The 13th edition of the week long Mumbai film festival (MFF) kicked off on 14th of october & like an obedient movie buff i was present to reap the benefits along with my fellow movie geeks. Each day I will try & post my views, opinions & thoughts about the films I see. So here are my musings of the 3 films I saw on day 1.
Adieu Gary (Goodbye Gary)
Language: French
Year: 2008
Director: Nassim Amouche
Adieu Gary is one of those films that creates its own little universe of characters & demands us to immerse ourselves in its amusing & dreamy world. The setting is an old forlorn garden city of France which used to have a factory which is now closed down. And yet some people decide to still linger around. We meet a 50-something widower Francis who has 2 sons Samir, who's returning after a stint in prison for selling weed & Icham who has a boring job but is learning Arabic to get a more 'happening' job in Morocco. Francis has an affair with his neighbour Maria who in turn has a dreamy, jobless teenage son who spends most of his day watching old American westerns. Oh & there's also the beautiful Nejma, a North American waitress that Samir falls in love with & the oleaginous Abdel who hangs around the street corners. Apart from these there are various other characters we are introduced to who mostly bask in the summer sun.
The film is not plot heavy & has more to do with references & imagery. It brings forth the interesting fact that the lives of the unemployed are probably as routined as those of the employed. There are character back stories here that need figuring out on your own accord. The acting is mostly good all around but Jean Pierre Bacri stands out as the conscientious Francis. There's one party scene in particular that caught my fancy where Nejma starts to sing with a man playing an Oud & the camera pans a full 360 around the party before coming back & resting on Nejma & the instrumentalist again.
If you are ready to be patient & like to embroil yourself in the happenings on screen you will find Adieu Gary lingering in your mind long after the end credits roll.
Moneyball
Language: English
Year: 2011
Director: Bennet Miller
I was desperately looking forward to watching Moneyball at MFF for 2 reasons- 1. Aaron Sorkin & 2. Steven Zalliain. Yep, the 2 phenomenal screenwriters have collaborated on the script of this zany, intelligent, smart & moving biographical sports drama.
Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane, GM of the Oakland A's who are down in the dumps ("There are rich teams, there are poor teams then there's 50 feet of crap & then there's us") owing to a losing streak & the impending doom of losing 3 star players. Beane has got to build a team worthy of winning the championship & he's got zilch budget. Enter Peter Brand, played to potent perfection by Jonah Hill who finally gets to dig his teeth in a role of substance after playing the comedy whiz kid in innumerable teen comedies. Brand is a nerdy Yale graduate, a sabermetrics pioneer who crunches the numbers to arrive at a strict cost effective analysis of baseball players.
Pitt is simply superb as Billy Beane & immerses himself completely in the role. Our heart goes out for him right from the word go & the passion is right up front with each movement & each dialogue. This is undoubtedly one of Pitt's most memorable performances of his career.
Also present is Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman as team manager Art Howe, a thorn in the side of Bean's plans. Hoffman doesn't have much screen time yet leaves an indellible mark on the movie.
The witty dialogue & tight script is no surprise given the dynamic duo that worked on it & the cinematography by by Wally Pfister makes for an inviting atmosphere. Also notable is how cleverly real, authentic baseball footage is used within the movie.
Moneyball is a business movie that's disguised as a sports movie. It's that rare occasion when big budget Hollywood decides to serve up something inventive, sharp & wise, It's a sumptuous feast.
Armadillo
Language: Danish
Year: 2010
Director: Janus Metz
Armadillo is a hard hitting documentary that will make you thankful for the fact that you can sit in the comfortable confines of your home & walk around freely on the city streets because there are other parts of the world (not very far from ours) where war, destruction & death stare people right in the face no matter where they turn.
The film follows a group of Danish soldiers who are on their first mission in Afghanistan at a forward operating base named FOB Armadillo. We are witness to how their lives play out for the next 6 months. Needless to say its not very pretty.
Armadillo is raw & unhinged. It puts us, the audience out there in the battlefield. It goes out to prove that no matter how much planning & plotting goes around, war is sudden, aggressive, brutal, gut wrenching & devastating.
There's one edit near the mid-way point that is heart thumpingly visceral. The soldiers out of boredom are busy playing black ops on their Xbox when the camera zooms in & the image of a pixelated cartoon-y blast merges with the green flames of a night vision camera. Splendid!
And then there are the scenes where the soldiers go out to ask the villagers of how secure they feel. This is when you realize just how helpless the people of the region are. How overnight their entire livelihood, their houses, cattle, crops & women & children shall be lost. They are damned if they do , damned if they don't as one Afghan farmer puts it innocently "You don't die, the Taliban don't die...its just us who dies"
Though I did feel that at times the film sensationilized certain sequences, yet at the end of it whatever you think of the war or even of the men’s actions, it’s impossible not to care for them and the suffering Afghans equally. And to maintain that balance for a war film is quite an achievement
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