Interview. Jessica Yu.

Jessica Yu's followup to In the Realms of the Unreal, Protagonist, premiered at Sundance and we had two people on the ground who caught it and sent immediate word to the Daily. Brian Darr sets up the doc: "Posed with the problem of making a documentary with the great tragedician Euripides as an inspiration, Yu put out a call for people ready to tell their stories of a cathartic awakening that they had been traveling for too long down the wrong path." Craig Phillips noted that it "reminds me a bit of Errol Morris's Fast, Cheap, Out of Control, as it's an ambitious film with a quartet of subjects that don't always fully connect with each other but fascinate anyway."

Now that Protagonist is beginning a tour of theaters around the US, Aaron Hillis talks with Yu about interweaving four personal tales of catharsis and resolution.

Updated through 11/30.

"[E]ven if Yu is ultimately less interested in the intellectual, philosophical, or the spiritual than the strictly dramatic, her film makes for an engaging look at how we can lie to ourselves even as we search for an elusive truth," writes Michael Koresky at indieWIRE.

ST VanAirsdale talks with Yu, too, at the Reeler.

Updates, 11/27: "[F]ascinating, often touching stuff... is too neatly sculpted into highly intellectualized mounds of human observation intended for no other reason than to flatter Yu's fetish with Greek narrative plot structure and give her a platform to exhibit her latest animated achievements," writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant.

In the Voice, Lisa Katzman tells the story behind Protagonist and Aaron Hillis follows up on his interview with a review: "Yu's rousing, difficult-to-classify exercise in parallel storytelling is surprisingly accessible, and all the more insightful for it."

Updates, 11/28: "Perhaps we're missing out on the whole classic-tragedy bit that is as true in contemporary society as it was in Euripides' time, but the film is at its best when it's allowing its subjects to tell their stories and not distracting us with, you know, puppets," writes Sara Vilkomerson in the New York Observer.

"[M]y respect for puppeteering has gone up tenfold," notes Robert Cashill. "Protagonist is a unique treatment of an unlikely subject, one that manages to be quite compelling even if you're at first a little resistant to its unorthodox aesthetic. But this was all, ahem, Greek to Yu as well, and that she approached the various aspects of the production with an open mind and heart makes for an absorbing, and fully cinematic, experience. She has pulled the strings extremely well."

Updates, 11/29: "Everyone in Yu's production has enough stories to fill an entire movie, but that's essential to its effectiveness," writes Eric Kohn in the New York Press. "The plots follow similar trajectories, but the revelations are in the individual details."

Cathleen Rountree also talks with Yu.

For Filmmaker, Damon Smith talks with Yu "about Greek tragedy, human nature, and the creative challenges she faced making Protagonist."

Updates, 11/30: "The four men who relate their life stories in Protagonist, Jessica Yu's enthralling documentary exploration of people with obsessive needs for control and self-mastery, are all disillusioned (and extremely articulate) true believers," writes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "In all four men, the loss of certainty has far-reaching consequences."

"The film bears the mark of a real directorial talent, eager to push the documentary form in inventive directions, just like Errol Morris and Werner Herzog, and for that alone, it deserves a nod of appreciation," writes Noel Murray at the AV Club. "But while Yu is a hell of a filmmaker, her work to date has been ridiculously overdetermined. Where some documentarians approach their subjects and say, 'Tell me your story,' Yu seems to say, 'Let me tell you what your story is.'"

Online listening tip. Yu's a guest on the Leonard Lopate Show.

Protagonist and The Diving Bell and the Butterfly might not seem to have much in common at first glance, admits Anthony Kaufman. "But perhaps proving Yu's point: the story of French Elle editor Jean-Dominique Bauby is similarly Euripidean: brash workaholic womanizer suffers stroke and finds redemption and humanity in the end..."

Posted by dwhudson at November 26, 2007 12:47 PM