Hanoi Cinematheque

From the Cinematheque members email:
While we prepare for our comprehensive Iranian Retrospective (opening May 26) we are presenting three outstanding recent Russian films, followed by two nights in Victorian London with Sweeney Todd.

Hanoi Cinematheque
16-25 May

3 outstanding Russian films, and Sweeney Todd

Please note that due to requests by several of our many French members, we will show SWEENEY TODD with French subtitles.

Here is Hanoi Cinematheque schedule for the next ten days. For reservations, please e-mail or phone 936 2648 from 14:00 -19:00 daily (except the days when Cinematheque is closed, as noted below).

MAY

16 Friday
19:00 THE THIEF
21:00 RUSSIAN ARK

17 Saturday
19:00 THE RETURN
21:00 RUSSIAN ARK

18 Sunday
Closed

19 Monday
Closed

20 Tuesday
19:00 SWEENEY TODD

21 Wednesday
19:00 SWEENEY TODD

22 Thursday
Reserved for private function

23 Friday
Reserved for private function

24 Saturday
Reserved for private function

25 Sunday
Reserved for private function

FILM NOTES

THE THIEF

1997 Directed by Pavel Chukhraj 94 minutes
Russian with English subtitles and Vietnamese audio option

ACADEMY AWARD NOMINATION, Best Foreign Language Film, 1997
GOLDEN LION AWARD, Venice Film Festival, 1997

THE THIEF is a haunting tale of passion, betrayal and innocence lost, as seen through the eyes of an impressionable young boy.
Fatherless and homeless, six-year-old Sanya and his mother Katya endure a harsh existence in post-World War II Russia. When a handsome, charismatic soldier enters their lives, mother and son fall under his spell, with disastrous consequences.

?A superb film in the classic style of screen storytelling. It reminds us how rarely we get to have so heartfelt an experience at the movies nowadays.?
— Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times
?Amazing! Deeply compelling and brilliantly directed.?
— Scene Magazine

?THE RETURN
2003 Directed by Andrey Zvyagintsev 105 minutes
Russian with English subtitles and Vietnamese audio option

GOLDEN LION AWARD, Best Film & Best First Film, Venice Film Festival, 2003

Review in The Guardian (London) by Peter Bradshaw, June 25, 2004:

?THE RETURN looks and feels like a classic, not just a Russian classic, but an English schoolroom classic like something by R.L. Stevenson or William Golding or John Le Carr�.

Andrey Zvyagintsev’s superb debut film about an errant father and his two sons was the resounding Golden Lion winner at last year’s Venice film festival, an award made piquant by the fact that its 16-year-old star Vladimir Garin was drowned shortly after filming in a terrible accident that mirrored the movie itself.

Already THE RETURN seems canonical, as if it has been there all along: an old-fashioned, satisfying piece of storytelling which looks languorously beautiful, while at the same time fastening itself to your attention like the bite of a snake.

The terrors of childhood are the movie’s opening theme, as two boys, Andrey (Garin) and his quieter and more timid younger brother Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov) are hanging out with a crowd of others in swimming trunks or underpants, daring each other to jump from the top of a tall tower into a lake. Andrey manages it, like all his buddies, and tauntingly shouts at Ivan to jump or be a “chicken”; but Ivan freezes with vertigo and has to be rescued by his mother.

This mortifying failure to prove himself a man is an augury of the film’s heart stopping climax, when Ivan has an elemental showdown with the figure long missing from his life: his father.

Ivan and Andrey have lived without him for 12 years, being brought up by their mother (Natalia Vdovina) and grandmother (Galina Petrova). But one day, holleringly running home after a fight, they are sternly told by their mother to hush because their father is upstairs sleeping. And that’s it. She does not offer them, or us, any explanation as to why he has been away for so long, and it becomes very clear that no such explanation has been offered to her. Fascinated, the two boys peep round the door to see their recumbent, mythical dad and his image appears foreshortened, like a painting of Christ. That image is intensely Russian, like everything else in the movie, and it too is to echo the film’s final moments.

But it is the first and last time the father - played by Konstantin Lavronenko - is to look so peaceful or so vulnerable. He quickly establishes himself as a taciturn disciplinarian, exerting his authority as head of his long-deserted family without a syllable of apology or regret. All we know about him is that he has been in the military, and probably has contact with gangster types, because he has more money in his wallet than they have ever seen.

