Born Into Brothels: Calcutta's Red Light Kids ThinkFilm/HBO Cinemax Documentary Films
Directed by Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman
Rated: R
Reviewed by Aaron Licht
“The men who enter our building are not so good.” Spoken by a young girl, she refers to the men looking for sex, drugs and booze in a building deep within a hidden maze of alleyways in Calcutta. The building is a brothel, where the girl calls home. “People ask me, when are you going to join the line with your Mother? It won’t be long now. . .” Such are the telling first lines of Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman’s documentary Born into Brothels.
Searching for a story in Calcutta’s red light district, photographer/co-director Briski relied on her instincts. After great difficulty, she located a room in a brothel. Soon, the kids discovered her. Once she found her cause - brothel children born into a life of abuse, hard work and no future hope - she embraced these children absolutely.
The film investigates the lives of eight of these young kids. Briski goes one step further in using her photography as an interpretive tool as she teaches the kids how to use a camera to take pictures of their world. Since this artistic endeavour is so unusual, I initially suspected that Briski wanted these “invisible” kids to spy on the bad people of the brothel, to take pictures for an insider sex worker expose. But there is no exploitation of the subjects’ difficult lives. The documentary does not rely on sensational tactics and in fact most criminal elements take place behind the sheets. This is no “American Report on Third World Prostitution.”
The documentary also avoids the traps of an overly caring “social problem” film. Gone is the spirit of Western condescension, the pitying of starving children. The film celebrates kids discovering the power of creative self-expression in a difficult world, and celebrates kids - as kids! Rather than learning what these kids don’t eat we learn that Avijit doesn’t like it when you call him fat.
This is the perspective of one caring artist who sees a group of strong charismatic children and introduces art into their lives. She teaches these kids to look at their world. Structured by their joyous art classes and field trips to the zoo and ocean, the audience begins to appreciate the unique artistic profile of each kid, through both the photos themselves and commentaries from the students. Kochi uses the camera to escape her home surroundings, taking pictures of animals, gardens, and parks. Puja is the only one brave enough to annoy strangers on the street. Avijit is discovered to have an innate understanding of composition and discovers beauty of streetcar rails and dirt in the back alley. Vicariously, we discover the sheer joy of creative expression.
For this fan of photography, the film provides the rare pleasure of seeing the context surrounding the moment of the photo. We see Avijit casually pour water onto the beach as he snaps a photo and we see Shanti run from her brother Manik as he snaps a photo. Photography lovers can see real prints of these photos as they tour with the filmmakers around the world in the new Kids-With-Cameras foundation, raising money for the children’s education.
Within the film, Briski learns the limitations of her project, that even with her help their future holds little hope for change. Suchitra is the child most at risk. The evil resides in her lack of choice, that she will join her mother “on the line.” But Born into Brothels allows us a rare chance to feel we really know these children. But why was I on the verge of tears nearly the whole time? Was it partially a feeling of pity? Maybe it was seeing that these kids are so full of life, even in such a dismal and claustrophobic environment. And the joy of seeing kids embrace such a transcendent art form.
Born into Brothels is both a beautiful portrait of brave kids and a lesson in the redemptive power of art.
P.S. On Feb 8th, I got an opportunity to hear the filmmakers speak about their film. Apparently the directors were in Calcutta for the Oscar nomination and the kids were overjoyed to hear the news, jumping up and down on their beds. Since then, they’ve been getting over twenty e-mails every day through the Kids-with-Cameras web page. People love these kids. The Oscars will strengthen the future of the worldwide Kids-with-Cameras foundation.
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Starring Don McKellar, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Mark Rendall
Directed by Don McKellar
Rated: R
Reviewed by Adam M. Anklewicz
Don McKellar has been entertaining for years, from the first feature he wrote, Bruce McDonald’s Roadkill, to his directorial debut Last Night. Don McKellar might not be a household name, but his humour and dramatic sensibilities always create great movies. He’s probably best known outside of his native country of Canada for co-writing The Red Violin and Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, which has even been parodied by The Simpsons.
With Childstar, McKellar takes the director’s chair for the second time. An American production heads to Toronto, importing their star, Taylor Brandon Burns (Mark Rendall). Burns is the smart-ass preteen in the Growing Pains-esque television series called Family Differences. Burns is competing with time. When puberty hits, his career will be over.
