MIFF 2011: Celebrity Stalking, African Refugees & General Nihilism

 

I have always been a huge fan of Martin Scorsese's only two comedies. AFTER HOURS & KING OF COMEDY were made back-to-back in the early 80s right after the success of RAGING BULL. Scorsese himself was recovering from a cocaine addiction, a divorce from actress Isabella Rosselini and a futile struggle trying to get LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST off the ground.

 

KING OF COMEDY came first after De Niro urged Scorsese to make a comedy with him – of course Scorsese was in the midst of such a depressive state that he ended up making a 'comedy' that was steeped in profound discomfort, angst and general anti-social behaviour. At it's time of release KING OF COMEDY was not highly regarded by audiences or even most critics. Its comedy of pain was years ahead of its time. Modern audiences have been schooled in this type of cringe comedy over the last decade. From The Office to Curb Your Enthusiasm, now more than ever we seem willing to laugh 'at' characters in a way that general audiences weren't willing to just a few decades ago.

 

While KING OF COMEDY not only has become more thematically relevant over the years (at the time its big zeitgeisty issue was celebrity stalking but nowadays in the age of reality TV we would be more inclined to look at the idea of a individual who yearns to become a famous celebrity) but also it formally set the benchmark for that curious blend of horror and comedy which has become increasingly prolific in recent years. Eschewing his trademark visual kinetisicm, Scorsese often locks his camera down here which only amplifies the viewer's discomfort as we watch out anti-hero Rupert Pupkin vainly try to get his stand-up comedy routine heard.

 

Scorsese brilliantly withholds any vision of Pupkin's actual routine until the end of the film where he finally subjects it to us in its entirety and we experience it to be a mix of painful honesty, mediocre jokes and frightening half-truths.

 

The failure of KING OF COMEDY hurt Scorsese and as he continued to unsuccessfully try to get LAST TEMPTATION funded he made another comedy a year later, AFTER HOURS. Arguably (or maybe just subjectively for me) his best film, AFTER HOURS was shot quickly in NY and resulted in one of the most brilliant black comedies ever made. Influencing countless films over the next 25 years, AFTER HOURS proved to be - along with KING OF COMEDY - two of Scorsese's most influential and underrated films. He never attempted another comedy after these yet within this duo he managed to craft and define an entire sub-category of cinematic comedy that has thrived ever since.

 

You still with me? OK, so I love that era of Scorsese as you can see. Let's move on.

 

LE HAVRE feels like a different type of Kaurismaki film. It still has all his defiantly oddball characteristics but there is a fascinating undercurrent of politicism that is only noticeable for how gentle and sweet it actually is. LE HAVRE follows the story of Marcel Marx (note that name), an old shoe-shiner who, while his wife is critically ill in hospital, comes across a black immigrant boy on the run from the authorities. Immediately and instinctively Marx offers help to the boy and as more people living on his street find out about the boy they also start to chip in and help.

 

Part of the pleasure in watching this elegant little film is seeing how Kaurismaki fuses together so many seemingly dissonant characteristics together in a way that looks effortless and actually rather traditionally classical. The film is at once a fairy tale of a boy touching and changing a man's life, it is also a film showing the tension between a community and it's authority (the disparate time markers within the film make it nearly impossible to take this as a comment on any current or even past cultural event. Kaurismaki is clever) but finally it's ultimately a true humanist film.

 

This is a quiet and fragile film that I don't wanna enthuse about too loudly. It's more a piece I would whisper about in hushed tones, 'It really is quite lovely'.

 

 

The wonderful thing about film festivals is that they often offer up inadvertent contrasts that arise through random scheduling conditions. Following LE HAVRE I saw Sion Sono's COLD FISH, a film that could not be more different.

 

COLD FISH may just be the most misanthropic film I have ever seen. Sion Sono pulls no punches in this film and creates a work of punk-rock nihilism that is simultaneously morally vacuous and blackly comic.

 

Sono has never been a particularly controlled or disciplined filmmaker. His films are alternately absurd, over-the-top, manic, jarring and over-long. To say he needs a strong editor to pull him into line is an understatement but I personally derive great fascination and delight from his imperfections. His films have sharp edges and often flaunt all the rules of cinematic structural convention. In many ways he reminds me of another Japanese fringe filmmaker, Ishi Sogo (long-term MIFF attendees will remember a Sogo retrospective maybe 7 or 8 years ago. One of my personal all-time MIFF highlights).

 

COLD FISH picks up several stylistic flourishes from Sono's previous epic, LOVE EXPOSURE. It takes him over 20 minutes to get to the film's title card. His use of classical music over long stretches of screen time is particularly more refined here. There is also an odd time stamp that frequently pops onto the screen throughout the film (Sono even boldly plasters it in the middle of the image at some tense moments in the final act in a moment of directorial bravado that reminded me of Gaspar Noe's countdown in I STAND ALONE). Unlike the countdown in LOVE EXPOSURE, here the time stamping offers a different, almost Dragnet style effect. Sono opens his film with a based on a true story note that I am decidedly distrustful of. While the constant reminder of dates and times only serve to cement this claim to truth (as if moments from police records are being recreated), I can only view this as another of Sono's punky, iconoclastic jokes. I haven't done any further research but I'm sure the links to a non-fiction story are pretty stretched here.

 

As I mentioned, Sono has pacing problems. The film's first 90 minutes are bit over-long but I was ultimately happy wallowing in this world until the narrative got down to business. And when it did, boy did it go there. COLD FISH is not an unpredictable film per se. Essentially it follows the classic male empowerment model we have seen for years, you know the story: Mild-mannered husband is ignored by his wife, stepped on by his daughter and generally unable to stand up for himself in any situation. Through a series of enlightening events he learns to assert himself and ultimately gain respect from his family in the process. COLD FISH is basically that story but in a way I can guarantee you have never seen before.

 

With a dark grin, Sono offers up a story of existential misanthropy where amorality rules, natural selection is king and you better god-damned take control. The world began 4.5 million years ago and the world will end 4.5 million years from now. We're just little irrelevant points in the middle doing random things. Sono says all that with COLD FISH and he says it with a devious smirk.

 

Happy start to the film festival indeed!!! Loving it!