MEN AT LUNCH attempts to unlock the many mysteries behind an iconic New York City photograph (© Bettmann/CORBIS)
MEN AT LUNCH: THE UNTOLD STORY OF A CITY’S LEGEND (Seán Ó Cualáín, 2012)
Quad Cinema
34 West 13th St. between Fifth & Sixth Aves.
Opens Friday, September 20
212-255-2243
www.quadcinema.com
www.menatlunchfilm.com
Seán Ó Cualáín puts one of the most iconic photographs ever of New York City under the microscope in the interesting yet too often slipshod documentary Men at Lunch. In 1932, a photographer snapped a picture of eleven construction workers having lunch while sitting atop a girder on what would become the sixty-ninth floor of the RCA Building in Rockefeller Center. The men are casually talking, having a smoke, and holding white cardboard lunchboxes while dangling their feet some 850 feet in the air, a bustling city below them, Central Park sprawled out behind them. Narrated by Fionnula Flanagan (Ulysses, Waking Ned Devine), the film delves into who the men might be, attempts to figure out whether it was indeed Charles C. Ebbets who took the photo, and seeks to put the picture into the social and cultural context of the depression and the wave of immigration, focusing on the Irish (the film is an Irish production), many of whom went into the construction industry. “This is a photograph in which every element of photography and of New York City kind of come together with spectacular panache,” filmmaker Ric Burns says. But while Ó Cualáín employs captivating archival footage as he tries to solve the photograph’s many mysteries, he extends the focus too far, biting off more than he can chew in a mere seventy minutes, as a handful of talking heads and Niall Murphy’s text make grand statements about the human condition in the twentieth century that are too often a reach, then spends too much time with a pair of Irish characters who believe they are related to two of the men in the picture. Still, the part of the film that zeroes in on the taking of the photograph is absolutely fascinating.
Korean writer-director Hong Sang-soo returned to the New York Film Festival for the fifth time with Night and Day, a character-driven tale about displacement and loneliness. Youngho Kim stars as Sungam, a married painter in his forties who flees South Korea for France after having been turned in for smoking marijuana with U.S. tourists. A fish out of water in Paris, he settles into a Korean neighborhood, spending most of his time with two young art students, Yujeong (Eunhye Park) and Hyunju (Minjeong Seo). He also meets an old girlfriend, Minsun (Youjin Kim), who is still attracted to him. And every night he calls his wife, Sungin (Sujung Hwang), wondering when he’ll be able to return home. Hong (Woman Is the Future of Man, Tale of Cinema) tells the story in a diary-like manner, with interstitials acting like calendar pages. Sometimes a day can be filled with talk of art, a party, and a chance encounter, while others can consist of a brief, random event with no real bearing on the plot, reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise, just without the existential cynicism and dark humor. As with 2006’s Woman on the Beach, Hong lets Night and Day go on too long (it clocks in at 141 minutes), with too many inconsequential (even if entertaining) vignettes, but it’s so much fun watching Youngho’s compelling performance that you just might not care about the length. Night and Day is screening September 20 at 9:00 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s “NYFF: Opening Act” series, featuring sixteen films from directors whose latest works will be shown at the fifty-first New York Film Festival, which runs September 27 through October 13. “NYFF: Opening Act” also includes outstanding films as Spike Jonze’s Adaptation., Paul Greengrass’s Bloody Sunday, Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Maborosi, Joel Coen’s Miller’s Crossing, and Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Pulse. Hong’s delightful Nobody’s Daughter Haewon screens at this year’s New York Film Festival on September 29 and 30.
Zachary Heinzerling’s 
As Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion begins, a man (Gian Maria Volontè) kills a woman (Florinda Bolkan) in the midst of some rather kinky sex. The man then goes out of his way to leave behind evidence tying him to the brutal crime, including making sure he is spotted as he exits the woman’s building complex. It is soon revealed that he is the former head of homicide in Rome who has just been promoted to chief of political intelligence, his victim a married lover of his who enjoyed acting out real murder cases with him. “How will you kill me this time?” she asks in a flashback, not knowing where their games will ultimately lead. For the rest of Elio Petri’s (A Quiet Place in the Country) absurdist farce, the man practically dares his colleagues to catch him as he continues to build a case against himself and rails against criminal and political terrorists and subversives in neo-fascist romps, filmed in daring close-up, that emphasize the importance of keeping the masses repressed. Shot in broad colors and featuring a playful score by Ennio Morricone, Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion is an enticing police procedural — in which the culprit is the man in charge of the case — as well as a satiric look at the state of Italian politics in 1970, as social unrest and sexual freedom grew throughout Europe and America. “Repressing all those evils is to cure them,” the man declares in a fiery speech to his department. Volontè (A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More) clearly has a ball as a man who either wants to be caught or is out to prove that he is indeed above the law, Petri carefully keeping his motive ambiguous in this wonderful black comedy. 
