The Strange Little Cat (Das merkwürdige Kätzchen)

THE STRANGE LITTLE CAT (Das merkwürdige Kätzchen)       B      

Germany  (72 mi)  2014  d:  Ramon Zürcher       The Strange Little Cat - KimStim

The film is little more than a day in the life of a Berlin family, meticulously observed with pinpoint accuracy, but what first-time director Ramon Zürcher offers is a radical perspective on ordinary events, where the film is peppered with oddly juxtaposed connections, where even the most banal events are continually seen as slightly askew, where instead of a harmony so perfectly expressed in the brilliant opening shot of Béla Tarr’s WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES (2000), Werckmeister Harmonies - YouTube (10:56), where drunken bar patrons become moons and spinning planets revolving around the sun, Zürcher’s universe is continually seen spinning out of balance with a rhythm of disorder, becoming an absurd comedy of errors.  Supposedly conceived at a seminar conducted by retired Hungarian director Béla Tarr, the idea draws upon Kafka’s 1915 novella The Metamorphosis, where a common, ordinary experience turns into an out of whack, surreal fantasy, where realistic events are given an often dream-like quality, but no explanation is ever offered for this most peculiar take on what is otherwise perceived as the mundane and the routine.  A minimalist economy of means at only seventy-two minutes, written, directed, edited, and produced by Zürcher, while also providing the sound editing and digital effects himself, the director brings a formal precision to confined space, as the claustrophobic camera offers a fixed position inside a cramped family apartment, placing the viewer in the center of the action as people slide around each other as they move throughout the kitchen in a flurry of activity while fixing themselves something to eat.  While the stoic mother (Jenny Schily) continually reminds her precocious daughter Clara (Mia Kasalo) to keep quiet as grandmother is still asleep, since Clara has a habit of screaming at the top of her lungs when the garbage disposal is running, it is nonetheless the mother that turns on every conceivable modern electrical appliance in the kitchen while grinding and roasting individual cups of coffee, squeezing fresh juice out of oranges, disposing of the garbage and preparing food, each one drowning out the conversation with the most disruptive and annoying noise that seems to come in the most inconceivable moments.  Equally strange is an early morning visit to fix a washing machine, where a dizzying routine of constant movement is established with people entering and exiting the frame, all jostling for position, with the camera centered upon their waists, often cutting off their heads, becoming a choreography of moving bodies not only coming in and out of the room, but in and out of the front door of the apartment. 

Initially the flurry of activity, including a mischievous cat being chased by a much bigger dog, is amusingly off-kilter, where there’s seemingly no rhyme or reason for what’s happening, becoming a strange jumble of chaos that accentuates sight gags and physical comedy, where the film is largely a collection of small moments that grow more absurd with often incomprehensible mutterings from each of the characters, establishing weird personalities, where by the end, human activity is seen as a fishbowl style madhouse where only the cat, with an air of indifference and lack of concern seems the most sane creature in the household.   The non-narrative, unpredictability factor gives this the rigorous form and outlandish style of an experimental film in keeping with the director’s Berlin School (films) mentors at the German Film and Television Academy in Berlin (Deutsche Film- und Fernsehakademie Berlin), where Zürcher, born in Switzerland, has been a student since 2006.  Led by directors including Christian Petzold’s Yella (2007), Jerichow (2008), Barbara (2012) and Beats Being Dead (Dreileben 1 - Etwas Besseres als den Tod) (2012), Thomas Arslan, Angela Schanelec, Christoph Hochhäusler’s One Minute of Darkness (Dreileben 3 – Eine Minute Dunkel) (2012), Ulrich Köhler, Benjamin Heisenberg’s THE ROBBER (2010), Valeska Grisebach’s BE MY STAR (2001) and LONGING (2006), and Maren Ade’s THE FOREST FOR THE TREES (2003) and 2010 Top Ten Films of the Year: #9 Everyone Else (Alle Anderen) (2009), their films tend to lack mainstream accessibility, where according to German director Oskar Roehler, “They are always slow, always depressing, nothing is ever really said in them (though) they are always well thought of.”  The fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989 triggered a collapse not only of political institutions, but many elements of cultural identity, particularly in the former East Germany which simply disappeared overnight, where Berlin became the cultural epicenter of new progressive measures, where in the mid 1990’s, graduates of the German Film and Television Academy emerged with a new aesthetically-driven form of cinema.  Abandoning the historical context embraced by most commercially popular German films at the time, films of the Berlin School tend to deal with life in the here and now, refraining from delving into Germany’s dark past, except through ambiguous means.  According to Marco Abel from his 2008 article in Cineaste, Intensifying Life: The Cinema of the “Berlin School”, elaborated upon further in his 2013 book, The Counter-Cinema of the Berlin School (Screen Cultures: German Film and the Visual), this: 

“counter-cinema is built around the unusual style of realism employed in the films of this movement, a realism that presents audiences with images of a Germany that does not yet exist.  It is precisely how these films’ images and sounds work that renders them political.  They are political not because they are message-driven films but because they are made politically, thus performing a ‘redistribution of the sensible’ — a direct artistic intervention in the way politics partitions ways of doing and making, saying and seeing.”  

