this week in film and television

KUROSAWA x 11: THE LOWER DEPTHS

THE LOWER DEPTHS is another masterful tour de force from Akira Kurosawa

THE LOWER DEPTHS (DONZOKO) (Akira Kurosawa, 1957)
Metrograph
7 Ludlow St. between Canal & Hester Sts.
Thursday, September 1, 1:15 & 8:00
Series runs August 31 – September 8
212-660-0312
metrograph.com

Loosely adapted from Maxim Gorky’s social realist play, The Lower Depths is yet another masterpiece from Japanese auteur Akira Kurosawa. Set in an immensely dark and dingy ramshackle skid-row tenement during the Edo period, the claustrophobic film examines the rich and the poor, gambling and prostitution, life and death, and everything in between through the eyes of impoverished characters who have nothing. The motley crew includes the suspicious landlord, Rokubei (Ganjiro Nakamura), and his much younger wife, Osugi (Isuzu Yamada); Osugi’s sister, Okayo (Kyôko Kagawa); the thief Sutekichi (Toshirō Mifune), who gets involved in a love triangle with a noir murder angle; and Kahei (Bokuzen Hidari), an elderly newcomer who might be more than just a grandfatherly observer. Despite the brutal conditions they live in, the inhabitants soldier on, some dreaming of their better past, others still hoping for a promising future. Kurosawa infuses the gripping film with a wry sense of humor, not allowing anyone to wallow away in self-pity. The play had previously been turned into a film in 1936 by Jean Renoir, starring Jean Gabin as the thief. A staggering achievement, The Lower Depths is screening September 1 as part of Metrograph’s Kurosawa x 11 series, which runs August 31 through September 8 and consists of such other gems as Throne of Blood, Rashomon, Sanjuro, I Live in Fear, High and Low, and Seven Samurai, a virtual crash course in all things Kurosawa.

MIA MADRE

Writer-director Nanni Moretti and Margherita Buy play siblings dealing with an ailing mother in MIA MADRE

MIA MADRE (MY MOTHER) (Nanni Moretti, 2015)
Angelika Film Center, 18 West Houston St. at Mercer St., 212-995-2570
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway between 62nd & 63rd Sts., 212-757-2280
Opens Friday, August 26
www.musicboxfilms.com

Several times throughout Nanni Moretti’s semiautobiographical Mia Madre, film director Margherita (Margherita Buy) says, “The actor must be next to the character.” It’s a line that Moretti, the Italian writer, director, and actor behind such international successes as Caro Diario and Palme d’Or winner The Son’s Room, has said that he uses all the time. It’s a concept that lies at the heart of Moretti’s latest, brilliantly intimate work, inspired by his own career and the death of his mother. Buy was named Best Actress at Cannes for her intense performance as Margherita, a divorced mother who is having difficulty balancing fiction and reality. She is making a film about an employee uprising at a factory run by a coldhearted boss, played by self-obsessed Italian American actor Barry Huggins (John Turturro), who keeps forgetting his lines and claims to have worked with Stanley Kubrick. Margherita is shuttling back and forth between the film shoot and the hospital, where her mother, Ada (Giulia Lazzarini), is slowly fading. A former teacher, Ada lights up only when discussing Latin with her granddaughter, Livia (Beatrice Mancini), Margherita’s teenage daughter, while Margherita has a difficult time communicating with both of them as well as with her ex-boyfriend, Vittorio (Enrico Ianniello), an actor in her movie. And Margherita’s brother, Giovanni (Moretti), has taken a leave of absence from his job in order to help take care of their mother. Margherita drifts in and out of what is real as imagined scenarios play out in her mind, but it is not always immediately clear what is happening in the film and what is happening in the film-within-a-film, with an additional layer of uncertainty because Moretti himself is often onscreen, further blurring the distinction of life versus cinema.

John Turturro is a problematic actor in Nanni Moretti’s MIA MADRE

Winner of the Ecumenical Jury Prize at Cannes, Mia Madre continues Moretti’s masterful exploration of the human condition through deeply personal narratives, even if they’re not fully autobiographical. Buy (A Five Star Life, Moretti’s We Have a Pope and The Caiman), who has won seven David di Donatello Awards (including a Best Actress trophy for Mia Madre) and has been nominated for another nine, is spellbinding as Margherita, carrying the complex film with her every look and gesture. It’s a dazzling, bravura performance, charged with powerful, raw emotion. Turturro (Barton Fink, The Big Lebowski, Passione) has a ball as the cranky ugly American who is not about to publicly admit his failings. Moretti, who wrote the script with Francesco Piccolo and Valia Santella, serves as a steady, calming influence as Giovanni, a soft-spoken man who understands the situation and always knows the right thing to do, which is not true of his sister. Mia Madre is a mesmerizing examination of family, grief, connection, and the very act of creation itself, in all its many forms and possibilities.

