twi-ny recommended events

MONTHLY CLASSICS: THE SWORD OF DOOM

Rogue samurai Ryunosuke Tsukue (Tatsuya Nakadai) leaves a path of bodies behind him in THE SWORD OF DOOM

THE SWORD OF DOOM (大菩薩峠) (THE GREAT BODHISATTVA PATH) (Kihachi Okamoto, 1966)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, February 5, $12, 7:00
212-715-1258
www.japansociety.org

Japan Society’s Monthly Classics series continues February 5 with the story of one of the screen’s most brutal antiheroes, a samurai you can’t help but root for despite his coldhearted brutality, a heartless killer called “a man from hell.” Based on Kaizan Nakazato’s forty-one-volume serial novel Dai-bosatsu Tōge, Kihachi Okamoto’s The Sword of Doom, aka The Great Bodhisattva Pass, begins in 1860 with Ryunosuke Tsukue (Tatsuya Nakadai) slaying an elderly Buddhist pilgrim (Ko Nishimura) apparently for no reason as the man visits a far-off mountain grave. Shortly before Ryunosuke is to battle Bunnojo Utsuki (Ichiro Nakaya) in a competition using unsharpened wooden swords, the man’s wife, Ohama (Michiyo Aratama), comes to him, begging for Ryunosuke to lose the match on purpose to save her family’s future. A master swordsman with an unorthodox style, Ryunosuke takes advantage of the situation in more ways than one. As emotionless as he is fearless, Ryunosuke is soon ambushed on a forest road, but killing, to him, comes natural, whether facing one man or dozens — or even hundreds. The only person he shows even the slightest respect for is Toranosuke Shimada (Toshirō Mifune), the instructor at a sword-fighting school. “We have rules concerning strangers,” Toranosuke tells him, but Ryunosuke plays by no rules. “The sword is the soul. Study the soul to know the sword. Evil mind, evil sword,” Toranosuke adds, words that torment Ryunosuke, who tries to start a family in spite of his hard, detached demeanor. But regardless of circumstance, Ryunosuke continues on his bloody path, culminating in an unforgettable battle that is one of the finest of the jidaigeki genre.

A snowy battle is one of the many highlights of Kihachi Okamoto classic

The Sword of Doom boasts a memorable performance by Nakadai, the star of such other classics as Masaki Kobayashi’s Harakiri, Hiroshi Teshigara’s The Face of Another and Samurai Rebellion, and Okamoto’s Battle of Okinawa and Kill!, as well as many Akira Kurosawa films, including Yojimbo, Sanjuro, High and Low, and Ran. In The Sword of Doom he is reunited with Aratama, who played his wife in Okamoto’s masterpiece trilogy, The Human Condition. Nakadai is brilliant as Ryunosuke, able to win over the audience, riveting your attention even though he is portraying a horrible man who rejects all sympathy. Also contributing to the film’s relentless intensity are Hiroshi Murai’s gorgeous black-and-white cinematography, which features a beautiful sword fight in the snow and an exquisitely photographed scene in a claustrophobic mill, and Masaru Sato’s sparse but effective score. The Sword of Doom is a masterful tale of evil, of one man’s struggle with inner demons as he wanders through a changing world. The Monthly Classics series continues on April 1 with Kurosawa’s Stray Dog.

TICKET ALERT: JOHN CARPENTER LIVE RETROSPECTIVE

John Carpenter is setting out on his first-ever live tour, coming to New York City in July

Who: John Carpenter
What: Concert tour
Where: PlayStation Theater, 1515 Broadway at 44th St., 888-929-7849
When: Tickets go on sale Friday, February 5, 12 noon, for Friday, July 8, 8:00 performance (price TBA)
Why: We’ve all sat on the edge of our seats, suffering wonderfully through cult horror films and low-budget thrillers by John Carpenter, who has written and directed such classics as Assault on Precinct 13, Halloween, The Fog, Escape from New York, They Live, and Ghosts of Mars. One of the reasons we are so glued to the screen is because of the creepy, propulsive music, memorable themes that were composed and performed by Carpenter (along with such regular collaborators as Alan Howarth). Carpenter has made only one feature film in the last fifteen years, 2010’s The Ward, instead concentrating on his synth-heavy music. In February 2015, he released his debut album, Lost Themes, and now the master of horror is readying the sequel, Lost Themes II (April 15, Sacred Bones), which boasts such tracks as “Distant Dream,” “White Pulse,” “Windy Death,” and “Bela Lugosi.” In addition, and even more exciting, Carpenter will be setting off on his first-ever live tour, playing songs from the Lost Themes records as well as soundtrack favorites from throughout his career; Carpenter, who hails from Carthage, New York, will be at the PlayStation Theater in Times Square on July 8. Tickets go on sale February 5 at noon. Get that popcorn and soda ready; this should be one splendid, and of course unusual, evening.