According to David Pendleton, programmer of the Harvard Film Archive, 

“In contrast with the markedly affective style of the New German cinema (of the 70’s) — Fassbinder’s melodramas, Herzog’s eccentricity, Wenders’ melancholy — these directors (of the 90’s) exhibit a striking coolness, at least on the surface.  In the absence of being told how to feel, the spectator is urged to confront his or her own involvement.”  

Zürcher himself has described this film as “a horror film without horror,” as the unique camera angles and protracted use of offscreen sound helps create confusion and disorientation, using alternative methods, among which include whimsical fantasy to help provide a look at a nation that longs for a better future but still hasn't found itself, like it’s still stuck in a labyrinthian puzzle with no exit plan.  Unlike the formal rigor of recent German films examining a crisis of faith, Katrin Gebbe’s Nothing Bad Can Happen (Tore Tantz) (2013), punk fascism disguised as religious parable, or Dietrich Brüggemann’s Stations of the Cross (Kreuzweg) (2014), an unwavering doctrine of religious fear and absolutism, Zürcher’s more mischievous film is perhaps closer to the zany universe embellished in Giorgos Lanthimos’s acclaimed DOGTOOTH (2009), where the off-the-wall absurdity is a world unto itself, punctuated by the musical theme of “Pulchritude,” Pulchritude By Thee More Shallows - YouTube (2:36), a hypnotic yet semi-agitated string piece from the San Francisco post-rock experimental indie group Thee More Shallows, whose constantly recurring ballet-like motif resembles the pulsating roar of a surging locomotive engine as it accelerates down the tracks.  Over time, the eccentricities of the characters are exposed, making strange remarks, concocting mysterious tales, offering weird commentary, all of which has an aura of randomness about it, creating a spontaneous feel.  But despite the quirky imagination at play, where you get the feeling something is always lurking just outside the frame, the question is does it add up to more than the sum of its parts?  Perhaps the key is staring at that tired, worn-out face of the mother, like a world-weary Kaurismäki character, whose depressive gaze tells all, or perhaps it’s the pint-sized view as seen through the clever imagination of young Clara, still too young and magical to matter all that much or to be taken seriously by the collection of droll adults in the room, often completely ignored while discovering things all on her own, much like the sleepy dreams and free-spirited rhythms of the cat, who romps around the house when she pleases, yet sees and ignores everything. 

The Owners

 

Director Adilkhan Yerzhanov

THE OWNERS           B-                     

Kazakhstan  (93 mi)  2014  d:  Adilkhan Yerzhanov

 

A portrait of miserablism, poverty and gloom, as seen through a surrealist lens where tragedy and dark comedy intersect, where it’s worth noting that the remote nation of Kazakhstan, known as one of the least densely populated nations on earth (only Canada and Australia are lower) with less than 15 people per square mile, yet it has produced two of the most weirdly unusual films to hit film festivals in the past two years, with this coming after Emir Baigazin’s Harmony Lessons (Uroki garmonii) (2013), one of the best directed and edited films from last year.  Both are young directors that have graduated from the Kazakh National Academy of Arts, so New Kazakh cinema has become a breeding ground of originality and novelty.  Actually THE OWNERS is a follow-up to his previous film, the 67-minute black and white short film CONSTRUCTORS (2013) Constructors | Stroiteli | FIFF | Fribourg International Film ..., shooting in wildly exaggerated colors, where both are low-key, absurdist treatments of the difficulties encountered by individuals that strive to maintain any sense of dignity when they are swallowed up whole by the apathy and indifference of a Kafkaesque Eastern European bureaucracy that may as well be the remnants of a Stalinist Soviet system left behind, as Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.  While the overall effect is a bit like Kaurismäki, with similar deadpan acting, but it’s not Kaurismäki, leaving something to be desired, namely the wit and zany characters that inhabit a Kaurismäki film.  It may be closer in tone to the Yorgos Lanthimos film DOGTOOTH (2009), though stylistically quite different, as both are interested in creating a weird and entirely unusual universe that seemingly exists on its own, as if floating on air, where much of it carries a fantasy oriented atmosphere of surrealist caricature.       

