This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Nov. 12, 2010 - Ride Rise Roar, Directed by David Hillman Curtis, Sunday, November 14, 8:45 pm, Shown at the Tivoli
Making a concert film that can reach beyond the built-in fan base of the featured performer is always a challenge. Making a film that will inevitably face comparisons to one of the two or three greatest concert films of all time is an even bigger one. Documenting former Talking Head David Byrne's 2008 tour, "Ride, Rise, Roar" director David Hillman Curtis appears undaunted by memories of Jonathan Demme's 1984 film; his film could even be called "Stop Making Sense 2.0," so effortlessly does it mirror and complement that illustrious predecessor.
Byrne, who is nearly as well known for avant-garde showmanship as for his music, hasn't changed his stage act much in the past 25 years, but for his most recent set of concerts promoting the album "Everything That Happens Will Happen Today," a collaboration with Brian Eno (who appears briefly in the film but didn't perform on the tour) he commissioned three choreographers to stage dance pieces based on the songs. Byrne and his band share the stage with a trio of dancers, some of whom also have to serve at times as background singers. (He also has three backup singers who occasionally take part in the dancing.) The effect is simple but often stunning, turning the usual static quality of a concert into a simple theater. Hillman Curtis, better known as a web designer, wisely realizes that all he has to do is aim his camera in the right direction and stay out of the way of the performance.
I Killed My Mother
Directed by Xavier Dolan
Sunday, Nov. 14, 7 pm
Shown at Plaza Frontenac
It's not always easy to watch "I Killed My Mother," the brilliant, disturbing debut film of 20-year-old Xavier Dolan, who wrote, directed and takes the lead role. Though the violence hinted at in the title is purely emotional, at times it seems that the petty misogyny and self-loathing of the film's young protagonist has taken hold of the film itself. Dolan plays Hubert, a gay teenager living with a perturbed single mother (Anne Dorval) whom he despises. Whatever affection passed between mother and son in the past has been replaced by sheer adolescent rage, with an intensity that puzzles and frightens both of them. Hubert's confused aggression conjures up images of earlier angry movie teens (a photo of James Dean decorates his room), but goes far beyond traditional high-school rebellion to form a dark cloud of depression, resentment, sexual identity and nihilism, which sometimes seems to reach beyond the young man on screen and bond the impression of the on-screen character to his off-screen counterpart. A ferocious, uncontrollable yet ultimately sympathetic figure results in a ferocious and uncontrollable film from a filmmaker whose work demands to be seen.
Valhalla Rising
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
Sunday Nov. 14, 9:15 pm
Shown at the Hi-Pointe
For the past few years, Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn has been just a few yards short of becoming the Next Big Thing. His violent "Pusher" trilogy developed a strong cult following worldwide, and his 2009 film "Bronson," made in England, earned respectable reviews on the festival circuit (Imagine "All That Jazz" if Bob Fosse had been a street fighter instead of a dancer), even if it was largely ignored in the U.S. His new "Valhalla Rising," also shot in English, suggests that Refn - despite citing the likes of Terence Malick as an influence - obviously has is eye on the Big Hollywood Action Movie and will stoop at very little to get there.
Set in the Middle Ages, "Valhalla Rising" follows a Viking strongman named "One-Eye" as he hacks, gouges and stomps his way through uncharted regions and an increasingly ponderous screenplay. In the opening "chapter," One-Eye is a prisoner, forced to engage in a seemingly endless series of death matches. He breaks open skulls, beheads his captor and disembowels a man with his fingers ... and that's just the first 10 minutes!
With a curious young boy in tow, One-Eye takes on the task of leading a band of Christian missionaries to the Holy Land. Although One-Eye has his spiritual side when he's not killing people - he has visions! - the journey goes bad very quickly.
Refn is clearly a talented filmmaker - "Bronson" proved that - but he's also an unashamedly shallow one, and "Valhalla Rising" is beautifully filmed but emotionally stunted. Whatever he's trying to express is overshadowed by a swaggering adolescent perspective. By the final 30 minutes, even the sense of originality fades and it becomes clear that Refn is simply remaking Herzog's "Aguirre, the Wrath of God." Sadly, he's doing it through eyes that see the world solely in terms of comic-book swagger and video-game ethics.
Facing the Storm: Story of the American Bison
Directed by Doug Hawes-Davis
Sunday, Nov. 14 5:30 pm
Shown at Webster University
You might think that a 78 minute film would be, to paraphrase an old "New Yorker" cartoon, more than you'll ever need to know about the buffalo; if that's the case, "Facing the Storm," the story of the iconic animal of the Western plains, will surprise you. Doug Hawes-Davis' film is part nature documentary, part history lesson and part an affectionate appreciation of the American bison, an important part of the country's past and still a formidable presence in some areas today. It's hard to say which is more impressive: the newly filmed footage of buffalo on the roam today, offering insight into their behavior and giving a fair example of their majesty, or the well-selected archive footage that pulls the film just short of connecting to the old west, when the creatures were nearly wiped out. This is an unexpectedly passionate film about animals and nature and their precarious state in the modern world.