RELATIVE HAPPINESS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Nova Scotian Lard Bucket Looks For Love

Relative Happiness (2014)
Dir. Deanne Foley
Starring: Melissa Bergland, Aaron Poole, Johnathan Sousa, Molly Dunsworth, Jennifer Kydd, Mary Lewis, Susan Kent, Joel Thomas Hynes, David Christoffel, Rob Wells

Review By Greg Klymkiw

She's 30-years-old, runs a bed and breakfast in Nowheresville, Nova Scotia, wears gaudy-chic clothes, sports a shock of straight red-dyed hair and among her other attributes, Lexie (Melissa Bergland) is a great cook. Flashing her almost insufferably perky smile, the comely lassie is what some might refer to as a pretty good catch. She's salt of the Earth, eh. She's good people, eh. She'd give ya' the shirt off 'er back, eh - well, that might not always be a blessing since her shirt, at least for most, would be a few sizes too big for even a baby hippopotamus, but still, she'd give to ye, eh.

Lexie's sisters (Molly Dunsworth, Jennifer Kydd) are mega babes and so's her Mom (Mary Lewis). One sis is married with children, the other sis is about to get married. Lexie's best friend (Susan Kent), also happens to be a babe and she's got a steady beau (Joel Thomas Hynes). Lexie is plumb without any steady bone in her life, save perhaps, for the occasional blind drunk (Rob Wells) trolling the local watering holes and campgrounds.

Worse yet, Lexie can't fit into her Maid of Honour dress and has immense pressure from Mumsy and sissies to come up with a date for her sister's round-the-corner nuptials. Life, it would seem, is pretty tough for a cute little porker in the land of fiddle playing fishermen. Luckily for her, a new guest in her B and B is a hunky photographer (Johnathan Sousa) and he seems to take as big a shine to her as she to him.

Our heroine might have a date for the wedding celebration after all. Unbeknownst to her, though, the shutterbug wayfarer isn't all he's cracked up to be and she's setting herself up for a big fall. Waiting in the wings, though, is a wonkily handsome, kind-hearted, good-humoured and charming roofer (Aaron Poole) who bemusedly catches her antics out of the corner of his eye whilst filling all manner of holes in her roof. If Lexie wasn't so blind to her houseguest's chicanery, she'd possibly be getting at least one of her holes filled by the hammer-wielding Newfie Mike Holmes.

The innocuous rom-com trappings of the film's first third eventually give way to all manner of melodramatic convolutions, some of which yield a reasonably amusing bevy of belly laughs alternating with mega-tear-squirting opportunities. How you handle this picture will be dependent upon your tolerance for regional cutesy-pie whimsy, but let it be said that both the writing, direction and first-rate performances do not let the genre down. If one's predilections are suited to such a romp, the entertainment value will be high indeed.

My 14-year-old daughter loved the movie to death and was laughing quite riotously throughout the picture, also responding emotionally to the more moving and tender aspects of the proceedings. This was enough to stop me from groaning throughout and spewing bilious invectives left, right and centre. That's something, anyway.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3 Stars

Relative Happiness is playing at the Canadian Film Fest 2015 in Toronto.

THE COCKSURE LADS MOVIE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Richard Lester Shenanigans MIA

The Cocksure Lads Movie (2014)
Dir. Murray Foster
Starring: Lyndon Osbourne, Luke Marty, Edward Hillier, Adam McNab, Peter Higginson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The Cocksure Lads (Lyndon Osbourne, Luke Marty, Edward Hillier, Adam McNab) are a contemporary British pop band with a decent following in Dear Old Blighty who are on the verge of launching themselves upon the North American marketplace with a tour beginning in Toronto. Accompanied by their trusty, faithful old Roadie/Driver Monty (Peter Higginson), the lads are chuffed to the gills as they set foot upon the urban hinterlands of the biggest city in the Dominion of Canada.

When an altercation erupts amongst our boys, it spells sure doom and within a few minutes of setting foot on the bland, cold streets of Toronto, they break up and go their separate ways - each one partaking of respective dalliances with a clutch of Canuck babes until the inevitable triumphant reunion on the stage of a Hog Town watering hole.

There's lots to be said for the dramatic premise of following a Brit Pop band in Canada a la Richard Lester's 1965 Beatles classic A Hard Days Night (not to mention John Boorman's delightful 1965 Dave Clark Five opus Having a Wild Weekend and the somewhat lesser blessed 1968 Mrs. Brown You've Got a Lovely Daughter, the Herman's Hermits' belly flop into similar territory).

Promise is one thing, execution is quite another.

Aside from a genuinely fun, funny, puckishly poppy song score by the picture's writer-director Foster and partner Mike Ford, some gorgeously shot musical numbers courtesy of ace D.P. Samy Inayeh (sprightly sliced and diced by editor Luke Sargent), a genuinely moving subplot involving the band's trusted codger-Friday Monty (and a great performance to match by Higginson), the picture pretty much takes a nosedive once the lads break up and wander about, finding romance where they least expect it, engaging in tedious soul-searching and otherwise aimlessly interacting with a variety of Canuckian denizens of T.O.

