Contemporary Filmmaking at its Best at the IFC
Reviewed by Cindi Di Marzo
For independent film fans, New York City is a great place to live. A visit to the small but stylish Paris Theatre in midtown provides a bit of culture between morning window shopping on Fifth Avenue and (we recommend) afternoon tea at the New York location of the famous Viennese Demel Café.1 Downtown, venue choices expand with the Angelika Film Center and Landmark Sunshine Cinema on Houston Street and Anthology Film Archives in the East Village. In Greenwich Village, the Independent Film Center (IFC), housed in the historic Waverly Theater, presents a low-key face to the world and might easily be missed by those walking up and down Sixth Avenue on their way to Fourteenth Street or Bleecker. But film buffs know it well; one look at the IFC marquee or printed calendar of events whets the appetite for gluttonous indulgence. It is no wonder that many of those “in the know” stop here, skipping the shopping (and, alas, the pastry) for a three- or four-course meal of superior filmmaking.
Opened in June 2005, the IFC underwent a four-year renovation to create five state-of-the-art cinemas with living room-style seating. Along with new independent and foreign films and documentaries, the IFC has a Weekend Classics series; a “Short Attention Span Cinema” consisting of short-film screenings prior to the start of featured films; and a gallery displaying vintage movie posters from around the world. Viennese pastry does not figure into the snack-bar mix, but there is organic popcorn with, yes, real butter.
On the spring 2010 calendar are three films as diverse as they come: an Academy Award-nominated animated feature inspired by a medieval illuminated manuscript (The Secret of Kells); a blistering exposé of greed and political intrigue in the art world (The Art of the Steal); and a revisionist fairy tale (Barbe Bleue/Bluebeard) starring the first recorded serial killer. While only one is truly appropriate for children–and it isn’t the fairy tale–most adults will be variously charmed, entertained, provoked and enlightened by all three.
The Secret of Kells, directed by Thomm Moore and Nora Twomey with a screenplay by Fabrice Ziolkowski
Compiled sometime between the sixth and ninth centuries, the illuminated manuscript that has come down through the ages as the Book of Kells (also known as the Book of Columba after the sixth-century, book-loving Irish saint who travelled to the Scottish island of Iona to spread the Christian faith) continues to intrigue scholars, artists and folklorists, as well as general audiences entranced by the intricate designs etched in harmonious hues that decorate each page. Even more astounding, the book survived hundreds of years of threats from natural disasters, fire, religious turmoil and foreign invasions.
This animated feature directed by Thomm Moore, a joint venture of production companies in Belgium, France and Ireland, makes real for children and adults the power of the book’s visual symbols and the lengths to which people–here 12-year-old Brendan and an aging master illuminator–have gone to protect it. Viking invasions during the eighth and ninth centuries caused monks on Iona to flee to Ireland. In Moore’s film, the Vikings who overrun the abbey in Ireland where Brendan lives with his uncompromising uncle, the abbot, and a group of monks colored in an ethnic rainbow, are shown as dark, looming shapes. The invaders and spirit figures from Ireland’s pagan past are mildly frightening, as they are whipped into a frenzy by Celtic music (pulsing bodhrán beats overlaid with haunting penny whistle).
Although Moore glosses over the history of the Book of Kells, it is likely that many viewers will want a greater understanding post closing credits. Such is the success of Moore’s visuals, a kaleidoscopic melange of mostly hand-drawn swirls, spirals and bold geometrics lushly colored to resemble a Celtic Garden of Eden, that his whimsical film will appeal to the widest range of ages.
The Art of the Steal, directed by Don Argot
The subject of Don Argot’s documentary is money and power, but the conclusion here defies the certainty that one equals the other in the eyes of the world. Centering on the multimillion-dollar art collection amassed by Albert C. Barnes, who rose from working-class background to Philadelphia physician, medical researcher and pharmaceutical company owner, Argot’s film promotes the view that Barnes’s will has been deliberately subverted by the city (Philadelphia) and institutions (e.g., the Philadelphia Museum of Art) from which he hoped to protect the works.
