Feature: MIFF Diary, Day 9 & 10: On children
It is sometimes hilarious how seriously some people take a film festival. In my diary entry for days 5 and 6 of the Melbourne International Film Festival I mentioned my experience with a man who was very vocally annoyed with all this sound I was making with my friend, chatting during the commercials. I can only imagine his reaction to the screening of Zhang Yimou’s Under the Hawthorn Tree which saw a couple of busloads of high school children piling into ACMI Cinema 2 to have a good old go at world cinema appreciation. As it turned out, their presence there was the best thing about the session as the film ended up another dud from Zhang Yimou, a director fallen from grace for, amongst other things, selling out to direct the Olympic opening ceremony. Zhang Yimou specialises in a kind of dog whistle cinema that plays with the sympathies of liberal-minded people naturally concerned for the lives of individuals oppressed under authoritarian rule without actually being a social critique of that authoritarianism. Under the Hawthorn Tree is no exception. The story of two young people falling in love during China’s Cultural Revolution, one can see that this film would have been unthinkable during Maoist China when films exhibiting a reactionary ideology of individualism were suppressed — In order to convince his lady love to take a break from hard labour to swim in the river, Lao San tells her, “Chairman Mao says one shouldn’t fear hardship or death. I say you should learn to have some fun!” But this tension is never really explored. Instead, the characters express a sunny optimism that the Party will change its policies and when the star-crossed lovers eventually part, it is not due to the Party but due to cancer, that old favourite of screenwriters looking to add a dumb tragic ending to a film. Zhang Yimou has said, “To create art, one must always remember that the subject of people in misery has the deepest meaning, the deepest resonance”. I can’t add much more to that.
But back to those school children in the cinema. They provided the most interesting moments of that screening in the way they reacted to the film in a manner generally quite alien to the festival experience. They squealed loudly when the onscreen kids got into some heavy petting. They laughed at the films corniest moments. I was scared that this whole situation of serious adult filmgoers and irreverent teenagers crammed in a room together to watch world cinema would be a disaster but happily there was not so much friction in the room.
There is an element of adult society that is terrified by the world of children. It represents something not yet tamed that threatens to overturn the social order. This accounts for the horror film trope of creepy children (e.g. in The Ring) and its opposite, the fantasy of the innocent child (e.g. in The Road). Happily, this year’s film festival has had some excellent films about children that express a real interest in exploring their worlds without sugar-coating the wildness of their hearts.
The Dardenne Brothers have given us another excellent film with The Kid With a Bike about a boy named Cyril, abandoned by his father to a group home. His life takes a turn with the introduction of a new foster mother into his life and the attention of a local petty criminal. The film is, like the Dardennes’ others, unadorned yet wonderfully articulate in describing its characters through its attentiveness to gestures. A scene in which Cyril sullenly plays with a tap, much to the annoyance of his foster mother, is a masterclass in telling a story through gestures. But what I was really taken by in this film was Cyril’s rage. He is a wild animal, lashing out at those who care for him, driven to ruthlessly pursue his needs and desires. We feel so much compassion for Cyril but it comes through hard work and this is what constitutes The Kid With a Bike as a great film about childhood for me.
Another film about a wild child, Toomelah, has not been spoken about as kindly by my fellow bloggers who accuse it of being too familiar to previous films about the plight of indigenous people but I would defend it as an exceptional film. It follows a kid in an indigenous community who is kicked out of school for violent behaviour and spends a couple of days with the local drug dealer. Sure there are similarities with The Kid With a Bike but such a comparison would ultimately be reductionist for a film whose concerns are so specific to this community. There is a wonderful Badlands-esque moment early in the film where our little protagonist stares at a display in his school charting indigenous history through old photographs which seem completely alien to him. Memory and identity are key to Toomelah (as in Beneath Clouds). Or rather, it is the absence of memory and identity which is key. The bleak portrait Toomelah paints is of a community hopelessly alienated from its history (one character comically claims his totem was endowed upon him by Jesus) and struggling to piece together a new identity from other cultures (the black gangster fantasy of video game Grand Theft Auto has a curious presence in the film).
Iranian filmmaker Samira Makhmalbaf’s The Apple screened as part of MIFF’s retrospective program and it is another remarkably compassionate film about children. It involves the situation of two young girls locked up for most of their lives in their house by their impoverished parents who are fearful of the outside world. The neighbours call social services and the girls are given freedom to explore their neighbourhood for the very first time. Incredibly acted by the family on whose story the film is based, the film is refreshingly unsentimental in the way it avoids eliciting false pity for the children. They seem just as happy in the house as out and their misadventures in the outside world are often caused by their own thoughtless actions. While we do feel like the children have been wronged by their parents in some sense, the film is also critical of the media who exploited the story and questions the virtue of the social worker who self-righteously intervenes in the family’s life. Right after we watch her smiling benevolently at the father and his children walking into the distance (a strange echo of Mary Poppins here), the film cuts to the family’s blind mother who has been abandoned at home and wanders out into the world alone and forgotten. Fans of the Simpsons will recall Helen Lovejoy’s hysterical cry, Won’t somebody please think of the children?! But it is in moments like this that one is forced to reconsider the complete wisdom of imposing one’s own values on another community. These films are not just concerned with the well-being of children. They are concerned with children as they exist within their specific life-world, their interests inseparable from a community of interests.
FILMS WATCHED:
- Under the Hawthorn Tree — Zhang Yimou
- The Apple — Samira Makhmalbaf
- Peter Tscherkassky Program Two
- It May Be That Beauty Has Strengthened Our Resolve: Masao Adachi — Philippe Grandrieux
- Tabloid — Errol Morris
- Toomelah — Ivan Sen
- Red Dog — Kriv Stenders
- The Kid With a Bike — Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne
PREVIOUS DIARY ENTRIES:
- Day 1: Drinking games, anticipation
- Day 2: On the value of film festivals, love, outcasts
- Day 3: The indignities of employment, the importance of caffeine
- Day 4: On the problem of relating to films
- Day 5 & 6: Man is alone!
- Day 7 & 8: More thoughts on love, the materiality of film
