Is This What the Arrival of a New Voice and Presence Sounds Like?

Rating: R

Grade: B+

By T.T. Stern-Enzi

I have a question for Greta Gerwig, the odd naturalistic beauty who has bounded out of the Mumblecore underworld into the bright and glaring lights of mainstream attention.

Hey, Greta – and I want to go on the record here as a critic who is certainly smitten by your off-kilter charms, your wide innocent eyes and your gangly comic physicality that’s both sweet and sexy, I get you, I do – but I have to wonder if you’ve begun having a few sleepless nights because there’s this other tall alluring blond out there; her name is Brit Marling, and I’ll be damned if she’s not sneaking up on you. I know she’s starting to creep into my dreams and I’m getting worried.

Marling is carving out a different path for herself, so on that note, you have little to fear. You’re mining the comic and the romantic, actually doing Lucille Ball one better and you’re so much softer than Tea Leoni, another of the latter-day would-be Ball-ers. But this Marling, well, she’s all about the drama, although she’s far from a diva. Her brand and flair for the dramatic is more inner-directed. Look into her eyes and there’s a multiverse of experience and wonder, stories waiting to be told.

Her new film, Sound of My Voice plays with one of the greatest and most inherently illogical brainteasers of them all – time travel. But like the best speculative works, and for my money, I go with Octavia Butler’s 1979 novel Kindred, which sends a black woman back to the birth of the nation to reconcile her own twisted personal history with the question of race, Sound of My Voice cares little about the mechanics of the movement.

Marling, who co-wrote the script with director Zal Batmanglij (the two are teaming up again on The East), simply explains that Maggie (Marling) woke up, face down and naked, in a bathtub of water and began wandering the streets until Klaus (Richard Wharton), a mysterious figure rescued her. Soon a cult developed around her, one that Peter (Christopher Denham) and Lorna (Nicole Vicius), a pair of enterprising aspiring journalists seek to expose.

The film kicks off with Peter and Lorna as they are brought into the fold during a secretive initiation rite that includes blindfolded journeys and funny handshakes. It sounds silly, but Voice has a cautious and quiet tone that has the ability to make believers out of skeptics. And that tone starts, and ends, with Marling. She draws the aspirants in, using the full force of her charm on Peter. He is our stand-in and we, no doubt, look at her the same way he does. We want to poke holes in the spell she’s weaving, but we just can’t stop looking at her, maybe because she nakedly unleashes her gaze on us. Rarely does a performer onscreen look into the camera and straight through to the audience, but Marling does and the effect is spine tingling.

The story falters a bit when she asks Peter to bring a young girl to her. We are meant to question what she wants with the girl and assume the worst. Before long other characters and a more conventional plotline intrude.

But for a time, Marling has us wrapped around her finger, both through the scripted narrative and her presence, and that is what caused me to wonder, Greta, if you’re not a wee bit afraid of her. She’s a dangerous threat because she didn’t just emerge from a movement; she’s also part of the brain trust pulling the strings.

I hear her Voice, and I don’t know about you, but I believe she might be The One.

Has Joss Whedon Put Avengers Together for Our times?

By T.T. Stern-Enzi

Back in 1963, Stan Lee and Jack Kirby probably didn’t have as much trouble creating Earth’s Mightiest Heroes as Hollywood has had in bringing these super duper dudes (and one dark and mysterious dudette) to the screen. There have been two very different Hulks (Eric Bana raged out in Ang Lee’s angsty version, while Edward Norton went green in Louis Leterrier’s smash-mouthed follow-up), a couple of Iron Man films with a pair of Rhodeys (the War Machine armor didn’t fit Terrence Howard, so dapper Don Cheadle stepped in), a thunderous alien prince with god-like abilities and Shakespearean aspirations, and a fittingly scrawny weakling who grew into an American captain of note. It is the same misunderstood bunch, but the behind-the-scenes drama eclipsed the narrative tension inherent in assembling such a collection of super-sized egos.

