Made it to "Avalon," last night, at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's sf film fest.
It is interesting to get a look at a recent sf film made outside the U.S. (Japanese-produced, shot in Poland).
However, it was not a very successful movie--the philosophical implications of the story were not well explored (woman living dingy life only thrives when she's playing a Warrior in an immersive VR game...but has she even left the game...and is there an ultimate top level for the best players...etc.), and apparently the director, Mamoru "Ghost In the Shell" Oshii, told the lead actress to play her part free of pesky little acting cliches like conveying emotional depth.
Still, the look was beautiful--Warsaw, in creamy sepia tones--and made the whole thing worth seeing.
Two days ago, the festival screened the full 4 hour, 40 minute cut of Wim Wenders' "Until the End of the World." UtEotW made a huge impression on me when I first saw it around 1993, with its' subtle futurism, environmentalist content, great score, and multi-continental cinematography. This director's cut rarely screens in the U.S.
Did it add a lot to see it? Yes, and no. The relationships between the characters become much clearer, there's more music, and the plot hangs together more coherently. The extra time also gives Wenders the opportunity to drive ideas home with a sledgehammer where they had once been more gently implied or inferred.
Probably the best part of this extended version comes in part three, where something that happened very abruptly in the original U.S. version is developed much more:
The film's characters, some of them pursuing opposing goals during the entire film, are now stuck together in an isolated Australian Aboriginal cultural center, waiting to find out if the world beyond has survived the atmospheric destruction of a nuclear satellite. No electronics have survived the electro-magnetic pulse of the explosion; there are no radios, tvs, video screens, phones.
A set of drums turns up. Then an old piano. One guy (the private detective, of course!) has a harmonica. One man starts teaching another to make and play a digeridoo.
A couple men begin to play instruments together to entertain themselves; then another joins, and another, practicing amongst the rocks in front of giggling children. It culminates on New Year's Eve 1999 in a glorious jam session, led by the singing of Claire, the woman around whom they've all been vying for love, money, information or recognition. Everyone has shaken off their animosities, the haze of passively consuming entertainment in isolated spaces, to make music together in the middle of one of the amazing landscape.
Posted by Emily at January 6, 2004 03:19 PM