“Love and Diane”

a film directed by Jennifer Dworkin

reviewed by Mike Lee

Jennifer Dworkin’s prize-winning documentary is an honest and touching portrayal of three generations of a family that, to be sadly blunt, live in a place two steps beyond redemption. Without a real sense of obtrusiveness, the cameras follow Diane Hazzard, a recovering crack addict who has, through blind faith and an indefatigable will struggles to rebuild the family her own drug addiction destroyed. As the documentary unfolds one realizes that Hazzard’s determination is never enough, however-there is just too much damage wrought already. Not to say that Dworkin’s subjects inexorably face a baleful fate, it is just that these people do not in inhabit a Touched by an Angel pop culture television environment where problem resolution serves as a pre-commercial interruption. Also, Dworkin avoids the exploitative trap of jaded voyeurism; while Dworkin in uncompromising and intensely detailed in documenting the daily lives of her subjects, she succeeds achieving the viewer to have an unstinting fondness for them. You root for Hazzard throughout, even though one realizes early on that small victories become sandwiched between stark, brutal defeats.

This is a story told in almost epic terms: At the beginning a new generation has arrived, Donyaeh, the son of Diane’s daughter Love, an emotionally disturbed young woman, embittered over her own earlier abandonment by Diane years before during the latter’s addiction. This conflict continues throughout the film, particularly when Diane must decide about what to do when her daughter’s emotional outbursts physically threaten Donyaeh. The risky choices she makes on a daily basis are heartbreaking, when one knows the outcome of these decisions means separation and possible homelessness.

This film is pure storytelling. At times Love and Diane are so dramatically riveting one forgets that it is a documentary. It does not judge, either. Everyone is all too human: from the often-deflated, though sympathetic social service bureaucrats to the struggling Hazards. Dworkin achieves, with her sensitive eye and judgment, a documentary that precisely manages to portray one family’s personal struggle against poverty and depravation without resorting to sentimental strings or strident speeches. All Diane Hazzard likely wanted in this documentary was telling it like it truly is. With that in mind, Jennifer Dworkin therefore then has accomplished a rare project of creative genius.

“Divine Intervention”

a film by Elia Suleiman

reviewed by Mike Lee

A surreal, depressing look into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, told from a militant, overly intellectualized Palestinian perspective using wildly sardonic humor, brutally honest irony within a disjointed plot that at times is somewhat maddening but always surprising.

“Divine Intervention” opens with a sequence interpreted in a myriad of ways, depending on one’s ideology: in a blatantly Bunuelistic turn a group of feralized children hunt down and murder Santa Claus on a hill overlooking Nazareth; a man unapologetically dumps his garbage into his neighbor’s yard whilst in another scene a pleasant old man happily waves at passers-by as he mumbles hilarious obscene commentary regarding them. Another individual decides to battle the local cops, tossing bottles from his roof in a desperate chaos. This sequence reminded me of what my grandfather used to say about not crying when the dog you’ve been beating bites the hell out of you-and in Suleiman’s film, there’s no group of dogs ornerier than West Bank Palestinians, obviously.

The main plot concerns a relatively young man (played by Suleiman himself) visiting his father and later spending an afternoon with his girlfriend, who due to Israeli Army restrictions and roadblocks are able only to pass the time together in his car, parked at a vacant lot, holding hands with the passion of unhappy school children. Here, “Divine Intervention” becomes a story of love physically denied, and the extremes to which romantic desire and nationalist politics become intertwined in a time of an unyielding conflict. However, Suleiman fails to follow this up, instead tying this plot strand to video game fantasy, hopelessly exhausting an opportunity to tell a story. This film also conveys a stultifying claustrophobia; one gets the impression the entire West Bank is a Southern backwoods steel cage match with barbed wire wrapped about the ring and flaming pillars. While this approach is often heavy-handedly sententious, “Divine Intervention” makes no excuses for its point of view or attempts any pretensions in compromising its radical Palestinian nationalist viewpoint. However, there seems to be an unintended consequence in the process of viewing “Divine Intervention”: while the Israelis portrayed are cartoon baddies, the Palestinian characters are hardly developed beyond cut-outs and plot devices. This slight makes it hard to like anyone in the film.

Todd Solondz’s fourth film, Palindromes, tells the story of Aviva, a 13-year-old girl whose only desire in the world is to have

Matthew Koff

A Review of Palindromes, or “TODD SOLONDZ WANTS TO MAKE MY EYES BLEED!”

“Palindromes”

Directed by Todd Solondz

2004

By Matt Koff

Todd Solondz’s fourth film, Palindromes, is a success. Well, it is a success in that I left the theater feeling sick and hating everything. But, since this film takes place in a world where all humans are weak, awful creatures incapable of growth or change, I can only assume that nauseating the audience was among the director’s stated objectives. So, good job, Mr. Solondz!

The film tells the story of Aviva, a 13-year-old love-starved adolescent girl whose only desire in the world is to have lots and lots of babies. After an agonizingly awkward sexual encounter with the son of family friends leaves her pregnant, Aviva’s distraught parents demand, against her wishes, that she get an abortion. Due to complications, the doctor must perform a hysterectomy during the abortion, rendering Aviva incapable of ever having children. Oblivious to the mishap, the single-minded Aviva continues to pursue her doomed dream of becoming a mother. She runs away from home and gets involved with a pedophile trucker. She also meets a conservative Christian couple that adopts disabled children. Et cetera, et cetera.

I could go on with the synopsis, but I wouldn’t want to ruin this horrible movie for you. There are many reasons why this film does not work, but here is the most important one: it is impossible to sympathize with Aviva. Why? Well, for one, she is a moron. In the first half of the film, she falls in love with a trucker. They have sex and then he abandons her, leaving her stranded at the motel room the next morning. This, we think, might just be common naiveté. But later in the film, she continues to pursue this same trucker. At this point, she becomes less a figure of tragic innocence than one of aggravating stupidity. 

