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weekendwarriorblog · 5 years

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WHAT TO WATCH THIS WEEKEND August 2, 2019 - LUCE, THE NIGHTINGALE, TEL AVIV ON FIRE, THE RED SEA DIVING RESORT

There are some really good movies out this week, and I want to shine a bit of focus on some of the limited releases before getting to the bigger releases.

First up, there’s Julius Onah’s LUCE (NEON), starring Kelvin Harrison Jr. from last year’s excellent Monsters and Men as the title character, a well-liked African-American high school student who seems to have it all together. His adopted parents, played by Naomi Watts and Tim Roth, love their son and are willing to give him the benefit of a doubt when one of Luce’s teachers, played indelibly by Octavia Spencer, finds something in Luce’s locker and tries convincing his parents that maybe he’s not the perfect son.

This film deals with the difficulties of being an African-American student in modern times and the expectations put on you. In Luce’s case, he was adopted after being rescued from an African war zone by his adopted parents, and they think he can do no wrong. When Luce’s teacher finds something in his locker, she thinks he’s putting on a front and fooling everyone but her.

Luce reminds me quite a bit of HBO’s Big Little Lies, a series I absolutely loved, because it’s about the interactions of these characters and their differing viewpoint on what’s happening. It also reminded me of the remarkable work done by Todd Field in his two movies, particularly In the Bedroom.

The performances all around are fantastic, making me think that this could work just as well as a play*, but there are some nice surprises in there like Andrea Bang as Stephanie Kim, a fellow student who might have been involved in an assault. I would not be remotely shocked if Spencer gets another Oscar nomination for her role in this (which ends up being far more complex a role than the one she played in the thriller Ma), but the entire cast and the way Onah tells this story is equally riveting.

What’s especially good about Luce is that it’s likely to start a lot of conversations, hopefully between white and black viewers, but it’s just one of the better adult dramas this year, and I’m sure Onah* has a strong future ahead if he keeps making movies like this. (Note: I feel a little silly because when I wrote this I didn’t realize that the movie was indeed based on a play and that Onah had directed The Cloverfield Paradox which went straight to Netflix.)

Rating: 8/10

Jennifer Kent’s THE NIGHTINGALE (IFC Films) is the follow-up to her 2014 horror film The Babadook, which is thought to be one of the best horror films of the past decade – and I’m not going to disagree with that sentiment.

The Nightingale is a very different movie, a period revenge thriller set during the days when Australia was caught in a war between its indigenous people and the British army. In this environment is Aisling Francisoci’s Clare, a young Irish ex-convict who has been bought into service by an Army officer (Sam Claflin), who will not release her after she fulfills her duties. One night, her husband and baby daughter are killed, sending Clare on a path of vengeance. Along for that journey is Baykali Ganambarr’s Billy, an indigenous tracker who knows that being black means he’s just as at risk of getting murdered as Clare.

This is not the groundbreaking follow-up some might be expecting, but it’s still very good, and it proves what a talented filmmaker Kent is, both with the screenplay that’s authentic to the times and the way she directs

I think what surprised me most about The Nightingale was how pretty boy actor Sam Claflin is able to play a complete slimeball, which is very much against the characters we’ve seen him play before. This is as much a testament to Claflin as it is to Kent for realizing he had it in him.

Some people might try to sway you off seeing Kent’s film due to the violence, which includes brutal rape, but honestly, I’ve seen far worse from male filmmakers like Lars von Trier and Gasper Noé, and in this case, it’s keeping with the way women would have been treated during these times.

I don’t think The Nightingale will be for everyone, especially those who first became fans of Kent’s from her earlier venture into horror. This is a tough and serious drama that still has genre elements, but it leaves a lasting imprint on you, not always in a good way.

Rating: 7.5/10

Lastly, I want to draw special attention to Sameh Zoabi’s TEL AVIV ON FIRE (Cohen Media), a witty comedy set in modern-day Israel where a Palestinian soap opera filled with dysfunctional characters becomes the center of a conflict more bizarre than the one in the Middle East. It stars Kais Nashif as Salam, a consultant on his uncle’s show who gets stopped at a checkpoint by a soldier Assi (Yaniv Biton) who doesn’t like the way that the Israeli soldier is portrayed on the show. He offers Salam a few tips, and Salam’s uncle and the show’s primadonna star like them enough to promote Salam to writer… except he relies on Assi to help him with that duty.

The movie definitely veers into the world of the absurd as Assi has to contend with his wife (an avid fan of the series) and Salam is trying to reconnect with an old flame, all the while dealing with the tense situation between the Israelis and Palestinians in the region.

This movie mainly surprised me because I didn’t go into it expecting a comedy, so when it proved to be particularly witty and entertaining, I was glad I made the effort to see it.

In fact, I had a chance to speak with Zoabi last week, an interview I’ll be running soon, but I wanted to share a few tidbits from it now.

