NOWHERE TO HIDE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Devastating Doc Reveals the Sorrows of Iraq

America is good at destroying things.
Can Iraq survive in spite of America?

Nowhere to Hide (2016)
Dir. Zaradasht Ahmed

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It's always worth thanking the United States of America for destroying Iraq thanks to their spurious war on terror that led to massive destruction, the mass murder of innocent people, the grotesque military occupation in the aftermath of America's foul actions, the eventual military pullout that led to far more instability in the country than ever existed before and, in general, the country's need to destroy and dominate under the guise of "freedom". Watching Zaradasht Ahmed's powerful, harrowing documentary Nowhere to Hide instills as much hatred towards the American Military Industrial Complex as it infuses one with love for the Iraqi people.

When filmmaker Ahmed gave a camera to Nori Sharif, a nurse in the Jalawla emergency hospital, the idea was simple: to help document life in Central Iraq after the withdrawal of American forces in 2011. What followed was simply, utterly extraordinary - five years of footage during one of the most devastating upheavals in the history of the country.

Nori not only proves to be a prodigious chronicler of this period, but he's clearly an intelligent, compassionate and well-humoured individual. God only knows how much footage director Ahmed had to work with since Nori's personality clearly reveals someone who would have had absolutely no problem getting people to open up.

When we first meet Nori on the job in the hospital, he asks a wounded patient, "Have you ever been injured before?" The patient replies, "No, never."

Nori's retort?

"Then you're not from Iraq."

Yes, it's funny as hell, but there's also a sad truth behind it.

Nori explains: "When I started my job it was about stitching and putting casts on simple fractures. But ever since the American invasion in 2003 and the later years, the nature of the injuries have changed. It has become a new reality for us to work in."

The reality of devastation.

Thanks, America!!!

Early on in the film, Nori admits: "My life is good. I have everything I need, but so many people I meet at the hospital had their lives destroyed by the war." Though some of the most fascinating footage in the film is of Nori himself, he maintains that showing the lives of others is, at least for him, far "more interesting than my life."

Since America's invasion, the area Nori lives in became "one of the most dangerous places in Iraq." It is in the very centre of the country and locals are heard to call it "the triangle of death". It is in the very centre of Iraq.

"The only thing you hear about the area is that the people who live here either killers are terrorists," says Nori, "but most of the people I know have had their lives destroyed by the war. Many people have died here along with their stories and neither the Media nor the authorities are interested in those people."

Well, not Nori.

He collects stories from a myriad of those who suffered because of America: a woman whose child died because she could not afford the medicine, a young woman who became so crippled by a bombing she can't leave her room ("the bed has become her only friend"), a family of seven widows and an army of orphans due to a suicide bomber who blew himself up during a funeral, a young man who's been paralyzed from the neck down for seven years - the parade of suffering seems to have no end.

"I try to document their reality as a witness," says Nori. "I wish to preserve their memory. For these people, the war entered their lives like a tornado, smashing all their dreams."

What's important to note is that even the mess of warring factions in Iraq is the fault of America. One man discusses how during the reign of Saddam Hussein, he was very poor, but in spite of this, he was able to build himself up step-by-step. Eventually, he was sold out by a friend to Al Qaida. For his troubles, he's now almost destitute with one leg missing and the other disabled.

This litany of suffering continues - year after year, but then things change. The internal struggles in the country become even more intense and the focus includes the life of Nori and his family as they have to cope with the madness that becomes Iraq.

And as the title suggest, there is truly no place to hide.

As Nori's city becomes too dangerous to live in, we follow him and his family as they escape, moving from one place to another until finally they are forced to settle in a refugee camp.

Nowhere to Hide might be one of the most important documents about the devastation of war you will ever see. For all the death, pain, sorrow and destruction, it is also a film infused with love and hope.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4-Stars

Nowhere to Hide is playing theatrically:

Carlton Cinemas and Kingsway Theatre – Toronto
Village East Cinema - New York City
Laemmle Music Hall - Los Angeles
The Roxie - San Francisco
Vancity Theatre – Vancouver

LAST MEN IN ALEPPO - Review By Greg Klymkiw - 2017 HotDocs Hot Pick - Do NOT Miss This!

NOTE: If your government is not allowing Syrian refugees into your country, DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!!! If you believe Syrian refugees should NOT be allowed into your country, you are an ASSHOLE. If after seeing this film, Last Men in Aleppo, you feel the same way about Syrian refugees or, frankly, any refugees from war-torn and/or repressive regimes, you are clearly BRAIN DEAD.

The child is awake. The child is alive.
You can thank Allah, the God of Abraham or Jesus Christ,
but mostly, you should be thanking
The "White Helmets" of Syria.

Last Men in Aleppo (2017)
Dir. Feras Fayyad

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The bodies of battered, crushed babies removed from under rubble. The love in a father's eyes as he Skypes with his little girl before he dies. Children happily playing outside during a cease-fire until the threat of bombings, in spite of the cease-fire, paralyzes them with fear. A sweet, young man staring blankly after retrieving corpses and body parts from a missile strike site. The planes and helicopters of a Syrian dictator and his dirty Russian allies whooshing over a decimated city as they look for large groups of innocent, unarmed civilians to target.

These and so many other images are branded into my memory banks. I cannot shake them. I'm still shuddering and feeling tears welling up in my eyes. After all the movies I've seen in my life, well over 40,000 of them, I suspect that Last Men in Aleppo will hold a place in my very soul. (And if truth be told, even trying to write about this film inspires the emotions that the film instilled within me.)

This is a documentary portrait of Syria's "White Helmets" - firemen, paramedics and other rescue workers who volunteer (with their very lives in many cases), to search through the carnage of fresh bomb strikes in the city of Aleppo to save those still breathing and to retrieve the remains of those who are dead. Shot in 2015 and adhering with considerable rigour to the style of Cinéma Direct, it follows two primary subjects - Khaled, a burly, gregarious family man (obsessed with raising goldfish in an outdoor fountain amidst the carnage around him) and Mahmoud, a young man who seems utterly fearless yet is, in fact, continually terrified that his baby brother (who works with him) will be killed in the line of (volunteer) duty.

