Matti Pellonpää and Kati Outinen star as two lonely souls in Aki Kaurismäki’s SHADOWS IN PARADISE
SHADOWS IN PARADISE (VARJOJA PARATIISISSA) (Aki Kaurismäki, 1986)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at West Third St.
October 7-10, $13, 11:00 am
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
In celebration of writer-director Aki Kaurismäki’s first feature film in five years, Le Havre, which just played the New York Film Festival and opens at the IFC Center on October 21, IFC is screening several of the Finnish auteur’s earlier works as part of its Weekend Classics series. On October 7-10 at 11:00 am, the first film in Kaurismäki’s Proletariat Trilogy, Shadows in Paradise, will be shown, a marvelous example of Kaurismäki’s trademark deadpan humor set amid a bleak world filled with lonely characters. Matti Pellonpää, a regular in the films of both Aki and his brother, Mika Kaurismäki, stars as Nikander, a garbage man who is offered a job as a foreman in a new company being started by a coworker (Esko Nikkari). But when the coworker suddenly drops dead of a heart attack, Nikander drinks himself into the drunk tank, where he meets Melartin (Sakari Kuosmanen), an unemployed married man with a child. Melartin takes the dead man’s place in Nikander’s original garbage truck. Meanwhile, Nikander is interested in going out with Ilona (Kati Outinen, in her first of many Kaurismäki films), a shy supermarket cashier who has just been fired and evicted and so has decided to steal her boss’s cash box. Nikander and Ilona are a terrible couple; he is far more interested in her than she is in him, and he lets her use and abuse him, all taking place in short, slow scenes with little dialogue and movement. Every time she leaves, she comes back, much to his chagrin, or delight — it’s often hard to tell, as neither character displays much emotion or reveals anything of their inner selves. It’s all wildly funny, the dark humor offset by the bright blues and oranges of Tuula Hilkamo’s costumes and Pertti Hilkamo and Heikki Ukkonen’s art direction. In many ways it’s reminiscent of Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise (1984), just in color; interestingly, Pellonpää went on to play a major role in the Helsinki section of Jarmusch’s Night on Earth (1991). Bleak but beautiful, Shadows in Paradise is a charming romantic black comedy about two lonely souls who are neither charming nor romantic. The Weekend Classics series continues at the IFC Center with the last two parts of the Proletariat Trilogy, Ariel (1988) on October 14-16 and The Match Factory Girl (1990) on October 28-30
When they were junior high school students in South Central Los Angeles in 1979, Angelo Moore and Norwood Fisher formed the core of Fishbone, what would soon become one of the most exciting live bands on the planet. Chris Metzler and Lev Anderson document the band’s rise and fall — and rise and fall, and rise and fall, etc. — in the stirring Everyday Sunshine: The Story of Fishbone. Using archival footage, old and new interviews, and playful animation, Metzler and Anderson follow the group — Moore and Fisher along with fellow founding members Chris Dowd, Walter “Dirty Walt” Kibby II, and Kendall Jones — through its many personal and financial struggles as it tries to deal with such socioeconomic issues as racism, violence, and the anti-liberal bias taking hold of the nation in Ronald Reagan’s 1980s. Fishbone held nothing back on such albums as In Your Face (1986), Truth and Soul (1988), The Reality of My Surroundings (1991), Give a Monkey a Brain and He’ll Swear He’s the Center of the Universe (1993), and Chim Chim’s Badass Revenge (1996), mixing in pop, punk, funk, ska, reggae, R&B, soul, jazz, and hardcore, prancing about the stage without shirts, diving into the crowd, and always speaking their mind, and they hold nothing back in Everyday Sunshine as well. Narrated by Laurence Fishburne, the film really picks up speed when it delves into the Rodney King beating and the mysterious circumstances involving Jones’s religious transformation and the band’s attempt at an intervention. The decidedly unusual tale also features an impressive lineup of talking heads offering their views on the history of Fishbone, including Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Perry Farrell from Jane’s Addiction, fIREHOSE’s Mike Watt, No Doubt’s Gwen Stefani and Tony Kanal, the Roots’ ?uestlove, Gogol Bordello’s Eugene Hutz, Parliament-Funkadelic’s George Clinton, Primus’s Les Clayool, Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, Circle Jerk Keith Morris, Ice-T, and, perhaps most informatively, Columbia Records executive David Kahne, who lends fascinating insight into what made Fishbone great — and what kept them from greater success. While you definitely don’t have to know a thing about Fishbone to enjoy this very intimate documentary, longtime fans should eat it up. Everyday Sunshine has its New York theatrical premiere October 7-13 at the reRun Gastropub Theater in Brooklyn in conjunction with the release of Fishbone’s latest release, the seven-track EP Crazy Glue (DC-Jam, October 11, 2011). Metzler, Anderson, Moore, and Fisher will appear in person at many of this weekend’s screenings, at least one of which will also include a live performance.
“It’s the best job in the world, no comparison,” Jonathan Dearman says in American Teacher, Vanessa Roth’s eye-opening documentary about the sorry treatment of teachers in the United States today. Based on the book Teachers Have It Easy: The Big Sacrifices and Small Salaries of America’s Teachers (New Press, 2005) by Dave Eggers, Daniel Moulthrop, and Nínive Clements Calegari, the eighty-one-minute film looks at the surprising lack of status, salary, respect, and training afforded what is considered in other countries the most important profession by examining the cases of four current or former American teachers, dedicated men and women who are born educators but who have been deeply affected by a seriously flawed system. Texas history professor and sports coach Erik Benner sees his marriage fall apart as he works two jobs to help support his wife and two daughters. Brooklynite Jamie Fidler is following in her father’s footsteps as a teacher, but her pregnancy complicates her future in part by revealing the relatively poor health benefits. Maplewood’s Rhena Jasey is a Harvard grad with two masters degrees from Columbia who is considering leaving the kids she loves so much for a Washington Heights charter school that pays a far more substantial salary. And Dearman, a beloved San Francisco educator, turns to the family real estate business when teaching just can’t pay the bills. Part of the nonprofit Teacher Salary Project, American Teacher is at its best when it shows the teachers in the classroom and talking about what they love about their job, but when it focuses on the many negatives, it feels too much like a telethon, as if a crawl should be running across the bottom of the screen soliciting donations. The film includes numerous statistics involving turnover rates, the declining number of men in the industry, and, of course, various financial figures, dryly narrated by Matt Damon. In addition to following around the four protagonists, Roth speaks with students and their parents, superintendents, principals, professors, and other industry professionals who want to see the system changed. Interestingly, one word that never comes up is “union,” which is often at the center of any discussion about the state of education in America. Although it can pull too much at the heartstrings while stating the obvious, American Teacher is an important documentary that makes a strong case for the United States to fix this growing problem, and fast.
