THE KEEPING ROOM - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Precious, Pretentious "Feminist" Western

The Keeping Room (2014)
Dir. Daniel Barber
Scr. Julia Hart
Starring: Brit Marling, Hailee Steinfeld, Manu Otaru,
Sam Worthington, Kyle Soller, Nicholas Pinnock, Ned Dennehy, Amy Nuttall

As Sherman marched through the South, decimating everything in his path, he placed considerable trust in his scouts to sniff out what lay ahead that could be burned and/or pillaged. Given that the menfolk on the Rebel side were off being slaughtered by the Yankees in a bloodthirsty, unevenly matched war, those left behind in the South were women, children, the old and infirm. One can't exactly place much in the way of heroism in Sherman's deeds, nor according to this movie, in those of his scouts who only had one thing on their minds - and we all know what that was.

Julia Hart's screenplay focuses upon those women left behind and her earnest efforts certainly exemplify the old college try, but for all its female bonding, attention to detail and attempts at putting a revisionist feminist spin on things, the whole affair comes up short - partially due to the too-lean script and Daniel Barber's precious direction.

The picture is finally little more than a Straw Dogs wannabe crossed with Kelly Reichardt's astonishing Meek's Cutoff.

Three women, comprised of two Southern belle sisters (TV stalwart Marling and True Grit's Steinfeld) and their female slave (Manu Otaru) live a hard, lonely life without the menfolk around to handle the heavy lifting. In addition to all the womanly household chores, they're out in the fields trying to yield what they can from the earth - Marling even ventures into the woods with her shotgun to try hunting.

Goldurn it, these ladies is never goin' hungry agin.

Just a ways down the road, a pair of Yankee scouts (Sam Worthington, Kyle Soller) are having one grand old time: pillaging, stealing, drinking, cussing, killing and most of all, raping. Yes, these boys just loves to rape. They spend so much time sniffing out prime flesh and then raping and killing it, one wonders when they have any time to do what General Sherman needs them to do.

Soon enough, these randy rapists will be coming to call upon our trio and we spend a good chunk of the movie watching the womenfolk defending their virtue and home. Along the way, the movie provides some passing nods to race relations and sexuality, but the name of the game is rape and revenge. Curiously, there's not much in the way of rape - there's one attempt upon the feisty Steinfeld, followed by plenty of prowling around and eventually the inevitable extraction of vengeance.

One can't quarrel with any of the solid, try-as-they-might performances and the gorgeous visuals, but this is one dull, precious and pretentious movie. It carries itself with an elegiac lope, but there's no real heft to its pseudo-arty rambling. It wants to have its cake and eat it too by taking a good wallow in girlie-girl concerns and some good old fashioned ultra violence, but just in case we'd mistake it for an exploitation item, everything is paced like that snail Col. Kurtz talks about in Apocalypse Now, slooooooowwwwwwllllllyyyy "crawling along the edge of a straight razor".

By the time the relatively modest running time unspools towards its "surprise" (not really) killing and the fake solidarity of womanhood as the ladies destroy everything before the Yankees can destroy it, we've felt like the movie has gone on forever and we're delivered one final sickening blow, the trilling of a mournful song whilst our trio disappear into the vastness that will become a new America. (Hmmm, I think I'm making it sound better than it is.)

The only real revisionism here is taking a potentially drama-charged setting and scenario, then slowing it down to a molasses ooze to fool some people into thinking they're seeing art. If there was a good screenplay here, director Barber hasn't done it any favours by applying a bargain basement Kelly Reichardt Meek's Cutoff contemplative approach to the proceedings. What was great there, is a big snore here. And, by the way, if you are hankering for a great revisionist western with a solid female character and perspective, you'd be better off with that film than The Keeping Room.

It's the real thing. This one's a fake.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** Two Stars

The Keeping Room is in limited release via FilmsWeLike. In Toronto it unspools at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

BORDER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - #TIFF 2013 - The horrors suffered by the innocent are mostly off-screen, but as such, are even more harrowing as we imagine the fate that faces two women fleeing Syria.

