Rowan Sullivan, Author at FilmRoot

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Towards The Battle – Spain/Latin American Competition – SBIFF

In Towards the Battle, Louis, a French photographer, gets lost in French occupied Mexico in the 1860’s. He wants to photograph the French-Mexican War, but gets lost in the Mexican wilderness trying to find it. However, his encounter with Pinto, a Mexican peasant, gives him the companion and support he needs to carry out his quest.

Louis is in Mexico as commissioned by the French army. He holds a permission slip from the French general which acts as his pass to freely travel the region without reprimand from the roaming French army. It’s the only thing that separates Louis from the rabble of the French army. If he loses it, he’d be conscripted into the army, or, if he’s lucky, sent back to France.

Whilst he can escape from the marauding French army, he can’t escape from the Mexican wilderness. As the scenery changes from mountainous scrub-land to deep rain-forest, Louis is (literally) one step away from a premature death. It’s obvious he can’t survive by himself with two horses carrying his huge amount of photography gear. Luckily for him, a Mexican peasant named Pinto finds him when he’s starving and gives him the food he needs to survive.

From that moment on, they become Don Quixote and Sancho Panza-esque partners. Louis is Don Quixote: a leader of a well off background that loses himself in the quest of one of his hobbies. Instead of chivalry, Louis drags a mountain of photographic equipment across the Mexican wilderness in search of a war that doesn’t appear to exist. When Pinto finds him, he’s already gone a bit mad in his quest to capture a photo of the elusive war. Pinto is Louis’ Sancho Panza: a Mexican peasant that knows Louis is mad, and doesn’t understand him (he doesn’t speak French), but happily goes along with Louis’ delusional quest because he’s got nothing better to do. Along the way, he saves Louis a couple of times, and subordinates himself to him to allow Louis to live out his fantasy. The Don Quixote allegory gives Towards the Battle a timeless feel, and gives an extra layer to Louis’ madness and his slow progression to his own awareness which he reaches in the final scenes.

From the scenery to the setting to the characters, Towards the Battle was one of the films that flew under the SBIFF radar. It’s a well made update of Cervantes’ Don Quixote applied to the French occupation of Mexico. It’s used to show the madness of the French in Mexico and the absurdity of the French occupation of Mexico. The French (Louis) and Don Quixote both live a world away from the reality.

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By A Sharp Knife – International Competition – SBIFF

In By A Sharp Knife, Ludovit finds out that his son has just been murdered by a group of neo-Nazis on the night of his graduation. Despite clear video evidence of the murder, the killers are let free. Ludovit leads a fight for justice whilst carrying his own feelings of guilt at pushing his son away.

It’s a bleak film which deals with grief and a corrupt judiciary department. However, unfortunately it feels limp. It’s an investigative, fight for justice thriller without the actual investigation. There’s no investigation into the murderers – why they killed David, who’s supporting them and why, and how they’re managing to influence justice. As a result, the court room scenes are lifeless as it just ends up in one person’s word versus another. Meanwhile the music and appearance of the gang boss adds drama which feels artificial.

Furthermore, the characters are left incomplete. Firstly, there’s the relationship between Ludovit and his wife. They don’t speak much about the death and there’s no exploration of their grief or any strains on their relationship. Which is why their sudden split and later reunion feels too underdeveloped – there’s no foundations for either.

Secondly, there are too many characters which are only present for one or two scenes. They appear and disappear in crucial plot developments in the legal procedure at the police station and court room. Because we only see them for a few minutes at most, we never know who they are, what their role is, and why they’ve been included in the film. They only manage to muddy the progression of the investigation and film.

Lastly, there are an unnecessary amount of images of the Most SNP bridge in Bratislava. One or two shots of it are enough to situate the film in the city – if viewers don’t recognize it by then, they probably won’t by the tenth time.

The inspiration of By A Sharp Knife is shocking. However, the following investigation never really feels threatening enough or real enough to turn the film into a memorable thriller. The underdeveloped characters and relationships and overproduced court room finale make the film feel limp.

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The Clash – Spain/Latin American Competition – SBIFF

Roberto, an 18 year old boy, joins his father in Montreal to escape the violence in Peru. His father, now Bob Montoya, fled Peru a few years earlier and now lives with his Canadian wife and daughter. The Clash shows both the culture clash for Roberto and the macho clash with his now Canadian father. It plays out a bit like a Martin Rejtman film in which the oddball humour has been switched out for a tense underlying machismo.

The arrival of Roberto is a challenge to Bob’s male pride. We don’t know how much of a success Bob was in Peru, but he’s desperate to present himself as a success story in Canada. Roberto obviously knows where he came from in Peru so Bob wants to show him how far he’s come. Roberto is the medium for Bob to prove himself to people back in Peru.

