The Show You Missed

Film Review: Inni

Directed by Vincent Morisset

Concert films are tricky things.  On the one hand, they seem like the next best thing to being there.  But then there’s the rub: the thing about a great concert is you have to be there.  It’s the whole point.  Of course, not everyone in the world was in attendance at every legendary concert: Hendrix at Woodstock, The Who at Kilburn, Prince at, well, anywhere.  So the rest of us schmucks are stuck with concert footage or, to be nice about it, the concert film.

Very few concert films work, mostly because inherent in film is the fourth wall – the very thing that rock & roll exists to tear down.  But sometimes a good director, paired with the right band, breaks through and you get a film like Stop Making Sense (1984), or The Last Waltz (1978), or even Born to Boogie (1972) (which not only had the advantage of a good director, but a director who understood high of live performance and the caprices of rock & roll fame better than any other director, ever).  Other than these select few and a handful of others, most concert films fall flat into the concert footage category, never rising above a mere documentary recording of something really cool… that you missed.

Inni, the concert film that accompanies Sigur Rós’ 2008 multi-media album of the same name, falls into this second category.  Screened at Commune Image in Saint Ouen in late November as part of the Journée Air d’Islande, Inni was the day’s highlight with two screenings for Sigur Rós fans.  Moody, stark, shot in grainy black and white (in some places the film stock underwent three post-production processes to create the effect of found archival footage), the film takes you on stage with the boys during their 2008 performance in London’s Alexandra Palace.  

While a few close-ups are striking visual treats – Jónsi’s contorted, wailing face, or Kjarri Sveinsson’s hands coaxing those haunting notes out of the piano keys – most of the footage seems to be of the empty space between performers on stage.  Intercut with actual archival footage of band interviews over the past decade, Inni is more fine arts thesis film than concert film; the director placing more importance on being “arty” than on giving us a true concert experience. The liner notes for the film state that it depicts “how it feels for both band and fan to experience Sigur Rós live,” but that’s exactly the problem.  It’s impossible to interpret how a fan experiences Sigur Rós live because each experience is highly subjective and personal.  Keeping the camera almost entirely onstage and at angles no fan will ever get to see at a live show may provide a very intimate portrait from Sigur Rós’ perspective, but the fans are left on the other side of a decidedly opaque fourth wall.

That being said, the Journée Air d’Islande was not all art film and Sigur Rós.  The main café space served an all-day Icelandic brunch that included some delicious, possibly not very Icelandic, brownies.  Icelandic sweaters were on display (reminding me of the Reykjavik airport, where my family used to stock up on sweaters and Toblerone during our layovers to and from Germany), and a very nice lady provided Vingt Paris’ resident Icelander with some proper yarn to darn his heirloom sweater with.  The day started with the documentary Rock in Reykjavik (1982), an award-winning documentary about the music scene coming out of Iceland, although the big shows were for screenings of Inni.

Journée Air d’Islande, produced by Sinny & Ooko and Air d’Islande, managed to encompass all the best exports from Iceland over the past 20 years: music, film, sweaters, brownies (sure, why not?) and, best of all, Icelanders.  I think I’ll stick to Sigur Rós live, thanks, but Journée Air d’Islande definitely whetted my appetite for more culture Islandais.

December 2011, Vingt Paris Magazine

December Film Events

Considered one of the greatest filmmakers you’ve never heard of, Hungarian Béla Tarr has influenced everyone from director Gus Van Sant to essayist Susan Sontag to actress Tilda Swinton.  Centre Pompidou presents a retrospective of the maestro’s work with its cycle Béla Tarr, L’Alchimiste.  Begins 3 December.

http://www.centrepompidou.fr/Pompidou/Manifs.nsf/0/CED0517E2B94E58EC12578DC00499A3F?OpenDocument&sessionM=2.4.2&L=1&form=Actualite

Centre Georges Pompidou
Place Georges Pompidou, 75004 Paris
Métro: Rambuteau

London Calling!  Forum des Images kicks off almost two months of London on film, screening everything from very early (slim! with hair!) Hitchcock to Mary Poppins to Julien Temple’s excellent documentary of that iconic Londoner, Joe Strummer: The Future Is Unwritten. Begins 7 December.  

http://www.forumdesimages.fr/fdi/Cycles/London-Calling

Forum des Images
Porte St Eustache, 75001
Métro: Chatelet-Les Halles

Institut Polonais Paris hosts its Fourth Annual Week of Polish Cinema with Festival Kinopolska, special Cannes edition: take your pick from the Masters of Polish Cinema, Animation Weekend, Contemporary Fiction, Shorts, and Guide to the Poles, documentaries that give insight into la vie polonaise. Begins 7 December.  

