Volume-1-Issue-13

IN REVIEW ONLINE
FEATURES
CINEMA DU REEL 2023
THE FUCKEE’S HYMN — 1
SLAUGHTERHOUSES OF
MODERNITY — 2
EVENTIDE — 2
ALLENSWORTH — 4
LABERINT SEQUENCES — 4
ORLANDO — 5
PARADIS — 5
LAST THINGS — 6
LA BONGA — 6
GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE — 8
ONLOOKERS — 8
ROCK BOTTOM RISER — 9
BEING IN A PLACE: A PORTRAIT OF
MARGARET TAIT — 10
OUR BODY — 10
THE SECRET GARDEN — 11
A SPELL TO WARD OFF THE
DARKNESS — 12
SOUVENIR D’ATHÈNES — 12
CHILDREN OF THE MIST — 13
TWO RESERVOIRS
An Interview with Léa Mysius — 14
KICKING THE CANON
UNKNOWN PLEASURES — 17
FILM REVIEWS
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR
AMONG THIEVES — 19
ENYS MEN — 21
KIL BOKSOON — 22
A THOUSAND AND ONE — 24
RYE LANE — 25
IN VIAGGIO — 27
THE LINE — 28
MURDER MYSTERY 2 — 30
SMOKING CAUSES COUGHING — 31
TETRIS — 31
THE INNOCENT — 32
WINNIE-THE-POOH: BLOOD AND
HONEY — 33
GIRAFFE — 34
ALBUM REVIEWS
LIL KEED — 35
DEPECHE MODE — 36
ALY& AJ — 37
March 31, 2023
Volume 1, Issue 13

CINÉMA DU RÉEL 2023
THE FUCKEE’S HYMN
Travis Wilkerson
The ghosts of the Vietnam War now outrank the survivors. After
fifty years, it may as well be ancient history, with Ken Burns’
recent documentary, The Vietnam War, solidifying its place as a
research project not unlike his Civil War. Kissinger’s still around,
of course, and every once in a while, one may spot the golden
“VIETNAM VETERAN” adorning a black hat, but the war’s individual
moments have been long subsumed into a mythic tale about the
limits of American hubris. But, the children of those veterans still
carry the residual traumas of those moments, and in them, the
ghosts find their vessels.
Travis Wilkerson, director of radical political documentaries such
as the magnificent An Injury to One, was one such child. His last
few projects have been increasingly personal, focusing mostly on
the sins and stories of his own family to illustrate larger political
issues. His latest, The Fuckee’s Hymn, continues the pattern by
amending his 2011 Distinguished Flying Cross with more stories
about Wilkerson’s late father and his role in the Vietnam War.
Here, Wilkerson takes a more philosophical approach by
questioning the role of stories in the war, as well as how those
stories directly affected his father. “Can a story kill you?”
Wilkerson teases. You probably know the answer.
Dense forest growth in high contrast black-and-white dominates
the frame for most of The Fuckee’s Hymn’s running time.
Wilkerson’s movies usually play like a visual radio show, so the
slow series of landscape shots merely serve as context for the
wider story. Here, the forest and surrounding flora are eventually
revealed to be the land around his parents’ house, with the house
itself briefly making a cameo (though only its darkest recesses
are shown with a sliver of light to mark a bathroom in a long
hallway). Meanwhile, Wilkerson narrates his story with the
circuitous rhythms of a Faulkner character, often interrupting
himself, starting the story again, or allowing the strength of a
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tangential story take over. With his commentary on the deadly
alchemy of storytelling, the curse of family memory, and the
ghosts that live in the margins of his father’s legacy, Wilkerson
has forged a true Vietnam Gothic.
“Wilkerson [makes] his subject,
as personal a subject as one
can get, the centerpiece of our
collective fears, guilt, and
doubt about the war.
After meditating on the power of stories and myths “that can turn
killers into heroes,” we learn the specifics of the elder
Wilkerson’s Vietnam career. He joins the army as it provides the
only way for a blue-collar kid to learn how to fly, he becomes the
youngest pilot to graduate from his base in Alabama, he’s
awarded one of the most prestigious medals a pilot can achieve,
he’s considered a hero, and he regrets all of it. Travis then
supplies his own memories of his father as he knew him: an
esteemed trauma doctor and professor who saved lives, only to
succumb to a form of cancer that only agent orange can induce.
Even if he tried to live through acts of service to exorcize the
ghosts of Vietnam, the ghosts can still occupy the body.
Wilkerson repeatedly teases a story that simultaneously put his
father in Vietnam, made his father regret Vietnam, and ultimately
killed his father; but a secondary story haunts both Wilkerson
and the film itself. Flashes of red interrupt the serene forest
imagery, a face appears in the shadows. Eventually, Wilkerson
recounts the spiritual horror of watching Hong Sen Nguyen’s The
Abandoned Field, a film that depicts American pilots as
unrelenting monsters to a small Vietnamese village and ends
with both Vietnamese and American boys fatherless. Clips of the
film dissolve into the American woods during the breaks in
Wilkerson’s monologue, providing the only war imagery and the
only faces visible in the film. They, too, haunt.
Films like The Fuckee’s Hymn, such as James N. Kienetz Wilkins’
Indefinite Pitch, remain interesting so long as the radio play
format holds your attention. Thankfully, Wilkerson pauses,
enunciates, grumbles, and teases enough to make his subject, as
personal a subject as one can get, the centerpiece of our
collective fears, guilt, and doubt about the war. Storytelling, that
ancient art, belongs to the characters of the Gothic like the
neighbors of Absalom, Absalom! who corner the novel’s Quentin
and ramble lies about half-forgotten pasts, then begin again as if
telling the story in the right way will hex the ghosts back into
history. Wilkerson’s story is also one of half-remembrances and
stories that earn a warning: “even if they’re not real, they’re true.”
But, he doesn’t tell his story again. Stories can kill you. — ZACH
LEWIS
EVENTIDE
Sharon Lockhart
In her remarkable 2021 book on James Benning’s Ten Skies, critic
and scholar Erika Balsom remarks that the film “at once rewards
a close attention to detail and sanctions wayward drift.” It’s a
lovely turn of phrase, and one quite applicable to Sharon
Lockhart’s new short film Eventide. The two artists — Benning
SLAUGHTERHOUSES OF MODERNITY
Heinz Emigholz
“Never before has Emigholz quite editorialized his architectural tours. Title cards with names of cities and dates of the works
usually give the only context to his series of shots, allowing the viewer to infer any meaning themselves. Perhaps a dilapidated
building in the countryside followed by a pristine building in the city, both made in the same year by the same architect, is a
commentary on how and what the government funds. Perhaps an empty auditorium shows how much community life has
dwindled. Film studies professors typically label this as “structuralist,” and the process can be just as fun as it is quintessentially
snobbish. This is not the case for Slaughterhouses, as Emigholz conducts lectures about the politics and history of each work and
lays out the connections explicitly.” — ZACH LEWIS [Originally published as part of InRO’s NYFF 2022 coverage.]
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and Lockhart — have cited each other’s works as influences in
their own, and even published a book together last year, titled
Over Time. Fittingly, both artists’ works are deceptively simple to
describe, while simultaneously invoking larger formal and
philosophical ideas about duration, stasis, and movement. As
Chus Martinez writes, “her [Lockhart’s] images determine our
understanding of time and action through the grieving
discrepancy between aesthetic expectation and the seeming
unity of time passing… a potentially endless stasis difficult to
recognise or delimit in terms of action or conclusion.”
The simplest thing to do with Lockhart’s films is, of course, to
look at them. Eventide begins with a single, static camera setup.
It does not cut or move for the next 30 minutes. The horizon line
cuts evenly across the frame; a body of water (this writer is not
sure if it is an ocean or a lake) with small, gently lapping waves is
on screen left, while a rocky shoreline and scattered shrubbery
extend across the frame to the right. A particularly large bit of
foliage sits in the middle of the image. It’s dark, although it’s at
first unclear whether it is dawn or dusk. A man enters frame left,
walking across the ground with a flashlight. Eventually, another
body, a woman, emerges from the same direction just as the first
person walks behind some of the shrubs and disappears from
the frame. The second figure is further back in the depth of field,
momentarily alone until the man re-emerges from behind the
shrubs; he's now on the same focal plane as the woman. While
these figures slowly traverse the grounds, their flashlights
pointed down in search of an unknown something or other, the
sky darkens, and stars become more visible.
At around the eight-minute mark, a third figure appears, hitherto
fully hidden by the shrubs and their distance from the camera (a
game of focal lengths). A tiny pinprick of light appears in the
deep background, suggesting now a fourth body. One of the
people moves closer to the water, and the brightness of their
flashlight begins reflecting off of the surface of the water, a
lovely tinkling, shimmering light. Two more figures arrive; it’s
unclear at first if one of them was the light source in the
distance and has simply walked closer to the main point of
action, but eventually that’s revealed, too. Six people are now
wandering the ground, each of them illuminated by their
flashlights. Even more stars are visible in the sky, as the
increasing darkness of the evening throws the light sources into
even sharper relief. Some of the people seem to pair off,
assisting each other in their unknown quest, while others remain
alone, content to investigate their own little patch of earth. What
are they looking for? We don’t know, and no narrative information
is forthcoming.
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It’s a formal game, while also being, of course, a documentary of
sorts, and the mixture of the two modes is where much of the
interest lies. As in her films Double Tide and Goshogaoka, Eventide
is a carefully choreographed performance piece (one could argue
that it’s actually a direct synthesis of these two prior works) that
gestures toward chance operations even as it’s, in actuality, a
document of predetermined movements. The surface simplicity
— a group of people wander about as dusk becomes dark —
belies the precision of Lockhart’s decision-making. But the
emphasis on time, that inalienable filmic element so frequently
diminished and quashed by narrative allows for all manner of
Balsom’s “wayward drift.” One is free to pay more or less
attention to any part of the image at any given moment, so much
so that viewers might not notice how bright the stars have
become or that one or more of the figures have momentarily
been obscured by the brush. In some sense, it even becomes
Tati-like, inasmuch as Noël Burch recognized that the deep focus
photography of Playtime allowed viewers to focus on only one
part of the image at any given moment. For all its static
austerity, then, Eventide is ultimately an entirely invigorating
experience. — DANIEL GORMAN
ALLENSWORTH
James Benning
“Since moving from 16mm to digital nearly fifteen years ago,
James Benning’s films have become more and more stringent,
foregoing surface incident in favor of intensive examination of
the outside world. The freedom to make the films he wants,
whenever and wherever he wants, has led to a profound
paring-down of cinematic language in which fixed-frame
images of mostly non human subjects — landscapes, buildings,
trains — are offered to the viewer for minutes at a time. By
temporalizing space in this manner, Benning’s films seem to
ask us to look beyond the placid surface of these shots, and to
consider the unseen social relations that brought them into
being, as well as the power structures that keep them in
place… Even by Benning’s minimalist standards, his new film
Allensworth addresses the viewer with a radically reduced
palette.” — MICHAEL SICINSKI [Originally published as part of
InRO’s Berlinale 2023 coverage.]
LABERINT SEQUENCES
Blake Williams
At times, Laberint Sequences, the new short film by Blake
Williams, feels a bit like an experimental feature, despite being
only 20 minutes long. That's because the artist packs a lot of
material in a relatively small space, introducing several visual
ideas and subjecting them to systematic yet unanticipated
permutations. The film was mostly shot at Barcelona's Parque del
Laberint d'Horta, a Neoclassical garden space that contains a
large hedge maze. After beginning with a stereoscopic image of
the garden, Williams provides a number of isolated views of the
space, including plants and trees, a canal with fountains, and a
work of classicist statuary. We also see several shots of a
reflecting pool at the center of the labyrinth, with a few tourists
milling about, including a couple of kids running through the
space. This series of shots, like the entire film, is presented in
anaglyph 3D, so in a way, Williams is both offering the viewer the
basic lay of the land as well as getting us accustomed to the
multi-planar depth of the 3D, and how it accentuates certain
attributes of the garden while flattening others.
At this point, things start getting a bit raucous. Situating his
camera at various angles of the hedges, and then panning back
and forth, Williams uses the moving frame to reconfigure the
visual space, the labyrinth forming solid masses that swivel
across the image. Of course, we expect that we might get "lost"
inside the hedge maze, but this camera movement doesn't
correspond to how any human would navigate the space. Instead,
it is as though the space is shifting around us (and the
occasionally still-visible humans inside). Establishing shots with
a stationary camera keep giving way to these kinetic passages,
which are all the more dramatic because of the use of 3D. After
some digital manipulation of the image -- perhaps a callback to
certain motifs in Williams’ feature film PROTOTYPE -- we begin to
see shots looking up through the trees. At this point, aerial cable
cars make their first appearance, first traversing the screen,
then offering birds-eye views of the garden, and then finally a
few shots from inside the moving car.
Following some brief pans inside an empty room overlooking the
woods (with expansive, Mies-style windows and parquet flooring),
Laberint Sequences includes shots from an old movie, in which
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two women are trying to find their way through a hedge maze in
the dark by candlelight. We see scan lines that suggest Williams
is filming off the television monitor, and eventually, he shows us
earlier scenes from the Laberint with a similar televisual
abstraction. But in between, we see shots of Deragh Campbell, in
her role as Audrey Benac from A Woman Escapes, last year’s
feature that Williams co-directed with Burak Çevik and Sofia
Bohdanowicz. Campbell is seated at a laptop watching the film in
question, and, scanning through text on her phone, she speaks
the women's dialogue along with the footage.
