SILENT SOULS is an extraordinary adventure about ritual and tradition
SILENT SOULS (OVSYANKI) (Aleksei Fedorchenko, 2010)
Angelika Film Center
18 West Houston St. at Mercer St.
Opens Friday, September 16
212-995-2570
www.silentsoulsfilm.com
www.angelikafilmcenter.com
After his wife, Tanya (Yuliya Aug), suddenly dies, paper factory boss Miron Alekseevich (Yuri Tsurilo) recruits his best friend and employee, Aist Sergeev (Igor Sergeyev), to join him in a Finno-Ugric ritual farewell to the young woman. The two Merjan men prepare the body in the traditional way — which includes a thorough cleansing and the tying of colored threads to her pubic region — and then begin the multiday journey to Lake Nero. Aist, who lives a relatively solitary life, brings with him his pair of beloved buntings, the two men in the car and the two caged birds off on a road trip of a very different kind, with the deceased woman wrapped in a blanket in the back. Along the way, Miron “smokes,” telling Aist intimate details of his and Tanya’s sex life, which is also part of the Finno-Ugric funeral tradition. Siberian-born director Aleksei Fedorchenko’s third feature film, Silent Souls is a touching, elegiac poem about love, friendship, and the ancient rituals of a Russian culture that has not fully assimilated into the modern Slavic ways. Beautifully shot by Mikhail Krichman and with an evocative score by Andrei Karasyov, the film includes long scenes with minimal camera movement, placing the viewer in the car as the men drive down a dirt road or in a hotel room as Miron gives Tanya an erotic vodka bath in a poignant flashback. The two men never talk about work, about the state of the world, about what comes next in their lives. Instead, they quietly go about their business, keeping their traditions alive. Previously shown at the New York, Toronto, and Venice film festivals, Silent Souls is an extraordinary seventy-five-minute adventure into the heart and the soul.
The first half of Lorenz Knauer’s documentary about Jane Goodall, Jane’s Journey, offers fascinating insight into the life and career of the famed primatologist. Making sure she’s not mistaken for the late Dian Fossey, Goodall shares intimate details about her personal and professional lives, discussing her two marriages and her conflict with her son while also delving into her early days working with chimpanzees and archaeologist Louis Leakey in Gombe National Park in Tanzania. Wanting to study animals in Africa since she was a little girl, Goodall achieved her dreams in her early twenties, as she came upon major discoveries that changed the way the scientific world looked at both chimpanzees and humans. Goodall, now in her seventies, returns to Tanzania, sitting with the chimpanzees, showing how they welcomed her those many years ago and still do today. In 1986, Goodall made an abrupt shift in her career, giving up primatology in favor of traveling around the world in a desperate effort to save the planet; the documentary makes an abrupt shift as well, going from a charming study of this highly influential woman to a worshipful fundraising campaign for her many charitable efforts, which include Roots & Shoots and the Jane Goodall Institute. It is here that the film loses its edge; whereas before Knauer spoke with people who knew Goodall well, including her son, her sister, her biographer, and a longtime coworker, now he adds interviews with superstar celebrities (Pierce Brosnan and Angelina Jolie) and random fans lining up for autographs. It’s not that what Goodall has been doing for the last quarter-century isn’t as important as what she did previously; it’s just that it’s not very interesting as presented, playing more like an infomercial than a documentary. Goodall will be at the IFC Center for the 7:20 and 9:50 screenings on opening night, September 16; on September 27 at 8:00 ($18), the one-night-only event 
Nothing is off limits for South Park dudes Trey Parker and Matt Stone in this marionette musical actioner that mixes Top Gun, Mission: Impossible, and The Matrix with that old classic television puppet show Thunderbirds. Kim Jong Il is determined to unleash his weapons of mass destruction on an unsuspecting world, and it is up to Team America and its newest member, actor Gary Johnston, formerly of the hit musical Lease, to stop the North Korean leader’s heinous plan. But Team America is a reckless bunch that has a tendency to destroy major cities and landmarks (the Eiffel Tower, the Sphinx) as it attempts to take out terrorists. Meanwhile, love threatens to complicate the success of their mission. Parker and Stone skewer international politics, the military, celebrity, and the media in this very dirty, very funny flick; among their victims are Alec Baldwin, Susan Sarandon, Sean Penn, Peter Jennings, Hans Blix, George Clooney, and, mercilessly, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck. There’s lots of blood and gore, a very hot puppet sex scene, and the best description ever about the three kinds of people in the world. Although it often misses its target or goes way too far — it could have been a classic like South Park: Bigger Longer & Uncut — it’s still a good way to spend a Saturday night out at the movies. And on Saturday, September 17, it will be offering even more, as the 92YTribeca screens it as part of its “Sing-along” series, adding the words on-screen so you can curse along with the characters to your heart’s delight — and they’ll even include props, trivia, and a free beer to help get things going.
