"Argo" is truly the escapist feature

 
Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, Spy (2011) was a cold, analytical, slow-paced, spy movie engendered by minute attention to detail and a puzzling structure inflicting a paranoid feeling of double-intentions and distrust of your own and Smiley's fragile conclusions. It was commanded by Swedish director Tomas Alfredson and resulted in a little masterpiece. I could get used to one of those each year. But I didn't mind a bit sitting to watch a whole different approach to a melancholic main character, a troubled international political context and an espionage agency as the otherwise vibrating, exquisitely tense and witty flick that is Argo (2012). The year's ultimate escapist film, though it is much more than watching a bunch of guys trying to escape Iranian crazy people.

The premise is a delicious starting point. The real-life story of how the CIA and the Canadian Government hooked up with Hollywood to produce a fake sci-fi movie in order to remove, as part of the fake crew, six people from the Canadian embassy in Tehran, during the hostage crisis the U.S. suffered in 1979. A somewhat metanarrative political thriller that buckets as much suspense as comedy potential.

And that's how it rolls. Chris Terrio's script is a straightforward incredible machine of tension, suspense and last-minute touchdowns where slight distortions of historical facts only happen on behalf of the drama (as the "adaptation" of President Carter's delay in approving the plane tickets). The way it delivers the tons of thoroughly-research-based but elegantly-baked exposition makes the bed for the oiled interlocking of three very distinct worlds: CIA headquarters, Hollywood studios and Tehran's mutinies. The secret was to ally the bureaucracy and urged political swing of the first, the hilarious comic relieves of the second (among the golden cast, a special bow to Alan Arkin) and the claustrophobic, rioting suspense of the third, with Ben Affleck swifting between them both in front and behind the camera.

Affleck is fine as Tony Mendez, but he exceeds himself once again after The Town (2010) on the director's chair, confirming for the third time and hopefully once and for all that this pretty boy is up to the challenge of being considered one of the most valuable filmmakers of his generation. This is not a guy who read the script and decided to shoot it. This is a man who understood the story and interpreted history, or else he wouldn't have been able to create this tale of asphyxiating timing. Close-ups locking the characters into frightening impatience and uncertainty; the capacity to make you feel the tumults of the revolutionary crowds; strong editing; a cut-in-half 35mm filmstock, increased by 200% to produce an aged graininess - some of the distinctive options the young director took that put you on the edge of your seat.

Some will complain about the overpopulation of characters and the lack of development of most, if not all, of them. "Argo" is a heavy-plot-driven movie, relying more on the smartness of the operations and the dimension of the stakes than on the character's inner lives. Although it cares to show you how broken Mendez's life is and that draws you close to him. It is as subtle and economic in conveying the sentimental states of the couple among the hostages and Lester's among the movie business. They had more stuff on John Chambers that didn't make the final cut, and maybe even on Jack O'Donnell, but this wasn't the time nor the place and I plainly accept it as it is.

I believe this film will live as another testimony to the power of stories and how they basically structure our perception of reality. It's all in there, as when they offer the Iranian militia's some storyboards as souvenirs. The dangerous game of real life and the amusing, often escapist, flare of storytelling is the inevitable way to look at things, at living things mostly, even if you don't take part in the fictions of diplomacy and international politics and just humbly want to tell the weather to your friends. 

MOTELx'12: a close-up on the best moments

Not only but also - will make sure I will be back next year. 

Hope you too.

Suspiria (1977), written by Dario Argento e Dario Nicolodi; directed by Dario Argento. Probably the greatest masterpiece of the Giallo legend and one of the most remarkable horror movies ever made. A unique experience to re-watch it on the big screen.

 

Dario Argento himself, in a masterclass that took place on the last day of the festival, with right to the screening of a few scenes and a sympathetic autograph session in the end. From the inspiration he draws from painting, architecture, opera and music in general, to the embrace his films have always given to technical features (the "reinvention" of the technicolor in Deep Red (1975) or the first Italian 3D movie with Dracula 3D (2012)), to how his films cope with his dreams, how did he learn to make films, and his future projects.

Babycall (2012), written and directed by Pål Sletaune.This is a rare case of appraisal for me. Why, because I hated the ending. I mean, what happened to "write a great third act because that's the only thing the audience will remember"? Happened that such one-sided aphorisms shrivel at the hands of craftsmen like the Norwegian filmmaker. A slow paced, realistic thriller that blends gelid paranoia, silent and undetectable violence with three real-life-like characters that might as well have been extracted from a good family drama. Main plot of delusion and subplots of character exploration are tied seamlessly together, instead of connecting here and there, pretending to puzzle up a major complexity of storytelling. You never get the impression that Anna's relationship with her son is loose from the babycall issue or from her relationship with Helge. It's almost unattainably organic. Details after details (the drawing of the building, the blood, the poster), this is no castle of cards. Noomi Rapace makes you mad along with her because you'll believe anything she says, any look she throws. The resolution casts a whole new light upon the rest of the film and I felt I lost so much of what I had to ground these characters and their actions on. I am still fighting with some logical holes but it is remarkable anyway.