TIFF Discovery Series - #TIFF 2013
Programmed By Piers Handling
Border (2013) ***1/2
Dir. Alessio Cremonini
Starring: Dana Keilani, Sara El debuch, Wasim Abo azan

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Of course it's been oft-noted that what we don't see is often more powerful than what we can see, but clearly one cannot exist without the other. What drives a narrative forward is every element used to enhance the journey of the characters and by extension, the audience's participation in said journey. When the issue of self-determination and choice is what drives every element of the story and the narrative itself is set-up in a way where we (both characters and audience) know what conflicts await and furthermore, when the choices, no matter how considered can lead to disaster, we're all the more aware of being in classic storytelling territory. However, what ultimately makes the expected unexpected is the telling of the story from a stylistic standpoint.

Fatima is a new bride. Her husband has gone to war and she lives a quiet life with her sister Aya in the conjugal flat. The sisters are extremely devout and spend a great deal of their time devoted to practising their faith. When news comes that Fatima's husband has left the Syrian Army to join the Free Army of "rebels", they have very little time to react. What they do know is that they will suffer the repercussions of the actions taken by Fatima's husband - actions they are both in concurrence with. Aya is already a survivor of gang rape, torture and incarceration and while she understands what could well await them, she's also wary of the complete stranger sent by Fatima's husband to whisk them out of Syria to safety and freedom in Turkey. Still, there's really no choice for either woman. The actions of a Totalitarian government and, to an extent, by Fatima's husband has petty much removed any vestige of self determination in the matter.

After hurriedly throwing together a few essentials, they are plunged into following a man they do not know through "enemy" territory. The only real choice they make, and it's at great risk to their safety, is that both women refuse to remove their religious headgear which, while on the road, could well give them away. The trip is fraught with several unexpected turns that keep them from moving moving forward as quickly as anyone had hoped. Deception, double-crosses and danger lie around every corner.

When they discover a recently tortured and slaughtered family deep in a Syrian forest, the stark, brutal reality really hits home, but upon finding a lone survivor of the massacre, the women both realize that this might well be the symbolic hope they need to find safety. In so doing, however, they will also have to protect the newly discovered survivor. There are no false notes in Border. The superb performances, the exquisitely structured screenplay (by director Cremonini and Susan Dabbous) and finally, Cremonini's terse helmsmanship of the action creates a tension that, at times, becomes far more unbearable if the story had been presented in some overtly overwrought manner (as might have been the case if directed by an American).

Border is, in its own way, a kind of celebration of self-determination in a world where so much is awry due the war-mongering of men and where every step these women must take might be one step closer to the most unimaginable horrors.

"Border" is part of the TIFF Discovery series at the Toronto International Film Festival 2013. Visit the TIFF website HERE.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Review of Museum of Modern Art Restoration of D.W. Griffith's first sound (and second last) film on Kino-Lorber BLU-RAY

Abraham Lincoln (1930) **** (for D.W. Griffith completists only) *** (for others)
Dir. D.W. Griffith
Starring: Walter Huston, Una Merkel

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Audiences not used to any movies made before last Monday often have blinders on with respect to anything made during the first 80-or-so years of cinema's 125-ish years on this planet. Sadly, one of the great pioneers, D.W. Griffith, frequently evokes catcalls, unintentional laughs and derision for even his best work. Abraham Lincoln, his first sound movie and second last movie period, is not an example of his best work and for many viewers, you can probably replace any or all of the aforementioned negative responses with snores due to the film's stately pace and Griffith's fondness for a gorgeously composed frame and long-ish takes. Running a mere 93 minutes, the Herculean Museum of Modern Art restoration, does occasionally feel twice as long, even, I suspect, to Griffith fans (and apologists of all stripes and, uh, shall we say, colours).

The movie's a bit of a patchwork quilt in that Griffith is clearly struggling with the transition from silent cinema to sound and he's resolutely tied to Victorian-styled storytelling elements which, even in 1930, probably felt dated. That said, Griffith's "dated" quality is pretty much his style, and if you can't embrace that, you probably never will. Besides, the film is still worth seeing - certainly for Griffith aficionados, but also for anyone seriously committed to experiencing a wider range of what the medium has to offer than what comprises the highest contender for last weekend's Friday-to-Sunday grosses.

