this week in film and television

NEW YORK JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL OPENING NIGHT: THE MUSES OF BASHEVIS SINGER

Documentary delves into Isaac Bashevis Singer’s love of women and their work as his translators

THE MUSES OF BASHEVIS SINGER (Asaf Galay & Shaul Betser, 2014)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Walter Reade Theater
165 West 65th St. between Eighth Ave. & Broadway
Wednesday, January 14, 4:00 & 8:45
Festival runs January 14-29
212-875-5050
www.filmlinc.com
www.the-muses-of-bashevis-singer.com

Who ever thought that little old Yiddish mensch Isaac Bashevis Singer was such a horndog? Asaf Galay and Shaul Betser begin The Muses of Bashevis Singer, their light and playful documentary, with the following quote from the Nobel Prize-winning author: “In my younger days I used to dream about a harem full of women. Lately I’m dreaming of a harem full of translators. If those translators could be women in addition, this would be paradise on earth.” Well, it seems that Singer, who was born in Poland in 1902, emigrated to the United States in 1935, and died in Florida in 1991 at the age of eighty-eight, found that paradise, as Galay and Betser meet with a series of women who were among many hand-picked by Singer, the man who nearly singlehandedly preserved Yiddish literature in the twentieth century, to serve as his translators, and not necessarily because of their language skills. “There were certain women who were more than just translators to him. It happened quite often,” says his Swedish publisher, Dorothea Bromberg, who also talks about Alma, Singer’s wife of more than fifty years. “He loved her, I’m sure, in his own way,” she adds. “She was very jealous of him, and she was completely right.” Galay and Betser meet with translators Eve Fridman, Evelyn Torton Beck, Dvorah Telushkin, Marie-Pierre Bay, Duba Leibell, and Dr. Bilha Rubenstein as well as Singer biographers Florence Noiville and Janet Hadda, his granddaughters Hazel Karr and Merav Chen-Zamir, Yentl the Yeshiva Boy playwright Leah Napolin, and his longtime secretary and proofreader, Doba Gerber, who share intimate, surprising tales about the author of such books as The Family Moskat, The Magician of Lublin, Shosha, and Enemies, a Love Story and such short stories as “Gimpel the Fool,” “A Friend of Kafka,” and “Zlateh the Goat.”

The seventy-two-minute film, lifted by a bouncy, airy soundtrack by Jonathan Bar-Giora, also includes footage of Singer making speeches, appearing on interview programs, going to a Jewish deli, walking on the Coney Island boardwalk, and writing with pen on paper and on a typewriter with Yiddish characters. But as the title implies, The Muses of Bashevis Singer doesn’t depict him as a callow cad but as a determined writer — and father and husband — who just loved women, loved being surrounded by women, using them as inspiration for his marvelous stories that mixed fiction with reality. “Isaac was a very frisky old man,” says Leibell, who worked with Singer in his later years after he moved to Florida with Alma. “That’s to put it very mildly.” The Muses of Bashevis Singer will have its U.S. premiere as the opening-night selection of the New York Jewish Film Festival on January 14 with screenings at 4:00 and 8:45 at the Walter Reade Theater, both followed by Q&As with the directors. The twenty-fourth annual festival continues through January 29 with screenings and special events at the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Jewish Museum.

FAREWELL, HERR SCHWARZ

A filmmaker uncovers heart-wrenching secrets of her family’s past in FAREWELL, HERR SCHWARZ

FAREWELL, HERR SCHWARZ (SCHNEE VON GESTERN / היה שלום פטר שווארץ) (Yael Reuveny, 2013)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St.
Opens Friday, January 9 (also at the JCC in Manhattan January 10-11)
212-255-2243
www.quadcinema.com

