Three Imaginary Girls - SIFF 2008

SIFF 2008 film Sita Sings the Blues playing at Central Cinema

Imaginary Amie — Thu, 14 May 2009 23:35:39 +0000

One of the biggest surprises I saw last year at SIFF was Sita Sings the Blues, an animated film created by Nina Paley.

SIFF 2008 recap

imaginary embracey — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 18:50:41 +0000

merch_2008catalog.gif

There wasn't an Emma's Bliss for me at SIFF 2008. You know, the singular moment that rocks your existence, that you know you'll remember always, that makes all festival-going inconvenience worth it all, that you're always prepped to talk about when friends ask what your favorite was.

I topped out at 50 films this year, and the two that came closest to being "the film" for me were Sita Sings the Blues, with its thrilling originality (and the difficulty it's sure to face in ever seeing the light of distribution), and Savage Grace, which I'm obsessed with for several reasons and which is currently in limited release here in Seattle. (Seriously -- go see it now.)

"Seattle's enthusiastic film audiences continued to affirm SIFF's prominence as a world-class showcase for extraordinary film experiences," said Carl Spence, SIFF Artistic Director and (per ChrisB) lousy John Waters interviewer. "Almost half of this year's feature films were from first or second time directors, and seventy percent entered the Festival without US distribution, maintaining SIFF's reputation as a fiercely independent showcase for audience discovery."

Overall it was a great SIFF. I'll save the gripes that I've already griped -- having to pay for drinks at the opening night party, having to sit through pre-sreening SIFF Cinema ads and City Arts Magazine "short films" ad nauseam -- and brag on our intrepid TIG SIFF staff: Roxie Rider, re-entering the TIG fold and doing a fabulous job on two dispatches, and superstar ChrisB, who managed an incredible amount of work (full-length reviews, blog entries, filmmaker interviews) in addition to a demanding dayjob and his other TIG commitments. He added a robustness to this year's coverage that I never would've thought possible... and I just remembered that still owe him an ass-whoopin' over Savage Grace, which he actually had the nerve to dislike. (Watch your back, Chris.)

Team TIG covered around around 17% of the 250ish feature-length films screened at SIFF 2008. Here are ChrisB and Roxie Rider in their own words on their festival experiences, followed by a complete linked list of all the films we covered.

ChrisB:

"I saw more films than at any previous SIFF (final tally: 19) and it was the first year I attended as a member of the media (and, really, my first time in the world of film criticism). It certainly had its benefits: dozens of party invitations, the chance to interview filmmakers, quite a bit of free booze, etc... But the movies were the centerpiece.

"This year I didn't have much of an agenda and decided that I was going to be as open-minded as possible and take chances on seeing films. I wasn't going to be beholden to a set agenda (not having to purchase advance tickets sure helped) and ended up seeing some really enjoyable films. Previously, I wouldn't have even considered the Korean film about suicide (Fantastic Parasuicides) or the Hungarian movie set in an insane asylum (Opium: Diary of a Madwoman) but I would have never known what a loss not seeing those films was. Not every film was fantastic -- and nor should they have been.

"By the end, it was exhausting -- I worked my full-time job while taking in as many films as I can and still trying to continue my obligations as a rock writer. During the final weekend I was out late every night for screenings and up early the next morning for interviews or for the awards banquet, so the festival ended at the right time. I took the final day off from screenings to write. Instead I slept the entire afternoon."

Roxie Rider:

"I've lived in Seattle for ohmygod 9 years now, and the two SIFF films I managed to see this year were the second and third I've ever seen. Ever! I realize that could be construed as pitiable, but from another point of view - mine -- it was quite the victory. I've been frankly lousy at getting to the movies since I added "mom" to my resume, and it was a real treat to get out and stretch the movie muscles again.

"Anyhoo, I happen to have enjoyed both of the films I saw immensely -- particularly Encounters at the End of the World, which was beautiful in unexpected ways -- but I enjoyed the camaraderie of the festival almost as much. It's always a treat to see a movie in a packed theater, and it's especially fun when the crowd is really into it. I think the SIFF excitement must help oft-stereotyped Nor'westerners shake off some of their famed reserve. People were downright enthusiastic, and I had a couple of quick chats in line about it all. I got a real kick out of that. Next year I'm shooting for double digits, yo."

Covered by Team TIG at SIFF 2008:

Team TIG covered 17% of the feature-length films screened at SIFF '08.

SIFF 2008: An interview with Erica Dunton, director of "The 27 Club"

ChrisB — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 05:21:20 +0000

There is a mythology that is attached to rock stars because there are a large number of them who have died at the age of 27. Kurt Cobain, Brian Jones (rhythm guitarist for the Rolling Stones), bluesman Robert Johnson, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix are the most well-known but “The 27 Club” also includes Chris Bell of Big Star, D. Boon of the Minutemen, Mia Zapata of the Gits and Kristen Pfaff of Hole.

Filmmaker Erica Dunton explores this idea with her very fascinating film The 27 Club, which just played at the Seattle International Film Festival. The story is that there is a band called Finn that is enormously popular and successful and one day Tom, the frontman for the band, dies of a drug overdose(somewhere after his 27th birthday but before his 28th). His best friend and bandmate Elliot is fearful that he may end up with the same fate. He enlists a stranger, a supermarket clerk he barely knows to drive him across the country to New York for his best friend’s funeral.

The clerk, who we only know as 3 Words (because all of the sentences he speaks have only 3 words), could not be more different and they form an unlikely bond and friendship, needing one another to grow and survive.

I spoke with Erica Dunton for a brief interview just before her film played an 11 am screening at SIFF last Saturday morning.

One of the things I really enjoyed with this film was that you had two completely different characters, Elliot and 3 Words, who were from two different worlds. Elliot was a rock star living that life and 3 Words was from a small town, red state, Christian, he could have voted for Bush…

He (3 Words) has a magical element to him. He has spirituality; but what I think I did was tell Elliot’s story in 3 Words’ world. So, if Elliot chose anyone else to be his driver, he might not have survived – but he chose this guy and this guy was picked. Now Elliot finds himself immersed in 3 Words’ world. That is that the world that saved him because it is a good, simple world. I wouldn’t say Republican/Bush but there is a Christian element to it. He’s a good boy, not stupid or naïve, but there’s a sweetness to his soul. If I set it in a different world, one that is gritty or dark, Elliot might not have survived. Or if I set him with any other character as a driver, he would not have come through.
Another thing I really liked about the film was the cinematography, the long songs of the countryside.