This stupidity is strikingly similar to that of Dawn Weiner, the young protagonist of Solondz’s first film,Welcome to the Dollhouse. This character also searches for love in the worst possible places. But that filmed worked, largely because of Heather Matarazzo’s sweet, sad, and humorous portrayal of Dawn. In Palindromes, the main character is played by eight different actresses of varying ethnicities, body sizes, and ages. The film is divided into chapters, and with each new chapter, Aviva shifts bodily incarnations. By doing this, Solondz is attempting to show the, uh, universality of, uh, the spirit of the … female … somethingorother — okay, I don’t know what the hell he’s trying to say, but the point is, the constant parade of actresses hurts the film drastically. Solondz is trying so hard to make a multileveled film that he forgets what it takes for a film to work on its most basic level: a real protagonist that we can relate to. Aviva’s constantly altering form doesn’t expand Aviva into a universal everywoman. It relegates her to the realm of an idea. In order for the audience to suspend its disbelief, it needs to believe that it is taking a journey with an actual, flesh-and-blood character. The film’s shifting betrays that. Ultimately, Todd Solondz never lets us forget that we are watching a Todd Solondz film.

There are plenty of other things in the film which the director probably views as challenging, but which come off instead as cynical and gratuitous. For example, there is a sequence in which handicapped children sing and dance in a Christian Rock band. Solondz is clearly portraying the children in a comedic light. He is trying to “challenge” the audience by making us laugh, and at the same time make us feel guilty for laughing. Why is this necessary? I have no idea. Solondz needs to learn the difference between challenging viewers and needlessly punishing them.

Another way in which the film attempts to challenge is by presenting both sides of the abortion issue. We meet selfish, scary, liberal parents (played by Ellen Barkin and Richard Masur) who force their daughter into getting an abortion she doesn’t want, and also right-wing lunatics who murder abortion doctors. The entire time, the audience is wondering what side of the issue the filmmaker is on. I’m not one to advocate telling the audience what to think, but by the time the film is over, there is nothing left to think except, “Everyone is bad, and everything is going to hell.”  

If I had never seen a Todd Solondz film before, I might have loved this movie. But this is the fourth one I’ve seen, and after a while his trademark cynicism becomes transparent and thin. 

The film’s essential message is voiced by the character Mark Weiner: “No one ever changes. They may think they do, but they don’t.” This is the kind of blanket generalization you’d expect to find in the diary of a fifteen-year-old. Solondz is clearly a talented filmmaker. It is a shame he can’t use his talent to say something more interesting. 

Frank Gonzales of “Manito”

A Star is Born in A Brilliant and Gritty Film

…Infinite Loop

Review and Interview by Melanie Maria Goodreaux

Frank Gonzales, otherwise known as”Frankie G.,” heats up a seat at the House of Tribes Theatre, a small black box on the Lower East Side of New York City. With a quiet confidence and intense gaze that could melt Alaska, he sits inside the red theatre seat in a black jumpsuit and sneakers, donning a chiseled jaw, gracious humility, and the smoldering eyes of a rising star. He looks like”Junior,” his touching role as the foxy and dutiful big brother in Eric Eason’s Manito, but assures me that he’s not.”I never experienced Junior’s story, but I had a friend that did, and I drew from that,” says Gonzales, his voice thickened with a Brooklyn accent.”Acting is going into someone else’s mind- jumping into their spirit, their body,” says Frankie G., who recalls drawing upon his grandmother’s death to fuel his performance as Junior in Manito.”I couldn’t stop crying,” says a remembering Gonzales,”I felt Junior.”

Junior, the character posed as Eason’s”big brother” in Manito,(which means”little brother” in Latin slang), is a hard working, married man, who did a prison sentence because of his involvement with his father’s drug ring. He served as the spy for the cops on the corner in front of the bodega where his father sold sandwiches, candy, beer and drugs to pull off living in the Washington Heights area of Manhattan. Junior took the rap, did the time, and never sold out his father. Once out of prison, Junior works hard as a contractor, who hustles gigs without a license to make ends meet and to throw a big high school graduation party for his”manito,” the scrawny and yet brainy brother of promise who has plans to go to college. A frighteningly believable twist of fate happens on the subway as Junior’s little brother Manny is traveling home from the party with his girlfriend and a wad of cash that the community has given him to send him successfully into the future to fulfill his dreams and theirs. Then the plot twists and the subway turns—two men harass the couple, they flee, his girlfriend gives him a gun, and then our”manito of promise” ends up killing the gangsters and having to do time. His future is now dimmed by this twist, all the hard work and hopes of the family are slammed into yet another jail cell-and Junior can’t do anything to raise the money to get his little brother out of prison besides asking his father.

Eason creates a thick distance and tension between Junior and his estranged father. In the early moments of the film we see papi preparing a huge hoagie big enough to feed the entire guest list at his youngest son’s graduation party. He prepares the sandwich graciously enough to feed a king- but once Junior sees the huge hoagie at the dance hall before the party starts, he grabs it, throws it in a van and speeds through Washington Heights only to throw the sandwich out the window. It lands as a demolished heap of bread, meat, lettuce and tomatoes in front of his father’s bodega. Later, while giving a tearful toast to his younger brother at the party, he eyes his father at the door and rushes through the crowd to beat him down and send him on his way. Obviously dad’s affection and attention comes uninvited and a little too late for a Junior that is bitter and angry about doing time for a man that has no genuine love for his family, a man that never visited Junior in prison. When Junior is forced to go to his father to ask for the cash to bail out his little brother, cash that Junior’s pride kept him from asking for in the first place, cash that Junior is well aware that his father has–his father still refuses. The impassioned Junior, hurt by hopelessness and his father’s cold display of heartlessness ends up strangling him to death after he is beaten with a bat. We catch each blow of the bat, we hear every desperate suck for life as he is strangled beneath a hand held camera that makes the viewer feel like it has just caught a domestic violence episode ending in death on a home video. The film ends with a repetitive shot of Junior running frantically from the scene of the crime. All hope is snatched away and there is no one to blame but the rugged, ragged, random monster of chance. This is what closes in on these characters, this is what makes Junior run. Manito’s characters are twisted into a fate of recycled hopelessness and trouble.”A lot was going on in Junior’s head,” says Frankie G. of his character,” he was running away from everything, running away from his problems-he didn’t want to go back to prison.”