The super teams of Marvel Comics always had interpersonal issues. The Fantastic Four juggled their, well, fantastic powers within the dynamic of a loving family of disparate individuals constantly at odds with one another. The Uncanny X-Men took matters even further, channeling the urgent civil unrest of the 1960s with the conflict between homo sapiens and homo superiors, the mutant super-race borne from accelerated genetic evolution. It was broad and gutsy to go in such a politicized direction with comic book characters, but it made even more sense when, in the hands of director Bryan Singer (The Usual Suspects, Apt Pupil), the outsider metaphor of the X-Men, was updated to include the more contemporary angle of the acceptance of gay, lesbian and the transgender community.

But the Avengers were always (and continue to be) a unique outfit in the world of superheroes. One of their rallying cries – Avengers Assemble – speaks to the very essence of what makes them so distinct, and what may make future film installments such a challenge. The team is an ad hoc committee. In a universe of rock stars, the Avengers are a supergroup with players constantly rotating and trading instruments in the studio. In fact, it has taken them so long to get together, they feel a bit like The Traveling Wilburys, despite having a stellar cast of fairly young faces and hard bodies poured into typically silly spandex tights.

So the real question is, are these Avengers the right ones for our current American society, the socially networked, reality freak show watchers that we are? I believe they most certainly are. Marvel always had a leg up on the DC comic world, in that Marvel never attempted to create a fictional alternative with generic names for their urban landscapes. So the Avengers Mansion takes up residence in Manhattan, meaning that at some key point down the road, the Hulk (played by a thirty-something Josh Hutcherson) and the crew, which might include a sexy red She-Hulk, a black hero or two, and a few alien beings, could pop over to the Jersey shore for a wild night that could, of course, somehow get captured on video and posted on the new intergalactic version of YouTube where Thor (having finally gotten over his daddy issues and claimed the throne) and the Asgardians could sit back and laugh at how pathetic we humans remain, but we wouldn’t care because everyone knows those old heads across the bridge are just  bunch of snobs.

We can thank cool comic book nerd Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel) for popping up these kernels of cultural dissonance into a patriotic reflection of our not-so-deep desires. You know, red-state vs. blue state, rich vs. poor, when faced with a common foe, America, despite all internal opposition, can assemble its best and brightest to give a heavy smack down.

It’s too bad the Hulk, Iron Man, Thor and Captain America can’t smash a depressed economy or the debate over civil unions. Who do we need to get together to handle that stuff?

Reach DCP film critic T.T. Stern-Enzi at Film@DaytonCityPaper.com.

Can a Child Bully a Parent?

Rating: R
Grade: A

By T.T. Stern-Enzi

We need to talk about Tilda Swinton. I think when she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Michael Clayton, a conversation began. We began to consider her particular brand of genius as a form that we could no longer ignore. And I don’t mean to use that word “genius” as lightly as we tend to in cultural debate. What Swinton does is genius because it is not driven by style or method or a concern for theatric — she simply and purely aims to find what makes her character and the stories they inhabit tick.

There is something attractive in her odd androgyny. Her angular features and her long lean figure cut every single frame and each piece of what is left has some elemental essence of Tilda Swintonness that is distinct from what the conventional beauties leave us. The beauties, the stars, if that is what we must call them, are always just themselves, but Swinton is a character, a presence, and something else – truly herself, which is hard to define, but still unique.

In Lynne Ramsey’s We Need To Talk About Kevin, as Eva Khatchadourian, the mother of a child (played by three young actors, but most impressively by Ezra Miller, the eldest of the three who captures the dark heart of a teen about to go off the reservation and the ethereal connection with Swinton as if he actually sprang, fully formed, from her head) who grows into a disturbed school shooter, Swinton embodies the existential angst of a woman who never imagined herself a mother or a wife, and who knows, as her child grows, that even he realizes that she’s not equipped to be a parent, so he begins to pick at her inadequacies, her essential lack of maternal instincts. In effect, Kevin bullies his mother and Swinton allows us a window into the soul of a victim who never dreamed of victimhood in this way. She was supposed to be a hip independent woman of means -artistic and smart, smart enough to avoid falling into the trap of motherhood. She was supposed to be Tilda Swinton.

