PIFF Dispatch. 7.

You know that torture as a plot device has gotten out of hand when it has drifted down to a German kids' films.

The torture scene occurs about 40 minutes into The Treasure of the White Falcons (Der Schatz der weissen Falken) when the girl bully Marie (Victoria Scherer) who is the leader of a gang of townies captures one of the "townhousies," a kid whose group of friends are richer. Marie and her friends have tied him to a tree and are trying to elicit info from him, raining knuckle sandwiches on the lad. But as we all now know, torture doesn't work, and the kid collapses, primarily because he needs an insulin shot.

The main character is Jan (David Bode), and he and his two friends embark on an adventure as their summer is coming to an end, at which time Jan and his family move away. Their mission is to find the "treasure" that an earlier generation of male friends left somewhere in or near a nearby castle. One day they trek to the castle, with Marie and her deputies in pursuit. Their search culminates in a toothless version of The Descent, and Jan learns his life lessons. The bulk of the film is one huge flashback as the adult Jan tells his daughter the story of this one summer, by way of explaining why they have stopped at a cemetery on a snowy day.

It's a peculiarity of the Portland International Film Festival that there always seem to be three or four German kids films on offer, and Christian Zûbert's film, though it is from 2005, is one of this year's representatives. It's a very Disneyfied tale, a lesson-filled story of transition from youth to a first experience of separation and loss and, in the end, is fine for what it is, but Falcons hardly qualifies for the high profile that placement in a film festival bestows.

One of several Mexican films in this year's selection, In the Pit (En el Hoyo) is a documentary that examines the lives of numerous construction workers erecting a new traffic-diverting bridge in Mexico City. It must be said that, for all his bravery as a cinematographer, Juan Carlos Rulfo's film plays into residue notions of construction workers from the 1960s, with their hooting at women passing by below, and their tendency to make assertions such as that "being a faggot" is the lowest form of work. It's noble to let the working men speak for themselves, and some of them have interesting off hours amusements (one named Vincencio Vazquez races horses), but the film is satisfied to dwell on the hardships of their jobs rather than also explore the political and economic climate that surrounds such a massive undertaking. A few of the workers are frank about the corruption of everyday life in Mexico, but these views end up having no more currency than folklore or urban myths. On the other hand, the AV Club's Scott Tobias liked the film as did Slant's Nick Schager.

Mystic Ball [site] is an engaging if limited documentary about one Canadian man's growing obsession with a little known sport. Greg Hamilton, a musician and martial artist, caught sight of a man in a park one day practicing Chinlone, an obscure Asian sport, and became so entranced that he spent the next two decades trying to master it, even to the extent of visiting and studying under its foremost practitioners in Myanmar. Working up a world tour of the sport's stars and the creation of this movie are other expressions of his love of the sport, which is a cross between hacky sack and soccer, with complex counter-intuitive foot moves. As a filmmaker, Hamilton's focus is so precise that he has no time for, say, the political conditions of countries such as Thailand or Myanmar (formerly Burma) where the sport thrives. The bare bones straightforwardness of the film highlights Hamilton's enthusiastic personality. Jason Anderson, writing at Eye Weekly, finds the film "lovely" and eFilmCritic Jason Whyte is equally enthusiastic.

It's surprisingly how closely The Host (Gwoemul, which means "creature") hews to the conventions of the Godzilla films, while at the same time deviating from them powerfully but without consequently losing the audience. The monster is formed by mankind (or at least Americans in the form of a doctor in a US Army morgue, Scott Wilson, who orders his Korean underling to pour formaldehyde down an open drain - and directly into the Han River - in defiance of Korean law).

In fact, you could call this film Little Miss Sunshine Meets Gojira, as a dysfunctional family hops into a van in order to help a little girl. It's six years since the chemical waste disposal, and a bizarre aquatic lizard-like creature has emerged from the Han River (and early in the film, about 10 minutes in). It chases people down streets and flings them about. A child is a terrified witness to the carnage.

The family in the van includes the blonde-dyed Park Gang-Du (Kang-ho Song), an irresponsible single father who lives and works with his father in a riverside food hut (if the movie were American and made several years ago, this part would have been taken by Steve Zahn, Philip Seymour Hoffman or Jack Black). Also in the van are his father, his brother, and his sister, who happens to be an Olympic archer whose Achilles Heel is hesitation. They go in search Gang-Du's daughter (the adorable Ko A-sung), who has been scooped up by the monster during its initial spree, and been stashed Alien-like within the interstices of one of the river's many bridges.

The Host sports convincing special effects (manufactured in an American studio) and comic set pieces, one of which mocks the public grieving process. Where the film departs from the Japanese model is in the elegiac music as the monster is felled, and the somberness of the end (not to give too much away, but director Joon-ho Bong takes a page out of the Guillermo del Toro playbook). Like Jimmy Stewart at the end of Vertigo, Gang-Du has matured but at a cost. In the film's beginning, he irresponsibly hands his daughter a can of Hite, an alcoholic beverage, while watching a sporting event on TV. But in the film's closing images, Gang-Du, reformed, lays out a full meal for his young charge, and turns off the TV set. There's something intensely poignant about the gesture.

Robert Keser (Bright Lights) and Darcy Paquet (Koreanfilm.org) offer detailed and enthusiastic reviews.

Posted by dwhudson at February 25, 2007 9:09 AM