filmed by Bradley, Justus, a very handsome 18-year-old, perhaps, says, in crisp tones, "When my mother and father were arrested for robbing a bank" (with a confident click on the "k" of "bank"), "she wound up having a set of twins, one being myself, the other being my twin brother Freedom." He also says, "My family has a very strong image." (Here we see them assembled, adult, well dressed, at a public occasion.) "But behind that is a lot of hurt, lot of pain." And this film is a stirring portrait of that pain.

What stands out is Fox Rich's apparently unwavering loyalty to her husband, and to the cause of making a decent living and raising her sons right, in the racist South. Eighteen years for a minor bank robbery, a sentence of sixty? I guess they didn't have access to the right fancy lawyers. I guess they were Black in America.

The score is unusual, like the chronology, periods of conventional string music augmented by a tranquil piano performance by a now ninety-something Ethiopian nun called Emahoy Tsegué Guèbrou, found on YouTube.

Greg Nussen wrote eloquently of this film on Letterboxd: "Time is both a cinematic wonder and a heavy piece of political agitation. . . [it's] as much about the arbitrary nature of time as it is about the fallacy that forms the basis of the American justice system. Time that is 'served' and time that is taken away, time that is thrust upon victims of the system and time that is even gained. Prisons are neither places for rehabilitation nor a useful means with which to punish someone, they accomplish nothing of value except for the people that literally profit off it."

"Are we going to see him get out?" I think we wonder as we watch. Yes, we do, and it's worth the wait. Rob comes out in a T-shirt saying "NEVER GIVE UP." The return is joyous, sexy, and loving. Rob is not a cowed victim. He is presidential. At a celebration of many hugs he says the greatest value and the greatest faith is love and adds, "If it could be an acronym it would be Life's Only Valid Expression." These people have a lot of class. They're pretty awesome.

Time, 81 mins., debuted at Sundance Jan. 2020, and won the Documentary Directing award at Sundance and has won several other awards and nominations. It also showed at Miami Mar. 2020 and Sept. 20 at the virtual New York Film Festival, as part of which it was screened for this review, and is set for showing Sept. 24 at Zurich, Camden International (virtual) Film Festival, London and the Hamptons (virtual) Oct. 9. It is slated for internet release on Oct. 16 in the US and Oct. 23 in Canada.

[Chris Knipp]

PHILIPPE LACOTE: NIGHT OF THE KINGS/LA NUIT DES ROIS (2020)


KONÉ BAKARY IN NIGHT OF THE KINGS

Night of the red moon

Night of the Kings/La Nuit des rois is a celebration set in Côte d'Ivoire and primarily in French, of improvisation, storytelling, and dramatic staging that also touches on the politics of control and the precariousness of life. Sometimes the narrative line may seem too much interrupted, but this is itself brilliant storytelling that impresses with its verve and flair and announces the arrival of a bold new talent from Africa. The setting is MACA, an overcrowded, disorderly prison in Abjijan, Cote d'Ivoire, in the middle of a jungle-park. "La MACA is the only prison in the world run by an inmate," someone declares. He is called Barbe Noire (Black Beard: Steve Teintchieu), and he is sick, and his authority is faltering. One called Demi Fou (Half Crazy: Digbeu Jean Cyrille) is a pretender for the throne. But he must contend with Lass (Abdoul Kariyi Konajé). The opening scene follows a new inmate as he arrives, riding rather grandly alone, in a yellow shirt, in the back of an open truck (Koné Bakary: but don't look him up: you'll find only Bakary Koné, a Cote d'Ivoirean footballer). He looks young and a little delicate, feminine (with a necklace), and yet also proud and strong. (The prison contains a truly effeminate young man, a cross dresser who's moved around, but never does anything). The prison throbs with energy. Guards or managers seem to stay in a room by themselves observing from a distance.