Even though Frankie G. was just doing his job as an actor by”jumping into the spirit” of Junior in Manito, doesn’t mean that he and Junior haven’t faced some similar salt. He says that playing Junior made him think of his own family’s struggle as working class folks from Brooklyn.”I thought of my family and their suffering, what they went through. My father worked hard so that we could move out of the troubles of the time.

When I told Frankie G. that some of the Latinos at the Julio Burgos Center in East Harlem argued that the film played up negative stereotypes of his people, he strongly shrugged it off saying,”This film was not just for Hispanics and Blacks. They’re upset cause they feel the realness of it. It was a reality check. It’s just a story, but it felt real– like a documentary. These people were trying to make a life for themselves, that’s life, period. How can someone think the film was just about drug deals?” Who am I to play the devil’s advocate with Frankie G.? He’s an actor who is sitting in obvious support of fellow Puerto Rican director Lou Torres, who also served as actor and producer of Manito. The two are part of the theater happenings at the House of Tribes this weekend. Torres is directing one of Juan Shamsul Alam’s plays and Frankie G. is coming to hear the work and watch the spirits do their jumping.

Gonzales’ magical delving into his character, the brilliance of Eason’s strong and gritty script, and its true to the times camera work, make Manito a classical addition to film history. Eason brought Washington Heights to film, and Washington Heights Manito style is as gritty as the city itself. Manito’s hand held camera shots make it come across as a documentary while actually delivering a great story built thick with suspense, a story that Frankie G. calls”soo good.” Rugged, raw, and real, Manito makes you feel a moment away from ordering yucca at the Cuchifrito, and a spot away from the little things in life blowing up into big drama. It documents what is both charming and mundane about neighborhood living in New York City. This juxtaposition is exactly where the style of filming matches the story. Manito masks its edgy story within a”reality television” style. Eason brings brilliance to a style that received lots of attention years ago with the disappointing Blair Witch Project. The audience witnesses intimate and unseen moments of”real life” in Washington Heights. The impromptu conversations of neighborhood Latino teenagers rapping about the comings and goings of their high school scene, being taken inside of a Washington Heights apartment with sexy prostitutes adorned with hot tops and big tits, skirts with slits, pale blue eye shadow and lip gloss, and the toasts of all the folks at the graduation party who feel like family, dancing and swaying, wishing Manny well through champagne, tears, and sweet Spanish Music in the background are just a few examples of scenes that are cut to look uncut. The viewer is in awe of the familiar, without being suspect of Eason’s brilliant storytelling. As a society, we have become numb to taking a movie camera into the privacy of our lives. We look in on first dates, on high priced dare devil reality game shows, and are dazed by watching hours of shows like”The Real World.” What may make audiences feel uncomfortable about Manito’s drama is that it could easily be anyone’s drama.

Gonzales’ humble brilliance as an actor matches the edgy, raw, rugged, and realistic vision of Eason’s masterpiece, a masterpiece that has already won awards at Sundance, Urbanworld, Gotham, and the Miami Film Festival, just to name a few. Yes, Frankie is all that and a bag of chips, as they say. He’s got the edge, he’s got the bomb of a first big gig, he’s coming with talent and good looks, AND he’s just finished working with Dustin Hoffman in Confidence? The intimate space of the House of Tribes Theater sets the stage for a moment that starts to get even smaller- I realize that Frankie G., the handsome and humble talent sitting across from me- is about to”blow up” or already has. And although our new star might not have ever faced the same hopeless brick wall as Junior, he certainly has had people around him trying to bring him down and keep him down.”When I first started acting, I didn’t tell anyone. At one time I was going to give up because of all the negative feedback. I had a lot of my own people telling me that I couldn’t do it, telling me that they knew that I wasn’t going to make it. They had such negative vibes. I had to prove myself. I had to believe in myself. Now I can tell them,’I told YOU so.’”

Frankie finishes up our talk by assuring me his visits to Hollywood are just that– he plans on staying in New York He offers a bit of hope to any young talent that may come behind him,”Believe in yourself. Don’t listen to people with negative vibes. The ones with positive vibes will lead you to your path.” It’s time for the play at the House of Tribes Theater to begin. The lights go down on Frankie G. and our conversation. The actors jump into the spirits of Juan Shamsul Alam’s characters on stage. This time, Frank Gonzales, a new star with new hope, will just sit back and watch.

Review by Melanie Maria Goodreaux

Well, Hollywood has pulled another fast one on us, folks — and Halle Berry should be ashamed of herself for saying at the Oscars, “This moment is much bigger than me … this is for Dorothy Dandridge, Lena Horne, etc.” I highly doubt that Lena or Dorothy would ever find themselves down on all fours for a racist white ex correctional officer in a soft porn sex scene for all of America to watch. Just imagine us telling our little black girls that they too can be Academy Award winners now because of Halle Berry. Their next question may be: “Well, mamma, what role did Halle play to get the award?” I guess my answer would be a big gulp. The entire premise of the film is that Halle’s good black pussy changes this racist into a black people lover who starts to empower the black people of his community. The mind of the film doesn’t offer us much more room than to believe that the hot sex he has with Halle’s character is what changes his mind. It’s not like they talk to each other, date each other, etc. The day after they have explosive sex at Halle’s house, he goes to the black neighborhood mechanic and offers him money to fix his truck, which he plans on giving to his new lay, portrayed by our lovely Halle. Earlier on in the film, he shoots this same black man’s children off of his property with a shotgun at the request of his racist father. In another encounter with Halle’s character before they actually copulate for 7 minutes on the big screen, Billy Bob’s character doesn’t even tip her at the restaurant for doing such a sloppy job waiting on him.

After he “hits it” though, her tip goes up to two bucks, she inherits his truck, she get a gas station named after her, and he moves his racist father out of his house and into an old folks home because he insults his new “lady” by saying that in his prime he also had a thing for “nigger juice.” This, of course, is after or Letitia has pawned her wedding ring to buy Billy Bob a white cowboy hat — even though her most urgent need is saving money to keep her own home.

