47th Thessaloniki International Film Festival

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47th Thessaloniki International Film Festival

#10

Stagnation Means Regression

European cinematography, in which aesthetic laboratories the film art substance of this new medium was crystallizing, a long time now only stands as a decorative, but firmly installed bastion of conformism. The 47th Thessaloniki Film Festival only proves this thesis, whose consequences – it seems so – aren’t making any real problems for the film producers: their serial-clichés film products has the audience of their own, who feels comfortable with this glamorous entertainment, falsely protected by the ‘evil tongues’ of the social, moral or political criticism. The list of the films with the themes, in which – with a lot of selectivity and care – the subtleties of the bourgeois small-hearted mentality are brought to the pedestal, along with the glorifying of the egoism and the hypocrisy of the modern-world ‘distinguished’ citizens. The vain and the privileged (and rich) citizens of the modern (Western) world have every right for cynicism – even in the cases of the collective drama s of whole nations.
In the political drama Back Home, the French director Rabah Ameur-Zaïmeche, for instance, tries to judge the war and the war manipulators, without any deeper analysis about their interests and motives of the initiators of that kind of evil. And for irony to be greater, he places his film plot in Algiers, former French colony, in which today – ‘who knows why?’ – is in political anarchy, mass confusion and social chaos. Also, the German director Markus Herling attempts to forget the ‘tiny dirty’ details from the youth ideals of his film characters, in his film Riding up Front which was in the competition program of the Festival, and also forgets to reveal their hypocrisy into the whirlpool of the Christ’s Birth Celebration, when all sins are forgiven and the lie gets its form as a nicely costumed illusion.
#11 The defense of the European cinematography ‘colors’ and pride, over their shaken dignity, remained only up to the doyen of the individualistic art-film, the French director Alain Resnais, with his latest film Intimate Fears In Public Spots, the Winner of the Silver Lion in Venice and of the French paralel to the Hollywood OscarCesar. Although the story about the six seekers for love of their lives was exploited by many in the past, especially by the distant predecessors since the Poetic Realism years. In the Resnais’s film, this theme sustains its freshness and inspiration, as of the actuality and validity of the moral conflicts along the poetry of the dream for happiness.
The Polish film authors also remained us of their former glow and prestige in their cinematography, which all until the 90’s of the 20th century has its own privileged place at the top of the film nations in Europe. Their representative was the film Retrieval, directed by Slawomir Fabicki, the Winner of the Best Director Prize at this Festival: this film, with merciless criticism and strong sarcasm, pictures the social uncertainty of his young heroes, at the doorsteps of their complete moral degradation and emotional insensitivity. Besides the good director’s cut, one must mention the great acting performances of whole acting ensemble.
#12 Some reflections and remains of the former lyrical glow and lucid irony conceived and nursed by the famous Czech filmmakers as Jirí Menzel or Vera Chytilová, can be seen in the film mentality of the director Jan Hrebejk, the author of the melancholic comedy Beauty in Trouble, a film with deep sympathies for the young heroine Marcella’s loves and adventures, without objections even for her adulteries that are certainly degrading her personality. With some dark-humored resignation, the film emanates the message that – most probably – “the time for sustaining the moral principles as loyalty and faith in human relationships is diminishing and fading”… We can see the same kind of pessimistic syntagma in the Island film representative Thicker Than Water by Arni Olafur Asgeirsson, a syntagma with erosive power to illuminate the film characters, although they – with a certain pathological measure of hypocrisy cherish the illusion that they are faithful to the principles of love and morality.

The Film Bards Aren’t Afraid Of Isolation

#13 And now, “something completely different” – can be the comment of the Russian film representative Island, directed by Pavel Lungin, known here by his psychological thriller Taxi Blues. This Russian film The Island is – without any doubt – one of the most intriguing films at The 47th Thessaloniki Film Festival, although far away from the moral-conflict and social-consequences themes, that seem to be the theme-point of the other Festival films. The leading character of this film, the unordinary monk Anatoli, lives in the far-away monastery on some Siberian desert island. Seems like, in his solitude and healing powers, he fluently absorbs whole world wisdom, vanity beauty and evil the modern world lives in. Pavel Lungin – doubtlessly – belongs to the Aleksandr Sokurov generation, which has implicite inclination to dig within the metaphysical themes about the meaning of life and about the human emotional and physical existence. Lungin continues with the tradition introduced by Andrei Tarkovsky, finding in his visions new sources of contradiction and new reasons to fight the hollow emptiness of the soul and of the world…
David Lynch, this year again, uses his personal creative enigmas in his latest film Inland Empire as a cognitive tool in the quest for the bizarre contradictories of his film characters’ personalities and their surroundings As usual, this year also, Lynch was one of the ‘most spoken of’ film personality at the Festival, dividing the audience and the critics in two: one as excessive apologists, and the other as strict opponents. But, the story of the film about a woman equally dedicated to love and exposed to the danger, should be followed with great attention, as the author equilibrates with the mysteries as with the harmless toys, and should be carefully analyzed.
#14 Besides David Lynch, who presented the elitist spirit and loyalty to the Hollywood tradition conceived and cherished by Erich von Strocheim, but also by Stanley Kubrick, at the The 47th Thessaloniki Film Festival program, there was few more interesting films. As for instance, the debut-film of the young American female director of Russian origin Julia Loktev, the film Day Night Day Night, most directly pictures the atmosphere of uncertainty, danger and risk of practicing terrorist activities young Americans often involve in. Of all promises made by his early works, Darren Aronofsky, in his new film, the mega-spectacle The Fountain, remained only with shiny-colored empty shells, colorful visions without any meaningful or poetic substance.
But luckily, the presence of the great author’s name of the world film in general with his film retrospective, the famous German director Wim Wenders (his appearance, among the filmophiliac audience, made an atmosphere as in the 60’s of the XX century!), brought back the hope that the artistic film and its makers didn’t completely lost the media vitality and the creative boldness and courageous ingenuity in making…

Translated by: Petar Volnarovski

2018-08-21T17:23:10+00:00 April 14th, 2007|Categories: Reviews, Gallery, Blesok no. 53|0 Comments