Documentary about Edward Burtynsky and his large-scale photographs is filled with unsettling beauty
MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES (Jennifer Baichwal, 2005)
Film Society of Lincoln Center
Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, Howard Gilman Theater
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Tuesday, November 12, 9:00
Series runs November 8-12
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.comg
www.zeitgeistfilms.com
Photographer Edward Burtynsky has been traveling the world with his large-format viewfinder camera, taking remarkable photographs of environmental landscapes undergoing industrial change. For Manufactured Landscapes, cinematographer Peter Mettler and director Jennifer Baichwal joined Burtynsky on his journey as he documented ships being broken down in Chittagong, Bangladesh; the controversial development of the Three Gorges Dam Project in China, which displaced more than a million people; the uniformity at a factory in Cankun that makes irons and the Deda Chicken Processing Plant in Dehui City; as well as various mines and quarries. Burtynsky’s photos, which were on view at the Brooklyn Museum in late 2005 and often can be seen in New York City galleries (two shows just closed last week), are filled with gorgeous colors and a horrible sadness at the lack of humanity they portray. As in the exhibit, the audience is not hit over the head with facts and figures and environmental rhetoric; instead, the pictures pretty much speak for themselves, although Burtynsky does give some limited narration. Baichwal lets the camera linger on its subject, as in the remarkable opening shot, a long, slow pan across a seemingly endless factory. She is also able to get inside the photographs, making them appear to be three-dimensional as Mettler slowly pulls away. Manufactured Landscapes is screening November 12 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Peter Mettler: Pictures of Light,” a midcareer retrospective of the innovative Canadian artist that also features eight shorts and full-length documentaries he directed, including Picture of Light, The End of Time, Plastikman, Petropolis, and Gambling, Gods, and LSD, with Mettler on hand to talk about his work at most shows. In addition, Mettler will participate in the free White Light Festival panel discussion “It’s a Matter of Time” on November 9 at 4:30 with Sylvia Boorstein, Daniel Casasanto, Georg Friedrich Haas, and Alan Lightman and a performance of Steve Reich’s “Clapping Music” by Alan Pierson and Chris Thompson, moderated by John Schaefer.
Woody Allen’s best film in years, Blue Jasmine is a modern-day Streetcar Named Desire filtered through the Bernie Madoff scandal. Cate Blanchett gives a marvelously nuanced and deeply textured performance as Jasmine French, an elegant socialite whose immensely wealthy husband, Hal (a wonderfully smarmy Alec Baldwin), amassed his fortune the new-fashioned way: by lying and cheating—only he was the rare financier who got caught and ended up in jail. Now broke and distraught, Jasmine moves in with her sister, Ginger (the delightful Sally Hawkins), a single mother with two kids living in a cramped apartment in San Francisco. Ginger and her ex-husband, Augie (an excellent Andrew Dice Clay), lost all their money by investing with Hal, and she is now trying to rebuild her life, working as a cashier and dating the gruff but dedicated Chili (a strong Bobby Cannavale). Not used to taking care of herself, Jasmine seems lost in a world that no longer treats her like a princess; she takes a job working for a dentist (Michael Stuhlbarg) and attends a computer class, but she is determined to regain her previous status. And that chance comes when she meets Dwight (a gentle Peter Sarsgaard), a man with grand plans who just might be the one to lead her back to the level to which she is accustomed.
Todd Haynes’s dramatization of the musical life of Bob Dylan is ambitious, innovative, and, ultimately, overblown and disappointing. Working with Dylan’s permission (though not artistic input), Haynes crafts a nonlinear tale in which six actors play different parts of Dylan’s psyche as the Great White Wonder develops from a humble folksinger to an internationally renowned and revered figure. Dylan is seen as an eleven-year-old black traveling hobo who goes by the name Woody Guthrie (Marcus Carl Franklin); Jack (Christian Bale), a Greenwich Village protest singer who later becomes a pastor; Robbie (Heath Ledger), an actor who has portrayed a Dylan entity and is having marital problems with his wife, Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg); Arthur Rimbaud (Ben Whishaw), a staunch defender of poetry and revolution; an old Billy the Kid (Richard Gere), who has settled down peacefully in the small town of Riddle; and Jude Quinn (Cate Blanchett), who is attacked by her audience when she goes electric. Each story line is shot in a different style; for example, Jude’s is influenced by Fellini and the Dylan documentary Eat This Document!, Robbie’s by Godard, and Billy’s by Peckinpah. Excerpts from Dylan’s own version of his songs are interwoven with interpretations by Tom Verlaine, Yo La Tengo, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Stephen Malkmus, the Hold Steady, Sonic Youth (who do a killer version of the unreleased Basement Tapes–era title track over the closing credits), and many more, with cameos by Kris Kristofferson (as the opening narrator), Richie Havens, Julianne Moore, Kim Gordon, Paul Van Dyck, Michelle Williams, and David Cross (looking ridiculous as Allen Ginsberg). The most successful section by far is Blanchett’s; she takes over the role with relish, and cinematographer Edward Lachman and production designer Judy Becker nail the feel of the mid-’60s energy surrounding Dylan. But the rest of the film is all over the place, a great concept that bit off more than it could chew. I’m Not There is screening November 8 at 7:00 as part of the Museum of the Moving Image’s “See It Big!” series, with Lachman present to talk about the making of the film.
