Documentary looks at battle between prolife center and abortion clinic on a Florida street corner
12th & DELAWARE (Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady, 2010)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at Third St.
Tuesday, November 16, $16, 8:00
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com
www.hbo.com/documentaries
Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, who have teamed up for such documentaries as THE BOYS OF BARAKA (2005), the Oscar-nominated JESUS CAMP (2006), and one segment of FREAKONOMICS (2010), spent a year on the rather indistinct corner of 12th St. & Delaware Ave. in the small community of Fort Pierce, Florida, where an intense battle is waging. On one side of the street sits an abortion clinic, while on the other side is the prolife Pregnancy Care Center. Ewing and Grady are able to get the primarily young, poor pregnant women considering abortion to open up and share their stories as they face one of the most difficult decisions anybody will ever have to make. The women are met by a constant handful of protesters outside the abortion clinic, who try to get them to change their mind and go across the street. Several of the women go to the Pregnancy Care Center by accident, believing it to be the abortion clinic — which is precisely why the center set up shop there — where they are not told of their mistake and are offered money and clothing to not go through with the termination of their pregnancies. They become pawns in a religious and moral battle that Ewing and Grady show can be as infuriating as it is heartbreaking, although the filmmakers do an excellent job of remaining neutral, not casting judgment. Interestingly, while the workers at the prolife center have a lot to say on the issue, the people at the abortion clinic are far more cautious and reserved, with the owner-doctor never being seen on camera but only pulling up in his car (perhaps at least partly for safety reasons, as Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered during the time the film was being made). This special screening of 12th & DELAWARE, which will be followed by a Q&A with Ewing and Grady, is part of the fourteenth season of IFC’s Stranger than Fiction series, which continues November 23 with Maximilian Schell’s MARLENE (1984) and November 30 with John-Keith Wasson’s SURVIVING HITLER: A LOVE STORY (2010).
In Akira Kurosawa’s sort-of sequel to YOJIMBO based on Shūgorō Yamamoto’s short story “Peaceful Days,” Toshirō Mifune returns as Tsubaki Sanjuro, a rogue samurai who shows up in a small town looking for food and fast money and takes up with a rag-tag group of wimps who don’t trust him when he says he will help them against the powerful ruling gang. Also back is Tatsuya Nakadai, this time as his accomplice Hanbei. Funnier than most Kurosawa samurai epics, the film is unfortunately brought down a notch by a bizarre soundtrack that ranges from melodramatic claptrap to a jazzy big-city score. The film is being screened at BAMcinématek as part of the series Kurosawa’s Samurai, which concludes November 21 with the King Lear epic RAN.
Screening at Film Forum in a new 35mm print in honor of its thirtieth anniversary, Jean-Luc Godard’s EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF marked a return to a somewhat more accessible narrative for the Nouvelle Vague auteur, although that does not mean it is by any means a traditional story or that it follows mainstream conventions. Arranged in four sections — the Imaginary (Slow Motion), Fear (Run for Your Life), Commerce (Trade), and Music — the film focuses on a smarmy, unlikable cigar-smoking video director, unironically named Paul Godard (Jacques Dutronc), who fights with his ex-wife (Paule Muret), wonders why he can’t touch his eleven-year-old daughter (Cécile Tanner) in rather sensitive areas, has driven away his bicycle-riding girlfriend, Denise Rimbaud (Nathalie Baye), and pays for a visit from Isabelle (Isabelle Huppert), a prostitute who recites lines from Charles Bukowski in her head while plying her trade and seeking her independence. Godard frames many of the images like paintings, coming alive with bright, bold colors. Nearly all of the interior scenes are filmed in long takes with no camera movement or cross-cutting (with two notable exceptions), while other scenes are filled with slow-motion shots, forcing viewers to question what they are seeing. Meanwhile, snippets of Gabriel Yared’s score and incidental music are often heard by only some of the characters, who wonder where the sounds are coming from. Godard infuses the film with various thoughts on Marxism, feminism, capitalism, pedophilia, incest, and violence against women; in one unforgettable scene, a businessman arranges a ridiculously funny Rube Goldberg-like foursome, acting like a film director, mocking Jean-Luc Godard’s own profession. Thirty years down the road, EVERY MAN FOR HIMSELF, also known as SLOW MOTION and, in French, SAUVE QUI PEUT (LA VIE), feels as relevant, as challenging, and as entertaining as ever. (Note: Film critic and Godard biographer Richard Brody will introduce the 8:20 screening on November 19.)