The meat of the story comes with the father’s announcement that he is taking the boys away with him on a fishing trip. It will make men of them, is the apparent subtext, after all the female mollycoddling, and he is to drive them up to the northern lakes. Here they find a mysterious island where their father has a metal strongbox buried in a ruined outhouse. The audience shares the boys’ sinking, scared feeling that they are just a convenient and expendable cover for the father’s criminal activities.

The breathtaking beauty of this landscape, utterly untenanted by human life apart from themselves, is at odds with its menace, which has been injected solely by the father. The man who is supposed to be protecting them is somehow their fiercest and most implacable enemy. His tests of their manhood seem like insidious acts of aggression.

THE RETURN unfolds like a mysterious and disquieting parable with no moral, acted out on a beautiful but chilling canvas of pale watercolours. It is a mystical film, and in its forthright way a religious film, evoking Christ and the legend of Abraham and Isaac - but with something twisted and thwarted at its centre. The movie is suffused with the idea of a creator’s power without a creator’s love. Zvyagintsev has burst on to the world cinema scene as a vivid new talent.?

RUSSIAN ARK
2002 Directed by Aleksandr Sokurov 96 minutes
Russian with English subtitles. No Vietnamese translation

In the history of cinema, it is the Russians who are generally credited with elevating film editing to a modern art form. It is ironic, and strangely fitting, therefore, that it should be the Russians who, almost a full century later, have now produced the first full-length feature film ever to be composed of a single unedited shot running uninterrupted from first moment to last (Hitchcock came close with ROPE, but he did include a few `cuts’ in the course of the film). Even Sergei Eisenstein, who, in films like POTEMKIN and TEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD spent his career developing and demonstrating the power of editing, would, I dare say, be impressed by RUSSIAN ARK, a film every bit as innovative and challenging as those earlier seminal works.

For their bravura, awe-inspiring cinematic tour-de-force, director Alexander Sokurov and cinematographer Tilman Buttner take us into the famed Hermitage Museum and Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, providing us with a grand tour not only of the opulent rooms and famous artwork contained therein, but of 300 years of Russian history as well, as various vignettes involving famous people (from Peter and Catherine the Great to Nicholas and Alexandra) and events are played out within the glorious gilded walls.

RUSSIAN ARK is a bold and audacious project that is the cinematic equivalent of a breathlessly performed high wire juggling act. It’s truly amazing to see just how beautifully planned and flawlessly executed the final product turns out to be, especially the ball sequence at the end which features hundreds of dancers and spectators who are set in beautifully choreographed and constantly whirling motion. What’s most remarkable is how much of a participant the camera itself is in the proceedings. Not content to stand idly by and observe the scene like some passive onlooker, the camera moves right into the center of the action, gliding in and out of the crowds with utmost grace and precision. Visually, the film is stunning, with exquisite costumes and furnishings as far as the eye can see. Indeed, RUSSIAN ARK is, among other things, a veritable feast for the eyes, the likes of which we have rarely seen on film before.

Sokurov breaks boundaries with his dreamlike vision of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg. It’s the first feature-length narrative film shot in a single take (on digital video, using a specially designed disc instead of tape). RUSSIAN ARK is shot from the point-of-view of an unseen narrator, as he explores the museum and travels through Russian history. The audience sees through his eyes as he witnesses Peter the Great (Maksim Sergeyev) abusing one of his generals; Catherine the Great (Maria Kuznetsova) desperately searching for a bathroom; and, in the grand finale, the sumptuous Great Royal Ball of 1913. The narrator is eventually joined by a sarcastic and eccentric 19th century French Marquis (Sergey Dreiden), who travels with him throughout the huge grounds, encountering various historical figures and viewing the legendary artworks on display. While the narrator only interacts with the Marquis (he seems to be invisible to all the other inhabitants), the Marquis occasionally !
interacts with visitors and former residents of the museum.

The film was obviously shot in one day, but the cast and crew rehearsed for months to time their movements precisely with the flow of the camera while capturing the complex narrative, with elaborate costumes from different periods, and several trips out to the exterior of the museum. Tillman Buttner, the director of photography, was responsible for capturing it all in one single Steadicam shot. RUSSIAN ARK is an amazing accomplishment, and clearly made with passion, but while the film is sure to be hailed as a masterpiece by some, its narrative conceit isn’t nearly as interesting as the technical feat of its creation. The result is a unique and intelligent film with sporadic moments of transcendent beauty that fails to create a strong emotional connection with its audience. It’s essentially a 96-minute museum tour, with the added benefit of time travel and wax figures that briefly come to life.

