David R. Walker

Archive for July, 2024

Fallen Leaves

Director: Aki Kaurismaki

Cast: Alma Poysti, Jussi Vatanen, Janne Hyytiainen

Running Time: 1 hour 21 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Language: Finnish with English subtitles

Festival: Durban International Film Festival

Finnish director Aki Kaurismaki presents his deadpan humour cinematically in the wonderful wacky romantic comedy Fallen Leaves starring Alma Poysti as Ansa Gronholm, a shelf stocker at a local supermarket in Helsinki and welder and Jussi Vatanem as construction worker Holappa who has a periodic drinking problem.

Despite the dreary lives of the two main characters, their courtship and blighted romance takes on an absurdist tinge as Fallen Leaves resembles more a Pedro Almodovar film with its characters dressed in primary colours, its scenes of bizarre Finnish nightlife involving bad Karaoke, where the characters are told to listen and appreciate. It’s as if Almodovar made a film set in Helsinki and not Madrid.

Fallen Leaves is filled with some hilarious scenes especially when Ansa received her electricity bill and cannot afford to pay it as she has been retrenched so she unplugs all the appliances. Then there are the karaoke scenes in which Holappa flirts with Ansa only later to ask her on a date at a dodgy looking art cinema named the Ritz, which culminates in him losing her phone number.

Ansa decides that men are completely unreliable and after she finds another low level job as a construction worker, she adopts a dog to keep her company. Holappa on the other hand jumps from job to job as he frequently takes to vodka to drown his sorrows and his miserable life. His only companionship is his fast talking older friend Hannes Huotari played by Janne Hyytiainen, who hits on younger woman only to be told he is too old for them even though he hasn’t hit 50.

Fallen leaves is a delightful 81 minutes, a brief snapshot into life in contemporary Helsinki in which most of the sparse dialogue is interrupted by radio reports of the ongoing Russian invasion of the Ukraine, which director Aki Kaurismaki snuck in there to provide a subliminal political commentary.

Crisply acted by Alma Poysti and Jussi Vatanem, Fallen Leaves beautifully charts a young couples event ridden courtship to their final walk into the sunset, while subtly highlighting issues of social connection, isolation, worker exploitation and addiction.

Colourful and deadpan with a distinctly Scandinavian sense of humour Fallen Leaves gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is highly recommended as a quirky love story about fate, films and falling in love.

If viewers love an art house romance, then catch Fallen Leaves on a streaming site. This Finnish film was a beautiful way to end of the 45^th Durban International Film Festival.

Memory

Director: Michel Franco

Cast: Jessica Chastain, Peter Sarsgaard, Merritt Weaver, Josh Charles, Jackson Dorfman, Jessica Harper, Brooke Timber

Running time: 1 hour 43 minutes

Film Rating: 6.5 out of 10 

Festival: Durban International Film Festival

Mexican director Michel Franco assembles an American cast in his latest film Memory starring Oscar winner Jessica Chastain (The Eyes of Tammy Faye) and Peter Sarsgaard (The Lost Daughter, Blue Jasmine). The two American stars play dysfunctional and broken characters in this contemporary New York drama.

Jessica Chastain plays Sylvia, a single mother and recovering alcoholic who is grappling with her traumatic past. Sylvia is very strict with her teenage daughter Anna played by Brooke Timber not allowing her to mix with boys or to go to teenage parties hoping to prevent a repetition of her own traumatic youth. Sylvia is supported emotionally by her stable and reliable younger sister Olivia wonderfully played Merritt Weaver (Marriage Story, Birdman and Michael Clayton) who is married with three children. Anna spends most of her time with her cousins while Sylvia is trying to cope with everyday life.

Anna’s life changes forever when a strange man Saul follows her home from a party then falls asleep on her doorstep outside her rundown apartment next to a tyre dealership in New York.

Peter Sarsgaard is brilliant as Saul Shapiro, the strange man who suffers from dementia and is looked after by his younger brother Isaac played by Josh Charles. Sarsgaard won the Best Actor prize at the 2023 Venice Film Festival for playing Saul who is constantly confused yet knows that in Sylvia he finds the love of his life, a woman equally damaged as he is, but who is able to look after him and incorporate him into the family dynamic involving her and her daughter.