As soon as Barbe Noire sees the new arrival he impulsively decides to name him "Roman," a designated storyteller. This will distract the attention of the prisoners and prolong Barbe Noir's authority a little. What the new Roman doesn't know is that the Scheherazade-like tradition calls for him to tell stories for one night, a night of the red moon, and then he will be killed. Later Roman sees the iron hook at the top of the stairs and meets a strange old white man with a big bird on his shoulder (legendary French actor of Beau Travail and Holy Motors Denis Lavant) who tells him what his fate will be. Barbe Noire does not last the night, but Roman does.

There are only a few named characters, but this is very much an ensemble piece with a hundred extras who provide a surging energy. When Roman begins his storytelling, clad now in a handsome long blue silk shirt and standing on a box, there emerges a small company of self-appointed singers, mimes, and dancers around him who will act out, underline, and in the oral tradition, delay key moments of his tale.

How will Roman even survive a minute? He seems timid at first arrival, almost speechless. But when he speaks, scoffers are soon silenced. He announces he is a pickpocket, scoundrel, shyster - and common thief (cheers). He tells that he had an aunt who was a griot (oral bard), and he launches into a criminal epic close to his own experience - the life of Zama King - they know who he is - his own childhood friend, now a legendary crime boss, just arrested, head of the notorious e "Microbes" gang who rode in on an insurrection.

Roman weaves in legendary elements such as a king and queen (artist/hair sculptress Laetitia Ky) arriving long ago and a blind father for Zama, Soni (Rasmané Quédraogo). Bakary Koné holds his own as a dramatic speaker, but there's the chorus at hand, and scenes illustrating his tale, notably the king and queen arriving along the seashore, almost TV-footage of civil unrest, and Zama marching through a crowd with Roman on the periphery. Meanwhile time out for a quick feast, and for Barbe Noire to collapse and give up - making Roman's story just the framework for Lacote's effort to tell three stories, that of Roman, i.e. Zama King; of Barbe Noire; and the story of his own effort to weave things together into a very theatrical whole. As storytelling, no one of the three is totally convincing. But as cinema, this is a rich and tasty dish, deftly and economically weaving together many essential elements of an African life and culture shown to be still flourishing amid poverty, confinement, civil unrest and political upheaval. Roman nods to City of God, and a review for the Toronto Globe and Mail calls it "City of God crossed with A Prophet by way of One Thousand and One Nights." Indeed the final shot may link Koné Bakary's Roman with Tahar Rahim's Malik El Djebena in Jacque Audiard's prison epic. High ambitions; great models.

Night of the Kings/La Nuit des rois, debuted at Venice Sept. 2020, also included at Toronto and the New York Film Festival virtual edition, as part of which it was reviewed Thurs., Sept. 24, 2020 for this review. Coming to Chicago and Reykjavik in October. Metascore 82% (so many mainstream reviews).

[Chris Knipp]

FREDERICK WISEMAN: CITY HALL (2020)


MAYOR OF BOSTON MARTY WALSH IN CITY HALL

Guy Lodge's Variety review lead off, "Frederick Wiseman’s Mammoth Boston Doc Shows Anti-Trump Politics in Practice."

The people who work for the city work for you"

"...My view is that these films are biased, prejudiced, condensed, compressed but fair. I think what I do is make movies that are not accurate in any objective sense, but accurate in the sense that I think they're a fair account of the experience I've had in making the movie."

First of all: Frederick Wiseman does not know boredom. Frederick Wiseman is interested in everything. Frederick Wiseman thinks we are interested too. Normally the "city hall" of an American city includes primarily the mayor's office and the city council, the city government. Last time in Monrovia, Indiana, Wiseman looked at a little town in the Midwest. Now he looks at one of America's great cities, Boston, Massachusetts, the biggest city in New England, one of the oldest large cities. It's also a city of racial and sectarian conflict, of warring ethnicities.