RUSSIAN ARK has the odd distinction of seeming both slow paced and rushed. It moves slowly and mournfully, but still only glances across the surface of the eras it portrays. It’s a demanding film, encompassing a wealth of Russian history and art history between its first and final frames. Those who stay with it will be rewarded in the end by a gorgeously mounted ball, in which the camera gracefully slides among elaborately costumed dancers as the orchestra plays. It’s a deeply felt irony that this transcendent moment of joy takes place on the eve of the Russian revolution, and the world of these briefly glimpsed characters is about to come crashing to an end.

Review by Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun Times:

?Every review of RUSSIAN ARK begins by discussing its method. The movie consists of one unbroken shot lasting the entire length of the film, as a camera glides through the Hermitage, the repository of Russian art and history in St. Petersburg. The cinematographer Tillman Buttner, using a Steadicam and high-def digital technology, joined with some 2,000 actors in an tight-wire act in which every mark and cue had to be hit without fail; there were two broken takes before the third time was the charm.

The subject of the film, which is written, directed and (in a sense) hosted by Alexander Sokurov, is no less than three centuries of Russian history. The camera doesn’t merely take us on a guided tour of the art on the walls and in the corridors, but witnesses many visitors who came to the Hermitage over the years. Apart from anything else, this is one of the best-sustained ideas I have ever seen on the screen. Sokurov reportedly rehearsed his all-important camera move again and again with the cinematographer, the actors and the invisible sound and lighting technicians, knowing that the Hermitage would be given to him for only one precious day.

After a dark screen and the words “I open my eyes and I see nothing,” the camera’s eye opens upon the Hermitage and we meet the Marquis (Sergey Dreiden), a French nobleman who will wander through the art and the history as we follow him. The voice we heard, which belongs to the never-seen Sokurov, becomes a foil for the Marquis, who keeps up a running commentary. What we see is the grand sweep of Russian history in the years before the Revolution, and a glimpse of the grim times afterwards.

It matters little, I think, if we recognize all of the people we meet on this journey; such figures as Catherine II and Peter the Great are identified (Catherine, like many another museum visitor, is searching for the loo), but some of the real people who play themselves, like Mikhail Piotrovsky, the current director of the Hermitage, work primarily as types. We overhear whispered conversations, see state functions, listen as representatives of the Shah apologize to Nicholas I for the killing of Russian diplomats, even see little flirtations.

And then, in a breathtaking opening-up, the camera enters a grand hall and witnesses a formal state ball. Hundreds of dancers, elaborately costumed and bejeweled, dance to the music of a symphony orchestra, and then the camera somehow seems to float through the air to the orchestra’s stage, and moves among the musicians. An invisible ramp must have been moved into place below the camera frame, for Buttner and his Steadicam to smoothly climb.

The film is a glorious experience to witness, not least because, knowing the technique and understanding how much depends on every moment, we almost hold our breath. How tragic if an actor had blown a cue or Buttner had stumbled five minutes from the end!

I found myself in a reverie of thoughts and images, and sometimes, as my mind drifted to the barbarity of Stalin and the tragic destiny of Russia, the scenes of dancing became poignant and ironic. It is not simply what Sokurov shows about Russian history, but what he does not show–doesn’t need to show, because it shadows all our thoughts of that country. RUSSIAN ARK spins a daydream made of centuries.?

SWEENEY TODD: THE DEMON BARBER OF FLEET STREET
2007 Directed by Tim Burton 116 minutes
English with French subtitles. No Vietnamese translation
(Please be advised that this film contains stylized but graphic shots of throat-cutting!)

Review by Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times:

For many a poor orphan lad
The first square meal he ever had
Was a hot meat pie
Made out of his dad
From Sweeney Todd the Barber.

Tim Burton’s film adaptation of “Sweeney Todd The Demon Barber of Fleet Street” smacks its lips at the prospect of such a meal, and so it should. In telling this story, half-measures will avail him nothing. The bloodiest musical in stage history, it now becomes the bloodiest in film history, and it isn’t a jolly romp, either, but a dark revenge tragedy with heartbreak, mayhem and bloody good meat pies.