Named Best Documentary at the 2013 Haifa International Film Festival, Yael Reuveny’s Farewell, Herr Schwarz offers a unique look at the Holocaust and its continuing effects on her and her family through three generations. “We were raised to reject the Diaspora,” the Israeli-born, Berlin-based writer and director says near the beginning of her first feature-length film. “I was supposed to be ‘the new Jew’ but somehow I ended up living in Germany, in the land I wasn’t allowed to set foot in. I wasn’t allowed to be here because of my grandmother’s story. But still, her story, which haunted my childhood, eventually made me build my home here.” And a haunting story it is, filled with intrigue, mystery, and powerful emotions. Sensitively shot by cinematographer Andreas Kohler and featuring an elegiac score by Volker “Hauschka” Bertelmann, the film explores what happened between Reuveny’s grandmother, Michla Schwarz, and Michla’s beloved brother, Feiv’ke. During the war, Feiv’ke was sent to the Schleiben concentration camp in Germany, where Michla thought he perished. Yet Reuveny discovers that her great-uncle actually survived the Holocaust but remained in the same town he had been held in, changing his first name to Peter, marrying a non-Jewish German woman whose brother was a Nazi, and starting a family.

Yael Reuveny (r.) meets relatives she never knew she had in gripping documentary

Traveling from Israel to Poland to Germany, Reuveny meets with Peter’s widow, Helga Krüger, and two surviving children, Uwe and Barbara; speaks with some of her late grandmother’s longtime friends; and talks to her own parents, Etty and Shaul, and brother, Oded, who share their thoughts and feelings about what Feiv’ke/Peter did. Although Oded thinks that Yael should move forward instead of looking back, others are deeply troubled and fascinated as more and more of the truth is revealed. It’s a gripping tale that Reuveny divides into three generational chapters, focusing first on her grandmother and great-uncle, who grew up together, and then on the next generation: her parents and their cousins, the children from Peter and Helga’s marriage. Finally, she looks at the third generation: herself, a young Jewish woman born in Israel but now living in Germany, and Peter’s grandson, Stephan, who curiously works in a synagogue and is studying Judaism. Reuveny is obsessed with the past, “not knowing how much I’m allowed to forget, how much I am allowed to let people around me forget,” and she captures her torn feelings in this captivating film that reveals yet another side of the haunting after-effects of the Holocaust. Farewell, Herr Schwarz opens Friday, January 9, at the Quad, with Columbia professor Annette Insdorf on hand to introduce the 6:00 show; the film will also be screened January 10 & 11 at the JCC in Manhattan.

THE BABADOOK

A mother (Essie Davis) and her young son (Noah Wiseman) must get past terrible tragedy in THE BABADOOK

THE BABADOOK (Jennifer Kent, 2014)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.thebabadook.com

A sleeper hit at Sundance that is now enjoying a hair-raising extended run at the IFC Center and has been named Best First Film of 2014 by the New York Film Critics Circle, The Babadook is a frightening tale of a mother and her young son — and a suspicious, scary character called the Babadook — trapped in a terrifying situation. Expanded from her 2005 ten-minute short, Monster, writer-director Jennifer Kent’s debut feature focuses on the relationship between single mom Amelia (Essie Davis), who works as a nursing home aide, and her seemingly uncontrollable six-year-old son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), who is constantly getting into trouble because he’s more than just a little strange. Sam was born the same day his father, Oskar (Ben Winspear), died, killed in a car accident while rushing Amelia to the hospital to give birth, resulting in Amelia harboring a deep resentment toward the boy, one that she is afraid to acknowledge. Meanwhile, Sam walks around with home-made weapons to protect his mother from a presence he says haunts them. One night Amelia reads Sam a book that suddenly appeared on the shelf, an odd pop-up book called Mister Babadook that threatens her. She tries to throw it away, but as Sam and the book keep reminding her, “You can’t get rid of the Babadook.” Soon the Babadook appears to take physical form, and Amelia must face her deepest, darkest fears if she wants she and Sam to survive.