Clearly, Laberint Sequences puts the viewer through their paces,
taking a fairly simple idea -- a study of a manicured landscape --
and introducing denser and denser layers of abstraction. From
an homage to the late Michael Snow, and his panning film ,
to a mechanically achieved birds-eye view, to an appropriation
of relevant material from a piece of narrative cinema
("something horizontal," we might say), and finally a performer
subjecting that outside material to critical scrutiny, this film
explores the many ways that a cultural landmark, usually subject
to the tourist's gaze, can be intellectually reorganized through
filmic intervention. And through it all, Laberint Sequences
maintains the hazy, protruding anaglyph 3D, a method that
implies a promise of presence ("like being there") but actually
doubles down on the representational remove. — MICHAEL
SICINSKI
PARADISE
Alexandre Abaturov
While global headlines are presently dominated by Russia’s
ongoing onslaught of imperialist atrocity, Alexander Abaturov’s
Paradise turns its eye to the country’s east, where casual
bureaucratic cruelty fixes the Republic of Sakha’s taiga-dwelling
denizens in perpetual danger. An opening text scrawl offers
specifics: in summer 2021, an extreme heatwave and resulting
drought triggered massive forest fires, and it was decided that in
certain, rural areas, no government-backed firefighting
intervention was needed if the anticipated damages fell short of
the expense to challenge the blazes. It was left to local
inhabitants, then, to fight The Dragon, as the cascading, racing
flames were so dubbed. This opening is immediately followed by
a young girl in the village of Shologon (where the documentary is
ORLANDO, MY POLITICAL BIOGRAPHY
Paul B. Preciado
“Its primary thrust features a number of trans and non-binary
people playing the role of Orlando. Each actor introduces
themself with their own name, but what may initially appear to
be a similar approach to last year’s Encounters entry
Mutzenbacher quickly gives way to a more explicit blurring of
personal narrative and adaptation. Preciado cuts between
talking head interviews with the actors and scenes from the
novel, but actors flow from discussing their own experiences
to speaking as Orlando in the first person, sometimes on the
scale of a sentence, and the scenes of adaptation are shot on
a soundstage, temporally and spatially expanding themselves
beyond the context of the novel into that of filmmaking. This
latter approach is eventually revealed to be self-reflexive in its
self-reflection, as Preciado explicitly compares the trans
experience of gender to a behind the scenes look at
filmmaking.” — JESSE CATHERINE WEBBER [Originally published
as part of InRO’s Berlinale 2023 coverage.]
set) attempting to memorize a passage: “Advise me, sacred
mountain. How does one reconcile man?”
It’s a question that is, of course, unanswerable to any satisfying
degree, but one which guides and pervades all of Abaturov’s
observational, largely unstructured (in any conventional sense)
Paradise, the query itself the closest we get to any kind of
statement of intent. Everything is freighted with potential
meaning. What of a government that places financial
consideration above the lives of its citizens, particularly within
this context where 80% of the regions affected by the enacted
policy are dominated by ethnic minorities? What happens to a
community’s collective psychology and identity when survival is a
daily concern, life-and-death stakes rendered a mundanity? How
does one’s notion of futurity reorganize itself around new
realities?
To the degree that Abaturov attempts any answers, he takes care
to do so presentationally rather than discursively. Scenes of
controlled burns, strategically felled trees, and planning sessions
weave with those of wild horses kicking up dust on village
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LAST THINGS
Deborah Stratman
“Though cryptic and eccentric, this is far from Stratman’s most impenetrable work. Much like her previous film, The Illinois
Parables (2016), Last Things frequently reformulates itself, armed with an arsenal of approaches. The movie embodies a variety
of perspectives, from outer space to microscope slides, as Stratman’s images — landscapes, crystal and rock formations,
sketches, spelunking and laboratory footage, celestial satellite imagery, microscopic forms, etc. — collectively embody an
otherworldly thrill. The soundtrack (including pieces by Brian Eno and Okkyung Lee) and sound design (by Stratman herself) are
often glitchy, alien, and sublime. Stratman’s rendition of rocks, in addition, highlights the complexities of their history and
evolutions. She imbues them with a vastness far beyond the dismissal often extended to the inanimate objects.” — RYAN
AKLER-BISHOP [Originally published as part of InRO’s Sundance 2023 coverage.]
streets, the glow of a tablet reflecting on a child’s face, and locals
eating sandwiches on lunch breaks, flames licking at the edges
of their carved-out, temporary haven. Masks are a common
sighting in Paradise as well, the associated suggestions of 2021’s
Covid-era living both thematic companion and refraction of the
community’s looming fiery threat; iconography we’ve internalized
over the 2020s is subtly and powerfully abstracted in its opaque
inclusion here. But no scene or rhetorical throughline is
over-enunciated or saddled with maudlin sentiment, the weight
of the film’s images to be read in the accumulation of spaces
between them.
This careful restraint likewise applies to Abaturov’s approach to
visual construction, which is essential to Paradise’s considerable
power. Thick, ochre-orange smoke clogs the film’s frames, its
backgrounds choked in desaturation. There’s the insinuation of
armageddon in its almost spectral compositions, black ash
peppering the smoldering landscape — more than anything,
Paradise’s visual character recalls the post-apocalyptic,
sci-fi-inflected imagery of the Floria Sigismondi-directed music
video from Sigur Ros’ “Vaka.” But thankfully, there is no needless
aestheticizing here, which would have the effect of cheapening
the very real human concerns inherent — spectacle is never the
strategy or personality here. Abaturov instead keeps his formal
designs humble, trusting in his portrait’s essential power to reach
viewers. In one scene late in the film, a local worker, one of many
in the group, beams, his unruly mustache entirely frozen, tendrils
rigid as they move over his upper lip. There’s melancholy in
Paradise, but as in that indelible image, there’s also a curious joy;
in the land, in each other, and in surviving. The Dragon is still out
out there, uncertainty remains, help may not come. But we smile
our way into tomorrow, as best we can. — LUKE GORHAM
LA BONGA
Sebastán Pinzón Silva & Canela Rayes
Most of La Bonga takes place in darkness; just flashlights serve
as key lights while voices (voiceovers? diegetic?) guide the shaky
frame to an invisible destination. This destination is the titular La
Bonga, a village that exists only in the memories of those who
once lived there in the north Colombian jungle. Now, the villagers
are resettling after years of displacement, and directors
Sebastán Pinzón Silva and Canela Rayes document this nocturnal
trek and celebration.
The film switches between two focal points: a caravan of those
villagers and friends making the return together and a solitary
mother and daughter duo who take a path separated from the
others. Through both groups, Silva and Rayes collect flashes of
stories about old village life and the subsequent expulsion. A man
in a pink Frozen backpack jokes with his friends, while a
53-year-old woman compliments an 82-year-old man on his
endurance, while memories of white people threatening their
lives suddenly surface. Steadily, the film reveals that the villagers
of La Bonga were threatened to leave their homes twenty years
ago, during the Colombian Civil War, as they were seen as assets
of the guerrilla fighters (FARC is never mentioned by name).
Emotional whiplash overwhelms the villagers as they finally
return to the ruins of La Bonga: some buildings, such as the
“recently” built school, still stand while entire homes have
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framed under a massive tree during the first minutes of dawn
such that their long series of shadows gives us an idea of the
size of the village before cutting to individual portraits, usually lit
by flashlight. Another shot frames their lights in the nighttime to
show a series of tiny lights in the distance snaking their way
through the brush of the jungle. And, in the sort of serendipity a
documentarian prays for, the daughter of our duo puts her
flashlight in her umbrella, which then becomes a makeshift
diffuser as they rest and talk. All of these planned, framed shots
work well when showing a group, but La Bonga’s wisdom lies in its
ability to interrupt these beautiful moments with the
improvisatory, cheap DV confessionals so that we can see the
village’s life in the villagers and vice versa. Silva and Rayes show
the history and lives that make up a community; and, though the
houses may no longer stand, and each villager may have
moments in which they wander in solemnity, the party continues
for now. — ZACH LEWIS
GEOGRAPHIES OF SOLITUDE
Jacquelyn Mills
“More so than a narrative disruption, Mills’ experimental
digressions are, in effect, an attempt to probe and reflect the
push and pull at the heart of Lucas’ environmentalism.
Moments like Lucas’ introduction into the film, walking with a
lantern amidst a pitch black sky perforated with stars; at once
wholly a part of the environment, just another gleaming light,
and yet distinct, somehow apart from the natural fabric of the
place and relegated to forever be an observer. The true
solitude of the film's title reveals itself slowly, in the
uncomfortable middle ground that we seem to occupy
somewhere between Mills' gorgeous compositions: the rugged
mosaic of horse skulls and the cloying primary colors of plastic
detritus.” — IGOR FISHMAN [Originally published as part of InRO’s
Sundance 2023 coverage.]
ONLOOKERS
Kimi Takesue
Kimi Takesue’s third feature film is a fraught, respectably
reflexive process in objectification. Utilizing the much ado of the
tourism industry as our subject (through which it extrapolates its
thesis), Onlookers revels in familiar formal intrigues: static,
compositionally-minded cinematography, distanced gazes, and
soundscapes with ambient sensibilities that somehow recall that
great sandbox video game, Roller Coaster Tycoon 3. To find an
easy and important analog for this film, one might turn to a work
such as Sergei Loznitsa’s Austerlitz, insofar as the subject of
tourism orbits and enables anthropological examination. But
where Loznitsa rooted his analysis in the constructs built from
the relationship with one, very specifically formulated space —
where history can play contingent text to the present’s passivity
— Takesue seems disinterested in anything so determined. Her
montage interlaces landscapes, each often occupied by Laotians
or tourists — persons consistently participating in acts religious,
economic, or excursionist. There’s no discrimination between
these acts, no delineated structure that curates an ideological
trajectory; instead, we simply gather the film’s thesis through
motley organization: a reflexivity that contends with the
camera’s foreign objecthood and its creation of everything
before it into a flattened spectacle. Tethering such a structure of
montage to the global tourism industry (not to mention Takesue’s
vantage as an American filmmaker) makes for an exciting
journey that plateaus about 11 minutes in.
Formal introspection quickly becomes an act of stagnation,
repeating with each new image the idea that came before it. The
equivocal character of each shot asserts the character of the
work as cinematic object. Nothing present in any of the rather
immediate and obvious compositions denotes any sense of
texture, lending an anonymity and ephemerality to the
landscapes themselves, as is emphasized through a pacing in
which each cut occurs within the span of 30 seconds: these
static wides are then variants of the same conception. Sure,
there’s intent in that choice, even articulated in the work’s very
synopsis, but of course intentionality isn’t inherently a virtue. If
this ideology of the montage is meant to be an expression of the
ever-present parade of tourism as a neocolonial, parasitic
industry, that’s a fine sentiment, but there’s little of note here
that hasn’t already been contended with over two centuries of
ethnographic image-making. In fact, it seems that Onlookers
could have registered as a work of greater intrigue and affect
were it a photographic project: an album of stills that curate our
gaze, naturally bringing both attention to the ontological (as this
does), the anthropological (as this does), but also to the object of
curation as a historical process of the imagined (which this does
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completely disappeared into the flora and mud. But that doesn’t
stop Maria de los Santos, the leader of the caravan, from guiding
a celebratory procession through the newfound village and
declaring, “Goddamn, tonight I’m getting drunk no matter what!”
before threatening, “Any men who fall asleep tonight will get their
dicks chopped off!” She’s as serious about the ritualistic
cleansing power of the party as others might be by mourning the
memories never made.
La Bonga, though brazenly political and humanistic, also
develops an air of mystery by choosing what not to reveal.
Though the story of the paramilitaries is told from multiple
perspectives (the exact threatening note shown in an insert
shot), the terms of their return are never given. Why did they
return all at once? Where were they initially gathered before
making the caravan? Did the government give them explicit
permission to return, or was it decided communally via a
diasporic WhatsApp group? All questions are rendered
unimportant as the mythic nature of the return, like Odysseus to
Penelope, takes shape. But then there’s a ghostly POV outside the
caravan, and our duo provides a second mystery. Suddenly,
during the first night’s celebration, handheld DV shots lead us
away from the party and back to the abandoned school while a
solitary, mysterious voiceover worries about getting lost, then
reminisces about an old class. Surely, a shot like this comes from
the filmmakers asking the villagers to shoot their own footage,
but this interruption is placed such that it takes us outside any
literal storytelling to simply meditate (drunkenly, hauntingly) on
which memories cannot be reforged. The DV captures shallow
water as flies, attracted to the camera’s solitary light, dart across
the frame like fireworks. Suddenly, another cut, and the village is
framed in a small corner with literal fireworks marking the party
that still rages on.
Though the majority of the film (both long sequences of the trek
and most of the party) is filmed in the dark, Silva and Rayes
consistently plan inventive ways to frame the villagers’
processions. Many wide shots give profiles of the caravan
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not), set within the subjective history of the photograph.
The idea of the “photograph,” in fact, is overtly present
throughout the film, implied and crystallized in the tourists’
cameras wishing to neatly capture these places they visit and
taking these images with them once their vacation comes to a
close. Sound and time, ultimately, offer little here. They are both
under-utilized and sterile, unnecessary for thematic
extrapolation. This is a film that attunes itself to the formal
machinations of familiar work — each year a lauded
observational doc, hyper-focused on localized global trends,
finds its way to some year-end lists and onto esteemed
streaming platforms — and thus culminates in familiar
perspectives and an even more familiar nondescriptness. With
everything here pitched as a signifier of the exact same thing,
and the signified remaining woefully ignorant to the introduced
contexts, Onlookers is a tired echo of polemics long abstracted
into the institutionalized nether. — ZACHARY GOLDKIND
ROCK BOTTOM RISER
Fern Silva
This is a mode (and, more importantly, length) more typical
amongst Fern Silva’s previous ethnographic pieces, but this being
his first foray into feature-length duration, there obviously needs
to be a little more going on to justify the additional 55 minutes.
And there certainly is — including discussions of the colonial
legacy of science, the communal debate around the construction
of a 30-meter telescope on the sacred Mauna Kea mountain, the
controversy surrounding Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson being cast
as King Kamehameha when the actor isn’t an Indigenous
Hawaiian — but none of these various threads are particularly
fleshed-out on their own, as they’re usually thrown together to
convey some nebulous notion of connectivity. — PAUL ATTARD
[Originally published as part of InRO’s Berlinale 2021 coverage.]
