Month: July 2010

I was one of the many many people who saw this film at its Monday festival screening. Lots of familiar faces in the audience. Embassy Theatre was heaving. It’s a nice cinema always, but especially when it’s heaving.

So: this is a “based on a true story” of prominent 80s KGB informant Vladimir Vetrov, who passed secrets to the West that enabled the discovery and complete dismantling of substantial USSR infiltration of Western technology programmes. (Flicking through webpages on the subject, somewhere I read “the West was basically in a technological arms race with itself” because as soon as a breakthrough happened, the Russians caught up thanks to their network.)

It was enjoyable, if somewhat undisciplined, and (as is apparent from just a cursory search of Wikipedia) substantially divergent from what really happened. The filmmakers make no apologies for this – they renamed their informant for a reason. But it does make some of the familial relationships that drive the film feel a bit empty, knowing they were contrived for the film rather than summarised for it.

It’s a French film so it features men having affairs, a bearded protagonist, and lots of unscrupulous Americans. (One of the Americans is Willem Defoe, hurray!) There are actors in the roles of Mitterand, Reagan and Gorbachev, who verbalise the impact of the passed information. They were all fine in the roles of such well-known public figures, but I think the film would have been stronger if it found another way to show those aspects of the story. The strongest elements are the personal relationships around the spies – I was actually reminded of Donnie Brasco, a great filmic study of the familial costs of a life of deceit.

It’s a bit too broadly played to be fully satisfying, and knowing how far it was from the truth feels like a let-down to me, even though it made no claims to be anything other than a dramatic story that echoed some of the things that happened. But it was engaging and often genuinely suspenseful (although it pulled the same suspense trick twice for two of its tensest scenes, which felt like scriptwriting laziness to me). Above all, it’s very watchable. I had a good time watching it; I think most everyone would.

Plus, Freddie Mercury in white pants cameo as part of some Queen concert footage. On the giant Embassy screen… well. Those pants were tight.

Those people who advised about going to see films without expectation or even choosing were right – this was not one I’d have chosen, and I think it’s my favourite of the five I’ve seen so far. We inherited tickets from my parents, who found late that they couldn’t go.

There’s not much film to sum up. US documentarian Frederick Wiseman takes his cameras inside the highly-respected Paris Opera Ballet, mostly into rehearsal rooms but also into administration offices, costume-workshops, and the rounds of the maintenance men. As the film goes on we see some of the actual performances, seven ballets in total from the traditional pleasures of the Nutcracker to a bunch of others I’d never seen before. It’s long, two-and-half hours, with extended sequences of nothing but dancers dancing and choreographers feeding back to them.

It was riveting.

I should clarify that I’m not a ballet aficionado in the slightest – I’ve seen, hmm, three ballet performances in my entire life, including last year’s Peter Pan. It’s a medium towards which I’ve never been drawn. That hasn’t stopped a strong thread of awe at what dancers do, and what they represent – the power and potential of movement alone, movement performed and experienced, and the many layers of communication that entails. Perhaps one of the reasons it isn’t my medium is because I’m so caught up with words, whereas dance is almost the opposite of words – one point in the film almost made me laugh as it addressed this so precisely, where a choreographer advised a dancer, as they talked through what the character might be thinking, “don’t put words to the movements or you’ll kill it”. And he was obviously right. Dance is a parallel track and its rules are different but no less potent for that.

This film, I felt, spoke to me very clearly about the creative process and creative expression, particularly shared and collaborative creativity. I was humbled by the sheer amount of work the dancers put into their craft, and pleased by their obvious joy in what they were doing. And as the film approached its end, and we started to see the ballets in performance, I found myself utterly caught up in the full realization of all that masterful development. Once or twice I might have forgotten to breathe.

I don’t want to oversell this film – as much as I loved it, I don’t know that I’d recommend it without caveats. It resonated with me personally, but I don’t know how another random person might take it. I don’t know that I’d watch it again, either. I think, if it sounds interesting to you, you’d probably enjoy it.

But yes, for me, this has been the highlight of my festival selection.

Doco about Daniel Ellsberg, an ex-Marine Pentagon/Rand staffer whose eventual conclusion that Vietnam was unwinnable then turned to horror when he discovered that the U.S. had been the instigator from the beginning. Ellsberg then leaked the history of the origins of the Vietnam War, first to senators and congressmen who did nothing with the information, and then directly to the press. Cue uproar, and Nixon in full-on supervillain fury mode.

Ellsberg was disappointed that the leak didn’t have the impact he’d hoped. Predictably, the story became about him, not about the facts of the origins of Vietnam. The fury he must have felt watching the similarly contrived build-up to war in Iraq can only be guessed at; Ellsberg is depicted protesting against that war too.

I found this fascinating and educational. I only knew the broad strokes of this story, so it was great to have it unpacked and explored. And as much as Ellsberg was unhappy the story became about him, his personal story is indeed fascinating, such as his on-again off-again love affair with a woman tied to the peace movement while he was working in the Pentagon on the war.

I would have appreciated a bit more detail on the secret history Ellsberg was unveiling. The collusion of five U.S. Presidents in lying about Vietnam was sketched very briefly – a few more minutes on the subject seems worthwhile to me, as I expect many in the audience would be just as uncertain about the detail as I am.

Apart from that, a solid doco, well-made, about a subject that rewards the interest. It doesn’t strive to illuminate any higher truth, which is probably to its benefit. To be honest, it felt like reading a really well-written chunk of journalism from the New Yorker or the Atlantic Monthly, and I mostly mean that as a compliment but an also an observation about style. A lot of film docos use the medium to explore things no magazine article could touch, but I don’t think that was much the case here. This was a more traditional journalistic style, rigorous and eye-opening. Recommended.

Movie site

Next flim fevistal offering: Candyman. NZ filmmaker Costa Botes went to California to make this documentary about David Klein, the inventor of the Jelly Belly jellybean. This was a candy product that, not to overstate the case, revolutionised candy production in the U.S. (and, some speculate, helped humanise Ronald Reagan). Klein sold out of Jelly Belly in the 80s, for a pittance relative to the worth of his invention. More importantly, he has been written out of history by the Jelly Belly company, who simply do not acknowledge his existence.

So the film is a character study of an interesting character who had a great idea, followed it through with his heart and soul, then lost everything.

Klein is fascinating. He’s entrepreneurial and good at business operations, with an instinctive eye for marketing and branding – the Mad Men advertisers could learn something from him. But at the same time he’s compeletely not cut out for business-as-she-is-played. That fateful act of selling out was a ridiculous decision from any sensible business perspective. More importantly, Klein’s heart is not in profit at all – he marries his business sensibility to a deep love of helping people, regardless of the cost to himself. Unfailingly, stupidly, generous, he was never going to thrive in the world of real business.

So this is a fascinating doco looking at Klein, at who he is and what makes him tick, as well as the ins and outs of the Jelly Belly story. It will particularly resonate in the U.S. where this candy brand is a genuine cultural icon.

However, I can’t recommend this unreservedly. It felt, to me, like a 45 minute documentary packed into a 75 minute package. There wasn’t enough in it to sustain my enthusiasm.

So: very good, but not great.

(And, special mention to the music by Lower Hutt’s finest, Tom McLeod. Music in a doco is often hard to get right, but this was a delight – it’s no surprise Costa made special mention of it when introducing the film.)