this week in film and television

TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL (REDUX)

A trio of nurses deal with a deadly epidemic in early Guy Maddin cult classic, Tales form the Gimli Hospital

TALES FROM THE GIMLI HOSPITAL (REDUX) (Guy Maddin, 1988/2022)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, October 14
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
zeitgeistfilms.com

In a 2011 twi-ny talk focusing on a “reframed” version of his 1988 debut feature, Tales from the Gimli Hospital, Canadian director Guy Maddin said, “I thought, of all the films of mine that might actually thematically justify a revisiting from the director (something that truly ought not to be done under almost any circumstances!), then this was the title.” Well, Maddin has done it again with a 4K restoration of the film, which he is now calling Tales from the Gimli Hospital (Redux), featuring some trimming as well as the addition of a long-lost scene.

The Canadian DIY master reached into Icelandic sagas for the original, ultra-low-budget version. In many ways a kind of Scandinavian Frankenstein as if directed by Ingmar Bergman and George A. Romero, the mostly black-and-white Expressionist film is a story within a story (at times within another story) that an old woman, Amma (Margaret Anne MacLeod), is telling her grandchildren (Heather and David Neale) in a hospital room where their mother lies very ill. The dark, lurid fairy tale, set in “a Gimli we no longer know,” is about Einar the Lonely (assistant director Kyle McCulloch), a shy fish smoker who does not know how to relate to other people, particularly women. Felled by an epidemic, he is brought to the Gimli Hospital in Manitoba, where other men battle this dread disease, which leaves stitchlike scars on their face and body. Einar is discouraged that the patient in the bed next to him, the portly Gunnar (Michael Gottli), is treated much nicer by the nurses than he is, but he is helpless to do anything about it. Gunnar is soon telling Einar the story of his true love, Snjófridur (Angela Heck), a tragic tale with a surprising twist that brings everything full circle.

A unique visual stylist who regularly pays homage to the early days of cinema, Maddin, who directed and edited the picture (and wrote the script on Post-it Notes), purposely keeps things low-tech, including less-than-perfect sound dubbing and bumpy cuts, incorporating freak-show-like oddities alongside an ominous lo-fi soundtrack with old songs; Maddin (My Winnipeg, Careful) himself plays the weirdo surgeon who operates on Gunnar and Einar in rather strange fashion. The intentionally amateurish nature of the original work led to its being rejected by the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) for ineptitude; it went on to become an instant cult classic, holding the midnight-movie slot at the Quad for nearly a year. In 2011, Maddin, who is part Icelandic, reimagined the film in the special Performa presentation Tales from the Gimli Hospital: Reframed, a reedited version with a live score by Icelandic musicians. Tales from the Gimli Hospital (Redux), a 4K restoration that premiered at TIFF 2022, goes a few steps further.

“The new scene was shot in 1999 as an after-the-fact deleted scene as a way of celebrating a cast reunion after a serious car accident injured the actor Michael Gottli,” Maddin explains. “The act of shooting this scene was intended as a kind of rehab therapy for my dispirited thespian. But it turned out quite well, I think. It is inserted early on in the feature, during the scene in the hospital when a primitive Punch and Judy puppet show is deployed as an anesthetic distraction to a patient (Gottli) having his leg operated on by a man wielding a sickle. Such puppet shows were the only anesthetic available in the pioneer days of Gimli. The new scene suggests to the patient a hallucinated tale of gender transformation and some lusty BDSM involving yet another man with a fish net. I had promised Gottli I would insert this ‘deleted scene’ into the body of the feature if I ever got the chance.”

This stunning new iteration opens theatrically October 14 at IFC, preceded by Maddin’s dazzling six-minute award-winning TIFF short The Heart of the World, about science battling religion and two brothers in love with the same woman as the end of the planet approaches, with the director on hand for Q&As following the 8:10 shows on Friday and Saturday night. Maddin is both fascinating and fun to listen to, so snag your tickets now for what promises to be a special event.

