This is Not a Weekly Reel, Weekly Reel #31
An Iranian documentary, comic book adaptation, Norwegian supernatural thriller, marital drama, and crime drama walk into a bar...
News of the Week: it’s festival season folks. Venice ended today, Telluride ended a few days ago, and TIFF will be going on for more than a week. Most of the award winners come from these three festivals, but better yet, it’s time to transition from summer blockbusters to critically acclaimed films. It’s looking good so far.
Watch Now
This is Not a Film (2011, Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb, Iran) is a seventy-six minute documentary about an unusual day in the life of Iranian director Jafar Panahi awaiting his prison sentencing appeal. Months before, the Iranian “judicial” courts sentenced him to a six year prison term and twenty year ban on filmmaking—if only we had that for some American directors…—and from leaving the country. We watch Panahi in his Tehran apartment making tea, calling friends on the phone, and talking to a stationary camera about his situation. He invites his documentary film friend over, who gives the doc a more personal feel through a handheld camera and two-person dialogue. The events depicted are daily banalities, Panahi at one point tries to stage a version of his latest script that the censors denied, but he gives up after a couple of scenes and wonders what the point of making a film is if one person can just act out the script.
Normally a film like this would land squarely in the save for later list, but the last fifteen minutes provides the kind of narrative interruption that I love being surprised by in documentaries. An example I like to give is Virunga, a documentary following gorilla caretakers in Congo’s Virunga National Park; during the filming, a rebellion of Congolese soldiers against the government broke out in the same area, so the narrative unexpectedly shifts its focus to the conflict, and it became a different film. In This is Not a Film, a far less violent disruption occurs at the end when Panahi’s friend is leaving. When he opens the door to the elevator, a young man who’s collecting garbage comes out to get Panahi’s. All of which Panahi is filming on his iPhone. After a moment of awkwardness, the young man goes into the house, gets the trash, and the camera on the dining room table, which Panahi’s friend left on, watches the young man as he notices the camera. Panahi’s friend leaves and the young man is waiting for the elevator to return while Panahi asks him questions.
It turns out the young man is doing this as a favor for his family, who lives in the building and collects the tenant’s trash. The rest of the documentary is Panahi, now using the film camera, following the young man as he collects the trash from each floor, telling short stories about his life along the way—he’s studying to be an artistic researcher at a university master’s program and doing a lot of odd jobs to pay for everything. Then it simply ends with them exiting the building—which we’re not sure Panahi is legally allowed to do—watching the fireworks, that day banned by Iran’s President, go off in celebration of the Iranian new year. Credits. These last fifteen minutes melt the viewer into the situation, we’re not sure who this young man is and why Panahi seems to intent on following him, almost like he's a plant. But instead, it’s just a simple fragment of humanity between two people interacting for the first time, which Panahi couldn’t do on house arrest. You can catch this short documentary on Kanopy, for free. ♦
Save for Later
Ghost World (2001, Terry Zwigoff, USA/UK/Germany) is one of the great cult comic book adaptations based on Daniel Clowes’s graphic novel of the same name. It’s about two teen misfits, Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johansson), who roam around town with a cynical edge that only Gen X could pull off—the two successive generations falsely interpret their narcissism as quirky existentialism. Enid is committed to continuing the misfit lifestyle after graduating high school, but Rebecca takes the conventional route of finding a job and an apartment. They come across a record collector called Seymour (Steve Buscemi), who put out an ad in the classifieds looking for a woman he had briefly met. Enid prank calls him to set up a date at the local fifties’ diner, which he humiliatingly goes to, sits alone, drinks milk, then goes home. Enid and Rebecca, who were watching him the whole time, follow him to his place. Enid wants to take it further and meet him, but Rebecca doesn’t. They approaches him at his apartment while he’s selling old records outside. They talk a little, she buys a record, then leaves with more intrigue after understanding his loser life more. Rebecca isn’t interested, which annoys Enid because he’s the perfect societal misfit and she see Rebecca’s rejection as a rejection of who they’re supposed to be. Enid and Seymour form an unlikely friendship and she tries to find him a romantic partner. But at the same time, her friendship with Rebecca takes a toll.
The film doesn’t back away from its black humor and dirty language, which films today discourage in favor of the financially-friendly PG-13 rating. Although the comic is bleaker, the story offers a great look into the immediate post-graduation angst of teen girls. This sensibility comes from the writer of the comic, Clowes, and the film’s co-screenwriter and director, Terry Zwigoff, who based his career in underground comix and subversive characters. One of his biggest artistic influences through his friendship with Robert Crumb, the prolific cartoonist who provided a voice for the type of misfits Enid would idolize. Zwigoff was even a member of Crumb’s string band, which played the kind of twenties ragtime and country blues that Seymour specializes in and introduces to Enid.