“Love conquers all” is what this film’s supporters are throwing out as a cheer. It’s more like “Good black pussy will get a white man to save your life, move you into his crib — and after he eats you out, he’ll go to the store for you and buy you some CHOCOLATE ice cream that you both will eat with a WHITE plastic spoon.” Hmmmmmm. Well. Even at the film’s ending, when Letitia figures out that her new savior was one of the correctional officers that electrocuted her husband the audience is given a sense that when he comes back home, either she is going to kill him or herself. Noooooo. Lovely Leticia sits on the back porch with her savior, eats chocolate ice cream with a white plastic spoon, eyes the tombstones in his backyard and looks up at the stars — the two of them are star-crossed lovers who find love. Awwwweeee.  WHATEVER! Take Halle off the covers of Ebony and Essence and put her where she seems to really want to be — the cover of Playboy or Penthouse. I can’t really play another sister like that, though. Let’s see — put her where she really needs to be — in a film class that deciphers the film’s symbolism and its cultural consequences. Only then will she realize the bigger symbol that she created for America — that as a black women — getting down on all fours and being fucked by a racist was the way we got handed the Academy Award. Somebody had to do it. I heard she begged for this role. Wow.

“Bamboozled”

Directed by Spike Lee

Maison Blanche Means “White House” and Black Face

A Review of Spike Lee’s Bamboozled”

by Melanie M. Goodreaux

Once I heard that Spike Lee’s latest work was a film about black face and minstrel shows it brought me back to just 5 years ago in New Orleans when a white coworker of mine casually told me a racist story in the lunchroom. According to the story, when she was a young woman, her summer vacations to Florida afforded her tans that made it possible for her to play the “high yellow” characters in Maison Blanche’s minstrel shows without applying any paste to her face. I was stunned at the slip up, and even more duped that Miss Trudy didn’t see what she had said as revealing one of those “white folk secrets” we were all afraid existed and obviously do. I caught the slip up, choked on my cafeteria lasagna, shared the story with my coworkers and laughed at how dumb Miss Trudy was for being so grossly “politically incorrect.” Sometimes ignorance and arrogance can be painted on so thick it seems senseless to try and wipe off the masquerade. Anyone who doesn’t appreciate Spike’s latest wake up call to the culture is as astute as Miss Trudy and not quick enough to catch an onslaught of heavy- handed, strategically- placed, Spike-styled images meant to disillusion the culture and poke fun at everyone. As writer and director of Bamboozled, Spike is nothing like his main character, Pierre Delacroix, a television executive and a “Negro” according to Spike’s script, who only daydreams of punching out the egotistical, money hungry, white producer Dunwitty who uses the word “nigger” with Delacroix like he’s telling him what he ate for breakfast. When Spike punches, he punches hard. And the bigger they are the harder they fall. The characters of Bamboozled are exaggerated themselves which, stylistically is much like historical black face performance. The characters are created to mock. And mock Spike does. Spike is a genius at manipulating these metaphorical layers. The Dunwitty character, a white man who believes he has the privilege of using the word nigger because he’s married to a black woman and keeps his office decorated with African sculpture and blow ups of great black athletes, is a mockery of those whites who feel they empathize with the black struggle so much they feel black themselves. Mike Tyson, who is known for being the kind of violent and “crazy colored” white America is most afraid of, is the sports figure Spike focuses on in Dunwitty’s office. Spike plays on this unspoken fear again when he gives the audience a scene with all white writers trying to get inspiration to begin writing the scripts for “ManTan: The New Millenium Minstrel Show.” Delacroix, who creates the show’s concept, urges them to remember how they felt when the O. J. Simpson verdict came out. Spike compounds on the “white- boy -wants -to -be -a- black -boy -syndrome” with Paul Mooney’s comedian character, Delacroix’s father. The comedian cracks on “how everybody wants to be black, but nobody wants to be black” and wonders if America started lynching blacks again how many of these “Timmy Hilnigger” wearing white young, rap free- stylists would want to be black then. “Hilnigger” is Spike’s renaming of Tommy Hilfiger. No one can say they haven’t met Spike’s characters before. Spike loves to exaggerate reality in his films. It’s just funny to watch Spike work his genius– showing us ourselves in a mockery, by making a mockery of the mockery itself. Spike’s opening shot is of a huge window shaped like a clock in Pierre Delacroix’s office. Spike’s clock image lets viewers know that the timing of a millennial turn over is ripe for a rush to “get revenge,” teach a lesson, and expose everyone in the entertainment industry that has anything to do with misrepresenting the African American culture before we head into a new age. From Stevie Wonder’s music for the movie that proclaims messages about not letting anyone “misrepresent you” and how “today its okay to play with the word “nigger,” to close ups of the thick black paste applied to the present day minstrels “Sleep and Eat” and “Man Tan,” Spike keeps the images going relentlessly. It is as if he had to make this film, strong and unapologetically controversial to prevent any further humiliation and misrepresentation of the race. It is as if Spike were afraid that if he didn’t bring up the past one more time, we could still bend easily towards the sometimes misguided sensationalism presented by money making media hype. We, like the audiences within the film, would react at first to a “millenium minstrel show” with looks of distaste and gasps of surprise. We, like them, might shift uncomfortably in our seats at first. But we, like them, after being taken in and wooed by a great song and tap dance number, would forget what is humiliating and undercut by the images of blacks in black face, lips swollen with red paste. We could be swayed and taken under the eerie hypnosis of television and the images of the Internet. But Spike doesn’t stop with poking fun at white folks. We all get kicked. The Maus Maus, a militant gang of rappers who talk of revolution and don’t really have a solid clue at who or what they are revolting against end the movie with the same mode of operating as many of our black gangster rappers do in real life-an enemy is sighted, someone who differs ideologically, and then everyone ends up shot and bloodied. Ironically the gangster rappers stage their revolution on the Internet. Man Tan, exploited by both black and white, is murdered by the bloodied hands of the angry and misguided gangster rap mentality and dies tap-dancing. Tap-dancing– that’s how he “wins” a part in the minstrel show. Man Ray, turned “Man Tan” literally tap dances on the desk of Dunwitty to get the part in the minstrel show. The show grows in its popularity so much so that the audience starts to wear black face as well. Spike graduates the exaggeration in the film with a crescendo. At first Delacroix seems like a genius who is using his creation of the minstrel show to expose the ulterior racism that exists beneath the surface of the white run entertainment industry. By the end of the movie , Delacroix’s genius vision is blurred by money and the “success” of his creation. Sloan, Delacroix’s assistant, gives him a black faced caricature that happens to be a bank. When the Sambo– looking bank opens his mouth you feed money into him. The image is fed by money and after Spike begins heightening the crescendo of exaggeration, the image starts to move by itself. Symbolic of Delacroix’s creation going out of control. It has a mind of its own. Delacroix’s office is overcrowded with black face memorabilia from the past that look like Rastus, Aunt Jemima, and Sambo.Get the hint? Spike continues to bombard the audience with television and film images of Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, Al Jolson and others in black face. Spike gives Bill Clinton a cameo appearance where even he is taken under by the comedy of “Man Tan: The New Millennium Minstrel Show.” Spike even throws a punch at Ving Rhames for giving up his academy award for Rosewood to Jack Lemmon by having the Delacroix character give away his award for the popular minstrel show to a white man in the film. And one would have to ask if Spike’s biggest bamboozle is having Damon Wayans play Pierre Delacroix. Isn’t Spike’s message anti- In Living Color? I felt embarrassed for Damon Wayans who seems to be subliminally scolded by the James Baldwin quote at the end of the film which says we will all pay for what we do, and more for what we have done to ourselves and we pay by the life we live. The quote accompanies a full frame shot of the Pierre character played by Damon Wayans. The camera shot seems to corner Damon Wayans. If arriving at the east village cinema ready to see Bamboozle with my popcorn and Miss Trudy’s Maison Blanche Minstrel Show story in my mind wasn’t enough, I left the flick with an even more disturbing image from real life. The black couple behind me slept through most of the film and continued to snore well into the credits. How could they miss the full color cartoonish Alabama porch monkeys? How could they miss Pierre scrolling the web for images of middle passage slave ships before he totally sells out? Weren’t they awake for the clock at the film’s beginning reminding us of a time factor? Whereas Spike had written a movie about black face meant to expose, teach, and entertain– middle black America had fallen asleep through it. I was waiting for Larry Fishburne or Wesley Snipes’ characters to be resurrected like angry ghosts from Spike Lee joints of the past yelping painfully into the screen with one of Spike’s renowned messages, “WAKE UP!” They continued to snore while those of us who were awake caught yet another glimpse of Spike’s original style, historical importance and artistic genius.

