The 43rd annual Chicago International Film Festival certainly covers lots of bases, what with 160 films from 37 countries and loads of special events. But while wanting to be all-inclusive by showing anything and everything has a curatorial purpose and value of its own, it’s doubtful any film festival can realize this. For better and for worse, the programming at Berlin, Cannes, Rotterdam, Toronto, Venice, and many other festivals reflects particular visions of what cinema should be. Discerning a point of view or critical agenda behind the CIFF lineup this year–or any year–is virtually impossible.
Instead of furthering the thoughtful examination of generational politics at the heart of his 2003 film, The Barbarian Invasions, Canadian Denys Arcand reverts to facile satire in this glossy tale about a Walter Mitty-ish civil servant (Marc Labr�che). Saddled with a wife and children who spend the bulk of their time glued to cell phones or video games and a job that basically entails denying disaster victims government assistance, the numbed bureaucrat escapes by indulging in elaborate revenge and sexual fantasies. Arcand’s attempts to expose the soul-deadening shallowness of modern culture fall flat; the intended targets are much too easy (the frequent skewering of “political correctness” feels about ten years out of date), and there’s a glib quality to the whole project that belies its ambition. In French with subtitles. 109 min. (RP) a Thu 10/11, 4 PM, and Fri 10/12, 6:30 PM, River East 21; Mon 10/15, 9:30 PM, Landmark’s Century Centre
Becoming John Ford
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Nick Redman’s uneven documentary about the great American filmmaker from his silent days through My Darling Clementine in 1946–almost all of it in black and white and devoted to Ford’s films at Fox–often feels like a rough cut. Talking heads are identified belatedly or not at all while sometimes echoing one another, backtracking, and offering alternately solid scholarship (from Joseph McBride and Janet Bergstrom, among others), lazy misinformation (such as the claim that Pinky didn’t show anywhere in the south, or Ford’s own absurd boast that he eliminated farce from his films), and odd mixtures of the two. We hear both real and alleged statements by Ford (read by Walter Hill) and Darryl F. Zanuck (read by Ron Shelton), whose sources are never cited. With many glaring omissions en route (including Judge Priest at Fox and Stagecoach at RKO), this patchy survey does, however, have many incidental pleasures: Peter Fonda offers a great John Wayne imitation, and some of the clips are fabulous even when they aren’t identified. 94 min. (JR) a Sun 10/7, 1 PM, and Mon 10/8, 5 PM, River East 21
Anton Corbijn transcends the conventions of the rock biopic with his reverberating portrait of Ian Curtis, the lyricist and front man for Joy Division, who committed suicide at 23 just as the postpunk band was taking off. The movie sheds light on Curtis’s death by focusing on the ordinary aspects of his life; he was dogged by poverty, early marriage, fatherhood, and the onset of epilepsy even as Joy Division gathered a local following, broke through on TV, and signed with Tony Wilson’s Factory Records. Martin Ruhe’s lustrous black-and-white cinematography evokes the tumultuous Manchester of the late 70s, a working-class milieu enlivened by punk. Sam Riley is fascinating as Curtis, a hypersensitive young man hobbled by his incurable disease, and Samantha Morton is poignant as his put-upon wife. R, 121 min. (AG) a Fri 10/5, 7:15 PM, River East 21; also Mon 10/8, 6:45 PM, and Tue 10/16, 6:30 PM, Landmark’s Century Centre
Her Wild Oat
Saverio Costanzo’s slow, somber religious drama caused a steady stream of walkouts when I saw it screened at the Toronto film festival, which seems ironic given the subject: a class of novice monks washing out one by one as they find the limits to their faith. The central character (Christo Jivkov) arrives at the Jesuit seminary on the Ventian island of San Giorgio Maggiore and embraces its severe regimen of silence and prayer. Yet the community’s core values of obedience and humility begin to lose their luster as he gets to know his fellow novitiates; the brighter ones tend to leave, departing not in shame but with new and exciting insights into themselves. One can’t become a lamb of God without being a sheep among men, Costanzo suggests, though in the end he comes back around to the principle of erasing one’s ego in pursuit of spiritual transcendence. By that time, however, most of the audience may have transcended the theater. In Italian with subtitles. 115 min. (JJ) a Wed 10/10, 6:30 PM, and Thu 10/11, 9:45 PM, River East 21; also Sat 10/13, 2:30 PM, Landmark’s Century Centre
