blog Simbarashe.

My eyes are becoming bloodshot. I’m developing chair fatigue. It’s like sitting in an airplane and flying coach from Los Angeles to Africa; there’s a point, maybe a quarter-way into the flight where you just can’t sit still anymore, where your legs needs circulation and you lower back needs more support. This can also happen while sitting in a car or bus for long distance road trips. For me it’s happening because of the Tribeca Film Festival. I’ve seen a ton of movies these past couple of weeks.

Now that the embargoes are over, I can actually start telling you about some of the films I’ve seen, my recommendations and the ones that have thus far left the biggest lasting impressions, and first up are two World Narrative Competition works that share remarkable similarities despite being so vastly different.

The first film that I screened for this year’s festival was Dog Pound, a story of three juvenile delinquents (unrelated) who travel very different paths to end up in a Montana juvenile detention facility at the same time. Through circumstances of being “fresh fish”, they’re forced to band together against the forces unknown. I use the term band very loosely—the three boys never become friends, per se. It’s more one of those situations where because they knew each other upon arrival before meeting anyone else, there’s a common rapport that’s lightly treaded and never quite called upon until one of the boys finds himself in serious trouble.

We meet Butch, a perpetually incarcerated individual who’s become notorious amongst the correctional ranks for taking out an officer; Davis, a pretty boy who’s presumed to be a lady killer (socially speaking) who got busted with a bag of drugs; and Angel, a younger Hispanic youth arrested for carjacking and assault. Director Kim Chapiron is subtle in making us understand Angel’s solitude; the boy rarely talks and generally does what he’s told. Instead, he focuses heavily on the stories of Butch and Davis. Butch, as we come to learn is on a potential reprieve: if he can go just a little while longer without getting into more trouble, he won’t be transferred to prison upon becoming an adult. The other boys know who he is, but he turns dormant in hopes of becoming, for lack of a better term, a free “man”. Davis, on the other hand, has all sorts of problems. The bigger boys have singled him out as a mark and continually punk him in a series of incidents that grow steadily more alarming.

All three boys have very specific issues that they must confront while in detention and none of all of the seem doomed—at least this is the impression that struck me after Angel and his immediate CO get into a tussle. Butch tries his damndest not to unleash his Sleeping Lion, but it’s proving to be more difficult by the day. Davis, god knows how, finds himself if the most dire of correctional situations. Dog Pound sort of plays like a cross between HBO’s Oz and Kids; it’s the type of film that’s only worth seeing if you have an appetite for hardcore drama in your bones (ie, if you like The Wire, you’re in; if you like The Bachelor, you’re probably out).

But if Dog Pound is a dark film that will resonate more with the male demographic, allow me to serve up an equally troubling When We Leave for the women. Carefully crafted by Austrian-born Feo Aladag, When We Leave follows the plight of Umay (played by the ridiculously beautiful Sibel Kekilli . . . and before I exit out of this parenthesis please allow me just a moment to say that I cannot, cannot overstate enough how beautiful she is. Go ahead and Google her . . . this article isn’t on a timer or anything). Let’s just say that Umay represents what the entire Western world would like for oppressed women, especially in the Islamic world, to get for themselves: emancipation. For all of you feminists out there, Umay is your girl. The film opens up with a boy who pulls a gun on Umay and her son on the street. We then see this boy running, for his life it seems, and then he’s on a bus peering out the rear window in horror. We’re then taken back to the beginning of when it all started. Living in Turkey, Umay is married with a son, and she lives in a Muslim marriage that at first glance seems like the most subtle form of oppression: she doesn’t love her husband but she can’t leave him. But she does(!) and bounces from her stereotypical husband with son in tow and flees Turkey for safer pastures in Germany, where her family resides. Only problem is, her family are staunchly Muslim themselves and well-rooted in their Berlin community where Umay’s father is highly regarded. We also learn that the boy who pulled the gun on Umay is her youngest brother, whom she has an affectionate attachment to.

When they find out that she has no intentions of going home to her family, their happiness soon turns to worry and frustration (what will your husband think of this? What will our friends think of this?). All it takes is for Umay’s husband to declare that she is a whore for the real fallout to begin. But Umay doesn’t care; she’s a woman on a mission, a mission for all womankind(!), and the new life she leads comes head-on with the old life her family are fighting to preserve. And maybe this is where some readers and moviegoers will be upset with me for saying this, but throughout the film there was this ill feeling that I couldn’t shake about Umay’s character and it’s this: when you’re a mother, and you have a son, at what cost is freedom when it is clearly at the detrimental expense of your child’s happiness?

