THE VENERABLE W - Day 6 - BFI London Film Festival 2017

Barbet Schroeder’s THE VENERABLE W is a deeply painful and provocative documentary about a buddhist monk who has incited genocide against the muslim Rohingya ethnic minority in Burma.  It's shocking for two reasons. First, it's a savage indictment of a religion that we think of as basically lovely and harmless and, in its leader the Dalai Lama, charming and beatific. And yet here we have a member of that same religion spouting hate speech that is so similar to Hitler's depiction of the Jews as to be chilling.  It makes you wonder why the Dalai Lama has been conspicuously silent in condemning these actions, and how the hate speech that began to really gather strength well over a decade ago, has been allowed to culminate in the current refugee crisis. It also exposes the hypocrisy of a religion whose priests are meant to take a vow of poverty but who sport very expensive smartphones.  Maybe these are also donations from worshippers looking to improve their karma? The second reason why it's shocking is that a woman who has been raised to the level of modern day saint by the international community - Aung San Suu Kyi - does absolutely nothing to prevent the genocide.  Apologists may say she's constrained by her alliance with the military dictatorship that truly runs Burma, but her claim that the the Rohingya are burning their own homes is absurd.  

One can only be grateful that Barbet Schroeder - a long-time documentarian of evil - took the time and patience to expose this scandal.  And that he had the intelligence to approach the Venerable Wirathu and appeal to his vanity in order to get him to participate in the movie.  And there's the power of the film - we see Wirathu calmly and pompously espouse hate speech against muslims of a kind and savagery that would make Marine le Pen blush.  He is damned from his own lips.  The power of the film is to show the clear link between the speech and its consequences - footage of soldiers and Burmese civilians beating the shit out of muslims and burning mosques. It's a savage indictment of racial and religious prejudice and makes a great companion piece to AZMAISH - also showing in the festival - which chronicles the rise of anti-muslim violence in India.

I cannot imagine that there is a more timely, relevant or necessary film to watch at this year's festival and yet I was saddened to see that the screening was two thirds empty. Where were all those bloggers using their free passes that were watching BEAST an hour earlier?  It's also a savage indictment of modern film criticism and amateur journalism that they couldn't be arsed to both watch this film or put a spotlight on the issues it highlighted. Shame on them.

THE VENERABLE W has a running time of 107 minutes.  The film played Cannes, Melbourne, Locarno and London.  It opened in France earlier this year. 

Overlooked DVD of the month - PARIS JE T'AIME

PARIS JE T'AIME is a series of 18 five minute short films inspired by the different arrondisements of Paris. Each director had 2 days to film in their designated area. Sadly, the films don't really work as a coherent whole. It isn't the case that watching one film will give you a cunning insight to another. As such, I'll review them as individual shorts.

The movie opens with MONTMARTRE**, in which director-actor Bruno Podalydès skewers our post-card vision of Paris, and Montmartre in particular, as a city of love. A middle-aged man curses the traffic and his lack of success with women. It's an entirely forgettable segment.

Gurinder Chadha uses her segment, QUAIS DE SEINE*, to comment on European perceptons of Muslim women who wear the hijab. A young girl articulates her choice to wear the veil to a bemused young ethnic European boy. This segment isn't forgettable but for all the wrong reasons. It's a pretty trite exploration of an extremely complicated social issue. Maybe a more profound treatment isn't possible in a five-minute slot? But if that were the case, Chadha should have chosen another story.

In LE MARAIS****, we finally get a fascinating and memorable segment. Gus van Sant shows a young man (Gaspard Ulliel) telling another that he loves him, not realising that the object of his affections can't understand French well enough to understand him. It's an enchanting and tragic little mood piece, but I don't quite understand why we need to have a cameo of Marianne Faithful. It strikes me as redundant cinematic name-dropping.

TUILLERIES**** is another fantastic segment. The Coen Brothers mess with us by filming the entire skit in a metro station. A nervous American tourist (Buscemi) gets roundly beaten up for daring to make eye contact with a kissing couple. So much for the city of love!

Walter Salles sticks to his preoccupations with social divides in LOIN DU 16e**. Cataline Sandino Moreno leaves her own baby to work as a nanny after a perishing commute. Her employer dehumanises her. It's all worthy enough but just like's Chadha's segment, comes across as a bit obvious and trite.

Christopher Doyle's bizarre segment has a salesman (Barbet Schroeder) enter a surreal Chinatown salon in PORTE DE CHOISY*. I was bemused and unimpressed. It's a shame - because it somewhat detracts from Doyle's reputation as an outstanding cinematographer.