So, it is not Kevin that we need to talk about. No, we need to address Tilda Swinton, who is a mother, but one who lives in an experimental and unorthodox family unit with her lover and the father of her twins. I tend to avoid drawing a performer’s personal life into critical evaluations of their work, but in this case, I feel justified because we are talking about Tilda’s Swintonness, right?

She is Orlando, the nobleman in Sally Potter’s adaptation of the Virginia Woolf story, who over the course of centuries becomes a modern woman and Margaret Hall (The Deep End), harried mother seeking to protect her son from blackmailers and killers and she is the White Witch from The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. She is Emma Recchi (I Am Love), the woman who marries into an Italian dynasty and chaffs under the restraints of family and duty. And she is each and every other character she has played, large and small. In fact, these characters become larger when imbued with her generous spirit. That is what daringly likeminded directors must be undeniably drawn to when they cast her.

Swinton is the epitome, the very definition of what we mean when we talk about the “alternative” and yet she makes it familiar thanks to her willingness to allow us to see the vulnerability at the core of her otherness, which is what takes the edge off the off-putting conversation about Kevin, and what the story implies about our children.

Reach DCP film critic T.T. Stern-Enzi at Film@DaytonCityPaper.com

An Unadulterated Shot (A Stab, Kick and Punch) to The Heart of Action Fans

By T.T. Stern-Enzi

Midnight Madness swept the Toronto International Film Festival last year and the clear winners were the audiences who saw The Raid: Redemption, the martial arts actioner from writer-director Gareth Evans. The Raid introduces Rama (Iko Uwais), a rookie SWAT team officer prepping for his first full-scale assignment, an early morning raid on an apartment building that serves as the stronghold for a ruthless drug lord (Ray Sahetapy). Rama works out, kisses his pregnant wife and heads off during the opening credits.

Rama and his unit of 20 arrive at the scene, enter the building and then find themselves facing not just the drug lord and an anticipated army of henchmen, but nearly every single inhabitant of the building. The Raid combines the aesthetics of Battle Los Angeles (minus the aliens) and Black Hawk Down with some of the street combat elements of District 13 and its sequel.

But, Evans is also trafficking in James Gray territory: that dark realm where brothers – in this case, Rama’s brother Andi (Doni Alamsyah) is the brains of the criminal outfit – find themselves caught on opposite sides of the divide. Think of the civil wars of crime and punishment, because that is the place where redemption is necessary and must be paid for in blood.

The Raid glances in the direction of We Own The Night, Gray’s Mark Wahlberg-Joaquin Phoenix starrer, which cast the two leads as brothers, one a cop, the other a bad boy prowling the dark streets and alleys of the night. Although The Raid isn’t so worried about the coming clash between the brothers. Instead, that plotline takes a backseat to the steady and unending attacks from all the other fronts. Bad cops playing one another, the right and left hands of the drug lord eager to claim victory and usurp the other as the heir to the underworld throne, and the armed-to-the-teeth tenants seeking to gain free rent through the bounty on the infidel SWAT team.

Yes, I compared the SWAT team to infidels seeking to impose their will on the land and rights of an oppressed people. That is an easy critical angle, handed to us on a silver platter. And, if we dare to think it through further, we will see and appreciate the fact that the movie also forces us to accept that there is no simple solution, no clear win and end to the battle. In today’s combative world, “victory” is unattainable.

In an Esquire anniversary issue from close to 20 years ago, I remember an essay from Norman Mailer, a tough guy piece on boxing. Mailer spent hours training in an old gym with real pros and other wannabe pluggers and he talked about how the training – the heavy bag work, the speed ball and the sparring – focused on breaking down the innate urge in Man to not hurt another person. The training, he believed, stripped away a core piece of the boxer’s humanity, easing the internal struggle.

