Frist movies at the flim fevistal this weekend gone. By a weird quirk of fate they were both highly naturalistic films about the consequences of poverty in the Western world, and both titled Name and Name.
Wendy and Lucy (USA, 2008)
Wendy is a young woman. Lucy is a dog. Wendy has very little money and is trying to get to Alaska. Dog goes missing. It’s sad and carefully observed, with almost no plot – it’s all about character and situation and, just quietly, the wider picture of a society where money no longer flows. There’s an admirable economy of backstory – you hear one phone conversation with Wendy’s family, who aren’t very supportive; she flips through a photo album hurriedly and you glimpse a photo of a baby. The focus stays firmly on the present. It’s a good film.
Samson and Delilah (Australia, 2009)
Samson and Delilah are aborigine kids living in a tiny community some distance from Alice Springs. The movie tracks their courtship, which is the strong thread that makes it bearable as they cope with a society that offers them nothing. The film is almost wordless, occasionally shocking, and impossible to resist. Another good ‘un.
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I didn’t care much for Samson and Delilah – it was well made, certainly, but I didn’t feel it offered me anything.
Partly, perhaps, this was because I started off unsympathetic to Samson, and really nothing he did throughout the film endeared him to me. I don’t necessarily think the film was trying for that, either, instead taking the view that right action should not be a prerequisite for being treated as a human being, but I prefer characters to be more character and less ideological token.
But mostly, I didn’t take any new way of seeing the world from it – whether that’s because of the film or me, I can’t say.
Were you at the screening with the director answering the “inane” questions afterwards (assuming that only happened on the Sunday 1pm screening)? That may have soured me a little as well. 🙂