A Touch of Sin:
Operating independently of the state run Chinese production company, Still Life director Zia Zhangke hammers home the mood of anger and disillusionment in Chinese society through the loosely connected stories of a rural man (Jiang), a high end prostitute (Li), a man returning home to the city of Chongqing and a labourer working a grim production line. They’re all at their wits end and act accordingly. Shot with marvellous scale, A Touch of Sin is violent, blaring with conviction and strikingly subversive.
12 Years a Slave:
Having navigated a mist of eye watering hype, Steve McQueen has emphatically delivered with his long awaited slavery drama. Based on Solomon Northup’s book of the same name, his film is about as marvellous, gruelling and brutal an exercise in cinema as you are likely to see.
We follow Northup’s (Ejiofor) odyssey from respected
musician living with wife and children in Saratoga to his kidnapping in
Washington and subsequent decent into slavery. We meet his first master, a
somewhat decent man named William Ford (Cumberbatch), and then his second, a
cruel maniac called Edward Epps (Fassbender). Northup is told constantly to
keep his head down and survive but the free man inside strives to “live” again.
So would this British video art director be
marginalised by such sweeping moves on Hollywood? It would seem not. Hans
Zimmer might know when to kick in the string section but the brutish composer
is just a deft with the drill and Sean Bobbitt’s photography has lost none of
its poetic hostility. Indeed, McQueen may have his sights on LA but his
eyelashes have yet to flutter and with 12
Years he shows us the fear and hatred which governed these peoples’ lives
in a way few American film makers have been able to muster.
Unknown Pleasures Festival:
Oscar hopefuls and kickstarter darlings will once again be rubbing elbows for this year’s Unknown Pleasures fest as the American independent showcase with the Mancunian album name reaches its sixth year. Opening night hosts the Berlin premiere of James Gray’s sepia drenched Ellis Island fable The Immigrant; concerning a Polish woman, delicately played by Marion Cotillard, who is forced into prostitution upon arrival in New York. Gray’s film premiered at Cannes last May alongside one of this year’s more light-hearted offerings, Alexander Payne’s Nebraska, in which Bruce Dern offers a fine reminder of his talents as an ailing man on a cross state mission to cash in a dubious sweepstakes letter. Robert Redford gives a similarly late flourish as he faces the elements on board a doomed sailboat in J.C. Chandor’s one man show All Is Lost. Redford’s Sundance film festival is represented here of course with two of last year’s best received films: I used to be Darker is Matthew Porterfields story of an Irish runaway and the crumbling Baltimore relatives with whom she takes refuge and Brie Larson stars as a foster care worker in Destin Daniel Crettin’s Short term 12. This year’s Special Program will focus on socialist documentary maker Travis Wilkerson- including An Injury to One; his study of Frank Little, a union agitator who was lynched by the capitalist leaders of Butte Montana. A town whose factories provided 10% of the world’s copper – as well as a number of restored films including Thom Andersen’s Los Angeles Plays Itself, a video essay on the city of Angels comprised entirely of clips from the movies. Sounds swell.
