We were at Berlinale – the Berlin Film Festival – in cold wet Berlin in February.
Here is a write up of some of the films we saw:
Small Things Like These
If you like dark, deep, depressing films than ‘Small Things Like These’ is right up your alley.
Set in cloudy and rainy Ireland where the mood is sad and there appears to be no color, Cillian Murphy is a married father of five daughters – Bill Furlong, a coal merchant with dirty hands who suffers from a childhood which involved his mother. An encounter with a young girl who escaped the covenant where unmarried young women are kept away from their families, basically shamed, changes Bill somehow. Bill feels their pain and sorrow – he’s still grieving from childhood and it gets worse when he has to visit the covenant to deliver coal. But one of the girls escapes snd Bill feels he has to do the right thing.
Murphy’s performance is a masterclass in acting. Murphy, soon to be an Oscar winner for Oppenheimer, has his character down pat but it’s Emily Watson as the head nun who is downright scary and incredibly intimidating. Overall Small Things Like These, while not on a big scale like Oppenheimer, will stay with you longer as its story is bare on actual facts.
Crossing
A retired teacher in Georgia goes in search of her niece Tekla in the hopes of reuniting with her in Turkey.
Mzia Arabuli is simply wonderful as Lia whose sister, Tekla’s mother, has died and it’s up to Lia to deliver the bad news. Tekla left Georgia because she was trans and wasn’t very well accepted by both her mother and aunt.
Lia hooks up local boy Achi (a very good Lucas Kankava) and together they go in search of Tekla in a crowded and cat filled Istanbul. We are also given a parallel story of Evrim (Denis Dumanl) a trans activist lawyer who works for a local gay charity who befriends two little adorable rambunctious children who seem to have no parents. Lia and Ervin’s worlds eventually collide in the search to find Tekla. ‘Crossing’ which refers to the crossing of the Black Sea from Georgia to Turkey, is an amazing and bittersweet film which also highlights the LGBT experience in Instanbul.
Crossing is just about perfect, with Director and Writers beautiful script and subtle direction. The last five minutes of the film delves into a hypothetical story of Lia finding Tekla and what she’d say to her which throws the plot off its course, and hence makes it a less than perfect film. Nonetheless Crossing is a quiet yet deeply emotional film. ‘Crossing’ is partially based on a true story.
Treasure
34-year old music journalist Ruth (Lena Dunham) and her father Edek travel to Poland to revisit her fathers past in the film ‘Treasure.’
A true story, set in 1992, is based on the 1999 novel ‘Too Many Men’ by Lily Brett. Ruth’s father, Edek (played by Stephen Fry), spent some of his early youth in Auschwitz concentration camp, along with Ruth’s mother. They survived, re-met after the war, and settled in New York. ‘Treasure’ tells the true story journey Ruth and Edek take in his native Poland to revisit his childhood home and to visit the concentration camp where he lost all members of his family.
It’s a bit of a lighthearted journey, seeming not to take itself too seriously. It’s a serious issue – WW2 and the millions of deaths that occurred between 1941 – 1945. If only this could’ve been produced as a serious dramatic movie it would have made a bigger impact. Comedians Fry and Dunham play it simple and clean and don’t push the boundaries, and neither does the script (by Director and Writer Julia Heinz). ‘Treasure’ is a film that would work better on television where its stars would have a built in audiences but it’s not cinema fare at all.
Another End
A film all about death is going to be a hard sell at the box office, even if it stars the charismatic Gael Garcia Bernal, but ‘Another End’ tackles this issue subtlety and carefully.
Sal (Garcia) is a widower whose wife Zoe (a captivating Renate Reinsve) died in a car crash where they were heading to a friends house for dinner. But there is a company called Aeternum that helps people to bring back their loved ones , if only for a day or so.
So this is what happens: Sal asks to bring backs his with more than once. This is only possible with the help of his sister Ebe (Berenice Bejo) who works at Arternum. While not only breaking the rules, this makes Sal yearn for more of her and he goes in search of Zoe’s host – the human m her spirit has inhabited. This leads to complications not only just for Sal, but also for Ebe and the host, and the whole program. Italian Director and Writer Piero Messina has a lot on his hands, he doesn’t quite convince us of the story, but the cinematography and the world of the future looks amazing. This film didn’t great get reviews at Berlinale.
Between Two Temples
Between Two Temples is the name of this black comedy about a widower cantor suffering from a mid life crises who lives with his two Jewish mothers and bumps into an older former teacher changing both their lives.
Jason Schwartzman is the gentle cantor but it’s the fantastic 71 year old Carol Kane as Carla, the former teacher who steals the movie. She’s also widowed with a married grown up psychiatrist son who is married with two young daughters. Ben Gottlieb (Schwartzman) has not really gotten over the death of his book author wife, who died after a nasty fall. Both his mothers (Dolly de Leon and Caroline Aaron) are constantly trying to set Ben up with a new wife, but then suddenly the local Rabi’s daughter takes a fancy to him and their relationship is a plot straight out of one his late wife’s books. Meanwhile Ben wants a new direction in life and Carla wants to become Jewish. So Ben takes her under his wings to start the process. Of course complications ensue, Ben tells Carol he’s falling in love with her, Carol is quite receptive to this, but everyone else has major issues with this, Director Nathan Silver brings us a cute lighthearted comedy that will do well on the film festival but may have a hard time getting box office dollars due to its lack of big name stars and it bring an true independent movie. Buts it’s cute, funny, and endearing and worth a watch.