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 I
am going to look at three films in this column. Each was up for an
Academy award. Each has sharp directing, fine acting, and a strong
story. They have dialogue that mostly sings, music that complements
rather than dominates, with excellent camera work, strong color and
smart editing.
All three are foreign films, what we used to call, “art house” films.
Two are what I would call a small film. One is far more ambitious. Two
are by known directors. One is a first-timer. One of three won the
Oscar for best foreign film.
Many years ago when I was a young writer at NBC News working on
documentary films – we actually shot them on film in those days -- I
was also an associate producer for a man named Gerald Green. From him
I learned the joy and importance of foreign films. Gerry. An
ex-newspaper writer, he was a popular novelist who wrote, “His Majesty
O’Keefe,” “The Last Angry Man” and a moving novel about the
Holocaust
that he adapted from his own original teleplay.
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Gerald Green |
I learned much about
journalism and filmmaking from my association with Gerry, but more
than anything I learned that in the making of a documentary film,
there was a time to relax, a time, actually, when parts of the film
were out of our hands. So Gerry and I would go to the movies, to an
art theater where we would sit in the back or in the balcony, if there
was one, eat a corn beef sandwich from a local deli, drink a Dr.
Brown’s celery tonic or cream soda, and watch a foreign film. We did
not see every foreign film. Not all were winners. But between 1962 and
1964 we saw many memorable films, including: Luis Bunuel’s
“Exterminating Angel,” Akira Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo,” Roman Polanski’s
“Knife in the Water,” Masaki Kobayashi’s “Seppuka,” Lindsay Anderson’s
“This Sporting Life,” John Schlesinger’s “Billy Liar,”Federico
Felini’s “8 ½,” Francessco Rossi’s “Hands Over the City,” Hiroshi
Teshigahara’s “Woman in the Dunes,” and Vittorio DeSica’s “Yesterday,
Today and Tomorrow.” Forget the bad horror films. Forget the Godzilla
films and their imitators. Countries outside America were also capable
of producing junk, and they did. However, these were among the best.
Today I do not see every movie made. That would be a chore far beyond
my capability. I don’t have the time, or, more importantly, the desire
to see films I believe are nothing more than worthless. We know most
films from Hollywood fit that description. Do not tell me that
independent films are better, more desirable and valuable than the
usual Hollywood fare. Most indies are self indulgent, often resembling
a first novel by a callow writer. Independent films also cost far more
than any first novel does. Usually any film I review has already been
under the purview of too many reviewers by the time I get to it.
Reviewers believe that unless they review a movie as soon as it enters
the marketplace he or she is not doing their job. Nonsense.
I will not summarize the plot of these films in detail. By the time I
get around to looking at a movie, you should know its story line. I
will not tell you about the other movies where a star has appeared. I
might occasionally give you the history of a director because there
should be interest in his or her body of work. My interest is in the
filmmaking and how, in general, these three foreign films differ in
approach and execution from most American movies.
 First, there is “Pan’s Labyrinth,” a fantasy for adults seated deeply
in a terrible time in Spain. Here a child leads the way. Normally in
Hollywood, fantasy is for children. Fantasy of this kind would be a
cartoon, not with real actors. In this film, it is central to the
theme of a cruel, violent murderer, a self-centered Republican army
officer doing everything he can to hold on to the past at the end of
the Spanish Civil War. The girl’s fantasy as portrayed on screen – for
her it is real and authentic – keeps her from succumbing to his
all-encompassing evil. The film is in high contrast color, which only
adds to the texture of the overall effect of the movie as written and
directed by Guillermo del Toro. The editing is leisurely, but more
effective for its pace, a pace that would never work in an American
film. The characters the girl discovers in the underworld are
grotesque yet believable. Importantly, the girl believes who they are
and she reacts to them as real. They are what I would expect beings to
look like that inhabit a world of dampness and darkness. Many people
die in this film, including the girl and her mother. The ending,
though quite simple, is one we want to believe as true. The girl dies.