HULU’s RAMY: RAMY YOUSSEF IN CONVERSATION WITH HASAN MINAJ

Who: Ramy Youssef, Hasan Minhaj
What: Recanati-Kaplan Talks, Ramy screening and discussion
Where: Kaufmann Concert Hall, 92nd St. Y, 1395 Lexington Ave. between Ninety-First & Ninety-Second Sts., and online
When: Friday, October 14, $20-$45 in person at 8:00, $25 online at 9:05
Why: In April 2019, the first season of Hulu’s Ramy began streaming, an unusual semiautobiographical comedy about an Egyptian-American ne’er-do-well and his family, trying to make a life for themselves in New Jersey, balancing tradition with contemporary mores. The very funny, often cringy show was created by Ramy Youssef, who also serves as star, writer, and executive producer. The series, which launched its third season on September 30, features Youssef as Ramy Hassan, who is searching for love and faith, with Hiam Abbass as his mother, Amr Waked as his father, May Calamawy as his sister, Laith Nakli as his uncle, and Mohammed Amer and Dave Merheje as his best friends. On October 14, Youssef will be at the 92nd St. Y to discuss his life and career with Peabody-winning American comedian and political commentator Hasan Minaj (The Daily Show, Patriot Act with Hasan Minaj). In-person tickets are $20-$45 and include a screening beginning at 8:00; online tickets are $25 and start at 9:05.

NYFF60 MAIN SLATE: ALL THAT BREATHES

All That Breathes explores the fate of black kites in India as representative of so much more

ALL THAT BREATHES (Shaunak Sen, 2022)
New York Film Festival, Film at Lincoln Center
Tuesday, October 11, Walter Reade Theater, 6:30
Wednesday, October 12, Howard Gilman Theater, 9:00
www.filmlinc.org
www.allthatbreathes.com

Shaunak Sen’s All That Breathes opens with a long shot of rats scurrying about a filthy New Delhi area, then follows a man carrying four boxes with holes in them into a dingy, crowded basement garage. One starts to rock and falls awkwardly to the floor. The man walks over and takes out an injured bird. As Mohammad Saud, Nadeem Shehzad, and Salik Rehman examine the injured creature, they speak of a possible nuclear war between India and Pakistan.

“What’ll happen to the birds if there’s a nuclear war?” Rehman asks. “We’ll all die. Where will they go?”

A moment later, a young boy searches for a bullet, an announcement from the street advises, “We don’t want any harm to any public property,” and a black kite, a bird of prey that migrates to New Delhi every year, grips a small branch and then accusingly stares directly into the camera. Later street announcements declare, “This is a fight for empathy and unity! The Constitution has to be saved!” regarding the treatment of Islamic citizens.

For several decades, Indian Muslim brothers Saud and Shehzad have been rescuing and healing kites that have fallen from the sky, victim to pollution and the cotton threads of kites that slice their wings. “When we got our first kite . . . I’d stay up at night staring at it,” Shehzad says in voiceover as a lone kite soars in the air, the moon at its left. “It looked like a furious reptile from another planet. It’s said that feeding kites earns ‘sawab’ [religious credit]. When they eat the meat you offer, they eat away your difficulties. And their hunger is insatiable.”

When the brothers were teenage bodybuilders, they encountered their first injured kite. A bird hospital refused to help because the species is not vegetarian, so they used their own knowledge of flesh, muscles, and tendons to repair it. They’ve been rescuing and repairing hurt birds in their highly unsanitary quarters ever since.

Amid the social unrest and their legitimate fears of being turned into refugees because of their religion, Saud and Shehzad continue to fix the birds, as if fixing themselves as they worry about losing their freedom. Over one dinner they discuss with their families what they might do if the government kicks them out of the country. Meanwhile, the brothers are desperate to get a grant to keep their Wildlife Rescue operating.

“I’ve devoted my entire life to this. But this doesn’t feel enough to me,” Shehzad explains. “Things are getting from bad to worse here. Birds are plummeting from the sky. Delhi is a gaping wound. And we’re a tiny Band-Aid on it.”

Cinematographer Ben Bernhard focuses in on nature, from an icy river to an owl to dozens and dozens of kites filling the sky, set to a gentle yet ominous score by Roger Goula. Director and producer Sen (Cities of Sleep) is not just making a film about kites in India; he is accusing the world as a whole of misusing resources in ways that threaten the existence of such living creatures as kites and damage the planet’s ecological system.

“Man is the loneliest animal,” Saud says.

Winner of the Grand Jury Prize for Best Documentary (World Cinema) at Sundance and the L’OEil d’or for Best Documentary at Cannes, All That Breathes is screening at the New York Film Festival on October 11 and 12, with Sen on hand for Q&As after both shows. The film opens theatrically October 21 at Film Forum, with Sen participating in Q&As following the 7:00 shows on October 21 and 22.

