The Grandhotel Pupp - home to the stars.
One of the theatres.
Sure is bright outside of the theatre.
The Prostitutes - a band a saw at the Rotes Berlin Club one night.
One of the grand prominades constructed around a mineral spring.
The Aeroport Club - a club set up just for the festival week in a derilict building.I made it through another test of my stamina; it wasn't quite as gruelling as canoeing upriver for weeks, but 9 days of sitting on your ass does take a different sort of toll on the body. Fortunately there's easy access to spas for recouperation.
In all it's been great. I've really enjoyed my time here. Definately the best film fest I've been to. It seems to attract excellent people. But by the halfway point in the fest, my fortitude for films about harsh subjects was worn down to nothing. Wednesday was the day that broke my spirit: "Dead Hand Knocking" (child dies in motor scooter accident); "Karamozovi" (child dies after falling off bridge, then father shoots himself); and "Captive" (bond formed between opposing soldiers in Chechnya, but then Russian forced to suffocate Chechan prisoner to avoid being discovered by the enemy).
I think that the focus on tragedy I'm finding at this fest is not just that movies in general focus on it, nor just that I tend to gravitate towards tragidy in storytelling, but Eastern Europe in general - from which this fest draws a majority of its films - tends more towards the tragic in both storytelling and life. Many surveys on "subjective happiness" have found that Eastern Europeans are the least happy people on the planet, and they usually have the top suicide rates. Maybe it's a legacy of communism; but when I think about Russian literature that predates 1917, it seems similarly concerned with the dark side of the human spirit.
After that day, I decided to search out whatever light comedies I could find in the festival program. For the first time in my life, the words "romantic comedy" peaked my interest. I got off to a good start with "Tulpan", which is my favourite for the whole fest. It's set on the Kazakstani steppe - a perfectly flat moonscape of dust and scrub, where a few herders living in yurts make a bare-bones living. The protagonist returns from the navy and begins his search for a wife, for he needs a wife before the boss will give him a herd and allow him to fulfil his dream of creating a little rural paradise on the steppe, which in his eyes is the most beautiful place on earth. But, while there's thousands of sheep around, nubile women are few and far between. And the only one around has no interest in him, apparently because his ears stick out too much. It's a film of long, slow, wide shots, the camera left to roll while children scurry through the shot, playing games, livestock runs into the near distance, and dust devils spin across the plain. The director (who was in attendence) had the actors live together for a month in a yurt before beginning to shoot, so they come off authentically as a real family living in these conditions of no running water, no electricity - just a transitor radio that the son listens to, then recites the news to his father that evening as he straddles his back, picking blackheads off it. But the animals are the real stars of the film, in my opinion: donkeys comically mounting, a camel who chases her baby across the steppe, as it is strapped down in the motorcycle sidecar of the region's vet; a goat who licks the face of the protagonist after he bursts into her barn, thinking his love was in there. And thankfully the only death in it is a few stillborn lambs. It even has a fairly happy ending. A perfect film - everything a film should be. It certainly was no candy-coated version of reality, but it wasn't a total downer either. It just felt like real life, beautifully distilled.
The next film held great promise, based on its write up - playing frisbee on the beach in Goa, discussing philosophy - but took itself way too seriously. There was a ten-minute sequence, complete with "tragic" snyth music, of a woman crying, looking at photos of her dead husband, crying, splashing water on her face, crying - then finally writing her suicide note and heading off to Goa to walk into the ocean. Please. Who commits suicide like that? I should have walked out then, but stuck it out a bit longer, until a hippy on the beach drew a circle in the sand and started explaining how, if all the earth's history was in an hour, humanity would be the last millisecond - as if this was a huge revelation.
I'm glad I walked on that one because I was just in time to catch the last screening of "Be Kind, Rewind" - even though i didn't have a ticket. Though I love Michel Gondry's work, I'd missed this one when it played in N. America, so was glad to get in. It was a little more mainstream than his other films, but still very enjoyable. His characters are like innocent children. I've read that he directs with a very spontaneous, improvisational style, and it shows. This was just the antidote that i needed to the broodiness of many of the other films I've seen here.