“It was this tiny little movie in Pittsburgh that seemed to have no chance and it changed the world,” says Jason Zinoman at the beginning of Rob Kuhns’s extremely entertaining new documentary, Birth of the Living Dead. Zinoman, author of Shock Value: How a Few Eccentric Outsiders Gave Us Nightmares, Conquered Hollywood, and Invented Modern Horror, is one of several experts discussing the making, influence, and legacy of college dropout George A. Romero’s 1968 classic frightfest, Night of the Living Dead, which essentially invented the flesh-eating zombie. Throughout the documentary, the Bronx-born Romero, looking somewhat like a wide-eyed, white-haired Martin Scorsese, shares fascinating behind-the-scenes details about the creation of his masterpiece, describing how he raised what little funds he could, how most of the nonprofessional actors were members of the local community (steel workers, cops, meatpackers, ad executives, television hosts, etc.) who not only played ad-libbing humans or zombies but also supplied props, did the makeup, and donated equipment, and how no one really thought they’d ever actually finish and distribute the film, having previously specialized primarily in beer commercials and such authorized shorts as Mister Rogers Gets a Tonsillectomy — which Romero still considers his scariest work to date. Fans of Night of the Living Dead will glory in learning more about Harry and Helen Cooper (business partners Karl Hindman and Marilyn Eastman), newscaster Charles Craig, cemetery zombie Bill Hinzman, Sheriff McClelland (George Kosana), and others. While Romero says that the casting of Duane Jones as Ben was not based on race — and that not a word of the script was changed because Jones was black — a group of talking heads relates how it was a genius move not to make specific mention of race in the film, which was completed just before the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
A huge critical and financial success in its native China, Zhao Wei’s romantic epic, So Young, will open the fourth annual New York Chinese Film Festival on November 5 at Alice Tully Hall. Adapted by screenwriter Li Qiang (Peacock) from Xin Yiwuit’s novel To Our Youth That Is Fading Away, the film follows a group of young women who meet at college, fall in and out of love with various young men, then look back at what could have been ten years later. The central focus is on Zheng Wei (Yang Zishan), an impulsive civil engineering freshman who is incensed by how she is treated by fellow architecture student and loner Chen Xiaozheng (Mark Chao). But soon her very public hatred simmers down as she tries to convince the very private Chen to be her boyfriend. Meanwhile, her roommates, campus beauty Ruan Guan (Jiang Shuying), clean freak Li Weijuan (Zhang Yao), and the butch Zhu Xiaobei (Liu Yase), go through their own problems as they all grow close. Award-winning actress and singer Zhao (So Close, Shaolin Soccer) makes a solid directorial debut with So Young, which takes its name from the song by Suede, although the film is overly long at more than two hours and gets confusing as it jumps around in time. But as the girls mature, so does the film itself, exploring social class, education, love, loyalty, ambition, and the many trials and tribulations that accompany the journey from childhood to adulthood. Zhao will attend the red carpet opening and participate in a postscreening Q&A. The festival continues November 6-7 at the AMC Empire 25 on Forty-Second St. with Larry Yang’s Sorry, I Love You, Xue Xiaolu’s Finding Mr. Right, Joe Ma’s Love Undercover, Pang Ho-Cheung’s Love in the Buff, Wilson Yip’s IP Man, and Clarence Fok Yiu-leung’s Special ID; among those taking part in Q&As after the screenings are Yang, Wesley Wong, Miriam Yeung, and Donnie Yen.