We first shot in Wilmington, North Carolina and then flew the cast and crew to LA and shot on the west coast for about 2 weeks: Sunset Blvd, Santa Monica, that whole area. Then we went to Joshua Tree. We used Colorado and Joshua Tree for the desert stuff and then to get all the landscapes on the way back we drove the camera truck back and did a second unit. It was our journey on the trip back home. It was the all the idea of the landscape of America and getting lost in Elliot’s mind. I didn’t want to do the really beautiful locations like Flagstaff, AZ. It wasn’t like the Thelma and Louise landscape. It was more real than that; places like New Mexico, Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas. Not exactly the prettiest landscapes but it really is Middle America.

You also used a distinctive color scheme: lots of browns and pale yellows, not a lot of loud, vibrant colors.

I’m a big color palette person. I worked with the same costume designer and film production designer for the last couple of films. We chose a color palette and said “these are our colors”. For instance, there is no green: no green in the wardrobe, in the locations. The only green you will find in the film is from trees or grass. Our color palette was brown, orange, yellow and blue. You can create a wash if everyone concentrates on that; you get obsessed with these colors and really can control how the film looks without cinematography, just within the production design. Then you shoot and you’ve got this amazing wash. In the first film I shot, RedMeansGo, we shot it in red, yellow and green. The costume lady renamed it “Red Means Brown” because if she couldn’t find anything, she was allowed to use brown. That was it. For example, I didn’t want blue in that film. I think it is something filmmakers without a lot of money can do. It takes a lot of time and preparation and everyone has to be on board but you can do it if you know your color palette. It is like if you go shopping to find a dress. You can look at all the dresses but if you say that you’re going to find a pink dress, you’ll find it a lot quicker. You’ll be looking for a pink dress and can cut out everything that isn’t pink. In that respect, it is very efficient and it gives you a really amazing wash. What it does is make everyone say the cinematography is amazing but it actually has a lot to do with productions and wardrobe.

Elliot was in very strong, black silhouettes. The car we bought was actually white and we painted it black so that you got this black silhouette driving a black car across the country landscape. There is no color with Elliot, apart from the red t-shirt. Red was one of the colors I allowed only for LA: red post-it notes, torn red t-shirt. Anything from LA was allowed red but you have to make sure you are working with people who understand what you are trying to do.

What was it about the idea of the 27 Club (the legend surrounding musicians who died at the age of 27, which includes Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain) that drew you to making this film?

I think it was that I was approaching 30 when I was writing this film. I don’t think it was so much 27, although there is this fantastic myth about all of those people who died at 27. I think it was more about the creative minds who reached that age around 30. It is a turning point and you either make the decision to grow up or not grow up. I think it is a very crucial age. I wanted to capture that, and then I found out more about the 27 Club and the musicians who died at 27. It wasn’t that I professed to know the answer but I wanted to ask the question: why have all these people died at 27? I’m not saying I know – I think it takes more than a number – and I think it is more that age going from young adulthood into, hopefully, more maturity. They all have music in common and all were successful and they all had a creative mind – there is a genius there. Nick Drake, for example, died at 28 and others died at 26, so it is around that age, from 26 to 30. There’s lots of growing up.
In your film, Elliot seems to be fighting that, even though he thinks it could be his fate. There is the scene in the beginning where he stocks up on all the drugs but doesn’t touch them for the trip, which lasts about 5 days.

If I had to sum the film up in one sentence it would be that if you spent 27 years of your life with someone and all of a sudden, they aren’t there anymore and they were the only person you had, what would make you get up in the morning? That is what you struggle with and drugs become a part of that.

That story in the film about the lady who locks herself in a room with all of her favorite foods to diet is true. She looked at all of her favorite foods for several days and didn’t touch them. Or it is like if someone is quitting smoking and they have to have a pack of cigarettes with them wherever they go.

What is interesting is that Tom’s death creates a new life for Elliot. It is a new beginning for him. If Tom hadn’t died, they might have both ended up the same way. It is something interesting to me that death can create life. That chapter is closed and you have to find a new reality.

There is a choir that is featured prominently in the film that is made up of recovering addicts and homeless people. How did you find them?

Oh you should check them out. There’s a link on the film’s website. I had gone to the Vail Film Festival and met a gal named Soozie Eastman and she made a film called By the Wayside. It was a film about recovering addicts in Louisville, Kentucky and this choir was amazing. They sang all of the songs they sing in the film.

When you make a road movie, you have the luxury of taking your characters wherever you go. I was on the road a lot, on the film festival circuit, so wherever I went, Elliot came along with me. I met this choir along the way and felt Elliot had to meet this choir.

It is basically that Elliot meets this choir to find the music again. To meet the choir, Elliot finds the music in the place he would never think to look. He never wants to hear that one thing until he meets them.

So… what happened was that I met Soozie and I had this line in my head about not having a home but you have a choir – they were semi-homeless or people from a halfway house. I told her I was going to write them in and she said to do it. Six months later, I called her and said I wrote them in and had the money and told her she had to help me. So we bused them from Louisville, KY for the film. It was amazing. They spent three days with them. They were a real choir and everything.

It was my favorite moment in the whole film because they were real people and their stories were real. There was a 39 year old chap who had been a prostitute since he was 9. There was another girl, she was the only one who wasn’t an addict, and she had woken up one morning and on her 18th birthday, her mother put all of her stuff downstairs and told her “you’re 18 now and I’m not responsible for you any longer.” It was those stories like that. We are going to take the film to Louisville so they can see it.

And then there is Peter Stampfel. Are you familiar with his story?

Unfortunately, I’m not.

He wrote the song “Fly Like a Bird” from Easy Rider and started the Holy Modal Rounders. He wrote this song, played while Jack Nicholson and Peter Fonda were on the backs of the bikes. It was a big success and he made a lot of money but became an addict for 22 years. He decides to give up and goes to his first [Narcotics Anonymous] meeting and hates it. He comes back and wrote that song “Take Me Away”. “I don’t want to drink, just take me away.” He got completely cleaned up and doesn’t do drugs. That was his first response to the NA meeting. He is such a nice man that I asked him to sing that song for us in the bar.

