Facets Executive Director
Milos Stehlik reports from the 59th Berlin International Film Festival.
Tom Tykwer is the great hope of German cinema – somebody who can make a film most can relate to as an art film (
Run Lola Run) which also becomes a box office hit. It’s a magical combination never to be repeated--not even this year with the release of Tykwer’s
The International, an international spy thriller starring
Clive Owen and
Naomi Watts.
It’s in English, of course. This, if anything, is the theme of the Berlinale at 59: no matter who puts up the money or what language you speak or which country you come from, MAKE YOUR FILM IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE!
In an interview he gave to the
L.A. Times, Tykwer described himself as a film geek. He grew up loving
Fassbinder,
Kurosawa and
Truffaut. He also loved
Bullitt,
The Conversation and
The French Connection. Nothing wrong with any of this, but it is a somewhat odd cinemania soup. The biggest problem with
The International? It has no sense of humor and the audience felt it, too.
The International at least has the honesty to aim at being a commercial project.
Lukas Moodysson’s Mammoth is gigantic only in the size of its ego.
Moodysson—an interesting director whose films include
Lilya-4-Ever and
Fucking Amal, - here comes off as a blowhard preacher, layering on the stereotypes (all gorgeously shot, of course) about just how screwed up and hypocritical our darling western civilization is.
Gael Garcia Bernal is a wonderful actor, but he is totally miscast as a hugely successful internet game developer married to an emergency room surgeon (
Michele Williams).
Bernal is off to Thailand to sign a deal for investment in his company and is forced to hang out in Bangkok while the deal finalizes. He is bored (we assume that playing his own internet game is not in the cards). He is strait-laced. His buddy’s enticements to sample the Bangkok sex life have no effect until he takes for a Thai island and meets bar girl Cookie, though it is not sex at first sight. Staring into the postcard sunset, running into the surf, finally (it’s a long wait) making love does something to his head, though the revelation is not very specific. Nevertheless, he signs the deal without further negotiation, takes off for the States, plays with his daughter (there is another equally important plot about Mom Michele and their 7-year old daughter whom she almost never sees, entrusting her to their Filipino nanny whose own kids, left back in the Philippines are desperate for their Mom) and – it would be funny if it was not so bloody serious – promises his wife to take two days off to take their daughter to school. The Third World be damned, the Ugly American rules!
Lone Scherfig – Moodysson’s fellow Scandinavian – also made her new film
Education in English. In
An Education and in her previous films –
Italian for Beginners and
Waldo Wants to Kill Himself – Scherfig is very mindful of the limitations of the theme and instead of trying to enlarge it into a universe-changing event, she enriches it with new insights, humor, and wonderful performances.
An Education, which showed first at Sundance, was here in Berlin as a Panorama Special presentation. It, too, is in English, but it is set in England and has an English theme – the relationship between a 16-year old British schoolgirl and an older man in 1961 London.
It’s a wonderful film because it relies on nuance and often delivers the unexpected – as in the colorful portrait of Jenny (the 16-year old schoolgirl, wonderfully played by Carey Mulligan) and her parents. Much of the credit for
An Education goes to the screenwriter
Nick Hornby, proving once again that even an “auteur” filmmaker benefits from having someone with a good script.
- Milos Stehlik, reporting from the 59th Berlin International Film Festival.
*Catch Milos' Berlin coverage for Chicago Public Radio's
Worldview here.
1970: Airport
1978: Heaven Can Wait
1990: Godfather III
Tom Tykwer is the great hope of German cinema – somebody who can make a film most can relate to as an art film (Run Lola Run) which also becomes a box office hit. It’s a magical combination never to be repeated--not even this year with the release of Tykwer’s The International, an international spy thriller starring Clive Owen and Naomi Watts.
Moodysson—an interesting director whose films include Lilya-4-Ever and Fucking Amal, - here comes off as a blowhard preacher, layering on the stereotypes (all gorgeously shot, of course) about just how screwed up and hypocritical our darling western civilization is. Gael Garcia Bernal is a wonderful actor, but he is totally miscast as a hugely successful internet game developer married to an emergency room surgeon (Michele Williams).
Lone Scherfig – Moodysson’s fellow Scandinavian – also made her new film Education in English. In An Education and in her previous films – Italian for Beginners and Waldo Wants to Kill Himself – Scherfig is very mindful of the limitations of the theme and instead of trying to enlarge it into a universe-changing event, she enriches it with new insights, humor, and wonderful performances.