Writer-director Jennifer Kent brings out classic horror tropes in her feature debut, the sleeper hit THE BABADOOK

Writer-director Jennifer Kent explores classic horror tropes in her feature debut, the sleeper hit THE BABADOOK

The Babadook began life as a demonic children’s book designed by illustrator Alex Juhasz specifically for the film — and one that can now be preordered from the movie’s website, although you might want to think twice before inviting the twisted tome into your house. The gripping film, shot by Polish cinematographer Radek Ladczuk in subdued German expressionist tones of black, gray, and white with bursts of other colors, evokes such classic horror fare as Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher, where place plays such a key role in the terror. The Babadook itself is a kind of warped combination of the villains from F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and Hideo Nakata’s The Ring. Kent, a former actress who studied at Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art with Davis, lets further influences show in the late-night television Amelia is obsessed with, which includes films by early French wizard Georges Méliès. But the real fear comes from something that many parents experience but are too ashamed or embarrassed to admit: that they might not actually love their child, despite trying their best to do so. At its tender heart, The Babadook is a story of a mother and son who must go through a kind of hell if they are going to get past the awful way they were brought together.

ROBERT ALTMAN: MASH

Trapper (Elliott Gould), Duke (Tom Skeritt), and Hawkeye (Donald Sutherland) think up new schemes in MASH

MASH (Robert Altman, 1970)
MoMA Film, Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Saturday, January 10, 4:00
Series runs through January 17
Tickets: $12, in person only, may be applied to museum admission within thirty days, same-day screenings free with museum admission, available at Film and Media Desk beginning at 9:30 am
212-708-9400
www.moma.org

Ostensibly set during the Korean War but actually about the controversial battle that was raging in Vietnam, Robert Altman’s MASH is one of the most subversive, and funniest, antiwar films ever to come from a Hollywood studio. Adapted by Hollywood Ten blacklisted writer Ring Lardner Jr. from Richard Hooker’s bookMASH: A Novel about Three Army Doctors, the film focuses on a different kind of hero: the doctors and nurses at a Mobile Surgical Army Hospital not far from the front lines. These brave men and women don’t go around with guns, grenades, and helmets; instead, they equip themselves with surgical masks, clamps, and scalpels, fighting to save the lives of those who risked theirs on the battlefield. Instead of celebrating killing, they celebrate survival, and celebrate they do, led by Capts. Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce (Donald Sutherland) and John Francis Xavier “Trapper John” McIntyre (Elliott Gould), who have their own way with wine, women, and song. Joined by Capt. Augustus Bedford “Duke” Forrest (Tom Skerritt), they ridicule Majs. Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan (Sally Kellerman) and Frank Burns (Robert Duvall), regularly embarrass Father John Patrick “Dago Red” Mulcahy (René Auberjonois), flirt endlessly with Lt. Maria “Dish” Schneider (Jo Ann Pflug) and her nursing staff, and generally wreak havoc that their commanding officer, Lt. Col. Henry Blake (Roger Bowen), will usually let them get away with, as long as they don’t interrupt his fishing outings. Hawkeye, Duke, and Trapper drink from a homemade still, take bets on whether Hot Lips’ carpet matches the drapes, play golf, and make fun of the military and religion every chance they get, especially during a mock funeral for Capt. Walter Koskiusko Waldowski (John Schuck), the dentist known as “Painless,” who has decided to commit suicide. The wacky cast of characters also includes Gary Burghoff as Cpl. Radar O’Reilly, Altman regular Michael Murphy as Capt. Ezekiel Bradbury “Me Lay” Marston IV, Bud Cort as Pvt. Lorenzo Boone, G. Wood as Brig. Gen. Charlie Hammond, and Kim Atwood as Ho-Jon. But Hawkeye and Trapper also happen to be outstanding doctors who take their oath very seriously, even when operating on an injured enemy. Their brazen disregard for authority of all kinds and the rule of military law is a knowing slap in the face to governments around the world, who so often send their young men and women off to war for highly questionable reasons.