NYFF60 MAIN SLATE: AFTERSUN

A father (Paul Mescal) and daughter (Francesca Corio) bond in Charlotte Wells’s Aftersun

AFTERSUN (Charlotte Wells, 2022)
New York Film Festival, Film at Lincoln Center
Saturday, October 8, Alice Tully Hall, 12:00
Sunday, October 9, Alice Tully Hall, 9:00
Monday, October 10, BAM Cinemas, 7:00
212-355-6160
www.filmlinc.org

At one point in Charlotte Wells’s hauntingly beautifully debut feature, Aftersun, a divorced father, Calum (Paul Mescal), and his eleven-year-old daughter, Sophie (Francesca Corio), are standing in the mountains, arms stretched to the sky as if the world is limitless for them, but nearby is an old, rotting sign that announces, “We know the perfect place,” once upon a time offering visitors “paradise.” The two are on vacation on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey, a bonding trip during which Calum assures Sophie, “You can live wherever you want to live. Be whoever you want to be.”

It is apparent that Calum and Sophie have not spent a lot of time together of late, as Calum has left their home country of Scotland following the divorce. In Turkey, they experience a warm and loving bond, as Calum learns how to be a father again and Sophie begins her transition into adolescence, neither one knowing exactly what comes next. Calum is watching his daughter grow up right in front of him, and he doesn’t always know quite how to react; as Sophie hangs out with a group of older teens as well as a boy her own age who has a crush on her, Calum allows her a freedom that threatens to be too much, sometimes acting more like a big brother or friend than a father. But as we discover, Sophie is an extraordinary capable young girl, coming of age in a world that is not a paradise for everyone.

Aftersun is a captivating adventure in which Scottish NYU grad Wells plays with genre tropes, gently turning them inside out as she makes the audience reevaluate their expectations from both real life and fictional drama. Many of the scenes are set up in a way that you anticipate a certain outcome — usually a dangerous one — but the bad result never happens, and we are disappointed in ourselves for having imagined a different conclusion.

The film is very much an extension of Wells’s early shorts, Blue Christmas, Laps, and Tuesday, in which she deals with such subjects as sexual abuse, the loss of a parent, and mental illness that threatens to tear a family apart. Wells favors a realistic pace, moving at the speed of life, with an expert sense of composition and a knack for avoiding unnecessary dialogue or explication while often using a handheld camera to keep things slightly off balance. We also get to see brief hints of Sophie as an adult (Celia Rowlson-Hall), thinking back on this critically formative vacation.

In Aftersun, Wells and cinematographer Gregory Oke incorporate pixelated digital shots and occasional grainy textures amid gorgeous images of the Turkish coast, lovingly edited by Blair McClendon and accompanied by a wistful score by Oliver Coates. The Irish Mescal (Normal People, The Lost Daughter) fully embodies the role of a father trying to redefine what’s important to him, while Corio, in her first film, having been chosen from a casting call of more than eight hundred actresses, is charming and delightful as Sophie; her eyes light up the screen with their sense of wonder at what awaits her, and us.

Aftersun is screening October 8-10 at the New York Film Festival with Wells participating in Q&As after the noon screening on October 8 (joined by Corio) and the October 9 show at 9:00; Wells will also take part in a free talk with Mia Hansen-Løve (One Fine Morning) on October 8 at 4:00 at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center amphitheater. The film opens at Lincoln Center on October 21.

LAST FLIGHT HOME

Filmmaker Ondi Timoner says goodbye to her father in Last Flight Home

LAST FLIGHT HOME (Ondi Timoner, 2022)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
Opens Friday, October 7
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.interloperfilms.com

Filmmaker Ondi Timoner and her family say goodbye to their beloved patriarch in the remarkable Last Flight Home, an honest, deeply human example of how we face death. At the age of ninety-two, Eli Timoner, husband, father, grandfather, friend, boss, and patient, decided that it was time for him to die. “I’ll always be looking down on all of you. Help me go there and end all this agony,” he says from his bed in his California living room.

Eli had spent the previous forty years partially paralyzed, having suffered a debilitating stroke at the age of fifty-three shortly after getting his neck cracked by a masseuse. Because of his disability, he ended up losing his business — he had been the president of Laura Lee Candy and later founded Air Florida — but still managed to put his three children, Rachel (a rabbi), David, and Ondi, through Yale.