“The comedy decision was more of a natural progression as my voice as a filmmaker,” he told me. “My first feature was a comedy, and I went to school here at Columbia University and did my masters here and did my BA in Tel Aviv, which is interesting because in Tel Aviv, I studied mostly European cinema more than American cinema, so the arthouse world is more prominent in the studies there. Then you come to the U.S., and it’s a totally different business, which is entertainment. I always felt like it was interesting if you could find your voice in the middle where you can be talking about something important, but still entertain at the same time. I think gradually I realized while watching the news and the media all the time, it’s always the fighters and the victims, and there’s nothing in between, which is a daily reality that I grew up with, which is that people are funny. People don’t wake up in the morning and think, ‘Oh, my God, today I’m going to go kill five, six people.’ They wake up in the morning and they still have to do [everyday] things. These are the characters that never make it to the big media. I grew up with comedies. People in my village, my town, my family, they never talk about serious things. It’s almost like every third line has to be a joke. I always said that if I want to talk about these issues and I want to present the reality closer to what it is, I think humor is an essential part of it. It comes really natural. Once I look at a situation, it’s almost like back home when I tell my friends a serious story, everyone is waiting for the punchline. It’s not an effort. It’s something you grow up with.”

“As a writer, you evolve of course, and hopefully you get better from one film to the next, but the voice of it has always been there, and I love the creation of comedy, because it brings people together in different ways.”

“For this film in particular, it cannot be done without a comedy, because it’s all about stereotypes,” he continued. “It’s about how Palestinians see the Israelis and how Israelis see the Palestinians. The best way to deal with it is a comedy, and the seriousness comes from the soap opera.”

“I actually grew up watching more soaps than films. I grew up two TV channels, and my Mom controls the remote, so we always had to watch soap operas. Years after, with all these satellites and millions of stations, there’s more soaps in the Middle East – from Turkey, from Syria, from Lebanon, Egypt. When I grew up, we only watched Egyptian soap operas, and this soap opera in my film is almost an homage to one that was very popular about an Egyptian spy who comes to Tel Aviv. I changed the narrative and made it a woman, but what’s interesting is that when I was writing the film, I was home with my Mom watching one of her soap operas, and she was crying at a moment when I was laughing, because of the overacting. I asked, ‘Mom, do you really believe this?’ and she goes, ‘What? The movies you make are better?’”

I’ll have more from this interview soon, but if you have a chance, do check out Tel Aviv on Fire, which opens at the Quad Cinemaand the Landmark 57in New York on Friday.

Of course, the big movie of the weekend is gonna be Universal Pictures’ FAST AND FURIOUS PRESENTS: HOBBS AND SHAW, and I’ve written quite a bit about that over at The Beat, including my interview with writer/producer Chris Morgan and a box office preview. My review will be live later on Wednesday. Not sure what more I can say about the movie… I enjoyed it!

I’m also excited that A24 is expanding Lulu Wang’s THE FAREWELL nationwide this weekend after it broke into the top 10 last week. I’ve been meaning to see it again myself and probably will this weekend, but it gets my highest recommendation, especially if you want to learn more about Chinese culture and traditions than you may have been able to get out of Crazy Rich Asians. Even though this one also stars Awkwafina, it’s a very different movie and it’s a very different, more dramatic role for the actor, and I wouldn’t be shocked if she’s in the Oscar (and Indie Spirit) conversation at year’s end.

LIMITED RELEASES

Opening in L.A. this Friday at the Landmark Nuart and in New York at the Quad on August 9 is Garret Price’s Love, Antosha, co-produced by Like Crazy director Drake Doremus, which is about actor Anton Yelchin, who was at the peak of his career when his life was cut down suddenly in a bizarre accident. This is a really sold documentary that’s quite heartbreaking, and I want to write more about it and hope to soon…

Opening at New York’s Film Forum on Wednesday is Stephen Wilkes’ doc Jay Myself (Oscilloscope), a film about photographer Jay Maisel, whose six-floor building The Bank on Bowery and Spring Street has been wrapped in mystery until the filmmaker is given access just before Maisel’s planned move after selling the building. It will open in L.A. on August 18.

One movie I had heard about out of Sundance but didn’t have a chance to see was Britt Poulton and Dan Madison’s Them That Follow (1091), which has an amazing cast that includes Oscar winner Olivia Colman, Walton Goggins, Alice Englert, Kaitlyn Dever from Book Smart, Jim Gaffigan, Thomas Mann and more. It takes place in the Appalachias in a community of snake handlers run by the Pastor Lemuel Childs (Goggins) as his daughter Mara (Englert) is getting ready for her wedding day when a secret is revealed about the church.

Lots of odds and ends after that, mostly low-profile stuff really …

Claudio Giovannesi’s Piranhas (Music Box Films) based on the novel by Gomorrah writer Roberto Saviano stars Francesco Di Napoli as a 15-year-old who lives with his mother in Naples in a neighborhood ruled by the Camorra mafia, although he has dreams of leaving, something that gets him involved with selling drugs.