A special show is about to begin for the 4077th in Korea

The brash, outrageous satire, the first studio film to get the F-word past the censors, also features a wild football game with real-life gridiron stars Buck Buchanan, Ben Davidson, and Fred Williamson as, yes, Capt. Oliver Harmon “Spearchucker” Jones (and came four years before The Longest Yard), won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actress (Kellerman), and Best Film Editing (Danford B. Greene), winning only for Best Adapted Screenplay, and it gave birth to the hugely popular television series that ran from 1972 to 1983. But there’s nothing quite like the film, a brilliant deconstruction of a different side of war, one where life is more important than death. The film’s overt misogyny gets a bit much all these years later, but it’s still a mad romp that served as the real starting point of Altman’s stellar career, which is being honored at MoMA with a comprehensive retrospective that runs through January 17 with upcoming screenings of Gosford Park and Nashville, Altman’s excellent political cable series, Tanner ’88, filmed versions of such plays as The Dumbwaiter and The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, and Ron Mann’s 2014 documentary, Altman. (MASH is being shown January 10 at 4:00 with Altman’s 1966 four-minute short, Ebb Tide, in which Lili St. Cyr enjoys herself on the beach.)

MR. TURNER

British painter J. M. W. Turner (Timothy Spall) and his devoted housekeeper, Hanna Danby (Dorothy Atkinson), pause for a moment in Mike Leigh’s biopic

MR. TURNER (Mike Leigh, 2014)
Opened December 19
www.sonyclassics.com/mrturner

Timothy Spall was named Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his compelling portrayal of British artist Joseph Mallord William Turner in Mike Leigh’s lovely biopic, Mr. Turner. Spall, who played Peter Pettigrew in the Harry Potter series and has appeared in such other Leigh films as Topsy-Turvy, All or Nothing, Life Is Sweet, and Secrets & Lies, portrays Turner as a gruff, self-involved painter who grunts and growls his way through life. At his home studio he is assisted by his aging father, William (Paul Jesson), and his devoted housekeeper, Hanna Danby (Dorothy Atkinson), who he occasionally shags when in the mood. Turner carries his sketchbook wherever he goes, always on the look-out for a beautiful landscape or winter storm that could become the subject of his next painting. With that in mind, he rents a room in a small seaside inn run by Sophia Booth (Marion Bailey), who eventually becomes more than just his landlady. An artist well ahead of his time, Turner becomes frustrated with the men at the Royal Academy of Arts and lisping art critic John Ruskin (Joshua McGuire), who don’t appreciate his work properly, especially when he starts heading toward abstraction.

J. M. W. Turner (Timothy Spall) is always on the look-out for a subject to paint in MR. TURNER

Leigh (Naked, Happy-Go-Lucky) does not paint the kindest portrait of J. M. W. Turner, who turned his back on his former mistress, the shrill Sarah Danby (Ruth Sheen), and their two daughters (Sandy Foster and Amy Dawson); doesn’t have the nicest things to say about such contemporaries as John Constable (James Fleet) and Benjamin Haydon (Martin Savage); and refuses to listen to the stern warnings of his doctor (David Horovitch). Turner is an artist first and foremost; everything else takes a backseat in his life. Despite being based on actual events, the film was made in Leigh’s usual style, with the actors improvising within set scenes; Spall, who studied painting for two years in preparing for the role, takes full advantage of the opportunity, often refusing to articulate, grunting and growling as he deals with other people who dare share their thoughts and opinions with him. It’s a very funny conceit that helps define a rather unusual character. As befits a story about a masterful painter, cinematographer Dick Pope, who has shot most of Leigh’s films, beautifully photographs the sun rising and setting over vast landscapes, capturing its glowing light cast over the sea. Leigh keeps the narrative subtle, as when Turner and Sophia sit for a daguerreotype; almost nothing extraordinary happens in the scene, but from a few groaned questions and Spall’s expression, viewers can sense Turner realizing the changes that photography will bring to realist painting, spurring his controversial switch to more abstract canvases. It is not shown as a eureka moment but just another part of Turner’s development in becoming one of the most important and influential artists of the nineteenth century. And then there are the paintings themselves, glorious works that are always a joy to see, especially in a film that is a work of art itself.

