{The Mill and the Cross}
From sumptuous beauty of black and white to glorious earthy hues, Lech Majewski’s The Mill and the Cross was a delicious favouirite of the festival from me. I’ve longed to step into a painting. I was grateful for the chance to walk through such a marvellous digital tapestry that has recreated (in a sense) Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Way to Calvary (1564). With Rutger Haur as Bruegel himself and Charlotte Rampling as the Virgin Mary, add in 500 hand sewn costumes, and clouds collaged from New Zealand, and this film was every inch of it beautiful to behold, delve into and decipher, reading the familiar language of the symbols. That it took three years to weave such rich painterly fabric will come of little surprise.
I want the viewer to live inside the painting.
Lech Majewski
(I have yet to see The Garden of Earthly Delights, featuring Bosch’s painting as its ground so perhaps I will try to and soon.)
{Detail of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s The Way to Calvary (1564).}
{Cave of Forgotten Dreams}
I have seen albino crocodiles of all things, and Fred Astaire dance parallels drawn in a cave of animals beautifully drawn in Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams. In the French Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave, the horses and lions on the wall have danced for some 32,000 years, chiefly unseen. Herzog muses, what would the crocodiles make of these prehistoric drawings? And the bear that made those scratches into the rock face too: what did he or she make of the imagery? Was it some attempt at mark making and gesture too? The contours of the rock describe the three-dimensional shape of the animals on the wall, some with their legs shown several times repeated to suggest the movement of said dance. Such movement through repletion is breathtaking; as is the way those animal portraits are drawn.
{Life in Movement}
{Familiar Ground}
Last up, Life in Movement, a documentary aptly titled, it left me feeling inspired and with full awareness of my own body. (You cannot slump in your seat when watching dance, can you?) The work of late choreographer Tanja Liedtke was amazing to see, as was her own video footage of herself as she worked out chorographical ideas and future sketches. Those particular video scenes were intimate and revealing. From movement powerful, controlled, expressive, and intelligent, we were projected, Louise and I, into our Sunday second screening. Into a film of such stillness and deadpan humour, it took me some time to settle into this new pace. A large wet tree branch sticks out from the fireplace and fails to properly alight and warm, an inflatable blue figure dances; a man from the future, six months from now, brings a warning in Stéphane Lafleur’s Familiar Ground, my festival sendoff before another year. These two, one a documentary, the other a film; one about movement, the other stillness in part; one about the body and all the brilliance it can do, the other, slow movement and bodies restrained by parkas, snow gloves and Skidoo helmets. In all, this pair made for a good end to the sensational hoopla of a festival.
To the festival this is, for me, as much about the cut lunch and the coffee and friendship as it is about great and challenging film: thank-you, it has been a swell festival, MIFF. And to our pets, Omar, Olive, Percy, Misha-non-penguin: thank-you for accepting our absence in the nest.
From beginning to end
The Silence of Joan (Jeanne Captive) (Philippe Ramos, 2011)
Le Havre (Aki Kaurismäki, 2011)
Beauty and the Beast (La Belle et la Bête) (Jean Cocteau, 1946)
Old Cats (Gatos Viejos) (Sebastián Silva, Pedro Peirano, 2010)
Silent Souls (Aleksei Fedorchenko, 2010)
Intimate Grammar (Nir Bergman, 2010)
An Autumn Afternoon (Yasujiro Ozu, 1962)
Norwegian Wood (Tran Anh Hung, 2010)
The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949)
The Solitude of Prime Numbers (La Solitudine dei Numeri Primi) (Saverio Costanzo, 2010)
The Apple (Samira Makhmalbaf, 1998)
Day is Done (Thomas Imbach, 2011)
The Kid with a Bike (Le Gamin au Vélo) (Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, 2011)
Majority (Çoğunluk) (Seren Yüce, 2010)
Beginners (Mike Mills, 2010)
The Turin Horse (A torinói ló) (Béla Tarr, 2011)
Principles of Life (Principii de viață) (Constantin Popescu, 2010)
Tomorrow Will Be Better (Jurto bedzie lepiej) (Dorota Kędzierzawska, 2010)
Tuesday, After Christmas (Marţi, după Crăciun) (Radu Muntean, 2010)
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Bir Zamanlar Anadolu'da) (Nuri Bilge Ceylan, 2011)
Silent Sonata (Janez Burger, 2010)
Innocent Saturday (Alexander Mindadze, 2011)
Sleeping Sickness (Schlafkrankheit) (Ulrich Köhler, 2011)
The Mill and the Cross (Lech Majewski, 2010)
Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog, 2010)
A Useful Life (La Vida Útil) (Federico Veiroj, 2010)
The Little Tailor (Le Petit Tailleur) (Louis Garrel, 2010)
Life in Movement (Bryan Mason, Sophie Hyde, 2011)
Familiar Ground (En Terrains Connus) (Stéphane Lafleur, 2011)
The End