Look, this is clearly the movie Foster wanted to make, but there are far too many genuine missed opportunities here which could have spun the picture into a way more cutting edge satirical look at pop-singing Brits on the home-turf of the "colonies" - the former Dominion of Canada. I have to admit I unfairly, perhaps, kept waiting for the movie to address this in an almost self-reflective mode of fish-out-of-water-in-a-perverse-fish-in-familiar-yet-weirdly-skewed-waters.

Alas, that's a different movie, but one that might have had a lot more bite and humour than the often dreary meanderings of the plot The Cocksure Lads Movie is saddled with.

Most disappointing is the obvious chemistry between the actors playing the title characters during the opening ten minutes-or-so of the picture and then seeing that turfed by the wayside.

Ultimately, aside from the clever opening titles and musical numbers, the movie never begins to approach the anarchy and mad inspiration of the Brit-pics it's clearly modelled itself upon and we're saddled with yet another Canadian movie that fails to reach the heights of a John Paizs or Bruce McDonald, but instead feels like far too many dour slogs of the most Canadian kind - most often bearing the words "produced with the participation of Telefilm Canada".

What should have been ebullient is instead unenthusiastically dull.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** 2-Stars

The Cocksure Lads Movie is the opening night Gala of the 2015 Canadian Film Fest.

MUCK - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Hot Babes in peril, in swamps, inundies. Albinos too!

Muck (2015)
Dir. Steve Wolsh
Starring: Kane Hodder, Lachlan Buchanan,
Jaclyn Swedberg, Stephanie Danielson, Lauren Francesca

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Muck is bursting at the seams with a whole whack of mega-babes running through swamps and deep woods in their underwear, admiring their lithe bodies in mirrors whilst undressing, taking showers ('natch) and being terrorized and butchered by drooling, psychotic, inbred albinos. All of this has been extremely well shot on a 4K RED Digital Cinema Camera to capture every jiggle of exposed flesh as well as the old-school-style SFX sans digital manipulations.

There is, one supposes, some merit in this.

If, however, you were in the market for a good movie, you might need to move on, unless the aforementioned salacious details might allow certain viewers to kick back and perform some of their own digital manipulations twixt their thighs as they partake in the otherwise dubious pleasures inherent in this massive tank of untreated sewage.

Here's the plot, if you can call it that.

A babe in her undies runs endlessly through the forest. Eventually she hooks up with more babes and their stupid boyfriends. One of them is badly injured. They make their way to an isolated house in the woods and break in. There is no phone, nor is there any cel coverage. Clearly some horrific stuff has happened and their pal is in mega-pain. They do what anyone would do in such a situation.

They talk endlessly.

Here, you will bear witness to the film's pathetically written dialogue, much of which is spotted with enough sexist, misogynistic and bubble-brained yammering that even I was vaguely offended. It takes a lot to inspire moral outrage within me, so if something like this is causing magma to roil up in the KlymNoggin, then most audiences are not going to be impressed.

Eventually, one of the guys decides to go to a roadside bar to use the phone. Everyone stays behind. Some of the babes fondle themselves and take nice hot showers.

Albinos encircle the house.

When rescue boy gets to the bar, he seems to forget why he's there, orders a drink and chats up some babes. The dialogue, naturally, is awful. When he finally decides to use the telephone, he doesn't call 911, he calls his moronic buddy who's a couple of hours away to come and pick him up. Eventually, buddy boy shows up (with babes, 'natch) and they all head to the isolated house.

Carnage, dreadful dialogue and flesh-jiggling continue.

None of this is remotely suspenseful nor especially entertaining. The ending is inconclusive, presumably because this is the first of a trilogy. That there will be more inept forays into the world of this execrable movie is absurd beyond all belief. In fact, this notion might prove to be more harebrained than Muck actually is.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: TURD DISCOVERED BEHIND HARRY'S CHAR BROIL AND DINING LOUNGE. For a full explanation and history of this rating, click HERE.

Muck is available on Blu-Ray and DVD via Anchor Bay Entertainment (Canada)

WHEN GOOD FILM FESTIVALS MAKE STUPID DECISIONS - Commentary By Greg Klymkiw

The cowardice of martinets are hidden behind
policy, process and/or committee decisions.

When Good Film Festivals Make Stupid
(and boy, do I mean STUPID) Decisions

Commentary By Greg Klymkiw

Spring is in the air. There are two ways I know this. First of all, my ponies are being extra rambunctious. It's a beautiful sight. Secondly, though, and perhaps most importantly (in my world), it's the beginning of a whole new season of film festivals. The fall flurry of flagship events is a distant memory, the winter blues reflecting the importance of avant-garde and/or dour social exposes has just passed and now, we're about to plunge into the best time to see movies in the dark - when it becomes warm and sunny.

Film festivals have always held a high degree of importance in the world of cinema; celebrating and positioning new motion picture product to springboard into larger arenas of adulation (or in some cases, belly-flopping into quagmires of rank forgetfulness). During the past quarter-century, however, film festivals are becoming the primary venue for the exposure of many great films that will only be seen on big screens within that context. This doesn't mean the films are bad, but that the traditional exhibition and distribution industry as a whole has become incredibly lazy, greedy and bereft of vision. (It didn't happen overnight, either. One can easily trace the decimation of theatrical exhibition from the early 80s onwards.)