But Wiseman isn't looking at problems. He looks at institutions. Here, "City Hall" seems to encompass the whole city. And indeed in a liberal government the city government has a hand in, and responsibility toward, every part of that city. But this is also very largely a portrait of Marty Walsh, Mayor of Boston. He's everything that the President in Washington today (whom he refers to, but will not name) is not.

As we learn, Mayor Walsh is the son of Irish immigrants, and he is in recovery from alcoholism. He is a classic liberal with natural sympathy for immigrants, for people of color and other minorities, who boasts that during his five years in office, unemployment has sunk to 2%, and Boston has been named the easiest city in the country to get a job. He is an impressive individual. This film is like an advertisement for Marty Walsh. If he ran for President of the United States, I'd vote for him.

Did this film need to be four and a half hours long? I don't know. At times if you're paying attention to its many scenes - separated, as Wiseman had often done before, by montages of still shots of the city - you may wonder why some of them were included. People pouring over artifacts? A dog being examined by a vet? A school planning meeting? The kitchen of a man with an infestation of rats?

But we can say this film shows the wide reach of Boston's city government. Its responsibilities are myriad, and the sweep of the scenes pays homage to the range of Marty Walsh's caring and interest. He, like Wiseman, seems never to be bored. It particularly fascinated me that he took a Marine veterans' meeting as the opportunity to tell about his former alcohol problem In another scene already, about arts and recovery, it seemed, an articulate young man has said that recovery is all about stories. It's true. So here, Mayor Walsh tells the story of his alcoholism, suggesting that what an old lady says they used to call "shell shock" and now is called PTSD, is something that also requires the healing effect of telling your story to others.

As for the length, think of it as a way of conveying what it's like to sit through a day in any city hall, a day of meetings. The endless talk. Some of it, people telling their stories, which may heal them and us. Wiseman teaches us to be patient and listen, to the ordinary talk and everyday stories that are part of a comprehensive sympathy.

City Hall, 272 mins., debuted at Venice Sept. 2020 (Fair Play Cinema Award - Special Mention) and is scheduled for Toronto Hamburg, New York and Camden International (Maine) also in Sept. Screened online for this review on its virtual release date in the NYFF, Sept. 25, 2020. Metascore 89%.

Here's a review by a local resident. I mean to read it all. It's long, like a Wiseman film.


Opens Friday, November 13, 2020
in the Roxie Virtual Cinema

[Chris Knipp]

TSAI MING-LIANG: DAYS 日子(2020)


ANONG HOUNGHEUANGSY AND LEE KANG-SHENG IN DAYS

The music box

Reactions range (on Letterboxd) from "a snoozer from start to finish" to "almost my favorite Tsai film" and a loving account from someone who has seen all ten of his films and flew to Berlin just to see this one in the festival, for his first big -screen Tsai experience, and felt well-rewarded, but had to endure bored and disrespectful audience members around him.

Among Tsai's films, though I haven't seen all of them, some of the main themes clearly are loneliness and lassitude and sex, or the implied desire for it, and for companionship. We get all that here in this unusually slow film featuring Tsai's longtime muse and life companion Lee Kang-sheng, along with a young Thai newcomer, Anong Houngheuangsy. (They are called in the credits respectively Kang and Non, but I'll just call them by their real names.)

This time Lee for the first time plays someone well off. Thus he occupies the rural compound here that Tsai and he actually moved into some time ago, and he can afford to fly to Bangkok and stay in a nice hotel room, where he will receive Anong, whom we've observed - and I do mean observed - patiently preparing a meal for himself in his rudimentary but airy digs and on duty in a food stall where he works. Later Anong reappears as a full service masseur, and I also do mean full service. The two men come together, the now fifty-two-year-old one, still suffering from the real-life neck ailment seen in The River and walking with a painful shuffle, and the twenty-something one, after an hour of this two-hour film has passed. Their encounter is the centerpiece and emotional core of this film typically suffused with sadness and loneliness but also with moments of warmth and gratitude, and always a feat of patient observation.

