waltz with bashir

Almost May, really? Time flies when you’re having fun! I’m still planning on making good on my 365 post-promise, and the good news is that I’m cherry picking the best of what I’ve seen, read and eaten the last few months for your pleasure.

To start with, a serious, but visual delight of storytelling. Waltz with Bashir was on my Film Fra Sør shortlist last year, but it took me till now to get to see it at the cinema. The first animated film to be nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, it tells the story of how the director Ari Folman uncovers his long buried memories of his personal experiences in the Lebanon War.

If you are at all a fan of the graphic novel, this film is definitely for you, as it’s a graphic novel come to life, grippingly and heart-stoppingly so. Few judgements are made on what happened, why and how, but a solemn reminder that every armed conflict affects and marks individuals, people like you and me.

jerusalema

Lots more action in the other Film Fra Sør film we saw, Jerusalema from South Africa. Ralph Ziman seems to have materialized out of nowhere to create this impressive feature debut based on real events, about Lucky Kunene who started his career in car-jacking (learning to drive on the way) before moving into providing pirate housing on a large scale in Johannesburg.

It’s a film which has a bit of everything – action, comedy, romance, family drama, social commentary – without seeming shallow. A crowd pleaser portrait of post-apartheid South Africa without cliches.

three monkeys

My attendance at this year’s film festival Film Fra Sør is dismal compared to last, mostly due to Inspector Gadget visiting and lots of other fun things on the schedule, like a haggis party at Special K’s and a trip to see Little Jacket. So far I’ve only seen one film, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s Three Monkeys. I got to know his name from Distant, but never got to see it. If Three Monkeys is anything to go by, his earlier film must surely be worth watching too.

Yesterday’s film centred around how an Istanbul family of a wife, a husband and their 20 year old son react to two incidents, one recent and the other long in the past. The two are not related but very much determine the family members’ actions and reactions, especially to each other. The washed out palette gives the film its own feel, of the still lifes that paint their lives, and words don’t help their communication.

An meditative but intense film by a filmmaker who clearly loves his city and its inhabitants in all their grimy, quirky glory.

the night of the sunflowers

Last year turned out to be a true film year for me, particularly after my move. I really enjoyed the film festivals in the autumn, like Film Fra Sør, the local Film Festival and even a Hong Kong film series to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover. The latter was memorable not only for premiering ‘Confession of Pain’, the latest film from the Infernal Affairs team, but also for laying on a great buffet afterwards – with alcohol for free, not in any way to be laughed at in this town!

When I did a tally using my paper diary from last year, I realized I had seen almost 40 films – surely a record for me. The one that is still with me the most though, is a Spanish film called ‘The Night of the Sunflowers’, or ‘La Noche de los Girasoles’. It’s director Jorge Sánchez-Cabezudo’s first full-length film, and opens with a man dumping a woman’s body in a field of sunflowers at dawn. It continues in a montage of little films, flitting back and forth in time, steadily building a hugely suspenseful story about how chance meetings and incidents can set off a chain of events, funny, tragic and horrible all at the same time. In that sense it reminded me a little of the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple and Christopher Nolan’s Memento.

The characters and their setting, a small, arid Spanish village, were very reminiscent of the Spain I have seen (minus random killers of course). I found the two aged feuding villagers and the police chief brilliantly played, certainly having the latter as your father-in-law when you’ve botched a murder cover-up is the last thing you would want. The images and the dilemmas of the film are still preying on my mind.

Unfortunately I missed Manda Bala, a documentary on drugs, corruption and crime in Brazil, which Mr. Snow said was a fantastic ride. I hope to catch it sometime (where?). What film have you seen recently that’s still keeping you thinking?