She passes into a world, almost a never-land, where she belongs as a
long lost princess, where she will live forever in a world that none
of us will ever see, except in our imagination. However one looks at
the film, no one could have made it here in America. It fits no
template we have in Hollywood for an adult film with its ironies, real
and imagined beliefs, its hard-nosed take on reality, its wretched
cruelties, and its tale of imperfect lives, all victims of a terrible
civil war. Long live the imagination of Guillermo del Toro.
 “The Lives of Others” is a remarkable film not so much for how the
first time director – 33-year-old Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck --
made it, but for the understanding he brought to a major political
subject with near perfect awareness. He did this through small
personal stories of artists and their art in the police state that
once was East Germany. The film is about the uncontrolled spying by
the Stasi, the secret police in East Germany in 1984 – and during the
many years before that and after that until the Berlin Wall fell -- on
all its citizens living in terror behind the Berlin Wall. It is an
intelligent film, almost old-fashioned in its approach and execution.
It is successful because there is no wasted effort in the direction,
the camerawork, and the acting.
All the performances in “The Lives of Others” are tightly controlled,
muted, if you will, but the best work is by Ulrich Muhe, a dedicated
eavesdropper, who ends as a man against the regime. Not as an outraged
rebel but on his own terms. Originally antiseptic, cold and menacing,
close to robotic, his character becomes a man of heart. His
performance is as if inspired by Samuel Beckett, his soul buttoned up
yet seething with quiet indignation once he frees himself from the
excesses of the controlling state. We see this in his eyes, but his
face never gives him away, certainly not to his superiors. His
unchanging expression and body language shows us how he finally sees
the evil behind his spying, especially when his boss, an important
minister, uses the information only for his sexual pleasure.
Confronting the past is difficult for all nations. Germany with
Hitler, then followed by Soviet-controlled East Germany with its
police state has more than its share of looking into a mirror to do.
That it is still capable of doing so is good and important.
 “Volver” is the sort of universal story that we can find anywhere, but
almost never on an American screen. Here the blessing is in watching
the performances, especially that of Penelope Cruz as the beleaguered
Spanish woman searching for a life of success and freedom in a world
dominated by men. There is pedophila followed by attempted rape. There
is a murder. There is a ghost – and an absolute charming one who makes
your heart glow. There are flirtations. There is mystery. Pedro
Almodovar does all this in his typical fashion using different parts
of Spain as the lyrical backdrop to his theme of rising above
adversity to reach some small triumph. As usual, his film lives
through women, never men. I admit that this is the first film of his
that I fullly enjoyed because of its enthusiasm, exuberance and
clarity of storytelling. In most of his films, I care very little
about Almodovar’s characters and their problems. Boredom wins out. I
usually want to get up and leave the theater but I don’t because I
hope that the next scene will bring something worthwhile to my viewing
experience. It rarely does. Perhaps it is a cultural problem. “Volver”
worked for me because I had a sense Almodovar was really trying to
communicate his ideas clearly despite its charming bits of magic
realism, and instead of being self-indulgent about them as I feel he
does in his other films. His characters survive to tackle another day,
and many days probably after that as they make their way in a
difficult world. Of course, none of this would have been possible
without the heartfelt Penelope Cruz, and the equally fine cast.
It comes down to this: with all the talent at our command in America,
why do we not make films like these? I know that independent
filmmakers do their best, but almost none that I see have themes that
transcend the deeply personal, and that never transcend the egocentric
wailing of immaturity.
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At NBC News for 35 years, Ron Steinman was bureau chief
in Saigon, Hong Kong and London, was a senior producer on Today and wrote
and produced for Sunday Today. At ABC News Productions, he produced
and wrote documentaries for A&E, TLC, Discovery, Lifetime and the
History Channel. He has a Peabody, a National Headliner award, a
National Press Club award, a International Documentary Festival Gold
Camera Award, two American Women in Radio & Television awards and
has been nominated for five Emmy's. He is a partner in
Douglas/Steinman Productions, whose latest documentary, "Luboml: My
Heart Remembers," aired on PBS' WLIW/21 and the History Channel in
Israel, April 29, 2003. He is the author of, "The Soldiers 'Story",
"Women in Vietnam," and most recently, "Inside Television's First
War: A Saigon Journal," University of Missouri Press, 2002. |