In many ways, it is the film industry itself that has placed so many pictures into what might once have been perceived as the ghetto of film festival exhibition, but is now, more often than not, the most important theatrical venue for many fine films to enjoy a shared experience initially and often only in film festivals.

Film Festivals, in this respect, must not make blatantly stupid decisions with respect to inclusion of product, but most importantly, with the omission of said product.

Some might argue that to err is human. That's all well and good, but a film festival in not human and as such should not err. Then again, like any first-rate computer, a film festival can only be as good as its programmers and in recent years, this is where I'm seeing some of the most egregious, abominable and downright boneheaded decisions/inclusions/omissions.

To that, some argue that the selection of motion picture product, especially within the context of a film festival, boils down to subjectivity.

To this I say, in my best John Huston impersonation, "BALLS!"

I expect film festival programmers to be beyond subjectivity. They are there to present product which, within the context of their festival (or section of the festival), is of supreme advancement of the art of cinema. As such, they might even need to include product they aren't especially fond of. This kind of inclusion (even if I as a viewer might also not be fond of said product) is, to a certain extent understandable, if not downright acceptable.

What's not acceptable, I think, are some of the omissions. The problem is that festivals set up expectations by their very hype. They hammer home the idea that they are presenting the best work, and as such, are the infallible arbiters of what's important in cinema. Far too many scribes, industry insiders and audiences fall for this nonsense.

The worst form of film festival puffery are the announcements from grinning festival directors, programmers and (ugh!) curators, which make a point of how many films were submitted for inclusion in their festival, how much hard work went into making their final selection and how the bevy of product on offer represents the highest level of cinema excellence.

To this I say, in my best John Huston impersonation, "BALLS!"

We all know there will be shitty, godawful films in the mix. We also know there are probably films - good and even great films - that were, for whatever moronic reasons, not invited to participate. Eventually, these "rejects", if they're truly good or great, find a way into the festival world and get seen.

Speaking from personal experience, one film I produced was rejected by a major film festival for some of the most moronic reasons imaginable. The bottom line is that politics and political correctness reared their ugly heads here. The happy ending was that the film was invited into an even more prestigious film festival in Europe, won a Best Feature Film Award there, then was invited to close to 200 film festivals worldwide, won even more awards and garnered to-die-for critical notices, substantial theatrical playoff in foreign (though not domestic) territories and numerous prestigious broadcast berths.

Why did it bug me, then, that one film festival chose to reject it? Well, I knew the film had already been invited to this other European Film Festival, buoyed by the kind of words of praise from the festival director that made me realize that he/she not only loved the movie, BUT, most importantly, that they "got it!"

"Getting it" is all important in the game and what concerns me is that now, more than ever, there has been a slow erosion of standards over a 20-year-or-so period wherein more and more film festivals just DON'T "get it". Sure, there are always going to be people who don't like certain films and like others, BUT, one always assumes that these arbiters of cinematic importance know their shit. What's almost intolerable ARE those who know their shit, but for whatever boneheadedly petty reasons, refuse to acknowledge the importance of certain films (whether they like them or not).

Ah, but here's the worst thing - arbiters of cinematic importance (and excellence) who DON'T know their shit. This is happening more and more. I'll be having a conversation with one of them (and yes, they're usually younger than I am, but THAT is no excuse, really) and upon my mentioning the work of a specific filmmaker, they're looking at me with the sort of blank eyes one finds attached to a cow chewing its cud. I usually resist going apoplectic - not an easy thing for me to do, either. I am, after all, a Ukrainian with the blood of Cossacks coursing through my veins, ready to plunge my sword into anyone and anything that stands in the way of my supremacy. Resist, though, I do, in spite of how infuriating and depressing it is.

Excuses that festival types come up with that I especially hate are those in which they acknowledge the submitted film is very good, but that the competition was extremely fierce that year and that there was simply no room to accommodate a screening of said rejected title.

Too fucking bad, loser! MAKE ROOM!

In fact, there was one time where I had a film rejected by a major festival under the guise of there not being enough room, in spite of the fact that the programmer acknowledged the picture was just fine. Here, I was NOT going to accept this as an answer. I went above the head of the aforementioned arbiter of cinematic excellence and explained the situation to the Festival Director. The director in question, looked at the film, assessed the reasons for its exclusion, then decided that room HAD to be made for the picture.

This, is what I call a mensch.

Alas, there are others who will not sully themselves with such matters. They set up a military-government-corporate-style chain of command within their organization so they don't have to deal with issues which might upset their hallowed apple-cart.

These, I call cowards. They hide behind the bureaucracy they've created. They will use "policy" and "process" as their buffer of weasel-like protectionism. Sometimes, they won't even taint their process with needing to provide ANY reason at all.

To this I say, yet again, in my best John Huston impersonation, "BALLS!"

I have no use or respect for "policy" and "process" since it is the very thing that justifies cowardice.

I have no use or respect for martinets who hide behind "policy" and "process".