That struggle disappears when you are fighting to survive. Action becomes jazz-like, improvisational in those moments and that is exactly what The Raid gives us. Evans has replicated Mailer’s prose with a healthy dose of Ornette Coleman-Don Cherry interplay and the physicality of Bruce Lee remixed for a critical contemporary global hip-hop audience. This is what it means to be human in that moment when your inevitable end is not a possibility on the horizon. Death is probable, probably about to greet you before the next blink of an eye.

Reach DCP film critic T.T. Stern-Enzi at Film@DaytonCityPaper.com

The Duplass Brothers Invite Notable Friends to Their Cinematic Home

By T.T. Stern-Enzi

Rating: R

Grade: B

See here, Jeff (Jason Segel), indeed lives at home with his mother Sharon (Susan Sarandon). He’s smoking weed and wallowing in a state of ennui. That’s just a fancy way of saying that he’s slacking his way through life. At one time, he played high school basketball and was on track to be a fine upstanding member of society — in theory, like his brother Pat (Ed Helms), a married low-level blue collar guy who dreams of cruising around town in a Porsche while his wife (Judy Greer) aims to save up money for a new house.

It’s Mama Sharon’s birthday and she’s been sleepwalking through life too, watching her boys diddle and dawdle, not completely aware that she’s missing out on her own happiness.

The Duplass Brothers, Mark and Jay, have spearheaded a movement, Mumblecore, beginning with The Puffy Chair (2005) and Baghead (2008) that has slipped through the cracks into the indie scene. Everything about it speaks to raw sketchy filmmaking. The narratives and dialogue sound like they have been borne out of late-night bull sessions fueled with weed and munchies. And the brothers make movies like a garage band, in the solitude of their back rooms with their closest buddies.

But there has been a gradual shift in their approach. Cyrus, from 2010, featured John C. Reilly, Marisa Tomei, Jonah Hill and Catherine Keener and attracted attention, obviously thanks to that cast – Academy Award nominees and winners. Here were characters able to infuse the Duplass plot with that real spark, that necessary buzz capable of breaking them and their movement.

And now comes the next step. Jeff, Who Lives At Home looks and sounds like the band’s been discovered by an A&R guy at a record label, given the chance to mix it up in a real studio, and a couple of pros happened to drop by for an impromptu jam that ended up on tape. No one’s trying too hard and they all find the pocket.

This Home is a tasty slow cooker, despite having a couple of leads, Jeff and his brother Pat, who aren’t the easiest guys to spend time with. In lesser hands, or actors without the appeal of Segel and Helms, audiences may have felt disconnected, even uncomfortable in the company of these guys. But we have a hopeful glimpse buried beneath their weird shells. So much of Mumblecore has been about the kooky idea and the lazy slackerish vibe — the anti-reactions of the players involved caught up in these moments.

Another pleasant surprise is Rae Dawn Chong, pretty back in the day, but now, grown and sexy in a profound way. Funny and touching too, as she banters back and forth with Sarandon. These two co-workers are ready to ditch and find their true homes in the world together, and they seem like a perfectly suited pair — who would have ever thought to match them up? A huge score for the Duplass brothers, but not so hard to figure.

Missing is their father. The man stands outside each and every frame, watching over the boys and Sharon too. There’s love watching and it tints our vision of these frames. We start to love everyone, warts and all. Jeff, Who Lives At Home is not Mumblecore: it is grown up, mature, even as it focuses on a cast of characters stuck in a state of arrested development.