At a family gathering, all of Sylvia’s traumatic past gets laid bare in a crucial scene in which she brings Saul to meet her sister Olivia, while the sisters overbearing mother Samantha played by Jessica Harper confronts Sylvia about her life choices.

While the acting of the two main lead stars is impeccable, Memory as a film falters as the storyline lacks pace and at times feels like a tortured unglamorous saga in which New York as a city is not even featured except as a grimy backdrop for miserable characters.

Director Michel Franco aims for an art house film whose storyline doesn’t really go anywhere except to highlight themes like addiction, complex family relationships and mental health.

Memory is worth seeing for Jessica Chastain and Peter Sarsgaard’s performances but unfortunately the storyline fails the characters. Memory gets a film rating of 6.5 out of 10. Catch Memory in cinemas or on an available streaming site.

The Showerhead

Director: Craig Tanner

Running time: 99 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Film Festival: Durban International Film Festival

Please note this film is a Documentary

Thank you to Videovision Entertainment for the invitation to the preview media screening held at their offices in Umhlanga on Wednesday 24^th July 2024.

The role of the court jester in any royal court is to make the king laugh by poking fun at the king and his antics.

In documentary filmmaker Craig Tanner’s film The Showerhead, Zapiro, that famous and incisive political cartoonist whose cartoons on many South African politicians have graced the pages of the Sunday Times, Mail and Guardian and more recently The Daily Maverick, is the court jester and he holds all the power.

The Showerhead is one of the best documentaries on the freedom of expression particularly pertinent to the South African political landscape which has now shifted from the disastrous Zuma years through state capture to Ramaphosa’s second term of office in which the President guides the beast that is the Government of National Unity following the ANC’s loss of their majority in the recent 2024 elections.

Viewing The Showerhead through an amused vantage point of 2024, where the political landscape has transformed considerably, this excellent documentary focuses on the life of Zapiro, known as Jonathan Shapiro whose extraordinary ability to capture in cartoons the South African political zeitgeist of the moment, focussing particularly of his numerous depictions of former President Jacob Zuma from his rise to power to his rape trial and then of course to his numerous corruption charges  which ultimately lead to his downfall.

In a recent online interview with director Craig Tanner and Zapiro, I asked them about their collaboration process, which they replied was intense but rewarding as Tanner expertly weaves the life of Jonathan Shapiro as he emerges as the leading controversial political cartoonist in South Africa as the politics of the country swept from President Thabo Mbeki’s AIDS denialism in the early 2000’s to the rise of President Zuma in 2009.

Zapiro expertly captured all of Zuma’s disgraceful antics from his rape trial to his shady association with the Gupta brothers at the height of State Capture which wrecked the South African economy, to President Zuma suing Zapiro for a particularly blistering cartoon of the rape of Lady Justice.

Ultimately, The Showerhead is about the right to freedom of expression and how powerful politicians should not interfere with that right. It must be expressed by talented cartoonists like Zapiro or brilliant contemporary artists like Brett Murray whose controversial painting of Jacob Zuma known as The Spear which appeared at the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg caused a clash between the artists right to exhibit and the government’s power to censor.

The Showerhead is specifically South African, but it will find an audience internationally as freedom of expression is being undermined in many repressive countries globally.

Craig Tanner’s excellent and humorous document will not only take the viewers on a forgotten political journey of previous SA presidents but focuses on the talented Zapiro who captures every politician’s misstep with spot on humour and ingenuity.

The Showerhead closes the 45^th Durban International Film Festival tonight Saturday 27^th July 2024 and will sure have audiences talking beyond it’s premiere and into its commercial release which is being facilitated by Videovision Entertainment.

In the case between Zapiro and Zuma, the court jester has all the power as he successfully outwits a fallen king.

The Showerhead gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is highly recommended viewing as an extraordinary documentary and a brave account of significance of the freedom of expression, which is enshrined in the South African constitution. Catch The Showerhead on commercial cinema release later this year, its brilliant.  