Latin American filmmaker Mariano Llinás’ 14-hour epic La Flor (Grasshopper Films), which premiered at last year’s New York Film Festival, will open at Film at Lincoln Center in New York on Friday. It’se a “love letter to the history of cinema” filmed on three continents in six languages with the director making appearances to explain the structure. I just don’t have 14 hours to see this so I probably never will.

Adam Dick’s Teacher (Cinedigm) stars David Dasmatlhcian (Ant-Man) and veteran comic Kevin Pollak that follows the downward spiral of DastMalchian’s high school English teacher who is trying to protect his students from bullies while challenging a wealthy patron in the community.

The other movies opening this weekend are Fred Grivois’ 15 Minutes of War (Blue Fox Entertainment), starring Alban Lenoir and Olga Kurylenko, based on the 1976 hostage crisis when Somali rebels kidnapped 21 French children; Sara Seligman’s crime-thriller Coyote Lake (Cranked Up), Zach Gayne’s States (Indiecan Entertainment) starring Alex Essoe; and Diane Krueger’s psychological spy thriller The Operative (Vertical), directed by Yuval Adler.

I don’t know much about The Grateful Dead: Meet-Up at the Movies 2019, which is taking place on Thursday, August 1, although apparently, the entire Giants Stadium concert from June 17, 1991 will be screened.

STREAMING AND CABLE

Netflix’s big release of the week is RED SEA DIVING RESORT, a dramatic thriller based on true events starring Chris Evans, Haley Bennett, Michael Kenneth Williams, Alesandro Nivola and more. It deals with the true story of a group of Ethiopian Jews who are seeking refuge from the warlords in Jerusalem, so it’s up to Evans’ Israeli special agent Ari Levinson to find a way to get them out of the country. He does so by having the Israeli government lease a rundown tourist spot in Sudan, to where the Ethiopian refugees can be brought by Michael K. Williams, as the man dedicated to saving them all.

Levinson has to deal with a lot of pushback from the government, including his handler played by Sir Ben Kingsley, but he puts together a crack team of Mossad agents (including Bennett and Nivola) to make this operation happen.

I wanted to like this movie more, due to it being based on an inspirational story, but it’s tone is all over the place, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness, and bouncing back and forth from the serious to the frivolous is not something that works in this case. I just don’t think Gideon Raff, who both wrote and directed this, is a very good filmmaker, and he’s made a fairly bland movie that’s so inconsistent, it’s hard to get

It’s a shame, because this seems like an important story to tell, but when you compare it to something like the recent Hotel Mumbai… or even Terry George’s Hotel Rwanda … it’s obvious why this isn’t getting theatrical distribution.

Rating: 6/10

Also, Cindy Chupack’s Otherwood, starring Angela Bassett, Patricia Arquette and Felicity Huffman will stream starting Friday. They play three friends who are feeling forgotten on Mother’s Day, so they drive to New York to reconnect with their adult sons. (How come MY mother never has done this??!)

Also, it looks like Dear White People is back for its third season, and though I haven’t seen it, creator Justin Simien is a good dude, who I used to work with in his film publicity days, so check it out! (In other words, do as I say, not as I do.)

REPERTORY

METROGRAPH (NYC):

Opening Friday is the Metrograph’s retrospective on Czech New Wave filmmaker Luraj Herz called “In and Out of the Czechoslovak New Wave.” This continues in the tradition in the past year of rep theaters getting into the Czech New Wave, and the series includes the filmmaker’s 1978 take on Beauty and the Beast, his 1981 film Ferat Vampire, and then next week, it will screen a restoration of the filmmaker’s 1969 film The Cremator. Also Friday, Metrograph will begin screening a new 35mm print of Joan Tewkesbury’s Old Boyfriends (1979), starring Talia Shire, John Belushia, Keith Carradine and Richard Jordan. In preparation for the release of Nanfu Wang’s excellent new doc One Child Nation, the Metrograph is also showing her previous two films, Hooligan Sparrow on Saturday (with the filmmaker doing a QnA) and 2017′s I Am Another You on Sunday.

This week’s Late Nites at Metrograph is John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness from 1987, while Playtime: Family Matinees will screen the 1953 monster film The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, which was a huge influence on the making of the original Godzilla. “Pier Paolo Pasolini: A Future Life Part II” concludes this weekend with screenings of 1970’s Notes Towards an African Orestes and Pasolini’s collaboration with Godard, 1963’s La Ricotta, which will screen with three Godard shorts, all in 35mm. Rob Nilsson’s 1996 film Chalk will play a couple more times before the weekend, as well.

FILM FORUM (NYC):

The Forum continues its amazing Burt Lancaster series with Atlantic City and Luchino Visconti’s 1963 film The Leopard on Wednesday, plus John Cassevetes’ 1963 film A Child is Waiting on Weds. and Thurs. 1983’s Local Hero screens on Friday and Saturday and more, as the series continues through August 6.