Rick Schiller (McKellar), a former film professor and aspiring filmmaker, is hired as Burns’ driver. He quickly begins an affair with Burns’ mother, Suzanne Burns (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Paralleling the story, Schiller becomes a mentor to the child star before he runs away and hides from the film industry that was his life.
Going into this film with the knowledge of McKellar’s previous work, I was very surprised by the film. It didn’t have the quirkiness of most of his earlier work. The personal drama and character evolution that happens in all of his films are present in Childstar, but for the first time act as the true core of the film. The relationships between Rick and Taylor, Rick and Suzanne, Rick and the film industry, and Taylor and his father all drive the film to its eventual climax.
Childstar is not Don McKeller’s best film. Last Night had much grander ideas and executed them better, but Childstar shouldn’t leave anyone disappointed. The film’s characters are much more approachable and are easier to connect with.
The ease of which McKellar illustrates his ideas without smashing the audience over the head is quite pleasant. Childstar excels where most Hollywood films fail, it’s entertaining while still making a point. Maybe one day McKellar will take a misstep, but not with this film.
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Hide and Seek 20th Century Fox
Starring Robert De Niro and Dakota Fanning
Directed by John Polson
Rated: R
Reviewed by Jennifer Di Santo
It’s been some time since Hollywood has come out with a movie that is genuinely frightening. Gigli aside, it seems increasingly difficult to really scare audiences these days.
In Hide and Seek, Robert De Niro and Dakota Fanning (The Cat in the Hat) give us a psychological thriller with sufficient suspense, creepy camera angles, well-placed gore and fine acting. But at the end of the film, you’re left feeling as if several characters and potential plot twists were left entirely unexplained, and even the characters and plot they decided on required just a little more elaboration.
De Niro stars as David Callaway, a New York psychiatrist living in the city with his wife and cheery nine-year-old daughter Emily (Fanning). When his wife dies in an apparent suicide, David notices Emily’s behavior change from youthful exuberance to baby-Goth sullenness. To get her away from the site of her mother’s death, David takes Emily and moves upstate to get a fresh start.
Emily continues withdrawing and getting progressively quieter and creepier as David tries in vain to reach out to her. She creates an imaginary friend named Charlie, which David assumes is a defense mechanism to help her deal with her mother’s death. He’s a shrink, after all, and he accepts Charlie as a part of Emily’s cute little child imagination. That is, until “Charlie” starts getting a little crazy, repeatedly recreating the scene of Emily’s mother’s death in their new bathroom, among other wacky hijinks. And of course, Emily’s defense: “I didn’t do it. It was Charlie.”
Conveniently, the movie offers a host of spooky neighborhood characters for you to assume might be Emily’s new pal, helping her with the bloody shenanigans: neighbors who recently lost a child, sketchy town sheriff, and – because it’s necessary to enforce Emily’s psychosis – a new love interest for David played by Elisabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas). Mommy’s dead and Daddy has a date – this makes for one hell of a dinner conversation.
If you don’t figure out the final plot twist before the end, you’re going to kick yourself. I know I did. When Charlie’s identity is finally revealed, you notice all the little hints you missed on the way. But you’re still left with a ton of questions.
Hide and Seek, even if you know the end going in, is still worth watching. De Niro and Fanning are terrific together. De Niro’s resume speaks for itself – he’s a bit underused in the beginning of the film, but makes up for it famously by the end. Fanning is charismatic in a way that compels you to keep watching – her performance is almost enough to make you want to go rent Uptown Girls. Almost.
The film provides you with a tense guessing game and minimal carnage, but enough intrigue to keep you watching. Definitely hit the matinee or wait for the rental, but even though it’s not the best scary movie made recently, it’s at least a good effort by a talented cast.
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Ong-Bak: Thai Warrior Magnolia Pictures
Starring Tony Jaa, Perttary Wongkamlao, Pumwaree Yodkamel
Directed By Prachya Pinkaew
Rated: PG-13
Reviewed by Casey Moore
We have a chain of theaters here in Austin, Texas called the Alamo Drafthouse (fans of the movie website AintItCoolNews.com have surely heard of them). Instead of the usual boring stuff you get played before a movie starts, the Alamo Drafthouse plays clips of other movies to get you in the mood or that thematically go with the film you are about to see. When I went to see Kill Bill: Volume 1, they had this insane Asian martial arts movie playing with a man flying through the air, unaided by wires, and hitting people with his elbow or his knee, or in one sequence that has made the crowd gasp at every screening I have been to, he hits an opponent with both knees. It wasn’t until a week later that I found out the clip we were watching was from a Thai movie called Ong Bak: Muy Thai Warrior.