The other nice musical fact you should mention, if you can, is that James Forgey, who plays Tom has been a musician since he was four and wrote almost all of the music for the film. James and I wrote the “Happy Birthday” song and he is just a phenomenal talent. I hope the film opens some doors for him. As an actor, too, but as a musician he just blew me away: that very lovely voice, it’s very emotional. Music-wise, I hope people like it very much.

I really thought those songs could fit in on the radio. It was not a stretch to hear those songs and think that the band in the film, Finn, could be so influential to a lot of fans and have thousands of people flock to New York for the funeral.

I needed the boys to feel like they were in a band. I didn’t expect them to write the music but I found a rehearsal space and got them some beer and put them in a room and told them to just hang out. Then they came back with this song and I was like “woah.”

27CLUB.jpg

Director Erica Dunton and I discussed her film, music in motion pictures and what may (or may) not be killing rock stars before they see cakes with 28 candles atop them.

SIFF 2008: An Interview with Julia Sweeney of "Letting Go of God"

ChrisB — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 21:37:36 +0000

Letting Go of God is the latest monologue by former Saturday Night Live star Julia Sweeney to be made into a motion picture. It’s a two-hour, one-person film where Sweeney traces her life from her Catholic upbringing to eventually rejecting the idea of God.

The film itself is powerful and funny at the same time. It was a live performance of Sweeney’s monologue that was filmed and turned into this movie. Her timing is impeccable and she is such a likeable personality that she is able to seamlessly hold our rapt attention for the entire length of the film. It was the most stripped-down and most basic film I saw at the Seattle International Film Festival. It was also my favorite.

Just before Letting Go of God made its world premiere at SIFF, Sweeney and I discussed her film, our own atheism, how the brain works and what she has on deck. We did not, however, talk about the gender of any androgynous, recurring "SNL" characters.

Tonight is the first screening of Letting Go of God as a film. Was it by design that you chose to screen it in Seattle, which is known as one of the more secular cities in America?

I was here before with God Said Ha! ten years ago and I’m from Spokane and I love Seattle, so it seemed natural to be here.

I wonder how this film will play in more conservative and religious parts of the country.

It will never play in those places!

I hope that is not true.

I don’t know if this film is going to be distributed or not. It might be in a movie theater for a week in LA so it can qualify for some things but then I feel it may play on cable on Showtime or Cinemax and then I’ll just release it on DVD – or something like that.
When did you start having doubts about the existence of God?

I guess I had doubts my whole life. There were a couple of significant times but it wasn’t until I started reading books about science, like Daniel Dennett’s book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. That was when I put down the book in the middle of reading it and thought “I can’t continue to believe. I’m convinced.” There isn’t any good evidence. Everything I kept holding out in my own mind as a way God could exist while trying to reconcile with how I know the world works was answered by psychology or probabilities or biology. It was all answered. It wasn’t until a couple of years into my quest that I even entertained the possibility. I never thought I’d ever not believe in God. I just thought I’d find some intellectually credible way of believing. But I never did.
From your story, you were curious your whole life and never seemed satisfied with any of the answers you had gotten to your questions trying to understand better.

Yeah, it was like all the things I learned in my Catholic education were the same things that caused me to leave: looking for the truth, caring about scholarship, rigorous intellectual pursuit. Those were very Catholic ideas but those were the things that caused me to reject the whole thing.

Even this morning I was thinking about when it first occurred to me. I thought “wait a minute, isn’t the Bible supposed to be the word of God according to Catholicism?” That’s a Catholic answer. Why is the Bible the Bible? It is amazing that that is a very difficult question to find an answer to. You can go to all of the Catholic websites or the Vatican’s website. The answer turns out to be tradition. It is traditionally our source and through our authority, the Pope, we traditionally accept it. If you applied those methods to finding truth in science, we’d all still be living in caves. “We’ve always lived here and the chief told us to live here.” That’s a crappy answer but it is their answer because there is no answer.

I didn’t know that. I thought I was going to call the Vatican and they were going to go “oh yes” and open some vaults and be like [in a wise old man’s voice] “looking at Jesus and then we have this site and a tomb and then…” I don’t know what I thought – just that when I looked for the evidence that it would be there.

I do understand the idea of faith but I didn’t realize that it would be used to cover up everything. It was like faith was spread so thin in your argument. Like frosting you keep spreading out over bigger portions of the crap you’re trying to cover up.

That reminds me of my own upbringing. My parents were never religious but I think they were both disappointed when I told them separately that I didn’t believe in God.

Daniel Dennett is this philosopher and scientist and he talked about how people don’t really believe anyway. They don’t actually believe they just believe it is good to believe. They want their kids to believe because they think it is good for them. I never had that articulated to me before but it’s true.

Every time I would meet an adult on my journey that would be against where I was in my critical thinking, when I tried to pin them down on why it was so important that I believed and it was never because of good evidence. It was because they thought it would be good for me. They weren’t being cynical or condescending – it was just this general acceptance that believing was better than not.

That was one of the things I really liked about Letting Go of God. You weren’t bitter or cynical – you just told your story and how you arrived at your conclusions. If someone never heard your story and their only exposure to atheism was seeing someone like Christopher Hitchens on television talking about his book God is Not Great they might get the impression that we atheists are a bunch of bitter jerks.

What I’ve been thinking about recently (and I’m writing my own book that I hope to have finished by the end of the year) is that I think the idea of God is a fantastic idea that works for short-term crises and traumas. I just read this book called Kluge that is about how the brain evolved. The neocortex is the last thing that came but all of these other parts of the brain evolved in our ancestral environment. They are more animalistic things and we do an amazing amount of cost/benefit analysis that we aren’t even really aware of. Like, should we fill this glass of water so much or will it make us have to go to the bathroom shortly? These are things we aren’t even aware of but we heavily discount the future because before we didn’t even live that long. Anything that helps you get through the next ten minutes was valued higher than something in your brain that helped you get through the next thirty years. My feeling is that if you are running into a battle or trying to kill a beast, believing that there is a supernatural force that is behind you or with you or loves you and is going to care for you, if you are killed or not, it works. If you can get yourself to believe that, then you are going to be less traumatized if you believe that your life is in danger or that your parents are dying. I just think that that belief in God only works in the short-term. I believe in the long-run it is better to be a better critical thinker than a person willing to throw themselves into battle because they think God is with them.

