Berlin Dispatch. 4.

Why today's a short day is a long story, but I'm glad to have finally met someone I'd been meaning to meet for some time now, and besides, the week ahead will be intense. So just two films on this Sunday, beginning with Grbavica - now don't read that Berlinale synopsis since it reveals too much. This one's got all you need to know plot-wise.

Set in present-day Sarajevo, Grbavica is both an effective character study and a window-onto-a-world sort of film; for context, I'd like to translate just a bit from the Q&A with director Jasmila Zbanic in the press material:

Q: "Grbavica" is a word that will likely be a tongue-twister for most foreigners. What is "Grbavica"?

A: Grbavica is a district not far from the house I live in. During the war, this area was occupied by the Serbian-Montenegran army and turned into an army depot in which the civilians were tortured. When you walk through Grbavica today, you see buildings typical for the period of the socialist regime, stores, children, dogs... and at the same time, you sense that there's something unspoken, unspeakable, invisible, this strange feeling you get when you're in a place where there's been great human suffering. Grbavica is a microcosm in which Esma and the other characters live.

Esma (Mirjana Karanovic) is a single mother; her daughter, Sara (Luna Mijovic), is twelve and looks like Nena might have looked at that age, though I'd guess Sara's got a mean streak that runs a bit wider and deeper. Both actresses are utterly convincing.

Esma and Sara are tight, but there's also friction. As we get to know them, we're rapidly approaching a point at which Esma will no longer be able to keep the secret from Sara that's been fermenting inside her all these years. The notion that the atrocities of war reverberate from one generation to the next is, of course, not new, but the telling here is both engaging and vital.

If you like A Prairie Home Companion, the radio show, you'll probably like A Prairie Home Companion, the movie. Or, if you're like me, and you like the idea of the radio show but can somehow never bring yourself to actually listen to more than about ten minutes of it, you may end up enjoying the film anyway, as I did.

There was just something about reentering the world of Robert Altman again this afternoon that brought on a smile. The overlapping dialogue, the simultaneous slow pans and zooms, the actors taking their characters and running off wildly with them. The set-up: the show's been sold to rich Texans who plan to shut it down. Tonight's the last broadcast, and we follow it pretty much in real time. Oddly, Garrison Keillor and Ken Lazebnik's screenplay doesn't stick to that simple realist notion, though. We get two subplots, one with Guy Noir (Kevin Kline, "really hamming it up," as David D'Arcy noted this afternoon) and one with an angel. Yes, an angel (Virginia Madsen). Both wander around in separate movies of their own.

The fun's to be had with Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin as Yolanda and Rhonda Johnson, sisters, the remains of what used to be a family act, reminiscing up a seemingly improvised storm; John C Reilly and Woody Harrelson as Lefty and Dusty, singing cowboys with a number about bad jokes you can't help laughing at; Keillor's actually surprisingly intriguing as himself; Lindsay Lohan holds her own as Yolanda's daughter; Tommy Lee Jones swoops in as the rich Texan and reminds you what "presence" means; LQ Jones has a sweet turn as an aging songster getting his last kicks from an affair with the lunch lady (Marylouise Burke); and Maya Rudolph is the only one of the bunch to actually underplay her role, as a sort of Ms Fix-it.

All in all, an amusing 100 minutes, ranking neither with the best nor the worst of Altman's work.

Posted by dwhudson at February 12, 2006 9:42 AM