SFIFF52 #3: Oblivion + Bullet in the Head

by Mark Haslam

The subject of Heddy Honigmann's new documentary, Oblivion (El olvido), which I saw yesterday afternoon, is broad to say the least: maybe we can call it a history of Peru's modern politics, or an account of the many, many follies of the Peruvian government, or, just, Peru. Honigmann tells the country's story through its people, their memories and their frustrations and their dreams. The camera follows them, integrates itself, for a day or two, into their lives. Among the bartenders and waiters, shop-owners and leather workers, shoe-shiners and panhandlers that populate Oblivion, the most enigmatic to me were the street performers: boys and girls that cartwheel and juggle and handstand through crosswalks, in front of idling cars, hoping to get money from the passengers looking out of their windshields. The dynamic of these moments is amazing. Aren't we like the idling onlookers we movie-goers chastise for penny-pinching? And when they do give money, are they just doing it because of the camera, to look good? But then, aren't the people in the cars the same ones telling this story? So much happens in these crosswalks, as in every other moment of the film: each shot a rich history; each memory, each anectdote a loving cry.

I went to Jaime Rosales's Bullet in the Head for two reasons: one, I'd heard that audiences had been walking out of it in droves, that it was 'difficult'; two, I couldn't get in to see Greenaway's Rembrandt's J'accuse. The 'difficulty' of Bullet is that there is no dialogue: the camera takes an embodied position, so that its position, which is always distanced from our main character, can't hear what anybody is saying. The narrative becomes a document of this man's daily life. Here he is with a friend in a cafe, there using a public telephone, here now at a party, going home with a woman, driving a car, etc. Yet these don't seem like 'difficult' concepts to me: space and voyeurism have been brought to higher levels of consciousness in film many times. Then again, I think (and the film gives you plenty of space to think) that 'voyeurism' might not be the right word—and here enters some 'difficulty'. We don't feel as though we're looking in on a life. The shots are too composed, all too orchestrated, don't feel at all like surveillance. Of course, a film like Rear Window is carefully composed—but there voyeurism lays beneath narrative; isn't, as here, the narrative itself. Moreover, a level of terror enters into each shot because of the title, which announces an event we think we know will happen. But do we want to see it? What agency do we have to not see it apart from leaving the theater all together? We're not voyeurs at all. We're not looking in, we're being shown, being made to watch. It terrorizes its audience, and I wasn't sure how I felt about. It seemed a different kind of terrorizing than that of, say, Michael Haneke, who deals with many of the same issues as Rosales. Where Haneke, for me, is a great success, I'm not sure about Bullet in the Head. I need to give it some space.

SFIFF52 #2: Tulpan

by Mark Haslam

Camel hooves, a cloud of dust, and a modest yurt on Kazakhstan's vast, desolate Hunger Steppe. Inside the yurt, Asa is describing the terrible sea creatures he probably didn't see during a spell in the Russian Army. To one side of him is his goofy, fidgety friend, nodding along to every word, laughing with his gold teeth; to the other side and rather stern is his brother-in-law, a sheep herder in whose home Asa's crashing. He is speaking to the parents of a young girl, Tulpan, that he desperately wants to marry. The listeners either aren't impressed, or don't have much time for emotion. Tulpan, whose eye flashes briefly from behind a curtain (this is about as much as we and Asa will see of her), is also unimpressed. To Asa, the rejection means more than lost love: his dream of a yurt and a herd and a family of his own, a dream drawn on the underside of his collar, depends on his having a wife. This is the only way he'll be given a herd. This is the only way to pursue his aspirations.

Tulpan is the document of Asa's pursuit. It seems fitting to call it a document, because director Sergey Dvortsevoy focuses just as readily on the land and space around as on character and drama. (Dvortsevoy has made several documentaries, all of which I now want to see.) It is, after all, the land that houses Asa's dreams and frustrations. Dirt kicked up clouds the camera, and we see nothing beyond, are forced into the foreground and into the present. Or, gazing off into the distance, we see everything, which, here, is nothing. And yet, through Asa's eyes, the vastness, the emptiness of the steppe becomes exceedingly beautiful. I couldn't help but dream, while watching the film and even a little now, about a perfect life on the Hunger Steppe....

So much of what makes this life appealing is the animals. Not only are they charming as hell, snorting and snarling and rambling about, but they introduce a level of spontaneity that allows Dvortsevoy's style to flourish, enhancing the sense of documentation that powers the film. In my books, the long sequence of a ewe giving birth on its own makes Tulpan worth seeing.

I saw it last night at the Kabuki. It plays there again on Thursday. Tomorrow, watch out for Heddy Honigmann's Oblivion, which is playing for the last time. I will be there, and I think I might camp out to see Wild Field and Rembrandt's J'accuse later in the day. It's gonna be a long one!

[A note: In case you miss it at SFIFF52, Tulpan will begin playing in the Bay Area May 8th as you can see here at the Zeitgeist Films website.]