Unlike Steven Spielberg's bloated overrated Lincoln which focuses almost solely on the fight to end slavery, Griffith's equally bloated, though sadly neglected effort sticks closer to a tried and true biopic structure. Though I'm usually a huge fan of Spielberg's own brand of sentimentality, he mutes it for the apparent benefit of the tale he's chosen to tell. Griffith on the other hand, pulls out all the familiar stops. His movie is replete with the gushing geyser force of old-style Americana and sense of myth. The movie actually begins with Honest Abe's old log cabin and as the film progresses, Griffith indulges in his penchant for quaint romanticism. He also delights in presenting some of Lincoln's bigger political moments in his historical "recreation" mode.

Walter Huston's performance as the Great Man Himself is pretty broad, but it's still a lot of fun seeing a kind of clod-hopping backwoods boy bluster his way into the role of politician and saviour of the little guy. Huston seems to be at his best in the early going, too. Granted, he chews the scenery admirably all the way through, but there's something sweet about the scenes where he's courting Ann Rutledge (played so delightfully by the wonderful Una Merkel) and after her death, Huston genuinely evokes real pain and despair over losing his first true love. Griffith seems less interested in the eventual First Lady and places emphasis on Lincoln's post-Rutledge thoughts of suicide, and mixed feelings to the point where his courtship of Mary Todd (Kay Hammond) even includes the completely fictional sequence where the bearded beanpole has left his bride-to-be abandoned at the altar.

Griffith gives us plenty in the way of debates emphasizing secession and, not so much slavery. I personally don't think this was a bad or even racist choice on Griffith's part. Spielberg, for example, gets to have his cake and eat it too by placing a fair degree of emphasis upon the literal back-room horse-trading which, in addition to the purely economic incentives of ending the war and "reconstructing" the south in the north's own image feel somewhat out of step with the race issue. In Spielberg's film, while muted, it's more of a case of well, yes, we really need to do all this to end slavery - completely downplaying the reality that ending the war was ultimately going to be better for business and would allow for greater expansion into the south, not to mention industrialization and out-and-out theft.

Particularly troubling to modern viewers (and less so, I think in 1930) is how Griffith has one of the few speaking roles of an African American played by a white actor in blackface. In a contemporary context, I think it's less disconcerting than it is just really a strange sight to our eyes and sensibilities. Also, given the historical context and just how "recent" the Civil War was to the timeframe of 1915 to 1930 that both Birth of a Nation and Abraham Lincoln rest within, I've always suspected Griffith was less a racist and more influenced by the prevailing attitude that Southern landowners were indeed exploited during the Reconstruction period. which, in spite of their exploitative use of slaves prior to the war, is far from some sort of tit-for-tat punishment. The shady profiteering off the "losers" of the war simply cannot be ignored.

What's more telling to me in terms of Griffith's moral and political position on slavery rings especially loud and clear within the context of The MOMA Abraham Lincoln restoration, which for example, adds a powerful opening scene aboard a slave ship that includes any number of harrowing and horrifying images of slavery. How a racist could infuse this sequence with such power is, frankly, beyond me.

All in all, Abraham Lincoln is hardly the artistic disaster many have declared - Griffith even uses his unfamiliarity with sound technology to his advantage by staging simple, but often effective single-shot tableaux of dialogue scenes.

As a big, by-the-numbers bio-pic, Abraham Lincoln is, finally a check list of events, but WHAT A CHECKLIST!!! Griffith delivers most of the major historical set-pieces, visits to battlefields (including a terrific battle montage), a genuinely great scene where Lincoln pardons a deserter, John Wilkes Booth (Ian Keith) maniacally plotting to take the president out and, of course the assassination. There is, finally, much in the picture that's spectacular, dazzling and romantic. I frankly like it a whole lot more than Spielberg's take on everyone's favourite stovetop hat-adorned president.

And that, my friends, ain't nothin' to sneeze a wad o' snuff at.

For all lovers of Griffith and anyone serious about the width and breadth of film history, the Kino-Lorber Blu-Ray is an excellent addition to one's film library. The restoration by MOMA, the transfer an the extras make it an absolute must.