Our three orphaned protagonists are introduced by a child’s drawing where we see 25-year old John (Aidyn Sakhaman), the reluctant patriarch, an ex-con who has done time for petty crimes and remains unemployed, his younger teenage brother Yerbol (Yerbolat Yerzhan), a handsome aspiring actor who retains his sense of idealism, and their sickly 12-year old epileptic sister Aliya (Aliya Zainalova) who remains the most innocent of all, where the two younger actors reprise their roles from CONSTRUCTORS.  Aliya continually sees the world through a kind of magical realism where people are always smiling and happy, often seen performing dance routines, where this whimsical element is a stark contrast to the gloom that inhabits the rest of the picture.  Forced to leave the city when they can no longer pay the rent, they move to a remote village where their deceased mother left them a house, carrying the deed to the property with them.  Unfortunately it’s currently inhabited by Zhuba (Bauyrzhan Kaptagai), the alcoholic brute of a brother to the local police chief (Nurbek Mukushev) who has been living there illegally for the past 10 years.  In this lawless frontier, possession takes precedence over any existing laws, as Zhuba wages an intimidation campaign and beats the crap out of John after he files a complaint with the police, while a visit to the housing ministry only results in the futility of trying to do anything about it, reduced to a portrait of comic absurdity, a throwback to a faceless and heartless Kafkaesque world where reason never prevails, where grievances remain in a state of limbo for months and problems are left to be resolved by hand-to-hand human combat, resorting to a survival of the fittest Darwinian universe where the weak are stomped on by more powerful Stalinist forces.  It’s a bleak and hopeless existence where John eventually gets arrested, where despite the dubious nature of the charges, there are signs that he will never be released, and the younger siblings are forced to survive on their own, where all that is saving them at the moment are Aliya’s charmingly innocent visions.

Duped into signing away ownership of the house, lured by the false promise of John’s freedom, the director likes to line up all the interested parties and shoot them in a tableaux shot where once again they are seen as just actors, where this offers a temporary relief from the descent into oblivion facing this family.  Perhaps part of the problem with this film is a similar one depicted in Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing (2012), where the collaborators and perpetrators of the heinous acts of genocide are seen as mere caricatures, lending a cartoonish aura of ridiculousness to their nature that not only influences but overshadows whatever horrors they committed.  This exaggerated comical absurdity overwhelms the grotesque nature of their crimes, where the artificiality of style, expressed through extreme violence and Hollywood dreamlike dance sequences with saturated colors, allows them to portray themselves as fools, where they may hide and take cover within the mysterious ambiguities of artistic presentation, where fiction is as distorted as reality.  The heartlessness of a Stalinist regime is prevalent in both Kazakh and Russian films, where the stone cold rigidity of the system remains intact, even under the authority of a different nationality.  Yerzhanov then abandons any concept of realism and prefers to emphasize the darker more satiric elements of a Kafkaesque society, but in doing so the film makes so many tonal shifts that he loses any visionary claim to authenticity and begins referencing the stylizations of others, from early Kaurismäki to Fellini to Tsai Ming-liang to the comic invention of Wes Anderson, where there’s even a tribute to SCARFACE (1983) and Vincent van Gogh.  While the film never seems to work, the fun is watching it stumble all over itself with clever ideas it really doesn’t know what to do with.  Yerzhanov’s picture of an absurdly decaying system of authority is saturated in an unreal universe that becomes almost too magical, where there is no question that it is a compelling style, but it grows much too absurd.  Does the artistic style of the film equate to emotional truths or human drama, or does it provoke ideas or complex thought?  And while it’s visually quite strong and startlingly unique, there’s some question whether it actually offers anything new.    

Richard Garriot: Man on a Mission

RICHARD GARRIOT:  MAN ON A MISSION       B-                   

USA  (83 mi)  2010  d:  Mike Woolf                Official site                  

Man on a Mission - Trailer - YouTube (1:29)

           