I especially have no respect for "policy" and "process" that hides behind committee decisions. It's been proven time and time again that good movies cannot be made by committee and frankly, the same goes for pretty much anything and everything. Committees are fraught with compromise. They're also a smokescreen for the real decision-makers to cower behind if and when the going gets really tough.

Now, I will say that I'm being especially harsh with film festivals and it's incumbent upon me now to declare that my aforementioned criticisms extend to virtually every nook and cranny of the film world. (In fact, this pretty much goes for any bureaucracy - government or corporate. They'll come up with some bullshit reason so they don't have to tell you the truth and/or risk betraying their ignorance - or worse, risk exposing that they're wrong. A bullshit excuse pretty much masks all that.)

It's sickening, really.

But here's the thing about festivals - I hold film festivals far above the standards applied by other segments of the film business. I expect them to be perched upon a pedestal, towering over studios, distributors, exhibitors, financiers, government investment/funding/production entities, industry awards and yes, even film critics (mainstream and alternative film criticism has become especially horrendous in respect to "knowing its shit"). I expect - nay, I DEMAND higher standards from festivals, especially now that they have become the manner in which alternative visions will be seen and celebrated by the world at large.

When good festivals make stupid decisions based on politics, lack of available space and NOT KNOWING THEIR SHIT, when they hide behind policy, process and committees to avoid admitting their cowardice (and/or stupidity), then I really and truly look upon this as yet another nail in the coffin of civilization.

The decline, ladies and gentlemen, is not imminent.

It's already upon us.

As Edward Albee placed, as a chant of despair during the final act of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf":

"…sad, sad, sad."

THE MAKIOKA SISTERS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Lesser Ichikawa on Criterion Blu-Ray

The Makioka Sisters (1983)
dir. Kon Ichikawa
Starring: Keiko Kishi, Yoshiko Kasuma, Sayuri Yoshinaga, Yuko Kotegawa, Juzo Itami

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I wanted to love this movie for three reasons.

First of all, I must admit that even after having seen over 30,000 movies in my life, there are still so many more to see. Japanese director Kon Ichikawa, one of the foremost masters of his country's cinema, is - for example - a filmmaker who inexplicably fell below my radar. I knew he existed, but bad timing forced me to keep missing the handful of massive retrospectives of his work at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) Cinematheque (now housed in the grand TIFF Lightbox complex in Toronto, Canada).

I had also been aware of Ichikawa's ongoing obsession with adapting the best of Japan's wealth of great literature and how this generally distinguished him amongst many of his contemporaries. Yasujiro Ozu and Akira Kurosawa were particularly interested in original screenplays - good on them, but I never look a road map in the mouth, so to speak. For me, Japanese literature (save for Yukio Mishima) continues to be an unknown commodity and I have been chomping at the bit to dine at the Ichikawa Buffet (as it were) to use his movies as a barometer and/or guide to some of these great literary works. In essence, I have been preparing to use Ichikawa like the "Classics Illustrated" comics from my childhood. They always promoted the notion of "now you've read the comic, read the full length book" and for me, that used to work wonders. I mean, really! What the hell! I'm technically not a kid anymore, but even adults with a bit of book learnin' can use some help now and again.

The second reason I wanted to love The Makioka Sisters is that the first half hour is utterly spellbinding. Though we focus only on the four sisters of the title (Keiko Kishi, Yoshiko Kasuma, Sayuri Yoshinaga, Yuko Kotegawa) and one husband (Juzo Itami, eventually a noted Japanese director in his own right), Ichikawa lays out an extremely complex backstory that forces us (not distractingly) to work overtime sorting out and digesting the relationships between the characters and the cultural/historical backdrop.

Add to the above, one of the most heart achingly beautiful visual set pieces imaginable - the sisters taking a lazy stroll to enjoy the cherry blossoms - and you feel like you're diving into what might be a life-changing masterwork (save for the intrusion of one execrable element I will mention much later in this piece).

The final reason I wanted to love this movie is that it's one of those potentially great Chekhovian stories I'm a sucker for - people looking desperately to make connections with each other (or ANYONE) against a major cusp period where it's easier to remain rooted in what's dying or dead than move forward and embrace or accept the new.

It's a world where the ghosts of the past - replete with all their sins and triumphs - want to be at peace, but the living will not let them go, much to the detriment of all concerned. Within this social/cultural/historical cusp period, some will make it, most will not - and out of this shift in the divide should come both tragedy and comedy - all the stuff of great drama.

Alas, The Makioka Sisters falls short of its goals. It is not even especially GOOD drama, let alone being great.

Its story is a simple one - as most great stories are. Four sisters in pre-war (1938) Osaka live a life of relative luxury. Buoyed as they are by the inheritance left to them by their late parents, all should be well. It isn't. Tradition dictates that the sisters marry in descending order of their age in order to qualify for their share of the loot - which is, essentially to be their dowries. This is all well and good for the two eldest sisters who are already hitched, but the third eldest is a major wallflower and the youngest is clearly a modern lass with a burning desire to get on with her life.