9

FESTIVAL COVERAGE
BEING IN A PLACE: A PORTRAIT OF
MARGARET TAIT
Luke Fowler
Luke Fowler’s latest feature film reflects a slight shift in his
creative project, something that might not be immediately
apparent even to longtime admirers of his work. Although he is
an experimental documentarian, Fowler could also be
considered an intellectual historian. His major works have
focused on specific artists and thinkers of the last century,
including psychologist R.D. Laing (2012’s All Divided Selves),
historian E.P. Thomson (The Poor Stockinger, the Luddite
Cropper, and the Deluded Followers of Joanna Southcott, also
2012), electronic composer Martin Bartlett (2017’s
Electro-Pythagorus), and the short film Cézanne (2019). In
each of these cases, Fowler has combined biographical data,
images, and sounds from historically pertinent locations, and
various excerpts from the subjects’ creations and archival
holdings.
The overall impression of Fowler’s films is that the past is a
constellation, a series of objects and moments held together
conceptually but never capable of forming an irrefutable whole.
In that respect, Being In a Place is certainly of a piece with the
director’s previous films. Composed largely of archival
documents and voice recordings of the late Scottish poet and
filmmaker Margaret Tait, the film abjures any simple didactic
impulse, offering up fragments that provide an impressionistic
sense of her creative worldview. However, this film also marks a
turn toward speculative or corrective history, an attempt to
tentatively accomplish something that Tait herself was unable to
do.
As we see from various notes, shot lists, and official letters of
rejection, Tait was planning a project called Heartlandscape, a
featurette in which she would trace a heart shape around
Scotland with her camera. The film would combine Tait’s
interests in nature and landscape cinema with her other primary
tendency: cinematic portraiture. Moving through the land and
encountering the people in it, Tait aimed to produce a kind of
materialist panorama of her homeland. However, Fowler shows
us documents from the Tait archive that show that at least two
British media organizations, the BBC and Channel 4, rejected the
project, essentially stating that the work Tait proposed did not fit
their existing formats.
So although Being In a Place indeed provides a portrait of
Margaret Tait, Fowler is also trying to reconstruct
Heartlandscape, based on the artist’s notes. This effort, however,
is not revealed until the end of the film, and this makes the
viewing experience a bit frustrating. We see Fowler out and about
in the Scottish countryside, shooting people and recording their
voices (although the two never sync up). But the purpose is
unclear; this approach sometimes seems to be to the detriment
of getting a firmer handle on Tait’s work. To be fair, Tait is
probably the most studied and written-about Scottish artist of
the 20 th century, so Fowler may have thought that a more
conventional documentary, or even one more in keeping with his
earlier strategies, would somehow be redundant. But the overall
impact, while always intriguing, is ultimately rather mixed. We
see and hear just enough of Tait to desire more access to her
work and her thinking, and the supplement Fowler provides never
quite coheres. Nevertheless, if Being In a Place encourages more
viewers to seek out Tait’s quite singular films, it’s all for the best.
— MICHAEL SICINSKI
OUR BODY
Claire Simon
One possibility is that the observation of the camera precludes such violations. Though this may be too simplistic a read — even
if Simon had captured such a traumatic moment, it’s almost unimaginable that she would have included it in the film — as well as
an inimitable antidote, it does add to both the film’s emotional and practical heft. Besides functioning as an encouraging artifact
for future patients, which is to say nearly everyone, as the woman who thanks Simon for filming her surgery hopes, it may at
least be able to serve as a more holistic model for a right relationship between doctor and patient.” — JESSE CATHERINE WEBBER
[Originally published as part of InRO’s Berlinale 2023 coverage.]
10

CINÉMA DU RÉEL
THE SECRET GARDEN
Nour Ouayda
Abbas Kiarostami’s 2008 film Shirin is constructed entirely of
closeups of faces as spectators react to a film playing in front of
them. But the film they are watching is never actually shown —
it’s alluded to only via snippets of dialogue and sound effects
that transpire entirely offscreen. Playfully idiosyncratic and with
a wry sense of humor, Nour Ouayda’s The Secret Garden fashions
a sci-fi epic in a similar design to Kiarostami’s experiment;
shooting in and around Beirut on what appears to be 16mm film,
The Secret Garden recounts a takeover by plant-like alien
invaders who are encroaching further and further into the city.
But this surprisingly complicated, expansive scope is relayed
only via voiceover narration while accompanied by otherwise
staid documentary images. In other words, a fictional narrative
and non-fiction images butt up against each other in a kind of
amalgamation of the two modes, each informing but also
contrasting the other (not unlike Ben Rivers’ Slow Action, come to
think of it). In the case of The Secret Garden, Ouayda’s images
consist of various plants, trees, shrubs, and flowers, some
growing naturally in the landscape, some bursting through the
concrete sidewalks and brick walls of the city, and still others
potted and hanging from balconies and window sills. Natural light
coupled with the fine film grain of the 16mm gives the patina of
an aged home movie, like an unearthed relic from the
1970s.
Sectioned into eight chapters, the film charts the strange
appearance of and the gradual accumulation of these
11

A SPELL TO WARD OFF THE DARKNESS
Ben Rivers & Ben Russell
FESTIVAL COVERAGE
“In spite of their stylistic idiosyncrasies, both filmmakers strive to reach beyond basic filmic semiology in search of a sort of
transcendental “realism,” a synthesis of modern ethnography and materialist aesthetics — aesthetics that permit film’s physical
attributes (grain, lens flares) their due import. Their collaborative feature, the experimental documentary A Spell to Ward of the
Darkness, is a fascinating blend of their respective methods that simultaneously honors their individuality. The film’s meticulous
three-part structure feels somewhat rigid and predetermined compared to the more exploratory nature of their other work, but
things gradually open up as we follow a nameless character (Robert A.A. Lowe) as he hangs around a neo-hippie Estonian
commune, trudges alone through some remote Finnish wilderness, and fronts a black metal band in a dark and dingy rock club in
Oslo.” — DREW HUNT
“never-before-seen” plants. Shots of vines emerging from drain
pipes and canal walls reinforce the idea of a violent emergence,
while the voiceover narration suggests the intonation of a
breathless news report. “Chapter 2” introduces Camelia and
Nahla, our ostensible protagonists (even though no human
figures are ever seen during the film). But we do hear their
voices via the narration, creating a kind of harmony between
multiple commentators. According to that narration, the two
women have discovered a box filled with notebooks and a map.
One of the notebooks is titled “At the Edge of the City, a Garden,”
and it contains sketches of all the plants that have 'infiltrated'
the city. A woman’s voice reads excerpts from this mysterious
document, which detail a series of extraordinary creatures and
fauna that occupy a space beyond the city. All the while, images
of plants continue to flash across the screen, a diverse array of
nature footage creating an oddly immersive quality.
Ouayda has a talent for casting the familiar as unfamiliar.
Occasionally, as the narration builds to a dramatic beat,
Ouaydawill violently shake the camera or increase the speed of
the editing, rupturing the otherwise lulling quality of the
recitation. Shots of nature eventually give way to a more urban
milieu, broaching the idea that the plants are either being
domesticated by humans or are silently waiting for a moment to
strike. It's a lo-fi War of the Worlds, a fantasy epic conveyed via
the simplest means. Critic Alex Fields has suggested some
deeper readings than mere genre film pastiche — that Beruit is
difficult to divorce from its context as a site of years-long civil
war, and a palpable yearning for a return to beauty (the
transformation of bomb impact craters into flower beds is a key
part of Godard's Notre Musique, and the plight of Sarajevo feels
pertinent here as well). There are hidden depths to this short
film, a lovely and mysterious object that seeks beauty in the
everyday. The world is wonderous, we simply have to look
carefully, and, importantly, differently. — DANIEL GORMAN
SOUVENIR D’ATHÈNES
Jean-Claude Rousseau
Jean-Claude Rousseau may be one of the best-kept secrets in
world cinema. But fortunately, in recent years, the word seems to
be getting out. Although he’s made a number of features, most
prominently his 1995 film The Enclosed Valley and 2021’s A Floating
World, he has been focused on short-form filmmaking for a
while, producing work that operates within a recognizable
vernacular but is at the same time wholly unique. His two films
from last year, Welcome and The Tomb of Kafka, are simple
interior studies that examine the light relationships between
objects in a room and shifting conditions out the window. The
films exhibit a certain kinship with North American structural
film, especially the work of Ernie Gehr and Michael Snow. But
Rousseau’s interest in the seductive aspects of European
classicism also suggests a connection to the films of Jean-Marie
Straub and Robert Beavers.
Rousseau’s latest film, Souvenir d’Athènes, finds the filmmaker
operating in a Straubian mode, but with decidedly Beaversesque
fillips. In the first several shots, we see a young man seated on a
rock, his head in his hands as he looks down. Perhaps he is
reading a book. We see the Parthenon in the distance, imposing
against a mostly clear blue sky. Rousseau provides a number of
shots of the man on the rock, all taken from the same camera
12

TWO RESERVOIRS
An Interview with Léa Mysius
In 2017, Léa Mysius premiered Ava at
Cannes. Her exhilarating directorial debut was a vibrant coming of age
tale, a showcase of filmic bravado presaging her arrival as a thrilling new
cinematic voice. Since then, the French screenwriter/director's talents have been repeatedly called into action with notable
screenwriting collaborations with André Téchiné (Farewell to the Night), Arnaud Desplechin (Oh Mercy!), Jacques Audiard (Paris, 13th
District), and Clarie Denis (Stars at Noon). Not content to be solely collecting co-writing credits with a who’s who of contemporary
French cinema, Mysius was simultaneously hard at work on her sophomore film, and so her 2022 return to the Croisette featured both
Stars at Noon, her collaboration with Claire Denis in the Main Competition, and The Five Devils, her long-awaited sophomore directorial
effort at the Director’s Fortnight.
The Five Devils is a spirited blend of themes, ideas, and influences, a nervy coming-of-age thriller about a young girl journeying across
time to uncover a secret buried in her mother’s past. Much like Ava, her latest is yet again a showcase of adventurous screenwriting
and confident direction. Now, on the eve of its 2023 U.S. theatrical release (Ava is finally available on Mubi as well), I connected with
Mysius to probe deeper into the film’s dominant themes, its racial subcurrents, the influence of U.S. literature, and the her writing
process, from collaborations with French auteurs to building out her own idiosyncratic worlds and visions.
14

Thinking through your approach to Ava and then coming to
The Five Devils, I was curious what, if anything, might have
changed in the way that you were writing and
conceptualizing these films?
I'd say that whereas Ava was a much more linear film, a much
sunnier film, mostly focused on this one character, [with] The
Five Devils I wanted to find something a bit more complex and
risky, drawing a gallery of characters, and I had a mosaic like
construction of the many layers of both time and dramaturgy
that fed into the script. So really, the film was a bit of a reaction
to Ava.
Does this require a different way of working, in that Ava had
this free flow, whereas here we are seeing a much more
orchestrated, controlled system of interconnected
characters?
I say both films were very controlled, on set at least. But I do
think that with The Five Devils, because it's a much more complex
story, there was a lot of work to do with camera movements for
them. The mise en scène was much, much trickier because we
had to keep it coherent because it was such an exploded
construction, and that's why perhaps it looks like there was a lot
more control in it. I should add that in contrast to Ava, Paul
Gilhaume and myself, what we wanted was to create a lot of
movement to keep the movement going throughout the film, and
movement is very hard to control, so that's maybe perhaps why
there's this sense that it is controlled.
I saw this incredible quote of yours where you said: “My
biggest satisfaction is when filmmakers start to believe they
have written a scene themselves, even though it was me.” I
was curious about the way that you work with some of these
other French auteurs and how that writing differs in
approach to when you're working within your world.
It's a very, very different process. I'd say, I mean, it's the same
job, but it works very differently. The closest I could describe it is
like: I have two reservoirs, one of which is mine, and the other is
for the other directors I write for. And when it's mine, I dig in and
find my own obsessions, desires, my own source material, my
own images, and I feel quite free with it. I don't need to explain it,
I just go ahead and do it. Whereas the other one is very much
the images and the source material of these other writers, and
it's very much seeing the world through their eyes. Personally, I
couldn't film what they're writing, if you see what I mean, and
perhaps that's linked to this French concept of the auteur.
I remember seeing a clip of Samouni Road and there was a
scene in there where a girl covers her eyes and that opens
up this animated world, and the second I saw that I
immediately thought of Ava. Are there moments where there
is this spillover between the two reservoirs?
I mean, I'm not a robot, so there will be things that escape me,
but I try not to put in what is “of me.” So for example, right now
I'm writing something about a couple, and there will be images
from my own bank that will translate into this film, but then
ultimately it's the role of the director. It's up to the director
whether or not to use them, but the barrier between the two is
porous.
Back to your world and your reservoir, you've mentioned that
Vicky's obsession with sense has a link to your past in your
childhood. Are there specific scents that you remember back
from your childhood that have stuck with you from those
days?
Yeah, I'd say both sight and smell were very much senses that I
really sought as a child. And I wonder if it's maybe because I grew
up in the countryside [that] I had this desire to smell everything
around me. And I do think as a sense it's quite maligned by
humans, maybe because there's something a bit animalistic
about it, in contrast to things like hearing, which we often
associate with beautiful things like music. I've just had a
daughter, for example, and I realize how we stimulate children by
showing them images, visually or even orally. But, I, for example,
try and get her to smell things. I want to develop that sense that
we tend to not focus too much once we leave childhood behind.
There's a condition that I find fascinating: synesthesia, when
someone mixes those senses in their mind. So one particular
smell will automatically trigger a color or a sound will trigger a
color and vice versa.
Vicky's sense of smell in her journey in understanding her
15

mother takes up the bulk of the film. But there is another
journey where Vicky is searching for a part of herself, and
we see this idea of race playing into it where she is clinging
to her [white] mother and perhaps pushing away from her
[Black] father. And the racism she encounters contributes to
it. You had previously mentioned the writing of James
Baldwin and Maya Angelou influencing you, and I was curious
to hear you elaborate a little bit more about your thoughts on
that and how that their work inspired you.
Yes, indeed. I mean, it wasn't just [James] Baldwin and Maya
Angelou, but whilst I was writing the script, I was very much
inspired by U.S. literature, even including Jim Harrison or
[Jonathan] Franzen, and I wanted to see how I could use that
inspiration without imposing very U.S.-specific concepts onto
France that would seem completely artificial. It made me think,
how do we talk about race in France, when it's less clear-cut than
it is in the U.S. And in France, there is a lot of racism, but it's
much more insidious, a bit like a poison, and I wanted to tackle it
without making it very explicit, which tends to put people off and
make them very defensive, and make them deny the reality by
feeling that it's too much of a caricature.