During the middle of the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression, a time when people are out of work and losing their homes in record numbers, when there are more homeless children attending schools than any other time in our nation’s history, when businesses are dissolving and schools and states are bankrupt and can’t find the funding for essential programs, this director decides to make a film about a gazillionaire?  Going into the film one has to wonder who’s really interested?  What could that possibly have to do with anyone’s actual life these days?  If the guy wants to spend his fortune jumping off cliffs in Acapulco, or dining in the best establishments in the world, collecting stamps or Maserati’s, build schools, adopt orphans, teach himself Chinese, or learning to hang-glide, it’s his right to do as he pleases.  But why should anybody care?  When it turns out the guy wants to donate $30 million dollars to the Russian space industry in order to become the 6th private citizen allowed to travel into space, one can’t exactly be surprised.  The whole world is on a Reality TV kick where they can make a television show and now a movie on just about anything, and in a sense, that’s exactly what this is, as the film is a kind of infomercial on one man’s mission into outer space, documenting his every move in preparation for the flight as well as the 12 days he spent aboard the International Space Station.  What’s most surprising, however, is the film is a kick, especially the bouncy and always upbeat music from Brian Satterwhite and John Constant (from Candi and the Strangers), which from the opening sounds a bit like Ennio Morricone from the Sergio Leone films, which couldn’t be more curiously atmospheric.  As it turns out, Richard Garriot was a geeky kid who felt every kid’s dream was to be an astronaut, which was accentuated in his own childhood because his own father actually flew as one of the first science officers on two space missions, 60 days on Skylab 3 in 1973 and 10 days aboard Spacelab-1 in 1983, which was the 6th mission of the Space Shuttle Columbia.

Nearsightedness prevented Richard from ever becoming an astronaut, even after successful laser surgery, but he built a fortune designing video games, creating his first interactive game at 17 just for fun, where each successive attempt was more successful, eventually selling over a million copies.  His wealth allowed him to follow in his father’s footsteps by purchasing a seat from Space Adventures, a USA based space tourism company, aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft for $30 million dollars.  This film documents his extensive preparation for an October 2008 mission, which includes a great deal of scientifically induced physical stress in order to simulate anticipated conditions of space travel, where nearly everyone gets space sickness almost immediately upon exiting the earth’s atmosphere.  What separates this film from other space missions is the more personal point of view, as it doesn’t include the data heavy NASA slant, where almost every move is scientifically calculated.  Instead, Richard is still a geeky guy with a pleasant social demeanor, who can’t help expressing his gratitude at every step of the journey, as he knows how unique an opportunity this is, the first American father and son team to ever venture into space.  By the time he passes his final exam, where his every move is evaluated by scores of Russian military advisors, he’s on his way to Baikonur in Kazakhstan, the home of the Russian space center, where he’s greeted by his father, and the family of others headed into space.  The actual liftoff is nothing less than breathtaking, where the beauty and grace belie the physical sickness that must accompany being shot out of a cannon straight up into the atmosphere with sufficient force to break the gravitational field.  Since Richard, looking a bit like Paul Giamotti, is just an ordinary guy, not a trained astronaut, one can only imagine what kind of punishing ordeal this must be. 

Richard’s point of view remains being awestruck at every turn, trying to get the hang of objects floating in thin air, keeping food from flying away, where you don’t move from place to place as much as float, where he gets along well with the other cosmonauts, hooking up to relieve several others at the International Space Station, one of whom has that wild Kaurismäki hair that resembles the Leningrad Cowboys (Home - LENINGRAD COWBOYS * Buena Vodka Social Club), where some will remain for months while Richard will return to earth with the replaced cosmonauts.  What’s most impressive is the view of earth from outer space, where what surprised him the most was the condensed areas of population, as the rest of the earth simply didn’t look like that.  He compared the actual Space Station to the Fritz Lang movie METROPOLIS (1927), where the American section was clean and bright, actually looking sterile and antisceptic, while the Russian sector was darker and more lived in, showing plenty of clutter and general disorganization, which perfectly matches the contrast between Kubrick’s immaculately clean look of 2001:  A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) and Tarkovsky’s SOLARIS (1972) where the rundown space ship is seen in a state of disarray bordering on chaos.  One amusing scene on the Space Station shows 3 weightless men attempting to chase one another in a circular cylinder, much like a hamster running wheel.  Richard takes great care to contact ham radio enthusiasts from outer space, something his father did as well, where there’s a special connection between both of them that’s rather extraordinary, as his father shares his every move and most likely planned or coordinated his activities in space, which includes being there when the aircraft returns to earth.  The idea of encouraging other civilians to purchase a ticket to space is ridiculously absurd, considering the price, yet this is a walking advertisement for exactly that. 

Note – While not in the film, apparently there is an 8-minute science fiction film shot in space by Richard Garriot while aboard the International Space Station, assisted by two fellow Americans and one Russian cosmonaut called Apogee of Fear, written for him by Tracy Hickman, which apparently makes numerous references to classic science-fiction movies including The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Forbidden Planet (1956) and Galaxy Quest (1999).  The movie has finally cleared NASA’s scrutiny for public release, as it was Garriot’s intention to include it in the documentary MAN ON A MISSION, but it was still under administrative review, apparently done without NASA’s knowledge and consent.