2.00pm: Masterclass: Brad Bird
Another one of the LFF's splendid Masterclasses, giving you the maximum amount of access to a filmmaker for a minimum amount of money - nine quid this year, which is less than what you'd pay for a festival screening at the Odeon West End. Today's event stars animation director Brad Bird, and is hosted by Phil Jupitus (or as he introduces himself, "couldn't get Jonathan Ross"). Jupitus talks to Bird briefly about the early years of his career - mentored as a teenager by one of Disney's top animators, contributing to early series of The Simpsons and King Of The Hill, and so on. Bird's feature debut in 1999 was The Iron Giant: a massive commercial flop but, as Jupitus correctly points out, wildly popular with men who cry. ("Oh, yeah, that's a huge market," snorts Bird in response.) Flop though it was, it brought Bird to the attention of Pixar studios, who gave him carte blanche to produce his latest film, The Incredibles, as a computer animation - his first. The rest of the event inevitably concentrates on the new film, as Bird talks us through animation tests, interviews with some of his staff, bloopers and an amusing final reel of all the buttons, doors and explosions that appear in the film.
It's interesting to compare today's event with the Pixar Masterclass held here three years ago, in which studio boss John Lassiter and a couple of animation directors talked their way through Monsters Inc. It's amazing how naive I was back then, wondering out loud if any of the material Lassiter screened at that event would ever turn up on a Monsters Inc DVD. Gee, do you think? Here, it's a lot more obvious: some of the sequences Bird shows here are literally completed DVD featurettes. He's even running them off a DVD custom-made for the event (we get glimpses of its menu every so often), which makes this a little too much like sitting in your living room with someone who's seen the film too many times. And let's be honest, we're all a bit blase about how CGI technology works these days: even three years ago there was an air of magic about the process, nowadays we've heard it all before.
Still, that's not to say that this show is short on technical gee-whiz moments, although as ever the most intense work has gone into things that the average audience would only notice if they went wrong. Three years ago, the talk was all of the effort required to animate Sully's fur realistically. This time, it's the movement and texture of the long black hair of the character Violet, which looks flawless, despite the admission from the technical staff after months of initial research that "long hair is pretty much theoretical right now". And also on the technical front, it's fascinating to discover that two different versions of the film have been made: one for digital projection, one for traditional celluloid, each one specifically tweaked to play to the delivery medium's strengths.
The biggest difference from the Monsters Inc event, though, is the involvement of Bird at every level. John Lassiter's explanation of the Pixar process tended to go along the lines of "story conference, story conference, story conference, then some technical stuff happens and we have a movie". Bird touches briefly on the detailed storyboarding process, but concentrates more on the day-to-day grind of getting the images out of people's heads and onto a screen. He's the first person at Pixar to get a sole writer/director credit for a feature film (all their previous work has been directed by teams of people), and the featurettes show him having a hands-on involvement with every aspect of the process - sketching out changes to test runs, discussing performance details with animators, talking the sound designer through the final mix. The impression you get is of a filmmaker who knows exactly what he wants, and who relishes the opportunity of making a film with one of the best animation teams in the world right now. Sadly and inevitably, the accompanying LFF screenings of The Incredibles sold out within minutes and I couldn't get a ticket, but I'm itching to see the film when it comes out on release here in November.
4.15pm: Champions
It's 1969, apparently. This date isn't mentioned at any point in Champions, but I guess it's assumed that the home audience will work that detail out for themselves, because the film covers the period when Czechoslovakia was storming its way through the World Ice Hockey Championships. The inhabitants of a tiny Czech village are all getting behind the national team in different ways. Karel (Leos Noha), the bar owner, is showing the match on TV to his usual crowd of five or six regular punters. His wife Zdena (Klara Meliskova) is taking advantage of the distraction by carrying on an affair with the local bus driver. The other inhabitants include Ziege (Will Spoor), the old Nazi who lives in the derelict church: Josef (Josef Polasek), the Gypsy who's continually being picked on for not being a 'real' Czech: and Bohaus (Jan Budar), the substance-abusing heavy metal fan who keeps getting visions of what the final scores will be...
There's a certain form to be expected from a certain sort of East European comedy film: potato-faced drunk people will have glum adventures, and we will laugh. That's pretty much the case with Marek Najbrt's film here, with the exception of Klara Meliskova, who can't really be described as potato-faced at all. (Mind you, as apparently the only woman in the village, she doesn't have to do much to attract attention.) The rest of the cast are made up of the typical comic grotesques you expect from the genre, and it gradually transpires that the film is really about Zdena's attempts to get away from them. The first half of Champions moves far too slowly, unfortunately - the nine or ten main characters all have an important part to play, and a large amount of time is spent setting up both them and their relationships to each other. But once we get to the events of the day of the Championship Final, all that setup work finally pays off, with everything tying together in an entertaining but downbeat fashion.