From beginning to end, the cameras are up close and personal with both men - through both their harrowing, dangerous, often deadly rescue missions and their private lives. These are people who love their city and country (in spite of the fuckwads running/ruining it) and it's made clear time and time again, they will stay or die. Most importantly they are wholly devoted to preserving human life after repeated attacks upon the city.

The movie is so plunged into the thick of the madness and chaos of this civil war (masqueraded as such on behalf of Syria's official government of dictatorship) that as we watch the film, we are not only on the edge of our seats with respect to the safety of the men onscreen, but we're equally fearful for the filmmakers.

And make no mistake, this is NOT journalism/war correspondence.

THIS IS REAL FILMMAKING OF THE HIGHEST ORDER.

Director Fayas Fayyad, co-director/co-editor Steen Johannessen, cinematographer Fadi Al Halabi, Sound Recordist Morten Groth Brandt and the entire team have not only risked life and limb to bring this vital story to the screen, but have done so with the most vivid artistic aplomb. You know you are watching a documentary, the real thing (so to speak), but so often you forget all notions of this and feel like you're watching an edge-of-the-seat action film that is putting every mega-budgeted Hollywood nonsense generated, machine-tooled by poseurs, to utter shame. The film's structure is, miraculously, sheer drama of the best kind.

It's thrilling, exciting, terrifying, sad and sickening. And ultimately, it is so very, deeply and profoundly moving. Last Men in Aleppo is a masterpiece and will, as time marches forward be regarded as a classic of brave, brilliant cinema.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Last Men in Aleppo enjoys its Canadian Premiere at Hot Docs 2017.

THE LOOK OF SILENCE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Powerful, important, deeply moving and utterly chilling companion piece to Joshua Oppenheimer's "The Act of Killing"

The Look of Silence (2014)
Dir. Joshua Oppenheimer

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A sure-fire way to avoid insanity after killing someone is to collect a couple of cupfuls of the victim's blood as it gushes from their jugular, then drink it all down: hot, steaming, sweet, salty and savoury.

If, after repeatedly hacking someone with a machete, and they're still alive, cut off their penis.

If you're interested in merely killing someone and not torturing them, feel free to hack off a woman's breast before she's dead in order to examine what it looks like.

These are a few words of wisdom imparted by men who, with smiles on their faces and infused with great pride, contributed to the wholesale slaughter of over one million innocent people during a foul genocide perpetrated some 50-years-ago.

Yup, you guessed it, Joshua Oppenheimer, the documentarian with the art of filmmaking hardwired into his very DNA is back in town and I steadfastly deliver you this following iron-clad guarantee:

You have not seen, nor will you ever see a movie like The Look of Silence. Never. Ever. Unless, of course, you've seen The Act of Killing, to which this film is a companion piece and one in which I made a similar guarantee when I reviewed that earlier work.

The Look of Silence proves to be an equally brave and cinematically brilliant look at the violent 1965 aftermath to the fall of Sukarno in Indonesia when the country shifted to a military dictatorship. Indonesians who opposed the new government were accused of being communists - a crime punishable by death. In less than a year with aid from the west, most of it from America (naturally), over one million "communists" were murdered.

Yes, many of the victims were communists, but so many others were simply labelled as such to justify killing them. Though the killings were sanctioned by the army, they were, in fact, carried out by civilian militias - squads of bloodthirsty garden variety psychopaths eager to taste blood for the "good" of their country.

THE YEAR OF LIVING DANGEROUSLY
THE ACT OF KILLING
THE LOOK OF SILENCE

The only serious and good dramatic feature film to focus on the beginnings of this tragedy is Peter Weir's The Year of Living Dangerously starring Mel Gibson, Sigourney Weaver and Linda Hunt in her brilliant Academy Award winning gender bending performance. Not that it's a factual document or anything, but it's a stylish fact-based fictional look at the events leading up to the genocide, placing things in a digestible manner. Given how sickeningly powerful Oppenheimer's documentaries are, the Weir picture isn't at all a bad place to begin before diving headlong into the horrors of both The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence.

Kudos are to be extended to Oppenheimer for creating an equally affecting companion piece that can work just fine as a stand-alone piece, bringing a completely new perspective to the tragedy. His first film on this subject focused the killers. Here, we focus on the victims.

Oppenheimer pulls out all the stops on his filmmaking prowess as an original cinematic storyteller by following Adi, a young 40-something travelling optician whose older brother was butchered during the genocide. Adi's route to offer eye examinations and to sell glasses takes him into the homes of the still-living killers (still feared, all rich and revered by the government as heroes) where he checks their eyesight and probes them about their parts in the genocide. If you want it, metaphor and irony abound in this odd tag-team of eye exams and hardline questioning, but for most, the story and the storytelling here will be the overriding element.

The look of a brother

Oppenheimer bounces between Adi watching interview footage with the various killers in the district (including those men describing gleefully how they murdered Adi's brother) and Adi on the road, confronting the same men he's seen in the videos. In most cases, these confrontations are chilling, the killers dropping unsubtle hints that Adi might be a communist himself and in need of extermination.

His Mother and wife are both terrified for Adi, but also for themselves and Adi's children. Adi's Mother lives everyday with the horror and pain of her son's murder while taking care of her blind, infirm husband whose own memories have been erased by the onset of senility.

