Ukraine

As you can probably see, I've been cheerily marching along on this blog, writing posts of both a frivolous and contemplative nature, despite the fact that a massive war has broken out in Europe.

Having a backlog of posts I had written but not yet posted does not excuse the behavior entirely. I've also written new posts that were time sensitive or have only occurred to me within the past week.

This is not to say I have not been thinking about Ukraine. And it's only responsible for me to finally relay those thoughts to the public on my blog, even though they do not relate to the movies as such.

I've been struggling to put the Russian invasion in the proper context in my head. On the one hand, I wonder how different this is from similar awful situations in Afghanistan or Syria. On the other, I know that anything involving one of the world's biggest military powers and most dangerous bad actors has potentially worldwide ramifications, up to and including World War III, though I still can't quite bring myself to believe that's a possible outcome. I also know that unlike those two other conflicts, this involves a foreign state invading another state, and the U.S. isn't even involved. (Yet.)

I never know quite how to behave in these situations when it comes to social media or this blog. There are certain things that happen in the world that disqualify a person from engaging in the sort of light banter I like to participate in on Facebook, or talking about what actor has appeared in the most best picture winners on this blog. I'm trying to figure out if this is one of those situations.

But even when we can definitively identify situations that qualify as that, I am never going to devote all my time on social media or this blog to them. "The show must go on" is the appropriately drama-related cliche that applies here.

I also, though, cannot just keep writing these posts without a post like this one, letting you know I'm not some heartless monster who isn't even thinking about these things. I hope I didn't need to post this for you to know that about me. 

And there is, actually, a way to relate this to the movies. My wife was the Australia-based producer on a 2019 film shot in Ukraine called A Family. She had a relationship with its Australian director and cinematographer, who shot the film in Kyiv in 2017 or thereabouts. They had a Ukrainian producer organizing all the day-to-day logistics of the shoot, while my wife did all the things like get the film finished back here and get it into film festivals.

The still above is from A Family, and feels appropriate to the hope for peace we all share. Well, all except Vladimir Putin I guess. 

As far as we know, everyone associated with the film is alright. My wife has been in touch with the Ukrainian producer and some others who worked on the film, who are displaced from their homes in many instances, actually taking up arms in others, and in all other ways showing the absolute courage, pride and determination of a group of citizens under a dire threat to their way of life and their very lives.

So yes, I'm thinking about Ukraine. I don't know when I will post about it again. Tomorrow I will surely go back to posting something frivolous. It doesn't mean I'm not thinking about it.

You know this. But I thought it was worth saying anyway. 

MIFF: Mid-week at Hoyts

Hoyts is a massive theater chain, not the type of venue you associate with MIFF. But for the entire time I’ve been going to MIFF, Hoyts has been involved, unlike its largest competitor, Village Cinemas. I’m a bit down on Hoyts for an additional reason than being a massive theater chain, which is that they recently stopped accepting our critics card. Even in the best of times they only allowed us to see free movies two nights a week and during the day on weekdays. But they withdrew altogether last year. Screw them.

MIFF, however, apparently remains a profitable endeavor for them. So the Hoyts at Melbourne Central is where I spent three straight screenings on Wednesday and Thursday nights, which I will tell you about now.

The first was the Sundance Audience Award winner from this year, Brittany Runs a Marathon. It’s also the second MIFF film I’ve reviewed, if you want to check that out here. It stars Jillian Bell, who I think of as appearing in a lot of Seth Rogen films, though it’s actually only one (The Night Before, which is where she came on my radar). She plays an overweight 28-year-old whose life is going down the tubes, but she tries to turn that around by first jogging, then training to run a marathon.

It’s been an unusual MIFF in terms of high-profile releases, as the Cannes Palme d’Or winner, which usually is one of the most sought-after tickets at MIFF, already opened here theatrically. That was Parasite, and it was great, and I surely would have seen it at MIFF had it been playing. Desperate for something else with awards buzz, I slotted Brittany in straight away as a must-see. The type of movie that wins at Cannes is pretty different from the type of movie that wins at Sundance, though, and this was a pretty typical Sundance winner. Which is to say, I liked it quite a bit but forced myself to be honest about its limitations, which means I knocked a potential 8 out of 10 down to a 7 out of 10 in the above review. Who knows, maybe it’s an 8. It’s good. I liked it.

I had enough time between the two ends of my double feature to go downstairs and get a pastry called a coffee pan from an Asian bakery chain I like called Pafu. That was supposed to be where I met a friend of mine, the same who attended In Fabric with me on Saturday (and will be seeing a double feature with me next Thursday). However, somehow he ended up at somewhere called Pafu on the second floor of Melbourne Central, though I’m still not sure the explanation for that and thought it best not to dig too deeply. Anyway, I bought him a coffee pan and met him in time to go into Berberian Sound Studio.

This is only the third film I’ve ever seen at MIFF that I had already seen before, and only the second that wasn’t a special screening. In 2017 I saw both of my previous instances, a performance of Fantastic Planet with a live score (which was great) and my first time seeing Strange Days on the big screen. I might’nt have prioritized Berberian, which I have already seen twice before, except that my friend is interested in giallo and this is also a film I’ve never seen before on the big screen. Besides, I’m currently mulling what will be my favorite films of the decade, and a film I’d already seen twice is certainly a candidate.

