Wintertijd

Haifa Film Festival

A couple of days ago, the City of Haifa had its annual film festival on the week of Sukkot. Sukkot being the Jewish holiday with the huts of leaves and whatnot. Het Loofhuttenfeest. Apparently this is the fifth or sixth year it's being organized, and this time around they had around 155 movies from all over the world. I saw German, Scandinavian (yes, from all Scandinavian countries including Finland), Russian, East-Asian and many other countries' movies among the listed. Unfortunately I didn't have the time to spend four days in the cinemas, but at least I managed to catch two films that tickled my fancy.

The first movie we saw was an American independently produced feature called Shotgun Stories about a feud that erupts between two groups of half-brothers when their father dies. The setting of the story is Little Rock, Arkansas. Somehow I had to think of the scenes from Walk the Line of Johnny Cash's early life in Arkansas. In Shotgun Stories, the landscape plays a very significant role, with its wide open farmland, water drafts and cotton fields. The whole movie is shot in 35 mm wide-screen format, which makes the landscapes really stand out.

The second thing that struck me was the slow pace and the gritty, sparse dialog. These people live a slow life, a life that ain't heading anywhere in particular, and they don't talk about feelings much. As a matter of fact, most of 'm don't talk much at all. Somehow, this movie is about rednecks or farmers or whatever you want to call 'm, and in that way it seemed like the movie was about home for me.

All in all a brilliant and utterly beautiful movie with sparse yet very good music to accentuate bits and pieces. I really enjoyed it, more so because for once I get to see a movie that tells you revenge isn't this glorious rush as portrayed in most Bruce Willis vehicles, but rather an awkward experience for people that would rather mind their own business and suck down a couple of beers at the end of the day than fight people.

The second movie we saw was a Swedish movie called När mörkret faller. I didn't know anything about the cast, crew and director of this movie so I went into the theatre with a completely open mind, and what I saw in the next two and a half hours, I really appreciated. Later it turned out that the director was Anders Nilsson, who's responsible for some pretty horrible action thrillers. The movie got mixed reviews, but I get the feeling that the Swedish journalists who trashed it are the usual pretentious wankers that reviewed Anders Nilsson more than the movie.

This movie is reminiscent of Crash, in that it takes three stories that are relevant to Swedish society today and lets them play out in one movie. The main difference is that there are no links whatsoever between these three stories. Essentially you're watching three movies simultaneously by zapping from one to the other, so there really aren't that many similarities with movies like Crash and Pulp Fiction if you think about it.

Spoilers ahead! The first segment, Leyla, is about a (I guess) Persian family in Sweden whose oldest daughter wants to live a Swedish life, which collides with the values and views of the family. She ends up being driven to Germany where she gets killed by her family. Her little sister Leyla witnesses this by accident, and decides to go to the police. This is a very relevant topic in Sweden because there have been a few "honour-killings" that were widely debated in society. The director does good things in this segment. Amongst others, Leyla asks the police officer who is helping her "Do you think we're Muslims? Most Swedes do, you know. But we're hardly even Christians", and this for me is a very important point to highlight. He avoids the cheap & easy pot-shots at the Islam, and really tries to make it about the trouble surrounding the survival of immigrant culture in Sweden.

The second segment is about a female journalist who finally, after ten years of abuse by her husband, decides to leave and expose him. At the end of the day it turns out that society and her colleagues aren't particularly interested in her story. The segment even pokes a stick at "Facket", the omnipresent labour unions that are the Swedish Mafia (in my eyes). As such, this segment is not as interesting as Leyla, but still well-done and an important debate in Swedish society. Sweden is not "Så jävla jämställd" (emancipated) as Swedes would like to think it is, I've always said that. And I feel that this segment is a worthy illustration of just that fact.

The third segment is about a gay immigrant who runs a successful nightclub with his sister and brother. There is an incident in which a couple of speed-heads get denied entry to the place. Unbeknownst to the security staff and the owner, these people are dangerous criminals, and a spiral of violence and threats is the consequence. I read a couple journalists' review of this in which they abhorred the "if you want things done, you got to do 'm yourself" attitude of this segment, but I just think those journalists are typical for the Svenne Sossepack mentality of many Swedes, so I think the opposite. It's refreshing to see such things coming out of Sweden, and god knows there should be more of it.

All in all, När mörkret faller (When Darkness falls) is a very worthwhile movie. Obviously it helps that I spent six years in Sweden, so I might pick up on a nuance here and there, but Hilla also enjoyed it tremendously. It's a relevant movie that's entertaining to boot, and I didn't find it boring for one minute. A job well done.

Posted by Chris at October 6, 2007 02:24 AM