Tradition is holding her back, And ultimately, for the family as a whole to move "forward", marriage (and by extension, tradition) is seen as the only option - hence the central goal of the story being the marrying off of daughters three and four. Romance would be nice in the equation, but clearly low on the totem pole of what's seen as necessary for the preservation of the family. The needs of the individual are less than an afterthought. In fact, they're negligible.

What keeps the movie from soaring, even though it occasionally feels like it wants to, is Ichikawa's approach to rendering the narrative. He often hangs back in medium wide shots and lets long conversations play themselves out. God knows I'm happy to watch bearded warriors in lotus positions in Kurosawa pictures as they discuss WHY they're at war and HOW they will do battle. I'm especially happy to sit for hours on end while people talk to each other in tatami-level shots in Ozu. Their pictures are replete with emotion and narrative drive - unlike The Makioka Sisters.

For several reasons, Ichikawa's approach just doesn't cut it. Some will argue that his method is restraint - that he's avoiding the obvious pitfalls and clichés inherent in goosing every dramatic beat to the max. On the other hand, it could almost be argued that he's either lazy, incompetent or hampered by exigencies of production. Almost every single time he moves from his favourite (and I'd suggest rather dull) fixed camera position, so many of the cuts feel jarring and awkward (and not intentionally) while the variation of shots often seem to be from the wrong angle. Well, given the number of stunning set pieces in the movie, he's neither lazy nor incompetent, but I do think he was wrong to tell this story the way he chose to tell it.

This is a story that, while simple on the surface, is loaded with layer upon layer of complexity and yet, one is hardly compelled to even bother peeling back those layers as the director seems so disinterested in wrenching our guts for fear, I suspect, of being melodramatic.

Well, this is a bit of a problem when the story has all the hallmarks of great melodrama and none of the required execution. Ichikawa goes out of his way to mute every major melodramatic beat to the point where a handful of scenes compel you in a certain direction, then refuse to deliver up the goods. The movie has five major emotional set pieces (you'll discover those on your own) and they're exquisitely rendered on both visual levels and from the great cast (who are often wasted by Ichikawa's overall mise-en-scene).

Sorry, Kon. This is really annoying, bud. You need to loosen up a bit.

Ozu, for example, is able to wrench out drama from the smallest details and he is NEVER afraid of emotion. Some have suggested his approach is indeed restrained in order for the emotional core to open up and be real. I disagree. Ozu, like Kurosawa, is NOT afraid of being sentimental or even melodramatic. They are storytellers - first and foremost - and will use every trick up their sleeve to wrench emotion from an audience. As well, I'm not suggesting a measured, mannered approach can't work. It can. It just doesn't work in The Makioka Sisters due, at least based on this picture to Ichikawa either unwilling or incapable of achieving the heights his colleagues aimed for or worse, his inability to properly execute his own approach.

On a surface level, the movie's concluding moments come close to creating that heart breaking devastation that's as sad as it is soaring, but by then, it's too late. Ichikawa has spent most of the movie muting all the emotion, occasionally and sloppily tossing in a dollop of it here and there, then allowing it to all hang out at the end.

Great melodrama (or even straight-up drama) needs to build to such an explosion. Ichikawa seems so obsessed with his snobby attempts at restraint that he forgot he had an audience he needed to please.

I've thus far avoided any background on exigencies of production that might have lead to Ichikawa creating this supremely flawed work (wildly praised from people who really should know better). The above were my impressions knowing nothing about the making of the film (my preferred method of seeing anything for the first time). That said, upon discovering that Ichikawa was commissioned by Japan's Toho Company to make the feature as part of its 50th year celebrations and that he was subsequently and idiotically nickelled and dimed to death, is still not reason enough to change my mind. In fact, I watched the movie a second time and my conclusions stand - it's a movie with occasional beauty, tons of potential but finally, a mess.

I suspect this was probably not the best introduction to Ichikawa's work. I'll certainly see more and I'll eventually watch this again with the context of his fuller canon behind me. Maybe I'll change my mind., though I doubt highly I will - especially in light of the following:

The most bafflingly egregious element of The Makioka Sisters is the music. In spite of the fact that the movie was made in the '80s where the style of music chosen was popular for the RIGHT movies, it is completely, utterly and overwhelmingly incomprehensible to me why a movie that DEMANDED a full orchestral score is miserably fouled with synthesized music so god-awful it might as well have been crapped out by Harold Faltermeyer.

The problem with this is that The Makioka Sisters is not about a Detroit cop in Beverly Hills. Given the score, it might as well have been.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3 Stars

The Makioka Sisters has been lovingly restored and presented on a nice looking, but extras-lacking Criterion Collection Blu-ray.

STANDSTILL - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Identity, redemption and facing the past drive this haunting portrait of a Canadian Mohawk living in the shadow of Colonialism and a Palestinian Refugee living in the shadow of an abusive lover.

