Denerstein: Telluride's aura entices filmmakers

Saturday, September 9, 2006

So, how was Telluride?

That's the question I'm always asked after spending Labor Day weekend at the Telluride Film Festival.

The answer: I saw lots of good films (18 in all over three days) and had several interesting conversations. If I had to summarize this year's films, I'd say they were generally good, if conventional.

Of the 29 major film programs here, almost half were in English, a far cry from the days when most of the English heard in Telluride was spoken in lines or in the Sheridan Bar. The art-film world may have changed radically since the festival debuted 33 years ago, but filmmakers still tend to view the festival as a cinematic nirvana, where devotion to the art of film valiantly struggles to survive.

In introducing The Last King of Scotland, director Kevin Macdonald, who previously had brought documentaries such as Touching the Void and One Day in September to Telluride, sounded a typical note. Macdonald told the audience Telluride was "the only festival I enjoy being at."

For me, Telluride 2006 best can be categorized by the galvanizing presence of a director whose passion seems boundless, by a film that tips toward youthful audiences and by a solid slate of movies that seemed to throw viewers on one or the other side of the fence.

The director

Alejandro González Iñárritu traveled to Telluride with his new film Babel. One in a crop of important new Mexican directors, the 43-year-old Iñárritu, who now lives in Los Angeles, has made a movie in which a rifle shot in Morocco echoes in the lives of a San Diego husband and wife, the nanny who cares for their two young children, a poor Moroccan family and a Japanese father and his deaf teen-age daughter.

Never mind how Iñárritu connects the tauntingly disparate parts. The director, who regards Babel as the last film in a triptych that began with Amores Perros and includes 21 Grams, is one of the few who attempts to tell stories with global reach.

During a showing of his film, I sat with Iñárritu in a small, backstage room. Iñárritu's a commanding director, so it's appropriate that he asked the first question in our interview, wanting to know whether the Crocs I was wearing were comfortable. He was close enough to my shoe size for me to let him discover for himself. He said they felt like "sleeping shoes," a description he quickly refined into "slippers."

Somehow, this moment of shoe-sharing served as a prelude to a discussion about illegal immigration, a subject that's deeply woven into the fabric of Iñárritu's Babel, which stars Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Gael Garc'a Bernal.

"I think both my country and the United States government have very cynical positions," said Iñárritu. "Both governments are playing a game of economic convenience, having these poor people working in this country and not being paid what they deserve. At the same time, these people are the second income of my country, so it's convenient for Mexico to have them here.

"I think racism and xenophobia are growing now. It's funny that the U.S. took pride in helping the Berlin Wall to fall down. But with their neighbor, they're talking about doing this border (fence) that, for me, will be a monument to intolerance."

Youthful exposure

Not all the films in this year's festival were meant to lead to weighty discussions.

Severance seemed to take aim at a demographic that's considerably younger than the average member of the Telluride audience.

British director Christopher Smith tries, in his words, to pay homage to the slasher films he watched as a kid. Smith's cult-colored entry caused quite a stir, although for me it seemed no funnier than most of the horror films that attempt to take the genre at face value.

Smith's story revolves around a group of employees at a weapons manufacturing company. These unlucky souls retreat into a Hungarian forest for a weekend of team-building and slaughter. Gore and gory humor ensue, such tasty morsels as a bloodied man stuffing a severed leg into a mini-fridge.

Who knows? This made-for- midnight movie might just find an audience in the real world. At minimum, those who market Severance probably will be encouraged by what one woman was overheard saying in line. She reported that after the movie her companion wanted to go into the bathroom and throw up. If you're in the horror business, you can't buy publicity like that.

And then, the rest

This year seemed to be marked by as much division as consensus when it came to the bulk of the Telluride program.

Fur, the eagerly anticipated fictionalized look at how photographer Diane Arbus discovered her inner freak, won the hearts of some. Others thought Nicole Kidman was miscast as Arbus, and that the story didn't do enough to illuminate Arbus' dark, visionary genius.

Director Steven Shainberg (Secretary) certainly can't be accused of failing to take risks with Fur. He approaches Arbus' story as the tale of a woman attracted to oddity and contrasts it with people who came by their weirdness naturally.

In this beauty-and-the-beast- like fantasy, Arbus' liberation from middle-class constraint develops because of contacts with a neighbor (Robert Downey Jr.) who was born with a disease that covers his face and body with excessive hair.

Audiences seemed to respond to Roger Michell's Venus, in which Peter O'Toole plays an aging actor trying to rekindle the fires of his dying libido by pursuing the teenage great niece of one of his companions.