THE NEW BEVERLY (L.A.):

Tarantino’s movie is still mostly showing Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood for the next few weeks, and it’s also mostly sold out, but the Wednesday matinee James Bond movie continue today with On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), George Lazenby’s only movie as Bond, but a good one nonetheless. The weekend KIDDEE MATINE is Disney’s amazing Mary Poppins (1964), and then Monday’s matinee is John Waters’ original 1988 musical comedy Hairspray.

AERO (LA):

It now looks like the EGYPTIAN THEATRE will shut down for renovations but the Aero is back, taking up the “Highballs and Screwballs” double feature series with My Man Godfrey (1936 )and Danger (1946)on Thursday, followed Friday with a double feature of Billy Wilder’s 1950 classic Sunset Boulevard and Preston Sturges Sullivan’s Travels (1941)… the latter two are in 35mm, the first two as DCP. Friday’s midnight movie is the original Child’s Play, and then Saturday, it’s back to “Highballs and Screwballs” with the Oscar-winning It Happened One Night (1934) and Ida Lupino’s The Hitchhiker (1953). On Sunday, the Art Directors Guild brings Woody Allen’s The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) with production designer Stuart Wurzel in person.

IFC CENTER (NYC)

Apparently, the IFC’s usual series are back… or maybe the theater finally decided to add them to its website because it looks like this began back in early July, and I didn’t see any of this on the site before this week. Anyway, I’ll try to get over the fact that I missed most of July with the August offerings. Weekend Classics: Staff Picks Summer 2019 will screen James Gray’s Two Loversthis weekend, while Waverly Midnights: Staff Picks Summer 2019 will show Stephen Chow’s Kung Fu Hustle and Late Night Favorites: Summer 2019 will show… for the 5,000th time… Ridley Scott’s Alien. (There must be a lot of demand since this seems to show at the IFC Center every month.) Also, “Abbas Kiarostami: A Retrospective” continues over the next few weeks with two more panels by film critic Godfrey Chesire and Jamsheed Akrami this Saturday and Sunday.

FILM OF LINCOLN CENTER (NYC):

“This is Cinema Now: 21stCentury Debuts” concludes on Wednesday with double features of Neighboring Sounds (a fantastic Brazil-set doc) and João Pedro Rodrigues’s 2000 film O Fantasma, as well as a double feature of Eduardo Williams’ The Human Surge and Helena Wittman’s Drift. This week’s free double feature on Thursday is Todd Haynes’ Velvet Goldmine (1998) as well as Alex Ross Perry’s fantastic recent film Her Smell with a reception in between! And did we mention... it’s FREE?!

BAM CINEMATEK(NYC):

BAM’s series “We Can’t Even: Millennials on Film” continues this week with Beach Rats, The Bling Ring, Tangerine, Greta Gerwig’s Oscar-nominated Lady Bird, David Fincher’s The Social Networkand the Edward Snowden doc Citizenfour, basically movies from the last ten to fifteen years that appeal to Millennials. On Saturday, the “Beyond the Canon” series will screen Haifaa Al-Mansour’s Wadja, along with Wim Wenders’ 1974 film Wind in the Cities.

MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (NYC):

The “See It Big! 70mm” series is a bit of a knock-off of what Lincoln Center did a few years back, but some of the same movies will be shown including Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, as well as Alfonso Cuaron’s Roma, plus more in the coming weeks. Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, starring Jennifer Connelly and David Bowie, will screen every afternoon from Thursday to Sunday as part of its “Summer Matinees: Fantastic Worlds” series. (While there, also check out the Jim Henson Exhibition!)

ROXY CINEMA (NYC)

New York’s downtown (and downstairs) arthouse will show the 1966 political thriller Torn Curtain in 35mm on Thursday, Saturday and Sunday.

LANDMARK THEATRES NUART (LA):

This week’s Friday night midnight movie is Tommy Wiseau’s The Roomfrom 2003.

Next week, we have a bunch of wide releases including Paramount’s Dora and the Lost City of Gold, the horror anthology Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, the female-driven crime thriller The Kitchenand more.

#WhatToWatchThisWeekend Movies Reviews TheNightingale Luce RedSeaDivingResort TelAvivOnFire

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biofunmy · 5 years

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When Rape Onscreen Is Directed by a Woman

“Whore!”

The word came sailing out of a man’s mouth after a screening of Jennifer Kent’s latest movie, “The Nightingale,” at the Venice Film Festival last year. At first Kent thought the livid viewer must be joking: The heroine of “The Nightingale,” an Irish convict in 1820s Tasmania, is called a whore by her tormentors all through the film.

But the man wasn’t joking; he had hollered other angry phrases like “Shame on you!” He turned out to be a journalist and later apologized, and though the festival responded by revoking his credentials, the vitriol directed at Kent and her movie proved a harbinger of reactions to come.