Standstill (2013)
Dir. Majdi El-­Omari
Starring: Atwena:Ron David Deerhouse, Meisoon Azzaria, Iohani:Io Curotte, Skawennati Madelaine Montour, Tatum Ieronhienhawi McComber, Jean Pierre Lefebvre

Review By Greg Klymkiw

…Gently she sleeps
With her fingers
in her ears
Gently she dreams
With her palms
on her eyes…
While her Mother sings,
"They Killed the fish
They Killed the bird
and the Little Girl in the house."
-Excerpt from Wedad's poem

Standstill is a powerful and deeply moving first feature film by the Canadian-Palestinian filmmaker Majdi El-­Omari. Set in and around the Quebec town of Oka, the city of Montreal and the Native Reservation of Kanehsatake, it tells the tale of a middle-aged member of the Mohawk Nation. Arihote (Atewena:ron David Deerhouse) is a former war correspondent who used his gifts as a photographer in Sarajevo, but now seeks peace and solace as an anonymous wedding photographer. Juggling the emotional turmoil of an at-risk son, a wife who left him - disappearing as if into thin air - and a father who, in despair, blew his brains out, Arihote shambles through life like a somnambulist.

One night, though, this all changes when he hears a disturbance in the apartment above his basement suite. Upon investigating, he discovers that a murder has been committed by Wedad (Meissoon Azzaria), a Palestinian refugee. The victim is her abusive lover. Arihote is consumed with a need to help the woman, but at the same time, he's equally concerned about personally involving himself in anything that will bring him in contact with the police.

There's a good reason for both of these compelling feelings. They're rooted in the personal, to be sure, but there is also a historical backdrop to his motivations.

Canada's ages-old apartheid, aimed at its First Nations, has been one of the most horrendous, foul and insidious policies of hatred and racism in the history of colonialism in the Americas. The country has also had its fair share of violent genocide, though it's a drop in the bucket, compared to its neighbours to the south (right from the USA and down to the bottom tip of South America). What's been especially infuriating in the Great White North is the "polite" Canadian approach to decimating its Aboriginal Nations through lies, deceit and bureaucracy. The Canadian apartheid has essentially been a cultural genocide; ignoring treaties, swindling land, attempting to smother cultural identity and a grim system of residential schools aimed at "whitening" Native children (and sexually abusing them at the hands of Catholic priests).

More often than not, Canadian Aboriginals have attempted to use legal means to address this infinite litany of injustices perpetrated upon them by politicians and bureaucrats feathering their own nests whilst kowtowing to the needs of old money and corporate pigs. Resistance, more often than not, has been peaceful.

In 1990, the resistance had only one way to go. A whack of lily-white-bread-inbreds living in the town of Oka, Quebec near the Kanehsatake reservation, decided willy-nilly to mow down a huge swath of forested traditional lands belonging to the Mohawks of the region. A sacred and ancient burial ground would have been desecrated and the land would have been decimated environmentally. The Canadian government, as per usual, reneged on old agreements and subsequent attempts to rectify the situation legally amounted to a hill of beans.

The reason? The town wanted a golf course.

Yes, you read that right - a fucking golf course!

The Mohawks had only one choice - they set up barbed wire fences, blocked roads and occupied the forest. And they were armed to the teeth. This led to yahoo vigilantes, Quebec Police and eventually the Canadian Army descending upon the Native People. The "Oka Crisis", as it was eventually dubbed by the lily-white-bread-Canadian-media (and many historians who should know better), was indeed one of the most severe, tension-ridden armed conflicts between First Nations and their Colonizers during the history of Canada in the 20th Century. (It eventually took an Aboriginal filmmaker, Alanis Obomsawin, to provide a proper perspective on this injustice with her now-immortal documentary Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance, a film which the publicly-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation shamefully refused to broadcast.)

It is within this almost-ghostly social, historical and political backdrop that the character of Arihote is haunted in writer-editor-producer-director El-­Omari's astonishing Standstill, the first feature film presented primarily in the Mohawk language (with a smaller percentage in English, French and Arabic). Shot in stunning black and white (save for the equally arresting colour bookends) by cinematographer Stephanie Weber Biron and underscored by jangling, forbidding, mournful and evocative music by Antoine Bustros, this might be one of the most important films to be made in Canada in some time. El-Omari's mise-en-scene includes a series of neo-realist tableaux and simple, but effective handheld camera movements (floaty-cam-style, not shaky-cam) to tell this story about two people forced by political and social upheaval to confront the past in order to move forward with the future. Arihote is a stranger in his own land whilst Wedad is most definitely a stranger in a strange land.

So much of the film's story unfolds in slow, but richly composed and always fascinating details of real life - the camera at once being a fly on several walls, but also revealing the extremely potent points of view of Arihote. These latter moments are especially extraordinary, because we get a sense of his "camera eye" and when we see what he sees, it's as if we're seeing it through the eyes of one who has spent a lifetime photographing death, destruction, exploitation and despair.

El-Omari places most of the narrative emphasis upon Arihote. He is haunted by his wife's disappearance after he left for Sarajevo as well as trying to raise his motherless son in a world of conflict, but all of it far removed from his own experiences as a war photographer. What's especially moving is when we (and his son) discover that Arihote, was more than an ineffectual husband and partner to his long-gone wife - that he did a lot more than look at the world through a camera lens. She was a major activist in the "Oka Crisis", as well as being a brilliant visual artist. She placed her life on the line in a serious conflict, but also exposed her soul upon canvas. Arihote was not dissimilar. He's described to his son as being a vital participant at Oka "with a camera in one hand and a semi-automatic weapon in the other."

