Opening locally this week are two new movies that inevitably dredge up another of those dreaded, age-old conundrums: Is the purpose of film (and, indeed, of all art) to raise questions or to answer them?
The Russian film The Return weighs in squarely on the "raising questions" side. The Israeli import Broken Wings takes a more conventionally satisfying approach. Both films manage to tantalize us, however, with dissimilar takes on the same subject. Both offer accounts of characters defined by something absent from their lives. At the most basic level, these are films about missing fathers.
In The Return, a father mysteriously reappears after a 12-year absence and takes his two young sons on what a Hollywood marketing hack might call "a camping trip from Hell." Dad turns out to be a rough and inscrutable man who keeps his children in a state of apprehension by alternately baiting, berating and dangling nuggets of praise before the boys. One of the sons, eager for a father's love and approval, immediately accepts the man, while the other boy just as quickly begins questioning the adult's judgment and butting heads with him. Tensions simmer, sparks fly, and mysterious and terrible things ensue.
The tale here is an essentially simple one, but it gains considerable complexity from the nuances of its telling. Director Andrey Zvyagintsev invites us to consider the film in a variety of ways — as an emotional-psychological drama, and even as a sort of mystical parable. The father (who remains nameless throughout) is positioned as an Old Testament God, a stern figure who demands respect and thrives on testing his flock (there's a little B.F. Skinner by way of Rambo in him, too). The very act of accepting him becomes a leap of faith, as pounded home by the mother's explanation of the hows and whys of his return. "He just came," is the sum total of her response.
Zvyagintsev creates an icy, elemental poetry by subtracting information rather than by supplying explanations. Is the father really who he claims to be? Is his presence benevolent or something else? Zvyagintsev isn't saying. The significant details of The Return almost all occur not just off screen, but in between the lines, accumulating bit by bit until they reach a critical mass.
The real story here unfolds beneath the surface, in a slow, elegant, austere way that resists revelations, and where not much "happens" but everything is implied. There's an almost primal power to this magnificently photographed film, evoking feelings that seem to spring from ancient, dark places, like some half-remembered dream, its meaning just out of reach.
The meanings in Broken Wings are more clearly stated, but no less resonant. There's a father here too, albeit a dead one, seen only as a faded image briefly glimpsed in a grainy videotape halfway through the movie. Still, everyone in the film lives in the looming shadow of this small man, reacting to an invisible presence every bit as potent as the daddy id-force in The Return.
Broken Wings shows us a more-or-less ordinary, middle-class family shattered by personal tragedy. There's a working mom, a cynical teenage son and his slightly older, wannabe-rock-star sister, and two youngsters too small to understand what they're feeling. The film is essentially a record of the ways in which the various characters express and repress their confusion, anger and grief. Eventually, it becomes an account of their nascent attempts at reconnecting with the world.
Broken Wings more closely resembles a slightly unconventional soap opera than it does the metaphysical connect-the-dots of The Return, although you're unlikely to ever see a soap opera that depicts its characters and their relationships in such a natural and finely detailed manner. These characters feel real, and the environment in which their story unfolds is universal enough to be a familiar one.
The Israel depicted in the film could be almost anywhere, just another outpost of global McCulture, complete with bong-huffing kids in backward baseball caps and Sid Vicious T-shirts. There are no political messages to be found anywhere in the film, no looming security fences, no Palestinian terrorists shooting babies through the heads. Some may come to Broken Wings expecting just that sort of local color, but, frankly, there's none to be found here. Be thankful for small favors.
Local News: Year of the Chicken, Year of the Snake Madstone Theaters continues its commitment to the local arts community this week with a screening of Risk, filmmaker Dave DeBorde's locally shot comedy about a salesman who finds that playing a board game with his new coworkers can be pretty serious business. The premiere and cast party happens at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 16. For more information, visit www.riskmovie.com.
Then, on Wednesday, May 19, Madstone presents Tampa artist Jeff Whipple's short film Chicken Feet, a dark comedy about romantic obsession that recently won the audience award at the HCC Ybor Festival of the Moving Image. The evening kicks off at 8 p.m., with $5 getting you into the screening and the post-film party. (Cocktails! Snacks!) For more info about Chicken Feet, the artist and the event, visit www.jeffwhipple.com.
Meanwhile, another major player in the Tampa Bay film scene, The Sleep of Reason Cinema Series, returns on Saturday, May 14, with an evening of rare films from Hong Kong's legendary Shaw Brothers studios. If you're only familiar with Shaw Brothers from badly dubbed videos of old Kung Fu flicks like The Five Venoms or, indirectly, from Tarantino's Kill Bill homage, you're in for a treat. The Shaws produced hundreds of wonderful movies over the course of many decades, and not just martial arts stuff. Melodrama, musical fantasies and horror were all part of the Shaws' agenda, and the films that Sleep of Reason has slated for this week rank among the studio's very best, and very strangest.
First up is the sublime Intimate Confessions of a Chinese Courtesan, the gorgeously shot tale of a young girl's sexual initiation by the brothel madam who becomes her lover and eventual nemesis. An erotic how-to guide that's part murder mystery and part revenge flick, the film is as poetic as it is perverse, and is probably one of the most artfully executed exploitation movies ever made. Director Chor Yun, who made dozens of fine films for the Shaws, may even remind you a bit of Mario Bava with his perfectly placed swatches of dry ice and elegant yet delirious palette of shocking pinks, greens and purples.
The top half of the evening's double bill is filled by Killer Snakes, a gritty slice of Hong Kong sleaze that Sleep of Reason curator Brian Taylor likens to the work of Abel Ferrara. The movie's starting point is sort of "Willard with snakes, in Hong Kong!" — but the film is much more. Set on the mean streets of '70s Hong Kong, and populated by an urban underbelly of pimps, prostitutes, thieves and assorted, amoral riffraff, Killer Snakes is a devastating social critique as well as a nightmarish and thoroughly seedy psychodrama of the first order. Tough, lurid and essential viewing.
The evening kicks off at 7:30 p.m. at Covivant Gallery, 4906 N. Florida Ave., Tampa. Requested donation is $5. Find out more at www.covivant.com or e-mail sleepofreasoncinema@ yahoo.com.
Contact Film Critic Lance Goldenberg at lance.goldenberg@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in May 13-19, 2004.