Thursday, July 30th, 2009
The final set of the match between Satyajit Ray (India) and Andrzej Wajda (Poland) takes us to the year 1977, and once again the two directors find themselves on similar ground. Ray’s The Chess Players
and Wajda’s Man of Marble
both open with a newsreel-type sequence, Wajda’s a historical bent and Ray’s an educational one. Both films take a critical look at the practices and ways of their country and countrymen, in addition to the negative influences of outside parties.
Both films also include their own touches of the seventies funky vibe. Wajda does so more through music and character while Ray’s cinematography and set design lends its own brand of funk at times. The Chess Players portrays a much earlier period in history, the mid-nineteenth century, and stays there. Man of Marble, meanwhile, looks at Stalin-era Poland through the lens of a present-day filmmaker, flashing back smoothly between the present and the past.
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Saturday, July 18th, 2009
Docu-biopic? Biopicumentary? American Splendor, co-directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini, takes a unique approach to the life of Harvey Pekar, skirting the line between documentary and narrative film. Since Harvey is known primarily as a character in a comic book, the film includes comic book touches throughout. Additionally, the film peels back the narrative at times to reveal the actual characters, and the actors who portray them, underneath, all set against a stark white background. The many layers of the film are intriguing at first but become annoying toward the end.
Paul Giamatti as Harvey Pekar
For most of the film, Harvey is portrayed by a scowling Paul Giamatti. Harvey actually provides the voiceover (to state the obvious at most times) and is included in the film in bits and pieces. Based on those brief appearances, it makes Paul’s portrayal seem one dimensional, kind of like a comic-book character. Like the many artists who have drawn their own versions of Harvey Pekar for American Splendor (the comic), the directors have drawn their version using Paul Giamatti. That he is no more a true version of Harvey than the black ink on white paper versions is either a testament to the statement they wanted to make or to the failing of the film’s structure. I can’t honestly say which.
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