Throughout Umay’s struggle to break free, her son witnesses her being abused by her husband, her father and her brothers, and even her mother must decide whether or not to turn her back on Umay and her son. He plods through the film like a little tragedy, and though none of her friends ever say it, I’m sure some of them wonder. I can’t imagine how complex of a situation something like this must be for someone in her situation, but honestly, there came a point where I wondered if I should be rooting for Umay anymore. In the end, I was convinced that sometimes, freedom is a selfish want and not necessarily a best choice. And Aladag, for her filmmaking genius, may have wanted it this way.

Both Dog Pound and When We Leave do brilliant jobs of questioning one’s moral compass. If you’re looking to be riveted and nothing more, consider Dog Pound your film. If you want a film that you can talk about and argue about over dinner, When We Leave is perfect. So far it’s been the most devastating film that I’ve screened in my three years covering Tribeca films, and if it makes its way to an IFC channel near you, you’ll definitely want to save the date.

Grades:

Dog Pound: B
When We Leave: A

Back in 2008, I had recently moved to New York wanting to fulfill a lifelong dream of becoming a writer. I’d just come from California where I fulfilled a different dream of becoming a musician (or rock star, I’ll leave that up to you to decide) and thought, if I could be writer anywhere, it might as well be here. I got a gig writing columns for Starpulse and after a couple of months, my editor Pete approached me about covering the Tribeca Film Festival. The craziest part? I was a music writer. I’d sort of decided early on that I would write these long-winded musical thesises, partly to exercise my brain of all of this musical data that I had stored up and would be a shame to part the earth without, but also because it’d always been my dream that someday I’d publish a complete anthology on the subject. Writing about music in this way, for me, was so much more liberating than reviewing albums. Critics always work off the same template: start with some piece of irony (read: everything I’ve said up to this point), and then give some opening and lasting impression of the work and throw in some facts about the project itself in the body. The difference between being a movie critic and an album critic have some slight subtle differences, like, with albums a critic will always talk about the artist or band’s previous work as some measuring stick for the newest project, while movie critics—the high brow ones at least—go into their Tarantinolike cinema vaults for brains to compare the latest movie to some other super obscure flick from thirty years ago that nobody under twenty-five has ever heard of before. And somewhere along the line I turned into parts of both but luckily, neither at the same time.
It’s important, I think, to mention this because my first year covering Tribeca felt like a really awesome summer camp that privileged kids get to go to. I got to see a bunch of films that most of you will never, ever see, I got to write about said films with the very conscious understanding that because you may never see those films, I could be bolder, more honest in my writing, and I got to interview some kick-ass filmmakers, producers and actors all at the same time. I came out of my virgin Tribeca experience with a new snobbiness as a writer. The kind of snobbiness that makes a writer fearless. And gets him published.
2010 is a completely different landscape. Everybody knows about the Tribeca Film Festival now. People seem to understand and respect the major difference between it and say, Sundance (the latter includes many independent films that have major Hollywood involvement, like say, Up in the Air; Tribeca, while some major Hollywood are lurking, is straight-up indie through and through, with a great emphasis on foreign films and documentaries). I’ve seen a couple of films during the pre-screening which I’m not allowed to discuss [yet] that will be Oscar contenders in ten months, the sort of films your friends will make you look like an idiot because you haven’t seen and the film has been playing at your little indie house for the past three weeks. For you, this will probably mean September or October of this year. But I feel as though I understand now what it truly means to have an Independent film festival, to get to witness and experience the sort of true filmmaking that can’t be made on the lot of Paramount Studios in Los Angeles. And guess what? The festival starts today.
For the next two weeks, scattered locations throughout Lower Manhattan will be screening hundreds of some of the finest films that Hollywood—at least until now—didn’t get to take part in. And it’s nothing but good times. I could spend a weekend watching Kick Ass and the American version of Death at a Funeral or whatever else you got in mind. Or I can say, hey, Metropia, that sounds like the title of a film I’d go see! And so I probably will. And for the first time ever, so can you! At http://www.tribecafilm.com you can sign up to watch movies on demand. And maybe I’ll just find a whole new way of telling you about the films you should—and really should—see. Maybe this is the year we can all be snobs together.