The look of a killer

Adi, however, is a man obsessed. He's driven to ask the questions about the brother he never knew. He MUST ask the questions nobody dares to ask. At one point, a killer is so upset with Adi's questions - often relating to morality, culpability and guilt - that the sleaze bucket points out that not even Joshua with his interviewer cap on ever asked such penetrating questions. Oppenheimer, of course, intentionally kept a cool distance in his previous film to allow the killers a chance to "hang" themselves with their bragging, but here, he keeps another form of distance altogether to tell a story - that of Adi's powerful journey to confront the killers of his brother.

This is highly potent and explosive material and once again, Oppenheimer delivers a motion picture that's not only an important document of history, but a magnificent, harrowing and consummate work of art. The fact of the matter is this - most documentary filmmakers are not filmmakers. They're journalists and/or committed activists wanting to present a point of view with respect to information and/or interesting subjects. Oppenheimer transcends those staid notions of documentarians, though. He's a genuine filmmaker, an artist of the highest order. His work is not ephemeral in the least and will survive long, long after he and the rest of us are six feet under.

Though The Look of Silence lives now, it will, most importantly, live forever.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

The Look of Silence begins its theatrical release in Canada at the Bloor Hot Docs Cinema in Toronto via Blue Ice Docs.

RADICAL FRIENDS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - 2014 Planet in Focus Film Festival

Discovering Green activism
within cultural roots.

Radical Friends (2014)
Dir. Chihiro Geuzebroek

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Amongst all the documentaries dealing with environmental activism, director Chihiro Geuzebroek has hit upon a winning formula to detail something that's so often rendered with the sledgehammer of didacticism. First of all, she's the subject of the film, a personal journey undertaken by a cute, plucky "little Dutch girl" (of Bolivian heritage) which, frankly, goes a long way to rendering a picture that's not merely palatable, but includes a wealth of information in an agreeable, entertaining fashion. Secondly, the movie is equal parts earnestness and humour, the latter of which comes mostly from Geuzebroek herself and in sufficient quantity (and quality) to temper the potentially deadly effects of the former. Finally, the film really kicks in when it focuses upon her personal journey that's as much tied into exploring cultural roots as it is devoted to becoming the best activist she can possibly be.

Setting up her "thesis" as quickly as possible, delivering a smattering of her life and ideals and setting up her trip to Bolivia, all blasts along amiably and soon we're plunged into the meat of her journey proper as she allows us to follow her travels in the country she was not born in, but is quickly falling in love with as she connects with the country's progressively green approach to governance and also, uniting with her extended family. Experiencing Bolivia's environmental victories as well as its challenges on the Green front are all through Geuzebroek's eyes as she discovers them for herself. Scenes with her family are ultimately the most powerful and moving of all. On their on, they'd be plenty affecting, but against the environmental backdrop, they're positively heart-wrenching. The movie occasionally relies too heavily upon a series of cutesy-pie chalkboard-style animation that occasionally drove me right up the wall. I'll grudgingly concede others might not be quite so intolerant of them as I and in fact, might derive considerable pleasure from their overly jaunty, uh, quality.

Alas, these animated sequences border on the whimsical and compel me to be desirous of punching someone in the face. In fairness, though, I'll quote from James Cagney's character in Raoul Walsh's Strawberry Blonde: "That's just the kind of hairpin I am."

The film's denouement is somewhat unsatisfying if only because of the direction the journey genuinely takes. As a filmmaker, Geuzebroek gives it the old college try and put a positive spin on what happens, but a little part of me wished she'd ended her film before that, or perhaps waited to finish it if and when a more satisfying turn of events transpired. As the film is right now, it's kind of begging for a sequel. That might have even been the intent. If so, I do look forward to it.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3 Stars

Radical Friends plays during Toronto's 2014 Planet in Focus Environmental Film Festival. The filmmaker will be present for the screening. For further information, check out the festival's website HERE.

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WE ARE THE BEST - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Video Services Corp. Theatrical Rollout Across Canada Now On

One of Greg Klymkiw's 10 Best of 2013 and Mira Barkhammar his pick for Best Actress of 2013. COOL!

We Are The Best (2013) *****
Dir. Lukas Moodysson

Starring: Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin, Liv LeMoyne

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Three very special little girls on the cusp of puberty are horrifically surrounded by conformist girlie-girls and immature boys toying with societal expectations of machismo. Two of the young ladies are self-described punk rockers, while a third comes from a goody-two-shoes ultra-Christian background (but with punk desires roiling beneath her veneer).

Joyfully and with great satisfaction, the trio find each other in an otherwise antiseptic Sweden where most of their peers, teachers and family are still clinging to outmoded values, yet pathetically attempting to inject cliched tropes of modernism into their otherwise prissy protected worlds.

Our pre-teen rebels form a punk band which results in a happy hell breaking loose, which, however is threatened by a combination of their newfound overt expressions of non-conformity and all the normal conflicts of puberty (especially within the context of an antiseptic society that’s poised to become even more bereft of character). The journey these little girls take is fraught with all manner of conflicts that have a potentially disastrous effect upon their quest to prove, to themselves and the world, that, as the film’s title declares: We Are The Best!

I’ve read a lot of nonsense lately that claim this film is a “return to form”.

“Hogwash!” I say. “Harumph!”

As if one of the great contemporary filmmakers of our time needs to find his way back to his earlier roots when he has, in fact, never abandoned them. Moodysson is one of contemporary cinema’s great humanist filmmakers and all of his films have generated - at least for me - levels of emotion that are rooted ever-so deeply in the richness and breadth of humanity. We Are The Best is, however, Moodysson’s most joyous film and furthermore is an absolutely lovely celebration of a time long past and the virtues of non-conformity that - for better or worse - created a generation of really cool people.

The screenplay, co-written by Moodysson and his wife Coco Moodysson is based on the latter’s graphic novel “Never Goodnight” and though, I have yet to read it myself, the movie wisely feels like a top-drawer graphic novel on film - great characters, wry observations, keen wit , a perfect balance between visual and literary story beats and several entertaining layers of “Fuck You!”