“Mystic River“  

Director: Clint Eastwood

Contaminated Water

review by Latif Zaman

A generation before Mystic River, Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns introduced Clint Eastwood as a cultural icon, the enigmatic and dangerous “man with no name.” Previous westerns showed a good-humored and colorful time, where bloodless gunplay represented a righteous machismo, namely a defense of family and honor. Leone and Eastwood’s collaborations painted a bleaker picture, with no delineation between good and evil, and no need for honor. In their barren western landscapes, self-interest and greed became the only motivations, and bloodshed was nothing more than the logical means to those ends. Eastwood’s series of “man with no name” characters juxtaposed caustic humor and irreverence with startling, but emotionless violence.

From the stately, somber score, to a moody gray aesthetic, Eastwood saturates Mystic River with a dark, unrelenting pressure. If the stark featureless deserts of Leone’s films reflected the moral emptiness of his characters, Mystic River’s protagonists are perpetually gathering storms of trauma and scars. The camera, in fact, often views events from above, a silent omniscient. While some may classify the film as a murder mystery, most startling is the oppressing feeling of inevitability. The film starts with the young Jimmy, Sean, and Dave whose basic characters are already defined. Jimmy is strong and aggressive, Sean is a cautious and watches Jimmy’s example, while Dave is soft and awkward, teased by friends. Primordial evil, in the form of a pair of child molesters, raises the blinds on their relative innocence and seals their fates. The rage that simmers inside the grown Jimmy is palpable. Sean, the police officer, is drawn to evil as an observer, and Dave’s every gesture seems to answer to his has victimization. Jimmy has committed unspeakable evil, Sean witnessed such evil, and Dave feels it everyday of his life. These roles trap them, and only they cannot see the unwavering propulsion of tragedy of their Sisyphean struggle to escape.  

In the spaghetti westerns violence is a rational choice for an immoral, seemingly godless world. There is no tragedy because life has little meaning. A more malevolent deity inhabits Mystic River. Dave obsesses over vampires at one point in the film. Like vampires, the molesters seemingly infect the boys with evil. This becomes their cross and they are already doomed. Tragedy ensues as the fates punish them further for trying to escape. Dave is branded as a victim but kills a child molester, ostensibly to save a young boy. His actions are violently against character and represent a desperate attempt to destroy, to erase the crime perpetrated upon him. His destiny in more than any single set of actions, and as in all tragedy he cannot escape destiny. He is punished for his hubris by being blamed for the murder of Jimmy’s young daughter and eventually being killed by Jimmy.

After time in prison. Jimmy tries, uneasily, to fit back into society. The death of his daughters propels him back into the life he desperately tried to leave. Years ago, after his first murder, he tries to appease his guilt and do penance for his crime by supporting the widow and children of man he killed. One of the boys ends up senselessly murdering Jimmy’s daughter. Jimmy ends the film knowing that his penance ended in his daughters senseless murder, and his search for justice ended in his friends equally senseless murder. Jimmy learns that he brings death and the only question can be who and when.

