THE RAFT - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Preview

THE RAFT is a superb documentary about a bizarre social experiment run by an anthropologist Santiago Genoves in 1973.  Apparently inspired by a dramatic airpline hijacking, he wanted to prove that violence underlay all human relations. So he recruited 11 men and women from all over the world, and planned to sail them in a raft from Europe to Mexico. He decided that sexual rivalry, sexual shame, and race and gender rivalry underlay conflict. So he picked 11 attractive people of different races, as well as a priest, and made the women the crew.  They set sail and he was sure conflict would soon arise. The problem is that the crew didn't conform to his prejudices and so his manipulations continued while at sea. He tried to stoke arguments by reading aloud portions of their so-called confidential daily questionnaires. He tried to bully crew members to sleep with each other. And when a tropical storm hit, rather than by taking the captain's advice and going to harbour, he continued the experiment and removed her captaincy. 

This fascinating tale of proto-reality show manipulation is told along two planes. The first is a linear retelling from the journals of Genovese, who has since died, and so voiced by an actor. He is quite explicit about the outcome he desires and his ruthless need to create conflict. It's quite shocking coming from an academic - this sort of poor methodology. The story is also told in counterpoint by some of the original participants - reunited for this documentary on a recreation of the raft.  I love the differing perceptions and opinions of the group and the way in which they are still learning from each other - from the white woman who can only grudgingly admit to Genovese's racism because she didn't see it firsthand as the black woman did.  But I was sorry not to hear the voices of the male sailors - except from a curiously shy Japanese photographer. At any rate the collective sailors seem to have achieved far greater wisdom than their leader.  But I shall refrain from giving the punchline and spoiling the final act of this fascinating documentary.

THE RAFT has a running time of 97 minutes. It's playing at this year's BFI London Film Festival as part of the Documentary Competition. There are still tickets available for all three screenings. 

PUTIN'S WITNESSES - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Preview

PUTIN'S WITNESSES is a fascinating documentary that gives genuine insight into one of the most powerful men in the world today - Vladimir Putin. It's based on footage taken by Ukrainian journalist Vitaly Manskiy when he was the head of docs for Russian state TV in 1999 and 2000.  This was the crucial period in which the first President of the new post Soviet Russia - Boris Yeltsin - stage managed the rise to power of his anointed successor - a then unknown ex KGB agent.  Yeltsin carefully crafted a shock resignation on New Year's Eve 1999 and handed power to Acting President Putin - giving the latter a clear 6 months to campaign before the next presidential election - gaining credibility by being seen with world leaders such as Tony Blair - and the full power of the state media. 

What's amazing is just how much access Manskiy had by virtue of being a trusted journalist.  Often-times we see Putin address Manskiy informally but via the camera, and it's as if he's directly addressing us and explaining his view of politics and his aims for Russia. This young, already slick politician comes across as scarily charming, persuasive but also highly explicit about his aims for Russia.  This is shocking because at the time pretty much everyone in the West saw Putin as "our man" - a continuation of Yeltsin - pro democracy, pro capitalism, pro trade - a person we could do business with. I can''t tell you how many investment bank research reports I read to this effect. And yet here we have Putin very clearly stating that his goal is to make Russia a strong power once again - a feared power - and that the national interest - the state's interest will always trump individualism.  And this is exactly what he has proceeded to do - erode individual freedoms and pursue a policy of restoring the sphere of influence over the old USSR. 

OPERATION FINALE

Chris Weitz - director of THE GOLDEN COMPASS and scriptwriter on ROGUE ONE - returns to our screens with this retelling of how a small team of Israeli secret agents abducted top ranking Nazi Adolf Eichmann from Argentina and smuggled him out on an El Al flight to stand trial for his crimes in Israel.  As Israel Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion (a cameo from Simon Russell Beale) explains to his agents, and so to the less historically literate audience - getting Eichmann to Israel is they key because it would be the the first time a Nazi would be put on trial by his victims, rather than by World War Two's victors. But should the mission fail, it would have been humiliating for the nascent state of Israel, and open it to justified accusations of having disrespected the sovereignty of Argentina.

And so we get a movie that is book-ended by a true-life thriller that is superbly executed.  Oscar Isaac plays the lead Mossad agent Peter Malkin and the only significant change to historical make-up of the team is including a female agent and love interest for Peter in Melanie Laurent's doctor - crucial in keeping the captor sedated.  We see the team take the intell from a Jew living in Argentina - his daughter is dating Adolf's son - and travel there to try and get a photo and a positive ID. These scenes are both the most tense and the most chilling - showing an active underground of Nazis in hiding and the rabid ideology of the next generation.  We then move to the abduction and Adolf's apparently rather quick admission of his real identity. 