A slow film with long passages where not only the camera but its human point of observation is still, if it works for you, alerts you and awakens your sympathy and skill in observation. Since, unlike the Berlin presentation described by Francesco Quario on Letterboxd mentioned above, the New York version was virtual, we have the peripheral distractions Martin Scorsese has bewailed, and also the temptation to stop and start or interrupt or skip that may aid observation, or not, but disrupt the sense of an ongoing irresistible force you get in a movie theater, apart the glory of the Walter Reade Theater or Alice Tully Hall with their impressive screens and immersive sound systems.

As A.O. Scott observed in his New York Times review of Tsai's 2005 Wayward Cloud, those at all familiar with Tsai "will note that water is an important motif in his films," and in them "roofs and pipes are always leaking" on "lonely, alienated city dwellers." I understand from Giovanni Marchini Camia's detailed and admiring BFI review of Days, that more recently Tsai has made short films in non-urban locations, and also declared himself retired, or ready to retire. Francesco Quario has said this may be the last, though he would "gladly take a hundred more."

In the first half Lee gets an elaborate trad medicine treatment for his neck and backbone with wires and hot coals; before that he spends a long time staring out the window while water flows noisily. Water appears again as we watch Anong, in Bangkok, to whom we go back and forth from Lee, preparing a meal for himself of "fish soup, papaya salad and sticky rice" (Camia) on the floor, with a lot of washing food and water spilled on the floor around him where he squats. This sequence is a soothing alternative to Lee's pain and look of sadness, because Anong's food preparation is calm and methodical, almost happy, you might say. The only thing is - is it just for himself? Because it seems rather a lot of food; and we don't get much of a look at his consumption of it once he's done.

Then we come to Lee in the Bangkok hotel room. It's a large, simple, but well-appointed and peaceful room, with nice wood paneling. Methodically, Lee takes the cover off the big bed and folds it away, counts out money and puts the rest in a drawer. When the sequence of the massage by Anong (in jockey shorts) begins, Lee is already laid out face down, eyes closed. After a while he's asleep and snoring. Now Anong's patience and attentiveness to ritual we saw as he prepared a meal comes into its own as direct human kindness. With amazing delicacy his hands crisscross and circle up and down and over Lee's back. Many details suggest that as a masseur he's trained and knows what he's doing. And then, Lee is on his back, the caressing becomes sexual, the jockey shorts come off.

This sequence isn't pornographic, barely even sexual but rather, sensual and more simply patient, attentive, and touching. As Lee gets closer to satisfaction and there is tenderness and warmth in Anong's participation and they embrace and kiss with real feeling, and as with Anong's following Lee into the shower and continuing there to spray him and soap him and massage him, this is always modest and undramatic and real, but no mere mechanical servicing, for sure.

No wonder, then, when both have dried off and dressed they sit down together on the foot of the bed. Lee gives Anong a present of a little music box that plays the theme from Chaplin's Limelight, and Anong keeps winding it and winding it so the theme plays on and on; and here, Quario begins to weep and will go on weeping for the rest of the film.

Here also the dragging-on-and-on quality of the film takes on a new, plangent meaning, because it's saying these two lonely men, one weary and past middle age, the other young, don't want to part. And so there's a coda sequence to the encounter that happens outside, in a little Chinese noodle shop, where they sit together eating, facing each other - but not like the still: they're separated from us by a street full of loud passing traffic. Then there is blackness. And we rejoin the men, apart again and in different countries. As Quario has come to Berlin for Tsai's new film, Lee has come to Bangkok for a massage, and now we're all back at home.

At the end, Anong and Lee are alone again. And no one in this film has uttered more than a few words, and there have been by choice no subtitles.

I would say this is a pretty memorable film. I will not easily forget the sight of Anong later, after Lee is gone, sitting on a bench in noisy traffic, listening to the music box play the Limelight theme again, over and over and over.