On one hand, I feel like I might be reading far too much into the movie - that my take on it is based too closely upon my own experiences during the cultural cusp years of 1978-1982. You see, as fun and celebratory as the picture indeed is, I couldn’t help but feel while watching it - not just once, but twice on a big screen - a very gentle hint of melancholy running through the piece.

Ultimately, I do feel this melancholia is intentional since every aspect of the film’s setting is pulsating with the horrendous sort of conformity that needed to be challenged. Set in 1982, a period which for me felt very much like the beginning of the end - not just at the time, but certainly in retrospect (which must certainly be a place the Moodysson’s are coming from themselves), one felt like the world was entering an intense phase of conservatism to rival the 50s, but without the cool repressive iconography of the 50s. The 80s were all about stripping everything down, yet in a kind of tastelessly garish fashion. Film critic Pauline Kael titled her collection of reviews from this period “State of the Art” - a horrendous phrase that came to describe everything that was so appalling about the 80s.

In spite of it all, there was, during this cusp period, a blip of hope. While it lasted, it was beautiful. Moodysson’s protagonists, like so many of us during that period, needed to affirm our non-conformity by declaring that we were, indeed, the best. What’s special about the film, is that every generation of non-conformists discovers this and Moodysson has very delightfully and, I’d argue, importantly delivered a tale of considerable universality.

Video Services Corp. (VSC) is releasing We Are The Best theatrically across Canada. Theatrical rollout begins at TIFF Bell Lightbox May 30, 2014. For showtimes and tickets visit the TIFF website HERE. Full Canadian playmate schedule for theatrical release below:

Opens May 30
Toronto – TIFF Bell Lightbox, 350 King St. W
Montreal – Cinema du Parc, 3575 Avenue du Parc
Vancouver – VanCity, 1181 Seymour St
Opens June 13
Ottawa – Bytowne Cinema, 325 Rideau St
London – Hyland Cinema, 240 Wharncliffe Road South

Here is a lovely selection of VSC (Video Service Corp.) titles you buy directly from the links below, and in so doing, contribute to the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner:

MASTER OF THE HOUSE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Decades ahead of its time, the silent Carl Th. Dreyer masterpiece of comedy deservedly receives the lavish Criterion Collection treatment.

Thank God for the Criterion Collection. I first caught up with this Carl Th. Dreyer masterpiece on 35mm during a Toronto International Film Festival Cinematheque screening a few years ago and have been dreaming ever since that I'd be able to see it again. The dream is now reality. Master of the House, the huge hit comedy by the delectably dreary Dane is here for all to enjoy on a magnificent Dual Format (Blu-Ray and DVD) package from The Criterion Collection. Now I can see it again and again. So too, can you.

Viktor (Johannes Mayer) and Ida (Astrid Holm)
A man's home is his castle. A man's wife, his slave.

Stunning new Criterion cover design
by Béatrice Coron

Master of the House (1925) *****
Dir. Carl Th. Dreyer
Starring: Johannes Mayer, Astrid Holm,
Mathilde Nielsen, Clara Schønfeld, Johannes Nielsen

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Carl Th. Dreyer was always ahead of his time. His greatness and importance to the art of cinema is inestimable. In terms of theme, he was probably one of the few filmmakers to consistently tackle the exploitation of women under the thumb of patriarchy. Though many of these same films from 1928 onwards also blended his concerns with the spirit and the flesh, nobody, but nobody during this period came close to capturing the harrowing worlds of women who would dare to have their own thoughts and desires. He managed to out-Ibsen Ibsen. In terms of style, he told stories using a myriad of original groundbreaking methods that paved the way for all the cinema that followed him. For much of his post Master of the House career, Dreyer's unique stories and approaches seldom found favour with either the movie-going public and/or financiers. From 1928 to 1964 he made only six features, one of which he disowned and had withdrawn. and sadly, he died before making his last proposed film, Jesus.

Master of the House was a huge box-office success in 1925. In terms of actual admissions to cinemas, it easily toppled many subsequent hits in the modern age where grosses purport to mean something. His followup picture in 1926, the delightfully titled The Bride of Glomdal, a romantic comedy with dashes of Griffith-style action in its climax also collected healthy admissions at the ticket wickets. In fact, many of Dreyer's silent pictures found favour with audiences. His 1920 The Parson's Widow served up - even by today's standards - the daring tale of a young parson forced into marrying a frumpy crone some fifty years older than he, but manages to sneak his young true love under the roof as his sister. (Days of Heaven, anyone? Albeit with a much happier ending than Malick afforded us.) Leaves From Satan's Book from 1921 follows Satan throughout history as he attempts to convert and rebuff followers for the mercy of his own soul. Michael from 1924 (!!!) is one of the first major works of gay-themed cinema and features a homosexual relationship between an older man and young lad as well as a subplot involving unrequited gay love. Dreyer constantly pushed the narrative envelopes and in terms of camera work, experimented with leisurely, austere shots and rich, exquisitely composed frames cut with considerable urgency.

And then came The Passion of Joan of Arc in 1928, the hugely expensive period costume drama that defied every known filmmaking tradition to man - its perverse angles, the rapid-fire cutting, the insane number of shots, the breaking of the axis to convey a beleaguered POV and most of all, the closeups. There was, up to this point, nobody like Dreyer in terms of capturing the landscape of the human face and the orbs of the eyes as pools one could use to dive into the souls of his characters. The Passion of Joan of Arc went beyond anything Dreyer had done, though building on less than a decade of astonishing experimentation. This is a film that to this day cannot be touched for its sheer audacious invention. In 2010, the curators of the Toronto International Film Festival proclaimed it to be the most influential film of all time.

Yet in 1928, it flopped. Big time. So much so that every subsequent work became harder and harder to finance.