IS THAT YOU?

Myla (Naruna Kaplan de Macedo) and Ronnie (Alon Aboutboul) go on a road trip exploring regret and the past in IS THAT YOU?

IS THAT YOU? (Dani Menkin, 2014)
Cinema Village
22 East 12th St. between University Pl. & Fifth Ave.
Opens Friday, August 26
212-529-6799
www.cinemavillage.com
heyjudeproductions.com

In Dani Menkin’s Is That You?, young film student Myla (Naruna Kaplan de Macedo) is making a documentary, asking strangers what they regret. If she asked me, I might just have told her that I regret having watched Is That You? Nominated for an Israeli Academy Award for Best Picture and winner of Best Indie Film, Dani Menkin’s Is That You? is a convoluted road-trip movie that manipulates its paper-thin plot until almost none of it makes sense. Israeli film, television, and stage favorite Alon Aboutboul (London Has Fallen, The Dark Knight Rises) stars as Ronnie, an outdated analog man in an ever-more-digital world. After losing his job as a projectionist in an Israeli art house, Ronnie heads to the States, determined to find his lost love, Rachel, who he has not seen in nearly forty years. He picks up an old used car (no fancy new styles for him) from his brother, Jacob (Rani Bleier), and sets out on his mission. The lemon soon breaks down, and Ronnie is offered help by Myla, whose film is called The Road Not Taken. Moved by Ronnie’s story, Myla joins him on his journey, taking her brother’s SUV, without permission. As Ronnie and Myla try to track down Rachel, who can’t seem to settle down in one place for very long, they stop along the way so Myla can interview people on the street and in their homes, getting them to share what they would change in their lives if they could. But the hardest person to get to open up is Ronnie himself.

Myla (Naruna De-Macedo Kaplan) and Ronnie (Alon Aboutboul) reach another fork in the road in IS THAT YOU?

Myla (Naruna Kaplan de Macedo) and Ronnie (Alon Aboutboul) reach another fork in the road in IS THAT YOU?

Is That You? is a narrative mess from the start, as Menkin (39 Pounds of Love, Dolphin Boy) keeps trying to force square pegs into round holes; if a plot development doesn’t quite work, he forges ahead anyway, leaving viewers scratching their head in disbelief. Aboutboul (Out of the Blue, One of Us) is a wonderful actor, but Ronnie is just too dour and withdrawn, too uncommunicative, while Kaplan de Macedo, a real-life documentary filmmaker in her acting debut and a dead ringer for Zooey Deschanel, is fun to watch, although her character is overly quirky. Even the opening credits are a disappointment; Menkin uses the font associated with Woody Allen films, but there’s nothing in Is That You? that shares any of the wit and intelligence in even the Woodman’s lesser works. There are some interesting ideas in the film, but it probably would have worked better as a short instead of an eighty-three-minute feature. Is That You? opens August 26 at Cinema Village, with Menkin, Aboutboul, and other members of the cast and crew participating in several Q&As over the weekend.

FATIMA

Soria Zéroual makes a moving debut in Philippe Faucon’s César-winning FATIMA

FATIMA (Philippe Faucon, 2015)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Howard Gilman Theater
144 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Opens Friday, August 26
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.org
www.kinolorber.com

Inspired by Fatima Elayoubi’s Prayer to the Moon, a collection of writings by a Moroccan woman trying to make a new life for herself and her family in France, Philippe Faucon’s Fatima is a tender, poignant look at the immigrant experience in the twenty-first century. In her film debut, nonprofessional actress Soria Zéroual, who was discovered after a massive talent search, stars as Fatima, a traditional woman raising two daughters in a small Muslim community in France. While her children, Nesrine (Zita Hanrot), who is starting pre-med, and Souad (Kenza-Noah Aïche), a typical disenchanted teenager who prefers hanging out with her friends and flirting with boys rather than studying, speak French and dress in contemporary styles, Fatima converses primarily in Arabic and wears a head scarf. Her ex-husband (Chawki Amari) has remarried, so she has taken on the primary responsibility of raising the kids, working several jobs as a cleaning woman in order to make money to improve their lives and offer them every possibility they deserve. On the surface, Fatima is simple and plain, struggling to communicate with her daughters, her employers, and her doctors. “If my daughter’s a success, my happiness is content,” she tells Nesrine. “You drive me so mad I could go out without a head scarf,” she says to Souad. But Fatima slowly begins revealing that there is much more to her when she picks up a pen and starts sharing her deepest thoughts in a notebook, writing poetry, letters, and short pieces about her life.