Days 日子, 127 mins., debuted at Berlin Feb. 2020 (where it won the Teddy Award), showed at Taipei July, IndieLisboa Aug., and, where it was screened virtually for this review, New York starting Sept. 25. Also to be shown at London in Oct. 2020.

[Chris Knipp]

CHLOE ZHAO: NOMADLAND (2020) Centerpiece


FRANCES MCDORMAND IN NOMADLAND

Forced off the grid and choosing to stay there

At the outset of Nomadland,based on a book by Jessica Bruder, Chinese-born American filmmaker Chloe Zhao's second big feature after her remarkable The Rider (NYFF 2017), onscreen captions announce that in 2011 US Gypsum closed a factory and resultingly the town of Empire, Nevada collapsed. Proof: the zip code was discontinued. The movie follows Fern (Frances McDormand), suddenly a widow and set adrift by the town's collapse. Fern suddenly takes up life as a nomad, living out of her modified van and working the seasonal shifts at Amazon fulfillment centers, beet processing plants, or as part of a janitorial crew at an RV park, in a job found by her fellow migratory nomad, Linda May. Linda May is a real person. So are many in Nomadland - and the artistry of this film, and theirs, is that they're good playing themselves; and McDormand blends in well with them. Fern is not "homeless," she says, but "houseless." Not a strong distinction.

I confess my resistance to Nomadland, though it weakened somewhat past halfway through, then came back when the ending didn't seem to avoid sentimentality as The Rider did so well. This film shows with its grand old fashioned Searchlight Pictures opening that Zhao is more mainstream than I'd supposed. The Rider had a real person (wounded young cowboy Brady Jandreau) right at the center of it; it was about him. The new film has a famous actress, Frances McDormand, as Fern, at the center. That's very different. Another well known actor-person is on hand as Fern's would-be boyfriend on the road, David Strathairn. That relationship doesn't quite work out, and Straithairn doesn't quite convince. These presences of course make the movie more marketable, but otherwise a very different kind of movie, with a big producer and smooth strings-plus-piano score weaving the meandering storyline together.

As Fern meets many real persons in her wanderings and goes to new places this becomes a travelogue of modern hard times in the American West. McDormand, who's been in so many good movies, playing here one of the most central roles of her life, doesn't fail us here. But Fern is a cheery cypher, a soul who doesn't stay and doesn't share. Not that there aren't people like that out there, and maybe they're the kind who wander like this and resist offers of places to stay like with her sister Dolly (Melissa Smith) - meeting with whom, to get a desperately needed loan, is a defining moment. But there's not much of a story here. Maybe the main story is not the one about stubborn wanderlust but of harsh economic necessity, which some viewers think makes this film prophetic of future post-pandemic travails.

I'm with Michael Phillips, only more so, who in his Chicago Tribune review admits he finds Nomadland "a shade less wonderful than The Rider, with fewer sharp edges and a tad more contrivance." He says he loves it anyway. I don't love it. I can see, though, how it fits with a group of strong American movies about contemporary outlaws and wanderers who live off the grid. Its moments of checking in with settled people reminded me of Captain Fantastic; the saga to save the van seemed familiar. Personal favorites in this very American genre are Matt Ross's Captain Fantastic and Sean Penn's Into the Wild], and another recent good one is Debra Granik's Leave No Trace. (People make lists of off-the-grid movies.) At Walgreen's checkout the other day, I found there's a slick handbook for sale on "living off the grid." Maybe this is the lingering ingrown cold edge of the American pioneering spirit. Perhaps the widespread lust for such life helps explain how the US has done worse than any other country in the pandemic, because so many people refuse to follow rules.