Ghost World sets up a parallel world in which people who don’t fall into the conventional path reside. They can see and interact with normies but can’t easily assimilate without losing the qualities that make them unique misfits—see Rebecca’s character. Nowadays, and before, these misfits are branded into bins of weirdos dangerous to the status quo. Then their tastes are co-opted into tomorrow’s trends—one example being Seymour’s record collection, which was what made him “strange” twenty years ago but is a standard in consumerism today. Even R. Crumb is a popular figure today among normies. The film is easily re-watchable and can see myself coming back to it often. Most likely, I’ll pick up a physical Criterion copy for doing so instead of relying on Tubi, which I unfortunately used—it has horrible ad-placements every ten minutes. Although I want to highly recommend it as the film of the week, it’s better to save for later, either through the purchase of a physical copy—Crumb is also available on Criterion—or waiting patiently for it to arrive on a better streaming service. Good luck with the latter. ♦
Thelma (2017, Joachim Trier, Norway/Sweden/Denmark/France) is the fourth feature film directed by Joachim Trier and written by Trier and Eskil Vogt. (I recently reviewed their fifth film, The Worst Person in the World, in Weekly Reel #26.) Thelma departs from their usual dramatic subject to a supernatural thriller about a college freshman, Thelma (Eili Harboe), who has unexplained and unexplored powers that come along with epileptic seizures. They mostly occur when she has intimate moments with and fantasies about a classmate, Anja (Kaya Wilkins). Thelma comes from a teetotaling, religious conservative family that wouldn’t acknowledge sex before marriage, let alone their daughter being a lesbian. Thelma’s repressions may cause the seizures, but her powers, which her grandmother seems to have also had, come from an unknown origin and have deadly effects with or without her control.
I didn’t enjoy this film as much as TWPITW, but that bar is super high. What Trier does well here is make the film as supernatural as possible without relying on the genre’s gimmicks and scares. It jolts your anxiety like Eraserhead by playing with the audio-visual component to match Thelma’s state of mind. Reviewer Bilge Ebiri said it best by describing how the film moves “away from the monstrous” in favor of “compassion and understanding.” At no point do we feel the abject horror associated with demonic possessions influencing Thelma and reducing her agency. Although she’s often not in control, we never lose focus on Thelma being Thelma. The enemy isn’t some alien being inside her. The enemy, if there was one, is diffused in the nature versus nurture debate. Trier and Vogt are at their best when telling stories about young people finding out who they are. It usually takes the form of a conventional yet superbly told drama; but it could also be mystical and unexplainable, as the feeling often is for young adults coming of age. You can stream Thelma on either Hulu or Kanopy. ♦
On the Rocks (2020, Sofia Coppola, USA) is a good movie, which makes it one of Coppola’s lesser films. It stars Rashida Jones as a novelist mother of two living in New York with her husband, played by Marlon Wayans, who is always away on business trips for his successful start-up. After one of his trips, Jones finds his behavior strange when he was thrown off by her voice when he entered their dark bedroom. And the next morning, she finds a woman’s toiletry bag sitting in his luggage. She has her suspicions, so she asks around and mostly receives the curt reply of “it’s probably nothing.” But she’s fishing for someone to confirm her wildest feeling, so she indulges her playboy father, Bill Murray, who immediately reckons that it’s cheating. More charming and penis-strong than any geriatric Boomer on screen, he lives as the center of attention, which Jones falls into; partly because of her own marital reasons but also to get at the core of her relationship with him, which appears more solid yet less questioned than his relationship with her sister and mother. As the film progresses, so do these parallel narratives, which, as films do, comes to a resolution when one problem helps solve the other.
On the Rocks is the least Coppola-esque in her filmography. The colors and editing are bland, the cinematography—by Frenchman Philippe Le Sourd, who also shot The Beguiled, a film I recently reviewed in Weekly Reel #27—is minimal, and the direction could have been done by others. In other words, it doesn’t have the same energy aesthetic of a Sofia Coppola work. But that doesn’t mean it’s bad or not worth saving for later. Bill Murray’s performance is one of his best in a long time, even if it’s just a more exaggerated roleplaying of his own publicly perceived persona. Rashida Jones also plays her best as Rashida Jones as Ann Perkins and Marlon Wayans was a great casting example of Coppola utilizing their best qualities while dropping the baggage. The film won’t leave you with any profound insights into overcoming marriage disputes or your relationship with her father, but still watchable enough. Although A24 had the theatrical rights, they released it in late 2020 to a non-theatergoing public. Apple TV+ acquired its streaming rights, so you can now stream it there. ♦
Pass
The Card Counter (2021, Paul Schrader, USA) has good intentions from the writer behind Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation of Christ, but it fails to deliver the same coherent punch. It stars Oscar Isaac as a low-time card counter who travels the eastern USA hustling casinos for a few hundred dollars. He developed his repetitive routine, which includes staying at motels and covering everything in gray fabric, from his near decade long stint in prison. His routine is disrupted by Tiffany Haddish, playing a pimp to card counters, and Tye Sheridan, a troubled young man who’s planning to abduct and torture the card counter’s officer, played by Willem Dafoe, from when he was a prison guard at Abu Ghraib. Dafoe and the other officers who taught the torture techniques left without dishonorable discharges and started lucrative consulting jobs while the lower soldiers were prosecuted because they were in the pictures. The events in the film show the card counter trying to influence the young man away from his plan, knowing that torturing others only tortures oneself in the end.
Compared to other works by Schrader, this film feels like he ran out of energy and defaulted to standard. His writing skills are still there, but not much else. Isaac’s performance is okay, but again, we all know he could do better—whether that fault is from the direction or characterization, who can tell. The story feels like Schrader’s come to his Unforgiven but can’t let go of the aspects that made Taxi Driver great, so he settles and holds on gambling for the higher card. I appreciate the subject, trying to expose how post 9/11 torture was forgotten and those who perpetrated it left with millions from government contracts—more on this in next week’s Weekly Reel. But that part of the story doesn’t blend well with the card counting story, which doesn’t need that backstory. It isn’t a bad film, but still a pass from me. You can make up your own mind and stream it on either HBO Max or DirecTV. ♦
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