But we know that going in and are relieved that Burton has played true to the material. Here is one scenario that is proof against a happy ending.

It has what is much better, a satisfactory mixed ending, in which what must happen, does. Along the way, with merciless performances by Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Alan Rickman, with a brooding production design by Dante Ferretti, with the dark shadows of Dariusz Wolski’s cinematography, it allows Burton to evoke the 19th century London of Henry Mayhew’s Labour and the London Poor, which reported on the dregs of London and greatly influenced Charles Dickens. The worst you’ve heard about Calcutta would have been an improvement on London poverty in those days.

And yet there is an exhilaration in the very fiber of the film, because its life force is so strong. Its heroes, or anti-heroes, have been wounded to the quick, its villains are vile and heartless, and they all play on a stage that rules out decency and mercy. The acting is so good that it enlists us in the sordid story, which even contains a great deal of humor — macabre, to be sure. As a feast for the eyes and the imagination, SWEENEY TODD is … well, I was going to say, even more satisfying than a hot meat pie made out of your dad.

The story: In London years earlier lived a barber named Benjamin Barker (Johnny Depp) and his sweet young wife and child, and he loved them. But the vile Judge Turpin (Alan Rickman) sentenced Barker on trumped-up charges and had him transported to Australia, meanwhile capturing his wife and child. After Turpin ravishes the wife, destroying her life, the girl Johanna (Jayne Wisner) grows up to become the judge’s ward and prisoner.

As the film proper opens, Benjamin has escaped from prison Down Under and sails into London with young Anthony Hope (Jamie Campbell Bower). He races through the streets to his former barbershop, where the landlady is still the dark-eyed beauty Mrs. Lovett (Helena Bonham Carter), who sells the worst meat pies in London. She tells him about the fate of his family. He moves upstairs to his former shop, now a ruin, changes his name to Sweeney Todd and sets up in business again.

But so deep is his rage that he makes an architectural improvement: a sliding chute that will drop his customers straight into the basement after he slits their throats, so Mrs. Lovett can cut them up and bake them into her pies. Now she offers the meatiest and most succulent meat pies in London; business booms, and sometimes satisfied customers go upstairs for a haircut and a quick recycling.

Burton fashions his musical in what can almost be described as an intimate style. No platoons of dancers in London squares, as in OLIVER!. This is a London of narrow alleys, streets shadowed by overhangs, close secrets. The Stephen Sondheim songs don’t really lend themselves to full-throated performance, although that has been the practice on the stage. They are more plot-driven, confessional, anguished. Depp and Bonham Carter do their own singing, and very well, too, and as actors, they use the words to convey meaning as well as melody.

There are also star turns by Sacha Baron Cohen, as the rival Italian barber Pirelli, whose singing career ends dramatically rather early in the film. And by Rickman as the judge and the invaluable Timothy Spall as Beadle Bamford, his flunky. And by Jayne Wisener as Johanna and Jamie Campbell Bower as Anthony, who become lovers and provide some consolation after the last throat has been slit.

To an unusual degree, SWEENEY TODD works on a quasi-realistic level and not as a musical fantasy. That’s not to say we’re to take it as fact, but that we can at least accept it on its own terms without the movie winking at us. It combines some of Tim Burton’s favorite elements: The fantastic, the ghoulish, the bizarre, the unspeakable, the romantic and in Johnny Depp, he has an actor he has worked with since “Edward Scissorhands” and finds a perfect instrument.

Helena Bonham Carter may be Burton’s inamorata, but apart from that, she is perfectly cast, not as a vulgar fishwife type but as a petite beauty with dark, sad eyes and a pouting mouth and a persistent fantasy that she and the barber will someday settle by the seaside. Not bloody likely.?

HANOI CINEMATHEQUE
Hanoi’s unique ‘art-house cinema’, is a members-only film society.

Memberships are available at the box office for only 100,000VND per year.

Members receive regular emails with detailed schedules and reviews of the films.

Tickets to the films are by donation.

HANOI CINEMATHEQUE 22A Hai Ba Trung Street (at the end of the alley leading to Artist’s Hotel) RESERVATIONS: Tel: 936 2648 (14:00 - 20:00) Fax: 936 2649 Email: info2@hanoicinema.or CAFE CINEMATHEQUE from 17:00 weekdays and from 13:30 weekends.