Reach DCP film critic T.T. Stern-Enzi at Film@DaytonCityPaper.com

Discussing 21 Jump Street and a Pair of New Releases

By T.T. Stern-Enzi

The advance buzz on the adaptation of 21 Jump Street left something to be desired. Months away from the movie’s release, moviegoers and critics alike expressed real trepidation. Would Channing Tatum’s bland blockheaded good looks bring in the ladies? What about the ever-changing Jonah Hill, a newly minted Oscar nominee — would this rising star continue to shine or would this be reminiscent of his raunchy stumble in The Sitter? Does the new generation of multiplex fans have any sense or connection to a gimmicky pop-cop show from the ‘80s, even with its reputation as the show that kickstarted the plunderific career of Captain Jack Sparrow?

I settled in for the preview screening with no expectations, which really means I was totally prepared for a two-inch vertical, at best — and that factors in my genuine love for Hill’s comedic chops. A long-trending topic in the film and television industry, the crossover of projects from the multiplex to the home box and vice versa is a curious notion, especially the jump from television to big screen in an age dominated by reality programming. Maybe the golden age was the ‘80s, hence 21 Jump Street.

A funny thing happened on the way. The movie was actually funny, hilarious, in fact. Another raunchy teen-based comedy, following closely on the heels of the epic Project X party, Jump Street capitalizes on its detonation of the rules of decorum and taste, but it also packs a sly punch line in its depiction of the reversal of fortunes among the high school social network. The gleeful geeks now reign supreme. Everyone wants to be a fey geek, which means that a shy nerd like Hill’s Schmidt gets to go back, as an undercover narc, and enjoy the fruits of his labor, while the cool jock Jenko (Tatum) is left wondering what went so wrong in the natural order. Who knew smart social commentary could be so much fun? And after a strong opening day (on the way to booking a big-time box office arrest), Sony has already signed up for a sequel.

Among the chattering class, speculation runs rampant. What’s going to be the next series to make the jump from television into the feature film franchise ranks? Arrested Development can’t seem to develop beyond its loyal cult base and there just aren’t enough hours or terrorist threats left to generate a 24 feature.

Well, why not Breakout Kings, the A&E series about a special FBI program that uses cons to catch recent escapees from federal prisons. March 13th marks the street date for the first season on DVD, while the second season opened with the shocking death of one of the Kings. There’s no real breakout star among the cast, but the premise, with its shades of 48 Hours, has the kind of episodic hook that a team of screenwriters could spin into a string of sequels and reboots ad nauseum.

Or maybe we should stick to the notion that some stories belong on television, where the details and red herrings of a show like The Killing can create a weekly web of intrigue. Based on a Danish crime procedural, the US edition, also on A&E, has a thirteen-episode season (the Complete First Season is out now) that follows a police investigation into a murder with all the tangential strands of family, various community elements and the overall political landscape coming into play. Many fans were confused by the lack of closure at the end of the first season, but will likely be drawn back in once the second season arrives on April 1st with a two-hour premiere.

It sounds silly to say that television is the new real, in terms of narrative storytelling, when so much airtime is devoted to the reality of housewives, bachelors, song & dance competitions and celebrity chef cook-offs, but cablers A&E and HBO are proving to be the last bastions of action and drama with production values that jump out of the box and off the screen.

Reach DCP film critic T.T. Stern-Enzi at Film@DaytonCityPaper.com

Spend St. Patrick’s Day With a Few of These Lucky Charms

By T.T. Stern-Enzi

The spirit of the Irish diaspora comes alive with the annual celebration of St. Patrick’s Day. Festivities include hearty parades and the copious consumption of green beer and food (with special Lenten dispensations for those who gave up particular treats or tasty beverages), all in honor of the fiery passion of a people inspired by language, music and a cultural mythology linked to the earth.

For those looking for an alternative to the shamrock party-vibe, I, your trusty neighborhood film critic, offer a selection of screen gems to lure you away from the ribald revelry of the streets. Invite a few close friends over and kick back with this double shamrock of features celebrating the lasting impact of the enchanted Irish Spring.

My Left Foot

Christy Brown (Daniel Day-Lewis) was a poor working class Irishman born with cerebral palsy who could only effectively manipulate his left foot. But Brown went on to become a celebrated poet and artist. Jim Sheridan’s 1989 film based on Brown’s memoir catapulted its Academy Award winning lead actor into the artistic firmament. At its core though, is the message that no impediment can limit the human spirit.