In a sense, we're faced with the tragedy of a couple whose love is effectively torn apart by the weight of colonialism and the crisis of Oka. She sought solace in rebuilding their family and love. Alas, he sought solace in the bitter war of Sarajevo. The broken pieces of this marriage resulted in abandonment on both sides of the equation and in the middle, Arihote's brilliant young son without a mother, his distant suicidal father and a sense of not belonging to either Kanehsatake or Montreal.

Add to this mix the parallel tale of Wedad and Arihote's involvement in her crisis - a strange narrative choice which starts the story off, but fades into the backdrop until the hugely emotional final third of the picture. Doing the math on the whole, we have a colonized aboriginal man, a female refugee from Palestine and a young man who doesn't know where he belongs. As such, El-Omari delivers what might be the ultimate indigenously Canadian story of all, one that recalls the title and even thematic layering of Edward Everett Hale's classic of short American fiction, "The Man Without a Country" (itself an allegory for the American Civil War).

To be without a country seems to be tantamount to being without a soul, not unlike so many aspects of Canadian existence amongst its aboriginal peoples, the diaspora of the poorest European immigrants and their progeny and the myriad of recent immigrants often fleeing political persecution in their countries of origin. In spite of this, though, El-Omari doesn't let us or his characters muddle about for an eternity of identity crises. He provides, like any great storyteller, obstacles that must be overcome and in so doing, he creates a film that is as despair-ridden as it is eventually very moving, powerful and oddly, but genuinely uplifting in a completely un-sentimental fashion.

There are no easy decisions or answers for any of the characters. Like most of us, they are living within an existential quagmire - one brought about by the crashing waves of history. As individuals it is their despair, practically hard-wired into their very beings by external powers which force them to face a new world, fresh horizons and a future in which they can break through the wall of stasis permeating their lives.

El-Omari presents all this in a muted fashion, but by doing so, he actually creates a film which might be one of the few Canadian films to be imbued with the strength and power which we have, for some 20 years turned to the Belgian filmmaking duo, the Dardenne Brothers for. Their intense naturalism and concentration upon the lives of the disenfranchised have been reflected in such masterworks as La promesse, Rosetta, L’Enfant, Le gamin au vélo and their most recent stunner Deux jours, une nuit.

Where Standstill might occasionally veer from a completely naturalistic style are its occasional dream-like visions and flashbacks, though even these extraordinary sequences are imbued with a highly realistic approach within the context of both the narrative and as self contained units of dramatic action. There's no overt flash to these haunting scenes, though in retrospect they are as unforgettable as anything else in the more realism-infused sequences. Like the Dardennes, El-Omari delivers considerable poetry, cinematic magic and flirts briefly, but pointedly with the cerebral.

It seems fitting, of course, that during a critical point in the story, the father of independent Canadian art cinema, director Jean Pierre Lefebvre appears in a pivotal, important role. (Full disclosure: Lefebvre appeared in a not dissimilar role in a film I produced in the late 90s by Bruno Lazaro Pacheco entitled City of Dark.) Here, as a weary French Canadian police detective investigating the murder that sets the whole film in action, he brings a wise, knowing humanity to his role as a man who has suffered similar personal bereavements as those experienced by Arihote. Lefebvre plays his role as more bureaucrat than Sûreté du Québec crime fighter whilst Arihote has all but given up his past as an activist and photographic eye upon the despair of war. It is here where we come face to face with men who both, in their own way, have been victims of British colonization and recognize a common ground in each other's place in the world.

Standstill is a film that gives Canadian Cinema the hope and promise that our truly indigenous stories will be told, stories about those who do far more living and dying in this world than the country's oppressors will ever do. Such stories will indeed be in very good hands with Majdi El­-Omari and the handful of other film artists who bring far more to the table than merely ephemeral expressions of cultural experience. He's made a film that has every potential to withstand the sands of time.

I can hardly wait for his next movie.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Standstill is a Domino Films release playing theatrically in Toronto at The Royal Cinema. Demand your local independent exhibitor bring it to your town.

THIEVES LIKE US - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Altman Dirty 30s Crime Classic on Kino-Lorber

Thieves Like Us (1974)
Dir. Robert Altman
Starring: Keith Carradine, Shelley Duvall, John Schuck, Bert Remsen,
Louise Fletcher, Tom Skerritt, Ann Latham, John Roper, Al Scott, Pam Warner

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Bowie, Chicamaw and T-Dub rob banks. There's nothing especially romantic, heroic or even mean-spiritedly psychotic about them. They're a mismatched trio, yet their very differences are what bind them as friends and colleagues. Set against the backdrop of the dirtiest days of the depression in Mississippi, much of their time is spent hanging out together; first in hiding after breaking out of prison, then lying low between bank heists.

Played respectively by Keith Carradine, John Schuck and Bert Remsen in Robert Altman's extraordinary Thieves Like Us, these men have doom written all over them. Chicamaw is good humoured enough, but his thirst for booze is unquenchable and under the influence, he's a mean drunk. Even when sober, he's a killer deep down and won't hesitate to blow anyone away who threatens his freedom to dally with dames, suck back the sauce and rob banks. T-Dub is the eldest of the trio and supposedly the brains, but he's a braggart and a simpleton with a weakness for platinum blondes.