In June, the film made headlines again, after a few dozen people walked out of showings at the Sydney Film Festival, one incensed woman shouting about the film’s portrayal of rape. Others took to Twitter to condemn the brutality borne onscreen by Aboriginal people.

Kent, the auteur of the spooky 2014 breakout hit “The Babadook,” struggled with the reactions as well as the media’s coverage, which she said distorted how Australians received the film. The Sydney Film Festival had added an extra screening to meet heightened ticket demands, critics variously described it as harrowing but essential viewing, and an audience had given it a standing ovation months earlier in Adelaide.

The controversy raised questions about how stories involving rape should be told — and by whom. While depictions of rape onscreen have unleashed storms of criticism in recent years, the debates were about stories almost exclusively created and directed by men. Was Paul Verhoeven’s 2016 feature, “Elle,” starring Isabelle Huppert as a rape victim who becomes attracted to her attacker, misogynistic or feminist? Were the numerous sexual assaults in “Game of Thrones” gratuitous at best? “The Nightingale” was also set in time and place that historians describe as even more grim than the world Kent created onscreen, and several critics praised the film as a rare example of horrific violence done right.

“One way to look at the world is, ‘If I turn away from all the suffering, it doesn’t exist,’” Kent said in a recent Skype interview from her home in Brisbane, Australia. “The other way is to look at it boldly in the face, and let it into your head, and see how it feels, and be motivated to be a more loving, compassionate person.”

In “The Nightingale,” the convict Clare, played by Aisling Franciosi (Lyanna Stark in “Game of Thrones”) sets out into the unforgiving Tasmanian wilderness to avenge atrocities committed against her and her family by an English officer, played by Sam Claflin (the “Hunger Games” films), and his underlings. She is accompanied by an Aboriginal tracker named Billy, played by the first-time actor Baykali Ganambarr, whose performance earned the best new talent award in Venice.

The film has been broadly characterized as a revenge tale, but it is more nuanced than that. Revenge tales typically have a catharsis. “The Nightingale” looks at what happens after revenge is exacted, and the toll it takes when you try to rid yourself of pain by inflicting it on others. Kent latched onto these themes in response to a modern-day world filled with outrage and lashing out.

“I wanted to see what are the other options,” she said, “because clearly we’re going to end our humanity if we choose revenge as an option continuously.”

The idea of the story started small, decades ago, when Kent visited Tasmania, off Australia’s southeastern coast, with her first serious boyfriend.

Tasmania is wildly different from the mainland’s vast bushland swaths. It is colder and greener, more like Scotland or Ireland, and, in Kent’s view, suffused with a deep sadness that she wanted to probe.

In the 1800s, female convicts were sent by the shipload to the island, then known as Van Diemen’s Land, usually for far lesser crimes than men. Men also outnumbered them nine to one. Visiting a former prison, Kent saw the cold, dark solitary cells where women were confined, in total sensory deprivation, for weeks at time. She learned that after their release, some women deliberately committed crimes to be sent right back in.

“So of course my mind was thinking, ‘What on earth was it that was worse than that, that made them want to flee and return to the darkness?’” Kent said.

Kent worked as an actress and acting teacher for years before turning to filmmaking. After serving as a production assistant on Lars von Trier’s “Dogville,” she made a short film, “Monster” (2005), that she developed into a feature, “The Babadook,” about a widowed mother contending with a demon that has sprung from the pages of her son’s picture book. Though it made just $10 million worldwide, it put Kent on the map not only as a director, but also as an artist who could plumb the recesses of female fury.

“Women’s rage is immense, and there’s an ocean of it,” she said. “It’s not hard, being a woman, to find reasons to have rage.”

To ensure the veracity of “The Nightingale,” she asked Jim Everett, a Tasmanian, Aboriginal elder, playwright and activist, to serve as an adviser. He initially said he had no time, but then read the script and couldn’t say no.

“People are realizing this country has a history that has been hidden from it, a history that a lot of people won’t accept,” Everett said, speaking by phone from Tasmania. “They can’t say it’s not there because it’s in the records. This is a discussion that Australia needs to have.”

Everett advised Kent on the body paint, clothes and shell necklaces worn by the Indigenous Australian actors, as well as their ceremonies, customs and language. One criticism lobbed at the film was that it was a white empowerment tale propped up by cruelties inflicted on black bodies. Yet Kristyn Harman, an author and professor of Aboriginal history at the University of Tasmania, described British colonial tactics against the Indigenous Australian people of the time as genocidal.

“Tens of thousands were in fact killed,” she said. “Sometimes people boasted of these killings.”

Coverage of the walkouts at the Sydney Film Festival converged on a single line reportedly shouted by a woman as she left the theater: “She’s already been raped, we don’t need to see it again.” For Kent, there was no way to tell a story about what happened to female convicts in colonial Tasmania without including rape. Deborah Swiss, the author of “The Tin Ticket: The Heroic Journey of Australia’s Convict Women,” said sexual assault was threaded through their lives. “There was horrific discrimination against the Irish,” Swiss said, “and the convict maids lived in a culture of rape and violence.”