The film has finally made its way to our shores in a new cut supervised by director Luc Besson (The Professional, La Femme Nikita). Besson became interested in the movie in a very up front manner, since during one of the scenes in the film there is a note scribbled to Besson in the background.
Ong Bak: Thai Warrior (the new title of the film) has a simple story. A group of criminals from the city come to the village of Ong Bak looking to buy relics. When they are refused, they steal the head of the Buddha statue in the village. Ting (Tony Jaa), one of the villagers and an expert at Muy Thai (since he has, of course, been taught the martial art by the village’s monk), volunteers to go to Bangkok and retrieve the head of the Buddha statue and return it in time for the village’s festival.
Jaa is being compared and hailed by many critics as the new Jackie Chan. He certainly has Chan’s athleticism when it comes to stunts. Just watch the foot race through the streets of Bangkok and try not to be impressed. However, Jaa seems to be lacking the charisma of Chan, at least in this role. He plays the part of a simple country boy perfectly for this film. It will be interesting to see what he brings as a person to his next role since he has the insane stunts down pat.
To a certain extent, Jaa gets upstaged by Perttary Wongkamlao, who plays George. George’s real name is Hum Lae. He is from the same village as Ting, but is trying to make it as a small time hustler and con artist in Bangkok. In some ways, Wongkamlao plays the Sammo Hun to Jaa’s Chan. Many of the funniest and most human moments actually go to Wongkamlao.
Also stealing the spotlight from Jaa is Pumwaree Yodkamel who plays Muay, George’s sidekick and partner in crime.
The movie really is something to behold and a change of pace for those who have been absorbing the new wave of wuxia movies in the past few years. Ong Bak: Thai Warrior is a throwback to days when stuntmen and women threw their whole bodies into the action. At times watching this new cut of the film, I felt sorry for the poor saps who play villains in the film since they take some of the most brutal hits from Jaa and off of nearby objects in recent memory. This is a film for those who are fans of hardcore stunt work, brutal not beautiful fighting, and with fond memories of early Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung movies.
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Rory O'Shea Was Here (aka Inside I'm Dancing) Focus Features/Universal/Alliance Atlantis
Starring James McAvoy, Steven Robertson, Romola Garai, Brenda Fricker
Directed by Damien O’Donnell
Rated: R
Reviewed by Michael Russnow
Rory O'Shea Was Here is an affecting film with a lot of newcomers that caused a lot of commotion at the Sundance Film Festival, and, while it's not terrific, I can understand why it attracted so much attention.
It's an odd piece set in Dublin, and the only "name" in the cast is Brenda Fricker (1989 Supporting Actress Oscar winner for My Left Foot). She plays Eileen, the director of a home for disabled adults of all kinds, including quadriplegics, the mentally retarded, those with severe Cerebral Palsy and many others.
It is a well-kept warehouse of human souls, shunted about in their daily lives; to the dining room, a community recreation room, or to the bathroom, where the most severely handicapped must be helped to perform their most private functions. It is a demoralizing and claustrophobic existence, but one senses the inmates are cared for in a generally kind way, orderly and rigidly scheduled, until handsome 21-year-old Rory O'Shea checks into the facility.
O'Shea, played spiritedly by Scottish actor James McAvoy, suffers from a severe case of Muscular Dystrophy and is propped up in a high-backed motorized wheelchair, operated by two of his fingers, which, apart from his head, are the last parts of his musculature he can control. And with his head comes his mouth, not to mention his tongue, which can be biting and cruel. It's not clear at what stage of his life he was consigned to his chair, but there's a sense he once had independence of movement, because of his free spirit and savoir-faire.
Whatever his background, he stirs up the place from the moment his wheelchair descends from the van. At first, no one likes him; especially his twenty-something neighbor Michael, a Cerebral Palsy victim who seems addled, but only because his speech is unintelligible. That is, unintelligible to almost everyone. Not to Rory, who has no problem acting as his interpreter. This is a huge relief to Michael, poignantly portrayed by fellow Scot Steven Robertson, and his enmity towards Rory immediately changes as he transforms him into his new best friend.