8.30pm: My Father Is An Engineer
This would have been the evening when The Belated Birthday Girl and I saw The Incredibles, except the screening is sold out. So in search of bigger and more dangerous thrills, we head out to Croydon. The David Lean Cinema there is one of the out-of-town picture houses that the LFF is tentatively extending itself to this year, as part of their Film In The City initiative. My Father Is An Engineer is playing to a satisfyingly packed house, presumably full of locals - I'm sure the idea of Film In The City wasn't really to encourage people like us to spend a fiver travelling out of London. In what feels like a slightly patronising touch, LFF bod Helen de Witt gives a detailed ten minute introduction to the film, its director, its themes and most of its plot - a bit like the programme notes you get with a film at the NFT, except you don't have the option to put Helen in your bag to read after you've seen the film.
Directed by French favourite Robert Guediguian, My Father Is An Engineer tells the story of Natacha (Ariane Ascride) and Jeremie (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), who've been in love on and off since the age of 14. Natacha is a pediatrician, working closely with her local community: Jeremie has an important medical post in the Government and travels all over. When Natacha suddenly goes into a catatonic state and refuses to move or talk to anyone, it's up to Jeremie to examine their past and piece together the story of what happened to her.
If you wanted to be really patronising towards the people of Croydon - something I don't get as much fun out of since we lost my favourite resident of the borough, Rob D - then you could suggest that My Father Is An Engineer is showing here because it conforms to the suburban ideal of what French arthouse cinema should be like. It has fabulous performances from the two principals, a carefully worked-out symbolic parallel narrative featuring Natacha and Jeremie as Mary and Joseph, an eclectic score (ranging from African-influenced music to Robert Palmer), and a solid sense of left-wing social responsibility that permeates every frame (and ultimately turns out to be the key to the mystery of Natacha's silence). It's a very old-fashioned French film in that sense, but that's not to deny how entertaining and thought-provoking it is. It certainly went down well in Croydon.
Notes From Spank's Pals
Roads To Koktebel
The Cineaste - One thing I find really exasperating about having to wait for returns/unsold tickets etc. is having to queue for ages then being sold the ticket after the film has started. Here the Odeon West End were still selling them a good ten minutes into the film (whilst the queuing had started at least 50 minutes before the start time), so no credit to the OWE for this. But I’ve commented before (negatively, since you ask) about the OWE’s personnel practices, so I won’t harp on about them.
What an amazing, thought-provoking film this was. On the surface, very straightforward, almost bland. A young father and his 11-year old son are making a journey, a long journey, to a place in Crimea (why, I don’t know, or rather, if we’re told I don’t know - perhaps the OWE would care to fill me in on all the bits they prevented me from seeing). I join the action with dad and son catching a ride in a freight train. It’s cold, they’re on their own, then a railway employee throws them off the train. But he’s doing them a favour, since the train is only destined for the freight yard, and he puts them up in a kind of railwayman’s dwelling. From here the two progress on their journey with simple adventures. They persuade an elderly man to provide them with food and lodging in return for mending his roof. But the father and the man fall out, and the man shoots the father. On the road again, the two come across a dwelling inhabited by a young female doctor, who takes them in and tends to the father’s injuries. These two become attracted to each other, and the father decides to break the journey he and his son were making “until next spring”. The young lad, disillusioned and annoyed by this, continues on his own to the destination in Crimea.Constantly during the film there was so much more behind the basic plotline that caught the imagination. There were lengthy periods with no dialogue, almost inviting the viewer to wonder what the characters were thinking. Indeed there was very little background music, enhancing the atmosphere of the wide open countryside. The homes were furnished in a very austere way, with long-in-the-tooth furniture and appliances. And the landscape inevitably featured: now lush, undulating plains, now barren, windswept, inhospitable, unwelcoming. The imagery was often fantastic, mesmerising.Eventually the young lad arrives at the seaside Crimean town. We see a wonderful shot of the sun-drenched people from his viewpoint, so it mainly features legs, bums and midriffs. He’s rather confused. Now he’s arrived, what does he hope to find? What is he searching for? That is what we were invited to ponder – because very little is revealed – there are no earth-shattering revelations, no melodramatic twists in the plot. It was thought-provoking and wonderful. The whole film could be an allegory for all kinds of things, love, hope, dreams, family bonds, fate… many more.And then, on the way home, after three tubes and a bus, sitting right behind me in the bus were two young women discussing the film. I want to go and see it all over again.
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