I’m going to abandon my normal procedure, and talk about the last film I saw first. This was Presumed Guilty, and their website is http://www.presuntoculpable.org/en/. It was about a particular prisoner in Mexico, who was picked up off the street for shooting a man dead, despite not resembling the police sketches (which were conveniently lost from the file), having no gunpowder residue, not being named or even mentioned in witness reports until after being picked up, and being at work 40 minutes walk away (in the street, in full view of dozens of witnesses, all ignored) at the time of the shooting. He was never shown an arrest warrant, he never saw a judge (his verdict was signed by a court clerk), and the only reason they were able to get the case revisted a second time (in front of the judge who’s signature convicted him) is because it turns out that the defence lawyer who handled the case wasn’t actually a lawyer – he had a poorly forged photocopy of a law certificate. (At the end, the film reveals that this lawyer is still in practice.)
The Mexican justice system seems outrageous and shocking. No presumption of innocence, police (with their face concealed) that they sometimes exaggerate or make up evidence in order to ensure a conviction, a 97% conviction rate even though the majority of cases have no physical evidence, over two-thirds of the prisoners fed by their families, stories of prison guards feeling up the prisoner’s girlfriend before they’ll let her in to cook for him… it’s incredible that this is happening today, in a fairly modern country.
The sad thing is, you can kind of see how it’s meant to work – the police should only present people they’re convinced are guilty, and then those people should have to show that it’s reasonable that they’re not. But when police (and judges) are promoted on the basis of conviction rate, then it’s not surprising that you’ll get someone grabbed off the street; the most surprising thing is how much they didn’t care about making him look guilty. I mean, it would presumably be just as easy to change the file to show that he had gunpowder residue (or fire a gun next to them), or to include a sketch done after they picked him up; my worry would be that the only result of this movie would be police would start faking physical evidence.
This is a good movie, and made me angry about the situation. Their website is mounting a campaign to make filming of all interrogations and criminal trials mandatory, to give defendants a fighting chance.
I now return to the beginning of the day.
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Towards the end of Genius Within: The Inner Life of Glenn Gould, one of the people interviewed said that he would be remembered five hundred years from now. I don’t know if it’s any indicator, but I didn’t have any idea who he was – I mean, I’d heard the name, but wouldn’t have been able to tell you that he was an exceedingly famous and controversial classical pianist, who broke onto the world scene with a electrifying version of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations”. I mean, I like what gets grouped into “classical music” well enough, and can tell a bad performance when I hear one, but I’m no connoisseur. However, this didn’t matter – they did a good job demonstrating what was different about him, and even showed the fingering technique he learned.
This was a good documentary about a man who was talented enough that his oddities and ticks were allowed to grow unchecked, which may have contributed to his relatively early death – for example, his hypochondria meant that he would see three or four doctors without telling them about each other, and then take all the pills they each gave him. They talked about how the ‘eccentric genius’ card was played up in the early years, but how he got odder and more controlling as he got older, wanting to script both questions and answers for interviews in his later life, for example. But he also did a bunch of interesting early stuff with recording equipment, and documentaries for the CBC.
I liked the film, and thought it was well done.
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I only had ten minutes to dash from Te Papa to the Embassy, but made it in plenty of time to see I Am Love. It opened like a European film from the fifties, and had a weird, operatic feel to it. I liked Tilda Swinton as the wife, the daughter looked uncannily likely as a blood relative, and the gorgeous colours and sets were wonderful to look at. I wasn’t so keen on the music, which I found somewhat intrusive at times, and the movie itself was slightly slow. But there were plenty of neat bits: for example, I found the main character’s reversion (or re-flowering) to her Russian roots to be handled really effectively.
I’m not sure how I feel about the one of the main story elements, however. The heart wants what the heart wants, as they say, and they do a good job of making the husband look bad; but the way the wife handles the situation felt essentially selfish.
I enjoyed watching the movie, but I don’t think I’d seek it out again.
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I hadn’t read the The Killer Inside Me was misogynistic, but I can see where that accusation comes from – the violence towards men tends to be distanced, either mediated by a gun or off-screen, whereas the camera shows us the beatings given to the two women. And the fact that one of them seems to accept and forgive it… well, that ranks up there with the song “He Hit Me, And It Felt Like A Kiss” on my creepy wrong-o-meter. But the first really nasty violence is up-close, personal, and directed towards a man… so I don’t know, there’s something going wrong, but it’s not misogyny (or at least, not just that).
Quite apart from the general unease with the events in the story, there were some characters that didn’t make any sense to me. Like the union boss, who seemed to be needlessly needling someone who he knows is a killer: what is he trying to achieve? And why did they allow him to go back to his house at the end?
It was certainly a visceral film, and if their message was something along the lines of “outward rectitude does not indicate inner goodness”, then they certainly managed it. And it was really weird watching Casey Affleck in this kind of role, which I’m guessing was the point. Oh, and it had very clever nod to the fact that it was a film towards the denouement; I wonder whether this was there originally, or added later to release tension before ramping it up again?
So… a good film, but I’m not sure I liked it.
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Then it was off once again to the Film Archive to see the Homegrown mixed-bag: in this case, Homegrown: Quirky Stories. This was a fairly good batch, with only one film that fell into the “film scratches and free jazz” tedium (Tentacles of Dimensions, which apparently was based on a bunch of interviews). There were a variety of good to very good films, though there were some that were frustrating because they could have been better with just a little bit of story-tweaking – for example, The Witch And The Woodsman, which was a well-done fairy-tale (though perhaps too scary for the audience most likely to enjoy it). They did a good job setting up the rules of the world, and then using them cleverly; but toward the end they used a subtitle to indicate the passage of time, which felt really clunky. There was no reason that I could see that you couldn’t put a bit of grey at the male lead’s temples, have an older girl called by the same name as one of the young girls, and then you don’t need to read.
Empty Swan Song felt like someone’s (not particularly well thought out) fantasy of other teens paying attention to a classical pianist at a teen talent quest. Rock Paper Sissors was a odd dialogue where the three characters mentioned explained why they thought they were fighting, and negotiated an odd sort of truce… with a bonkers ending that I won’t spoil. Fruitless Journey was Scott’s Artic expedition told from the point of view of a banana with a belief in destiny… which I thought was very well done, though I’m a little uncomfortable mining that particular tragedy for humour. Tide was a really clever piece – just narration over the top of a shot of the back of a ferry as it scoots across a harbour, really well done.
Eat Your Cake; I’m a Vietnamese Refugee told it’s story effectively with folded paper and animation, overcoming the woodenness of it’s child actor. Nell the Narcoleptic was straight-up slapstick, though I was surprised at how little narrative it had. And finally, Michael and His Dragon was a short sketch of an Iraqi war veteran, which was effective, but felt a little shallow.
All in all, I’m glad I saw them.
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