Violence and crime started long before these friends, and long before the molesters. A river is symbol of movement and change. To Eastwood, however, humanity is a contaminated river and everyone who drinks of it is infected. From Dave to Jimmy, the only differences are the symptoms. Only Sean physically leaves his neighborhood, but looks back through the window of being a cop. The violence and atrocities of humanity becomes his career. His wife doesn’t want to bring a child into this cycle and leaves him while she is pregnant. While he is the only character who physically escape the neighborhood he never tries to escape the human infection of evil. Being on the police force he is forced to bear witness. Only when the film ends and his wife returns with their child is the viewer left to wonder if Sean too will continue his friends struggles and try to transcend the cycle of human evil that engulfed them.

      “Kids”

      Director: Larry Clark

      Screenplay: Harmony Korine , Larry Clark, Leo Fitzpatrick , Jim Lewis 

      With Leo Fitzpatrick, Justin Pierce and Chloë Sevigny 

      “Bully”

      Director: Larry Clark

      Screenplay: Zachary Long, Roger Pullis 

      With Brad Renfro, Rachel Miner, Nick Stahl and Bijou Phillips 

Violation of Youth: Transcendence Through Destruction in  Kids and  Bully review by Latif Zaman

Larry Clark’s Kids follows vacuous NYC teenagers Telly and Casper on a normal day, leisurely searching for drugs and sex. The stark, simple title, the day in the life structure, and realistic dialog of Kids gave it a documentary-like feel, many heralding it as an indictment of the kids of America. Clark’s film  Bully unfolds its tale of suburban teenage debauchery around the true-life murder of the sadistic bully Bobby Kent by a group six teenagers, including his best friend Marty Puccio. The extreme nature of the crime, and the victim, helps particularize these characters more than those in Kids, but also elucidates Clark’s perspective, namely his fascination with a certain kind of predatory instinct. In Kids and Bully the search for drugs and sex often come off as mere rote, fueled more by intertia than vigor or passion. The most dynamic character in Kids is Telly, the “virgin surgeon”, whose life is defined by the pursuit of his next virgin conquest. Bully portrays Bobby Kent as the only one among of his friends possessing any significant intelligence or ambition. However, a genuine pleasure in sadism centers his life. He repeatedly embraces Marty, his most fragrant victim, assuring him, “you’re my best friend.” Bobby needs his victims, whom he rapes, beats, and psychologically tortures, to escape the lethargy seeped ennui of their lives. The only powerful motivation Clark offers his protagonists in either film is the desire to conquer and violate.

Clark’s films generally follow a male perspective, females existing mainly as foils for the males. In fact most of the major female characters in both Kids and Bully are raped. In Kids, Casper, to emulate the sexual mastery of Telly, rapes the peacefully sleeping Jenny, in a long, explicitly jarring scene. The defilement of Casper primarily intrigues Clark, however, the camera focusing on Casper’s bewildered face the next morning as he asks “what happened?” Amidst all his drugs and debauchery, only the malicious violence of rape exiles Casper from innocence, from childhood. Looking back, Telly’s pursuit of virgins can be seen as a subliminal compulsion to destroy innocence that is made even more profound by the fact that he is HIV positive.

Planning the murder of Bobby Kent consumes the lives of the teenagers in Bully, all of them playing an integral part in the proceedings, and carrying it out in an almost ritualistic fashion. Just before the murder the kids even dance and rhythmically chant “we’re going to kill him,” and “dead.” All these youths live within the extended womb of their parents homes and financial support. They do not have the intelligence to escape to college or the drive to escape financially. Thus they are trapped in a perpetual adolescence. In one scene playing a video game, two of the teenagers perform a move called an “infantality” One explains “Its worse than death, because you keep living, but you’re a fucking baby.” Their hyper-sexualized and drug-filled world inundates them with so much stimulus that it no longer affects them. The first sexual experience, a first smoke or drink, become merely a blur instead of the traditional “coming of age” experience. Murder becomes the plateau of adulthood in Bully. The teenagers follow Bobby’s example and find the first stimulus in their uneventful and rather pathetic lives, in the urge to destroy him. Lust and rage, in and of themselves may be natural human emotions, but sadistic lust to harm transcends human law. Larry Clark doesn’t just degrade his protagonists, he makes them strive for degradation, and ultimately dehumanization through acts murder and rape. Clark’s films obsessively follow teenagers, and the only growth, the only escape from adolescence, he allows them in his microcosm are the basest of transgressions. Clark doesn’t concern himself with the consequences or victims of his protagonists actions, solely on the inclination to perpetrate them.

Ambiguous Morals Are Trendy: Maria Full of Grace  – by Lauren Saccone

“Maria Full of Grace”

Directed by Joshua Marston

With Catalina Sandino Moreno, Yenny Paola Vega and Guilied Lopez 

2003

Maria Full of Grace was not a movie I was particularly interested in seeing. A film about a seventeen year-old girl who traffics drugs? It sounds like a bad episode of a teen drama. And critics in general have a habit of applauding movies that tackle ’serious’ issues, while ignoring their artistic merits. It makes them seem multicultural, I guess. However, I am happy to admit that in this case I was completely wrong.

From the opening shots of Maria (Catalina Sandino Moreno) going to work at the flower factory, you know this is no light-hearted film. Set to the melancholy ‘Los Caminos de la Vida,’ this sets the tone of everything that is to follow. Maria is a smart, stubborn girl who does things her own way. After quitting her job due to an altercation with her boss, her family insists she find more work quickly. In a family made up exclusively of women, save for her sister’s infant son, Maria has an obligation to bring in cash. Add to that the trauma of finding out she is pregnant by her loutish boyfriend, it seems as if Maria is being backed into a corner. Despite the time period, her world is pretty old fashioned. But Maria has her own ideas.

Instead of marrying her boyfriend or working another low-wage job, Maria decides to become a drug mule. This work consists of her ingesting large pellets of heroin, then flying to America to ‘hand over’ the merchandise. With her friend Blanco (Yenny Paola Vega) and fellow drug mule Lucy (Guilied Lopez), these young girls enter a world where they are only worth what they can carry. In a particularly difficult scene, Maria practices swallowing grapes whole in preparation of the heroin pellets she will have to ingest to earn her pay. The director wants to show you the challenges in the lives of these mules, and it works; you often find yourself wanting to gag for her.

