MIFF: More dead animals

I'm not sure I'm going to write about every MIFF movie I watch from my living room this August, but as of right now, I'm 3-for-3.

And it's a pretty #2020 year so far at MIFF, if you are keen to dwell on ideas of mortality, as I have now watched my second straight movie about dead animals, after Marona's Fantastic Tale on Saturday night.

Sunday night brought the Greek film Kala Azar, which was advertised as being in the style of Yorgos Lanthimos (they probably say that about every movie from Greece). The MIFF program also explained that it focuses on a couple who perform animal cremations and collect roadkill. So it's not like I didn't know what I was getting into.

Having seen the movie, I do get the Lanthimos comparison. I was also reminded of last year's beekeeper documentary Honeyland, though that was not as positive an association.

Overall I was pretty mixed on the movie. It's one of those semi-experimental films where there isn't a lot of dialogue, and you are supposed to glean your ideas from it only by getting a general sense of what's going on. You observe and draw some conclusions, but there isn't much of a narrative. Now that I think of it I also got a bit of a Carlos Reygadas vibe from it.

The typical scene is as follows: The two humans, usually in some state of semi-nudity, go about their their cryptic and enigmatic tasks (why are they cremating animals? why do they have to collect the roadkill?) as various dogs (there are always dogs around) pant and slobber in their vicinity. I feel like a few additional lines of dialogue here and there would have served to clarify a few things, but this movie is not interested in that. Which makes the developing fissure between this man and this woman as cryptic as anything else.

The final scene salvaged it from a mildly negative to a mildly positive review for me, and though I won't go into much detail, I will say that in this scene, I got a third fond comparision from the movie: the Swedish director Roy Andersson. There's a poignant absurdism to how the film closes, and that was enough to win me over. (Three fond comparisons and one not-so-fond comparison is a net gain of two fond comparisons, you see.)

Think I'll take a couple nights off and resume my MIFF on Wednesday.