So I thought, right, what realistically would be a mixed race
family in the countryside? I thought, well, it's unlikely they're
going to be Americans, so chances are they're going to come
from Senegal. I wanted it to be this family that actually is normal
— there are mixed race families in the countryside in France,
without denying that they also face racism. But instead of
portraying it as very explicit, I wanted to show it more as an
atmosphere, as an oppressive atmosphere, that imbues life in
this village, and that's how I feel is the best way to translate the
racism in France.
I think this mirrors what you had accomplished in Ava, where
there is the constant presence of fascism around the edges.
I had read that you wanted to have your next film have a
more political lean, and I’m curious whether you would make
these politics, which have been in the background,
percolating, if you’re interested in pushing them to the
forefront in your next work?
Yeah, I mean, I'm right in the middle of that process, and it keeps
changing. And the political angle keeps coming back, and it
scares me because it's now becoming a subject matter and I don't
like working with subject matters. I like working with moments,
with storylines, not subjects, and the question I’m grappling with
is how to really talk about society without it becoming the
subject of the film.
To close us off, you ended The Five Devils with “Cuatro
Vientos,” a gorgeous song about the wind coming in, and it
has this mystical quality of equilibrium. Could you talk about
that choice and how it tied into your thought process about
where the film ends?
Yeah, it was actually the DP Paul Gilhaume who found that
specific song, and I think it perfectly embodies the happy open
end that I wanted to have. Because initially there’s a lot of chaos,
and I like the idea that eventually the chaos organizes itself and
we find this balance, which then allows us to find freedom and
love.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity. — INTERVIEW
CONDUCTED BY IGOR FISHMAN
And to go even beyond that, the quest for Vicky to uncover this
past is born out of the weight she carries of things unsaid, the
things that remain unsaid, but not only inside her family, but
within her community and, on a larger scale, her country.
Because when we think of things that are unsaid in France, there
are things like colonialism and racism that we deny, things we
just don't speak openly of. So it's very much a way of linking
those familial taboos with the village and at a larger scale the
country.
16

KICKING THE CANON
UNKNOWN PLEASURES
Jia Zhangke
Since his breakout 1997 film Xiao Wu, Jia Zhangke has emerged as one of the most gifted artists chronicling life in 21st-century China.
Three of his earliest films — Xiao Wu, 2000's Platform, and 2002's Unknown Pleasures, all of which were made outside China's studio
system — form a loose, low-budget trilogy portraying life at the bottom in an emerging superpower. Jia didn't abandon that focus
when he made the leap to bigger budgets and State approval — 2013's A Touch of Sin, for instance, is also unflinching in its social
criticism — but nevertheless, Unknown Pleasures especially captures the crushing ennui of the early 2000s era.
The film follows three disaffected young people as they navigate life in the changing People's Republic. Unlike Platform — a sprawling,
elliptical, and unwieldy reflection on the rapid social changes from the late 1970s to the early '90s — Jia’s succeeding film is a more
concise and decidedly contemporary tale of alienated youth. Xiao Ji (Wu Qiong) is a reckless scoundrel who falls in love with Qiao Qiao
(Zhao Tao), a singer, dancer, and sex worker who performs at promotional events put on by her gangster boyfriend (and pimp) Qiao
San (Li Zhubin). Xiao Ji's best friend, Bin Bin (Zhao Wei Wei), meanwhile, struggles with depression caused by unemployment and the
scorn of his ball-busting mother (Bai Ru), who is a follower of the Falun Gong church.
Xiao Ji and Bin Bin spend most of their time haunting pool halls by day and drowning their depression in nightclubs by night. The loud
techno music, which remixes iconic pieces of Americana such as Dick Dale's surf-rock spin on "Miserlou," signifies the encroaching
Western influence which coincided with the increasing liberalization of China's markets, a development which culminated in the PRC
joining the World Trade Organization. Jia roots Unknown Pleasures in the present by including contemporary news reports flickering
across discolored, bulbous television sets — a group of textile factory workers are seen celebrating the announcement that the 2008
Olympics will be held in Beijing — and a pervasive sense of internet-era detachment, exemplified by a character nonchalantly asking
17

KICKING THE CANON
if the Americans had invaded China again when she hears a loud
explosion destroy the local textile factory.
Arguably, Unknown Pleasures’ portrayal of late-capitalist malaise
could be read, if not as explicitly Marxist, then at least as a
left-wing, anti-capitalist critique of globalization. The nature of
Jia's social criticism, however, is somewhat surprisingly far more
conservative in character. "In Unknown Pleasures, young people
lack discipline," said the filmmaker in the film's production notes.
"They don't have any goals for the future. They refuse all
constraints. They run their own lives and act independently. But
their spirit is not as free." Indeed, the lives of his central trio are
very much defined by the mass media that surrounds them, while
Chinese culture has faded into insignificance. Their search for
freedom has, ironically, presented them with more limitations —
in the words of Neil Young: "And I know we should be free / But
freedom's just a prison to me."
In what is perhaps the film's most interesting aesthetic choice,
Jia sets Unknown Pleasures in a crime-ridden, rubble-littered
wasteland — heightened significantly from Platform's
comparatively less seedy post-industrial setting — a backdrop
that invokes a kind of post-apocalyptic reflection of the spiritual
decay of post-Maoist China that Jia laments. The characters
seek to escape their hopelessness through shallow
hedonism that they mimic from the Western movies and TV
shows that have recently become accessible to them. While
sitting in a restaurant, Xiao Ji, eager to impress Qiao Qiao, tells
her about his vague ambitions as an outlaw while making
reference to Pulp Fiction's opening scene, quoting its dialogue
and pointing his finger (mimicking a gun) at the other customers.
Jia punctuates the scene with a rare moment of overt stylization,
whipping the camera around in a blur to transition the scene to a
nightclub.
This stylization is remarkable because Yu Lik-wai's consumergrade
digital cinematography otherwise radiates pure homemovie
transience, imbuing the film with something more
ephemeral — an object found and observed, rather than
consumed. Unknown Pleasures' musings on the purgatory at the
end of history recall Hou Hsiao-hsien's Millennium Mambo,
released the year before, but Jia's vision of neoliberal
Weltschmerz is a lot bleaker than Hou's. While Millennium Mambo's
Vicky (Shu Qi) addresses the audience from the future of 2011,
implying some form of resolution and development for the adrift
young woman, Jia cuts his sparse narrative short with Bin Bin
being made to sing for the cops who arrested him after a failed
robbery attempt. The last glimpse the audience gets of him is
standing in a police station — lost, humiliated, doomed to
languish in purgatory forever. — FRED BARRETT
18

FILM REVIEWS
DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: HONOR AMONG
THIEVES
Jonathan M. Goldstein & John Francis Daley
There is no winning in Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) — not really.
You can reach the end of a campaign or defeat something very
nasty, or reach the highest level in a book that tells you what the
highest level could be, but if your friends wish to continue, then
you’ll play on. Unlike other games, measurable skill matters not,
and those who wish to boast of their achievements in any
quantifiable vector will be instantly humbled. Nerds may love
their numbers, but here is a nerd-game — an entire nerd
universe, in fact — in which numbers merely represent fate, the
true subject of the game, and cannot be harnessed outside of
Machiavelli’s virtù to meet fortuna. Dutch historian Johan
Huizinga wrote in his classic Homo Ludens that play is the human
activity most generative to what we now call “culture,” and I’d
argue that D&D fulfills the play role for humans who once relied
upon myth, ritual, and war to satisfy the kind of game in which
rules are erected in order to be stretched and broken — so long
as it makes the game more playful. In Catholic Carnival, a fool
king plays royalty to both mock power and justify it; in D&D, a
player may play out any mythic character of their choosing, so
long as the gods (their dungeon master) believe it to be that
holiest of holy qualities: fun. Though fate decides a measly four
on the twenty-sided dice roll, a deus ex machina appears,
rescuing a naïve character from an early grave; or, though a
veteran character is nearly a god, his attempts to destroy a new
player are impossible, as this new player is the curious younger
sibling of the DM, and the veteran is an asshole. In a world run by
spreadsheets, data, and scientific certainty, it feels radical to
return to that most beautiful aspect of being human — the
imagination. This kind of play asks one to don a mask during a
sacred dithyramb and pretend (or, perhaps, to finally understand)
that the world is malleable.
In other words, Dungeons and Dragons offers an alternative to
those who’d demand the world be made into winners and losers
— especially to those who believe they have the numbers to
prove it. To take away this element of holy play is to rob D&D of
its most powerful virtue. But myths must be made and money
must be sought, hence the successful series of novels based in
19

FILM REVIEWS
the Forgotten Realms (D&D’s catchall “world” for its stories and
guidebooks) universe and the new film, Dungeons and Dragons:
Honor Among Thieves. Reduced to a movie, D&D might merely
seem like an ersatz version of Tolkien: quests, monsters,
dragons, riches, and the other derivatives of high fantasy fiction
that entered the nerd realm’s shared imagination in the 20th
century. Honor Among Thieves is certainly that, though its sense
of playfulness lifts it above our large pile of geek fandom
detritus.
The data analysts who comb through the audience surveys at
major Hollywood studios must have a wealth of information on
teenage boys’ preferred protagonists because, once again, the
sarcastic, lovable asshole firmly plants himself in the middle of
every scene such that no moment can go by without the
teenagers’ beloved sarcasm. Thankfully, it’s Chris Pine this time,
and his boyish smile and not-quite-perfect good looks at least
make these quips believable. He plays Edgin, a human who tries
to do good but succumbs to a life of thievery. After his
one-last-heist goes awry, Edgin gathers a band of adventurers to
rescue his daughter and defeat the power-hungry Forge
Fitzwilliam (Hugh Grant), who may simply be a puppet for even
more malevolent forces.
If the narrative beats sound familiar, it’s because the script
doesn’t try to fix anything that isn’t broken. Inside this hero’s
journey narrative lies a series of scenes that either exposit the
realm’s history (excused as “worldbuilding” in fantasy circles) or
dazzle the audience with some pretty impressive Unreal Engine
demos. The former is a somewhat necessary drag, but the latter,
along with the action sequences, carry the film. Unlike a certain
other franchise that likes to keep its productions quarantined to
Atlanta warehouses, Honor Among Thieves was shot on location in
Northern Ireland and Iceland, allowing the lush, varied
landscapes (and a real volcano) to stand in for the Forgotten
Realms. These are the lands that birthed the Poetic Edda and
many other sources that would inspire Richard Wagner’s Der Ring
des Nibelungen, Tolkien’s Silmarillion, and — subsequently —
contemporary fantasy; so it’s nice to have a respectful nod to
these roots before the CGI parades take the frame.
Thankfully, most of the effects help rather than distract from the
action. A speedy scene midway through the film follows Edgin’s
druid teammate, Doric (Sophia Lillis), as she transforms into a
series of animals to infiltrate a castle, spy on the bouncy Grant,
and escape. The camera follows her in a seemingly unbroken
shot as she flies through cracks as a fly, scampers across
soldiers’ feet as a rat, tumbles through a chimney as a bird, and
emerges out of a house as a cat, then a deer. Though the
sequence is nearly entirely animated, the choice to animate this
as a single shot elevates the tension of her escape, while also
announcing a vote of confidence for the effects team in an
effects-heavy movie. Like all entertainment for adolescent boys,
this also features plenty of light beams and explosions, but here,
at least, there’s clearly someone composing them.
“In a way, the Satanic Panic
of the 1980s and ‘90s
surrounding D&D was right
about one thing: it is literally
a form of magic.
Ultimately, Honor Among Thieves settles for a rote sword and
sorcery journey with a bigger budget and a smaller vision than,
say, Albert Pyun’s ‘80s work in similar territory. It stinks of Kevin
Feige, given the shopworn screenplay, jokey “meta” asides that
beat the audience to make fun of itself, and characters reduced
to their roles. But without Disney’s bureaucracy fine-tuning every
detail, directors Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daly are
able to deliver the best possible version of the post-Feige
formula. The action scenes are coherent (thanks in no small part
to hiring action movie veteran Michelle Rodriguez to play the role
of the barbarian Holga), audiences are not asked to have an
advanced degree in the IP in order to have an emotional reaction
to carefully timed cameos, and some of the jokes do land. It’s no
Conan the Barbarian, nor is it even comparable to simply playing
a nice D&D session with good friends, but Honor Among Thieves
has a playfulness that its competitors lack.
In a way, the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and ‘90s surrounding
D&D was right about one thing: it is literally a form of magic.
Despite its reputation for attracting socially-inept nerds, the
game only really came alive if a player had a handle on both the
real world and the world conjured within their heads. Huizinga’s
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Homo Ludens notes that religious rituals have always worked
according to this logic of play, where improvisatory straddling
between worlds (spiritual, mental, or metaphorical — depending
on your perspective) caused real change in our physical realm.
D&D allows its players to attune to this ancient, limitless play that
grants them the basic yet radical power to imagine the world
differently. At a time in which major studios promise no
alternative to data-driven, audience-tested, demographicmarketed
schlock, it’s a good power to have. — ZACH LEWIS
DIRECTOR: Jonathan M. Goldstein & John Francis Daley; CAST:
Chris Pine, Michelle Rodriguez, Regé-Jean Page, Sophia Lillis;
DISTRIBUTOR: Paramount Pictures; IN THEATERS: March 31;
RUNTIME: 2 hr. 14 min.
ENYS MEN
Mark Jenkin
In Mark Jenkin’s Enys Men, the unnamed protagonist (Mary
Woodvine, in a role mysteriously dubbed “The Volunteer”) sets out
on a mundane, quietly transfixing routine. Her daily tasks include
observing a rare and unnamed cluster of flowers, transcribing
her observations into a logbook, throwing a rock down an
abandoned mineshaft, and rekindling a small petrol generator;
her spare time she occupies with solitude, a book (Robert Allen
and Edward Goldsmith’s A Blueprint for Survival), and a dwindling
supply of tea. The setting, of course, is an equally solitudinous
island off the Cornish coast in Celtic, Southwest England, and the
year 1973, an era of labor strikes, global oil crisis, and domestic
political conflict. These facts aren’t mere trivia: their import
soon becomes clear as the film discloses — through its
apparational and uneasy iconography — its broader
historiographic relevance, inscribing local and national detail
alike into an eerie and bedazzling (if sometimes bewildering)
spectacle of folk horror.