Nomadland has, of course, some nice moments. It's rich with characters, notably "cheap RV" evangelist Bob Wells. Also touching is the drunken young man - I didn't catch his name - whom Fern gives a lighter to and whom she meets later and gives her another, prettier lighter (in this movie, alas, a significant event), and to whom she recites Shakespeare's Sonnet 18 ("Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?") to dress up a letter to his girlfriend. Lovely, thanks to Shakespeare. Only trouble is, in a film as busy and distracted and in love with sunsets and vistas as this one, a few nice moments aren't enough.

Nomadland, 108 mins., debuted Sept. 11, 2020 at Venice, winning the Golden Lion and two other awards, also showing in many other festivals, including Toronto (People's Choice award), New York (where it was viewed, as the Centerpiece film, for this review), Helsinki, Reykjavik, Zurich, London, Hamburg, the Hamptons, Montclair, and more. C̶u̶r̶r̶e̶n̶t̶ Metascore 9̶8̶%̶ 89%.

[Chris Knipp]

CHAITANYA TAMHANE: THE DISCIIPLE (2020)


A STILL FROM TAMHANE'S THE DISCIPLE

Trapped in the pressures of musical tradition in modern India

The Disciple is a fantastic, complex and quite unexpected film about the undermining of cultural tradition and the pressure on a fledgling practitioner of traditional art to achieve an inaccessible perfection. Of Tamhane's debut film Court, shown in New Directors/New Films 2015, I wrote, "All the romance has been drained from our vision of India by the time we've experienced this complex, mind-boggling, convincing film." This sophomore effort isn't quite as grim as that meandering, ironic picture of India's corrupt, bureaucratic judicial system, but here again Tamhane gives us a disturbing, challenging watch that takes on central aspects of Indian life. Tamhane is a remarkable, uniquely thought-provoking filmmaker, a significant new cinematic voice from India.

The main character is a not-so-young man called Sharad (real musician and fledgling actor Aditya Modak) who wishes to become a significant performer-singer of Śāstriya Saṅgīt, North Indian classical music, aka Hindustani music. This music dates from the 12th century when it branched off from far older music. We know if from the sitar maestro Ravi Shankar, who brought it to the West. He taught us about ragas, and that there were morning and evening ones: here we learn that there are numerous more specific ones even little boys, in some families, are supposed to know the names of. We also learn that yoga and yogic meditation are elements in the mastery of this art. Khayal is the tradition of improvisational singing, and it comes from the Arabic word for "imagination," but all the rest of this film is in Marathi language with a few moments and frequent words in English.

Once I heard Ravi's sister-in-law Lakshmi Shankar: her singing had technical perfection and an otherworldly beauty. But a difficulty here is that we don't know this highly improvisational yet deeply traditional music well enough to know when the singing is good or not. And it's important to know that Sharad, who is riddled by doubt, may not be good enough - or not good enough yet. Modak must be conveying that, but can we appreciate it? We hear frequent excerpts from classical Indian music concerts, which may seem beautiful and calming, but also trouble us with trying to figure out where they fit in today's India and where Sharad fits in.

Sharad lives with and cares for his aged guruji (Arun Dravid, a master of khayal), who is very severe with him always and seems to suggest he won't make the grade, that his performances are too bland or repetitious. The worst of it is Sharad is criticized by his guru under his breath in joint public performances where the student tabla player and young female singing sitar player seem accepted by him as successes. He also listens to tapes - we hear them as we see him in slow motion riding in the evening on the astonishingly deserted Mumbai freeway on his motorbike - the sharp voice of Maai (Sumitra Bhave), a legendary woman, his guru's guru, whose singing was never recorded, but who pronounces on the relentless demands of the art and the absurdity of paying attention to conventional standards or performing for audiences. (It turns out Sharad's father was a student of Maai, but a mediocre one; it's on him to do better.) "I sing only for my guru and for my god," she says, her "god" presumably being Sarasvatī, the Hindu goddess of knowledge, music, art, speech, wisdom, and learning; in her Wikipedia picture she is seen playing a sitar with two of her four arms. The slow-mo motorbike ride with the guru's guru is a repeated signature image, one of the ones we take away from this complicated, often troubling flim.