Fatima (Soria Zéroual) will do whatever it takes to make a better life for her daughters in French drama

Winner of Best Film, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Most Promising Actress (Hanrot) at the 2016 César Awards, Fatima is a beautifully made drama, written, directed, and produced (with Serge Noël) by Faucon, warmly photographed by Laurent Fenart, and edited with a soft gentleness by Sophie Mandonnet. Faucon (L’Amour, Samia), whose grandparents came from North Africa, maintains a patient, naturalistic pace throughout, centered by Zéroual’s sweetly innocent César-nominated performance, as Fatima faces racism from the French and shame from her fellow Muslims. She is a mother who would do anything for her children but is stuck in a world that traps and confines her, limiting her options, some of which Zéroual, who was cleaning banks when she auditioned for the role, has experienced herself. Hanrot excels as Nesrine, a young woman who is nervous about her future, while Souad wonderfully captures the angst and ennui of the rebellious teenager who loves her mother but wants to break free of old-fashioned traditions and outdated social mores. Although the film is not overtly political, it is clearly making a point, one that takes on ever-more-urgent meaning in the postcolonial age of Trump and Le Pen, when immigration, particularly concerning Muslims, is under attack every day.

NITEHAWK MIDNITE SCREENINGS — HOT HORROR: THE DESCENT

Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) searches for a way out in THE DESCENT

THE DESCENT (Neil Marshall, 2006)
Nitehawk Cinema
136 Metropolitan Ave. between Berry St. & Wythe Ave.
Friday, August 26, 12:10 am
718-384-3980
www.nitehawkcinema.com
www.thedescentfilm.com

Ostensibly a female Deliverance gone underground, Neil Marshall’s The Descent is a piss-poor piece of putrefaction. A year after Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) loses her husband and daughter in a terrible car accident, an adventurous group of friends go spelunking in the Appalachians (though the film was actually shot in England, at Pinewood Studios). But Juno (Natalie Mendoza) has pulled a fast one; instead of the well-traversed caves they thought they were going to, Juno has taken them to unexplored territory, where lying in wait for them are fast-moving mutant Gollums with hardy appetites. There is actually one genuine scare, but everything else is manipulatively mundane and morbidly mangled. Inexplicably, The Descent was a hit in its home country, garnering a handful of British film awards and nominations, and there was even a sequel made in 2009. Oh, and by the way, what ever became of the child’s laughter? The Descent is being shown August 26 at 12:10 am as part of the Nitehawk Cinema series “Nitehawk Midnite Screenings” and “Hot Horror,” but you must have something better to do with your time than descend into this disappointing maelstrom.

METROPOLITAN OPERA 2016 SUMMER HD FESTIVAL

Metropolitan Opera has announced its schedule for free summer outdoor screening series (photo by Richard Termine/Metropolitan Opera)

Lincoln Center, Josie Robertson Plaza
Columbus Ave. at 63rd St.
August 26 – September 5, free, starting time between 7:30 and 8:00
212-769-7028
www.metopera.org

Looking to catch up on your opera viewing? The Met has just announced the full schedule for its annual — and free — Summer HD Festival, eleven nights of filmed operas from 2008 to 2016, projected onto a large screen on Josie Robertson Plaza, beginning August 26 with Miloš Forman’s Oscar-winning 1984 drama Amadeus, being shown as a tribute to playwright and screenwriter Peter Shaffer, who passed away in June at the age of ninety. The first-come, first-served festival, which has 3,100 seats up for grabs at every screening, continues August 27 with Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro, directed by Richard Eyre, conducted by James Levine, and starring Amanda Majeski, Marlis Petersen, Isabel Leonard, Peter Mattei, and Ildar Abdrazakov; August 28 with Sir David McVicar’s production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore, with Anna Netrebko, Dolora Zajick, Dmitri Hvorostovsky, and Yonghoon Lee; August 29 with Verdi’s Otello, directed by Bartlett Sher, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and featuring Aleksandrs Antonenko as Otello, Sonya Yoncheva as Desdemona, and Željko Lučić as Iago; August 30 with Donizetti’s La Fille du Régiment, with Natalie Dessay and Juan Diego Flórez; August 31 with Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, with Dessay, Joseph Calleja, and Ludovic Tézier; September 1 with Rossini’s La Cenerentola, conducted by Fabio Luisi and with a cast led by Joyce DiDonato and Flórez; September 2 with the popular double bill of Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, with Marcelo Álvarez (as the lead in both), Eva-Maria Westbroek, Patricia Racette, and George Gagnidze, conducted by Luisi; September 3 with Renée Fleming singing the title role in Susan Stroman’s adaptation of Lehár’s The Merry Widow, with Nathan Gunn and, in her 2015 Met debut, Kelli O’Hara; September 4 with Franco Zeffirelli’s version of Puccini’s Turandot, starring Nina Stemme; and September 5 with Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de Perles, with Diana Damrau, Matthew Polenzani, and Mariusz Kwiecien, conducted by Gianandrea Noseda.