That’s what I’m thinking about right now, but when I think of Christopher Hitchens’ book, I’m not saying God is great, I don’t think there is a God. I just think that God can be very useful to people in traumatic situations. You can think of any emotion that is a short-term benefit: physical attraction or infatuation, for example. Your judgment can become clouded. You are attracted to this person and you want to have sex with them, but that is very short-term thinking. You may act on your emotions but everyone knows that infatuation is not the same as making a good choice for a partner for your lifetime.

Although they wouldn’t have seen your film yet, how have people that are very religious who have heard your story, either the audio version or seeing you live, responded to it?

They feel sorry for me. They think I had those experiences where I experienced God. To them, that is God – a mechanism for coping. I think of it as psychological now but they still think of it as religious; like I shut out God because the knowledge has not left me with any room for God. They think that is sad. I think it is happiness – to me, that is joyful that I’m the most human I can be. I am a human being with a brain that can think through things. To me that is just joyful but to them, it is just sad.
I agree. It reminded me of when you discussed Pascal’s Wager – this argument that you should believe in God because the benefits and probabilities of God’s existence outweigh disbelief. If you believe in God and go to heaven, it is preferable to not believing in God and going to Hell. To me, that is one of the most cynical things a person can believe.

I know it!

Now that I’m in the skeptic world I hear all these arguments against it. One is by Michael Shermer, who would say “how do you know this God is the right god?” It could be Vishnu and you’re screwed! You just spent your whole life worshipping the wrong god!

I like my take on it, which is: isn’t God supposed to know what you’re thinking anyway? You have this idea that you are hoodwinking God into believing that you believe. It’s like “he didn’t know that I was just doing it to get into Heaven, but I’m here now!” I thought the idea was that He could hear your thoughts.

That reminds me of a cartoon I once saw in The New Yorker where a man and woman are drawn coming from church and the husband says “just between you and me, I hate the sinner as much as I hate the sin.”

That’s really funny!
In your story you also talk about meeting Deepak Chopra when you were both guests on “The View” and you were fawning over him. Then in Letting Go of God you talk about taking a class on quantum mechanics and conclude after one class that “Deepak Chopra is full of shit”. Have you run into him since?

No, I haven’t. I did read that Mike Myers, who was on SNL with me (but I’m not in contact with him. I do think he’s funny and I want to see his new movie), has become friends with him and it inspired his new movie (The Love Guru) and he actually appears in the film.
I don’t know what Deepak could say beyond “I’m not full of shit!”

He’s written some things for Skeptic Magazine, but he really bends science to become “the God of the Gaps”. There are gaps in our understanding of science and he puts God in there. “We don’t know if electrons can be positive and negative at the same time so there is a God!”
What else are you working on these days?

In the fall, Jill Sobule and I are opening a show together where she sings and I tell stories. It’s called “The Jill and Julia Show”. We’re going to open it in LA. She’s working on a new record right now and she’s hoping to release her CD and I’m hoping to release my DVD and we’re hoping to open our show at the same time. We are hoping to get into a 99-seat theater called The Coast Theater. I don’t know if it will all work out at the same time, but that’s our plan.

I’m also working on a pilot to a show. It’s set in Seattle and is about a science journalist who works at NPR. Her life is very similar to mine. She has a daughter and a scientist husband. It is a single-camera comedy. It’ll never get made but they pay me to write the pilot and I get my insurance that way. I still have to write it. I have already gotten the outline approved but now I have to write the script.

juliasweeney08jun.jpg

Sweeney and I discussed her film, our own atheism, how the brain works, and what she has on deck.

SIFF '08: week three (and final weekend!)

imaginary embracey — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 18:35:49 +0000

Friday, June 13 was a lucky SIFF day, with two live-scored archival films providing a nice break from traditional festival venues and fare.

SIFF 2008: Bottle Shock

ChrisB — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 22:44:30 +0000

bottleshock2small.jpg

When Bottle Shock, the closing night film at the 2008 Seattle International Film Festival, was screened for critics, it was obvious that I had seen this film before. So have you.

Filmmaker Randall Miller uses nearly every cliché in film imaginable: a family business with a proud but stubborn father, a slacker son who still has the family’s best interests at heart, a woman who shows up at the beginning to only be one of the protagonist’s love interest and throw in some dime-store philosophy about hard work and put it in a bottle of chardonnay and the result is Bottle Shock.

The film tells the story of the famous 1976 “Judgment of Paris” wine-tasting event where an American wine from California’s Napa Valley “beat” the French wine establishment. I’m sure that the film is highly fictional – everything wraps up way too neatly to be anything other than a Hollywood production. There isn’t a single surprise during the film’s 110 minutes.

Now that we got that out of the way, I actually rather enjoyed the movie. Although the characters are generic boilerplate, they also have a passion, but not pretension, for good wine. It’s something that each and every important character cares about that you want to care about it too. Like with all of Robert Altman’s films, there is a common thread that holds each character together, and here’s it’s their love of wine. Bottle Shock isn’t as ambitious and, unlike Altman, Miller is too afraid to fail that he relies on the aforementioned cliché and doesn’t take any risks.

The long, pan shots of the vineyards are gorgeous even if the remainder of the cinematography is pedestrian. The acting, especially from Alan Rickman, Dennis Farina and Chris Pine, are especially good. Rickman’s character has the most depth, as he’s a British merchant snubbed by the French wine hegemony who still seeks their approval. After travelling to California on a tip to sample American wines, his Steven Spurrier puts on the famous blind taste test and the surprise winner was the 1973 Chateau Montelena chardonnay.

I’ve been reading a book off and on recently about the powerful, American wine critic Robert Parker and whether some wineries sink or swim really can rely on his recommendations. I have no doubt that the drama attached to the 1976 event and how it “saved” American wine is not exaggerated, even if the many details of getting there may have been.

This film is a love letter to wine, and American wine at that. The characters that are ambivalent or dismissive of wine are only present in one scene. It hits the right notes to make us cheer for the American heroes, just like another film Bill Pullman starred in, Independence Day, although Bottle Shock is far less manipulative and much more enjoyable (and certainly not a right-wing wet dream). Still, the antagonists are the mostly-faceless French (we are still living in George Bush’s America whether we like it or not).

Bottle Shock is an enjoyable film to watch. It’s a film you’ll want to discuss afterwards, but not to debate the merits of it, but as an excuse to drink some really good wine.