The Seed of the Sacred Fig

Director: Mohammad Rasoulof

Cast: Mahsa Roshani, Setareh Maleki, Niousha Akhshi, Missagh Zareh, Soheila Golestrani

Running Time: 2 hours and 48 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Film Festival: Durban International Film Festival – DIFF 

Language: Persian with English subtitles

After a tumultuous start to the premiere of Iranian director’s new film The Seed of the Sacred Fig which eventually did premiere in competition at the 2024 Cannes festival, the lucky director Mohammad Rasoulof managed to escape his sentence in Iran of 8 years in prison, a whipping and a fine and move to Germany in May 2024 just in time for his superb yet complex film to premiere at Cannes Film Festival in France.

Fresh from its controversial premiere, The Seed of the Sacred Fig had its African premiere at the 45^th Durban International Film Festival and is a fascinating yet complex, slightly drawn out family drama which moves from the confines of a luxury apartment in central Tehran to an outlying area of Iran: a remote house in the countryside.

Much like director Justine Triet’s Oscar winning courtroom drama Anatomy of a Fall, which rightly won best original screenplay at the 2024 Oscars, The Seed of the Sacred Fig which was also written and directed by Mohammad Rasoulof is a simple story about a family of four: a father, a mother and two daughters.

One day the father who has been promoted as an investigator whose job description is shady at best, comes home one day and brings a gun to the apartment. He shows it to his wife. Then the gun goes missing.

Ironically, before this incident, the father tells his family that their actions should be viewed by the rest of Iranian society as irreproachable. After all he is an investigating judge for the Islamic Revolutionary Court in Tehran.

While the investigator Iman played by Missagh Zareh is often absent, his wife Rezvan played brilliantly by Mahsa Rostami has to contend with their two young daughters Sana and Sadaf as they start rebelling against the current government and as protests flare up in central Tehran many horrific videos are shared on social media and soon the eldest Sadaf assists one of her college friends who gets badly beaten.

The women have no rights in this film and interestingly when Iman’s gun goes missing which could threaten his job in the pernicious administration, his work colleague suggests that he interrogates his wife and two daughters.

From domestic harmony, where the social unrest and strife is always viewed through partly closed windows as the night sky in Tehran is lit up with fires and the sounds of civil unrest, that external social strife soon becomes internalized in this family when Iman takes his wife and daughters to a remote location to question them, the only time that a seemingly normal family event occurs which rapidly deteriorates into a cat and mouse game between captor and hostage.

As Iman’s true occupation as a judge and executioner gets revealed, director Mohammad Rasoulof expertly directs the action by incorporating real footage from social media of recent civil unrest in Tehran, while commenting on the many contradictions in Iranian society as it struggles to maintain traditions and religious custom while digital advancement gradually undermines the social fabric.

Ominous in tone, but hugely fascinating as a piece of cinema which offers an unfiltered glimpse into a reclusive society which is completely at odds with the West, The Seed of the Sacred Fig gets a solid rating of 8 out of 10.

The only criticism is that some of the domestic scenes could have been edited, otherwise this complex family film is recommended viewing as a fine example of International cinema.

A Match

Director: Jayant Diganbar Somalkar

Cast: Nandini Chikte, Sandip Somalkar, Taranath Khiratkar, Sangita Sonekar, Suyog Dhawas

Running time: 1 hour 44 minutes

Film Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Film Festival: Durban International Film Festival – DIFF – https://ccadiff.ukzn.ac.za/

Strip away all the Bollywood dazzle and audiences are left to contemplate director Jayant Diganbar Somalkar authentic Indian directorial debut film A Match focusing on the future of a young Indian woman Savita who lives in the countryside with her father, a cotton farmer, her mother and her misbehaving brother Mangya played by Suyog Dhavas.

Savita is adeptly played by a non-professional actor Nandini Chikte who plays the role of perpetual candidate for an arranged marriage as endless groups of men, male relatives of a potential suitor interview her about her age, her caste, her education and her hobbies. This is all part of the traditional practices of setting up an arranged marriage in rural India.