The Timoner clan very carefully follows California’s End of Life Option Act, which specifies a fifteen-day period in which the patient goes through a series of medical tests and legal requirements that will allow him to die with dignity, in this case at home surrounded by family. During this time, friends and relatives visit Eli, in person and online, as it is February 2021 and the Covid-19 pandemic is raging. Most of these meetings are warm and happy; everyone is extolling Eli’s life, not mourning his coming passing.

Even as his body fades, his mind is still sharp as he shares memories, tells bad jokes, praises Joe Biden and Rachel Maddow — Eli is a fiercely dedicated liberal — and ponders regrets that haunt him. He gives words of wisdom to his children and grandchildren, who let him know how much they love him and how important he will always be to them, and he returns the love. “You give love, you get love,” he advises one of his grandsons.

“To know this is coming is a luxury,” Ondi says to the hospice nurse, Candice Carsey, and they take full advantage of that, putting together a farewell list, reviewing Eli’s obituary with him, and arranging for the burial plot and funeral. Two-time Sundance winner Ondi (We Live in Public, Dig!) was not initially planning to make a documentary about her father and his passing; she set up unobtrusive cameras to capture the events for herself because that is what she has always done, how she processes things. It wasn’t until her sister asked her to make a memorial video for a Zoom service that she realized the treasure trove of material she had amassed honoring her father’s life. Serving as writer, director, photographer, producer, and editor, Ondi intercuts archival material, including family photographs, home movies, and clips of Eli’s business successes. Her partner, Morgan Doctor, composed the moving score.

As the days count down to March 3, 2021, the viewer feels as if they have become part of the Timoners’ extended family, gaining understanding of the various characters and feeling their pain and love. The film goes beyond cinéma verité or fly-on-the-wall witnessing; it’s a privilege to be invited into what is normally such a private, personal experience. Death is something everyone has their own relationship with, but Ondi turns her father’s passing into a communal gathering that celebrates life as well as dying with dignity.

“Long time since I felt your warmth. I’m so glad to bathe in it,” Eli tells his former daughter-in-law, Felicia Park-Rogers, as they say goodbye to each other. With Last Flight Home, we all get to bathe in the warmth of an ordinary yet extraordinary human being.

Last Flight Home opens October 7 at IFC, with Ondi Timoner participating in Q&As with special guests following the 7:15 shows that night (moderated by Amy Berg) and October 8 (moderated by Sandi DuBowski).

MONTHLY CLASSICS: RINGU

Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima) finds herself and her young son in danger in Ringu

RINGU (Hideo Nakata, 1998)
Japan Society
333 East 47th St. at First Ave.
Friday, October 7, $15, 7:00
212-715-1258
japansociety.org/events

In many ways, Hideo Nakata’s 1998 classic, Ringu, is the ultimate horror movie: a film about a film that scares people to death. But Ringu is not chock-full of blood, gore, and violence; instead it’s more of a psychological tale that plays out like an investigative procedural as two characters desperately search for answers to save themselves from impending death.

Journalist Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima) and her ex-husband, professor and author Ryūji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada), are both on tight deadlines — for their lives. After Reiko’s niece, Tomoko Ōishi (Yuko Takeuchi), suddenly dies, apparently from fright, Reiko discovers a rumor that Tomoko and some of her friends had watched a short video, then received a phone call in which an otherworldly voice told them they would die in a week. And they did.

Reiko tracks down the eerie videotape and watches it herself — a few minutes of creepy, hard-to-decipher grainy images — after which the phone rings, telling her she has one week to live. She shows the tape to Ryūji, who has extrasensory powers, and they start digging deep into who shown in the tape and what it is trying to communicate. As they begin uncovering fascinating facts, their son, Yōichi (Rikiya Ōtaka), gets hold of the video and watches it, so all three are doomed if they don’t figure out how to reverse the curse — if that is even possible.