At the time that Barnes (1872-1951) purchased top-shelf pictures by the likes of Van Gogh, Renoir, Picasso and Cézanne, the American art establishment jeered at their work. Barnes reviled the museum system as a commercial enterprise prostituting great art works to draw large audiences that did not appreciate them. He built his own private gallery in the suburbs of Philadelphia, decorated to his idiosyncratic aesthetic code, and invited scholars and students rather than city museum-hoppers. The Barnes Foundation stipulated a by-invitation-only policy and seemingly prevented his collection from being sold or lent to other museums.
After his death, a devoted follower ran the foundation until her death in 1988. Dramatized in Argot’s film, what happened thereafter will elicit strong feelings, whether one believes that Barnes’s wishes should be respected or that the caliber of his collection demands public display. Between these extremes hovers a very real concern; ignoring Barnes’s wishes may have served money-and-power seekers, not Barnes or his collection.
Barbe Bleue/Bluebeard, adapted and directed by Catherine Breillat
Originally, French author and poet Charles Perrault (1628-1703) wrote his fairy tales for an elite adult audience resident at the court of Louis XIV. Born into an aristocratic family, Perrault aspired to the lofty artistic ideals of his times. He injected intelligence and wit into his romantic stories, inspired by the form and content of oral tales. Perrault’s literary fairy tales were immensely popular, all the rage at court. As with Grimm and Andersen, later Perrault was folded into the children’s cannon, despite the violence and dark themes percolating in his work.
French author/filmmaker Catherine Breillat (The Last Mistress; Fat Girl) remembers reading “Bluebeard” as a 5-year-old fan of fairy tales. The impact that this and other traditional stories had on her emerging feminist consciousness resounds through her beautiful rendering of Perrault’s shocker.2 Known for her controversial portrayals of women’s internal lives as they unfold within class-conscious misogynist societies, Breillat has been marginalized by censors and timid promoters. Reviewers have commented on the comparatively staid tenor of Breillat’s Bluebeard, yet the sense of calm pervading the film reflects Breillat’s reverence for fairy tales and their creators. Like them, she has mined story for the greed and cruelty inherent in quests for domination.3
Breillat organized her film as a story within a story, with two sets of sisters living centuries apart. In interviews, Breillat identifies herself with a defiant young girl, 1950s era, who sneers at her sister’s fears. Perrault’s cautionary tale reveals the price women pay for disobeying men. Breillat’s film reveals the price they pay for fearing them. Fairy tales appeal to children primarily, perhaps, because their finely tuned sense of justice refuses to accept the underdog’s defeat. From Jack the Giant Killer to Clever Gretchen, characters in folk and fairy tales win children’s hearts by using their wits to defeat brute strength. In the murky waters of adolescence, Breillat’s territory, women awaken to the rules of the game. In Bluebeard, the filmmaker once again tackles the hate men have for willful women to highlight the love women have for their murderers. It is a chilling view.
1 Located on the lower level of the Plaza Hotel on West 58th Street, the Demel Café serves world-class Viennese pastry from the Demel Bakery, founded in 1786 in Vienna.
2 For admirers of fractured fairy tales, Breillat work stands with celebrated stories and studies by authors Alison Lurie, Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Marina Warner, Terri Windling and scholar Maria Tatar. For a 2002 addition to Windling’s Fairy Tales series, Fitcher’s Brides, Gregory Frost wrote about a Bluebeard figure living in the 1830s in New York’s Finger Lakes district. An outstanding list of works incorporating the theme (e.g., a novella by Anatole France, poem by Ralph Waldo Emerson, short story by Shirley Jackson, operetta by Jacques Offenback and Maurice Maeterlinck’s play, Ariane et Barbe-bleu) can be accessed at: http://www.surlalunefairytales.com/bluebeard/themes.html
3 Prior to the official March 26, 2010 release date of Briellat’s Barbe Bleue/Bluebeard, Anthology Film Archives showed the film in its Bluebeard on Film series along with Ernst Lubitsch’s Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938), Edgar G. Ulmer’s Poverty Row production (1944); Charlie Chaplin’s Monsieur Verdoux (1947); Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door (1948); and Michael Powell’s Bluebeard’s Castle (1964).
　
　