INHERENT VICE

Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix reveal that opposites attract in INHERENT VICE

INHERENT VICE (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2014)
Opened December 19
www.inherentvicemovie.com

It makes sense that award-winning writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson, who has made such complex, challenging films as Magnolia, There Will Be Blood, and The Master, has made the first cinematic adaptation of a novel by reclusive, iconoclastic author Thomas Pynchon, who has written such complex, challenging books as Gravity’s Rainbow, V., and Vineland. It also makes sense that the book he chose to adapt is Inherent Vice, probably the most lighthearted and breezy of Pynchon’s tomes. But it also makes sense that the film itself is complex and challenging — and downright confusing. Walking out of the theater, we were pretty sure we liked what we had just seen, even if we didn’t completely understand what had happened. (As Jena Malone said of the making of the film, “The logic becomes the chaos and the chaos becomes the logic.”) The neo-noir takes place in 1970 in the fictional Valley town of Gordita Beach (based on Manhattan Beach, where Pynchon lived for a long time). Joaquin Phoenix stars as Larry “Doc” Sportello, a mutton-chopped ex-hippie who is now a private gumshoe working out of a health clinic. One day his ex, Shasta Fay Hepworth (a transplendant Katherine Waterston), shows up to ask him to get her out of a jam involving her billionaire boyfriend, Mickey Wolfmann (Eric Roberts), who has gone missing, perhaps at the hands of Wolfmann’s high-society wife, Sloane (Serena Scott Thomas). Meanwhile, Doc is also hired by Hope Harlingen (Malone) to determine whether her supposedly dead husband, surf-sax legend Coy (Owen Wilson), is actually alive. As Pynchon himself says in the book trailer, “At that point, it gets sort of peculiar,” and peculiar it does indeed get, as Doc becomes immersed in a web of lies and deceit, dealing with a dangerous cult known as the Golden Fang (where Martin Short plays a sex-crazed dentist with a wild abandon), a curious health facility called the Chryskylodon Institute run by Dr. Threeply (Jefferson Mays), and Det. Bigfoot Bjornsen, a “renaissance cop” who has no time for any of Doc’s hippie crap, as the Manson murders hover over everything. Well, at least that’s what we think the plot is about.

Doc (Joaquin Phoenix) and Bigfoot (Josh Brolin) don’t agree on much in Paul Thomas Anderson adaptation of Thomas Pynchon novel

As with all Anderson films, Inherent Vice looks and sounds great; cinematographer Robert Elswit, who has shot most of Anderson’s films, bathes the quirky drama in hazy, syrupy colors, while Jonny Greenwood’s score is accompanied by songs by Can, Sam Cooke, Minnie Riperton, the Marketts, and Neil Young. (In fact, Young’s Journey through the Past experimental film served as an influence on Anderson when making Inherent Vice, as did David Zucker, Jim Abrahams, and Jerry Zucker’s Police Squad and Naked Gun series, Robert Altman’s 1973 Philip Marlowe movie The Long Goodbye, and Howard Hawks’s 1946 version of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep.) It all has the feel of the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski as reinterpreted by Anderson and Pynchon — who might have been on-set during at least some of the shooting and supposedly makes a cameo in the picture. The film is littered with absurdist jokes and oddities, from the way Bigfoot eats a chocolate-covered banana to a trio of FBI agents picking their noses, from the right-wing Vigilant California organization to a clip from the 1952 Cold War propaganda film Red Nightmare. Phoenix once again fully inhabits his character, who putt-putts around in an old Dodge Dart and just wants life to be mellow and groovy. Brolin is hysterical as his foil, the straitlaced, flattop cop who has a penchant for busting down doors. The large cast also includes Benicio del Toro as Sauncho Smilax, Doc’s too-cool lawyer; Reese Witherspoon as Penny Kimball, Doc’s well-coiffed girlfriend; Maya Rudolph (Anderson’s real-life partner and the daughter of Riperton) as receptionist Petunia Leeway; Sasha Pieterse as Japonica Fenway, who hangs with Golden Fang dentist Rudy Blatnoyd (Short); and Joanna Newsom as Sortilège, the film’s narrator (who does not appear in the book). Inherent Vice is yet another unique cinematic experience from Anderson, one that is likely to take multiple viewings to understand just what is going on, but as with his previous films, it is likely to be well worth the investment.

BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE)

Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) and Mike Shiner (Edward Norton) battle it out onstage and off in BIRDMAN

BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) (Alejandro G. Iñárritu, 2014)
Opened October 17
www.birdmanthemovie.com

In Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance), Oscar-winning cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki’s swirling camera immerses the audience in Mexican director Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s gripping whirlwind black comedy of a former superhero action star trying to regain respect on the Broadway stage. Onetime Batman star Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, an actor who left his blockbuster Birdman franchise in order to be taken more seriously. Twenty years later, he is considering refinancing his house in order to support his Broadway debut as writer, director, and star of an adaptation of Raymond Carver’s short story “What We Talk about When We Talk about Love.” As he works on the play with costars Mike Shiner (Edward Norton), Shiner’s girlfriend, Lesley (Naomi Watts), and his own girlfriend, Laura (Andrea Riseborough), he battles his inner demons, which take the form of the dark, gravelly voice of his Birdman character (voiced by Keaton). Either his somewhat obscure but vaguely Buddhist spiritual pursuits or his Birdman abilities also apparently give him the ability to move objects with his mind; the first time we see him, he is levitating in front of the window of his dressing room at the St. James Theatre. His team also includes his devoted lawyer, producer, and best friend, Jake (Zach Galifianakis), his stalwart stage manager, Annie (Merritt Wever), and his daughter and personal assistant, Sam (Emma Stone), a bitter and cynical young woman fresh out of rehab. He also has an encounter with vicious theater critic Tabitha Dickinson (Lindsay Duncan), who is licking her lips in anticipation of reviewing his show. With opening night approaching, Thomson must look deep within himself as he reevaluates his life and career.

Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) tries to reestablish his relationship with his daughter, Sam (Emma Stone), in BIRDMAN

Iñárritu (Amores Perros, Babel) and Lubezki (Gravity, Children of Men) take viewers on a wicked, wild ride in Birdman, which is masterfully made to look as if it is one continuous two-hour shot, the handful of cuts cleverly hidden as the camera roams through the narrow hallways and small dressing rooms of the St. James and into (and above) Times Square, instilling the film with the energy and feel of live theater. The live aspect reaches a new peak when, as Thomson is winding his way backstage accompanied by Antonio Sánchez’s propulsive percussion score, he runs past a man playing the music on the drums. (Think Count Basie leading his band out on the western plains in Blazing Saddles.) Another inside joke occurs when Shiner is shown reading Jorge Luis Borges’s Labyrinths, a short-story collection filled with magical scenes of its own. Keaton gives the best, bravest performance of his career as Thomson, a comeback role that clearly hits home; it seems so tailor made for him that it is hard to believe it was not written specifically for the ’80s star of such hits as Night Shift, Mr. Mom, Gung Ho, and Beetlejuice. Keaton — who has had very limited theater experience — lets it all hang out, as does Norton, channeling his narrator character from Fight Club. The film’s supporting cast is outstanding as well, including Watts, who is now considering making her long-awaited theater debut, and Amy Ryan as Thomson’s ex-wife, but Stone’s big, expressive eyes nearly steal the movie. Birdman is so fresh and potent, so dynamic and spirited, that it’s easy to forgive it its few plot holes. It’s a biting satire of Hollywood and Broadway, of fame and stardom, a magical fantasy that relates to everyone’s fear of becoming insignificant.