Sharad does some tutoring of young boys with a harmonium. But Sharad's mother, who thinks he keeps the boys too long working, keeps telling him to get a real job, or any job job, which he rejects. Yet he must pay his guru's medical bills. He does work at a recording business under Kishore (Makarand Mukund) selling CD's made from tapes of obscure Indian classical music artists.

Sharad is initially only 24, and by tradition he must be a student till he's 40, and only then can get married; he tells his mother a divorcee or widow will be okay. Meanwhile, he masturbates, the film frankly shows, to the inspiration of online porn. He surfs and finds an unflattering video of himself performing, more noise in his dedicated life. The years go by, and we see him at different stages, with and without a mustache.

Always there is the threat, further out, of Hindustani music's degeneration or corruption or simply fading out thorough lack of interest or lack of understanding or lack of audience. The idea of "fusion" corrupting the music comes several times, first close to home from a student offered a job in a "fusion" band asking (through his mother) Sharad's permission to take it - his consent is withering in its disapproval; then on TV, from Shaswati Bose (Kristy Banerjee), a young woman contestant on a reality music competition show called "Fame India" who starts out with a minute or two of classical performance. The judges congratulate her on her voice and it's "on the Mumbai!" From then on she becomes a pop/Bollywood fusion star Sharad must be watching in horror. It's all the pain of not being appreciated when the tradition you are following is the pure, true one and what is admired all around is a debasement, or something from abroad.

Worse yet debasement comes from within, when Sharad has a meeting arranged by Kishore with Rajan Joshi (Prasad Vanarse), a renowned music critic who clams to know all - he's quite convincing - and who promply, while consuming a whisky and soda, trashes both Sharad's guru and even Maai, whom he speaks of in the most humiliating terms imaginable. It's a brilliantly written scene, pushing the situation to the limits without overstepping credibility. You acutely feel its sting, and Sharad's rage and sense of insult.

How it all ends we don't really know from a final brief scene that appears happy but leaves the outcome of all that's gone before uncertain. Tamhane, who wrote, directed, and edited this film, is all the more proven a true original from this second example. But he remains austere, as indicated by the work of his dp Michal Sobocinski, who provides many unflashy establishing shots and photographs the real live concerts from a discreet distance. We are lucky to have this fiercely intelligent new director from India.

The Disciple, debuted at Venice Sept. 4, 2020 to general acclaim, winning there Best Screenplay, the FIPRESCI Prize, and the Golden Lion (Best Film). Reviewed enthusiastically there by Jay Weissberg in Variety and Deborah Young in Hollywood Reporter. Also shown at Toronto, Zurich (nominated for best international feature), New York and London. Screened for this review as part of the virtual NYFF Sept. 29, 2020. Executive produced by Alfonso Cuarón. Metacritic rating 83%.

[Chris Knipp]

PHILIPPE GARREL: THE SALT OF TEARS/LE SEL DES LARMES (2020)


OULAYA AMAMRA AND LOGANN ANTUOFERMO IN THE SALT OF TEARS

Lucky Luc

Philippe Garrel is a regular in NYFF Main Slates, perhaps for his classic French style and stubborn independence as a filmmaker. The look here is handsome, the storytelling is economical, and the actors are all good, but Garrel senior begins to seem more and more an inexplicable anachronism, his blindly chauvinistic point of view downright shocking this time, though maybe for some the storyline here may seem simply novel. And always there is the old fashioned framework, the rich black and white images, the frequent voiceover narration using the formal passé simple tense. Garrel collaborated again here with the prolific screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière, now 89, who worked in an almost surreal "exquisite corpse" style with Garrel's son Louis recently on the latter's second feature as a director, A Faithful Man (NYFF 2018).

