jürgen fauth’s muckworld

The New York Film Festival is a marathon, not a sprint, and I hit the wall somewhere around week 3 (sorry, Alexander Sokurov and In the City of Sylvia) but recovered for the final stretch. It’s been a heady month: from the dizzying heights of Blade Runner: The Final Cut and Secret Sunshine, the joyful surprise that is The Darjeeling Limited to the horrors of Redacted, dog-on-girl action of Go Go Tales and Bela Tarr’s elegant snoozefest The Man From London. I also got to shake David Cronenberg’s hand, engage in epic debates over I’m Not There, take candids of Nicole Kidman and Sam Elliott, and meet fellow critics and bloggers who were just names and URLs to me before. Some of my suitcases from Berlin are still not unpacked.

Here are a few gut reactions to the last stray movies; we’ll have thorough reviews for all of them on About.com before long.

No Country for Old Men
The Coen’s Cormac McCarthy adaption is certainly accomplished, and the word “masterpiece” has been bandied about. Maybe so. But especially after seeing Joel and Ethan hem, haw, and shrug their way through the post-screening press conference I can’t help but wonder what this tough-minded, sun-beaten blood letting is all about. Nobody I know ever found a suitcase — or satchel — full of money, and no matter how many significant dreams Tommy Lee Jones narrates in high-falutin’ prose, all of this stuff is nothing but macho artifice. It’s like they made a movie about the “Stranger” character played by Sam Elliott in The Big Lebowski but forgot not to take it too seriously. Ethan and Joel Coen, 2007. ***

Actresses
Valeria Bruni Tedeschi (Munich, 5×2) directs and stars in a long hard look at the fears and insecurities of the artist’s life, specifically that of an aging actress, harangued by her mother, warned by her gynocologist, terrorized by her director, but always lonely and unfulfilled. Moving but overlong, Actresses reminded me of the Ellen Fanshaw character played by Martha Burns in the outstanding Canadian TV show Slings & Arrows, which handled the same topic with sharper wit. Actresses also stars Louis Garrel and Mathieu Amalric. Actrices. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, 2007. **

Runnin’ Down a Dream: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
Forget about the Redacted brouhaha: this was the real scandal of NYFF45. Only the hardiest of us turned out for this four-hour-twenty-minute rock’n roll documentary directed by Peter Bogdanovich, which lays out Petty’s career in meticulous album-by-album fashion, spiced up by the occasional drug binge and band member flame-out. Mostly narrated by a warm and winning Petty himself, the film is studded with hit songs and quality collaborators including Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison, Stevie Nicks, Dave Steward, Eddie Vedder, and George Harrison. Even at its exhaustive length, the film doesn’t drag.

Still, something seemed off to me. Neither live nor on MTV, Tom Petty has ever transported me quite like my favorite rock bands do, but as a veteran of the deafening Walter Reade screening of The Kids Are Alright, I couldn’t help but wonder what was wrong. When Bogdanovich took the stage for the Q&A, he immediatley cleared this up: we were shown the movie in mono.

No wonder I felt underwhelmed; now I was livid. Apparently, there’s a “spectacular” 5.1 mix that would have “lifted [us] right of our seats,” but somebody somewhere fucked up good. I’m sorry, Film Society at Lincoln Center, I dearly love what you do, but if you’d told me I was going to waste an entire day on an epic rock’n roll documentary and only see it in mono, I would have caught up on some desperately needed sleep. Peter Bodanovich, 2007. ***

Persepolis
Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical comic books are marvels of deceptively simple storytelling and clear black lines that carry surprising emotional weight. The movie adaptation does a fantastic job of setting the images I loved to linger over into motion. One of the best of the year. Much more very soon. Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi, 2007. ****

Here’s a list of all the films I saw at the festival, ranked by how much I liked them. Movies I most regret missing include Silent Light, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, and the repeat screening of The Darjeeling Limited.

• Blade Runner: The Final Cut. *****
• Secret Sunshine. *****
• Persepolis. ****
• The Darjeeling Limited. ****
• Redacted. ****
• A Girl Cut in Two. ***
• Runnin’ Down a Dream. ***
• I’m Not There. ***
• Flight of the Red Balloon. ***
• Fados. ***
• The Orphanage. ***
• Go Go Tales. ***
• The Man From London. ***
• No Country for Old Men. ***
• Actresses. **
• The Axe in the Attic. **
• Margot at the Wedding. **
• Paranoid Park. **
• Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. **
• Married Life. *

See all posts about the New York Film Festival.

And finally, here’s the video for “Into the Great Wide Open,” starring Johnny Depp and Faye Dunaway — because somehow Bogdanovich couldn’t spare the 6 1/2 minutes of his 253 to show us the entire thing. You’ll find that the YouTube clip actually sounds better than what we saw at the Walter Reade.

We’re about to embark on a longish trip, so expect the emphasis on muckworld to shift to photos and tidbits from the road for a little while. While we’re packing our bags and staying on the line with our cell phone providers to work out the kinks in the international roaming plan, let me catch up with last week’s viewing:

Children of Men
The incredible long takes at the heart of this film look slightly less impressive on the small screen, but there can be no doubt that it’s one hell of a movie. Stories set in alternate realities often rely heavily on Joseph Campbell’s monomyth, probably because the familiar stations of the Hero’s Journey allow us to better absorb the unfamiliar world surrounding it. Children of Men is a particularly potent example, a fully realized dystopia in which hope is hard won indeed. In honor of Theo’s ongoing footwear problems, here’s Cavern, which features one of the truest lines you’ll ever find in a rock song: “Whatever you do / take care of your shoes.” Alfonso Cuaron, 2006. *****

Almost Famous
Cameron Crowe’s sweetly romanticized memories of his early days as rock critic are anything but dystopian, but William Miller’s adventures with Miss Penny Lane and Stillwater are yet another Hero’s Journey, with Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Lester Bangs taking over the Magician/Hermit role that Michael Caine plays in Children of Men. It’s one of those movies I find impossible to turn off, no matter how many times I’ve seen it. Cameron Crowe, 2000. *****

Camp
Poorly paced and predictably told, this movie about teenagers in a performing arts summer camp failed to engage us. Todd Graff, 2003. *

The Gymnast
Feel the fabric! Wolfe Video is releasing this festival favorite about two aging gymnasts who find love while they’re swinging from the rafters. As much as I want to like true independent films like this, you’re bound to be underwhelmed unless you’re particularly fascinated by the world of gay aerialists. Ned Farr, 2006. **

Follow My Voice
Portrait of a group of gay teenagers at the Harvey Milk School in New York who are the beneficiaries of a cover album of Hedwig songs. With Frank Black, the Polyphonic Spree, Ben Folds, Ben Kweller, Yoko Ono, Jonathan Richman and John Cameron Mitchell. Earnest and likable, if overlong. Katherine Linton, 2006. ***

2 Days in Paris
The less said about Julie Delpy’s dreadful directorial debut the better. Julie Delpy, 2007. *

Persepolis
The second book of Marjane Satrapi’s coming-of-age graphic novel memoir doesn’t quite have the impact of the first (which is set in Iran), but anybody who has ever suffered culture shock will find plenty to recognize and love. I’m very much looking forward to the movie. ****

In the Shadow of the Moon
The real wonder here isn’t the Apollo program or the digitally restored footage from the NASA vaults, but the spirited and witty memories of the septuagenarian astronauts telling their unique stories. I’ll have a review by the time this opens on September 7. David Sington, 2006. ***