Aki Kaurismäki’s ARIEL is part of Weekend Classics series at the IFC Center
ARIEL (Aki Kaurismäki, 1988)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
October 14-16, $13, 11:00 am
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
Following last weekend’s screenings of the first part of Aki Kaurismäki’s Proletariat Trilogy, 1986’s Shadows in Paradise, the IFC Center will be showing the second part, 1988’s Ariel, Friday through Sunday at 11:00 am. More of a conceptual sequel than a continuing narrative, Ariel stars Turo Pajala as Taisto Kasurinen, a Finnish miner who has just lost his job because the mine has closed. Sitting at a diner with his father/coworker, Taisto barely flinches as the elder Kasurinen tells him that there is nothing for him here, gives him the keys to his white Cadillac convertible, and goes into the bathroom and shoots himself. Taisto, with ever-changing facial hair in the beginning, quickly gets mugged, his meager life savings stolen from him. He seeks day work on the docks and sort of starts dating single mother Irmeli Pihlaja (Susanna Haavisto), who has never met a job she couldn’t quit that day. Taisto soon finds himself in prison for a ridiculous reason — and one he doesn’t really fight, as he generally just sits back and lets things happen to him — and meets fellow inmate Mikkonen (Shadows in Paradise’s Matti Pellonpää), and the two decide it’s time to take action and break out. A very dark, very black comedy that mixes in elements of romance and noir, Ariel is an absurdist existential feast, following Taisto and his compatriots as they make their very strange way through a very bizarre world. The third part of the trilogy, The Match Factory Girl (1990), will screen October 28-30, taking a week off as Kaurismäki’s latest, the wonderful Le Havre, opens at the IFC on October 21.
Makoto Shinkai, who took the anime world by storm with his 2003 hit Voices of a Distant Star, a short film made completely on his home computer, followed that up with his first feature-length work, the magical and mystical The Place Promised in Our Early Days. Set in an alternate futuristic post-WWII world, The Place Promised centers on three friends, Hiroki, Takuya, and Sayuri, who make a vow to fly Hiroke and Takuya’s plane, Bela C’ielo, into the Tower, a monolithic structure rising into the sky that symbolizes the postwar division into the Union and U.S.-Japanese forces. With war imminent, an older Takuya and Hiroki find themselves on opposing sides, with Sayuri lost in a coma dreamworld. Although the plot — especially the science aspects — gets rather complex and confusing, The Place Promised is a beautiful-looking film, both tenderly sweet and harshly depressing, presenting a rather bleak forecast of the future. But stunning visual moments such as a setting sun with an illuminated halo that forms a shining star twinkling into an abandoned factory make it all worth it. Shinkai’s film was deservedly named Best Animated Film at the Mainichi Film Awards, where it topped the much more heralded Steamboy (Katsuhiro Otomo, 2004) and Howl’s Moving Castle (Hayao Miyazaki, 2004). The career of the thirty-eight-year-old anime auteur is being celebrated at this year’s New York Comic Con / New York Anime Festival, which will include screenings of Voices of a Distant Star (October 14, Room 1A18, 12:30), The Place Promised in Our Early Days (October 14, Room 1A18, 1:15), the three-part 5 Centimeters Per Second (October 14, Room 1A18, 3:00), and his latest, Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below (October 16, IGN Theater, 11:00 am), with Shinkai on hand to introduce this New York premiere.
In his hysterical 2001 black comedy The Royal Tenenbaums, eclectic indie auteur Wes Anderson (The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox) created one of the kings of dysfunctional film families. Directly inspired by J. D. Salinger’s Glass clan (Franny and Zooey, Raise High the Roof Beam), the Tenenbaums of New York City have more than their fair share of distress. After being kicked out of the house for being a lousy father and husband, Royal (Gene Hackman) returns, claiming he is dying of stomach cancer. His wife, noted archaeologist Etheline (Anjelica Huston), is now seeing her accountant, the straitlaced Henry Sherman (Danny Glover). Finance wiz Chas (Ben Stiller) is having difficulty getting over his wife’s death in a plane crash, becoming absurdly overprotective of his two young sons’ (Grant Rosenmeyer and Jonah Meyerson) safety. Tennis prodigy Richie (Luke Wilson) is recovering from a very public breakdown and soon has to admit to himself that he is madly in love with his adopted playwright sister, Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow), who is married to strange neurologist Raleigh St. Clair (Bill Murray) and having an affair with longtime family friend and Western novelist Eli Cash (cowriter Owen Wilson). Narrated by Alec Baldwin, The Royal Tenenbaums completed an impressive opening hat trick from Anderson, who had previously made Bottle Rocket (1996) and Rushmore (1998). The marvelously funny flick — which had its premiere at the 2001 New York Film Festival — is having a special tenth-anniversary screening October 13 at the forty-ninth annual New York Film Festival, followed by a discussion with the cast and crew, including Anderson and many of the stars. Additional tickets have just been released, but you better act fast if you want to see this unique event.
Returning to her small hometown of Hancock in Northern Michigan, documentarian Heather Courtney (Letters from the Other Side) wanted to make a film about the Upper Peninsula area and its residents, and she came up with quite a story. For several years, Courtney followed a group of young men who had enlisted in the National Guard because they either didn’t have enough money for college or didn’t know what else to do with their lives; she then traveled with them as they got called up and sent to fight the war in Afghanistan. Dominic Fredianelli, Cole Smith, and Matt “Bodi” Beaudoin never fully considered what they were getting into when they signed up; they clearly did not join up merely for patriotic reasons, so it doesn’t take long before they start questioning what America is doing over there. The three men, along with their families back home, allowed Courtney remarkable access, holding nothing back as they share their bittersweet emotions, their politics, their fears, and their overwhelming confusion. The men’s National Guard unit is assigned to an IED sweeper team that goes out in heavily protected vehicles, searching for and detonating hidden improvised explosive devices, but even carefully monitored explosions take their toll on the soldiers, not to mention the surprise bombs that nearly blow them to pieces. Courtney, who served as producer, director, cinematographer, and coeditor, does not add any voice-over narration or accumulate facts and statistics; instead, she lets the story tell itself, avoiding propaganda and grand statements. At first it is hard to have much sympathy for Dom, Cole, and Bodi, who should have thought a lot more about their decision to join the National Guard, but as they and their families get more deeply involved in the war, Where Soldiers Come From grows ever-more poignant and frightening.