Master of the House, then, is the perfect Dreyer picture to be made more widely available in this day and age when cinema is becoming more and more predictable and less inventive than ever before, a day and age when grosses mean everything and yet, mean nothing when one does the real math and realizes that average ticket prices are now in the $15 range as opposed to the $0.15 average in Dreyer's heyday. And allow me to reiterate, Master of the House was a HUGE HIT! In terms of intelligence and sophistication, though, it blows most everything made today out of the water. In terms of cinematic daring, it makes state of the art digital effects little more than circus sideshow sleights of hand.

Master of the House is mature to the max, but in 1925 it had the ability to appeal to everybody. I daresay it could even do so today. Like the best romantic or even screwball comedy, Dreyer's film, based upon a popular play entitled Thou Shalt Honor Thy Wife by Sven Rindom, has a very simple tale on its surface. Viktor (Johannes Mayer) and Ida (Astrid Holm) live with their three children in a comfortable, though small flat. They are obviously well off enough to keep Mads (Mathilde Nielsen) a nanny/housekeeper in their employ. And sure enough, Ida's Mom (Clara Schønfeld) is extremely well-to-do, but as Viktor is the master of the house, it is he who must provide. Unfortunately, his role as a breadwinner seems to give him the right to treat Ida like a slave. The first half of the film doesn't even play out as a comedy. His treatment of Ida is dismissive, nasty and abusive. It gets to a point where she's becoming deathly ill and zapped of all spirit. Mads and Ida's Mom concoct a secret plan. They steal Ida away when Viktor is not home. She stays with her Mother and under a Doctor's (Johannes Nielsen) orders, Viktor must not see her until she's well again - if ever!

And here, the comedy does indeed roll in with the force of a tsunami. Viktor, once the Master of the House, is reduced to a slave by the wily Mads. He must now learn how much work it is to be a homemaker and realize just how horrid he's been to Ida. For her part, Ida is so on-the-mend that being away from her brutish husband is having quite the emancipating effect upon her.

Watching Viktor get his comeuppance is truly hilarious, but Dreyer takes us deeper than the mere skin of the narrative and we're deftly dealt several hands that expose a variety of layers to the lives of the men and women of the bourgeoisie.

And above all, in spite of everything, love exists between these two people, but the tale paints several pictures that illustrate just how both of their lives have been turned topsy-turvy by the mores and demands of society and how the roles of men and women in a patriarchal world so easily become entrenched in horrendous master-slave relationships. This is a couple who once worked together and then, even more surprisingly, the one thing that truly defines Viktor as a man in the world has, it seems, been snatched away from him and his ego, fuelled more by societal pressure is what drives him to compensate for his loss and become a monster.

Dreyer, ultimately looks to tell a tale of redemption, but to get there, the suffering is as real, painful and yes, funny and there are no guarantees that anything is going to work out the way any of the characters would want it to.

Not only is the story layered with all manner of psychological and political complexity, but the manner in which Dreyer shoots the film is utterly extraordinary. Most of the film takes place in one room, yet never do we feel claustrophobic until Dreyer wants us to through the POV of his characters. His shots are gems, gorgeously composed and always rooted in character and/or dramatic action. He values the "proscenium" and creates movement within it via extremely sophisticated blocking and a superlative use of the sets, props and overall reality of the space.

This is the kind of comedy most of us yearn for, but alas, in this day and age it's been replaced with sledgehammers and/or misplaced story elements that can never get the mix between comedy and tragedy just right and certainly never as well as this brilliant Dane did - a man who created one of the biggest box-office romantic/screwball comedy hits (albeit of the Danish variety) some 90 (!!!) years ago. And guess what? He did it with grace, intelligence and invention.

See for yourself. I think you'll be shocked.

Master of the House is available via the Criterion Collection in a dual format box with both Blu-Ray and DVD, both formats lovingly mastered and transferred. Béatrice Coron's gorgeous cover art houses an exquisite package that includes an all new 2K digital restoration, with a reconstructed score by composer Gillian B. Anderson, expertly performed by pianist Sara Davis Buechner and presented in uncompressed stereo. There's a new interview with Carl Theodor Dreyer historian Casper Tybjerg, a decent visual essay on Dreyer’s innovations by film historian David Bordwell, new English inter title translation and in the accompanying booklet, an essay by film scholar Mark Le Fanu.

PINE RIDGE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - HOT DOCS 2014 - The Hearts and Minds that soar above Wounded Knee - Blend of Direct Cinema with poetic dollops of Cinéma vérité, explores daily life of the Oglala Lakota Nation.

Ceremonial Dance in Pine Ridge

Pine Ridge (2013) *****
Dir. Anna Eborn

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Preamble:
South Dakota Dreaming
In 1992 I found myself travelling through South Dakota during the opening weekend of Michael Apted's Thunderheart, a fictional rendering of Incident at Oglala, his feature documentary released the same year. I saw the former title in Rapid City, South Dakota which is not far from the incidents depicted in both of the Apted pictures. My wife and I were in a packed movie theatre and it seemed like we were the only non-Native-Americans present. Starring Val Kilmer and Graham Greene, it reduced the horrific events on the Oglala Reservation to little more than a glorified feature length procedural, though as such, I recall it being reasonably well made and genuinely stirring. The reaction of the audience was far more interesting.

In fact, the buzz in the auditorium was palpable and though my response to the film in retrospect is tepid at best, I do recall my visceral feelings at that specific time and place as being highly influenced by an audience reacting on very emotional levels to fictionalized events that occurred in the very backyards of those in attendance. In particular, these were the sort of events seldom tackled by Hollywood in its 100+ years of the art form's history. Native Americans suffered the stereotypes of endless westerns which painted them as bloodthirsty "savages" who impeded the goals of "civilized" Americans and on the few occasions, "positive" portraits were attempted, they were oft-infused with the stereotype of the "noble savage" and/or focused upon the "negative" aspects of contemporary North American Native life. Movies are made by what's called a dream factory and, in fact, might well be the greatest gift to artistic expression.