I'll take the opposition side here: I found the movie a trifle unseemly - not to mention unbelievable, a real surprise for me because it was written by one of my favorite screenwriters, Hanif Kureishi (My Beautiful Laundrette).

A chapter of Ken Burns' upcoming, 15-hour documentary War also received a sneak preview. French director Bertrand Tavernier (Sunday in the Country, 'Round Midnight) said that he had watched all of War and that it ranked among the greatest films he'd ever seen.

I can't think of anything that would have made me more eager to see Burns' epic World War II documentary than that kind of endorsement from a director whose knowledge of film remains unsurpassed.

Star gazing

Telluride isn't noted for herds of celebrities, but this past weekend the festival hosted its share:

• Forest Whitaker: The actor showed up, and (bless him) carried on the tradition of Telluride informality. Whitaker wasted little time basking in the much-deserved praise he received for his staggering portrayal of Idi Amin in Last King of Scotland. Instead, he walked around town unguarded by publicists or sat in theaters watching other people's movies.

• Penelope Cruz: The actress, who stars in Pedro Almodovar's new movie Volver, appeared at a tribute.

• Laura Linney: The star of the Australian drama Jindabyne came to town in support of the film.

• Derek Luke showed up for one of the festival's sneak previews, Phillip Noyce's Catch A Fire, a movie about South Africa under apartheid.

Five Fantastic films...

Of the 18 films I saw at the Telluride Film Festival, here (in alphabetical order) are the five which impressed me the most.

'Babel'

Alejandro González Iñárritu's new movie may not be as emotionally devastating as his previous film, the shattering 21 Grams. But Babel, the first film I saw here, grew in stature as the weekend progressed. Brad Pitt shows remarkable restraint as a San Diego husband dealing with a crisis in Morocco, and the Japanese segment of Iñárritu's globe-hopping film focuses on a fascinating and cryptic story about a father and his rebellious teenage daughter who happens to be deaf.

'Indigenes'

Director Rachid Bouchareb has made a conventional war film that displays a high level of craftsmanship. It becomes compelling because of its subject: the travails and exceptional courage of Algerian soldiers who fought for France during World War II. The film's entire cast won the best actor award at May's Cannes Film Festival. They deserved it.

'Infamous'

I'm not sure the world needs another movie about Truman Capote. I can't say that I entirely bought director Douglas McGrath's interpretation, but his movie contains strong work, notably from Daniel Craig as killer Perry Smith.

And, yes, it's true: The new James Bond (Craig) actually kisses the guy who plays Capote (British actor Toby Jones). I liked having two views of the same story and being able to watch the movie on the screen while the movie that survives in memory from last year unfolded in my head. We all now know more about the writing of Capote's In Cold Blood than we ever dreamed possible.

'The Lives of Others'

I suspected that a movie about the East German secret police would be cut and dried. Far from it, this morally complex tale shows how an interrogator's life becomes intertwined with the career of a prominent theater director. Two great performances (from Ulrich Muhe as the secret policeman and Sebastian Koch as the director) add to the film's surprising power.

'Ten Canoes'

Tribute guest Rolf De Heer brought his adaptation of an aboriginal folk tale to the festival. Beautifully shot and full of earthy humor, the movie serves as a cautionary tale on how wars can be avoided. Some of the cultural nuances may elude American audiences, but we get the point.

Honorable mention

The Page Turner. An eerily delicate thriller about a young woman who grows up to exact vengeance on the woman she believes destroyed her career as a budding pianist. This one was directed by Denis Dercourt, who, according to the Telluride program, is regarded as one of Europe's leading viola players.

. . .and one flop

Oddly, the film that elicited the strongest and most vocal reaction at Telluride may have been one of its shortest.

The brief but excruciating Dutch short When We Were Big opens with a man and a young girl playing at the side of a swimming pool. The girl may or may not be his daughter. The two seem to be having a fine time.

Soon the man jumps into the pool with the child and sinks to the bottom. He pulls the girl underwater with him, and clings to her hand so she can't surface. She flails in the water and ultimately drowns. He's able to hold his breath and swim off.

It's not often that one hears a film booed at a festival, but When We Were Big earned that dubious distinction, not to mention a lot of catcalls.

"Who let that film into the festival?"

"It's murder."

As it turned out, the film's director, Eveline Ketterings, was in the audience when the film showed at the Galaxy Theater. She rose and defiantly faced her detractors who, by this time, were shouting things such as, "You should leave."

She didn't, at least not that I could see.

If When We Were Big had redeeming value, it escaped me. I'm not in favor of public booing at film festivals, but I have trouble recalling a film that struck me as any sicker.

Robert Denerstein is the film critic. denersteinb@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5101