The Commitments

This 1991 dramedy, adapted from Roddy Doyle’s novel of the same name featuring the music of Wilson Pickett and Percy Sledge, tells the story of a group of unemployed Dubliners who formed a band. The raucous dream of performing soul music by the all-white band ultimately fails due to the constant bickering among the members. And yet, failure never sounded as sweet as this — the bonus here is the soundtrack, which, after the screening, can get the after-party started.

Once

Music, again, plays a major role in this 2006 musical film debut from writer-director John Carney and Dublin is the scene, but Once captures the bittersweet taste of love and a common passion as a struggling street musician (Glen Hansard of the Irish folk rock band The Frames) begins to tentatively court a young Eastern European immigrant (Marketa Irglova), a trained pianist with family commitments. The film’s organic nature — based on the real-life musical and romantic collaboration that developed between Hansard and Irglova — garnered awards (an Oscar for Best Original Song), fans around the world and a stage adaptation that aims to keep this contemporary faery tale story alive in our hearts a little longer.

Miller’s Crossing

Leave it to the Coen Brothers to infuse the American gangster saga with a healthy dose of Irish flavor. Miller’s Crossing pits rival gangs against one another with Gabriel Byrne playing both sides to his advantage. This is crime noir rooted in political and social history (the Prohibition era), but sadly, the film failed to hit the box office bull’s eye during its limited run. Of course, the best way to experience its true glory is in more intimate home screenings — with your favorite crew.

In America

Writer-director Jim Sheridan snags a second spot on this St. Patrick’s Day list of required screenings with the family drama In America, which he co-wrote with his daughters Naomi and Kirsten. The semi-autobiographical story details the trials of modern-day Irish immigrants attempting to stay afloat in New York City’s Hell’s Kitchen. Love and redemption reign.

The Secret of Roan Inish

The power of Irish folklore drives this John Sayles film about the selkies, a mythic race of seals that can shed their skin and take on human form. A young girl, sent to live with her grandparents near the island of Roan Inish, comes to believe that her brother, swept away as an infant, may have been rescued by the legendary creatures and be able to return. This 1994 feature is fitting St. Patrick’s Day fare for the entire family.

Reach DCP film critic T.T. Stern-Enzi at Film@DaytonCityPaper.com

Kentucky Native Joey McFarland Helps Bring this Baby to The Screen

By T.T. Stern-Enzi

Julie (Jennifer Westfeldt) and Jason (Adam Scott) take notes as the arrival of children seems to rip the romance out of the relationships of their coupled friends, the ever-horny Ben (Jon Hamm) & Missy (Kristen Wiig) and the humorously rock-solid Leslie (Maya Rudolph) & Alex (Chris O’Dowd). The six are lively and cultured New Yorkers enjoying their version of Sex and the City, but all of them are vaguely aware, in theory, that kids will challenge their ability to dine out in style and vacation with ease. Julie and Jason, though, have even more reason to fear: they are the platonic couple, the best friends who know each other’s every foible, which leads them to consider the possibility of having a child, while sidestepping all of the pesky entanglements that sex and love can create.

As a married critic with kids, my insider’s gaze of Friends With Kids, the new project from Westfeldt, the now triple-threat independent film phenom who gave us Kissing Jessica Stein, raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I wondered, at times, which of my friends had taped one of our house parties or a raucous restaurant road show. Even though the focus is on the crazy couple that believes they can cheat the game — or remake it in their own glamorously deluded self-image — married folks will see reflections of themselves in these two, because we all say we want to marry our best friend and imagine that we will remain as hip and sexy as we were back in the day.

I felt not one ounce of shame sharing this sentiment during a phone interview with Joey McFarland, the Kentucky native (with a home in the Queen City) who, along with his Red Granite Pictures partner, Riza Aziz, helped to produce Friends With Kids.