Tom Cruise must be the only actor on the planet who can get away with playing any character, at any time, with an American accent. He never really disappears in his roles, not like Daniel Day-Lewis or Jamie Foxx with his portrayal of Ray Charles in “Ray”—no matter what he does, you can’t help but looking at the screen and simply thinking to yourself, that’s Tom Cruise. If that’s the worst thing that can be said about a film, it probably stands a fighting chance.

As it turns out, Cruise’s refusal to be anyone other than himself proves to be but a slight annoyance in an otherwise terrific film. Director Bryan Singer (of the classic “The Usual Suspects”) does a phenomenal job of capturing the tension and urgency brought forth by screenwriters Christopher McQuarrie and Gilbert Adler, and the supporting cast are invested enough to give this film serious Oscar consideration.

So some of you may have heard the story: during World War II, Adolf Hitler was in a briefing room with some of his top men when a bomb exploded. The rest of you can figure out the result: he didn’t die. As a matter of fact, Hitler managed to escape with only minor injuries. So how does one go about making a movie about a plot of which the audience already knows will fail? This is where Singer rolls up his sleeves and gets dirty.

“Valkyrie” makes you feel the anxiety of Cruise’s character, Nazi dissenter Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who continues to serve as a German military officer despite losing a hand and an eye in an air strike while on tour in North Africa. Now imagine having the task of rewriting Hitler’s very own emergency contingency plan in order to sabotage it, and then having the task of taking the amended document to Hitler himself to convince him to sign off on it, and then having the task of taking a bomb into his notorious Wolf’s Lair complex to assassinate him not on one, but TWO seperate occasions. The key people in the resistance circle carry grave concerns as the plot unfolds, but von Stauffenberg is determined only at executing the objective, which is vintage Tom Cruise stuff, so it works out. As it seems, one would need superior testicular fortitude to pull this off, and herein lies the irony when things begin to fall apart. Watching the events unfold, and seeing how an operation that relies largely on Hilter’s death for a chance at success can still proceed despite the fact that he’s not dead is nothing short of ridiculous.

After the screening, I went home and decided to do some research on this operation, and what I found was simply fascinating. What really surprised me was how true to the historical timeline the movie was, and how the little details, as mundane as they were (to get from Berlin to the Wolf’s Lair is a three hour plane ride; this is critical information), turned out to be so crucial to the fate of so many people, including Hitler himself. There’s a tiny, indiscriminate action that an officer takes with von Stauffenberg’s briefcase just before the bomb detonates, and it arguably changes the course of the war, and history.

And say what you will about Cruise being Cruise, but the man is at least committed to the emotional center of his character. But the real gem here lies with the supporting cast. The politicians and officers who want Hilter dead are genuinely concerned with the delicacy that things must be handled, and von Stauffenberg’s supporters are devout in their conviction that he should succeed. It is no surprise then that a monument dedicated to him stands at the Benderlock—“the only monument to a German who served in World War II.”

The film’s greatest strength is the way it takes advantage of it’s behind-the-scenes privy into what the Germans at the top of the food chain were dealing with during the war, and since there are no Westerners to here save the day, it easily makes for an intriguing look at one of the truly underrated events in the history of warfare.

My Grade: B+

Running time: 120 minutes

Starring: Tom Cruise, Tom Wilkinson, Kenneth Branagh

Written by: Christopher McQuarrie and Nathan Adler

Directed by: Bryan Singer

Distributed by United Artists

Release date: December 25, 2008

In the days heading up to the premier of Baghead, the Sony Pictures Classics camper about a group of four friends who hole themselves up in a cabin to write a screenplay before their idea of writing a horror movie comes to life, the amount of buzz surrounding it has been growing quite positively, an official selection into the 2008 Sundance Film Festival, as well as critical praise already coming in from Roger Roeper, NPR and Variety. This past week I got the chance to sit down with writers/directors Jay and Mark Duplass, as well two of the stars of the film, Ross Partridge and Greta Gerwig.

What was the inspiration to do this film?