Bottle Shock isn’t as ambitious and, unlike Altman, Miller is too afraid to fail that he relies on the aforementioned cliché and doesn’t take any risks.

SIFF 2008: Mr. Big: an interview with director Tiffany Burns

ChrisB — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 06:25:33 +0000

In 2004, two teenage boys named Sebastian Burns and Atif Rafay were convicted in the 1994 murder of Rafay’s parents in their Bellevue home. The physical evidence was scant and the strongest piece of evidence against Burns and Rafay was a videotaped confession made by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Burns and Rafay were Canadian citizens). The confession was obtained through a sting operation called “Mr. Big” – it is where undercover officers befriend the suspects and offer to destroy evidence for the targets as long as they offer a mea culpa confession. People targeted have said that when they say that they don’t want to participate, they are coerced through threats of physical violence, up to and including being murdered themselves. In the United States, it would almost certainly be considered a violation against the Fifth Amendment’s protection against self-incrimination. The confession was allowed to be used against Burns and Rafay because they were Canadian citizens and the confession did not violate Canadian law.

Sebastian Burns’ sister Tiffany made an enormously compelling film about this procedure, named Mr. Big. She uses the case of her brother as a starting point for discussion of these undercover tactics and what effect has had on both American and Canadian justice systems. It is a powerful film that serves as a cautionary tale of what can happen to people caught up in operations like this. It also shows the effects first-hand of the pain families of crime suspects go through.

Mr. Big screened at the Seattle International Film Festival in early June and Tiffany Burns was kind enough to find time during her commute from Vancouver to talk with me about her movie.

At the end of our conversation, she asked me to let readers know that if they want to learn more about the film and this case, to check out the film’s website at mrbigthemovie.com or the website set up for Sebastian Burns’ and Atif Rafay’s appeal: rafayburnsappeal.com.

One of the things that really struck me about this film is that it is about questionable police tactics from the Canadian government. I hear a lot of people refer to Canada as a liberal utopia because they are progressive on gay marriage or marijuana and have a lower drinking age, but in this film you demonstrate that the tactics of Mr. Big operations would not be admissible in an American court.

A lot of people express shock when they see it. I’ve shown it at film festivals in Europe, US and Canada. Everyone says the same thing: they’re shocked that the Canadian police are doing this type of sting. Ironically, a lot of Americans tell me that you expect this to happen in the US but not in Canada. It shows you just how powerful the image of the Mounties is. They have such powerful branding. For a while, Disney managed their brand. When people think of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, they think of Dudley Do-Right in a pretty, red jacket riding a horse and keeping a watchful eye on the people. They have no idea that if one wants to, they can dress up like Tony Soprano and intimidate you and make you tell them what they want to hear or they will do something terrible to you, or your mother, or your wife.

It doesn’t seem like they have any accountability. In the film you try to get an interview with a spokesman over the phone to ask general questions about their operation (budget, time, etc…) and he doesn’t want to speak to you and gives general, almost evasive, answers throughout the film.

You hit the nail on the head. There is no accountability from the RCMP. They are not accountable to the Canadian people even though they are funded by Canadian taxpayer dollars. When something happens that needs to be investigated, they do their own internal investigation. There are no public watch-over investigations of their practices. They investigate themselves. I think the Canadian people are becoming very concerned about this and the details of the Mr. Big stings becoming public. The RCMP always asks for, and gets, a gag order for cases involving this sting operation so the press was hamstrung on these cases. They public would just hear that someone confessed to murder and were left thinking that someone just walked into a police station and said “I did it”. They would have no idea about the weeks and months, and even up to a year, that was spent to get these confessions. Or even the money spent on odd jobs by the organization. Until just a few years ago, these cases were never made public until the Supreme Court ruled the media could report on these cases, they had not reached the awareness of the average Canadian citizen.

What kind of reaction do you get when you show the film?

When I showed it in Europe, the audiences couldn’t believe this was allowed to go on – especially in a place like Canada that has a reputation for being fair and just. Every European told me that there was no way that type of sting operation would be allowed in their country. The really disturbing thing with Mr. Big operations is that if you get a confession, it should add up and corroborate the physical evidence from the crime scene or lead you to a murder weapon, or you might learn things only the true murderer would know. However, that is rarely the case. The police are under so much pressure to get confessions and they feel the need to prosecute every one. Unfortunately, in all of the cases in my documentary, the confessions don’t corroborate the evidence found at the crime scene and in many cases contradict it. Police turn a blind eye to that; they have Mr. Big tunnel-vision.

There was an expert witness in the film who walked you through the transcript of the “confession” in your brother’s case and said that the undercover officers stopped the conversation when anything exculpatory was said. It was as though they were seeking a confession and not the truth.

Yeah, the guy you are referring to is named Michael Levine. The thing about him is that he is not against Mr. Big stings. He thinks they are effective. He’s a former drug enforcement agent with undercover ops. If he was allowed to be an expert witness in my brother’s case, he would have shown what a shoddy operation that particular sting was.

There were actually two expert witnesses barred from testifying. One was Michael Levine. The other was Richard Leo, who is a world-renowned expert on false confessions. (King County) Judge (Charles) Mertel had some flimsy reasons for excluding their testimony but those are grounds for appeal.

In a few hours from now you’re going to show this film to audiences at the Seattle International Film Festival. Is this the first time showing it to an audience so close to Bellevue, where the murders took place?

I did show it to law students at the University of Washington but that was a private screening. I haven’t had a public screening before the Seattle Film Festival. I have shown it in BC, though; in Victoria, in Vancouver, in Portland, Chicago, Winnipeg. It was the people’s choice for best film at the Canadian Film Festival in Toronto. It has been shown globally. I do have a distributor for broadcast in Europe.

What about in the US or Canada?

I would love to see it shown in North America. It is very important to show it because the US has a justice system that is against this type of entrapment but they are okay with using evidence as long as you aren’t an American citizen. It’s a dangerous precedent because it’s psychological torture. It is the same thing as saying “we’re American and against torture but this guy is Syrian. Let’s send him back to Syria and have them torture a confession out of him and use that confession in an American court of law.” All Americans should be concerned about this slippery-slope.

I’d love to see it happen (being broadcast in the US and Canada) but if I don’t hear anything for a few months the film will definitely be available for DVD purchase and download. It could be six months. These things always take a really long time. I think we’ll first concentrate on sales. It’s been an interesting selection of countries that has purchased the film so far: Israel, Sweden and Poland. It is intriguing to me to see who is interested in it.

