Sadly, as expected, I have not been able to attend that many of the movies at New Directors/New Films this year, and while I hope to get to at least a couple more before the fest is over, it may not be possible. I have seen two films though, and I thought I’d give some brief (no, really … I’m going to try!) thoughts:
- Everyday People: Director Jim McKay’s slice-of-life drama is interesting, but I found it to be a less-compelling film than his previous work Our Song. On a side-note, when McKay was introducing the film, I turned to my friend and asked, “At what point is a director no longer “new.” This is McKay’s third film. In fact, I saw Our Song at the ND/NF a few years ago, so it’s not even his first film to show in the series. It’s no big deal, and it’s not like he’s a big-shot mainstream filmmaker. I’m just saying ….
- The initial concept of Everyday People involved a bunch of New Yorkers sending in letters to HBO describing individual stories of life in the City. These stories were then workshopped with a bunch of actors (many of whom, apparently, are in the actual film) and improvised as scenes to eventually fit around a story, or more appropriately, a situation. This “story” centers around Raskin’s, a Jewish deli in a primarily black neighborhood of Brooklyn which is having to close (and lay-off its staff) to make way for a huge new development.The most interesting part of this film to me was actually the fact that “Raskin’s” was really the relatively recently closed dairy kosher deli Ratner’s, which was, in fact, an institution on the Lower East Side for many years, until business got so bad, it was closed and the space was added on to the ever-growing-in-popularity Lansky Lounge. I found it interesting that they chose to make Ratner’s a Brooklyn institution rather than simply keep the LES locale, but that was obviously due to the community they wanted to represent.
- No. 17: This film is a very unfortunate Israeli documentary dealing with the after-effect of a bus bombing in Northern Israel that claimed 17 lives. I say “unfortunate” because there’s a great idea here, but the filmmakers just missed the boat. The film focuses on the search for the identity of one of the victims whose body was charred and mutilated by the explosion beyond all recognition. Apparently, this was the first time that any of the victims of a terrorist bombing in Israel had gone unidentified for so long.
Director David Ofek had a great idea of constructing the documentary as a murder mystery, not to find the identity of the terrorist but of this one victim. Unfortuantely, he also had the idea of creating a film about life in Israel in the midst of terrorist activity, and that’s really a completely different film. The hunt for the victim’s identity is repeatedly interrupted by what amount to brief profiles of various Israelis the filmmakers encounter during their investigation. Yes, they’re tangentally related to the case, but what we learn about them doesn’t actually involve the case or even this specific bus bombing.
The film basically looks like an episode of Cold Case Files created as a high school film project. The storytelling is very sloppy with bits of information repeated over-and-over, and in a film that runs only 75 minutes, all that means is that it should be even shorter. Also, while the film does have a definitive conclusion and they did, in fact, discover the victim’s identity (and show how the police really just let this case slip off their radars), there are tons of holes in the story, and they spend virtually no time showing the difficulties they encountered. In fact, during the Q&A session after the screening, Ofek and his producer told several little stories that would have made the film that much more interesting and complete. For one thing, it seems that the police never identified the victim simply because there was no system in place (or they disregarded it, I’m still not sure) to cross-reference the unidentified victim information from a Northern Israel bus-bombing with the eventual missing person report filed by the victim’s family in Southern Israel. By the way, Israel? It ain’t so big! Also left-out of the film and impossible to know were there not a Q&A session was a piece of information that had been in the police file from the initial interviews but never followed-up and that the filmmakers present as this surprise discovery that ultimately helps them crack the case.
I understand that maybe they didn’t want to create an indictment of the Israeli police, but the documentary is incomplete. I’m not suggesting it needed to present a bias, but Ofek spends too much time worrying about tangental life-in-Israel stories and not enough on the hook of the film — the mystery itself. There is one fantastic section where we get to see a sketch-artist at work, interviewing two witnesses in an attempt to draw a representation of the victim. I don’t know whether this particular sketch artist’s methods are common, but the representation of the process and seeing the resulting sketch is pretty incredible.
No. 17 will air on the Sundance Channel sometime this year. I wish I could recommend watching it because there are interesting bits here and there, and both central ideas — the mystery and the representations of life-in-Israel — are interesting. Unfortunately, this is just a case where the movie as a whole is not nearly as good as the stories it is trying to tell.
McKay’s films have a very naturalistic feel to them. The improvisational aspect of the workshops acts as a catalyst for script development, and usually helps this real-life aspect of the films. The people talk like people talk, for lack of a better phrase. But Everyday People feels as average as the description placed upon the characters by its title. I’m not sure whether the dialogue is simply too blatant (or “on the nose” as development people like to say) in what it is trying to communicate or if the actors simply aren’t good enough, but the “real” of this film gets lost because just about everyone always seems like they’re performing rather than just being. There certainly is no breakout talent like Kerry Washington, whose performance in Our SOng propelled her career forward into major Hollywood fare. Additionally, I’m a big proponent of not tying up all the loose ends at the end of the movie, but the climax of this film is flapping in the wind just a bit too much. In fact, there’s a scene where the owner of the deli happens upon his pastry chef frosting several cakes for the weekend. To use an incredibly unsophisticated metaphor, this film is like a slice-of-cake missing the frosting. (OK English majors, that was a simile! Sue me!)
Everyday People brings up many issues about city life, race relations, urban development, absentee fathers and a slew of other interesting and important topics. In this case, the variety of issues is both the film’s strength and weakness. There’s so much going on that nohing carries enough dramatic weight to really sink in. Still, if I were either of two certain Chicago critics, I’d give it a cautious thumbs-up. It’s an interesting film, and McKay is a talented director. And besides, it’s going to premiere on HBO in a couple months: there are worse ways to spend a Saturday night!
OK … so I’ve still got to work on brief!
Out of Focus 