Day 2 of the 20th Jio MAMI Film Festival brings with it more exciting films by renowned directors and a whole lot of waiting in queues to get into screenings. Lucky for me, I managed to get into 4 films that inspired in me excitement levels ranging from calm anticipation to rubbing my hands together with glee. The following are those films.
Wildlife
Paul Dano's directorial debut is a mature, confident and thoughtful portrayal of a family falling apart. Even though it's not exactly the same theme, Wildlife is everything that Boy Erased lacked. Rather than a superficial portrayal of a teenager going through troubled times at the hands of his inconsiderate parents, Dano and his writing (and real life) partner know that emotional wounds go much deeper than the skin.
The authenticity of the world constructed around 2 parents and their child feels incredibly lived in and believable. A father who can hardly bring himself to stay in one place for too long, a mother who finally decides to stop living for the men in her life and start living for herself, and a son who is caught between two warring parents and doesn't know how to pick a side: the characters are fleshed out from the very start but as the story progresses and all three's lives begin to unravel, the film goes up a few notches.
All the performances are wonderful but Carey Mulligan steals the show, especially in her drunken "Cha Cha Cha" scene. Dano has made a first film to be proud of and his is certainly the best film of MAMI by the end of Day 2.
The Coens are masters of genre filmmaking. Probably even more than Spielberg, they have tackled so many different genres and sub-genres throughout their career, there's nothing that is beyond the grasp of their talents. In Ballad of Buster Scruggs, they have made 6 short Westerns, not even loosely connected with one another, each belonging to different pacing and sub-Western categories. If anyone could achieve this feat successfully, it's them. It's not the juggling of dramatically different tones one after the other that holds the film back but surprisingly it's the writing.
The film starts off in quirky fashion, a comedy musical Western story around a chirpy Tim Blake Nelson as the eponymous Buster Scruggs, followed by an irony-filled dramedy Western starring an interestingly cast James Franco. The following 2 stories are much more drama-oriented and slower paced but Coens are in fine form here as well, taking each story to its desired conclusion.
It's the last 2 stories where they lose the plot a bit, particularly the final one starring Brendan Gleeson, that was so extremely out of the blue and completely ill-fitted with everything that's come before that the film ends on a dour note. Nonetheless, Buster Scruggs is fun while it lasts and another diverse, if not particularly noteworthy, addition to their awe-inspiring filmography.
High Life
Visually stunning yet lacking in the narrative department, High Life is Claire Denis's idea of what The Martian would've been like if it had mechanical dildos, semen leaking out of vaginas, dick shots and lactating breasts. And if it was infinitesimally more boring.
Set aboard a space station whose only survivors are a man and his new born daughter, Denis uses a lot of surreal imagery and impressionistic editing to make comparisons between the birth of the Earth and the soon-approaching doom (or so I assume is she was driving at). The film has some interesting dimensions to it and the constant back and forth narrative lends to the sense of how time and space work completely differently in outer space compared to what we know on Earth. Unfortunately, the film never managed to fully engross me into its off-kilter world, and despite what Denis might say if ever asked, logical inconsistencies don't have to be accepted in surrealism.
Overall, a decent watch more for the experience than the enjoyment.
Ash is Purest White
The final film of Day 2, by Chinese director Jia Zhang-ke, also turns out to be the weakest at the fest thus far. Part intimate character portrait, part national critique, Ash is Purest White is like one of those films that end and then you scratch your brain trying to understand what the point of the character portrait was.
A low-key story that spans 17 years in the life of a woman who falls in love with a leader of an organized gang leader, the film starts off well with unexpected humor, clever use of music and an interesting choice of location and period to be set in. Skip to an hour later and the film never progresses beyond this initial setup, failing to follow up on the story strands set up by the beginning. If there was something that Zhang-ke was trying to say through the film about human nature, I did not make the connection. Her use of music remains solid throughout the film, though.
