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Friday, January 11, 2013

Dia Ocho, आठ दिन, Dag Otte, Day 8



“Kapringen” [A Hijacking] is already being celebrated with major festival prizes worldwide.  This Danish film follows the arduous negotiating between the CEO of a cargo firm and the Somali pirates who have captured the ship and crew.  The sterile environment of the corporate headquarters shot in bright antiseptic light contrasts with horrible conditions the crew endures at the hands of gun crazy Muslim bandits.  The room the crew is locked in is dark, stuffy from lack of air and reeks of human excrement.
Days turn to weeks and eventually months as the bargaining moves at a frustrating pace.
This is dark stuff with moral and ethical questions that constantly leap from today’s headlines.  Just how much is human life worth; when is suffering too much? 

One of my favorite books has finally been brought to the screen.  Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children follows the lives of two boys born at midnight on the eve of India’s independence.  One is born into wealth, the other poverty but the babies are switched at birth and we are immersed in a Fielding-esque satire of political upheaval, class warfare, and oppression.  The films handing of Rushdie’s “magical realism” is lyrical and understated.  The caste is lovely to look at and the locations are gorgeously exotic and claustrophobically decrepit.  I read the book so long ago that I don’t know if this is a valid recommendation but the story came back to me in all its wondrous beauty.

The director was at the screening of Sweden’s “Call Girl” and he introduced the film with the tongue-in-cheek observation that he was surprised to see the theatre full at mid-day to watch a 2.5 hour movie about the dark underbelly of Sweden.  I sat next to a Swedish woman connected to the industry and asked her why so many Scandinavian films choose to examine the dark, the corrupt, the violent and perverse.  She thought for a moment and agreed that was in fact the trend and it may be that they want to show that the region is not all spic-and-span, not all blonde and beautiful, not the stereotyped light and bright palette the region has been painted in since the 1950’s.  “Call Girl” follows the trend set by the Wallender stories, Steig Larssen, Sjöwall & Wahlöö, Jo Nesbo and others.  If we are to take anything away from this film, the government of Sweden, it’s liberalism and quasi-socialist image exists as a means to hide the reality that everyone is corrupt or corruptible.  If you try to expose it you will be dispatched before you open your mouth.  Trust no one and watch your back.  All this aside, the movie does portray a very believable scenario about the recruitment of women and very young girls into the dead end life of the call girl.

Cuba has held my fascination for the past 20-odd years, since before my 1999 New Years’ celebration visit.  This was the only Cuban film at the Fest so I had to fit it in.  Lucy Mulloy wrote and directed her debut feature “Una Noche” about three young people attempting to flee the limiting prospects of life in Havana.  Her three leads are remarkably solid for first time actors and we will see more of them I am certain.  The Island is shot with affection, daily life is portrayed in stark simplicity and there is very little political posturing.  The enemy is not so much the government as local law enforcement.  The scenes shot on and in the water are impressive for a low budget freshman effort.  

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