Kent said she did not believe in upholding taboos against talking about or depicting sexual violence onscreen.

“Speaking from my perspective, and having done a lot of research, the way is not to sweep things under the carpet,” Kent continued. “If a woman or anyone who has a painful experience and they can talk about it, that’s a miracle. And that’s all I wanted to say with the film. That ultimately we shouldn’t turn away from these things.”

In preparation for her role, Franciosi spent time with sexual assault victims and worked closely with a psychologist on set. During the rape scenes, Kent kept the camera focused closely on the victim’s face; her intent was to make the viewer experience the violence, too. “What you really have to reckon with is, this is a human being,” Franciosi said.

Some of the scenes left the production crew in tears. Ganambarr said he would hear the screams and cower. After production wrapped, Franciosi canceled travel plans and instead stayed home for two months in Dublin, where she dreamed every night that she was still on set and sometimes woke up crying.

When controversy about the film first swirled, Franciosi took to Twitter in the director’s defense, expressing what both she and Kent would come to believe: that the filmmaker was facing heightened wrath because she was a woman. “Double. Standards.” Franciosi wrote.

At the final, sold-out screening at the Sydney Film Festival, several audience members said they had been drawn in by reports of outraged walkouts at previous showings. This time, though, everyone stayed in their seats. Afterward, several young viewers said the film relayed a version of their country’s history that had never made it into their childhood school books.

“I think it’s a really dark chapter of Australian history that deserves to be read,” said Sarah O’Keefe, 19, a film and communications student at the University of Sydney. She added that she found the violence “graphic but not gratuitous,” and that it was “integral to the plot” and “wholly considerate of the victim.”

“I was shocked, I was confronted, I was horrified,” O’Keefe said. “But I thought it was a fantastic movie.”

Genevieve Jia Ling Finn contributed reporting from Sydney.

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s0021778a2film · 7 years

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Post T - First draft

Film essay. can number : 8917

For my creative investigation I am going to study the films Ghost (1990), A Ghost Story (2017) and The Babadook (2014). I chose these films because they’re very different in the ways they present death and grief within their genres. Ghost is a very cliche drama film with a classic plot line however it’s now become a well loved film which is why I chose it. A Ghost Story is a very new modern day film which not many people will have seen due to it being an independent film which was only shown in a few cinemas, however they deal with death in a very different way to anything i’ve seen before and then there’s The Babadook which is completely different genre to my other two films meaning it will be interesting to see what the differences and similarities are compared to my other films. My aim is to find out why and how these three different films being in different genres have gone about showing death differently and how this may affect the viewer watching. To do this I have broken the essay up into three different subtopics to try and answer my question to the best of my abilities choosing the main scenes I think each of my films show grief and death in best.

How are the micro features used to conform with or challenge the conventional representation of grief and death in relation to the genre of each focal film?

'Ghost’ is classified as being a drama, typically dramas are meant to portray real life however the way it represents death here may be considered a little fantasy like. For example, the fact that the audience can see Sam’s ghost but Molly can’t see him makes it more realistic to her than us. Saying this though by being over dramatic conforms to the drama genre we’re all used to, this is also an example of dramatic irony as we the audience are given ‘sight’ and act as mediums throughout the film.

For example take this shot. The audience doesn’t know who this man is yet but already there are bad connotations with him just with the use of lighting and poisoning in the frame which is foreshadowing what will happen in the future. The lighting is coming from the right creating a shadow over him so the audience can’t quite see his full face. Then the fact he’s lurking in the corner watching Molly and Sam the audience knows he’s up to something bad otherwise he wouldn’t have been given as much screen time.

And then of course our theory is proven when he pulls a gun on Sam. This shot is a close up shallow depth of field shot so the audience is forced to look at Sam’s face and the gun pointing at him almost as if we were in his position which relates back to it being a drama and wanting to feel realistic.

After this scene Molly is left with a lot of grief and sadness from Sam’s death. She does what most typical people do when they’re grieving and she locks herself away in her house not wanted to see anymore which is actually a typical feature of grieving so this would be expected.

The next film I looked at was The Babadook. The Babadook is a hybrid film between drama and horror so therefore the audience would expect dark lighting, creepy music and of course something to be scared of whether that’s a monster or a ghost etc. for the horror side but then that element of drama gives it a more realistic feel when relating to death. I think one of the main ways it does this is by making the film more relatable by added a single mum with a not so well behaved child but then the dramatic twist is that her husband died on the same day her son was boring leading her to not really liking her child. So the mum is already stressed out due to all these factors but then this monster is thrown in there which adds a new element of stress causing her to have this anxiety and slowly go mad. The way the film itself is presented gives the audience this realism feel with low-key lighting. which can be seen in the scene I’m studying where she’s in the bath after nearly crashing her car.

