BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: priming Rain of the Childen.

VINCENT WARD is probably the closest figure to an auteur in New Zealand, which means even his noble failures (such as River Queen) are worthy of consideration. His visual palettes and the understated yet complex moods are brilliantly constructed, and he was able to maintain these tropes even within his mixed American career. Given the release of Rain of the Children, the Film Society in a nice piece of foresight, screened two of Ward’s earlier films – A State of Siege based on a Janet Frame story, and In Spring One Plants Alone, the documentary that forms the basis of Rain of the Children.

A roundup/recap of the current best and rest in film and DVD. In this installment: Underbelly, Donnie Darko: Collector’s Edition, The Chaser’s War on Everything, The War on Democracy, The Investigator, Secret Diary of a Call Girl (DVD); Up the Yangtze, Paris; 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Film).

With the long overdue release of Seasons Three and Four to DVD, HBO’s extraordinary The Wire continues on its rightful format. BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM extols the show’s progress to date. (contains spoilers)

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: life through a lens.

ROSS MCELWEE’s particular brand of angst reaches its apogee in Time Indefinite. A mix of philosophical ruminations, self-deprecating humour, and personal filmmaking, Ross McElwee’s tragicomic documentary carries on the storylines he set up in his previous work. And while the film does drag at points near the end (you feel like you know him and his family really really well after seeing all these films), this is a poignant and wonderful piece of work.

George Andrews/NZ/2008; R0
GA Productions, $49.95 | Reviewed by Andy Palmer

AT LAST we, as a nation, are starting to celebrate our intellectuals; those who have left their mark internationally outside of the sporting arena. Allan Wilson: Evolutionary is a documentary about a man who helped develop and strengthen evolutionary theory. Or, as the publicity puts it, a “groundbreaking researcher and a lightning rod for controversy, [who] revolutionized science and galvanized the scientific community”.

Steven Soderbergh/USA/2005; R4
Madman, $29.95 | Reviewed by Simon Wood

STEVEN SODERBERGH is the exception that proves auteur theory correct. No matter how diverse his projects in scope, they have to be superlative; the biggest cast, the most relevant political argument, the biggest stars. Now we have Bubble, the indiest film he could have possibly made.

Reviewed by David Levinson

IN The Dark Knight – Christopher Nolan’s second outing at the helm of the Batman franchise – the caped crusader may sport a fetishist’s dream of high-tech, tailor-made weaponry, but nothing unleashed on Gotham’s crime populace proves more alluring than the film’s grim publicity-hook: Namely, the fact that it marks the final complete performance by once-rising star Heath Ledger, whose career was tragically cut short by a sleeping pill overdose on completion of filming.

An election on the horizon, Alister Barry’s documentary expose (from Nicky Hager’s book) gets a timely rerun at Wellington’s Paramount Theatre, from September 18.

“SURE WE COULD play the race card, but how would we run the country on Monday?” Jim Bolger wisely said. Yet under Brash-Key the party of Doug Graham centred their 2005 campaign on exploiting and encouraging racism and bigotry. Alister Barry (Someone Else’s Country) skilfully adapts Nicky Hager’s dynamite book; like Orewa Speech author Peter Keenan’s email that he hates the race-based privilege line. Keenan described the slogan as ludicrous given Maori are at the bottom of the heap.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: brief encounters.

THE FILM SOCIETY’s playing of New Zealand short films this year has been a bonus. Too often, the short film has been marginalised as an art-form and within film criticism or exhibition (admittedly, I have neglected to cover the short films in my reviews). This also means short films are often neglected by the artists themselves – for many (and this seems especially true for New Zealand Film Commission funded shorts) it’s seen as a stepping stone for feature films. This means the shorts are merely an excuse to throw in as many ‘quirky’ camera angles as possible, or rely on clichéd or dull storytelling (perhaps the reason why Taika Waititi’s Two Cars, One Night was so good was because it understood what a short film should be doing). It’s a shame as the short film can be just as poignant or thought-provoking as a feature. The Film Society presented six “classic” New Zealand short films, and each had varying degree of success in justifying this classic label.

The Lumière Reader winds down its New Zealand International Film Festivals coverage for 2008 with a series of illustrations by LYNDON BARROIS and ADDOLEY DZEGEDE. The Festival itself (in condensed form) continues to tour these remaining centres: New Plymouth (Sept 4-17), Nelson (Sept 11-25), Greymouth (Oct 2-8), Masterton (Oct 15-29), Queenstown (Oct 23-Nov 5), Gisborne (Nov 6-19), Whangarei (Nov 13-26). The Editor’s Post-Festival Wrap will follow shortly (previous years’ reports can be surveyed here); in the meantime, Lumière’s 70+ film reviews, along with visiting filmmaker interviews, can be revisited via our NZIFF ’08 A-Z Guide.

Grooming and torture in the Middle East. By NINA FOWLER.

DIRECTOR Nadine Labaki’s debut feature is candid and charming. The plot is standard romantic comedy; the film as a whole a dusty, beautiful sweep of the lives of women in Beirut. Labaki herself plays salon-owner Layale, torn between her role as a dutiful Christian daughter and her troubled love for a married man. Beautician Nisrine (Yasmine Al Masri) faces a Muslim wedding night sans hymen. Jamale struggles to come to terms with her age; spinster Rose (Sihame Haddad) gets a last chance at romance. The supporting cast is familiar: cute cop, crazy old woman and handsome American. Where Caramel gets interesting is the intersection of these rom-com cliches with the reality of everyday life in Lebanon. Easy to identify with relationship and work troubles, less easy to relate to an armed soldier tapping on the window of your car.

BRANNAVAN GNANALINGAM reports from the Wellington Film Society. This week: Bergman, in passing.

Persona’s opening sequence would probably have had Film Society patrons wondering if the technical difficulties that beset previous weeks’ films had continued with this one. The famous montage shatters the notion of cinema, the idea that we’re comfortably going to suture ourselves into whatever film is playing. And he starts with light (not really in a biblical sense) and splices in clips from the ‘beginning’ of cinema. He moves onto animation, slapstick comedy, horror, pornography (Fight Club wasn’t so anarchic in that respect). Film is instead imaged as a violent art-form, something which tears, destroys, kills. Bergman adopts the idea that cinema captures death – what we see is no longer living, it stopped living the moment it was captured by a camera – and all we see are ghosts of the original trace. Throw in explorations of the tyrannical artist, charting the alienation of human contact, and an emphasis on the frailty/constructed nature of the visual image and you have one of the all-time masterpieces of world cinema.