In BASTILLE**, Leonor Watling shows a wealthy man trapped in a loveless marriage, but rediscovering his love for his wife (Miranda Richardson) when she falls ill. Much like the first segment, I thought Watling gave us a rather dull story, told with no visual flair.

Nobuhiro Suwa gives us a segment that rather predictably uses Juliette Binoche as a grieving mother. In a Gondry-esque flight of fancy she deludes herself with visions of a cowboy (Willem Defoe) in PLACE DES VICTOIRES**. It's all a bit mawkish and forced.

Sylvain Chaumet shows life in Paris for two mimes in TOUR EIFFEL****. It's sweet and bizarre and rather strange.

Alfonso Cuarón puts together a tricksy single take conversation between Nick Nolte and Ludivigne Sagnier in PARC MONCEAU***. It's clever but hardly substantial or affecting.

Oliver Assayas has Maggie Gyllenhaal procure drugs in the QUARTIER DES ENFANTS ROUGES***. He makes a nice comment about the interaction between the heritage of the district and the current underground scene.

Oliver Schmitz shows a moment of violence and rekindled love at first sight in PLACE DES FETES*****. It's arguably the best segment in the movie. The acting is brilliant - the concept is original - it's tricksy but emotionally engaging all at the same time. Although it's five minutes long you feel you really know the characters and the lives they live. And best of all, you get the kind of social insight that Chadha and Salles were striving for without feeling lectured at.

Richard LaGravenese has Bob Hoskins and Fanny Ardant act out an argument for a prostitute in PIGALLE***. It's fun but not much more.

The same could be said of Vincenzo Natali's fantasy in LA MADELAINE***. Elijah Wood's hapless traveller chances upon Olga Kurylenko's sexy vampire.

Wes Craven's PERE-LACHAISE***, where Oscar Wilde helps Rufus Sewell win back Emily Mortimer, is also well-acted but insubstantial.

Like a middle-class version of PLACE DES FETES, Tom Tykwer condenses an entire relationship between a blind man and Natalie Portman's acting student into five minutes in FAUBOURG-ST DENIS****. The two leads act beautifully - the story has a great twist - and the use of music and the musicality of speech is outstanding.

In QUARTIER LATIN**, Ben Gazzara and Gena Rowlands have a last drink before separating in a bar run by Gérard Depardieu. Frédéric Auburtin directs. Yawn.

Perhaps most controversial and open to interpretation is Alexander Payne's segment 14e ARRONDISEMENT*/*****. He has a stereotypical American tourist (Margo Martindale) recite in demotic French her love for Paris. I can't make up my mind whether he's being very patronising about American tourists, or whether he's actually satirising European prejudices about Americans. This segment is either offensive or brilliant! You decide!

THE DARJEELING LIMITED should take its own advice

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It's highly unattractive."

I was non-plussed by THE DARJEELING LIMITED when I watched it at the London Film Festival. Because I had previously enjoyed many of Wes Anderson's films, I thought maybe my non-reaction was due to cinematic overload in the preceeding fortnight. So I decided to give the flick another shot after a suitably relaxing Thansgiving break had put me into a more receptive mood. Sadly, even after a second viewing, I have to report that Wes Anderson is, to my mind, a director offering diminishing returns.

His new movie, THE DARJEELING LIMITED, treads familiar ground. So much so that THE ONION spoofed his style brilliantly last month. The production design consists of interiors over-stuffed with meaningful objets and the characters wear tailor-made suits and carry bespoke luggage. We are in the ranks of the over-privileged and self-indulgent. The camera draws attention to itself by switching between static symmetric framing; sudden changes of focus; and the jarring use of slo-mo (usually to a vintage Kinks sound-track.) There is an absent father figure and a beloved but somehow distant mother. There are siblings who are struggling to deal with each other and their parents. There is a troubled boy, played by a Wilson brother, who attempts suicide.

In previous, better films, Wes Anderson used this set-up to create characters that were memorable and love-able. He brilliantly articulated the dynamics of family relationships but also provided light relief throught witty banter and improbable situations. His movies have always looked deliberately designed but pre LIFE AQUATIC, they also had heart.

THE DARJEELING LIMITED is, by contrast, a deeply boring, unengaging and alienating experience. Three self-obsessed, self-pitying brothers cross Rajasthan by train, feigning interest in spiritual enlightenment but skating on the surface of things. Anderson doesn't so much satirise the dumb, luxury-lined tourist as simply present him for our consideration. As a result, where we should have laughed at, and with, our protagonists, we find ourselves bored by their emotional ugliness. Surely, it must be possible to make a movie about superficial people on a dull journey that is not of itself superficial and dull?