Eerie, perhaps, best describes the manifestations of the
supernatural and fantastical in Enys Men. Following Jenkin’s
outstanding feature debut, 2019’s Bait — a contemporary tale of
tourism and gentrification set in a Cornish fishing village — Enys
Men combs through the recesses of cultural memory, this time
grafting its variegated images onto a canvas distanced from
Bait’s B&W, working-class realism. Where Bait was tinged with the
frequently unsaid — and thus spectral — implications of its
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ambiguous, lo-fi narrative, Jenkin’s present invocation of
Cornwall’s past ghosts acquires, especially when manifested atop
a lone landscape of rock and withered foliage, a clarity that
arrives ironically enough with the imposition of the uncanny.
That is to say, the rhythm and tone of Enys Men are tempered by
an opposition of order and disruption: order in the quotidian,
almost studied patterns that constitute the Volunteer’s natural
existence, and disruption in the margins of her narrative that
quickly enter the forefront of her imagination and confront her
shaky sense of self. Over a budding April spring, stretching into
diurnal summer, the island’s untamed natural environs begin to
exert a spiritual and even sensual pressure upon the Volunteer,
with her background and psychology not so much explicated as
they are increasingly refracted through a prism of persistent,
oneiric symbolism.
Time and space are made slippery on Stone Island — a direct
translation from the eponymous Cornish habitat — as various
anachronistic artifacts pop up, sometimes on the periphery,
other times jutting into the screen as candidly as daylight. In one
sequence, a man’s visage suddenly fills the frame, as
counterpoint to the Volunteer’s weathered one; in several others,
a young woman — her daughter? her younger self? — flits about
the stony cottage, appearing to coexist with the Volunteer. These
phantasmagoria, however, do not inflict shock or awe in the
traditional sense. Their lasting power derives instead from what
might be psychoanalytically termed Unheimlichkeit, an
inexplicable foreignness amidst rustic, private territory which
reverberates across shots and coalesces in blurry, otherworldly
wonder. Observing the robust evolution of 1970s British horror,
from which Enys Men no doubt draws inspiration, the late Mark
Fisher wrote of eeriness as that which is “constituted by a failure
of absence or by a failure of presence,” a phenomenon doubly
integrated into this film’s DNA. On one hand, presence refuses to
show when we witness, in intimate detail, the Volunteer’s habits
but not her motivations; who she is and what she does exactly
are elided like ciphers from a long-buried canister. On the other
hand, the solitary landscape gets disturbed, as if part of its
design, by the traces of civilizational history, its class struggles
and traumas come to life in the hallucinations the Volunteer
experiences. Perhaps they aren’t hallucinations after all: the
textured 16mm film seems to embed in them a tactility that
foregrounds them in coterminous presence with her
contemporary figure. Bal maidens serenade the Volunteer in
repose; children frolic and merrily sing; the earthy, soot-ridden
faces of long-dead miners pop up one inexplicable night, only to
be then elided for the short-lived normalcy of day.
This coterie of allusions and culturally specific references in
Enys Men may be easily lost on most viewers, even those with
some acquaintance with the seminal works of British horror. And
the film’s stubborn abstractions threaten, at times, to withdraw
from classical cinematic logic in pursuit of an elusive, insular
wavelength. Despite this, the irresistible pull of the fragmented
para-narrative holds our attention, thwarting ready-made
preconceptions of the romanticized wilderness yet colluding
perversely with our inherent fascination with horror to sustain
attachment to them. Jenkin’s avant-garde sensibilities are
neither gaudy nor academic, reveling instead in the poetically
arcane: more than anything, his film resembles a palimpsest of
discrete yet interwoven impressions, of the supernatural
inflected with the political and vice versa. Atop the isle, a stone
menhir presides over night and day with ominous significance,
its jagged body a site of tradition and lore. Enys Men similarly
stands proud and alone on solemn ground, overlooking an eerie,
elaborate shore. — MORRIS YANG
DIRECTOR: Mark Jenkin; CAST: Mary Woodvine, John Woodvine,
Callum Mitchell; DISTRIBUTOR: NEON; IN THEATERS: March 31;
RUNTIME: 1 hr. 31 min.
KILL BOKSOON
Byun Sung-hyun
Byun Sung-hyun’s Kill Boksoon belongs to a time-honored (or less
generously, clichéd) subgenre of the assassin movie: the kind in
which the stoic, unbelievably badass contract killer has a
relationship with a young ward. It’s easy to see the draw in telling
stories like these, whether they be Leon: The Professional or
recent fare like Choi Jae-hoon’s The Killer. Putting a child —
usually a stranger — in the care of a hitman opens up the
sociopathic protagonist to a character arc, turning them into an
unlikely object of empathy and making it easy to root for
bloodshed. Plus, at some point or another, the kid is put in
danger, giving the killer someone to save for a change. Emotional
throughlines and stakes are established in one go.
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Kill Boksoon is, thankfully, a bit different from this usual
blueprint. In lieu of the male assassin and his surrogate child, the
film’s focus is on a mother and daughter. Gil Boksoon (Jeon
Do-yeon), called Kill Boksoon by her colleagues, is a middle-aged
murderer struggling to connect with her fifteen-year-old
daughter, Jae-young (Kim Si-a). While her work life is definitely
affecting her home life and vice versa, Boksoon’s struggles with
her daughter never come off as the contrived plot device of an
action movie, but instead reflect the everyday difficulties of
being a single mother with a career. It just so happens that this
career involves ultra-violent, stylish death-dealing.
Boksoon does her killing for a company called MK, a clandestine
operation in an ecosystem with other companies that, by and
large, follow the rules set by MK. These rules keep killers in line
and prevent those outside of the employ of companies from
doing unsanctioned hits. It’s a little like the worldbuilding done in
John Wick, but less flamboyant and far less detailed. Still, despite
not being especially fleshed out, an awful lot of the film’s time
seems spent on the minutiae of contract killing’s labor laws,
rather than the film’s supposed mother-daughter core.
That so many of the goings-on of Kill Boksoon feel like
distractions is the film’s most frustrating flaw. While it’s
refreshing that Jae-young is not put in danger simply for the
sake of plot, the sustained separation of Boksoon’s domestic life
and work leaves the film feeling unfocused and cluttered. There
are essentially two separate plots, the one in which Boksoon
decides she can’t follow through with a hit, earning the ire of MK,
and the one in which Jae-young stabs a classmate who threatens
to out her and her girlfriend to the entire school. Boksoon dealing
with either situation is a solid enough foundation for its own
movie, but they only tenuously come together here as Jae-young
comes close to discovering what her mother does for work.
Meanwhile, the film uses other characters, like Boksoon’s boss,
and flashbacks to reflect themes of parental figures and
generational trauma instead of fleshing out its central
relationship. Whenever Boksoon doesn’t pick up a phone call
from her daughter, it feels as though the filmmakers are also
ignoring the call. The film even goes so far as to pair Boksoon
with a young intern at her company, an obvious mirror for her
daughter who can be put in all the lines of fire Jae-young is
spared.
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Yet although it might be overstuffed, overlong, and unfocused,
Kill Boksoon is rarely less than entertaining, all of its individual
parts working as they should, even when they don’t come
together. The action scenes are frenetic, brutal, and a lot of fun,
directed with a style that doesn’t sacrifice their clarity. Both the
choreography and the script possess a keen sense of levity that
keeps the film from self-seriousness without ever tipping over
into quip-a-minute slop. In the film’s opening fight scene,
Boksoon’s yakuza opponent details the storied history of his
four-centuries-old wakizashi blade, and Boksoon replies that the
ax in her hand can be purchased on the cheap at Walmart.
Elsewhere, a series of knives all find their way into the same
unintended target in the middle of the film’s best action
sequence, a fight scene that splits into two groups of
combatants and cuts between them as they slam into opposite
sides of the same wall. The myriad of littered pleasures means
that, while Kill Boksoon doesn’t totally add up to the sum of its
parts, most of those parts are worth it anyway. — CHRIS MELLO
DIRECTOR: Byun Sung-hyun; CAST: Jeon Do-yeon, Sol
Skyung-gu, Kim Si-a, Esom; DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix; STREAMING:
March 31; RUNTIME: 2 hr. 17 min.
A THOUSAND AND ONE
A.V. Rockwell
Once in a while, a debut film comes along that announces the
arrival of a potentially major new talent. A.V. Rockwell’s
freshmanfeature, the Teyana Taylor-starring A Thousand and One,
possesses a sagacious maturity that’s immediately arresting. It’s
clear Rockwell knows what the hell she’s doing behind the
camera — and, in fact, she’s been doing it for a while. The rising
Tisch-bred writer-director has already been heralded as a
trenchant cinematic voice, confronting the complexities of race,
personal identity, and systemic oppression in an array of short
films. These thematic concerns carry into this feature-length
offering, a heart-rending, subtly epic drama that balances its raw
vision of urban struggle with an empathetically poetic
exploration of the bonds that sustain the folks working within
that hardship.
The film opens with Inez (Teyana Taylor) shelter-hopping after a
stint behind bars at Rikers. One day, she encounters Terry, the
six-year-old son she lost contact with and who is now in the
foster system. Recalling the early life turbulence she
experienced in foster care and keen on cementing a single
meaningful tie, Inez gets Terry to agree to living with her as she
reconstructs her life, effectively kidnapping him. She
successfully builds a stable situation for the two of them, their
family expanding as the years pass and Terry grows into a
swaggering, sensitive teenager. Yet the secret at the heart of
their new life threatens to undo everything: Terry struggles,
wearing the mask of a false identity, and Inez strains to keep it
all together.
Part of the appealing mystique of A Thousand and One is that it
instantly feels like part of a larger canon. The lushly warm
daytime shots of city life, comprising a number of the
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establishing montages, evokes the sizzling, sun-drenched
neighborhood scenes throughout Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing.
The cooler hues and intimate close-ups found in darker, bleaker
sequences are reminiscent of some of the compositions Barry
Jenkins and his team achieved in Moonlight. Scenes in this film
are often clipped, vignette-style, finding quiet elegance and
dignity within dreary interiors. There’s a lyrical rhythm in the
arrangement of bodies, who the camera is capturing and where
and for how long, that harkens back to the bracing work of
Charles Burnett. A Thousand and One is a modern-day Black story
suffused with Black cinematic history. The film’s deliberate pace
allows the viewer to appreciate the details, to scrutinize like
they’re appraising a preserved artifact, one of unmistakable
artistic integrity.
A long-time multi-hyphenate, Teyana Taylor boasts some serious
acting chops in the leading role. Inez brims with Taylor’s effusive
spirit, her brazen attitude a sword protecting a softer, earnest
side that has weathered years of pain. Her wit and noble nature
warm the audience to her quickly, yet the most indelible scenes
here are the ones where Inez is subdued or quietly coping with
pain, her emotions closely guarded before bubbling to the
surface (even a quiet scene of Inez munching on Cup Noodles
proves subtly transfixing). Terry, on the other hand, is portrayed
by three actors: Aaron Kingsley Adetola at 6, Aven Courtney at 13,
and Josiah Cross at 17. All perform admirably (as do most of the
main cast in general, with a particular nod to William Catlett as
Inez’s lover, Lucky). But Cross in particular is splendid, playing
Terry with a charming bashfulness. At the climax, Inez and Terry
launch into a devastating tête-à-tête, and Cross does more than
hold his own, with bursts of palpable despair and hurt
punctuating his crumbling, stolid façade.
Early on, one disapproving character chastises Inez, saying, “You
want to be taken serious, be from Harlem, not of Harlem.” It’s a
loaded sentiment worth unpacking if one bothers to pause, but
as soon as the line is delivered, the scene shifts. We get snippets
here and there of talking heads and public figures discussing
New York’s culture and political future, typically delivered via
radio call-ins and television news broadcasts, more so to signal
jumps in time than initiate any sustained discourse. Allusions to
gentrification and police misconduct lurk at the periphery, but
these ruinous forces of injustice get little further exploration and
ultimately serve as textural details that authenticate Harlem’s
tough reality. Later, the film juggles screen time between Inez
and Terry, as the teen wrestles with what influences he’ll let
inform his personal brand of masculinity. In a longer film, or a
tighter one, more time could have been dedicated to their
character journeys intersecting with the systems of power
satisfied with boxing them in.
It’s fair to say, then, that the polemic power of the film’s critiques
leaves a little to be desired — this is a debut after all, and
Rockwell’s script and story pacing have a few kinks to iron out.
But it’s the emotional, psychodramatic intensity Rockwell and co.
capture that makes A Thousand and One such a moving success.
It’s a movie about people, possessing a humanist veracity many
will connect with, and anchored by potentially career-making
performances. Get in on the ground floor now — Rockwell has
nowhere to go but up. — TRAVIS DESHONG
DIRECTOR: A.V. Rockwell; CAST: Teyana Taylor, William Catlett,
Aven Courtney; DISTRIBUTOR: Focus Features; IN THEATERS:
March 31; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 57 min.
RYE LANE
Raine Allen-Miller
On a personal note, Rye Lane couldn’t have come at a more
significant time. I only recently moved away from South London,
and have started to feel homesick for the exact places that Raine
Allen-Miller’s debut feature film captures so lovingly. It’s not just
that I’ve spent time in almost all of this movie’s locations, but that
many of the most meaningful moments of the last few years of
my life took place on these very streets of Peckham and Brixton:
I found love and my closest friend, and I came to understand my
gender dysphoria there. This intimacy makes it hard for me to
imagine someone watching this movie and not feeling the same
reverence for the faded Bovril sign just outside the Ritzy that I
do. Allen-Miller clearly feels the same way — she moved the story
from Camden, where it was set in the original version of Nathan
Bryon and Tom Melia’s script.