But swallowing sixty-two pellets of heroin dipped in broth is not the end of her troubles. Maria must then endure quite possibly the most hellish airplane flight in history to the United States. Fully aware of her situation, and the ramifications of getting caught, this long plane ride just exacerbates her anxiety. Originally believing herself to be alone, she discovers that Lucy, Blanco, and another girl are all on the plane with her. This could be considered comforting, save for the fact that Lucy is violently sick.   As if matters weren’t stressful enough, what with trying to illegally get into America with heroin inside her, Maria has to go to the bathroom. After ‘losing’ the pellets, she is forced to once again return them to her stomach, in ways I’d rather not dwell on. This adds a remarkable level of tension to the film, heightened by the audience’s anxiety over whether or not Maria will get caught. It is a bit hard to believe that no one on the plane notices several extremely nervous young women spending an inordinate amount of time around the restrooms. The music here is all sparse strings, allowing the scene to play up its own tension.

America does not solve her problems. Upon arrival, Maria and her friends are all separately taken into custody under suspicion of transporting drugs. Maria is saved from an X-Ray that would reveal the pellets only by her pregnancy. After being released, things go downhill. Two seedy guys take them to a questionable hotel to wait for the pellets to ‘pass,’ as Jon Wesley’s ‘Shake It Fa Me’ makes it immensely clear that they are far from home. This goes on for two days. Then Lucy is taken away in the dead of night. Panicking, Maria flees to Lucy’s older sister, all the while lying about Lucy’s whereabouts and her own intentions. Finally, she has fellow Colombians around and the soundtrack returns to a more ethnic beat with ‘Mi Primer Millon.’ Yet even this has some American influence; Maria cannot go back.

Things reach a head when Maria and Blanco discover Lucy has died. Maria finally contacts the men they fled from, and even tries to get Lucy’s money so her family can bury her with dignity. In the end, she gives them some of her own money. When Blanco finally goes back to Columbia, Maria chooses to stay in America for her child.

Maria’s personal changes remain authentic, despite the director throwing every curve ball possible at his leading character. Her sympathy and kindness towards Lucy’s family remains believable because she has her own interests in mind.

Her final decision to stay in America, played out against ‘Yo No Quiero’ (another American-produced song) has some rather questionable morals behind it. Although it is made clear by many characters that America is a better place for children, Maria is seventeen, pregnant, and an illegal immigrant with very limited funds. While you do want her to be happy and raise her child the best way possible, how happy will she and her offspring be there? No mention is ever given to the fact that Maria essentially abandons her family in Columbia; we are not supposed to care about them.

It appears the director wants everyone to go to America. That seems to be the only moral message behind this story. Of course, nobody wants the standard ‘Don’t do drugs’ message  –  we’ve certainly seen enough of that. But taking some sort of moral stance on his character’s actions would have made a greater impact. Ambiguity is usually good, but not when it leads to lapses in common sense.

Writer/director Joshua Marston has made a very fine second feature, but he still has some work before I’ll consider him talented. Although his writing is basically sound, save for my issues with the ending, his directing and cinematography leave much to be desired. At first the grainy, realistic camera work seems authentic. But Marston seems so intent on jumping in front of the camera and showing us how artistic he can be, he often forgets that the story should be the focus. If it were not such a good movie, this could be called ‘masturbatory’. Many of the shots come from ‘Filmmaking 101,’ and those that don’t usually don’t work (did we really need constant shots of the pellets to remind us they were heroin?) There is no information on Marston’s backgrond, but he seems too detached from his characters, making this film ‘very good,’ rather than brilliant.

All that being said, Moreno is so good that she makes me forgive the film its faults. At twenty-three, she has managed to create a brilliant, uncompromising character in Maria. She does not ask us to like Maria; instead, she demands we understand her, which is a far more difficult and rewarding experience. The whole film rests on her shoulders, and she carries it with ease. In fantastic support are Patricia Rae as Lucy’s older sister, and Guilied Lopez as Lucy. Her end may be predictable (there are too many mentions of how much she wants to see her sister), but Lopez manages to make you suffer anyway. The only real sour note as far as acting is Blanco, who is the obligatory best friend you spend the whole movie wishing would either shut up or die.

But in the end, Maria Full of Grace is about finding grace. More than that, it is about finding the courage and will to survive. Whatever grace comes from that, Maria has surely found.

      “FIREDANCER”

      Directed by Jawed Wassel

Review by Laimah Osman - Kara Williams

A vast landscape stretches to eternity. A dark night finds a little boy running from his home.

Cut to: New York City 2000. Haris, a stylish Afghan-American artist living in Chelsea is haunted by a traumatic past. He tries to interpret his visions in his artwork but needs more clarity.

Flashback to: Kabul, Afghanistan 1979. A young Haris wakes to gun fire. His father tells him to run and sends him off with a prayer and a promise not to return home. His legacy begins.

Haris, played by Baktash Zaher, is haunted by re-occurring flashbacks of his homeland and he seeks out other Afghans to make sense of his own story which is tied to one of largest diaporas in our time.

FireDancer was written and directed by Jawed Wassel, who was brutally murdered soon after the film premiered in New York. He never witnessed the success of his first film, but his spirit was invoked at the Tribeca Film Festival May 9, 2003 when cast and crew paid homage to his work before a packed theater.

FireDancer is a fictional story based on very real insight into the lives of displaced Afghans in America– a rarely told cinematic experience. Mr. Wassel, illustrates what happens when Afghan and American cultures meet. Cultural clashes and meshes in FireDancer are both funny and painful reminders of the struggle between assimilation and tradition.

Gossiping voices are heard as we travel along a row of houses in Queens. A father attempts to marry off his daughter to an eligible Afghan thug. And our main character, Haris attempts to find comfort in Laila (played by Mariam Yasmine Weiss) who is initially suspicious because she believes his intentions are for marriage.