As Chariots of Fire, The Mission, The Killing Fields and Local Hero producer David Puttnam says in his great book "Movies and Money":

" . . . from its earliest beginnings, [film's] real magic has been its ability to conjure up and sustain the dreams of ordinary men and women . . . the human race needs those dreams now, as much as at any time in its history."

The dreams Hollywood offered the Native Peoples of North America and others who have suffered the indignities of racism, ethnocentrism and exploitation have mostly been skewed as nightmares and certainly fly in the face of Puttnam's own output as a visionary producer whose work has focused respectively (in the aforementioned titles) upon issues as diverse as anti-semitism, colonization, genocide and the corporate rape of indigenous small communities. Puttnam adds that filmmakers are charged with creating work that must live beyond the ephemeral needs of industry and contribute, in no small measure to how we all can peer into a celluloid mirror and indeed reap the benefits of artistic expression and its relationship to our own lives. The line between that which helps and that which hinders is, however, thin indeed. To quote Puttnam:

"Stories and images are among the principal means by which human society has always transmitted its values and beliefs, from generation to generation and community to community. Movies, along with all the other activities driven by stories and the images and characters that flow from them, are now at the very heart of the way we run our economies and live our lives. If we fail to use them responsibly and creatively, if we treat them simply as so many consumer industries rather than as complex cultural phenomena, then we are likely to damage irreversibly the health and vitality of our own society."

Though Puttnam acknowledges he's "not naive enough to pretend that on its own cinema can capture the very soul of significant social and cultural problems," I certainly would like to believe it can come damn close.

Pine Ridge - The Film
Watching Anna Eborn's fine documentary Pine Ridge, I'm reminded of cinema's power to capture the dreams, lives and landscape by which humanity can have a conduit into their own existence. She expertly blends two profound elements of the documentary genre and in so doing, creates both a stirring narrative and cinematic poetry of the highest order. Mostly utilizing the tenets of the Direct Cinema movement (essentially invented and developed during the "Quiet Revolution" by Quebecois filmmakers working out of the Montreal studio of Canada's National Film Board [NFB] during the 50s and 60s), Eborn's kino-eye focuses upon the lives of youthful Native Americans of the Oglala Lakota Nation living on the Pine Ridge reservation of South Dakota.

For the most part, Eborn let's the words and actions of her subjects speak for themselves in a fly on the wall tradition, though she departs occasionally from the raw visual qualities of Direct Cinema by shooting the material with stunning compositions and often painting cinematic tapestries of the highest order. Using both natural and practical sources of light, reminiscent of the exquisite visuals of such contemporary masters as Austria's Ulrich Seidl, Finland's Pirjo Honkasalo and certainly that of Honkasalo's Finnish colleague Paul-Anders Simma (whose Olga is also screening at Hot Docs 2014 in Toronto), Eborn's flourishes could well be mistaken for misplaced sentimentality though I'd be amongst the first to vigorously disagree.

Some purists tend to quarrel with utilizing the full aesthetic beauty inherent in film, especially when applied to Direct Cinema when capturing some of the more harrowing aspects of the human condition, but I'd argue that the use of shaky-cam and raw lighting effects are just as much an imposition of the filmmaker upon their subjects as that which tends to do so with elegance. For me, there is considerable validity in bringing beauty of an impressionistic nature to bear upon lives led at what some might term as the outer fringes of our world.

Eborn seeks, right at the beginning of her film to knock us on our collective duffers by keeping us literally in the deep black of a rich ebony screen while we hear an unidentified male voice offer what seems like the thesis of her film, but also a stirring personal perspective from one of many of her film's subjects. These young people are, after all, the descendants of those who suffered the 1890 Wounded Knee Massacre (300 Native Americans, including women and children, butchered by the U.S. Cavalry), as well as those who fought during the 1973 standoff in Pine Ridge to protest the horrendous policies of the American government and, lest we forget, the American government's reign of terror which pitted "Americanized" Sioux thugs against "traditional" Native Americans, resulting in over 50 unsolved murders during the mid-70s. For many of the descendants, life has not improved in spite of the blood of their ancestors and progenitors soaking the soil of Pine Ridge.

The words that greet us in black are as follows:

"Most people think we still live in tipis. Fuck, we have houses, man. It's just stupid, man. We have houses to live in. We have trailers. We have houses and trailers. You'd think about fuckin' ghettos in fuckin' L.A. and New York? Our whole fuckin' town is a big old fuckin' ghetto. I can bet you one hundred bucks, that everyone that lives on the reservation wants to get the fuck out of there, you know? No one wants to live there. Who would? We all try to grow up and make some money to get the fuck out of there, man. We pray for our people to get better, man. Everyday. Every fuckin' day, man, we try, man, but you know it's our land, you know. It's what the white people gave us. Gave us fuckin' shit, a shitty ass fuckin' spot to live in."

As the monologue ends, Eborn slams the title of the picture into our line of vision and delves into a series of wonderful fly on the wall moments - one involving a young man trying to sell a new tent to anyone who will listen as he approaches them in a gas/convenience store and the other featuring two young men hanging "Bill and Ted-like" at the same location, commenting wryly upon those who pull in and out under the harsh glare of outdoor lamps and fluorescent lights. She then segues, quite seamlessly, into a vaguely Cinéma vérité sequence (where "truth" is overtly manipulated) with m.o.s. shots of a young man in a diner as we hear his alternately sad and hopeful off-camera narration involving a recounting of all the siblings he's lost to imprisonment, death and just-plain moving away as well as his hope for a better life - one that he imagines could see him as an architect.

