EIFF Day 4

"Well the Brittania Yacht costs money but I hear there's a big shopping centre nearby."
"That sounds like fun…"

Today was Indie Soundtrack Day, with Papa M, Will Oldham, and Godspeed You, Black Emperor! all turning up.

Festival fatigue is now widespread: two people lost consciousness within a few seats of me during one film this evening.

Even at four days it looks like I'm spamming Beard. Ten? Ha.

Family Diary (retrospective)
(Valerio Zurlini / Italy / 1962 / 114 min)
"Often cited as Zurlini's masterpiece, and winner of the Gold Lion at the 1962 Venice Film Festival." — EIFF

A man (Marcello Mastroianni) remembers parts of his prematurely deceased younger brother's life in this elegy. Gorgeous cinematography, many scenes looking like paintings, it's an emotive film set across a background of Italian history in the making, ranging from WWI through to '62. I worry that I'm not good at appreciating a lot of "classics" (oftentimes this turns out to have been due to lack of context — seeing something once new but which has been much-aped since, it still looks old until you see its contemporaries), and to some extent that was the case here — felt more distanced from it than I'd like to have been, possibly in reflection of the (variable but often great) distance between family members in the film. Which is arguably a major part of its subject.

Lindsay Anderson Discussion
"I believe every few years I can make a film that changes the world. And if it doesn't, well, it isn't my fault." — Lindsay Anderson

Lindsay Anderson died a decade ago next week, so the festival's doing a ten-year celebration which I'm largely missing (only so much you can do &c.). Time constraints resulted in a forced early departure even from this, but I caught almost all of it. A panel of five friends and co-workers, including Graham Crowden, told affectionate anecdotes and tried to build a coherent picture of the man (with help from more friends and co-workers in the audience) and a couple of shorts were shown. Made me want to see more of his work.

Dead Man's Shoes
(Shane Meadows / UK / 2004 / 86 min)
"Fourth feature from one of Britain's best-loved filmmakers; a gritty tale of gangland retribution." — EIFF

Two brothers return to their childhood stomping grounds to exact revenge for some slowly revealed past wrong. Very good, very well acted and pretty violent. Not gonna go into details though. Good sense of place (Peak District) too, and the soundtrack was very good, including tracks by Papa M (or a perfect soundalike: I recognised tone/voice/sound, not the song) and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy — the director, in Q&A, said that the connection with Warp Records (this is a Warp Film) hugely eased the task of getting music rights.

Chain
(Jem Cohen / USA & Germany / 2004 / 99 min)
"Anti-globalisation film poem, produced by members of Fugazi. From the co-director of Benjamin Smoke." — EIFF

Well of course I'm biased on this subject, but it is extremely good — a fantastically compelling meditation on globalisation, in the form of a (fake) documentary on the lives of two women, one scavenging in and around a mall, the other a Japanese woman trying to do her employer's will (when she can discern it) living out of hotels in the U.S.A. while seeking partners for a business proposal. I'm a bit uneasy with the idea of using fake documentaries to make serious points — treacherous ground &c. — but think Cohen has pretty much succeeded here (although at fractionally excessive length — this is the film two of my near neighbours lost consciousness in, but to be fair I do think that their fatigue was rooted in other things). The stories feel very true — indeed for most of the film I was debating whether this was a documentary or not (portions of it do come from the actor's own lives). The corporate culture stuff was frequently scary too. Still, feeling true isn't the same as being true. Difficult one. Opening titles are accompanied by not-so-well-known-for-their-crass-commercialism GYBE, which is something of an achievement…

Overnight
(Mark Brian Smith, Tony Montana / USA / 2004 / 81 min)
"Rags-to-rags tale of a young filmmaker blowing his big break; a study of hubris that has to be seen to be believed." — EIFF

Documentary about first-time director and famous wannabe Troy Duffy making his self-penned The Boondock Saints (read the wildly inconsistent reviews and wonder) and the first album by "his" band, The Brood. Hubris isn't a strong enough word. The man believes he is The Christ reborn and refuses to acknowledge anybody's contribution to his meteoric rise, with the gratifying result that he has a meteoric fall too. The documentary is unfortunately not terribly coherent, and I found Duffy so unpleasant that it was often not a pleasure to watch. Preferred Comedian for its portrayal of a total prick destroying his future through arrogance while also giving us Jerry Seinfeld's much more positive story as a counter to that.