jürgen fauth’s muckworld

In Sarreguemines, France, Ludivine Sagnier and Claude Chabrol hold their own among the blockbusters. (Here’s the trailer.)

The films of Thai director Apichatpong Weerasethakul occupy a fertile space between narrative and art object, where simple interactions accumulate and gain weight in a web of meaning that is held together as much by space and mood as it is by character and story. Like Tropical Malady, his new film consists of two parts, both involving a love story between doctors. The press notes explain that what can just barely called the plot is loosely based on the memories of Weerasethakul’s parents.

Both halves of the film are set in hospitals, one in the past and the other in the present, and Syndromes and a Century is probably the strangest hospital drama since Lars von Trier’s The Kingdom: Buddhist monks come to tell their nightmares and finagle pills for their entire temple, dentists sing cowboy songs, and boozing chakra healers hide their liqour in prosthetic legs. One doctor tells a lengthy tale about wild orchids, another supposes that DDT stands for “Destroy Dirty Things.” Presents are exchanged, reincarnation is discussed, hearts are — perhaps — broken.

Among recent films, the surrealist pull of Syndromes and a Century doesn’t resemble anything as much as David Lynch’s Inland Empire, bathed in sunlight and freed from violent threats. Both films have a fragmented, time-bending structure in which themes and motifs return and form strange connections. Both directors are fond of dreamlike sequences in which the camera prowls hallways to a brooding score, and both culminate in bizarre, catchy musical numbers. But here the similarities end. While Lynch dregs shocking epiphanies from the gunk of the subconscious, Weerasethakul’s mysteries lie right on the surface, in the obvious, seemingly trivial moments that are riddle and answer at once. Opens in April.

Sang sattawat. Apichatpong Weerasethakul, 2006. ****

• Rotten Tomatoes
• At the 2006 New York Film Festival
• Official Site
• More Inland Empire, Links
• After the jump, the trailer

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Some movies are harder to judge objectively than others. The title of this behind-the-scenes doc about the German soccer team during the 2006 World Cup translates as “Germany: A Summer’s Fairy Tale.” In case you didn’t follow it, nobody expected much from them, but expat coach Jürgen Klinsmann brought a sunny California attitude that somehow clicked and led the team on an extraordinary series of wins which sent the country into an ekstatischen Freudestaumel. From what I am told, Germany had not seen such wholesome national joy since–ever.

As you might imagine, a movie about a transformative event in the old country can infect an exile like me with a particularly nasty strain of homesickness, a complicated emotion that combines longing with cringing overfamiliarity. As much as I liked listening to the players’ unaffected German, did they really have to play “Marmor Stein und Eisen bricht” on the bus?  And who was that dismal no-flow rapper on the Fanmeile?

Poor musical choices and personal issues with the Vaterland aside, Deutschland: Ein Sommermärchen offers a privileged peek at the world of high-powered sports with their team psychologists, penalty shoot experts, and visits from Frau Bundeskanzler. There are even a couple of nekkid shower scenes, and Klinsmann’s rousing half-time speeches are something to behold. I was riveted by Deutschland: Ein Sommermärchen, but it’s difficult to know if I would have found it half as charming if it had been a movie about the Canadian curling team.

The Sommermärchen ended with the semi-finals against Italy, a match that carries its own set of bad memories for me. I watched some of the games at Zum Schneider, but for the semi-finals, I was at Astoria Beer Garden, and in the general madness after the second goal, my Moleskine disappeared. The team might have lost the Cup that day, but I lost my notebook, and I’m still not over it.

Deutschland: Ein Sommermärchen. Sönke Wortmann, 2006. ****

• The Guardian: German director scores with World Cup documentary
• Official Site
• Here’s the trailer:

[tags]film, deutschland, expats, german, 4 stars, trailer, youtube, fussball, astoria, jurgen, soccer, moleskine, astoria, beer garden, zum schneider, ilja richter, disco, drafi deutscher, sönke wortmann[/tags]