For my finally film I studied ‘A ghost story’ A story about a man who dies and gets trapped in the house he died in forced to see different people come and go until he can finally find peace in a note left by his girlfriend. This film is a hybrid fantasy/romance/drama so it explores a lot of different elements in relation to loss and grief. To start with the ghost in this film is in a sheet so from the start we get a fantasy feel to it however the use of natural lighting, long takes and minimal locations brings a more realism feel to it as it makes it feel as if we’re there with them as well as representing the grief from the girlfriend pretty well. For example there’s a 5 minute scene of M sitting on the floor eating a pie ( eating is a sign of grief) . However this later changed when the story starts to repeat itself because the Ghost still hasn’t found peace even after the girlfriend has found it so the audience’s view of the film gets a little confusing hence where the fantasy element comes into play.

As it can be seen here this is a pretty dark scene possibly only using light from the window in front to show this quite confusing scene of C (the ghost) looking at a past encounter he had when he first passed away giving this story a circular narrative which none of the other films had. I personally think this is a good way to show grief within this genre because it shows how the answer to him finding peace was there all along however this kind of style wouldn’t have worked in a normal drama film due to the unrealistic elements.

In this question I want to analyse my chosen scenes and look at how they were filmed, including lighting, sound, different camera shots and costumes.

The scene I chose to study for the film Ghost (1990) is the scene when Sam gets shot. I chose this scene as I feel like it’s a defining moment in the film and it also shows grief and death in a different way to my other two films and it shows it straight as it happens.

The scene starts off with Sam and Molly walking home from seeing a show. The shot starts off with a long shot of them walking down a road in the night. From the star the audience can maybe this isn’t the best area due to the fact it’s not well lit and it looks a little run down form all the rubbish and bins outside the houses.

Then as Sam and Molly walk towards the camera down the street a little they become more well lit from the street lamps meaning the audience can now see what they’re wearing which later plays a part as this is what Sam will be wearing for the rest of the film.

Then after this quite long shot of Sam and Molly walking down the road the camera finally cuts to an over the shoulder shot as Molly stops them to talk. The use of little cuts here make this conversation seem more realistic and less film like.

The camera then changes to a slightly lower angle when Sam starts to talk as if we were now looking at him from Molly’s point of view, again to more the film seem more realistic.

Then all of a sudden as if out of now where this figure appears in the background. The shadows around his face make it so the audience can’t quite see who he his and the shadow of him on the wall from the light coming from his left creates this mystery creepy feel to him so without him even saying a word the audience already know he’s bad news.

Before the audience knows it Sam and this robber are having a fright. Sam trying not to get shot and the robber, as we later learn, actually trying to kill him. This fight brings a whole different mood to the scene. It went from quite calm and slow to all of a sudden fast and manic.

The audience then hears a gun shot and sees the robber running away. This shot sends a lot of thoughts through the audiences heads, the main one being who, if anyone, did he shoot?

Then we think our question has been answered when we see Sam chasing after the robber down this dark road.

However that is until the camera cuts to a shot of Molly crying holding Sam’s lifeless bleeding body in her arms only then do we realise that the Sam chasing after the robber is actually a ghost.

The camera then shows a shot of Sam looking at himself coming to reality that he is in fact dead. The shock on his face is the expressing you’re imagine anyone who’s just died to have and it’s at this moment that the audience realises where this story is going to go.

My second film I decided to study was The Babadook. I chose this film as it was a horror/drama and I thought discussing the way grief and death was represented in this genre of film would be quite interesting as when people think of horror they usually think of something scar. However for the scene I have chosen to look at it isn’t actually that scary but more perhaps creepy.

The scene starts off with Noah (the son) and Essie (the mum) getting out of the car after just being in a car crash. The shot is a long shot perhaps so the audience can see the dent in the car from the accident.

The camera then cuts to a shallow depth of field shot of their next door neighbour waving at them and saying hi. The woman is positioned to the far left of the from and it behind a metal gate which could maybe symbolise her trying to help the family but not being able to.

The location then changed. It’s hard to make out where Essie actually is here as there’s not props in the background to indicate anythings it’s just a close up of her face. He eyes are closed and she looks quite contents which is odd as she’s just been in a car crash and most people in this situation would be a little shaken up perhaps may even be in tears.

It’s only when her son comes in do we realise she’s in the bathroom, we know this from the towel rack and toilet roll. Her son in this whole scene has the same worried/concerning look to him as if he’s worried about his mum which is odd as you’d usually expect this to be the other way round in most ‘normal’ families.

The camera then cuts again and the audience can now see she’s actually sat in the bath fully clothes so obviously there’s something wrong with her. There isn’t much colour in this scene as everything is white which could maybe represent the mood Essie is feeling which is that she isn’t feeling anything anymore.

Her son then walks over to her talking at her trying to get her attention but she’s just ignoring him which could possibly be why this shot has cut the top of Noah’s head off as this is what Essie might be wishing would happen so she could get some peace.