Allen-Miller’s love in Rye Lane is not just for these specific little
landmarks though, but the life that teems all around them. The
first shot of Rye Lane tracks across a line of bathroom stalls, a
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The wide-angle lenses and candy-colored lights of Olan Collardy’s
cinematography don’t paint everything in the same shade, but
instead emphasize a brightness in every moment. When Dom is
at his very lowest, sitting in the cinema alone after finding out
his girlfriend is cheating on him, the light of the projector pours
over his head; he’s plunked within one of those famous shots that
so often romanticizes the movie-going experience. But this isn’t
ironic, and it’s not a joke at his expense. In fact, it’s one of the
movie’s most vibrant images, Collardy and Allen-Miller coaxing
out all the conflicting feelings taking place within this scene and
allowing them, like all the myriad colors, to share the same
space. It’s at once tragic, pathetic, funny, and maybe the best
thing to ever happen to Dom.
If the third act of Rye Lane becomes a little predictable and the
gears of the script move more obviously, it’s easy to forgive
because the rom-com template here is really just a framework to
house what Allen-Miller is most interested in. The heart of the
movie has little to do with the way that Yas and Dom fall out, nor
how they inevitably find their way back together, but rather it’s in
the little moments between narrative beats where other people
are captured moving through their everyday. The fact that most
of Rye Lane takes place over a 24-hour span suggests that it’s
showing only a fragment of life in this place; that the camera
could easily pan and find countless other stories equally worth
following. For those who have spent intimate time in Brixton and
Peckham, seeing all of this unfold in the margins and peripheries
couldn’t be more natural. But Allen-Miller engages with Rye Lane’s
spaces with such palpable wonder that even those with less
proximity and familiarity to its depictions are likely to be swept
up in its gentle spell. — ESMÉ HOLDEN
DIRECTOR: Raine Allen-Miller; CAST: David Jonsson, Vivian
Oparah, Simon Manyonda; DISTRIBUTOR: Hulu; STREAMING:
March 31; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 22 min.
IN VIAGGIO
Gianfranco Rosi
Depicting larger-than-life subjects has always posed some
representational challenges: inch the individual too perfectly into
focus, and one runs the risk of hagiography, but impose too
much critical distance, and it casts irrefutable doubt on their life
and times at hand. With men and women of certain stature, two
questions surface: how best to represent who they are and what
they stand for, and where to start? Among our contemporary
global polity, game-changing figures from government, business,
tech, and the arts frequently inspire and perpetuate discourse;
our attention, then, is most commonly bestowed upon these
figures, whether vis-à-vis grander socio-political narratives or in
and of themselves. One such figure we may sometimes overlook
— but whose influence, or that of the institution he stands for, is
arguably the longest-lasting and thus unparalleled — is the Pope.
Jorge Mario Bergoglio, adopting the papal name Francis, is
notable in several ways. He is the first Jesuit to hold this
position, the first from the Americas (and the Southern
Hemisphere), and the first to take his name from Francis of
Assisi, the medieval Catholic friar and one of Italy’s patron saints.
Pope Francis has also been distinguished by his comparatively
progressive leanings, from his critiques of income inequality and
climate change to his support for human and LGBTQ rights.
All these attributes are given relatively short shrift in Gianfranco
Rosi’s latest documentary, a quiet and observational portrait of
the man almost exclusively culled from archival footage. In
Viaggio, translated as “On Voyage,” is less an infographic of the
Pope’s various stances on public policy than it is a work that
seeks to document the subtle constructions and consequences
of his persona. Running a lean 82 minutes, the film follows
Francis on his many visits around the world, through continents
stricken with natural disasters and man-made terrors, and
through communities in social and spiritual crisis. Shots of the
Pope on his compact white Popemobile — speeding past throngs
of devotees — are interspersed with excerpts from his addresses
to countries and clergymen alike: calling for solidarity amidst
troubled times, Francis appears cognizant of the symbolic import
his office holds, seeking to uphold a unifying presence both
against deeply fractious issues and the consequent threat of
Catholicism’s diminishing relevance.
There’s a bracing honesty to In Viaggio, not quite derived from
ironic distance or critical contrast, but inherent to Rosi’s stylistic
choices. The typical position of the documentarian is that of
exposition, of uncovering hidden truth; Rosi, consistent with his
noteworthy past portraiture (Sacro GRA, Fire at Sea, etc.),
reframes honesty as that which discloses starting from the
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surface. No hidden cameras are revealed, no alternate and
possibly conspiratorial accounts are engendered in the montage
of Pope Francis as religious synecdoche, and whatever truth In
Viaggio holds is left to the viewer’s discretion. Offering an
excellent counterpoint to Wim Wenders’ 2018 documentary, Pope
Francis: A Man of His Word, Rosi observes a more respectful and
reserved position in contrast to Wenders’ almost reverential
treatment of the Pope’s reformist character. Whether In Viaggio
ultimately engenders hope or skepticism is, of course, hugely
premised on one’s initial disposition to religion and ideology
alike, and its perhaps unavoidable flaw comes in the Herculean
ambitions of biography. To make a film about a singular
individual whose pronouncements yield worldwide
reverberations is challenging; to render it definite, delusional. But
In Viaggio is instead rather modest — a modesty that may seem
naïve to some, or be praiseworthy for others — and graceful,
acknowledging Francis’ significant, benevolent presence without
slipping into valorization. “I do not use doublespeak, it is always
the same,” the Pope states in defense of his speech and sincerity
without much delusion; In Viaggio is, indeed, better off with its
honest, unobtrusive perspective. — MORRIS YANG
DIRECTOR: Gianfranco Rosi; CAST: —; DISTRIBUTOR: Magnolia
Pictures; IN THEATERS & STREAMING: March 31; RUNTIME: 1 hr.
17 min.
THE LINE
Ursula Meier
For years now, director Ursula Meier has been interested in
boundaries and the reasons we cross them. Her debut feature
Strong Shoulders (2003) is about a young track-and-field athlete
whose drive for excellence becomes a dangerous obsession. Her
absurdist comedy Home (2008) focuses on a family living nearby
a disused four-lane highway and how their sense of place is
destroyed once the road is opened. Sister (2012) examines the
connections between family obligation and criminality, and the
fact that love sometimes entails transgression. And her
not-widely-seen true crime drama Diary of my Mind (2018) is
about the distinction between word and deed, and how the
movement from one to the other shifts our ideas about
responsibility and blame.
So in a certain respect, The Line is probably the film Meier has
always been moving toward. Unfortunately, it is also her least
creatively successful to date, a film that so aggressively
literalizes its central metaphor that it removes the sense of
latent threat that characterizes her best work. The titular line
refers to a 100-meter restraining order imposed on Margaret
(Stéphanie Blanchoud), a musician who has a problem with
uncontrolled rage. In the film’s opening scene, which plays out in
a kind of stylized, balletic slow-motion, Margaret is seen
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charging like a bull at her mother, Christina (Valeria Bruni
Tedeschi), while her sisters, brother-in-law, and stepfather
struggle in vain to hold her back. She manages to connect,
smacking her mother who then falls onto a piano, hitting her
head.
The family home is a soft modern glass structure near the Alps,
and once Margaret has been thrown out, we see her pounding on
the windows to be let back in. These panes of glass are the
artificial barriers between Margaret and her family, but once the
restraining order is in place, the division is at once more abstract
and more absolute, because it’s legally binding. In order to keep
Margaret in her life, youngest sister Marion (Elli Spagnolo)
measures out a 100-meter radius from the house and paints a
blue circle across yards and streets, essentially making sure
Margaret doesn’t violate her parole agreement. Meier organizes
the entire film around this thick blue line, thereby separating
public and private, legality and illegality, as well as inclusion or
exclusion from the (literal) family circle.
The Line never provides any backstory for Margaret’s violence.
We just hear that she has always had a problem with fighting and
physical outbursts, and any larger psychological ramifications or
explanations of this history (for instance, whether Margaret may
be mentally ill) are simply ignored. This is only the most obvious
failure of The Line, since Meier’s fixation on the landscape and its
bright-line barrier does all the conceptual heavy lifting for what
becomes a fairly pedestrian family dramedy.
The Line’s characterizations are stunted at the level of a sitcom,
despite the fact that Meier’s tone suggests that we are supposed
to be emotionally invested in the women’s frayed dynamics.
Marion is a singer in a choir, and her burgeoning obsession with
God and prayer is a personality tic that substitutes for a
discernible personality. This is also the case for angry Margaret,
sensible middle sister Louise (India Hair), and petty, narcissistic
Christina. In fact, Bruni Tedeschi’s performance is rather jarring,
in the sense that it strongly resembles Catherine O’Hara’s Moira
Rose from Schitt’s Creek, but played totally straight. There are
intimations of maternal cruelty and neglect, since Christina
blames her children for ending her promising career as a concert
pianist. When Margaret’s blow to the head renders her mother
deaf in one ear, we once again see The Line literalizing its
metaphors, ushering all subtlety out the arena.
It might have seemed like a bold move for Meier to provide an in
medias res snapshot of a toxic family environment, and so it’s
possible that the decision not to flesh out any of the roiling
emotional subtext was a strategy of some sort. But this omission
clashes with The Line’s tendency to spell everything else out in
24-point bold type. The net result is a sense that nothing much is
really at stake, that Margaret’s fury and Christina’s selfishness are
mere contrivances that allow Meier to establish her big, absurd
idea: a blue circle in the snow that keeps Margaret physically at
bay, even as her larger influence is broadcast over the line and
into the family unit. Marion, meanwhile, continues to find herself
(again, literally) at the end of her tether. It’s all
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maddeningly simpleminded, and gives the impression that the
very talented Meier has painted herself into a corner. — MICHAEL
SICINSKI
DIRECTOR: Ursula Meier; CAST: Stéphanie Blanchoud, Valeria
Bruni Tedeschi, Dali Benssalah; DISTRIBUTOR: Strand Releasing;
IN THEATERS: March 31; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 42 min.
MURDER MYSTERY 2
Jeremy Garelick
The last time we saw Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston on
screen together as Nick and Audrey Spitz, the mid-life,
middle-class Brooklynites were caught up in a convoluted murder
plot involving various archetypes of European aristocracy, played
by a respectable cast of British thespians. Drawing from a script
by Zodiac screenwriter James Vanderbilt originally intended as a
vehicle for Charlize Theron (who remained on as executive
producer for both films), the first Murder Mystery film, while still
obviously a Netflix product, did a nice job walking the “action
comedy” line, an obvious fit for Sandler’s sensibilities that made
time for some decent setpieces and wasn’t totally sanitized. It
also expressed a charming, self-reflexive awareness of its own
audience (i.e., Netflix subscribers), their viewing habits, and their
lifestyles, centering the action on a working class couple — a cop
and a hair stylist — whose mutual obsessions with true crime and
British mystery television shows allowed them to see angles of
the mystery that their snobbish Euro counterparts overlook (sort
of like a gentler Bitter Moon).
Nick jumps at the opportunity to live large and blow off studying
for his detective license exam. But as the film’s sequalized title
suggests, another murder mystery awaits these two, as
festivities are cut short when Maharajah is assassinated as the
ceremony begins, providing the Spitzs a prime opportunity to flex
their powers of deduction. But this is quickly undercut by the
entrance of Mark Strong as a super detective who doubts their
abilities and innocence.
Murder Mystery 2 is mostly driven by fish-out-of-water gags and
Hot Fuzz-type action genre parody, none of which is particularly
fresh, but still comes to life thanks to Sandler and Aniston’s
rapport, which exists comfortably between sitcom-ish, gendered
debasement and sweet, mutual deprecation that keeps the
proceedings away from the caustic cruelty that can occasionally
get the better of a Happy Madison production. The game
supporting cast helps, too (Jodie Turner-Smith especially,
Mélanie Laurent somewhat), though it’s really Bazelli’s
camerawork that puts the movie up and over, handily managing
explosive action and pulling some vibrant images out of the
film’s decadent wedding party scene. Something of a trifle,
Murder Mystery 2 at least actually succeeds at entertaining and
manages some solid, pleasant looking photography — perhaps
not a tremendous feat, but a bit more than the majority of
Hollywood blockbusters manage these days. It’s certainly not a
movie likely to persist in the cultural memory, but is one clearly
Murder Mystery 2 doesn’t bother to tweak any of this really — why
should it after the first film’s record-setting opening weekend
viewership? — and isn’t worse for it, the 89-minute runtime
punchy enough to sustain another go-around with the likable,
well-paired Aniston/Sandler, improved somewhat by tight,
colorful (by Netflix standards), action-minded cinematography
courtesy of Ferrara/Verbinski DP Bojan Bazelli. After successfully
solving Terrence Stamp’s murder last time, the Spitzs have
returned to Brooklyn to set up a private eye operation that fails
to bring in much money or excite Nick as much as it did when
they were on vacation. Invited to a lavish Indian wedding by Adeel
Akhtar’s Maharajah character from the previous movie,
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made by artists who care, and is enjoyable in the moment, which
is no trifling feat. — M.G. MAILLOUX
DIRECTOR: Jeremy Garelick; CAST: Adam Sandler, Jennifer
Aniston, Mark Strong, Mélanie Laurent; DISTRIBUTOR: Netflix;
STREAMING: March 31; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 30 min.
SMOKING CAUSES COUGHING
QUENTIN DUPIEUX
“Reinventing the superhero genre often entails energizing it,
usually with piled-on camp (as with Troma Entertainment’s The
Toxic Avenger and, more recently, Marvel’s Deadpool) or pointed
critique (as with Eric Kripke’s series The Boys). Typically, the
assumption is that the genre needs reinventing because it’s stale,
and staleness is a bad thing. But what of jettisoning staleness
only to restore it? With neither gaudy bloodlust nor dramatic
reversal, Quentin Dupieux’s “Avengers assemble!” moment
collapses upon itself, and deliberately so. A loosely construed
series of wacky vignettes, Smoking Causes Coughing is calibrated
to an uncanny tonal wavelength… Think midnight hangout movie,
with quasi-stoner philosophy to boot — it’s quite a hoot.”—
MORRIS YANG
DIRECTOR: Quentin Dupieux; CAST: Gilles Lellouche, Vincent
Lacoste, Anaïs Demoustier; DISTRIBUTOR: Magnolia Pictures; IN
THEATERS & STREAMING: March 31; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 20 min.