Bowie has the most to lose. He's the youngest and most susceptible to falling in with the wrong crowd. It's what landed him a life sentence in the first place. With the potential to leave a life of crime behind him, he makes the only real choice he can. He keeps robbing banks. He doesn't really know what else to do anyway. Holdups are the only thing he's ever really known and he's also deeply loyal to his partners in crime.

There's a spot of hope for him though, when Bowie meets Keechie (Shelley Duval), a woman who loves him and will soon bear his child. We want them to find happiness together, but as a couple, they too have doom written all over them.

It's the depression, after all. We hear FDR going on at length on the radio about the "New Deal" and new beginnings for America, but we know it's all a smokescreen. Doom hangs over everyone, like the thick, heavy Mississippi humidity.

Thieves Like Us has always been my favourite Robert Altman picture from the 70s. It doesn't have the cool attitude of The Long Goodbye, nor the grimy grace and poeticism of McCabe and Mrs. Miller, nor the sardonic wit of M*A*S*H, nor the epic tragedy of Nashville and is thankfully bereft of Quintet's Essex the Seal Hunter. If anything, it comes closer to the kind of muted slice of life exemplified by the great California Split.

What I love most about the picture is Altman's attention to the monotony between bank jobs: the hanging around, the card games, the cold bottles of Coke and cigarettes Bowie shares with Keechie. The stick-ups themselves are not charged with the kind of mad kinetic drive of Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde or the pulpy nastiness of John Milius's Dillinger, but they're so low key that they feel like a genuine profession. One of the guys drives, the other two do the stealing. For the most part, the robberies are without incident. In fact, they seem so laissez-faire that once things turn desperate and ugly, the violence is grim. It seems to explode when you least expect it and it's shocking - not in a Peckinpah orgy of violence, but seemingly as matter of fact as the robberies themselves.

The final robbery staged in the film is brilliantly covered by Altman. The cameras are perched above the action, taking advantage of the high ceilings and allowing the superb, almost matter-of-fact manner in which the men go about their business. It's a God shot so fraught with the kind of tension which spells impending disaster. If tension can feel heartbreaking, Altman has somehow managed to do it.

Altman was blessed with securing cinematographer Jean Boffety, who brought a hazy, grainy realism to the film. The daytime exteriors are, for lack of a better word, ugly: cloudy skies, endless mist, lots of rain, muddy roads, greenery to be sure, but always feeling like it's dripping with humidity. The night exteriors are pitch black, extremely contrasty between the big old Mississippi skies of dark grey and occasional flashes of light from a lone closed filling station or sleepy small town street lights or the occasional headlamps of another car. And when we find ourselves with the characters in the drab interiors, Boffety's lighting captures a kind of shabby, somber beauty.

One of the things about the movie that I absolutely love to death is the lack of a traditional score. In many scenes, radios are on constantly - kind of the way people keep televisions on these days. Of course, what we hear are the haunting tunes of the 30s, but best of all, old radio shows like "Crime Busters". In fact, much of this soundtrack is used less as source music, but in fact, becomes the score itself.

Altman takes us to a place that feels long ago and far away and yet, it also feels sadly familiar in a contemporary world where 99% of the population is becoming more poor and desperate. Along with his co-screenwriters Joan Tewkesbury and Calder Willingham, he manages to retain the flavour of Edward Anderson's great novel on which the film is based, but what's even more extraordinary is how Anderson's punchy, yet unadorned straightforward prose jumps off the page and is captured, at least in spirit, through Altman's haunting mise-en-scene.

The relationship between Bowie and Keechie, especially within this context, does have a kind of vapid, almost desolate sense of romance: the inevitability of two young people finding each other in a place with no escape, falling into each other's arms because no other choices exist, is the only romance life can offer. Keechie is a good hearted soul, but she's plain, unmotivated and uneducated. Bowie might well be a handsome young fella, but he's only motivated to steal and his idea of scintillating repartee is when he asks Keechie what the state animal of Mississippi is and upon her answering with a guess, Bowie takes a swig of his Coke and quips, "It's a squashed dog in the road!"

Somehow, all the film's characters are little more than refuse - roadkill abandoned by a life and country infused with despair. It's a story of the forgotten ones. Those who merely existed and had no other choice but to survive in whatever way they could.

When Altman leaves us with the image of Keechie in a train station, patting her belly which contains Bowie's child, she announces in a voice that seems stripped of all emotion and she says of Bowie, "He didn't deserve to have no baby named after him."

Through our tears, we almost believe her.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Thieves Like Us is available on Kino-Lorber Blu-Ray and features a fine commentary by the late Robert Altman. The film looks gorgeous on Blu-Ray. The source has a bit of a battered feel to it, but the transfer impeccably captures cinematographer Boffety's genius in ways it hasn't looked since it was first screened on 35mm.

***NOTE*** The other film adaptation of Anderson's novel is Nicholas Ray's They Live By Night (made in 1947, but not released until 1950). It's a very different approach, but just as great as Altman's.