From here. Eborn treats us to a series of fascinating set-pieces involving a cast of youthful subjects involved in a variety of day-to-day activities including splashing about in a water hole, breaking horses whilst preparing for a rodeo, being Moms and in one sequence, using a variety of firearms supplied by an old cowpoke war veteran who teaches the boys how to hit targets. And though, the weight of Wounded Knee and Oglala loom largely, Eborn lets her subjects speak of this, if not in words, but by their actions. (We do, however, sojourn with Eborn to a Wounded Knee museum which seems impossible to ignore in such a portrait of life unfolding on the Pine Ridge Reservation.)

As per her overall mise-en-scène, Eborn continues to pull us from Cinema Direct territory to that of Cinéma vérité, focusing upon one young woman in a series of decidedly non-fly-on-the-wall interviews and a stirring ceremonial dance performed against the South Dakota Badlands by the same young lady adorned in traditional garb.

Life is what ultimately pulsates at the heart of this extraordinary film and though its subjects yearn for an existence beyond the reservation, Eborn's powerful evocation of the land's stunning natural beauty is mirrored in the light of her subjects' eyes. Moving on seems to be the only desire for some, while others look forward to assuming and/or resuming an itinerant exploration of the world beyond, but always acknowledging the pull of the reservation to bring them back to a home, grudgingly given to them with the spilling of blood. For others yet, they're as inextricably linked to a place that they know, love and detest with equal measure. On the surface, these all seem like aspects of life that might affect young people everywhere, but unlike the youth of the Pine Ridge Reservation, they're not the living, breathing remnants of a legacy of colonialism, genocide and a government indifferent to the benign apartheid of reservation life.

Pine Ridge is a film that conjures all the magic of cinema to give us several lives that could have been so much better lived and yet others, that seem very well lived indeed, but both exist in the shadow of shameful actions and events that continue to darken the doors of the colonizers and the colonized. We're reminded that answers have never come easily, nor, alas will they ever.

Pine Ridge is co-presented at Hot Docs 2014 in Toronto by the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival. Tickets, playmates and showtimes are available at the Hot Docs website HERE.

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WE ARE THE BEST - Review By Greg Klymkiw - #TIFF13 - Amidst the mediocrity of the 80s, one thing shone!

We Are The Best (2013) *****
Dir. Lukas Moodysson

Starring: Mira Barkhammar, Mira Grosin, Liv LeMoyne

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Three very special little girls on the cusp of puberty are horrifically surrounded by conformist girlie-girls and immature boys toying with societal expectations of machismo. Two of the young ladies are self-described punk rockers, while a third comes from a goody-two-shoes ultra-Christian background (but with punk desires roiling beneath her veneer).

Joyfully and with great satisfaction, the trio find each other in an otherwise antiseptic Sweden where most of their peers, teachers and family are still clinging to outmoded values, yet pathetically attempting to inject cliched tropes of modernism into their otherwise prissy protected worlds.

Our pre-teen rebels form a punk band which results in a happy hell breaking loose, which, however is threatened by a combination of their newfound overt expressions of non-conformity and all the normal conflicts of puberty (especially within the context of an antiseptic society that’s poised to become even more bereft of character). The journey these little girls take is fraught with all manner of conflicts that have a potentially disastrous effect upon their quest to prove, to themselves and the world, that, as the film’s title declares: We Are The Best!

I’ve read a lot of nonsense lately that claim this film is a “return to form”.

“Hogwash!” I say. “Harumph!”

As if one of the great contemporary filmmakers of our time needs to find his way back to his earlier roots when he has, in fact, never abandoned them. Moodysson is one of contemporary cinema’s great humanist filmmakers and all of his films have generated - at least for me - levels of emotion that are rooted ever-so deeply in the richness and breadth of humanity. We Are The Best is, however, Moodysson’s most joyous film and furthermore is an absolutely lovely celebration of a time long past and the virtues of non-conformity that - for better or worse - created a generation of really cool people.

The screenplay, co-written by Moodysson and his wife Coco Moodysson is based on the latter’s graphic novel “Never Goodnight” and though, I have yet to read it myself, the movie wisely feels like a top-drawer graphic novel on film - great characters, wry observations, keen wit , a perfect balance between visual and literary story beats and several entertaining layers of “Fuck You!”

On one hand, I feel like I might be reading far too much into the movie - that my take on it is based too closely upon my own experiences during the cultural cusp years of 1978-1982. You see, as fun and celebratory as the picture indeed is, I couldn’t help but feel while watching it - not just once, but twice on a big screen - a very gentle hint of melancholy running through the piece.

Ultimately, I do feel this melancholia is intentional since every aspect of the film’s setting is pulsating with the horrendous sort of conformity that needed to be challenged. Set in 1982, a period which for me felt very much like the beginning of the end - not just at the time, but certainly in retrospect (which must certainly be a place the Moodysson’s are coming from themselves), one felt like the world was entering an intense phase of conservatism to rival the 50s, but without the cool repressive iconography of the 50s. The 80s were all about stripping everything down, yet in a kind of tastelessly garish fashion. Film critic Pauline Kael titled her collection of reviews from this period “State of the Art” - a horrendous phrase that came to describe everything that was so appalling about the 80s.

In spite of it all, there was, during this cusp period, a blip of hope. While it lasted, it was beautiful. Moodysson’s protagonists, like so many of us during that period, needed to affirm our non-conformity by declaring that we were, indeed, the best. What’s special about the film, is that every generation of non-conformists discovers this and Moodysson has very delightfully and, I’d argue, importantly delivered a tale of considerable universality.

Video Services Corp. (VSC) is releasing We Are The Best theatrically across Canada. Theatrical rollout begins at TIFF Bell Lightbox May 30, 2014. For showtimes and tickets visit the TIFF website HERE.