UTOYA - JULY 22 - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Preview

We're soon to be greeted with not one but two films about the white supremacist terrorist attacks on Oslo on July 22nd 2011.  The more high profile film is called 22 JULY. Directed by Paul Greengrass it will be released on Netflix on October 10th, and covers more than just the attacks. He gives context and aftermath - the political climate in Norway and the trial of the perpetrator.  I look forward to watching it very much.

By contrast, Erik Poppe's U-JULY 22 or UTOYA - JULY 22 focuses on the immediate events on Utoya island.  In that respect it more closely resembles Gus Van Sant's ELEPHANT. We open with a car bomb exploding outside government buildings in Oslo and then move immediately to Utoya. We see young teenagers camping on an island - grubby in a damp in a way that feels so familiar from school trips. A girl - our protagonist Kaia turns to the screen and apparently breaks the fourth wall -challenging us that we won't understand. Then we realise she's speaking to someone on the phone. But it's a provocative challenge.  We then move into the first act of the film - kids hanging around and discussing the news of the car bomb. A muslim kid nervously tells them Al Qaeda will get the blame as always.  Some other kids decide not to let it stop their fun.  There's the usual banal chit chat.  And then, about 20 minutes into the film, the second terrorist attack begins and unfolds seemingly in real time. The kids run and hide in a building as they hear gun shots. Is it a drill? How many gunmen are there? Why can't they get through to the cops on the phone? Kaia makes it out of the building trying to find her kid sister, but instead finds a traumatised little brother of someone else, and holds another teenager as she dies.  All three scenes - the traumatised boy, the desperate call to her mum saying she can't find her sister, and the death scene - are desperately moving and brilliantly acted. I can't speak enough for the talent and raw emotion of Andrea Berntzen here.  The outside world comes into the picture - are the helicopters police ready to help or the media?  Can you swim to safety or risk being shot in open water?

UNDER THE WIRE

Documentary Chris Martin (THE WAR ON DEMOCRACY) returns with a powerful and deeply moving documentary about the death of Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin in the Syrian civil war in 2012. The story of her death in a bombing raid is told principally by her photographer Paul Conroy.  What emerges is the tale of a remarkable woman and journalist, no stranger to extreme risk, having already lost an eye in Sri Lanka.  She comes across as a strong woman, perhaps difficult because uncompromising, who had a clear mission to report about the innocent victims of war. One of the stories told about her is how she saved civilians from being killed by refusing to leave them, and leveraging her journalistic credentials and protections.  And it was just such a story that led Marie and Paul to Homs - a city where the civilians were being relentlessly bombed by Assad's government. They get holed up in a building in a city ringed with troops and seemingly on fire and Marie and another journalist are killed.

I wasn't surprised to be moved by her story but what perhaps did surprise me was how charismatic and moving Conroy's testimony would be, and how darkly thrilling his tale of escape would be. How he and his colleagues managed to get out of the house and into a car and just drive like hell through the oncoming fire.  It's thrilling and horrifying all at once. 

Overall, the documentary struck me as being well produced, tightly constructed and deeply moving and provocative. It left me with a profound respect for war journalists and new insight into the Syrian civil war. It's a tough watch - but rightly so - and a film we must watch regardless.

UNDER THE WIRE is currently on release in the UK and is available on streaming services. The movie is rated R and has a running time of 95 minutes.

THE DAY I LOST MY SHADOW - BFI London Film Festival 2018 - Preview

Documentarian and journalist Soudade Kaadan turns her hand to a fictionalised recreation of life in Syria in the early years of the civil war.  She focuses on a young, apparently single mother who desperately needs to find a gas canister so she can cook for her eight year old son.  This search takes her outside of Damascus with a pair of siblings and into a place where both government and rebel soldiers threaten their lives. 

The film works best when we see mother and son together at the start. They seem to have a genuine connection and there's a charismatic energy to their interactions. Doing the laundry before the electricity cuts out becomes both a joyful and frustrating game. And it's notable that - without spoiling the plot - the film only truly comes alive when the two interact - and this is sadly not the case for large parts of the film.

The intervening scenes see the mother take up with a brother and sister whose characters are lightly sketched and seem somehow less real than mother and son. The interactions with the soldiers are indeed scary but I keep thinking of recent documentaries about Syria - particularly UNDER THE WIRE - and how much more visceral they felt. I have read interviews where the director says she refused to depict the more recent events of the Syrian war because she had already left. I understand that reticence. The problem is that for the audience, we have seen those more contemporary reports on the news, and so the situation in THE DAY I LOST MY SHADOW - no matter how awful - seems tame by comparison.  I also found the use of magic realism - in the shadows of the title - poorly executed and somehow trivialising of the trauma being depicted. The concept just didn't work for me, and this was a fatal blow.

THE DAY I LOST MY SHADOW has a running time of 94 minutes. it played Venice 2018 where it won the Luigi de Laurentiis award and is nominated for the Sutherland Award for First Feature at this year's BFI London Film Festival. It also played Toronto and Busan. There are still tickets available for all three screenings.