How is the appeal in your brother’s case going?

It is still ongoing. They’re working on their appellate brief right now. Who knows how long that is going to take? This thing has taken so damn long already. I’m pretty disgusted with the legal system right now. They were convicted in 2004 and now it is 2008 and their appeal is barely being filed. It took 18 months for the transcripts to be written. Their appeal lawyers couldn’t do anything for 18 months while they were sitting in jail. It took so long to get their transcripts written.

Are you looking forward to showing your film before a Seattle/Northwest audience?

I always hoped it would screen in Seattle and I was really excited when the Seattle Film Festival accepted the movie. I think Seattle audiences have been subjected to one-sided, vitriolic media reports for more than a decade. I think the average person is smarter than that. I’m happy to bring them the back story. I think they wonder why they only heard one side to this story.

I’m a little nervous, too. I hope (King County deputy prosecutor James) Konat doesn’t show up to heckle me.

Have you tried to interview Konat or Mertel?

No. They got enough TV time. If you want to hear their side, look up every single other story. My film was going to be about the people you don’t get access to. Sometimes I hear critiques that say it is one-sided but it is pretty clear in the film that I was trying to get the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s side of the story but they didn’t want to cooperate. I wasn’t going to let that hold me back from making this film. I didn’t talk to any of the prosecutors.

To reiterate, you can watch “48 Hours” or read any of the coverage of this case and get 90% prosecution sound bites. I think it’s pretty clear that I’m Sebastian Burns’ sister. I think audiences are savvy enough to take the information from the film and weigh it against whatever else they might have heard.

mrbig.jpg

Mr. Big screened at the Seattle International Film Festival in early June and Tiffany Burns was kind enough to find time during her commute from Vancouver to talk with me about her movie.

SIFF Take: Encounters at the End of the World

Roxie Rider — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 22:50:44 +0000

It's been a good while since I've encountered such an unironic tribute to sincerity, philosophy, and adventure.

SIFF 2008: Tulia, Texas

ChrisB — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 22:24:51 +0000

tulia.jpg

{Tulia, Texas plays at the Seattle International Film Festival on Monday, June 9 at 7pm at the Harvard Exit.}

Tulia, Texas is a town outside of Amarillo with about 5,000 people who call it home. It is the county seat of Swisher County, a completely dry county and one in which over 70% of voters voted for George Bush in 2004. It is also the name and subject of an enormously compelling, hour-long documentary by filmmakers Cassandra Hermann and Kelly Whalen.

If the county bans alcohol, just how do you think they feel about cocaine?

The median income in Tulia is slightly above $27,000. The people who live there are overwhelmingly white, go to church, vote Republican and want to be left alone by outsiders. They are the people that are bitter and find comfort in guns, Jesus and antipathy towards people who are different than they are.

In 1999, an undercover police officer allegedly did a sting operation that resulted in 46 people being arrested for trying to sell him cocaine. Thirty-nine were black, amongst a population where blacks made up 8.4% of the town’s population, according to the 2000 census.

Of course, the 46 people arrested were convicted by almost exclusively white juries or pleaded guilty figuring that if they were offered 10 years in a plea bargain or faced 90 if convicted, the math would be in their favor even if justice wasn’t.

Fortunately, a defense attorney named Jeff Blackburn (who should be played by Steve Buscemi in the feature film that is reportedly being filmed about this incident) took on the case and began to notice some discrepancies. The undercover officer named Tom Coleman, a stereotypical redneck if there ever was one, reported that he performed these drug stings on days that did not correspond with his time card or that his descriptions of the alleged perpetrators varied from reality (a skinny woman was pregnant). They were all suspiciously over a gram (making for the maximum punishment by law). Knowing that small, poor communities like Tulia would benefit greatly from grants by anti-drug task forces, and that the racial and political makeup of the area made it likely he could ram through a bunch of convictions, he put together a raid on those 46 people and had them arrested for drug trafficking.

It was immaterial that no drugs were recovered as evidence or that the people arrested did not have the income that would come from selling drugs. They became felons anyway and Coleman became a hero.

The prosecution’s case begins to unravel as Blackburn looks closer at the details and finds an arrest warrant issued to (not by) Coleman for theft. As the case begins to attract more attention, the ACLU of Texas and the NAACP become involved. The case makes national news stories when Blackburn tries the case in the media before going to the courtroom.

What makes this film so important is that there is no narration. Hermann and Whalen let their interview subjects speak for themselves. Coleman, to his credit, grants an interview after he has been exposed as a fraud, criminal and racist. The interviews with townspeople are especially interesting because they are, even in retrospect, defiant and believe they did the right thing.

What the film does especially well is tell this story without getting too heavy-handed and not putting the “War on Drugs” on trial (even if it is a colossal failure by most objective standards). It highlights one example out of way-too-many and the only point the filmmakers really make explicitly is that laws need to be changed that require a higher burden of proof than only the testimony of one undercover officer (and evidence should be needed to corroborate said testimony). The film is never preachy even though it is also one-sided. Yet, it was shot in hindsight and while Hermann and Whalen knew the outcome prior to filming, they didn’t let their agenda get in the way of their story. They documented a travesty of justice and its eventual vindication but they let the participants and the facts speak for themselves.

If the county bans alcohol, just how do you think they feel about cocaine?

SIFF '08: week two

imaginary embracey — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 18:53:06 +0000

I have found a summer obsession and its name is Savage Grace.

SIFF Take: SIFF Interviews John Waters

ChrisB — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 18:14:52 +0000

Although Spence was a lousy interviewer (“Are you sure you don’t remember any salacious stories about Kathleen Turner from Serial Mom?”), Waters is a great person to quote.

SIFF Take: Mr. Big

ChrisB — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 17:34:32 +0000

Mr. Big plays at 7pm tonight (June 3) at the Harvard Exit and Thursday, June 5 at 4:30pm at SIFF Cinema.

SIFF Take: Young People F***ing

ChrisB — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:59:01 +0000

What a subtle title for a film. There is no ambiguity as to what this movie is about.