LUNAR NEW YEAR FESTIVAL: YEAR OF THE MONKEY

The Met will celebrate the Year of the Monkey with a full slate of programs on February 6

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Ave. at 82nd St.
Saturday, February 6, free with recommended museum admission ($12-$25), 11:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.
www.metmuseum.org

It will soon be 4713 on the Chinese calendar, the Year of the Monkey, a positive yang fire year that celebrates the monkey’s clever wit and inventive, playful nature. On February 6, the Metropolitan Museum of Art will host its annual Lunar New Year festival, with special events going on all day long honoring both China and Tibet. There will be live performances by Sesame Street puppeteers, students from the Music from China Youth Orchestra using traditional instruments, and Lotus Music & Dance in addition to a parade led by the Chinese Center on Long Island Lion Troupe. Art workshops include paper cutting with Master Lu, Monkey King mask making with the Children’s Museum of Manhattan, iPad calligraphy with the China Institute, a hand-pulled noodle demonstration by Chef Zheng of Noodle Q, a martial arts demonstration by the New York Chinese Cultural Center, Chinese tea ceremonies with Ten Ren Tea & Ginseng Co., a participatory installation by artist Wu Jian’an, a reading by picture book author and illustrator Yangsook Choi, bilingual storytime, drawing stations, and more. There will also be an interactive digital fireworks display in the Great Hall by CHiKA and Calli Higgins. The museum is currently showing several exhibitions related to China and Tibet, including “Monkey Business: Celebrating the Year of the Monkey,” “The Arts of Nepal and Tibet: Recent Gifts,” “Chinese Textiles: Ten Centuries of Masterpieces from the Met Collection,” “Chinese Lacquer: Treasures from the Irving Collection, 12th-18th Century,” and “Masterpieces of Chinese Painting from the Metropolitan Collection.”

CHARLOTTE RAMPLING: THE NIGHT PORTER

Lucia (Charlotte Rampling) and Max (Dirk Bogarde) relive their Holocaust experience in THE NIGHT PORTER

WEEKEND CLASSICS: THE NIGHT PORTER (Liliana Cavani, 1974)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
February 5-7, 11:00 am
Series runs through March 6
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com

Disgraceful Nazi porn or searing allegory about the devastating after-effects of the Holocaust on victims as well as Europe as a whole? Lurid exploitation or sensitively drawn, poignant exploration of a severe case of Stockholm syndrome? You can decide for yourself when Liliana Cavani’s ever-so-kinky, extremely controversial 1974 drama, The Night Porter, screens at the very strange time of eleven o’clock in the morning February 5-7 as part of the IFC Center’s eight-film tribute to Charlotte Rampling, being held on the occasion of the release of her latest movie, 45 Years, which has earned the British actress, model, and singer her first Oscar nomination. Rampling is downright frightening as Lucia, a young woman who was tortured as a sex slave by SS officer Maximilian Theo Aldorfer (Dirk Bogarde) in a Nazi concentration camp. It’s now 1957, and Lucia has arrived in Vienna with her husband (Marino Masé), a prominent American conductor. Lucia and Max, who is the night porter at the fashionable Hotel zur Oper, instantly recognize each other, and the moment hangs in the air, neither sure what the other will do. They say nothing, and soon the two of them have seemingly journeyed back to the camp, involved in a dangerous descent into sex and violence behind closed doors. But a small group of Max’s Nazi friends, including Klaus (Philippe Leroy), Hans Folger (Gabriele Ferzetti), and Stumm (Giuseppe Addobbati), who have dedicated themselves to destroying documents — and witnesses — as former members of the SS are brought to trial, become suspicious of Max’s bizarre relationship with Lucia, who could make trouble for them all.