TETRIS
Jon S. Baird
Narrative video games have been an appealing cash-grab for
years now, but the recent phenomenon of The Last of Us has
made game adaptations hot again. This critic’s personal favorite:
Super Mario Bros. (1993), a bizarre bastard made with gleeful
absurdity by Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton (the team behind
Max Headroom: 20 Minutes Into the Future, perhaps the best
made-for-television movie ever produced). It vexed fans because
it had very little to do with the game, but the relish with which
the directors conjure ridiculous images and borderline surreal
scenarios offers the kind of playbook of video game adaptation
from which filmmakers should take their inspiration. That, and a
good cast — God Bob Hoskins as the plumber (with a crotchety
weariness that belies that game character's ebullience) and
Dennis Hopper as the draconian reptilian, boasting a legion of
tiny-headed goons — makes all the difference.
Tetris, written by Noah Pink and directed by Jon S. Baird, is not
an adaptation of a narrative game, and since no studio would
finance an avant-garde, Michael Snow-esque take on translating
the game, we get something here like The Founder, but replete
with some Scorsese sprinklings, a little Baz glitz, and all of it
dressed in animated 8-bit graphics like garland. Even as a
traditional historical drama, however, a film like this could have
been an inspired idea if someone formally daring, some
consummate craftsman with sui generis vision, had made it —
just imagine Gaspar Noe's version of the variegated puzzle. At the
very least, the film would have benefited from someone capable
of incisive insight into the making and marketing of the game,
interrogating the relationship between the creative and the
corporate.
The Tetris we’ve been given offers none of that. Still, the final
product could have been worse, and that's often as good as these
kinds of studio productions tend to be. Baird’s film is a
competent, based-on-a-true-story bit of entertainment, but let’s
indulge what could have been: The people who had the idea of
making a movie out of a game about rearranging falling shapes
really missed a golden opportunity — Dr. Mario! Picture it: instead
of Tetris, we could have had a portly Italian with a bulbous head
and robust mustache dishing out a panoply of pills that need to
disappear somewhere. That could have been truly fun.
The backstory of Tetris the game — from an embryonic
entertainment flickering on a soviet programmer's boxy old
screen to worldwide sensation making certain people, though not
the Soviet programer, a lot of money — offers a fun narrative to
work from and is delivered with breezy playfulness that offers
diverting enough viewing. And Taron Egerton, as the hopeful
dealer who sees the potential of the game and bets everything,
proves once again that he is an enjoyably lively screen presence.
But there's only so much about knavish businessmen getting fat
off of someone else's creation — the dude who invented the
game got $10,000, minus fees — that you can watch before going
numb. This is a familiar story, dressed in its slightly particular
details. The story of the business background of the game is far
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less interesting than the story of its creation, and Baird’s film
feels like it’s aiming for a snazzy Moneyball-type thing. That sense
of apathy that plagues the film’s conception is what will
ultimately register most with viewers — there's simply nothing to
be excited about here. — GREG CWIK
DIRECTOR: Jon S. Baird; CAST: Taron Egerton, Nikita Efremov,
Toby Jones; DISTRIBUTOR: Apple TV+; STREAMING: March 31;
RUNTIME: 1 hr. 58 min.
THE INNOCENT
Louis Garrel
Three features into his career as director, and Louis Garrel’s
vision remains unexpected and lively, channeled into decidedly
comedic pieces that stand apart from the stylish melancholy
associated with his father’s iconic film work. Existing in the same
universe (though with minimal regard for continuity) and all
focusing on Garrel’s own screen alter ego “Abel,” A Faithful Man,
The Crusade, and now L’Innocent are written as contemporary
parables, addressing current-day social dilemma and offering
light moral critique through the bumblings and ignorance of their
shared central character. Something of a Hulot for our times (and
also kind of a Doinel), Abel’s proven to be a useful device for
Garrel to interrogate both our current moment and himself, the
self-interrogative nature of his unvain performance shielding the
lessons in morality from sanctimony.
Whereas A Faithful Man played out as a fidelity farce, and The
Crusade contended with the climate crisis, Garrel turns his
attention toward rehabilitation and forgiveness with his new
caper-comedy L’Innocent. Marking the first film Garrel didn’t write
alongside late novelist/screenwriting icon Jean-Claude Carriére,
L’Innocent nevertheless bears his influence in its parodic,
off-kilter approach to exploring morality, which is surprisingly,
deftly woven into an archetypal crime narrative, presumably
informed by co-writer Tanguy Viel, a French novelist who writes
on such things. Quickly establishing a new reality for Abel — now
a childless widow giving guided tours to grade schoolers at the
local aquarium — the film simultaneously introduces his
heretofore unseen mother, Sylvie (Anouk Grinberg), and the
source of L'Innocent’s primary conflict. Accused by Abel of using
the local penitentiary as a dating service, Sylvie is indeed on her
fifth relationship with a soon-to-be free convict, armed robber
Michel (Roschdy Zem), who she marries and goes into business
with immediately uponrelease. Upset to no end by his mother’s
choice of husband, the emotionally repressed, often petulant Abel
starts clumsily stalking Michel, hoping to catch him falling back
on old habits, but mostly just embarrassing himself and the
crush/friend (Noémie Merlant) he’s enlisted in his amateur spy
games.
Playing out as a series of broad, hilarious setpieces (Garrel
proving himself an adept comedian in just about every sense)
that eventually merge into a more grounded heist movie,
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L’Innocent dodges expectations from beginning to end without
devolving into incoherence. It’s a neat trick for a movie that deals
heavily in big moral messages and genre archetype, but the
cleanness with which Garrel executes his tonally complicated
screenplay is undeniable, helped along by a talented cast tuned
in to the film’s specific peculiarities. The rare contemporary
movie that might actually be able to keep an audience
off-balance while still engaging broadly, L’Innocent decidedly
confirms Louis Garrel as a clever filmmaker capable of
navigating between pop and arthouse sensibility, with no sign of
strain. — M.G. MAILLOUX
DIRECTOR: Louis Garrel; CAST: Louis Garrel, Noémie Merlant,
Anouk Grinberg, Roschdy Zem; DISTRIBUTOR: Janus Films; IN
THEATERS: March 17; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 40 min.
WINNIE-THE-POOH: BLOOD AND HONEY
Rhys Frake-Waterfield
Let’s start with a little personal history: when this reviewer
caught the live-action adaptation of Norman Bridwell’s
endearing giant canine in 2021’s Clifford the Big Red Dog, he
decried it in the harshest of terms as “vapid [...] soulless torture.”
For context, the film was about its eponymous furry fella and the
adorably oblivious family that took him in before
he inflated to the size of a small truck; the stakes at hand were
split, somewhat evenly, between familial dynamics
(acclimatization to the stares, the discrimination, oh the
household budget — wait — what even does he eat?) and global
conspiratorial shenanigans (the lab coats after Clifford’s flesh
and blood, very much for research purposes and maybe a smidge
of profit here and there). Why Clifford the Big Red Dog proved
anathemic was neither wholly the result of its cringeworthy
antics nor its shoddy, uncanny animatronics. Rather, Walt
Becker’s post-peak COVID defibrillation for cineplexes and their
communal origins failed due to stark irrelevance: there was
simply nothing to the film, not even its wink-wink wokeisms or
fairytale truisms, to entice audiences beyond the immediacy of
the scene, sometimes not even halfway past. Unless we count the
toddlers-to-five-years range, but even then it wouldn’t be
surprising if TikTok and the iPad have already indoctrinated them
into a realm of irony and self-consciousness — markers of
baseline social sentience.
The reason this is personal news, and the reason why this
unlucky (and unforgettable) memory has been dredged up, is
because you can, apparently, do worse than vapid, soulless
torture. Enter another franchise beloved by all: as the “bear of
very little brain,” children’s classic, pre-war nostalgia,
proto-Paddington, Xi Jinping, and psychoanalytic pasture, which
have been its alternative denotations, Winnie-the-Pooh remains
one of the more influential cultural icons of cartoons and
childhood around the world. Created by the vivid imagination of
one A.A. Milne, and soon copyrighted by the Disney empire, Pooh
exudes an air of tranquility, of innocence not yet lost and still
reflected in the bumbling denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood,
representing an unexpectedly progressive take on mental health
representation (all of Pooh’s neighbors, including the young
human master Christopher Robin, could potentially be read as
stand-ins for various disorders). Whether child or adult, boomer
or zoomer, jaded hermit or suburban wine mom, you’ve probably
come across some adaptation, T-shirt, or souvenir of the bear;
there’s even a meme template featuring Pooh with different
degrees of physical and intellectual sophistication.
What Clifford and Pooh share, then, are two volatile ingredients in
a recipe for disaster: the potential for live-action, and the
ensuing fanfare that naturally springs from any announcements
of the former sort. So when the lovable ursine entered America’s
public domain on January 1 last year, who but an opportunistic,
clout-chasing wannabe-director leapt at the chance to legally
stamp his own brand on Milne’s legacy, and cook up a horror
slasher while at it? To be very clear, there’s nothing ethically
dubious about reappropriating public domain stuff, even if for
arguably “distasteful” ends — little point arguing with the
conservatives and moral police, who tend to base their premises
on very different first principles. But there’s something quite
questionable about cashing in on the attention deficits of
hunger-starved tweens and older moviegoers alike, only to yield
pointless, less than incompetent garbage. Winnie-the-Pooh: Blood
and Honey, written, directed, and produced by the incoming Rhys
Frake-Waterfield, is a nightmare true to its genre, only that its
terrors are induced not by some changeling monstrosity, but by
mind-boggling indifference to image and craft. Ostensibly a film
about Pooh turned evil, it situates Milne’s lore in a contemporary
alternate universe where he presumably never existed and
Christopher Robin finally grew up to abandon his rural coterie.
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With their caretaker off to college, Pooh et al. — hereby
reimagined as anthropomorphic, originally savage creatures —
are forced to brave the loss of human companionship, retreating
into a winter of decrepitude and starvation where they mutually
sacrifice the sullen Eeyore for food. The trauma of this act, or so
the film goes, scars them into permanent silence and pushes
them back to their feral roots, engendering severe hatred for all
of civilization, adolescent dudes and chicks included.
All of this makes up the film’s paltry opening minutes, rendered in
somewhat decent animation. Had Blood and Honey kept that tone
and quality up throughout the rest of its runtime, the result would
have at least been bearable, even if a little lackadaisical. But
Frake-Waterfield knows his audiences aren’t here for a long time,
and not even for a particularly good time; they’re watching his
film because someone told them to, because the single digits on
Rotten Tomatoes bespeak a cinematic rite of passage, because
they banned it in Hong Kong (Pooh’s murderous rampage
probably too overt a metaphor for Beijing’s censors), or just
because. And so Blood and Honey takes itself to its logical
conclusion: numbing bloodshed. Pooh and Piglet, infused with a
thirst for human blood, kill and hack their way through the forest
around their enclave, to which an adult Christopher Robin initially
returns, followed by a gaggle of sorority girls looking to Airbnb,
away from city-life stress. The dynamic duo murder and scalp his
girlfriend, shower her blood on a whipped and shell-shocked
Christopher, and exact similar patterns of revenge on anyone
else within their radius of scent. They get knocked down from
time to time, but it’s not clear if they’re somehow unassailable or
if their victims are too utterly stupid to finish them off.
The slasher formula, even when stripped of its accessories, isn’t
indicative of boredom tout court. Blood and Honey, however, goes
one step further and beneath the workings of many a
mainstream kill-and-fill to strip and season all the wrong places.
The team behind this titanic failure sand away any meaningful
dialogue or motive, and pepper its frames with body counts. They
invoke a brief subtext on harassment and stalking, only to reduce
the women to dumber-than-dumb blondes upon sighting P&P.
The murderous duo aren’t even feral creatures here, but two
muscular men in droopy cosplay masks that — pardon the
expression — resemble inbred furry Ghostfaces. When Piglet
catches one of the girls, she kicks up a whole fuss, only to wade
into the Airbnb’s indoor swimming pool and wait there. Like a
literal NPC, she lingers, patiently allotting the next scene to
another girl who’s incapacitated and screaming her brains out,
and then waiting for Tusk Man to wade into the pool for company,
before she then tries to tread her way out of the slog. She
doesn’t, spoiler alert, and Piglet’s mallet blow to her head for once
lends credence to the reactionary old guard who correlate
violence with suicide, onscreen gore as manifestation of the
desire to end it all. It is a bloody relief — albeit momentarily,
because Frake-Waterfield has to justify his passion project and
afford the two killers their spree quota. Blood and Honey just
keeps going, and its superficially modest 84-minute runtime
soon turns into a grotesque orgy of banality as the screaming
and hammering ramp up to no foreseeable end. Oh fucking
bother. — MORRIS YANG
DIRECTOR: Rhys Frake-Waterfield; CAST: Craig David Dowsett,
Chris Cordell, Amber Doig-Thorne; DISTRIBUTOR: Fathom Events;
IN THEATERS & STREAMING: March 31; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 24 min.
GIRAFFE
Anna Sofie Hartmann
?Hartmann favors largely static master shots, always maintaining
a careful symmetry and allowing the camera to occasionally pan
slowly left or right. The result is a handsome film somewhat
lacking in formal variation, with shots stacking up in a dull,
metronomic rhythm. Hartmann is obviously interested in the
various threads of our modern, interconnected world and losing
our links to the past, but her approach is too diffuse to really
land. Bits of narrative information are unproductively obscured,
revealed only in dribs and drabs… There are epistolary
sequences of Dara reading aloud from a diary…
pseudo-documentary interview scenes detailing the plight of the
Polish workers, and glacially paced trips on the ferry, which
Hartmann films like an alien spacecraft… There’s a clear
imbalance found in how much better some of this works than
other parts.” — DANIEL GORMAN
DIRECTOR: Anna Sofie Hartmann; CAST: Lisa Loven Kongsli,
Jakub Gierszał, Maren Eggert; DISTRIBUTOR: Film Movement;
STREAMING: March 31; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 27 min.
