Berlinale Forum, 2/11.

Wednesday began with two more movies from the "Real Stories form a Free South Africa" section of the program: The Devil Breaks My Heart 10 Years Later and Home. Devil focuses on four young, poor men ten years ago and now. It paints a fairly bleak picture because of the fact that so little has changed for them in the intervening ten years. One is facing jail time, one drinks all day with his friends - partially out of fear of going outside into the violent, crime plagued streets - and one survives on the meager amounts of food he and his family can grow on their farm. Only one has progressed from his childhood, living a comfortable life as a member of the South African national rugby team. When he visits his old hometown, he's a hero - everyone knows him, waves and shouts his name. Does this mean that, born to poverty in South Africa, one has a one in four chance of breaking out of it?

Home focuses on a family in the violence-ravaged town of Bhambayi. Ten years ago, the Apartheid government kept this tiny town in constant fear. Nearly 11,000 lives were lost here alone and the inhabitants are still recovering today. Although it is still a very poor area, things are looking up, with government subsidized building developments and a lot less violent crime. Overall, these are two sobering, honest views of modern South Africa.

Agadez Nomade FM is another documentary out of Africa; this time, it's Niger. It's about a small town made entirely of mud buildings and the local radio station, the movie's namesake. The colors are beautiful burnt oranges and browns and, while the imagery is fit for a postcard, there is no real beginning or end, no clear narrative or direction, in fact, no structure whatsoever. Which is why I found it worthwhile only for the cinematography.

The fourth documentary of the day came in the form of a stirring, fascinating, thought-provoking film by a pair of Israeli filmmakers. Out of the Forest focuses on the town of Ponar (in Poland before and during WWII, now in Lithuania) and the diary of a Polish man living there during those nightmare years. Ponar was the site of more than 100,000 murders (most of victims were Jews) by SS troops in the time between 1941 and 1944. There is no archival footage and there are no photos from the period; instead, the film relies on sensitive interviews with residents of the area, the few miraculous survivors, people forced to help the killers and so on. No one is willing to take any responsibility for anything that happened, of course, with everyone placing the blame firmly on everyone else. Though the film offers few answers, it raises several provocative questions, including, naturally, the crucial one: "How did this happen?"

The perfect anecdote to such a heavy documentary was the Japanese film that followed. Hard Luck Hero is a hyperactive, ridiculously fast-paced, sugar rush of a movie. It begins with a cook being forced into a kickboxing match against a national champion. When he accidentally wins the match, the film steps on the accelerator and never lets up. It follows three parallel stories to their final, literal collision. Very funny at times, it'll leave you exhausted, feeling something like a sugar crash.

The day concluded with Dealer from Hungarian director Benedek Fliegauf. Dealer is an overlong, contrived drama following the life of a drug dealer. Every deal he meets blabbers on and on in a pretentious, pseudo-philosophical tone (with very looong pauses between sentences). The film strives for a heady, intellectual atmo but never breaks away from the superficial. The cinematography is moody and dark, with every scene bathed in a pale blue light. The lighting and pacing suggest the filmmaker is heavily influenced by Tarkovsky's Solaris, but where Solaris raised several existential questions worth raising, the only question I had after Dealer was, "Why is every shot a tracking shot?" I have already heard a bit of buzz about this film, and it has all the earmarks of a real buzz-generator, so I have to give it a pre-emptive "over-rated."

Well, the fest may be almost over, but there are still almost 20 films for me to see. Bis dann, Cory.

Posted by dwhudson at February 12, 2004 1:16 PM