Throughout the film Wassel deals with the restrictions of patriarchy as it exists in Afghan culture. The female characters struggle with their intentions to be assertive without breaking ties with tradition. Laila works as a fashion designer, an occupation that is often seen as the common work of a”tailor” by Afghan standards, yet is regarded in America as a creative discipline. Wassel also shows how the transfer of priorities from family to the individual can arouse Afghan-American men to shift loyalties. The father of Laila creates a spectacle when he leaves his wife of twenty years to marry his Latin mistress. We witness the tragic breakdown of a family.

The story culminates when Haris reconciles his past and proclaims: “Afghanhastum,” I am Afghan.

From an Afghan-American perspective, FireDancer is a success. Although Mr. Wassel takes on too many issues for one film his story remains an engaging, poetic and haunting tribute to the Afghan-American experience. This film attempts and succeeds in exposing so many issues connected to what it means to be Afghan and American today.

Pinero a Miramax Pictures film directed by Leon Ichaso

Review by Luis Chaluisan

Interesting how late seventies and eighties urban history is handled in the movie “Pinero.” The movies producers and director/writer confirm a prediction made by Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe co-founder Miguel Algarin more than 25 years ago about efforts to bring Latino creativity into the mainstream, “I see a lot of waste because before the great Hispanic hit is going to come out you’re going to have to break through all of the cliches.” Miguel Algarin August 1977. The movie about Miguel Pinero’s life reinforces the view no matter how creative Puerto Ricans in the U.S. are we’re still a bunch of savages.

“Pinero” is a cliche filled exercise delivered by Co-producer John Leguizamo and his cohorts that fails to balance the debauchery it emphasizes with the positive creative impact of the Nuyorican experience that Miguel Pinero helped found. AThere’s no denying Miguel Pinero was one wild son of a bitch. Mikey Pinero would be the first to say it. And Miguel Algarin acknowledged it when I first met him in the late seventies but he put it in perspective then,

“Mikey Pinero is an area we live in. What’s happened to him is exactly what he would have wanted along all lines. He’s leading the life he loves. But at the same time the man is developing in a form that no other Puerto Rican playwright or writer has succeeded in. If a Pinero script attracts the studio guys at a TV show like Baretta with Robert Blake they tackle it… if they don’t like it they let it go… they pay the 1600 dollars or 1800 dollars and take the loss.”

 (August 1977)

The Miguel Pinero and Nuyoricans of the late seventies at the Sixth Street location (a space markedly different that the current incarnation on Third Street that’s jarringly used for the movie) were much richer than what I saw on screen. Even the founding of the 6th Street Cafe - portrayed as a move by Algarin to get Pinero and his boys out of his hair - contradicts what Algarin himself held true in the Cafe’s infancy, “At one point we were using Joe Papp’s space at 4 Astor place by the Public Theater. I found that the workshop I had at the Public was too removed. Then Marvin Felix Camillo came in right behind me with The Family (the group that first produced Miguel Pinero) and occupied the space. Things changed when Joe decided to give up the space to rent out. Marvin had to get out too and then moving down this way was just a matter of facilitating what I wanted to be doing at that moment. Then when things developed along with my work with Mikey and Lucky, the Cafe was initiated as a continuation of the theater work.”

Miguel Pinero, Bimbo Rivas, Pedro Pietri, Lucky Cienfuegos, Brenda Feliciano, Sandy Esteves et al. in the early days there was the power of life and death in the written word. At a time when mainstream media ignored Puerto Ricans they showed us who we were as a people and who we could become. This movie serves no purpose but to present the general public with a distorted view of Nuyorican creativity and do a hatchet job on a dead man whose words have outlived his hectic life.

I doubt it will survive more than a month in release.

GONE

Video by Cecilia Dougherty

Review by Kara Williamson

The 8th Annual New York Underground Film Festival closed on Sunday March 12th with a double billed screening of Cecilia Dougherty’s split-screen, installation-like video: GONE. Inside the Anthology Film Archive fans muscled through a packed East Village movie house in anticipation for the second sold out screening of GONE starring writer/performer Laurie Weeks as Lance Loud, a drifting artist.

GONE is thick with visual layers. It is a wry look at family and friends, where ‘digi-scape’ meets urban monument to reflect a hidden landscape of the underground artist.  The story is loosely based on a television series from the early 70’s — a real life TV docu-drama called An American Family staring the “Louds” — and un-folds during a family reunion in New York City. In GONE Dougherty employs archetypal and cartoony characters that drawn from her personal life experiences to tell a story that speaks to the New York fringe. She draws on a world of homegrown talent whose life stories blur with the real and imagined. Painter Amy Sillman plays a visiting mother and musician Frances Sorensen, plays Lance’s ambiguous live-in “other.”

Sillman is the outsider submerged in an aimless and kinetic energy of the city. Inside the Chelsea Hotel Sorensen hangs out in the background like wall paper while humdrum conversation drones on between “the Louds” like two rocking chairs going back and forth over time. These characters are so alien in one breath yet eerily recognizable in another.

The sound score is an original blend of ambient tunes from keyboardist Johanna Fateman with music by Le Tigre and Mike Iveson that infuse montage sequences intercut between painfully funny narratives. In these non-narrative sequences urban environment meets the oddly organic –  a “forest” of towering flowers is slapped next to a towering brick building, scale askew. There is a stark contrast between the “Disnification” of Times Square and Jennifer Monson’s naked dance performance. At first glance her dance seems out of context because it is so natural compared to the exterior shots of an encroaching digital world. In the end it is her realness that reinforces a reoccurring theme between the raw and familiar (or unfamiliar). These breaks in narrative add to an other-worldliness — a dark and exquisite study of light and motion.

Dougherty admits that she stopped counting how long it took to create GONE after the fourth year. With her masterly use of images and narrative style aside, the dialogue going on between the split-screen is totally awe-inspiring. Like the more mainstream theatrical release of last year’s Time Code, GONE is a fresh, experimental, narrative fusion that forces an active viewing.

GONE is soon to screen at Lux in London.

For more information on GONE{ www.gonevideo.com}