Red Granite is the new kid on the production block, but they have already formed an alliance with Appian Way, Leonardo DiCaprio’s production company on The Wolf of Wall Street (with Leo starring), which will begin filming this summer, and their aim is to mix tent-pole projects with more intimate fare while hopefully generating a slate of three movies a year. For them, not the scope but the material comes first.

Producing approximates the give-and-take of a condensed long-term relationship or a marriage, one with an offspring that grows up equally fast and heads out into the world to seek approval. To hear McFarland talk about Westfeldt, it is like the testimony of a proud and enamored partner.

“She is the embodiment of a passionate writer, producer, director and actress. She is a force. The truth is, it is easy to like a script on the page, but you have to believe in the people to bring that vision to life on the screen. And when we sat down with Jennifer and Jon, these two soul mates who aren’t married but have been together for years and are best friends and put their own time and money behind this project, it was an awesome experience.”

For the intimately attuned audience members, there is a subtlety in Friends too, displayed through its old school approach to friendship. In a society that has tipped overwhelmingly towards social media and virtual networks versus face-to-face encounters, Westfeldt reminds us that friends used to be the people you went out of your way to spend time with, the people you saw and who saw you at your best and worst in the moment.

With local voices like McFarland out there in production houses like Red Granite, there seems to be hope for more organic partnerships not only between filmmakers, but also filmmakers and eager audiences everywhere.

Reach DCP film critic T.T. Stern-Enzi at Film@DaytonCityPaper.com

Iranian Film Separates Melodrama from the Complex Realities of Life

Rating: PG-13

Grade: A

In an awards season when we celebrate the idea of George Clooney playing a beleaguered father/husband/family trustee who discovers that his comatose wife has been having an affair, while also juggling a monumental decision about the land rights to his family’s epic estate in Hawaii, it is fascinating that a film out of Iran could appear on the scene and cause audiences to question what we mean when we talk about the complexity of emotional dramas in narrative feature films. But, that is exactly what A Separation writer-director Asghar Farhadi’s Academy Award winner for Best Foreign Language Film dares to do, and the film’s sheer audacity should serve as a wake-up call not only to filmmakers and audiences, but to our social and cultural networks.

A Separation presents Simin (Leila Hatami) and Nader (Peyman Maadi), a couple caught in a legal battle. Simin wants a divorce so that she can take their daughter and flee the social oppression of Iran, with its restrictions on women, education and civil liberty. She wants her daughter to have the right and option for a better life — and as an unspoken benefit, she too will gain access to rights and opportunities for herself. But, this is not to be, because the legal system is a male-dominated process rooted in religious authority, although there is more complexity in the situation. Nader’s decision to remain in the country (and to expect some support and understanding from his wife and daughter) stems from his role as the primary caretaker for his father who is suffering from Alzheimer’s.

The court sides, as it must in order to remain consistent to its creed, with Nader, and Simin is forced to remain unless she is able to cut off all ties with her family and her cultural roots, which financial security might allow, but as a woman — a lesser class citizen in her society — we see that is not even a remote possibility. So, she must use her wits to navigate as best she can, living a separate and totally unequal life in quiet isolation like women (of color or lower class designations) throughout history.

The film illustrates the differences between social, cultural and economic realities of life in Iran and life in the United States. Our sense of the poor and the oppressed here cannot come close to the ties that bind Simin and Nader. There is a rawness to the lives of Simin and Nader that goes far beyond the scripted scenes, digging deep into the very act of living and how people fight in the face of such inevitable tragedy, but they do so because there is hope, hope that we used to believe in, that we used to have faith in, that there is some chance, some act that might redeem us, if only for a moment. Even in the most restrictive of situations, a vital essence of our humanity continues to strive to (re)create a version of our true selves, a place where that idealized self can thrive. That sense transforms the play, the fantasy of these stories, into real human moments, real life, rather than a stab at some perception that we dub “reality.”