Michael enjoys Rory's joie de vivre, especially during an outing where the collective inhabitants are sent, buckets in hand, to beg for donations. Rory convinces Michael to go off with him to a bar and later to a disco. Here, Michael finds delight in a life he never knew existed.
It's pretty clear Rory doesn't much care for institutional living, and when he loses another opportunity to get a grant to live independently he convinces Michael to try. When Michael gets the approval, Rory is allowed to go along as his roommate, because he's literally the only one who can decipher Michael's utterances and thus the two of them are set free.
But they can't live without help, so Rory convinces Siobhan (played winningly by Romola Garai), a girl they met at a bar, to take the job, and the three form an unusual troika. After a while it unfortunately becomes strained when Michael misinterprets Siobhan's pleasant demeanor as fodder for romance.
There are other aspects to the story, but the plot's not what makes the film special. It's the “opposites attract” aspect to their personality, plus Rory's influence on Michael to get the most out of life that he can.
Director Damien O'Donnell ably moves Jeffrey Caine's simple but effective script as well as he can, considering the confines of a low budget. He is aided by the attractive, mostly serviceable, sets by designer Tom Conroy. Plus, O'Donnell exacts very good performances out of all the principal players, especially the increasingly loving bond between Michael and his charismatic champion Rory.
The film, released abroad last year as Inside I'm Dancing, is a testament to what can be accomplished with so much going against you. Though it is slight in scope and there are script conveniences that are not too likely, it is nonetheless a well-told tale that deserves more of an audience than it is likely to get.
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Swimming Upstream Crusader Entertainment LLC
Starring Geoffrey Rush, Judy Davis, and Jesse Spencer
Directed by Russell Mulcahy
Rated: PG-13
Reviewed by Michael Russnow
Swimming Upstream is an Australian effort that was released down under in 2003 and took over a year to dog paddle to the Northern Hemisphere. Actually, it was the backstroke, which explains the length of time to journey; and like the stroke it moves a bit slowly at times, but is intriguing enough to take a look.
It's clearly in the art-film category and not posed to make much money, but when you have Geoffrey Rush as an insensitive father and Judy Davis as his suffering wife, it elevates any movie -- especially in the indie world.
As probably surmised by the swimming analogies, much of the action takes place in a swimming pool, a refuge for two sons of the really awful man played by Rush. He belittles them constantly, especially the second oldest son, Tony, played by Australian teen idol Jesse Spencer. This kid is clearly good for nothing in his father's eyes and receives little support from his older brother Harold, played by David Hoflin, who picks up the slack when his father's not around. He beats him and joins in the verbal abuse with his father, who tortures him with names, in particular because Tony plays the piano and is not very good at sports. His mother (Judy Davis) and next-oldest brother John, played by Tim Draxl, are his only sense of refuge, but mother is too weak to stand up to her brutal longshoreman husband, and John is just a kid, who can do little more than sympathize.
The family lives in northern Queensland, where the weather is muggy and they spend a lot of time in the community pool. It is there, quite by chance, that Rush notices Tony and John's swimming ability, and like Mama Rose in Gypsy soon recognizes an opportunity to live vicariously through them, having failed to succeed at football himself.
He trains them mercilessly everyday, rousing them before 6 a.m. to do laps in the pool, and soon they are attracting notice, Tony for his backstroke and John for the freestyle. Tony is the more committed, perhaps to prove something to himself as much as his father, and wins initial tournaments until his father, not willing to leave well enough alone, throws a monkey wrench in the circumstances that now pits loving brothers against each other.
On the surface, that's pretty much what happens, a bunch of competitions with hopes for Olympic Gold. But in between we see the more moving tale of a boy, inexplicably hated by his father, who does all he can to make him love and respect him.
We begin to root for Tony, who with his sister Diane, will later write the book that became the genesis for his screenplay for this film. We also wonder why he cares so much what his father thinks, a man not only hateful, but a wastrel and ne'er-do-well.
The film is directed simply by Russell Mulcahy, whose work is known mostly from television efforts, such as the American Queer as Folk. There is an old fashioned essence about it, as the screen splits into two and three to show various aspects of what we're watching, almost as if this effect was a new CGI discovery. This and the somewhat ordinary dialogue hurts the pacing of what, if delivered in another form, might have been a taut, more emotional method of storytelling. It may be the early sixties, but it doesn't have to make us feel like it was made way back then, or more appropriately back in the forties.