THE NIGHT PORTER is part of eight-film Charlotte Rampling tribute at IFC Center

Cavani (The Berlin Affair, Ripley’s Game), er, takes no prisoners in The Night Porter, holding nothing back as Max and Lucia grow closer and closer, eventually isolating themselves from the rest of the world. Rampling plays Lucia like a caged animal, her penetrating eyes bathed in mystery; we never know what she’s going to do next, and still we’re continually shocked by her actions. Bogarde plays Max with a grim elegance; he believes that he truly loves Lucia, and that she loves him. He uses his body, and especially his hands, with an eerie grace that is both complicated and scary. The film is very much about performance and voyeurism, about the relationship between creator, performer, and audience. When Max first sees Lucia in the concentration camp, he is instantly taken with her, and he begins filming her with his camera. In one of the movie’s most provocative and titillating scenes, Max and other Nazis watch the young Lucia, wearing an SS outfit but with only suspenders on top, sing “Wenn ich mir was wünschen dürfte” (“If I Could Wish for Something”), a German song made famous by Marlene Dietrich (and originally written by Friedrich Hollaender for the 1931 film The Man in Search of His Murderer). It’s a mesmerizing few minutes that takes the sadomasochism to a whole new psychological level. Max is also still taking care of Bert (Amedeo Amodio), another survivor who has been dancing for Max and other SS officers since the war. So it is not surprising that Lucia has married a conductor, a man with the power to control others. The film has holes you can drive a Panzer through, but it’s impossible to take your eyes off of Rampling (Georgy Girl, Stardust Memories, The Verdict), who will turn seventy on February 5, and Bogarde (The Servant, Darling, Death in Venice), two beautiful actors locked in a grotesque game of cat and mouse. The Rampling series continues at IFC through March 6 with Heading South, Under the Sand, The Cherry Orchard, and Farewell, My Lovely.

FIRST SATURDAY: RADICAL BLACK HISTORY

Stanley Nelson will be at the Brooklyn Museum to screen and discuss his 2015 documentary, THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION, as part of free Black History Month program

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway at Washington St.
Saturday, February 6, free, 5:00 – 11:00
212-864-5400
www.brooklynmuseum.org

The Brooklyn Museum turns its attention to Black History Month for its February edition of its free First Saturday program. There will be live performances by Dasan Ahanu and Tai Allen (“The Originals,” a live mix-tape honoring Gil Scott-Heron and Oscar Brown Jr.), the New Black Fest (“HANDS UP 7: Testaments,” monologues followed by a Q&A), L.A. Lytes (Latasha Alcindor, DJ Afro Panther, and NonVisuals), and Charles Perry; art chats with experts using the ASK app; interactive activities with the Museum of Impact, the Very Black Project, and #TeamMelanin; an art workshop inspired by Romare Bearden’s collage portraits; an art workshop about Black Lives Matter and gender justice led by activist Joshua Allen; book-club discussions of Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin’s Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party and Bob Avakian’s From Ike to Mao and Beyond: My Journey from Mainstream America to Revolutionary Communist, led by Andy Zee; and a screening of Stanley Nelson’s 2015 documentary, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, followed by a conversation with Nelson and Elizabeth Sackler. In addition, the galleries are open late so you can check out such exhibitions as “Coney Island: Visions of an American Dreamland, 1861–2008,” “Stephen Powers: Coney Island Is Still Dreamland (to a Seagull),’” “KAWS: ALONG THE WAY,” “Forever Coney: Photographs from the Brooklyn Museum Collection,” and “Agitprop!”

RAMS

A community of sheep farms is threatened by a devastating disease in RAMS

RAMS (Grímur Hákonarson, 2015)
Film Forum, 209 West Houston St., 212-727-8110
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway at 63rd St., 212-757-2280
Opens Wednesday, February 3
cohenmedia.net

When scrapie, a fatal neurodegenerative disease, is discovered in sheep in a close-knit farming community in rural Iceland, two brothers who have not spoken in forty years are forced to take a hard look at their lives in Grímur Hákonarson’s endearing gem of a film, Rams. Siblings Gummi (Sigurður Sigurjónsson) and Kiddi (Theodór Júlíusson) raise sheep on their family farm, but they are locked in a feud that has lasted four decades. Neither man has ever married or had kids, and they essentially ignore each other when not exchanging handwritten messages relayed by Kiddi’s dog. The outbreak of scrapie, which is related to mad cow disease, means that all of the rams and sheep in the area have to be slaughtered and all the facilities thoroughly cleaned and disinfected, threatening the livelihood of numerous farmers. While Kiddi reacts by hitting the bottle, Gummi, ruled by his heart, has a different plan, one that could land him in serious trouble.