As dull as this movie is, it might have been forgiveable were it not for one serious mis-step. This centres on Wes Anderson's use of a tragic event as a deus ex machina. His exploitation of an Indian tragedy to facilitate a change in the American protagonists is woefully exploitative, in that he never pays any attention to the impact of this event on the Indian characters. They are merely authentic background details. And this brings me to a wider inconsistency in the piece. For much of this movie, Anderson implicitly criticises superficial tourists who do not engage with the places they travel in and, specifically in the case of India, see it as a means to their own spiritual enlightenment rather than a worthy subject of study in itself. But, on the other hand, Anderson is guilty of exactly the things he is criticises. India is no more than a facilitator that is lightly skated over.

Finally, Anderson's sheer lack of humility is infuriating. Given how generally tedious, emotionally dry and morally vacuous this movie is - how completely unengaged with India - Anderson's musical nod to Satyajit Ray appears presumptuous in the extreme.

THE DARJEELING LIMITED played Venice and London 2007. It opened in Canada and the US earlier this year and is currently on release in the UK, Brazil, Denmark, Sweden, Australia and Norway. It opens in December in Denmark, Sweden, Australia and Norway and in January in Germany, Singapore, Italy, Spain, Russia and Iceland. It opens in Estonia, Turkey and the Netherlands in February and in Japan, Argentina and France in March. It opens in Finland in April 2008.

London Film Fest Day 7 - TERROR'S ADVOCATE/L'AVOCAT DE LA TERREUR

TERROR'S ADVOCATE is a deeply disturbing and important documentary by Barbet Schroeder. Nominally, it's about French lawyer and terrorist-sympathiser Jacques Verges. More widely, the movie documents the history of post-WW2 terrorism.

The movie skips quickly over Verges' early life. As a mixed-race child, he experienced racism at the hands of French colonists in Reunion, but still fought for the Free French in WW2. He was fighting for liberty, he claims. He was an anti-colonial activist as a student. The movie then spends 45 minutes on Verges' first infamous case. He defended the pretty young women who planted bombs in the French quarter of Algiers and became folk heroes to a people hungry for independence. Not only did Verges sympathise with his clients, he actually married Djamila Bouhired, having agitated for her death sentence to be commuted. Verges does not apologise for violence or death or for creating a disruptive form of legal defence that subverts court cases into publicity events. He feels that if a terrorist group has the backing of a people, it is legitimate. The establishment are the traitors. His companions of this period are similarly unrepetentant: Abderrahmane Benhamida gives up bombing for a while because he regrets mutilating people. He doesn't mind killing them, you understand. In this period, Verges comes across as naive and more sympathetic than those he defends. And it is sinister to see them still free, often in positions of power, years later.

In the 1970s, Verges disappears for a decade. Maybe he was with his friend Pol Pot in Cambodia? Maybe he was in the Middle East? Or maybe he was just pissed off at being the lesser half of a famous couple, living in Paris, eating and drinking? He keeps his secret in this documentary, but the twinkle in his eye suggests that he loves the air of mystery he has created.

Verges reappears in the 1980s in France, hardened, cynical and apparently a gun for hire. He finds himself defending even more unsavoury people and having close contacts with Carlos the Jackal, the Baader-Meinhof gang, Palestinian terrorists, Nazi war criminals......Verges claims that he is still defending anti-colonial fighters but it is clear that money is more of a consideration. Even more despicable, he takes payment from Francois Genoud, a notorious Swiss Nazi to defend Klaus Barbie, the Butcher of Lyon. Now let's be clear: there's nothing despicable in defending a murderer. This facilitates the rule of law. But to profess political symapthy as opposed to professional courtesy is to cross a line into a shady world of violence, terrorism, murder and crime.

What is more horrifying or more fascinating than a calm, harmless old man who has spent his life consorting with and advocating the use of murder as a political tool? Perhaps the laughing voice of Carlos the Jackal on a telephone bragging about how he took back another pretty terrorist, Magdalena Kopp, after Verges screwed her in Strasbourg? Or reformed ultra-left wing German terrorist HJ Klein in Algeria being congratulated, "Hitler was a great man". This documentary is full of such horrific scenes. The men responsible for Munich and other attrocities are shown to be living, breathing men and women who believe that they are logical and right. This testimony alone makes TERROR'S ADVOCATE an important and pertrifying film.

TERROR'S ADVOCATE played Cannes, Toronto and London 2007 and was released in France, Belgium and the Netherlands earlier this year.