It's all from the point of view of lucky, clueless, avowedly cowardly Luc (Logann Antuofermo), son of a carpenter, living in the provinces. He meets a girl of Arab origin and impressive hair at a bus stop in Paris, Djemila (Oulaya Amamra), and from this springs a connection. We have to grant that Garrel writes his women pretty dumb too, since it's well goofy of Djemila to fall instantly for a guy who hardly says a word to her. Luc seems to connect just by staring. Luc explains to Djemila that he's only in Paris to apply to a famous and prestigious training program for ébénistes, cabinetmakers, the Boulle School. He quickly gets her into his bed, but she won't go all the way. Nonetheless when he soon returns to the provinces, she's devastated.

It's surprising that Garrel spends so much on this relationship and makes it the first, emotional, one and the most memorable. One really does feel the power of the long exchanged looks. When Djemila tells Luc he's very "doux" (sweet, gentle), at that point it seems convincing and rather interesting. The actor radiates warmth, sexuality, and yes, gentleness. He tells Djemila he'll "never forget her." In these days of email and cellphones, this too is an anachronism, because of course, it's easy to keep in touch. Back he goes to his carpenter father (André Wilms), with whom he lives. Later Luc confesses (through the voiceover) to his "lacheté" toward Djemila, his cowardice.

Eventually we see that the only human Luc cares about is his father, and that's the one relationship in this film of real depth. The movie has two other women up its sleeve for Luc, neither of whom will really matter, though number three is ostensibly the charm, the keeper. Ant the plot jumps the shark later on, and I began to lose track, or cease to care. Immediately upon his return home, Luc runs into Geneviève (Louise Chevillotte, seen also in Gerrel's 2017 Lover for a Day, NYFF 2017)Geneviève instantly pops into bed with Luc - or do they have sex in the bath? She is hot for her Lycee lover from six or seven years earlier, no questions asked. This goes on for a while, and then Luc gets the letter of acceptance to the Boulle School, which makes his dad cry: he never made it that high in the French carpentry pecking order. Needless to say, this, like Garrel's kind of filmmaking, is an antique craft.

Before Luc leaves home for school, when he has promised Geneviève they'd see each other every other week, she breaks down and confesses to him she is pregnant with his child. Far from delighted he is furious and yells at her, saying she has "betrayed him," since this isn't a responsibility he is ready for, financially or otherwise. Clearly not. His departure is cold, and he isn't in touch. Geneviève, like Djemila, has admittedly been foolish to fall into this relationship again so heavily. Can't she see how shallow Luc is?

Need we say that soon after he gets set at éboniste school, a personable black colleague, Jean-René (Teddy Chawa), sets up a double date for the two of them with two nurses, he with Alice (Aline Belibi), Luc with Betsy ( Souheila Yacoub)? Before you know it or the action has accounted for it Luc and Betsy are living together and then, with Paco (Martin Mesnier), a coworker of Betsy's who - needs a place for a while. Paco must endure the sound of Luc and Betsy's lovemaking, there's no way around it. Luc has to get up very early for cabinetry school leaving Paco and Betsy in bed in their small apartment, since they work later, and - that's the kind of world this is - Luc has to worry that Betsy could also be popping into bed with Paco.

The last part of the plot shifts the attention to Luc's father, perhaps a figure of more weight - but it's too late. My first experience with Philippe Garrel's films was the best one: the drawn-out, dreamy, ultra-sad evocation of late sixties Paris, Regular Lovers (NYFF 2005). A couple times Garrel senion has evoked his own famous, druggy failed love affairs effectively. But this is a tale that's hard to swallow.

The Salt of Tears/Le sel des larmes, 100 mins., debuted at the Berlinale Feb. 2020, opened in Paris theaters in July (AlloCiné press rating 3.5). Screened for this review as part of the virtual New York Film Festival Sept. 29, 2020. Also slated for Moscow Oct. 4. A Distrib Films release.