IFF Day 9: Muezzin, Blood Simple, Kinatay

Day 8 was spent in nature, with family and friends. No movies, but I did watch 24. Interesting change of pace.

Muezzin is an Austrian documentary about imams in Turkey. More specifically, it's about the calls to prayer (ezan) they chant five times a day, and a call to prayer competition apparently held each year. The film follows a few of the imams who enter the competition, through regionals, all the way to national finals. What Muezzin does, very subtly and respectfully, is show how ambitious and vain these men really are. There may not be anything wrong with ambition and vanity per se (I would beg to differ, but in some strange cultures, ambition is even encouraged); but these imams are supposed to be 'men of God' in a religion that allegedy puts modesty above all.

Blood Simple. Pure Coens, even in their feature debut. Zhang Yimou's version now looks even more dull.

Kinatay is the first Philippine film to have competed at Cannes, where Brillante Mendoza won Best Director. I don't know if there was a problem with projection or not, but after the first 30 minutes or so (within which nothing happens), the film became so dark I could no longer follow it, and I left. Sorry to say, I was not the only one.

IFF 6: The Shock Doctrine, Dancing Dreams

Docu-Day at IFF.

The Shock Doctrine was adapted by Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross from Naomi Klein's book. It features the author in many speeches, too many for my taste. She essentially argues that extreme capitalism feeds on 'shock': wars, disasters, etc. She starts from the Chilean coup, goes over the fall of the USSR, Gulf Wars, mentions Katrina and the Asian tsunami, and pretty much blames everything that is wrong with the world on Milton Friedman. While it was interesting to watch some of the archival footage, I found there to be too many leaps in her argumentation. Also, I don't get the use of Fargo soundtrack. (They also use some random Michael Nyman, just like Man on Wire did last year.)



On an entirely different note, I went into Dancing Dreams with absolutely no expectations. This is a documentary about a group of teenagers who perform Pina Bausch's Kontakthof, and the sole reason I went was that I loved everything I had seen by her (see my reference in the Mother review here). To cut a long story short, I was blown away. It would be wonderful enough to see another Bausch piece (and see it being prepared), but the film also introduces some of the young dancers, who are just regular high school students, but apparently some with such fascinating back-stories that they would deserve individual films. It was also extremely frustrating and saddening, knowing that Bausch is gone forever. Favorite doc in quite some time.

(Here's a performance of Kontakthof from 1983)