Red State (2012), written and directed by Kevin Smith. Sardonic at times, scary at others, might be an interesting case study on how to carry the audience between two heroes and yet the global situation as a third character, mostly the antagonist, without leaving room for complete identification with anything unless the moral pending issues it lifts. We are with Travis in the setup and the religious lunatics in the first half and we suffer for him and his friends. Then we're with Keenen in the second half and visit both Travis and the progressively dissolved antagonists, but now we're not simply pinched by the one hero's pain but also the other's ethical and political ungrateful decision. The shaky camerawork waves a story between ritualistic torture and paranoic institutional evaluation, two magnifying glasses for the same situation. Still, I would've wanted a more traditional approach to the relationship between Travis and Cheyenne, which provided some of the best conflict of the movie. I don't think you can call it Manichean, because while yes it has a clear target for conviction (extremists even ultra-conservatives and neo-nazis pull away), never trying to hide it ("red" state), the doubts it poses upon the characters are sharp human examination. And yes, the epilogue is a fucking spit on those people's face. Great performances by the whole cast, chiefly Melissa Leo and Michael Parks.

The Artist (2011): a silent film that will echo in time

In an era of profuse technological progress, with remarking parallels in history, the film industry is boxing its frames into our homes with distinctive quality, sharpness and novelty extras (blu-ray), while at the same time the community cibernetically assaults their delivery trucks and unboxes them into our homes for distinctive camaraderie and share. Things are changing in the movie business and have been for a few years now, as home video screening sessions have risen as some of the highest accommodation and entertainment patterns. Things are changing too when the first culmination point hits The Artist's characters and although the world would never go back to silent films, we still have one steady buried foot on the somewhat sandy shore of theatrical exhibition. Let you get the other foot and make that step back this time, drive yourself to a cinema and don't waste this experience on a tiny-inch screen.

Hazanavicious' film, which I so far consider the strongest possible 2012 Oscar contender (three actors, script, directing, cinematography, editing, music), is an homage to the first years of this baby art-form stamped as the seventh. It is genuine and marvelously dignifying, without being flamboyant, and brings a pedagogical expectation of arousing in a mass audience the taste for the history of film. Maybe that's one of the reasons why the director worked a style I'd say takes so much of the classics (beginning credits, the smooth backlighted editing in the conversations, the wonderful montage sequences) as of their followers (the perfect Dutch shots or that extraordinary 180º swivel shot to the little whiskey puddle).

Being technically exquisite (the black and white, how the editing works the reactions or how the camera swifts focus with an impressive smoothness), this is also a very compelling story. As a global object, it is the typical melodrama of the time, told in a classic, simple, clear, three-act way (we have the cute dog character, a family movie element). However, the stones that lift this piece are the details on the set and characters (take the treatment of the Peppy's "birthmark"), the intelligent and delightful although few inter titles (the woman that regrets that the dog doesn't speak), the good rhythm and the great scenes (Peppy and Valentino meet each other's legs; P and V's coat; P and V dancing scene takes; V's dream sequence; the fire; and so many others). I'm missing the amazing cast, which wouldn't have done without the very well written characters. Jean Dujardin, brilliant, interprets a falling silent movie star, who I believe is loosely inspired on the figure of Douglas Fairbanks (the physical similarities; Valentino played Zorro and when Zimmer calls him to give the bad news he seems to be playing a musketeer, being that Fairbanks both starred as Zorro and D'Artagnan). Bérénice Bejo, also extraordinary, plays a rising sound film star and they're backed up by the great John Goodman as a film producer as well as by a very nice cameo by Malcom McDowell.


Last night was a solemn moment of connection with the past, with a Golden Age, as Woody Allen would've noticed, a feeling maybe enhanced by the enormous, carved, red benched room and by the introduction by a colored restored version of George Méliés' A Trip to the Moon. Reminder of other great films, such as Billy Wilder's Sunset Blv. The silence, the mimics, the grimaces and mugging, will echo as the bells of an old church would still peal after one hundread years of muteness. And let us hope one day we won't watch a film about the transition from huge screens to TV screens or from 2D to 3D. But then again, am I sounding as those early withholders ?