Brothers Gummi (Sigurður Sigurjónsson) and Kiddi (Theodór Júlíusson) take a hard look at life and legacy in award-winning Icelandic charmer

Rams is a sweetly told tale with a healthy dose of black comedy and spectacular facial hair. Hákonarson, a documentarian whose previous feature film was 2010’s Summerland, was inspired by his friends’ and family’s actual stories — he himself spent a lot of time on a farm as a child — giving the film an unimpeachable authenticity enhanced by the casting of local, nonprofessional actors and, of course, real sheep, which he selected very carefully. Icelandic film and theater veterans Sigurjónsson (Borgriki, Spaugstofan), who has voiced SpongeBob in the Icelandic version of SpongeBob SquarePants, and Júlíusson are fabulous together as brothers with a common goal — preserving the family legacy — while locked in a brutal personal battle. A scene involving the siblings and a backhoe loader is absolutely brilliant, laugh-out-loud funny but tinged with just the right smidgen of compassion, emblematic of the film as a whole, which uses dark humor to counteract the devastating effects of scrapie and a lament for a disappearing way of life. Rams is beautiful to look at and listen to as well, with stunning shots of the vast Bárðardalur landscape by cinematographer Sturla Brandth Grøvlen and a spare score by Atli Örvarsson amid long dialogue-free scenes featuring natural sound and classical music in the background. Winner of the Un Certain Regard prize at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival and Iceland’s submission for the Academy Awards, Rams is a lovely little film, a deeply humanistic charmer that will infect your soul — and perhaps have you reexamining any long-running family feuds of your own while stroking your favorite wool sweater.

UTILITY

Amber (Vanessa Vache) and Chris (James Kautz) try to put their life back together in Emily Schwend’s UTILITY (photo by Russ Rowland)

Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
224 Waverly Pl. between Eleventh & Perry Sts.
Wednesday – Monday through October 25, $35
866-811-4111
www.theamoralists.com
www.rattlestick.org

Since the spring of 2007, the Amoralists have been presenting challenging productions marked by bold strokes of black comedy and absurdity, avoiding predictable, conventional narrative paths. The two-part HotelMotel took place in a bedroom in the Gershwin Hotel, The Bad and the Better was an avant-noir that featured no fewer than twenty-six actors playing thirty-three roles in the small Peter Jay Sharp Theater, while The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side involved a much-talked-about nude scene. In their latest show, Emily Schwend’s Utility, which opened last night at the Rattlestick, they have come up with yet another surprise: a wonderfully touching, beautifully subtle drama about love, family, and the everyday struggles to just get by in East Texas. Amoralists cofounder and president James Kautz plays Chris, a recovering pill popper and ne’er-do-well who wants to reunite with his estranged wife, Amber (Vanessa Vache), and the kids. Amber is the central figure, the conflicted heart of the story, working two jobs while juggling myriad household and child-care responsibilities, including preparing for a big birthday party for her eight-year-old daughter, Janie. Meanwhile, Chris is of only ineffectual help, occasionally called in to work a few days a week at a local joint while also helping his older brother, Jim (Alex Grubbs), fix the water damage that forced everyone out of their house in the first place. “C’mon now. It’ll be easier this way,” Chris pleads. “Right. It’ll be easier, till it ain’t easier no more. . . . ’Cause I don’t got the energy to hate you. I am just done with the bullshit, okay?” Amber says. Chris claims he’s a changed man, so they decide to give it another try. Amber gets reluctant help from her mother, Laura (Melissa Hurst), who lives just down the street, while Jim hangs around with very little to say about anything. As the party approaches, problems pile up, mainly because of Chris’s hapless negligence, and Amber begins to seriously doubt her decisions.

Jim (Alex Grubbs) looks on as Amber (Vanessa Vache) wonders what’s next in Amoralists world premiere (photo by Russ Rowland)

Schwend (The Other Thing, South of Settling), who hails from Texas, has created an involving little slice-of-life tale that could really take place anytime, anywhere. But Kate Noll’s kitchen set seems right out of the 1970s, with an old Peanuts lunchbox, a dilapidated microwave, a canister of iced-tea mix, and white aluminum siding. (The props are by Zach Serafin.) Director Jay Stull (the Amoralists’ Rantoul and Die, Schwend’s Take Me Back) gives plenty of space for the story to breathe in and breathe out at a naturalistic pace, giving equal weight to whatever is going on; there are no shocking twists, no sudden jolts of action, just everyday life going on, with all of the pitfalls and at least some of the dreams. The cast is led by a particularly gorgeous turn by Amoralists veteran Vache (Rantoul and Die, HotelMotel, The Bad and the Better), who commands the stage with a bittersweet presence; when she sits down at the kitchen table and has a cigarette, you can see her mind hard at work, trying to figure out if she is ever going to get out of the hole she and her family are in. Kautz (The Other Thing, Take Me Back, The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side) imbues Chris with just enough of a smidgen of possibility and usefulness so that you can root for him even though you know he’s a luckless, though well-meaning, loser, while Grubbs (SeaWife, These Seven Sicknesses) adds a dose of dark humor with his ever-so-brief, deep-voiced dialogue. Utility reveals another, gentler side of the Amoralists, but that doesn’t make it any less powerful than its wilder, crazier productions.