The teenage daughter (Stephanie Leonidas) of a circus family, attempting
to cope with her mother’s illness, sets off on a phantasmagoric journey of
self-discovery. She winds up in the Dark Lands, a curious place peopled with
masked inhabitants, library books with a life of their own and many other
strange creatures. The reigning Queen of Light is played by Gina McKee, who
also portrays the teen’s mother.
The girl searches for a magical mask and encounters a dark version of
herself in the Queen’s daughter. But the story, the conventional stuff of
fiction for young people, is less important than the film’s bounty of images,
which call to mind “The Wizard of Oz,” “Alice in Wonderland,” Jean Cocteau,
Hieronymus Bosch, Cirque du Soleil, Terry Gilliam and the Brothers Quay.
Other efforts of this sort have succumbed to terminal whimsy, but director
Dave McKean gives us enough reminders of the girl’s fragile emotional state to
provide some grounding.
There’s humor, too, including a nice bit in which the tables are turned on
a menacing Sphinx-like character, a scene that will also serve to introduce
young people to the famous riddle from “Oedipus Rex.”
The filmmakers knew and liked the fantasy films of Jim Henson, including
“The Dark Crystal,” and chose Henson’s studio (now run by his daughter, Lisa)
to create the film’s fanciful puppets, sets and computer graphics. These, and
not its rather thin story, are the real delight of “MirrorMask.”
– Advisory: This film includes some mildly scary images.
– Walter Addiego
‘Keane’
Drama. Directed by Lodge Kerrigan. With Damian Lewis, Amy Ryan and
Abigail Breslin. (Rated R. 93 minutes. At the Opera Plaza.)
Mental illness, in movies and TV shows, often means one thing: a lot of
overacting. Actors will open their eyes as wide as possible and cackle
devilishly to show how loony they are. They might even throw in a jig just in
case we didn’t get the message.
In “Keane,” a taut and suspenseful low-budget drama, Damian Lewis delivers
a convincing, powerful and highly nuanced performance as a man who’s fighting
desperately to keep his illness in check and lead a normal life.
The film opens with Lewis, as Keane, in the claustrophobic and grungy
confines of New York’s Port Authority bus terminal. Frustrated and frantic,
he’s trying to reconstruct the scene of his daughter’s apparent abduction from
the terminal months before. It’s only when he begins whispering to himself —
“It’s going to be OK” — that one feels it’s not going to be OK.
Keane lives by himself in a cheap rooming house, where he meets Lynn, a
struggling mother, and her 7-year-old daughter, Kira. When he’s with the two of
them, Keane’s behavior changes — he’s at ease. Without that stability, he’s
out on the streets, harming himself with drugs and alcohol and getting into
fights.
Keane’s continued anguish over the loss of his daughter eventually puts
him in a situation in which he faces a great moral crisis. It’s to director
Lodge Kerrigan’s credit that the film doesn’t overplay the drama of this scene,
or any others in the film, yet remains nail-bitingly tense.
Kerrigan displays remarkable maturity and thoughtfulness for a director
who has made only two previous films. “Keane” is free of any stylistic tricks
– especially tempting for directors trying to convey mental illness — and
the movie’s extended handheld shots, stark settings and lack of scoring all
contribute to the film’s sense of urgency and realism.
Lewis, an Englishman who got his start with the Royal Shakespeare Company
– and played Maj. Richard Winters in HBO’s “Band of Brothers” — has the
range to carry the film. In fact, he’s in every shot of it. He lets the
audience feel compassion for Keane, and he does so without a hint of
sentimentality. Easier said than done.
– Advisory: Adult language, drug use and sexual content.
– John McMurtrie
‘I Am Cuba’
Drama. Directed by Mikhail Kalatozov.
In Spanish and English with English subtitles. (Not
rated. 141 minutes. At the Balboa.)
Propaganda films can be so riveting when made by a master filmmaker.
“Triumph of the Will,” for example, is captivating in the hands of Leni
Riefenstahl, despite its frightening context.