SIFF 2008: A conversation with the stars of The Wrecking Crew

ChrisB — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:32:02 +0000

One of my favorite films from the Seattle International Film Festival so far has been The Wrecking Crew a documentary about the legendary studio musicians from Los Angeles who recorded thousands and thousands of songs, mostly during the 1960s. The film was directed by Denny Tedesco, whose late father Tommy, who along with drummer Hal Blaine, remain two of the most recorded musicians in history.

I was fortunate enough to sit down for an interview with Denny Tedesco, Carmie Tedesco (Denny’s mother and Tommy’s widow, who is also interviewed in the film) and Hal Blaine just a few hours before their film premiered at SIFF. The Wrecking Crew is still seeking distribution but hopefully it will appear in theaters very soon.

One of the things I really liked about this film was that it was held together by a round table discussion with your father, Hal, Carol (Kaye) and Plas Johnson. Your father died in 1997 and this footage was shot in 1996. Did it take you 12 years to get this film made?

Denny Tedesco: I started in 1995. My father was diagnosed so it was truly a do-or-die situation and I really had to get this working. I put together this idea and took it to Dad and said this is what I want to do and he said great. I wanted to pick four or five key players: Hal obviously, Carol on bass, Plas on saxophone and (drummer) Earl Palmer was also supposed to be there but unfortunately he got sick so he unfortunately wasn’t there. We started recording history. I was influenced by the movie Broadway Danny Rose. Do you remember that movie?

Oh yes. I’m a huge Woody Allen fan.

Denny: There’s a scene where all of the writers are sitting around talking about Broadway Danny Rose in a coffee shop. It’s this conversation about who he was. Everyone would kibbutz and that’s what I wanted that roundtable to be like because they all had this sense of humor and when they’re by themselves, it’s wicked. I wanted be like a voyeur to this conversation, just like in Broadway Danny Rose.

You really let the musicians speak for themselves in this film and tell their own stories.

Denny: I was never going to put myself into this documentary but after a few years I kept interviewing people. We had a 30 minute cut and another filmmaker said we had a History Channel documentary, that’s it. That was a slam on the movie.

Hal Blaine: It was a wake-up call.

Denny: It said you better find something inside and it was a road I didn’t want to go down for awhile. I didn’t want to do this just with my dad or with the Wrecking Crew as an outsider. Anyone can do that. I needed my father as my storyteller. At a certain point I felt that you can’t have him without the Wrecking Crew and you couldn’t have the Wrecking Crew without him. They were an extended family. Hal probably saw more of my father in my first ten years than I did. It can happen in any family. You don’t have to be a musician. If someone goes to work 8 to 10 hours a day, you see your kids for 2 hours a day when you get home, that’s it.

There was a great line in the film from one of the players who said he was a better grandfather than a father.

Denny: That was Plas Johnson. It was a really meaningful quote and you don’t have to be a musician to understand it.

There was another line about how you would never say no to working until you were too busy to say yes.

Denny: That was from Bones Howe. It is a great line. My father always told me that if a job is fun, or can give you connections, money or experience, you should do it.

Hal: You can’t buy those experiences. I never turned down work if I could do it. That was part of the work ethic that I learned from my immigrant parents. We all learned that from our parents. Hard work is essential.

When we came along in Levi’s and t-shirts, they thought we were a bunch of kids. They had no idea we all had degrees. We were very well learned. We could read music.

Two producers that hang over this film are Brian Wilson and Phil Spector, both of whom are like Gods to me. Wilson was interviewed in the film but not Spector. Did you try to interview him?

Denny: Yeah. There was always something going on with Phil. I was getting closer. The week before “the incident” I was talking to Hal’s daughter Michelle somewhere between 2000 and 2003 and she said just give me the 14 minute cut you made and she was going to walk it in to him and make him watch it. It’s unfortunate because he was close to them. But it’s not over. He could still do an interview for the DVD. He might have been a pain in the neck to work with sometimes…

Hal: Oh, he was a pain in the other end.

There’s an interview with Earl Palmer in the film who said that he got along fine with Spector because you and him were the only drummers of that caliber available and his relationship with you was already strained.

Hal: If they couldn’t get Earl, who might have been their favorite, they called me. They knew we could get the job done. I always said R & R didn’t stand for rock and roll but reliability and responsibility. That was why we lasted so long. Well, that and talent.

Denny: Glen Campbell has a line that got cut from the film but he said the Chicago Bulls had a good team built around Michael Jordan. This was all Michael Jordans. Everyone knew what they were doing – they were at the top of their game.

Hal: right time, right place.

Carmie Tedesco: There was so much you couldn’t put in (the movie).

Denny: That’s what makes the DVD so special.

One of the things I really liked about the film was that it found a balance between the wonk-ish details of making music and telling a story that was accessible to a wider audience.

Denny: Thank you. I found audiences appreciate it at different levels. When we screened it at a film festival in Nashville last month, the audience was like 50% musicians and 50% not. I didn’t think about this but there was another audience. My mother became a character in the movie. I was only going to use her as a conduit to tell the story but from a lot of e-mails I got back, audiences appreciated what she said. She was a musician’s wife. “Barbara the Barbarian” notwithstanding [Blaine’s ex-wife who took him to the cleaners when they divorced, as detailed in the film]; audiences appreciated what the families had to go through. It has nothing to do with music. You could be a plumber. There’s a balance. Who’s going to take the kids to school? Who is going to pick them up? We all go through this.

Hal: I used to tell the guys to never say you were going on the road or sick.

Carmie: …or going on vacation. Tommy never said we were going away. We always said he was busy.

Denny: This is how sick that mentality was. When father had a stroke in 1992, I saw him in the hospital. He had a gig the following week. My mother said not to tell anyone. He wasn’t working that much at that point. At the last minute we were still not saying anything. He couldn’t talk or move. It took him a few months to recover.

Hal: When I had my accident, it was a motorcycle accident. It was on a Friday. Friday night I was operated on and had a date Monday morning. I went in with crutches. They took me in a wheelchair. Nobody knew. When it was over with, they brought me out in the wheelchair, holding the crutches. Everybody looked and couldn’t believe we had just done this session. The doctor made a special cast for me. If they knew Hal Blaine had an accident nobody would call me.

Carmie: Even if the accident was over a year ago.

Hal: The other part of that mentality is this: I was talking to Bones (Howe) one day and he said that he hoped I wouldn’t die. And you know what would happen if I died? In this business everyone would say “Oh my God, Hal died. We have a date. What are we going to do without Hal? OK, bring in a new guy. Time is money. Let’s go.”