http://www.institutpolonais.fr/#/event/433

Institut Polonais

31 rue Jean Goujon, 75008

Métro: Alma Marceau

La Cinémathèque Française is sending out 2011 with a bang.  December is so jam-packed with good stuff your Christmas shopping may never get done. The month begins with a retrospective of 100 Years of Nikkatsu, the oldest production company in Japan where Japan’s greatest filmmakers forged their careers.  Three wise men? No, just some guys who make iconic films: Eastwood, Spielberg and Altman each get a retrospective of their work.  Stranger bedfellows can indeed be found in the final cycle of the month, Images des Outre-Mer, which includes film, roundtables, and Q&As with visiting filmmakers. Lucky for you, Bercy Village is in running distance so you can make a mad dash for gifts in between screenings.  Begins 7 December.

La Cinémathèque Française
51, rue de Bercy 75012
Métro: Bercy

Celebrating the release of Roman Polanski’s latest, Carnage, La Champollion is hosting a Polanski night, featuring Rosemary’s Baby, Repulsion, The Ghost Writer, and Death and the Maiden.  Christmas-y?  Not really.  But sometimes you need a break from all that holiday cheer, n’est-ce pas?  10 December

http://www.lechampo.com/nuits.php?page=nuits

Le Champollion
51 rue des Ecoles 75005 Paris
Métro: Odéon - Saint-Michel

I don’t know about you, but around my appartement nothing says Christmas like old British black & white films.  Musée d’Orsay is of similar mind, with two Yuletide programs: The Way We Were: Victorian England in Cinema, and Reading Dickens, including holiday favorites Oliver Twist (David Lean’s, of course), Great Expectations and – bless their hearts, every one – the 1935 version of Scrooge.  Begins 2 December.

http://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/evenements/cinema/presentation-generale/article/the-way-we-were-31278.html?tx_ttnews[backPid]=218&cHash=72c3318c3e

http://www.musee-orsay.fr/fr/evenements/cinema/presentation-generale/article/en-lisant-dickens-31291.html?tx_ttnews[backPid]=218&cHash=2c040ee005

Musée d’Orsay
1, rue de la Légion d'Honneur, 75007
Métros: Assemblée Nationale, Solferino

November 2011, Vingt Paris Magazine

Metropolis : 83 Years in the Making

Metropolis at La Cinematheque Francaise
19 October 2011 - 29 January 2012

In 1927, the German studio Universum Film A.G. (UFA) premiered Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s machine-driven parable of a dystopian future where the demand for new technology and goods literally sacrifices the working classes for the benefit of executives oblivious to the human cost of their own greed. Plus ça change, eh?

While heavy-handed in the symbolism department and somewhat plodding plot-wise, the film is a technical and artistic marvel that has influenced filmmakers from Kurosawa to Kubrick, Burton to Besson, and has become the most iconic science fiction film ever made.  The film reached a whole new generation when music producer Giorgio Moroder tinted and re-cut the footage to a rock soundtrack, and David Bowie and Queen’s “Under Pressure” played over choice scenes, encapsulating in music video the changes that swept the world with Tianamen Square, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the USSR.

Recently restored to its original 153-minute length, La Cinémathèque Française opens its exhibition of Metropolis this week, with original stills, equipment, props and costumes, script pages and musical score to tell an even more incredible story behind Metropolis and its restoration – where National Treasure meets Bladerunner, with a little bit of Sherlock Holmes thrown in.

The original 153-minute version of Metropolis was sold to Paramount who promptly cut it down to 89 minutes and, for good measure, revamped the story from an examination of class struggle into a futuristic version of Romeo and Juliet in an effort to make the film more commercial.  Their efforts not only succeeded, it is this truncated version that lived on in the popular consciousness for many years.  But by the 1980s, technology finally caught up with film historians’ curiosity, and the long, arduous efforts at restoring the film to its original version began.

I say long and arduous because, at the time of its production, the technology to produce multiple negatives of film for multi-country distribution simply didn’t exist.  Lang and his crew got around this obstacle by shooting every single scene on 4 cameras set side by side to, in effect, create four original negatives of Metropolis.  One negative—and the best preserved—was sold to Paramount who, as mentioned, hacked it up to suit their own vision.  The edited footage and the remaining negatives were long thought to be lost or too corrupted to restore, although multiple efforts have been made over the years.  