Savitha has other plans which involves her completing her education and writing her final exam on sociology while flirting with her male lecturer as they read the newspapers.

As the Indian trains run swiftly past rural villages, A Match follows the journey of Savitha and more significantly her hapless father Daulatrao played by Taranath Khiratkar an indebted cotton farmer who is battling to survive financially and cannot wait to marry his daughter off. When one such bid for marriage represents itself as enticing the price paid to the male relatives for the potential suitor proves to be exorbitant and Daulatrao considers drastic action.

Ironically Savitha’s flirty male lecturer who preaches female emancipation in India doesn’t practice it and our heroine in this story feels constantly stifled by the overpowering and persuasive patriarchal system which allows arranged marriages to thrive often without consent from the woman involved.

Unlike the flamboyant but excellent 2001 Mira Nair film Monsoon Wedding, director Jayant Diganbar Somalkar’s film is a grassroots and gritty exploration of arranged marriages in a traditional rural Indian village far away from the glossy, bustling cities of Mumbai and New Delhi. The characters are authentic and identifiable, a family seemingly trapped by their own circumstances with Savitha’s ultimate choice is really to defy these restrictive social conventions.

After a successful premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and now premiering at the Durban International Film Festival (DIFF) catch A Match at the 2024 festival or on a future streaming site.

A fascinating portrayal of arranged marriages and generational conflict, A Match gets a film rating of 7.5 out of 10 and is worth seeing especially as the cast comprises non-actors. Recommended viewing.

Fly Me to the Moon

Director: Greg Berlanti

Cast: Scarlett Johansson, Channing Tatum, Woody Harrelson, Ray Romano, Jim Rash, Greg Kriek, Noah Robbins, Colin Woodell, Nick Dillenburg

Running Time: 2 hours and 12 minutes

Film Rating: 8 out of 10

Love Simon director Greg Berlanti delivers a delightful romantic comedy Fly Me to the Moon about the weeks leading up to NASA successful Apollo 11 mission in July 1969 which successfully culminated with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren landing on the moon.

With a catchy title Fly Me to the Moon, this summer romantic comedy focuses on the love and working relationship between marketing maverick Kelly Jones superbly played with gorgeous panache by the sassy Oscar nominee Scarlett Johansson (Marriage Story, Jo Jo Rabbit) and the dashing pilot Cole Davis played by Channing Tatum (The Lost City, Magic Mike XXL, Foxcatcher)  at Cape Canaveral in Florida, the launch site for Apollo 11 as they both prepare in different ways for the historic mission to the moon.

Kelly is all New York marketing and advertising and is hired by a mysterious government man Moe Berkus, a stand out performance by triple Oscar nominee Woody Harrelson (The People vs Larry Flynt, The Messenger, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) who is supposedly working for President Nixon whose government needs a propaganda coup to galvanize the American public into supporting the mission to the moon, while discreetly distracting them from the horrific war in Vietnam.

Cole Davis is a straight laced pilot whose sole concern is the safety of his astronauts and their successful but tense mission to the moon. Davis is distracted by Kelly’s charm and unconventional approach to public relations.

NASA needs some good PR and Kelly and Berkus devise a secret plan to film a deep fake landing on the moon culminating in a film production lavishly directed by Lance Vespertine played with gay abandon by Jim Rash.

Fly Me to the Moon has some great comic moments including many scenes involving a slinky black cat, but the gem of the story is the onscreen chemistry between Tatum and Johansson bolstered by some stunning visual effects of the actual Apollo 11 taking off to the moon.

As Kelly Jones comes clean about her past to Cole Davis, their partnership both professionally and romantically blossoms in the beautiful setting of Cape Canaveral, Florida as Kelly secret directs Project Artemis at the request of the shady Berkus until a feline unseats the deep fake.

Delightful, superbly written and brilliantly conceived down to the late 1960’s production design, Fly Me to the Moon gets a film rating of 8 out of 10 and is recommended viewing as a thoroughly enjoyable romantic comedy.