The opening-night selection of the 2011 Human Rights Watch Film Festival, Granito: How to Nail a Dictator is an illuminating, if at times overly self-referential, examination of the power of documentary filmmaking. In 1982, Pamela Yates and Newton Thomas Sigel made When the Mountains Tremble, which told the inside story of civilian massacres of the indigenous Maya people as government forces and guerrilla revolutionaries fought in the jungles of Guatemala; one of the film’s subjects, Rigoberta Menchú, became an international figure and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize. “When I made that film, I had no idea I was filming in the middle of a genocide,” Yates says at the beginning of Granito. A quarter-century after When the Mountains Tremble, Yates was contacted by lawyer Almudena Bernabeu, who asked Yates to comb through her reels and reels of footage to find evidence of the Guatemalan genocide and help bring charges again dictator Ríos Montt, whom Yates had met with back in 1982. In researching the case, Yates speaks with Menchú, forensic archivist Kate Doyle, journalist liaison Naomi Roht-Arriaza, forensic anthropologist Fredy Peccerelli, Spanish national court judge Santiago Pedraz, victims’ rights leader and genocide survivor Antonio Caba Caba, and Gustavo Meoño, a founding member of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor, each of whom sheds light on the proceedings from various different angles, from digging up bones in mass graves to discussing redacted documents that reveal U.S. involvement in Guatemala. Several of them are risking their lives by both continuing to fight the government and appearing on camera. Granito, which Yates directed with Peter Kinoy and Paco de Onís and was her sixth film to be shown at the Human Rights Watch festival, is a compelling look at how individuals can make a difference. The music is often overly melodramatic, and Yates does seem to like to show herself both in outtakes from her first film and in serious poses in the new film, but its ultimate point overrides those tendencies. Granito opens September 14 at the IFC Center, with the filmmakers present to talk about their work at the 7:40 showings Wednesday through Sunday as well as the 10:00 show Friday and Saturday night. 
Woody Allen’s Manhattan opens with one of the most beautiful tributes ever made to the Big Apple, a lovingly filmed black-and-white architectural tour set to the beautiful sounds of George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” Once again collaborating with screenwriter Marshall Brickman, master cinematographer Gordon Willis, and Oscar-winning actress Diane Keaton, Allen’s tale of a nebbishy forty-two-year-old two-time divorcee who takes up with a seventeen-year-old ingénue (Mariel Hemingway) is both hysterically funny and romantically poignant, filled with classic dialogue (Yale: “You think you’re God.” Isaac: “I gotta model myself after someone.”) and iconic shots of city landmarks. BAM will be holding four free screenings of Manhattan on September 11, paying tribute to the iconic landmark that perished ten years ago. As Isaac says at the beginning of the film, “He adored New York City, he idolized it all out of proportion — no, make that, he romanticized it all out of proportion.” On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, there will be a lot of romanticizing going on, solemn memories, and news reports that are likely to spin way out of proportion, so sitting down for a free screening of this New York City masterpiece is a great way to take the edge off and just laugh yourself silly.