Adapted by screenwriter Hiroshi Takahashi from the 1991 novel by Koji Suzuki, Ringu is a softer film than you might expect, maintaining a slow, even pace, avoiding cheap shocks as the relatively calm and gentle Reiko continues her research and is able to work together with her former husband, who has not been a father to Yoichi at all. The film gains momentum as Reiko and Ryūji learn more about the people in the video, but Nakata, who went on to make several sequels in addition to Dark Water, Chaos, The Incite Mill, and the Death Note spinoff L: Change the World, never lets things get out of hand. The supporting cast includes pop singer Miki Nakatani as Mai Takano, one of Ryūji’s students; the prolific Yutaka Matsushige (he’s appeared in more than one hundred films and television shows since 1992) as Yoshino, a reporter who assists Reiko; and Rie Inō as the strange figure hiding behind all that black hair.

The 2019 twentieth anniversary digital restoration of Ringu is screening October 7 at 7:00 in Japan Society’s Monthly Classics series, which continues October 14 with Mamoru Oshii’s Angel’s Egg. Oh, and just for the record, a “homomorphism” — the word is written on Ryūji’s blackboard of mathematical equations — is a map between algebraic objects that come in two forms, “group” and “ring,” the latter being a structure-preserving function.

NYFF60 SPOTLIGHT: BONES AND ALL

Maren (Taylor Russell) and Lee (Timothée Chalamet) try to find love among so much blood in Bones and All

BONES AND ALL (Luca Guadagnino, 2022)
New York Film Festival, Film at Lincoln Center
Thursday, October 6, Alice Tully Hall, 9:00
Saturday, October 8, Alice Tully Hall, 2:45
Tuesday, October 11, Alamo Drafthouse Staten Island, 6:00
Sunday, October 16, Walter Reade Theater, 5:45
www.filmlinc.org

Luca Guadagnino won the Silver Lion for Best Director at the Venice Film Festival for his horror/road movie/romance Bones and All, a Spotlight selection of NYFF60. The Italian director evokes Bonnie and Clyde and Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry in the tale of two young people who were born with a taste for human flesh. But they’re not vampires; they don’t come out only at night, and they don’t just suck out their victims’ blood but go for a much heartier meal.

At a sleepover with a few girls from her new high school, Maren Yearly (Taylor Russell) desperately wants to fit in, but things go astray when she starts munching on one of the girls’ fingers. Her father (André Holland), who has been shuttling her to small towns for years because of her needs, takes off, believing that he cannot protect her anymore, but he leaves behind a cassette tape in which he details her life; she listens to parts of the tape every day as her full story emerges.

On the run, she meets up with fellow cannibal and extremely creepy Sully (Mark Rylance), who is happy to have a companion and wants to become her mentor. But she eventually is back out on the road, hungry and desperate, not wanting to kill, when she meets up with cannibal drifter, Lee (Timothée Chalamet), who provides her with companionship, food, and love as they try to stay alive and not get caught.

Maren (Taylor Russell) and Lee (Timothée Chalamet) take a rare break in new horror romance

Russell (Lost in Space, Waves), who won the Marcello Mastroianni Award for emerging actor at Venice, is captivating as Maren, who just wants to have a normal life. Her eyes are filled with both fear and wonder at the world that awaits her. Chalamet (Call Me by Your Name, Dune) is compelling as the raggedy would-be hero with puppy-dog eyes. Oscar and Tony winner Rylance (Bridge of Spies, Wolf Hall) nearly steals the movie as Sully, until a misbegotten late scene, while Tony and Emmy nominee Michael Stuhlbarg (A Serious Man, Dopesick) is nearly unrecognizable as the wickedly devilish Jake. The film also features Oscar nominee Chloë Sevigny (Boys Don’t Cry, Big Love) as Maren’s mother, Anna Cobb as Kayla, Lee’s sister, Jessica Harper (Suspiria, My Favorite Year) as Maren’s grandmother, and filmmaker David Gordon Green (George Washington, Pineapple Express) as Brad, Jake’s friend.

Adapted by David Kajganich from Camille DeAngelis’s 2015 novel, Bones and All is riddled with plot holes and inconsistencies, asking the audience to suspend disbelief all too often, and its final scenes become clichéd and melodramatic, but it’s worth seeing for Russell’s performance alone, as well as the developing relationship between Maren and Lee, which is like a 1980s version of Bonnie Parker (Faye Dunaway) and Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) or Mary (Susan George) and Larry (Peter Fonda), although bloodier in its own way. The soundtrack is a blast, with a score composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and such songs as Leonard Cohen’s “You Want It Darker.” Guadagnino, Russell, and Sevigny will be at Alice Tully Hall on October 6 for a Q&A following the 9:00 screening.