What kind of reaction have you gotten from the record industry for this film?

Denny: It took me 12 years to make this film but my biggest fear was that there are 120 songs in the film (and needed to get clearance to use all of them). Someone suggested I cut it down to 20 but that wasn’t the point. These guys went from Sinatra to the Chipmunks to the Mamas and Papas. They worked all kinds of sounds, you can’t get it down to 20 songs. There’s a quality there but there’s also quantity and I needed to convey how prolific these guys were.

I heard one of the stupidest ideas: a producer suggested I we use remixes or sound-alike’s. I said “are you kidding me? That’s a Milli Vanilli on top of a Milli Vanilli! You can’t do that!” Finally, the record companies started to appreciate what we were doing. The American Federation of Musicians wanted this story out there and they started to understand that. They could have easily taken me to the cleaners but they haven’t and they won’t. They know it is good for the industry and have been very supportive. That was the big fear for distributors but everyone came through. Plus, no one wanted to be the guy who killed it, either.

What were some of the memorable artists to work with for you, Hal?

Every date was a party. The guys were just happy to be working. They were always smiling but there was nothing like a Dean Martin date. They always got chairs out for the secretaries and their friends and friends and friends and it was just one big party. Dean comes out and does his numbers and he was just the nicest and funniest guy. So when we got a call for a Dean Martin record, we knew it was going to be a great party. Sinatra was the same way. There was a certain electricity with those guys.

Sometimes producers would get wind of a song title and grab 5 guys and make a record with that title. Spector was famous for that. He would be at the radio station at 4am with a session that we recorded for him the previous night.

Carmie: Do you remember when we recorded “Strangers in the Night” then went to Hawaii and heard it on the radio not more than two days after it was recorded?

Hal: Another person we had great fun with was Don Ho. Did you know he was an Air Force pilot in World War II? He said he was going to run for President one time. He said if he became President of the United States he was going to move the White House to Hawaii and rename it the “Ho House”. It was for real. It wasn’t a joke.

{It was at this point that we had to end the interview but given the option, I would have happily talked with them as long as they were willing – even after my tape recorder stopped.}

wreckingcrewlogo.png

The Wrecking Crew is still seeking distribution but hopefully it will appear in theaters very soon.

SIFF Take: A Wink and a Smile

ChrisB — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 05:56:59 +0000

Miss Indigo Blue teaches a Seattle-based, 6-week course of burlesque dancing. A Wink and a Smile is a 90 minute documentary that follows 10 students of this class from last fall. Throughout the course, the pupils develop their own on-stage persona and it culminates with a final recital at the Rendezvous.

The students in the film (and presumably in the other terms where cameras aren't following the class) are said to be from diverse backgrounds but they are all still adult, blue-state women looking to bring out a part of their personalities they've kept hidden.

What makes this film interesting, though, is that Miss Indigo Blue has such a deep knowledge of burlesque that she is able to put the subject in a historical context throughout the film and for each act. Miss Blue and filmmaker Dierdre Timmons deserve bonus points for making every effort to educate their audience.

SIFF '08: week one

imaginary embracey — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 18:55:56 +0000

As The SIFF Turns, part 2. Is anyone else as sick of the constant pre-screening stream of SIFF trailers, City Arts Magazine "shorts" and SIFF Cinema ads as I am?

SIFF Take: Ask Not; Heavy Metal in Baghdad

ChrisB — Tue, 27 May 2008 19:33:58 +0000

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is, to put it bluntly, bullshit.

SIFF Take: Elite Squad

ChrisB — Tue, 27 May 2008 17:27:09 +0000

It's an intense movie that takes its morality serious and it's crime investigation even more so.

SIFF: 4 days down, 21 to go

imaginary embracey — Mon, 26 May 2008 04:37:20 +0000

SIFF 08 opening night coverage, plus reviews of Vexille, Sita Sings the Blues, The Last Mistress, Mermaid, and more!

SIFF 2008: Opium: Diary of a Madwoman

ChrisB — Fri, 23 May 2008 17:17:41 +0000

opium1.jpg

Opium: Diary of a Madwoman is a uniquely unpleasant and difficult film to watch. It is slow-paced and more than a few scenes are difficult to view without looking away.

The film is also a brilliant character study of two individuals in a mutually exploitative relationship. It explores big ideas and is morally ambiguous.

Gizella is a beautiful, young woman with pale skin who was committed to a mental institution while her mother dies of TB. She thinks the devil is trying to slowly possess her body and her defense mechanism is to write obsessively. This irks the staff of the asylum, mostly Catholic nuns, who try taking away her pencils and notebooks (she has already filled dozens and dozens of large notebooks with her scribbling). She’s allegedly a brilliant writer, although every time we see her writing, she looks incoherent and seems to be writing gibberish.

Dr. Brenner takes a job in the asylum as a means of acquiring morphine to satisfy his growing addiction. He takes a liking to Gizella (and vice versa), attracted by her virginal innocence, beauty and writing. The relationship soon, like his morphine addiction becomes too much for him to bear. That is where the movie really gets explosive.

The film is set in World War I era Hungary and the cinematography is shot with a yellow tint to the scenes. It gives it a stale, bleak view that sets the mood of the film. As you can surely imagine, medical care in 1910s Eastern Europe left more than a little do be desired – especially in an insane asylum, where the medical treatment is so experimental it makes A Clockwork Orange look like a routine physical.

Dr. Brenner, played masterfully by Ulrich Thomsen, is a very complex character. Disapproving of the manner in which the asylum’s director treats the inmates, he could be the moral center of the film (and at times is), but he still grapples with his addictions and other assorted demons.

Kirsti Stubo plays Gizella, whose vulnerability forces her to fall for the troubled Brenner. Her future is so helpless that being drawn to Brenner is her only mechanism for coping with the conditions inside the institution. Stubo’s performance is brilliant. She perfectly captures the despair and minimal optimism her character demands in each scene.

One the surface, Opium would seem like a sadistic and pornographic film but it never approves of the pain – the camera only documents it and the nudity and sex scenes are hardly arousing but necessary to building the depth for the characters (particularly Brenner).

The graphic depiction of lobotomies will ensure that this is a movie you won’t soon be forgetting but the depth of the characters and the great acting performances from Thomson and Stubo will keep you thinking about the film and grappling with the issues of lust/love and good/evil that it raises.