Still, the performances are good, and Tony, played by Jesse Spencer (who can now be seen in the Fox TV show House), is true to the image of the swimmer as a lean, muscled heartthrob. His range as an actor isn't too strong, nor are any of the other players, save Rush and Davis, the latter of whom agonizes beautifully as she struggles over staying with her man or saving her favorite son.
Swimming Upstream is a pretty good film in that it inspires us to overcome obstacles in our own lives, though most of us probably haven't experienced the levels of Tony's agony. It is a mantra to do better and to believe in what we want to be. That in itself is probably worth the price of admission.
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Starring Jonathan Caouette, Renee Leblanc, and Rosemary Davis
Directed by Jonathan Caouette
Reviewed by Aaron Licht
Jonathan Caouette’s Tarnation is 2004’s no-budget documentary sensation. The film was discovered by John Cameron Mitchell (Hedwig and the Angry Inch) and Gus Van Sant (Drugstore Cowboy) and, with their support, scorched through the film festival circuit. A certain Roger Ebert even championed the “great film” at his own Ebertfest. Caouette earned his place on my “most envied” list. Then I saw his work.
Captured on home video, Tarnation is Caouette’s own life story. Harrowing and messy, fun and energetic, founded in painful love and honesty. This is a portrait of a dysfunctional family almost on the level of Capturing the Friedmans. After seeing the film, I knew to envy the conditions surrounding the film’s discovery and not the filmmaker’s life itself.
The movie’s opens on the odd figure of Jonathan’s mother, weather-beaten and staring oddly into the camera. Her mental illness is Tarnation’s primary concern. We’re introduced to Jonathan, living with his lover at age thirty. He gets a phone call; his mother has had a lithium overdose. The powerful effect of the news is clear in the self-held camera footage a foot from his tormented face. Now the timeline has been established, the movie unfolds the family story at the start. With simple lines of text and layers upon layers of image and sound racing across the screen, we learn of the ‘happy’ Caouette family.
Why should the audience care about this guy’s personal family problems? We have plenty of our own family drama. And why should we pay $10 to watch a stranger’s home movies? Even our close friends avoid subjecting us to dull family footage. While these matters are true, Caouette’s secret is his sheer obsessive excess.
It requires a combination of feverish dedication and extreme patience to edit for weeks, shaping over 160 hours of footage from 20 years of his life. The rare energy created by the film is the result of a filmmaker alone and with total control over intensely personal material. iMovie allows astonishing control of material for an innately talented editor. It’s easy to imagine Jonathan, inspired by a high school scene, throwing in a precise track of emotional solo acoustic into iMovie to capture the mood. His manic desire to shape his family’s dysfunction resulted in a feature length horror show of abuse, drug misuse, disconnection, rebellion, schizophrenia; all grounded with his desperate need to love his mom. His search for personal truth manages to be full of affecting music and is as energetic as MTV entertainment.
Much of the film’s interest resides in charismatic Jonathan himself. Since he is personally involved in nearly every image, it helps that he’s a natural performer. Fans of queer maverick filmmakers Mitchell and Van Sant will respect Jon’s defiance as a gay youth. (At 13, he would frequent a legal age gay club by dressing as a petite goth girl.)
Following is a brief outline of his mother’s horrifying story. Renee was discovered as a twelve-year-old beauty queen, soon fell off the roof, parents prescribed years of shock treatment, girl hospitalized, lost her personality, when of legal age she married Steve, Steve left before he knew of the pregnancy. Renee’s attempt to leave to California with her baby involves theft and rape, baby Jonathan gets adopted and abused and... it continues to gets worse. Anyone who has experience dealing with mental illness will be drawn to relate to both Jonathan and Mother in his heartfelt, but often naive, investigation.
While most will soon forget any initial resentment with the home-movie nature of the film, some of the audience won’t be able to see past this format. Indeed, at times, the flood of fancy iMovie editing technique may cease to be engaging and simply feel gimmicky and overwhelming.
But overall it is worth $10 to see this stranger’s home movies. Mainly because he edited for months and his life makes for a tragic spectacle.
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