OUTDOOR CINEMA: EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT

EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT takes viewers on an extraordinary journey into the heart of darkness and beyond

EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT (EL ABRAZO DE LA SERPIENTE) (Ciro Guerra, 2015)
Socrates Sculpture Park
32-01 Vernon Blvd.
Wednesday, August 24, free, live music at 7:00, screening at sunset
718-956-1819
www.socratessculpturepark.org
embraceoftheserpent.oscilloscope.net

Colombian writer-director Ciro Guerra takes viewers on a spectacular journey through time and space and deep into the heart of darkness in the extraordinary Embrace of the Serpent. Guerra’s Oscar-nominated film, the first to be shot in the Colombian Amazon in thirty years, opens with a 1909 quote from explorer Theodor Koch-Grünberg: “It is not possible for me to know if the infinite jungle has started on me the process that has taken many others to complete and irremediable insanity.” Inspired by the real-life journals of Koch-Grünberg and botanist and explorer Richard Evans Schultes, Guerra poetically shifts back and forth between two similar trips down the Vaupés River, both led by the same Amazonian shaman, each time guiding a white scientist on a perilous expedition in a long, narrow canoe. Shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, ailing white ethnologist Theo (Jan Bijvoet) and his native aid, Manduca (Yauenkü Migue), seek the help of Karamakate (Nilbio Torres), a shaman wholly suspicious of whites and who believes he is the last of his tribe. However, Theo claims he knows where remnants of Karamakate’s people live and will show him in return for helping him find the magical and mysterious hallucinogenic Yakruna plant that Theo thinks can cure his illness. Forty years later, white botanist Evan (Brionne Davis) enlists Karamakate (Antonio Bolívar Salvador) to locate what is thought to be the last surviving Yakruna plant, which he hopes will finally allow him to dream in order to heal his soul. Evoking such films as Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, Embrace of the Serpent makes the rainforest itself a character, shot in glorious black-and-white by David Gallego (Cecilia, Violencia) in a sparkling palette reminiscent of the work of Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado. As the parallel stories continue, the men encounter similar locations that have changed dramatically over time, largely as a result of rubber barons descending on the forest and white missionaries bringing Western religion to the natives. It’s difficult to watch without being assailed by imperialist concepts of the “noble savage,” mainly because the Amazon — and our Western minds — have been so profoundly affected by those ideas. “Before he can become a warrior, a man has to leave everything behind and go into the jungle, guided only by his dreams,” the older Karamakate says. “In that journey he has to discover, completely alone, who he really is.”

Guide Karamakate (Antonio Bolívar Salvador) and botanist Evan (Brionne Davis) explore dreams in Ciro Guerra’s EMBRACE OF THE SERPENT

Winner of the Directors’ Fortnight Art Cinema Award at the Cannes Film Festival and nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award, Embrace of the Serpent is an unforgettable spiritual quest into the ravages of colonialism, the evils of materialism, the end of indigenous cultures, and what should be a sacred relationship between humanity and nature. Written by Guerra (2004’s Wandering Shadows, 2009’s The Wind Journeys) and Jacques Toulemonde (Anna), it is told from the point of view of the indigenous people of the Amazon, whom Guerra worked closely with in the making of the film, assuring them of his intentions to not exploit them the way so many others have. Aside from the Belgian Bijvoet and the Texan Davis, the rest of the cast is made up of members of tribes that live along the Vaupés. Guerra actually brought along a shaman known as a payé to perform ritual ceremonies to ensure the safety of the cast and crew and to protect the jungle itself. “What Ciro is doing with this film is an homage to the memory of our elders, in the time before: the way the white men treated the natives, the rubber exploitation,” Torres, in his first movie, says about the film. “I’ve asked the elders how it was and it is as seen in the film; that’s why we decided to support it. For the elders and myself it is a memory of the ancestors and their knowledge.” Salvador, who previously had bad experiences with filmmakers, notes, “It is a film that shows the Amazon, the lungs of the world, the greater purifying filter, and the most valuable of indigenous cultures. That is its greatest achievement.” Embrace of the Serpent is a great achievement indeed, an honest, humanistic, maddening journey that takes you places you’ve never been. Embrace of the Serpent is screening August 24 in Long Island City, concluding Socrates Sculpture Park’s seventeenth annual free summer Outdoor Cinema series, programmed by Film Forum, and will be preceded by a live performance by Bulla en el Barrio, with South American food available for purchase from La Carreta Paisa.