In addition, having only the Paramount version to go by, the order of shots and sequences, music cues, and title cards have been in dispute for years.  In essence, no one really knew what Metropolis was supposed to look like.  Fritz Lang wasn’t any help: he died in 1976, long before any true restoration efforts were possible, but had distanced himself from the film during his lifetime anyway, citing the film as “silly and stupid.”

The 1984 version, while popular with disaffected teens already suffering from Reagan, Thatcher and yuppies, horrified historians both within and outside of the film world, and raised debate about the validity of repackaging the past to suit the present versus preserving the integrity of a work of art.  

In 2001, a 125-minute version of the film was reconstructed using still photographs and title cards where original footage was missing.  Screened at that year’s Berlin Film Festival, this was thought to be the definitive version of Metropolis, the only one in existence closest to the original 153-minute film.

But as it turns out, that day in 1927 when the 153-minute negative was offered up for sale, there was another buyer in the room – one that UFA, Fritz Lang and all of history completely forgot about.  An Argentinean distributor purchased one of the negatives, took it back to Buenos Aires and…  stuck it in a drawer and forgot all about it.  

Until 2008, when it was rediscovered by the curator of Buenos Aires Museo del Cine.  Although in some places terribly corrupted, the Argentine negative was the sole remaining, complete version of Metropolis in the world, and served as a blueprint to end the questions of sequences, shots, music cues and, ultimately, the actual plot and storyline.  Spearheaded by the Murnau Foundation, the restoration took about one year and was completed through digital technology specially designed for the project.  Not only have shots been restored (including a breathtaking bird’s eye shot of the Tower of Babel), but entire subplots and characters. Metropolis is finally complete.

The exhibit at La Cinémathèque Française takes an in-depth look at the making of Metropolis, as well as the incredible story of the film’s restoration as a cultural and historical event, in a multi-media presentation that combines film footage, production stills and a recreation of the birth of the iconic Machine (of which I was delightfully reminded of my favorite sideshow at New York’s Coney Island).  Not just for film buffs, the exhibit is a fantastic look at technology, German Expressionism, and of course the historical context and prescience of Metropolis, where progress both destroys and restores.

The fully restored version of Metropolis is being screened at MK2 cinemas beginning 19 October.

Metropolis: L’Exposition runs from 19 October through 29 January 2012 at La Cinémathèque Française, and includes discussions, live events and an accompanying retrospective of Fritz Lang’s body of work.

October 2011, Vingt Paris Magazine

November Film Events

On 2 November, independent filmmaker Elena Rossini presents her work-in-progress, The Illusionist, a feature-length documentary that explores the commodification of the body and the marketing of unattainable beauty around the world. From Vogue to Jenny Craig, global companies work hard to market the “Official Body” for women – an idealized, unattainable image that is sold from Los Angeles to Tokyo with very little relation to what real women look like, yet producing a profound effect on real women’s lives. A networking cocktail hosted by European Professional Women’s Network precedes and follows Ms. Rossini’s presentation.  Net proceeds go to the completion of The Illusionist and promoting this important dialog.

Deloitte (auditorium)
185 av de Charles de Gaulle 92524 Neuilly sur Seine
Métro: Pont de Neuilly (line 1)

From 3-8 November, the 11th Festival Resonances focuses on the new form of social revolution begun by the Arab Spring.  Cell phones, Twitter, Facebook and the use of digital technology and social networking tools were effectively used as a call to arms, a way to document change as it’s happening and make the world witness.  Yet what is the role of the images and tweets and updates that live on when the revolution is over? A selection of films, roundtable discussions and a preview of Tous au Larzac by director Christian Rouaud and an official selection at the Cannes Film Festival.

Magic Cinéma de BobignyRue du Chemin Vert 93000 Bobigny
Métro: Bobigny Pablo Picasso (line 5)

Guess what?  It’s Documentary Month! The Bibliothèque Centre Pompidou features a retrospective of the work of cool Dutch filmmaker Heddy Honigman, the BPI opens the month with screenings of Metal and Melancholy, Underground Orchetra, Crazy and El Ovido, as well as a selection of her short films and works made for television.  Begins 5 November.

Centre Georges Pompidou
Place Georges Pompidou 75004
Métro: Rambuteau

Documentaries and features from Japan are on the menu this month at La Cinémathèque Française. Founded in 1986 by Tetsujiro Yamagami, Productions Siglo produces documentary films and fiction devoted to the social problems of Japan often neglected by mainstream film: pollution, poverty, alcoholism and the environment.  