SEX, DRUGS & TAXATION (aka SPIES & GLISTRUP) - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2013 - Fear & Loathing in Copenhagen

Michael Shannon lookalike Pilou Asbæk as real-life Danish Billionaire playboy Simon Spies

Sex, Drugs & Taxation (2013) *****
Dir. Christoffer Boe
Starring: Nicolas Bro, Pilou Asbæk

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Fear and Loathing in Denmark is certainly one way to pitch Christoffer Boe's perverse, manic, absurdly hilarious and sometimes dangerous (but absolutely gratifying) belly flop into this fact-based tale charting a 20-year-long unlikely friendship that began during Copenhagen's swinging 60s. Generating its own parallel universe to the drug-and-booze-fuelled delirium, which Terry Gilliam accomplished so tremendously in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the 1998 adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's 1971 semi-autobiographical novel, director Boe tosses us aboard his very own hallucinogenic roller-coaster ride which comprises the properties of both the English title of his film, Sex, Drugs & Taxation, and the very appropriate Danish title Spies & Glistrup.

Hunter S. Thompson's addled satirical literary meanderings were pointedly subtitled "A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream" - meanderings rendered even more satirically addled (delightfully so) by Gilliam. First serialized in Rolling Stone magazine, then published a year later in standalone hard copy form, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas celebrated a debauchery that, during the 70s, could be the only possible way to view an America that was well on the trajectory of a slow crash and burn. Boe, however, aims his satirical eye at a very specific dream that initially was not part of any sort of collective nationalistic hopes, wishes or dreams, but instead belonged to two men - their grand, mad dream which eventually became a national dream and like Thompson's American Dream, took its own fork in the road - choosing instead an eventual boulevard of broken dreams.

Just as Thompson's novel and Gilliam's film were rooted in mediated reality, so too is Boe's film - maybe even more so. Ripped from Danish headlines, Sex, Drugs & Taxation turns out to be a worthy fantasia of the strangest corporate dynasty in Denmark's history. In fact, the dreams of two men were really only one man's dream - its mastermind. The other, in retrospect and within the context of Roe's film, is a dim-bulb-ish recipient of perks born from the practical realization of the dream, his hedonistic enlightenment so to speak (and not as big an oxymoron as one might think).

The aforementioned dreamer is corporate tax lawyer Mogens Glistrup (Nicolas Bro), a paunchy, balding, bucktoothed family man with a cockeyed visage who lives vicariously through the antics of his boozing, whore-mongering chief client, best friend and crazed vacation travel magnate Simon Spies (Pilou Asbaek). Glistrup took a back-room position while Spies was the public face to all of his friend's legal chicanery. Glistrup wanted to make his best friend Spies filthy rich, but in so doing, his real desire was to crack intricate Danish tax law and find a legal way to keep Spies at a zero tax base which, he hoped, would extend to all of Denmark.

Glistrup, you see, was both a genius and most probably insane.

He believed that paying taxes was not only wrong, but that for a country to collect taxes was immoral. To be sure, Boe's film is a complete miasma of back-room business world and government bureaucracy back-stabbing and the details of this world of high finances, law and government are never simplified - they're laid out in all their complexity.

None of this, though, is ever dull since every single story beat involving corporate shenanigans and the malleability of jurisprudence is indelibly tied to some of the most outlandishly grotesque and hilarious indulgences in sex and drugs.

There are moments in the film so gloriously absurd, so sex-drenched, booze flooded and drug charged that one can do little more than soar along with a movie that dazzles us with stylistic flourishes, compelling storytelling and characters as engaging as they are reprehensible. Though one can credit director Boe and his co-writer Simon Pasternak for creating a delectably dense and intelligent screenplay, it would be remiss of me not to mention the tremendous efforts of a perfect cast. Its two leads are especially stunning. There is never a false moment rendered by either of them. What's astounding is that they must infuse their roles with bigger-than-life attributes and push certain thespian boundaries to levels that are ever-so dangerously bordering on over-the-top. They simply MUST do this or the film would NEVER work.

Pilou Asbæk as Spies drives his performance with a Mephistophelean charm that is as malevolent as it is strangely sexy and Nicholas Bro must slowly and creepily infuse his role with the mounting fervour of an anarchist crossed with a fundamentalist fascist. That we BELIEVE these men are friends, as we further believe the development of their friendship and its almost inevitable erosion and even deeper yet, that we sense love, sadness and loyalty amidst betrayal, is a testament to the genius of these two actors and to director Boe for creating an atmosphere allowing these men to take the kind of chances which, as actors, could have threatened to plunge either or both of them into an abyss they might otherwise have never fully recovered from. This kind of bravery displayed by a director and his lead actors is so rare in contemporary cinema that to see it here - so raw and dazzling, is not only sheer joy, but feels almost privileged.

Sex, Drugs & Taxation sometimes makes us feel as if it is a film that's not only set during another age, but one that might actually have been made at a time when cinema knew no boundaries and as such, proved both immortal and universal. It's a great picture, and like all great pictures, it's got shelf life branded deep into its cinematic flesh. After a lifetime of almost insanely devoting myself to cinema, I've gotten to a point where "good" is no longer "good enough". Even "excellence" sometimes bores me. I demand greatness and when I find it I feel like I've been given more than ample reason to keep expecting it (as is the case with this film), the vicious circle begins all over again for me. I continue to see one movie after another, looking, ever-searching and hoping, like that junkie who needs bigger and bigger fixes - I keep digging ever deeper, like some palaeontologist or archeologist, hoping to unearth some discovery of cultural and historical importance. I crave for pictures to instil the gooseflesh I first felt over half a century ago and that continued for quite some time then started, in the 80s (when the hapless Glistrup was at the tail end of his incarceration), when cinema felt like it was in the throes of a slow, painful death. What keeps saving me, what keeps giving mne faith are films like Sex, Drugs & Taxation.

This is a movie that'll stay with you, grow with you and be around long after you're gone from this Earth. Now THAT'S entertainment!

"Sex, Drugs & Taxation" is part of the TIFF Vanguard Series at the Toronto International Film Festival 2013. Visit the TIFF Website HERE.