“I Am Cuba” (”Soy Cuba”) was released (in Communist countries) in 1964, on
the heels of the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis, looking to extol the
righteousness of Fidel Castro’s vision five years into his reign. Powered by
the great Soviet director Mikhail Kalatozov (”The Cranes Are Flying”) and the
unmatched handheld black-and-white cinematography of Sergei Urusevsky, it is
one of the most visually hypnotic films ever — and that’s not hyperbole.
Episodically structured much like Roberto Rossellini’s Italian neorealist
post-World War II breakthrough “Paisan,” it is divided into four sections,
sketching out Cuba’s transition from corrupt Western influences that had the
country’s many poor working for the few elite to a sweeping people-first revolt
that rediscovered the island’s identity.
Call me a materialistic Westerner, but Kalatozov’s first section —
wherein American businessmen are catered to in some really hot jazz nightclubs
– is the most fun. It includes a fantastic shot of an outdoor party, the
camera beginning up on a terrace, down past revelers on the ground floor and
into the pool.
But all of the sections are terrific, with Raquel Revuelta’s melodious
narration serving as the voice of Cuba.
“I Am Cuba,” the American release of which is sponsored by Francis Ford
Coppola and Martin Scorsese, was not seen in America until the early 1990s, and
it reportedly received two standing ovations during the film at the 1993 San
Francisco International Film Festival.
It’s not hard to figure out why. It’s a must-see.
– G. Allen Johnson
‘The Future of Food’
Documentary. Directed, produced and
written by Deborah Koons Garcia. (Not rated. 88 minutes. At the Shattuck
Cinemas in Berkeley.)
Food insiders may already know the disturbing facts highlighted by this
film, but the general public is in for a shock at how corporations are using
misleading campaigns — and scare tactics — to ensure that people around
the world become dependent on genetically modified food.
Monsanto and other corporate behemoths are motivated (not surprisingly) by
profits, according to farmers, academics and others who talk to documentarian
Deborah Koons Garcia. Typical: Canadian farmer Percy Schmeiser was targeted by
Monsanto’s lawyers because some of the corporation’s patented seedlings were
found on his property. Schmeiser didn’t plant them there; wind blew the
insecticide-resistant seeds onto his farm from another farm, or the seeds fell
off a passing truck, or birds deposited them there. Monsanto didn’t care,
ordering Schmeiser to kill all his family’s seed because they’d potentially
been contaminated by its patented product. Schmeiser, whose family cultivated
its seeds for more than a generation, fought Monsanto, spending his retirement
money against the sort of legal attack that has already scared farmers
throughout North America. Incredibly, a judge ruled in favor of Monsanto, but
Garcia’s documentary shows how much the U.S. federal government favors these
corporations, especially through lax oversight (the Food and Drug
Administration and the Department of Agriculture seem to rubber-stamp every
corporate project having to do with genetically modified food) and direct
support. During the presidency of George H.W. Bush, the White House encouraged
U.S. businesses to take the lead on scientifically altered food. In the past 20
years, Monsanto’s alumni have occupied the high reaches of American power.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for example, did legal work for the
corporation, while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was president of a
Monsanto subsidiary.
“The Future of Food” digs out these connections and also raises an issue
that many scientists have been hollering about for years: Genetically
engineered food may be dangerous to eat and dangerous for the environment.
Millions of acres are now being planted with genetically modified corn, cotton,
canola and soy beans, despite the fact that questions are still being raised
about the health effects of food born from laboratory experiments.
Scientifically modified food is helping to crowd out food that has
traditionally sustained people, according to “The Future of Food,” which offers
a brief history lesson about the dangers of shrinking food sources.
Monsanto will attack Garcia’s documentary as a piece of unbalanced
journalism, but “The Future of Food” doesn’t need to put corporate spokespeople
on camera to attain credibility. Garcia uses their own public relations video
to show how much spin they are doing to convince the general public that their
motives are good. One of 2005’s must-see documentaries, “The Future of Food”
will motivate many of its audience members to reconsider their eating (and
purchasing) habits. Garcia, the widow of Grateful Dead star Jerry Garcia, has
taken a complex subject and made it digestible for anyone who cares about what
they put into their stomachs.
– Jonathan Curiel