This argument should take nothing away from films like The Descendants, American Beauty or the indie dramas that attempt to immerse us in the lives of others, our friends and neighbors as they struggle courageously to live the dream. No, but I do mean to point out the sharp contrast with A Separation, which shows the family as a frayed fabric that we endeavor to piece back together, to keep whole, so that we can enjoy the warmth and security it still has the power to provide.

Reach DCP film critic T.T. Stern-Enzi at Film@DaytonCityPaper.com

Wim Wenders Projects Dance Theater in 3D

By T.T. Stern-Enzi

Rating: PG
Grade: A

The idea of “dance theater” (Tanztheater in German) evolved from expressionist dance in 1920s Vienna, with new forms developing and spreading throughout Central Europe beginning in 1917. The term re-emerged during the 1980s and Pina Bausch, a student of one of the leaders of this school of dance, became a new school practitioner of note. Since the 1970s, kicking off with her run as the artistic director of the Wuppertal Opera Ballet (later renamed the Tanztheater Wuppertal Pina Bausch), Bausch blended movement, sound and various staging configurations to create her own stamp on modern dance with the members of her troupe.

Her short segments composed with dialogue and action often set in natural environs touched with surreal elements inspired filmmakers like Pedro Almodovar (his movie Talk to Her not only embraces this aesthetic, but presents pieces of the idea to the filmgoing set). Bausch herself, back in 1983, even appeared in Federico Fellini’s And the Ship Sails On.

So it is not surprising that Wim Wenders, director of Wings of Desire and the Buena Vista Social Club (to name two films familiar to stateside audiences) and president of the European Film Academy in Berlin decided to capture Bausch’s unique interpretation of dance theater on film. What is fascinating about his project though was his decision, joining fellow German filmmaker Werner Herzog (Cave of Forgotten Dreams), to shoot in 3D, which has almost exclusively been a technical gimmick/fix for Hollywood genre junkies. Thankfully, Wenders and Herzog see the real potential of these effects to not only immerse audiences in a setting but also to construct a visual foundation between the moving frame and a new heightened experiential realm.

Pina bridges the divide between the audience and the action onstage, much like Bausch’s work. She brought the random nature of the after-hours cafe along with the hills and mountains and the floods into theaters and Wenders further extends the boundaries, exploding outward, while, at the same time, drawing us into those spaces, partnering us with dancers, moving us around the stages or the streets, as if we were another element in the artistic mix. Wenders doesn’t merely conceive of the audience as spectators taking in the action of the art, we are actively engaged in the performance thanks to this third dimensional perspective.

There are four sequences or segments in Pina, each with its own music and locational muses, driven by a host of interviews with members of the troupe. The diversity of nationalities, races, ages and body types cues us in to Bausch’s daring dismissal of social standards. She found beauty and sensuality and grace in the movements of all human bodies and the dancers willingly surrender to her approach, even to the point of shutting themselves off to one or more of their own senses because they realize that such vulnerability will expose stronger and more beautiful expressions within the human experience.

One of the dancers spoke of the power of Bausch’s gaze as performances evolved during practice. Bausch saw the raw emotions as they were born in the dancers in the moment, and that is exactly what Wenders captures in this film. We, the audience, must also be willing to surrender something of ourselves, to feel the blindness, the repetition of movement, the primal sexual energy. We cannot be afraid of it. In fact, the film says that it is part of our forgotten birthright.

Due to Bausch’s untimely death during the preparatory stage of the documentary, Pina feels more like a tribute, but even in that, it departs from the normal conventions one would expect, because as we watch clips of Bausch performing juxtaposed alongside the contemporary clips, or when we see and hear her comments on her craft and its impact on the world of modern dance, the sense never wallows in sorrow over the loss. Her voice, infused with urgent passion, challenges us all.

“Dance, dance,” she preaches, “otherwise we are lost.”

Reach DCP film critic T.T. Stern-Enzi at Film@DaytonCityPaper.com