This wasn't my first attempt to get into this film. I had gone to the Grand Hall - the premiere theatre here - at the appointed time, only to find no crowds waiting to get in. I waved my ticket at the guard, though, and he let me in. Pushed through the heavy doors; disoriented in the dark, i fumbled for an opening in the curtains. Finally I emerged near the front of the vast theatre, packed with people. I looked at the movie playing with confusion - judgingf from the faded colours, it seemed to be an older film. But maybe Gondry was just up to some of his tricks. No, this wasn't right: I fled the theatre. Back out in the light, I studied my ticket closely. Of course! I knew perfectly well that they use the 24 hour clock here. Why did I think that 11:30 meant 11:30pm? That would have been written as 23:30 here.
The next day's selection was a disappointment, unfortunately. They were all decent films - perhaps I've just reached that point of movie overload, where it takes a truly exceptional film for me to appreciate it. The film, "Mermaid", typified this day. It began well: the life story of a girl with supernatural powers. It was playful - sort of like "Amelie". But as the film went on (and it was on the long side, at 2 hours) is slowly deteriorated into a standard story of unrequited love, of the girl who tries to redeam the cynical older man. And then, just when things were moving towards a happy conclusion, the girl is run over and the guy chooses another woman. Maybe because it was a Russian film, it was as unable to finish happily as an American film is to finish unhappily.
Something else that this film did which really annoys me in movies: the build-up to an accident. I've seen many accidents - mostly involving cars - in these movies this week, and you can see almost all of them coming. Your fist tip off might be that, suddenly, the camera seems to suspiciously focuss a little too long on the simple act of driving. Why are we being shown all this driving, with no dialogue, you ask yourself. Because: something bad's about to happen. Then there's the cutting between the hero's car, and those unpleasant people in the red sports car, driving recklessly. Why do filmmakers feel it is necessary to warn viewers of an impending accident? Wouldn't it be better if on-screen accidents occured with the same unexpectedness as off-screen ones? Occasioanally I've seen a director confound this expectation - show all the lead-up to an accident, but then, at the last minute, it's avoided. But even this is just playing with the convention. I'd rather get rid of the convention all together.
I did see one good film that day, however - and it was the strangest film i've seen all festival. It's called "The Sunny Side of the Alps" and it's a Slovenian short film. It's a simple film with little dialogue, about a man who is jealous of his neighbour's new car, then takes his young son on a hike up to a nearby peak. The film ends with a song about the beauty of Slovenia, sung by a band in traditional dress in a bar, with a smiling, rocking back and forth crowd. So what's so wierd about that? All the characters are deepest Africa black. This is never explained - it's just taken to be normal. I loved it.
In non-film fest news, I've changed my return flight date to fast-approaching July 24. I alternate between thinking its too soon and too late - which i suppose means it's just about right. Based on a recommendation from Eva, I plan to do some couchsurfing in Slovenia for at least some of the remainder of my time here. And judging from that film, "The Sunny Side of the Alps", it is beautiful. And maybe they are all black there.
And I sold my canoe. 5000 Czech Crowns. I don't want to remind readers of how much I paid for it - it's in the archives somewhere. But I'm happy to get something for it, anyway. I said goodbye to Sarka yesterday, picked up by the courier, off to a town just outside Berlin. Sounds like she'll have a good home - father and son trips on the Vlatava. I have to meet him tomorrow in Prague to get the cash.
I went out again with Eva and her friends, this time to the Rotes Berlin Club, to see a band called the Prostitutes. There are apparently one of the most highly regarded bands in the Czech Republic. And I did really get into them. It's always nice to get a bit drunk and listen to ear-bleeding music once and a while. And a plus was that the lead singer was English, so I could understand most of the lyrics. Some memorable ones were, "Such a nice girl / Now she's dead!"
Another self-realization: My central dilema, or "why i love movies", is that I'm an introvert with a hunger for life. I don't know how to solve that one.
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