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Blogs by Bill Johnson
Notes on The Guatemalan Handshake and The Bridge 2/20/2007 11:59:23 PM
Short summaries of a recent film and a documentary. The Guatemalan Handshake
posted 2/19/2007
This film by writer/director Todd Rohal is in the quirky, odd vein of The American Astronaut and Repo Man. The set up for the story is a young girl's voice over that in a demolition derby, the 'winner' is typically too battered to move and almost destroyed by events. That's a commentary on the lives of the characters, who are a collection of odd people and a sick turtle in the vein of Napoleon Dynamite on acid. A set up for the plot is an accident at a nuclear power plant.
The story is not linear and not logical, but the camera work is inventive and engaging and the characters interesting.
Not for everyone, but a real gem for those who love the off-beat.
The Bridge
posted 2/17/2007
This documentary by Eric Steel explores the lives of people who have committed or attempted suicide by jumping off the Golden State Bridge. Footage is shown of those on the bridge as they hesitate, pace, ponder, then often casually climb over a railing and jump to their deaths, this footage interspersed with interviews with family and friends. The documentary gives voice to those left behind as they struggle to deal with what they might have said or done, or whether it would have made any difference at all. Movies tend to wrap up a significant character's death in a neat, dramatic package. This documentary shows what can be left behind with someone's death.
Marie Antoninette
posted 1/21/2007
A difficulty in turning someone's life into film is to avoid a structure of 'this happened, then that happened.' A good story, unlike life, is more than just a sequence of events; it's that something that gives meaning to a life. One way to discover the underlying purpose of a life story is often to see where a character ends. In this film, Marie Antoninette makes the transition from a sheltered teenage girl to a woman strong enough to meet her fate. But, that means the question of whether Marie will make that transition needs to be framed as a question in the beginning of the film, in the same way that in Lost in Translation, the young girl's issue of being lost is set out early.
What happens instead is that viewers are, in the first third, shown Marie going to France as a naive young girl and slowly realizing the depth of her dilemna if she can't get pregnant by her doltish husband. Then the movie begins to skip through periods of the next several years of Marie's life, as a young girl who spends lavishly on her whims; as a young mother; then her attempts to seek out a life separate from the rigid protocol of the court; taking on a lover; then facing the mobs of France.
But instead of building toward a powerful fulfillment that answers a clearly presented story question, the film simply offers another take on Marie's life, that she was more complex than the woman from the history books. That idea is a starting place for a story, but an idea is not a story. The film ends up being episodic.