Jay: We wanted to make a movie that was about something that was weirdly scary and funny at the same time. We were sitting around trying to think of an idea of what’s scary and someone came up with the idea of a guy with a bag over his head. That’s like the most lo-fi version. Most scary movies aren’t even scary; they’re movies about people mutilating each other, which is kind of gross and not scary. But even the scary movies are tending to go to more and more extremes of what that thing has to be. We were like, “That doesn’t really scare me because that doesn’t exist.” What scares me is, “There’s a guy outside my window with a bag over his head and I don’t know who the hell he is, or what he’s doing there.” It’s relatively reasonable to think that it could happen.

Mark: And it’s also pretty funny too, when you think about it.

Jay: It was just that dichotomy that you could laugh at that and still be pretty scared at the same thing, was really fascinating to us.

How long have you been making films now?

Mark: We did the whole video camcorder thing when I was six and Jay was ten, and we went to film school and made the obligatory bad film school movies. When then ran an editing business for a while where we actually learned a ton. It’s kind of common knowledge that editing is a good way to get into making movies because you’re at the back end of the process and you’re realizing what everybody else is doing wrong. It was probably when we were in our mid-20s where we really lucked into the documentary style of filmmaking. When we scaled down our crew, and it was just me on the camera and Jay on the microphone, and we worked with a group of actors and just told a story that we know to be true, we started coming up with material that audiences really responded to.

And to that end with Baghead, was it difficult to get from point A to B, from the conception to the actual point of filmmaking?

Jay: For us there’s never a point where we’re sure about anything; it’s always a process of discovery and questioning and rewriting, improvisation, re-shooting a scene, and then editorial where you cut the movie in such a way that you think it’s going to work, and then you re-cut everything four or five times. It’s not until we’re nearly done editing that everything finally starts to come together.

What led you to choosing the four principles in the film?

Jay: I met Greta on the movie Hannah Takes the Stairs. I really liked her and thought she was a natural, and was convinced that she had the same qualities that our character Michelle required. We met Ross at a film festival; we not only thought he was a great guy, but we saw that he shared our sense of ambition; a sort of nervous energy that was the desire to get something done. Steve was the president of our high school student council.

Mark: He’s our muse!

Jay: And then we cased Elise out of a Backstage ad. Most importantly, we really liked these people and wanted to hang out with them, and could stand hanging out them for three weeks in a cabin while we shot the film. That was important!

Ross, I saw your listed of credits on imdb.com, which are pretty lengthy. How was it for you going from all the supporting role work that you’ve done in the past to this role where you are essentially the engine for the four characters?

Mark: He’s the cooker.

Ross: To me, it never felt like a responsibility. It always felt like a collaboration; I didn’t feel like a had to carry the film. I’ve done other films where I’ve played parts where I’ve tried to carry the project, but in this film it was never a problem.

Mark: I think Ross is good at carrying things. He’s got a big dad vibe. We hired him as a producer in our last film because he’s so good at that. He would drive everybody back and forth to and from the set. All of a sudden on day two he’s setting up lights; by day four he’s cooking dinner for the crew.

Would you say you’re like your character Matt?

Ross: There are some elements that I’m like, some for better and some for worse.

Mark: Ross is a little smarter than Matt. He gets shit done. I mean Matt does too, but…

Greta: His shit’s good!

Mark: Right! [laughs]

Jay: Matt’s represents the television version of us. When we get our eyes set on an idea, we become less sensitive to the people around us, and we develop this mad energy and get focused.

Mark: We hope that we’re not destroying the relationships any more when we’re trying to get things done—

Jay: Unless we’re making a film, and then it’s a given.

Greta, your character Michelle surprised me the most. At the beginning of the movie, something told me that your character would probably be the least important, because she was so nice and innocent. But after you all got to the cabin, your character went through the widest range of emotion and dynamics.

Greta: When I got the script, Mark and Jay gave me a lot of freedom. I bought her wardrobe, decided how she wore her hair, and I wore this pink nail polish throughout the film. I was able to bring a lot of physical elements to the girl, and then I just got completely into who she was, and was psyched to get to know who she was. During filming, Mark and Jay weren’t telling me that I had to be this way or that way during certain scenes, and sometimes when we’d improve it out, it kept pushing the boundaries of who she was as a person. I don’t think a person can be one thing all the time, or everything all at once.

Jay: Michelle was the youngest in the group. She was new to Los Angeles and wasn’t quite sure who she was yet.