Finally Essie gives Noah some attention and stands up. From her standing up the audience is told that the bath does actually have water in it and she wasn’t just sitting in the bath. When Essie stands up here her the higher up she goes the darker it goes now I don’t know if this is just due to the fact they were using natural lighting or if it was done on purpose to symbolise where the story is going to go?

Essie then picks Noah up and puts him in the bath with her. He doesn’t question it and does what she wants. This could possibly be because he wants to make her happy or even because maybe he’s a little scared of her seen as though she nearly killed them both in the car accident.

The last angle the audience sees in this scene is the same angle that started off the bathroom scene but only this time Essie is smiling at Noah and saying ‘I’m not going anywhere’ this is the only time in this scene where the element of horror creeps in and all of a sudden the audience gets this unnerving feeling about Essie.

The final film I have studied is the 2017 A Ghost Story. I chose this film as although its a drama like the other two it’s also a romance/fantasy which I thought would be a interesting to study for death and grief. The scene I decided to look at was the final scene I decided on this one as it gives C closure and answers questions the audience might have been questioning at the beginning.

The scene starts off at the same scene the audience sees at the beginning of the film. It starts with C and his girlfriend M laying in bed talking and kissing each other from a close up shot.

Then the camera cuts to ghost C by the piano in the same house. The lighting is dark to show how it’s night time and ghost C is still in his sheet to show how he is now a ghost.

He then makes a banging noise which is what we heard at the beginning of the films but we saw it from alive C and M’s point of view where as this time we see it from ghost C’s view and we realise he’s the one that made the nose to start with. The camera angle changed to a long shot for this section so the audience can see M come out of her room in the bed covers to see what nose was but also so we can see ghost C sitting on the chair looking at her. The lighting also changes where she’s turned the light on.

However when she leaves she turns the light off and ghost C is left on his own in the dark again.

The time then switches to dark time and the audience see’s this interesting scene of ghost C looking at new ghost C looking at M as she moves out of the house. There’s a shallow depth of field but the audience can still tell who the other characters are. The lighting is also not that bright at just natural lighting is used.

After everyone is gone ghost C is left on his own again and he goes by the wall and tries to pick at it again, which is a common thing he has done throughout the film but the audience doesn’t know why. The lighting is still this minimal grey kinda of light and the angle is now a long angle so the audience can see the empty house.

The camera then cuts to a close up of ghost C’s hand and we can see he has finally got something from out the wall which perhaps what he’s been trying to get out this whole time?

As soon as he pulls this piece of paper from out the wall the front door flies open and there’s a bright white light coming from it.

He then reads what’s on the piece of paper and all of a sudden the body goes from the sheet and it’s left lifeless on the floor in a pile as if he’s now found piece. However the audience never knows what was written on the paper so some element of mystery is still left to the story.

How do the differing / similar representations of death and grief in all three focal films impact on audience response?

All three of my focal films I would say represent death and grief in their own way even though all of them are a cross between the drama genre and something else. Spectatorship suggests that the film builds a specific relationship with every individual which is why we choose to watch films. We are essentially the film critic so if the audience don’t understand the film they won’t watch it which is why I think out of all my films Ghost made the most profit with earning $12,191,540 in the opening week as appose to The Babadook only making $559,147 and A ghost story making $104,030. Ghost is a simple film to understand, there’s some elements of shock and scary scene but there’s also a lot of happy laughable scene. Now there any be other factors to do with this other than the audience enjoying the story the most for example Ghost is the only one of my films that was produced by a big Hollywood company ( Paramount) meaning this film would of had more marketing than the other two who may not have had any. Although saying all this out of all the film reviews Ghost had the ‘worst’ reviews of them all saying how the plot was very cliche which actually goes with what Steve Neale said that genres are instances of repetition and differences (1980) but for the time this cliche might not have been a cliche unlike now where we’ve seen this plot 100 different ways. New York Times A.O.Scott said ‘Kent twists the possible answers around, scrambling your sense of standard horror-movie rhythm’ (November 27, 2014). I think this may be one of the reason the Babadook wasn’t that popular because it’s not like the usually horror movies you see, so therefore it’s a change for people and this change some people may not like meaning they wouldn’t recommend the film and they wouldn’t see it again. I also think this might be the reason why A ghost story didn’t do too well in comparison to Ghost. A film review writer Matt Zoller Seitz said ‘ People either seem to love “A Ghost Story” or hate it, with no in-between...people find it too precious, too sentimental, too much of a one-joke movie, or not enough of one thing or another thing.’ So it has been argued that this film is too real and makes people feel awkward when watching it just because how personal it is when talking about grief and death even though this film made a profit of $4,030 in the opening week unlike The Babadook who lost money making their film.

Either way I feel like all three of these films have done a great job in showing grief and death in different ways whether that’s a ‘too real’ way or a ‘cliche’ way.

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