In order to maintain his image, he tries to sell how great Canada is to his son. He keeps telling him it’s a place where you can be anything, a place where you can make lots of money. He portrays himself as a businessman that is one step away from the next big deal with a nice house and a nice car. However, the house, the car, and his suit are all for show. The nice house and car that he ‘owns’ are really his wife’s and his suit is just a image that covers up the debts he’s incurring.

Like Uncle Rico in Napoleon Dynamite, Bob Montoya resorts to machismo to present himself as a big man. Whilst he’s grateful to have his son with him – as it’s a chance to prove to someone he’s achieved the American dream – he also sees him as a challenge to his masculinity. He’s a new male figure in the house that takes some of his wife’s and mistress’ attention away from him.

Their relationship fits Freud’s Oedipus complex theory. Bob is the father figure that dominates the household. Roberto is the son that reluctantly lives within the rules his father sets. They rarely talk beyond a few awkward words as Roberto lives in silence. Bob asserts his male dominance over Roberto by kissing his wife and his mistress in front of his son. In contrast, Roberto has fantasies of hooking up with his father’s mistress. In a final awkward party, Roberto battles his father for a dance with his mistress. It’s only in the club when he’s drunk that he can overcome his ‘castration anxiety‘. However, his father never allows her to dance with him in order to preserve his position as the alpha male.

The Clash is a brilliantly awkward film about a father and his son battling to prove their masculinity in a place foreign to the both of them.

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Stitches – International Competition – SBIFF

In Stitches, a mother restarts her own investigation into the death of her newborn son 18 years ago. She believes he was stolen from her and that he’s potentially still alive. However, she has to also prove the police, her friends, and her family that she’s not insane.

The film spends most of its run time following the mother’s investigation. While she’s investigating, the audience also has to figure out if she’s crazy or not. She’s not the most engaging or sympathetic of characters as she doesn’t say anything to her family or friends. Her face is always blank and emotionless. We can only start to sympathise with her when her investigations are vindicated in some of the records she uncovers.

From that point on, the way she has to try to convince her family and friends of the truths she’s uncovered follows the routine of horror films:

The main character knows something the audience doesn’t.
The audience learns/sees something which makes them understand the main character.
The main character struggles to convince her friends and family.
Eventually, they prove something to a close family member or friend.
That friend or family member shows/convinces everyone else.

However, unfortunately there few things that let down the film for me. Firstly, I was never sold on the main character. Her face is expressionless for the whole film, making her hard to sympathise with or care about. Her actions and movements in contrast to her blank expression were always very obvious and rigid, which made them appear forced and unnatural, drawing attention to her role as an actor.

Secondly, it would have been good to have more background about the mother. it’s not clear why the lady starts the film so depressed all of a sudden. 18 years have passed, so why is she not talking to her daughter and suddenly so concerned to find her missing son again. It would also be good to know why she was put into a mental asylum and how she managed to get out and reintegrate herself into her family and society.

Lastly, I found the editing and cinematography of Stitches a bit off-putting. There were a lot of scenes with one character in clear focus with everything in the background blurred. In itself this works, but these shots were often cut with mid range shots where everything was in focus, making the editing feel a bit disjointed.

Overall Stitches covered an interesting story, but because of the hard to sympathise with feature character, I never got fully engaged in her investigation.

215

The Flying Circus – International Competition – SBIFF

In The Flying Circus, four lads from Kosovo receive an invitation from the Albanian National Theatre to put on their latest play for their festival. Problem is, to get there, they need to cross two borders illegally. They have to escape Serbian occupied Kosovo, sneak through Monetenegro, before crossing illegally into Albania.

It’s a funny ‘based on a true story’ escape/road trip film set in a divided Balkans. It manages to convey the seriousness of their journey, but lightened with humour. The only unnecessary addition to the film is the cliched holiday relationship between one of the actors and a woman from Tirana. It just feels too quick, underdeveloped, and unnecessary.

The humour comes from the strange situations and people the four actors stumble into and how they deal with them. For example, there’s the threatening episode when the Kosovars traveling from Kosovo are all threatened by a trio of skinheads in a restaurant. One of the skinheads brings out a gun to which one of the four actors smashes his hands on two glasses (as he saw in a movie earlier). It turns a threatening situation into something absurd to laugh at. In these comedic moments you almost forget that they’re on the run and their lives are under threat.

The Flying Circus also offers a glimpse of life as a Kosovar in the Balkans. At home there are routine ID checks of ethnic Albanians and officials speaking Serbian instead of the local Albanian. This sets up what they’re due to face later on. On the road, they face further checks – made by grumpy officials speaking Serbian, and they’re threatened by a local in Montenegro. All the signs show that the Kosovars are looked down upon both at home and abroad. This doesn’t change when they make it to Albania either, where the officials are corrupt and inept.

Overall, The Flying Journey is a fun journey, on a similar level to Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople. It’s got funny characters, humor in unlikely situations, and a happy-ish ending.