Mark: She was trying out new things all of the time.

What was the best part of filming?

Jay: Wrapping feels amazing! And that’s spelled W-R-A-P-P-I-N-G.

Mark: Not r-a-p-p-i-n’.

Jay: Honestly, it was a hard movie for us to make. We only had three weeks, and we didn’t really have a payoff. We did several versions of different scenes. But in retrospect I think, the best part was that everybody put in everything they had, and everybody was absolutely necessary. It was a very efficient set. There weren’t a lot of assistants running around wondering “Am I important?” It was nice to have a small crew where everybody on hand had something crucial to do, and not in a superficial, “I’m saying this for the press,” kind of way.

Greta: My favorite part, quite honestly, were the meals. They were home cooked meals. We would cook at night, before the day started, and have dinner and then get up and go, “Okay, let’s make a movie.” That was really nice.

What was the most challenging aspect of filming?

Jay: Managing the tone of the film. We’re making a relationship, comedy, and horror movie all at once. Our brains were hurting at the end of every night. But looking back, I could see how we could have very easily made a bad film under that scenario. I’m really proud of the fact that we did make it happen. At one point, Mark and I realized that this was going to take every inch of ourselves just to make it happen; not make it great, but just to make it work, so that it doesn’t feel like two different movies.

Mark: Because we had a very small crew, we had to basically do a lot of the tech stuff ourselves. We had to clear out paths and light the woods so that people could run through them, and I could run with them with the camera while trying to keep it in focus.

Greta: There was one day when the sun definitely coming out, and Jay kept wanting to do one more take, and then one more take, and Mark was like, “Jay, it’s over. It’s over!” right when sun had started to rise.

Mark: Jay, it’s over… [laughs]

In the opening scene, when the director does the Q&A after his screening audience has this reaction to him, has that ever happened in real life?

Mark: It’s a slightly heightened version of ourselves and what we end up doing at Q&As. What we do is a more subtle way, but you’re asking us if we were brilliant, and we’re saying, “Yes, we were brilliant.” And that’s what happens at Q&As: The audience wants to show you how brilliant you are, and you want to show the audience how brilliant they are for recognizing your brilliance. It just gets really funny when you take a step back and see what’s really going on.

Jay: You gotta make fun of it a little bit.

How does it feel when you stop and realize that in your career you’ve had multiple entries at Sundance?

Jay: To a lot of people, that’s a big deal. …..?

Mark: I have to be honest and say that there was a point in our lives when we couldn’t even think about the possibility of having a feature at Sundance, and then that was literally the apex of everything we could have ever wanted. But we’re desperate guys who want more. And we work and work, and then sometimes, I might look at an old journal that I might have written in as a kid or see old pictures of us, and I’ll think, “Wow, we’ve had four movies at Sundance, and we have deals with major studios who want to do projects with us.” The surreal part, and I know this sounds cliché, but it’s really about us just making stuff. Getting paid is awesome, but really, we just want to make stuff.

Why did you turn down major studio money to make this particular film?

Jay: We had the option of making this on the cheap, because we had made some money making movies, so we were able to finance this ourselves. We had gotten some very good advice that if it was appropriate to do the project with a low budget, which this totally was, then we should do it. We knew that if we made this in the traditional Hollywood style, there would have been some creative compromises to be made to do this through the studio. I think they would’ve wanted us to do a straight-ahead horror film.

What’s next?

Greta: I’m going to start working on a project that’s tentatively called Art House, about an art commune being bought up by a golf course. Iggy Pop is going to be in it, and I’m playing his daughter. [pause]I look like I be part of Iggy’s spawn! I think?

Ross: You know, just fielding offers to do studio movies, deciding what I want to do. I want to get out of the independent world since there’s no money in it. I’ll make a big Hollywood movie and make like twelve million dollars after Baghead does so well, and then we’re gonna go back and make like ten more independents…

Mark: He has to keep up the indie cred… [laughs]

Do you plan on staying the independent course?

Jay: I think it’ll be a combination probably. We can’t say for sure, but we’ll always love making these movies like this. They can get done quicker, so there’s an easier chance to get movies like this made. With that being said, we sold a bunch of scripts to studios and they want us to direct those movies. When those iron out, which takes a lot more time, we’ll do those.

Mark: If we could make movies that we love inside the studio system then we would absolutely do it.