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KEED TALK TO ‘EM 2
Lil Keed
The final track off Lil Keed’s new
posthumous album, Keed Talk to ‘Em 2, is a
somber remembrance for the Atlanta
rapper, who died at only 24 from a rare
blood disease last year. During this fitting
finale, up-and-coming Philly R&B singer
Fridayy (who rose to semi-prominence in
2022, due to guest appearances on Lil
Baby and DJ Khaled albums) showily
croons over mournful piano notes.
Interjecting this is Keed himself, delivering
a both off-the-cuff and declaratory
statement of purpose for the album he
was never able to complete. “This whole
album 'bout me / Like this shit portray me,
my growth / Keed Talk to 'Em 2 is 'bout the
grind, man,” he confesses in an almost
sheepish address. Indeed, KTTE2 does dip
into some more personal territory lyrically
on songs like the low-key “Think About It,”
where he discusses the stroke that took
his father’s life. But even there, Keed
intersperses the intimate reflections with
lines like “Yeah, she want my baby, but her
face where I place my semen” and “I slimed
my plug for the zaza 'cause it smellin' like
farts.” Make no mistake, this is still a Keed
(and by extension, Young Stoner Life)
project: irreverent, attention-deficit trap
music.
by the sublime melodies of the original
Keed Talk to ‘Em, the immaculate beats on
Long Live Mexico, and the adventurous
flow patterns of the aforementioned
Cleveland 3, was stellar, and established a
level of quality that this outing isn’t able
to match. Nonetheless, clearly assembled
with care by his family (his mother
released a statement with its lead single,
and his surviving young daughter
Naychur is credited as executive
producer), KTTE2 isn’t a tasteless cash
grab like those mounted by the Pop
Smoke and XXXTentacion estates after
their untimely deaths. It’s a well-meaning
and mostly effective attempt to capture
what Keed did best — even if it pales in
comparison to his past output and to the
troves of leaked, first-rate material that
have surfaced on SoundCloud.
There are a few songs here that rank
among Keed’s best work: the previously
mentioned lead single, “Long Way to Go,”
is defined by a potent mix of Keed’s
kinetic, restless energy with a strain of
wistfulness — his ad-libs feel particularly
fraught with regret. The chorus’ “Got a
long way to go, but I'm closer than ever”
mantra is imbued with a sinking feeling
that somehow he knew he was never
going to reach the goals toward which
he’s gesturing. On the more purely
enjoyable end of the spectrum, “Betty
Boop” — a collaboration with longtime
Young Thug fiancée Karlae — is a
mischievous, attitude-heavy tune,
supported by excellent, groovy
production by Bankroll Got It and Diego
Ave. “All I Wanna Know” is also a standout,
but it’s essentially a covert, virtuoso
Keed also begins his soliloquy by framing
the album as a redemption or comeback,
which makes some sense on a commercial
level, as his previous full-length, Trapped
on Cleveland 3, was a disappointment if
judged by streaming numbers. But it’s
totally needless artistically: Keed’s prior
run, characterized
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Young Thug song with a 30-second (yet
still very strong) Keed verse that arrives
over two minutes into the track. A pair of
string-backed cuts, “How Many” and “Lost
My Trust,” further help keep things vital.
The album is a bit rough around the edges.
One has to wonder what its architects
were thinking when they included a song
called “Hitman,” given the grave charges
currently embroiling YSL’s leader, and the
instrumental on “Hottest” is, no joke, a
warmed-over retread of Wheezy’s iconic
work for Thug and Gunna’s 2019 smash
“Hot,” horns and all. Then there’s the beat
of the opening track, “Go See,” complete
with Inclinations sample, which doesn’t
really play to Keed’s strengths, though it
does at least leave one wondering how he
would’ve grown into making more versatile
choices. As is, Keed Talk to ‘Em 2 is an
unresolved hypothetical about what might
have been; a good-enough eulogy for a
talent gone far too soon. — CHARLES
LYONS-BURT
LABEL: YSL Records and 300
Entertainment; RELEASE DATE: March 17
MEMENTO MORI
Depeche Mode
In May 2022, Andy Fletcher — the keyboard
player and one of the founding members
of the prestigious British
synth-pop/electronic rock group Depeche
Mode — passed away after a tragic battle
with aortic dissection, leaving the
remaining duo of Dave Gahan and Martin
Gore in deep shock and overwhelming
grief. The last time the trio got together to
record a studio album was in 2017,
resulting in Spirit, the final record Depeche
Mode released in their famous trio
format. Fortunately perhaps, Fletcher’s
saddening death didn’t stop Gahan and
Gore's artistic collaboration, thus giving
birth to Depeche Mode’s 15th studio
record, Memento Mori, an album filled —
as its title explicitly suggests — with the
memory and experience of Fletcher’s
passing. Opening with “My Cosmos Is
Mine,” the duo quickly form and manifest
the unique sonic universe of Memento
Mori. While the outfit’s usual
characteristics — Gahan’s distinctive and
dramatic baritone vocals; Gore’s gradual,
multilayered compositions — are vividly
at play here, “My Cosmos Is Mine” easily
exhibits a distinct aura of its own that
encompasses the entire album from
beginning to end. Deeper, darker, and
possibly more pensive than ever,
Memento Mori finds a seamless balance
between confrontational expression and
introspective impression, empowered by
an individualistic motivation and
confidence that’s no stranger to the
group’s artistic work for roughly five
decades: “Don’t play with my world / Don’t
mess with my mind / Don’t question my
spacetime / My cosmos is mine”.
The fact that all of Memento Mori’s tracks
exceed four minutes evinces a level of
precision and purism, with Gore and
Gahan handling everything from
free-flowing songwriting to incisive
musicianship and passionate vocals.
While embracing the familiar sound and
style of Depeche Mode, the duo are not
averse to (re-)articulation and innovation.
Be it an ‘80’s retro-reverberating ditty like
“Wagging Tongue” (which tackles the
notions of personal liberation and
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ALBUM REVIEWS
self-reliance: “You won’t do well to silence
me / With your words or wagging tongue /
With your long tall tales to sorrow / Your
song and to be sung / I won’t be offended”)
or the outstanding banger of the album,
“Ghosts Again” (proving how Depeche Mode
is still capable of coming up with an
instant eargasmic, slow-burn megahit), the
collaborative spirit of Gore and Gahan’s
work appears to be a result of sensorial,
sonic architecture, simultaneously
indicating the extent of Memento Mori’s
delicately taut compositions, its integrity
and chemistry while immersing in a
seraphically posthumous atmosphere,
filled with philosophically cosmological
reveries (“Heaven’s dreaming / Thoughtless
thoughts, my friends / We know we’ll be
ghosts again”).Indeed, Memento Mori is
both aesthetically and conceptually
shaped by ecstatic verve and relaxed
fluidity, organically synthesizing its catchy
melodies with Depeche Mode’s constant
experimentalism. After all, this is an album
that seems (like its cover artwork)
minimalistic, yet meticulously sketched
with various degrees of light and shade,
effectively interweaving its pieces with
spiritual sublimity and intellectual
elevation. It shouldn’t be a surprise, then,
that after the hauntingly beautiful
(anti-)love ballad, “Don’t Say You Love Me”
(“You’ll be the killer / I’ll be the corpse /
You’ll be the thriller / And I’ll be the drama,
of course”), we’re confronted with the
industrial/new-way/Bauhaus-y disco hit
“My Favourite Stranger,” which epitomizes
the album’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde quality:
“My favorite stranger stands in my mirror /
Puts words in my mouth / All broke and
bitter.” Yet, as Gahan’s clear-cut baritone
crooning is, as usual, responsible for
providing an expressive personality
alongside Gore’s juxtapositions of
electronic bits, electric guitar riffs,
magnificent keyboard interludes, and
string orchestrations and arrangements,
Gore’s languid tenor once again
emphasizes the essential
light-versus-dark motif in “Soul With Me,”
the record’s centerpiece, which might
give the listener a feeling of gradual
spiritual transcendence: “I’m ready for the
final pages / Kiss goodbye to all my earthly
cages / I’m climbing up the golden stairs /
Go sing it from the highest tower / From
the morning / Till the midnight hour.”
The same charcoal chiaroscuro of sound
fills the second half of Memento Mori, the
duo of Gahan and Gore never ceasing to
experiment and extend the boundaries of
their musicianship. This is especially
evident with the surreal poetry of
“Caroline’s Monkey,” which suggests some
inspiration from ‘70s Pink Floyd and the
abstractions present in a lot of German
Krautrock: “Caroline’s monkey coos in her
ear / Drives like a demon / Through
Caroline’s tears.” Another song, “Before We
Drown,” provides an implicit counterpoint
to the earlier “Soul With Me”; instead of
reaching for the sublime, though, it
submerges the listener in the innermost
depths of a darker reflection: “First we
stand up, then we fall down / We have to
move forward before we drown”. “People
Are Good,” meanwhile, splits the
difference between those two tones with
a mildly dissonant, heavier-sounding New
Wave techno song that also tries to
remain optimistic about mankind: “Keep
reminding myself / That people are good /
And when they do bad things / They’re just
hurting inside.” But it’s the last three
songs on Memento Mori that manifest
some of the album’s most emotionally
powerful moments. On the romantically
heart-wrenching “Always You,” Gahan’s
vocals trend toward his falsetto range,
singing, “And then there’s you / There’s
always you / The light that leads me from
the darkness,” aided by some of Gore’s
dreamiest, trippiest keyboard
accompaniment. “Never Let Me Go” aims
to please the group’s hardcore fans,
throwing back to the BDSM style and
ambiance of an ‘80s underground
industrial/goth club, while the symphonic
closer “Speak to Me” conjures a perfect
serenity through the unison of an
elevating lightness and absorbing
darkness, speaking to each other and
arriving at a new meaning of faith. With
Memento Mori, Depeche Mode have not
only once again crafted their music at a
high level and in a style that somehow
feels outside of space and time, but this
new and tragically diminished
incarnation of the band has also made
one of their best and most personal
albums in the process. — AYEEN
FOROOTAN
LABEL: Mute Records; RELEASE DATE:
March 24
WITH LOVE FROM
Aly & AJ
The music on sister duo Aly & AJ’s last
album, 2021’s A Touch of the Beat, ranged
from fireplace-warm pop-rock
(“Listen!!!”) to tense synthpop (“Lucky to
Get Him”) to tender acoustic love songs
(“Slow Dancing”). Compared to the two
EPs that preceded it — which were full of
glistening, explosive (and equally
excellent!) synthpop — Beat marked a
37

turn toward live instrumentation and
patient singer-songwriter tendencies, a
notable departure from the duo’s Disney
days in the 2000s. The album still came
packed with potent hooks and layered
production, true to their pop roots, but
there was a distinctly exploratory spirit to
it, untamed by any expectations to simply
keep making pop bangers. Even Beat’s
opener, the five-minute-long soft rock of
“Pretty Places,” opened the album like a
horizon, predicated on the idea of
escaping somewhere new — and although
many of the other songs are upbeat and
sprinkled with synth details, the bonus
tracks that Aly & AJ released a year later
seemed to conclude that album’s era on a
note of mellow acoustic music.
The sisters’ newest project, With Love
From, is best appreciated when armed
with the knowledge of where A Touch of
the Beat left off. Compared to the latter,
which mixed different tempos and flavors
of alternative pop, With Love From is
consistent in style and mood: it’s a full
record’s worth of the most gentle, easy
rock side of their discography, as if
“Pretty Places” was spun off into a whole
universe. Any of the individual songs
would fit in on A Touch of the Beat (Yves
Rothman executive produced both), but
taken all together, they create a much
more understated album experience. It’s
not entirely country or rock or Americana,
but the sonic signifiers bend gracefully in
those directions, while still
ALBUM REVIEWS
lingering on the edge of the pop
conversation.
Tracks like “Tear the Night Up,” “Love You
This Way,” and “Baby Lay Your Head
Down” are upbeat — there’s fun to be had,
even if the music is mellow — but
accentuated with the kind of tasteful
guitars and soft drums that can’t help but
lend a song a certain contemplativeness.
The slower cuts, meanwhile, are
deliberate in their feelings: “Blue Dress” is
delicate but emotionally assured (“I don’t
care who you’ve been with / I just care that
you show up at all”); “Way of Nature Way
of Grace” announces its folksy intentions
from the start and follows through; and
closer “6 Months of
Staring Into the Sun” confidently
builds across its five minutes,
operating almost like a bookend
to “Pretty Places” in the way it
sets a scene of cruising down
the highway, destination
unknown. With Love From is a
record for small, cozy rooms —
an evening album to match A
Touch of the Beat’s breezy day.
The record doesn’t surpass the
duo’s previous work in terms of
impressing as an overarching
artistic statement, but the music
remains effortlessly wonderful,
punctuated with a sense of care
and belief in companionship that
promises to reveal its full power
in the slow burn. We need
albums for the quiet moments,
too. — KAYLA BEARDSLEE
LABEL: Aly & AJ Music LLC;
RELEASE DATE: March 15
38

Photo Credits:
Cover - Aidan Monaghan; Page 1 - Travis Wilkerson/Cinéma du Réel; Page 3 - Sharon
Lockhart/Cinéma du Réel; Page 7 - Sebastián Pinzón-Silva & Canela Reyes/Cinéma du Réel; Page 9
- Paul Guilhaume; Page 11 - Nour Ouayda/Cinéma du Réel; Page 13 - Jean-Claude
Rousseau/Cinéma du Réel; Page 14 - Paul Guilhaume; Page 17, 18 - New Yorker Films; Page 19 -
Paramount Pictures/eOne; Page 21 - NEON; Page 23- Netflix; Page 24 - Aaron Ricketts/Focus
Features; Page 26 - Searchlight Pictures; Page 28 - Magnolia Pictures; Page 29 - Strand
Releasing; Page 30 - Scott Yamano/Netflix; Page 32 - Janus Films; Page 35 - YSL Records/300
Entertainment; Page 36 - Mute Records; Page 38 - Stephen Ringer; Back Cover - Focus Features