Unfortunately, on this third viewing I found myself a bit impatient with the film’s pacing, which had never been a problem for me on previous viewings. Part of that was that there were certain parts I was looking forward to, but couldn’t really remember how soon they might be coming. Part of it was also that by recommending it to my friend, I felt the urgency for the film to deliver its good bits with a certain regularity, to justify my praise of it. Fortunately, this is not an impatient viewer, and he said he really liked the film – a big improvement on our mutual impression of Peter Strickland’s new film, the aforementioned In Fabric.

This was also my second time at MIFF seeing Strickland himself. He came out beforehand at In Fabric and also did so here, as MIFF is doing a retrospective on his films this year (which is why the seven-year-old Berberian is playing). This time he stayed for a Q&A afterward, and so did I. I actually asked him a question, which was how they created that perfect scream that the character Silvia (Fatma Mohamed) delivers near the end of the film, as the image of her diminishes in the frame to just a speck. (Which was one of the moments I was impatiently awaiting.) Alas, here was a mild bit of disappointment as well – as Strickland himself said it would be before he gave his answer. It wasn’t some clever bit of sound design, it was just an extracted moment from the song “Glory Hole” by Nurse With Wound. I’ve just listened to that on YouTube and confirmed it. Oh well.

Thursday night summoned me back to Hoyts for the premiere of my wife’s film A Family, which as I said yesterday, I will not discuss in any detail in terms of its quality. Nothing at all should be read into that in terms of whether I liked it or not. Just take that at face value: I said I wouldn’t discuss whether I liked the film or not, and I still won’t.

I will say that it was fun to be involved in a world premiere, as there was a similar place where you could take pictures in front of a MIFF background as there had been at opening night of the festival, only this time it was just for her film in particular. It was also lovely to see all sorts of familiar faces from our life here in Melbourne turn out for my wife’s big night. I sat in a seat that had a “reserved” sign on it for I think the first time ever. And then stayed for the Q&A afterward, which also featured my wife and a lot of questions from people who had obviously enjoyed the movie.

Which felt really, really nice.

My first conflict of interest

It’s not often in my career that I’ve had to deal with conflicts of interest. I do know one Australian director, the husband of one of my wife’s school friends, but I’ve never reviewed any of his films. I have, however, given them star ratings on Letterboxd, ranked them on Flickchart and included them on my year-end lists.

But now I’ve got a real conflict of interest, and I’m not going to do any of those things.

Tonight I am seeing the world premiere of A Family, a deadpan comedy that I’m told has a sense of humor similar to that of Yorgos Lanthimos. It was directed by Jayden Stevens, who shot it in Ukraine with his director of photography, Tom Swinburn.

This film is also produced by my wife.

She didn’t go to Ukraine, but she’s handled all the producer duties for post back in Australia, and it’s eaten up a good amount of her attention over the past year. I’m not going to name my wife, though you could probably look it up if you were interested. It’ll be in keeping with my policy of not naming either my wife or my children by anything other than their titles (“my wife,” “my younger son,” “my older son”), a policy that dates back to the very beginning of this blog.

The film got into MIFF and in fact received some funding from MIFF as part of MIFF’s Premiere Fund, which helped them complete the film. Interest has been high, and not only among Jayden’s friends. I know tonight is sold out, at least, and I believe Tuesday night is as well. It was popular enough that they added a third screening of it next Thursday in the afternoon.

I will likely spend the entire movie figuring out what to say about it to the interested parties after the movie ends. But I will say it to them and to them only.

I think it’s probably obvious that I won’t review the film, but I’ve also decided not to give it a star rating on Letterboxd, not to rank it on Flickchart, and definitely not to include it in my year-end list of rankings. It will appear only on lists that bear no assessment of its quality, like the alphabetical list of all the movies I’ve ever seen, or a similar list of movies released in 2019. I may include it in Letterboxd so it can take up its place in the chronological continuum of films I’ve seen, but it will have no star rating.

It seems only right. No, this is not my wife’s brainchild per se, though she did provide notes on the script, a role that led to her involvement as producer. And I know Jayden and Tom a lot less well than I know my wife’s school friend’s husband, whose films I did star-rate and list.

But I think this is how it needs to be. I can’t watch this thing that my wife has spent so much time on and reduce it to a numerical value. I understand that it’s not everyone’s cup of tea, and if I were to agree with that and just slap a “3.5 stars” on it (which is probably as low as I would allow myself to go), it just wouldn’t feel right.

So I’m breaking from traditions that are more than 20 years ingrained in me, and leaving A Family utterly undiscussed, unranked, and unclassified -- in any public forum, anyway.

But before I’ve seen it, I feel like I can say this: Remember this title, and seek it out when it hits a theater near you, or more likely a streaming service, or possibly nowhere, but I hope not.

Because I can’t pretend I’m not invested in my wife’s career, and damn, I hope it’s good.