La Cinémathèque Française
51, rue de Bercy 75012
Métro: Bercy

November is Aprés-midi des Enfants at Forum des Images, and just to keep it relatable to les petits Parsians, the Forum leads children through the world’s greatest cities, from Prague to Dakar, Rome to St. Petersburg and all points in between.  Start from home with a screening of the delightful Ratatouille on 2 November.

Forum des Images
Porte St Eustache, 75001
Métro: Les Halles

November 2011, Vingt Paris Magazine

The Other Side of History

Film Review: Les Hommes Libres Directed by Ismaël Ferroukhi, screenplay by Ismaël Ferroukhi and Alain-Michel Blanc, Pyramide Productions

History, as they say, is written by the winners.  Certainly that’s true when it comes to war.  Of course, whichever side wins not only gets to write the history, but also gets to be the hero and take all the heroic credit for itself.  But as we’ve seen over the years—especially when it comes to WWII—from Schindler’s List to Inglorious Bastards to Valkyrie, the unlikely and unsung heroes of war can come in every color, country, and guise… and will probably never stop coming.

That’s a good thing, because as much as war tears the world apart, it also brings unlikely factions together, factions that have themselves seem to have forgotten they were ever on the same side.

Among these is the little-known story of the Great Mosque of Paris.  During the German Occupation of Paris in WWII, the Muezzin and his fellow Muslims turned the Great Mosque into an underground railroad for Jewish families, children and resistance fighters, providing refuge for resistance fighters in its underground caves and tunnels, and false identify papers for Jewish families, claiming them as Muslim and helping to arrange safe passage out of France and away from the death camps.  

Sound unlikely?  That’s what young Algerian Younes, the small-time criminal and reluctant protagonist of Les Hommes Libres thinks too, when he’s caught by French police for dealing on the black market.  Deep into their collaboration with the Nazi occupiers when the film begins, the French police are convinced the Great Mosque is harboring Jews and resistance fighters, but they need proof.  In exchange for providing incriminating evidence, Younes can enjoy freedom to continue to scratch out his meager living on the black market without too much harassment from either the French or the Germans.  Such a bargain!  

Younes accepts the devil’s bargain and starts hanging around the Mosque, where he befriends the Arabo-Andalusian singer, Salim.  When he discovers Salim is not a Muslim but a Jew who has been given sanctuary at the Mosque, Younes must choose between his own safety and his friends at the mosque, including the benign muezzin Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit, the mastermind behind the subterfuge and, in his own gentle way, one of Paris’ most formidable resistance fighters.

Advised by noted historian Robert Satloff, with events corroborated in the recently released La Grande Mosquée de Paris by Karen Gray Ruelle and Déborah Durland DeSaix, writer-director Ismaël Ferroukhi carefully builds his film on research and facts, even if fictionalizing some characters in the service of his story.  He reveals in small, tight shots the hardscrabble existence living on rations and fear in Occupied Paris; the tension in the underground clubs and parties the Parisian Muslim world enjoys, never knowing when the Nazis will change their minds and turn against them, too; the impact of all the Jewish families suddenly cleared out of the 11th arrondissement (see the plaques along rue de la Roquette).  The entire film is an advanced class in how to make a period film on a shoestring budget..  But for all these noble efforts, I can’t say that Les Hommes Libres is a particularly  groundbreaking film.

The brooding and intense Tahar Rahim, acclaimed for his titular role in The Prophet, is Younes, although his on-screen presence in this film is not strong enough to carry it on the back of his rather sparse dialog.  Michael Lonsdale brings his considerable experience and gravitas to his role of the muezzin Si Kaddour Ben Ghabrit, and Salim Halali, who in real life went on to become a huge pop star in Morocco, is sensitively portrayed by the distractingly green-eyed Mahmud Shalaby.  

Co-written with Alain-Michel Blanc, the structure of the film is conventional, if not predictable, and some of the dialog drifts toward cliché from time to time.  There is nothing that is groan-inducing, but it’s not brilliant either.  However, as a fascinating view into a piece of history nearly forgotten, the film is priceless.  The filmmakers have stated that they wish for this film to re-open a dialog that has been stalled for decades and commemorate the kindnesses and sacrifices once made for one another, not as Jews, not as Muslims, but as fellow humans, regardless of who writes the history in the end.

September 2011, Vingt Paris Magazine