Review: MIFF ‘10: Primate (1974), To Die Like a Man, Cities on Speed
Primate (1974)
Dir. Frederick Wiseman
With these ‘thematic’ retrospectives at MIFF and other festivals, there is often a bizarre disconnect between the curatorial language used to frame the overall showcase and the films themselves. Such is the case with the “Wild Things” series screening this year, which is described to us in the MIFF guide as a selection of films which “seek to depict the emotional plight of humanity through the eyes of animals.” That doesn’t sound terribly interesting – surely the only thing more boring than a film about the emotional plight of humanity would be one in which some poor beast is used as a symbol for said plight. Fortunately, though, the films MIFF have selected for this showcase offer plenty of other avenues of interpretation and experience; even if one might be able to read such films as Robert Bresson’s masterpiece Au Hasard Balthazar and Frederick Wiseman’s Primate as symbolizations of human suffering (or whatever), there are plenty of more interesting ways to look at them.
Wiseman, as we know, deals with institutions, rather than any construct so spurious and tiresome as ‘humanity’. His most famous films, High School (1968) and Titicut Follies (1967), approach the two most notorious, oppressive structures of social control in modern society – the high school and the insane asylum. His terrific new film, La Danse (also screening at MIFF this year) details the entire social architecture (from the workers at the cafeteria to the company administrators to the training of the dancers and coaches) that enables the Paris Opera’s ballet company productions. And with Primate, Wiseman allows us to spend two hours with a group of scientists as they conduct a variety of experiments upon chimpanzees and orangutans.
That title, Primate, provides as much authorial judgement as we’re going to get from Wiseman – the ambiguity as to whether the primate in question is man or ape or both suggesting a somewhat ironic perspective on the enlightened Reason of the scientists. But, this being Wiseman, we are never going to get an omniscient, explanatory voiceover or a flashily rhetorical bit of cross-cutting between two scenes that might enable us to learn what the ‘message’ is. What we get is a startlingly immediate series of images of life in and outside the laboratory, the institutional arrangements and hierarchies amongst the scientists (all white men), the workers who look after and feed the animals (all black men), and the enslaved world of the animals. The experiments themselves constitute the most unforgettable scenes in the film, where the suffering of these animals at the hands of the human avarice for knowledge (practiced under that venerated name, Research – the name of God in our secular age) is so ineradicably apparent that we do not need to be told.
- Conall Cash
To Die Like a Man
Dir. João Pedro Rodrigues
The central character of this film is Tonia, a middle-aged transvestite whose identity is under pressure from two major relationships in her life: her son, a violent young man struggling to come to terms with his own sexuality and who resents his father’s incarnation as a woman, and her aggressive lover Rosario, a self-destructive young man and dress-maker who – still uneasy about their relationship – asks Tonia to undergo a sex change to “complete” her transformation. Meanwhile, Tonia’s popularity as a seasoned drag performer in a Lisbon nightclub is being gradually eclipsed by Jenny, a young black transvestite with stunning physique and a sly, implicitly villainous demeanour. Facing the inevitability of entering retirement (“People don’t want 20 years of experience! They want good looks!” yells her manager), Tonia begins to worry about what will become of her when the stage lights finally go down.
The dramatic set-up I have described might sound contrived on the one hand and deadly serious on the other, but the film unfolds with a generous sense of pacing and a sense of meandering and thoughtfulness that helps to defuse any prolonged feelings of gloom. In fact, many of the film’s more dramatic scenes of violence and emotional outburst are quickly cut short. It is on the quiet moments of reflection, play and collective mundane activity that the film permits us to linger. Several of these moments are explicitly musical in nature, with entire songs being indulged, either sung by the characters or played on the soundtrack. During these musical interludes the film begins to play with its realist aesthetic, which has the effect of both furnishing the rhythm and mood of the music and drawing us into a contemplation of the construction of the image. In one such instance, several characters are wandering through the forest when the moon “magically” changes colour, the picture adopts a highly artificial red tint and the camera establishes and fixes upon a wide shot; the characters then arrange themselves in the frame and sit and listen as a wonderfully melancholy and emotive song plays out in full.
These moments of music indulgence do not detract from the fact the film for the most part makes use of a realistic aesthetic. The film makes heavy use of natural and realistic light, the locations are largely equivocal – thankfully devoid of any symbolic set dressing – and the parts of Tonia, Maria and Jenny are strikingly portrayed by real-life transvestites, non-professional actors who bring a sense of lived reality to bear upon the film.
To Die Like a Man is ultimately a character study that weighs on the side of levity and calm in its explorations of complex and emotive themes concerning transgender subjectivity, identity and mortality. Whether you like the film or not seems to depend on the extent to which you accept the film’s meandering pace and its experimental and musical deviations from realism; are provoked by the philosophical aspects of its narrative; and whether or not you think all these elements were successfully and meaningfully combined. Reactions to the film, in the reviews I browsed online and in the screening I attended, were largely divided. I was moved and driven to intense reflection, while others were seemingly left cold and unaffected.
- Alifeleti Brown
Cities on Speed: Program 2
‘Bogotá Change’ – Dir. Andreas Møl Dalsgaard
‘Cairo Garbage’ - Dir. Mikala Krogh
Using a couple of strong interviews, and glorious (to my eye) video news footage from the 1980s and 90s, Bogota: Change charts the urban renewal of one of the most decayed cities in South America under the leadership of two eccentric and visionary mayors. Building themes from the first two instalments of Cities on Speed, this reinforced the notion that the modern democratic system, seeking constant consensus, is anathema to change. Bogota: Change depicts how a city transcended this scenario through two vastly different approaches: The first involves experimental, research-based methods, sprung from the academy. The second, equally visionary, is characterized by a project manager ethos: ignoring consensus to efficiently identify and fix a range of infrastructural problems. Although both wildly successful and ultimately popular methods, the former was celebrated for confronting the corrupt Colombian scene and the latter met with huge opposition from a public resistant to such extreme change. This was all hugely thought-provoking stuff, particularly for an Australian audience stultified by the most deadly and uninspiring of elections. What we wouldn’t do for a circuit breaker, someone mad or visionary to commit to some real change, to take a truly different approach.
In contrast, Cairo: Garbage, although inherently interesting in its subject matter, was (forgive me) a stinker of a film. In short, it was aimless, repetitive and condescending to its subjects who were treated to a whimsical soundtrack which gaily implied: These silly poor people: they don’t know what to do with their rubbish! Where the insulting soundtrack clearly didn’t suit, it was simply turned down, idling in anticipation of the next uproarious third world waste disposal caper. Truly idiotic intertitles and incoherent graphics were icing on the cake.
What I couldn’t avoid asking myself at the end of the session was: why was I watching this at MIFF, a film that, rather than taking the documentary form into account, just consumes it and spews it out with arbitrary subject matter inserted. Regardless of each film’s individual merits, Cities on Speed would have looked better and been less disappointing had I been watching it, say, on a Wednesday night on SBS, rather than at the Melbourne Film Festival.
- Jessie Scott
