‘Voices in Wartime’ Documentary. Directed by Rick King. Produced by
Jonathan King and Rick King. (Not rated. 74 minutes. At the Lumiere and
Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley.).
In the weeks before the start of the Iraq war, a literary controversy
engulfed the White House. First lady Laura Bush wanted to host a poetry
symposium on Feb. 12, 2003, but one of the invited guests, Sam Hamill,
blanched at the invitation, saying it was hypocritical of the Bush
administration to honor Walt Whitman and Langston Hughes at the same time it
was planning to unleash firepower in the Persian Gulf. Within days, Hamill had
elicited thousands of poems against the war, the symposium was canceled —
and a new anti-war movement had begun.
Hamill is still upset at the Bush administration, as evidenced by “Voices
in Wartime,” an important new documentary that looks at the ways in which
poetry helps people come to terms with conflict. Soldiers write poetry on the
battlefield. Generals read poetry in their war rooms. Anti-war protesters
write poetry in their homes. And poets write (and read) their poems wherever
they can — including in front of the White House, if that’s what it takes
to make a difference.
For more than 3,000 years, people have relied on poetry to voice their
pain and anguish about war, according to “Voices in Wartime,” which features
the words of Whitman (read by Garrison Keillor), Hughes, Lord Tennyson and
many lesser-known poets, including Alexandra Sanyal, a 9-year-old from Boston
who recites a work about snow: “So fluffy and soft … I like to run and jump
into it … Snow stops war and fights that lead to killing. So, snow — come
today.”
Filmmaker Rick King goes to Iraq to get two Iraqi poets on camera, one of
whom (Ali Habash) criticizes the U.S. occupation, saying that Americans are
just cowboys and that his country is actually worse off without Saddam Hussein.
Besides being a study on poetry in wartime, “Voices” is an astute history of
war, thanks to the commentary of New York Times reporter Chris Hedges (author
of “War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning”), Nation writer Jonathan Schell
(author of “The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the
People”) and others who point out that modern warfare claims civilian
casualties at an alarming rate compared with World War I. “The only way to
understand war,” Hedges says, “is to understand war through the eyes of the
victims.”
Along with words that trigger strong feelings, “Voices in Wartime” shows
us affecting images of soldiers and civilians.
It’s a potent mix that underscores the filmmaker’s belief that war should
be avoided if at all possible. Even the military figures interviewed in
“Voices in Wartime” support the conclusion that war is hell. King gets a lot
of voices into his documentary. The time goes quickly — too quickly, really.
This is a film that provides a context and perspective that’s too often
missing from the national conversation about armed conflict.
– Advisory: This film has images of dead bodies.
– Jonathan Curiel
‘Double Dare’ Documentary. Directed by Amanda Micheli. With Jeannie Epper
and Zoe Bell. (Not rated. 81 minutes. At the Roxie.).
For our entertainment, they jump off tall buildings, set themselves on
fire and crash their cars at high speeds. When they’re not hustling for work,
they need to train at the pace of athletes. They get hurt. And the jobs grow
scarce as they age.
They are movie stunt performers, and “Double Dare” tells the story of two
who face all these obstacles and more, because they happen to be women in a
traditionally male occupation.
Jeannie Epper is the veteran with extensive credits, best known as the
stunt double for Lynda Carter in the “Wonder Woman” TV series of the late ’70s.
She’s a grandmother; her daughter’s a stuntwoman; and she comes from a family
of stunt performers (they’re the Flying Wallendas of the stunt world, we’re
informed by no less than Steven Spielberg).
At the other end of the age spectrum is Zoe Bell, a young New Zealander
who doubled for Lucy Lawless in the “Xena: Warrior Princess” show and who
wears a lip ring when not on camera. She travels to Hollywood to scout for
work and winds up auditioning for Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill.”
These two performers of different generations appeared in shows that
offer intriguing contrasts as fantasies about powerful females. Still, the
women have much in common. They sail through the air in extremely
uncomfortable harnesses. They tumble down stairs and smash through walls, and
the revealing costumes they wear also prevent them from using the kind of
padding that often protects male stunt performers. All this, and most
audiences never know their names.
Director Amanda Micheli makes it clear that injuries are a constant
reality — Epper’s daughter needs surgery to deal with the chronic pain she
suffers from a work accident. The stuntwomen are also subject to the
unbreakable law of Hollywood, that the advantage is always to the young and
beautiful.
We see Epper and another old-timer talking with a specialist about
liposuction.
Micheli, based in San Francisco, has an obvious affinity for women in
physically demanding roles — a rugby player, she also directed “Just for
the Ride,” a documentary about female rodeo champions that screened in the PBS
series “POV.”
(Note: “Double Dare” won an audience award for best documentary feature
at the 2004 San Francisco International Film Festival.)
– Advisory: This film is not rated, but has some raw language.
– Walter Addiego
‘A Wake in Providence’ Comedy. Starring Vincent Pagano, Victoria Rowell,
Mike Pagano, Adrienne Barbeau. Directed by Rosario Roveto Jr. (Rated R. 95
minutes. At the Galaxy.).
“A Wake in Providence” might be said to have pleasant echoes of “Garden
State” and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” — except that they aren’t echoes;
this 1999 indie film was made long before those other two hits, and frankly,
is just about as good.
What took so long? The snappy and hilarious tale of Tony (Vincent Pagano),
an L.A. actor who takes his black girlfriend Alissa (Victoria Rowell) home to
Providence, R.I., to meet his Italian American family on the occasion of his
grandfather’s funeral is hilarious and filled with wonderful characters and
situations.
Well-written by Pagano and his brother Mike, who plays his brother
Frankie in the film (they really are from an Italian American family in
Providence), Tony is the type of guy who, despite years in Los Angeles, still
has the keys to the family grocery store. But the old-school family not only
opposes him dating a black woman, but is against him dating anyone who isn’t
FBI (Full-Blown Italian). The lone exception is Frankie and Tony’s aging but
still-hot aunt, played by an aging but still-hot Adrienne Barbeau (warning:
presence of Barbeau may cause moviegoers to fire up their VHS copy of “Swamp
Thing”).
“A Wake in Providence,” which could just as well been called “Awake in
Providence,” is well directed by Rosario Roveto Jr., who keeps the predictable
plot humming along and keeps his actors from going over the top. Rowell is
fetching and achieves that fine balance between emotional outrage and
fragility.
After all, this is all a bit of a surprise for her. When she points out
that ” ‘Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner’ was 30 years ago,” the sheepish Tony
responds, “Nobody in that movie was Italian.”
As she’s about to discover, several members of the family have secrets of
their own.
– Advisory: This film contains some foul language and sexual situations.
– G. Allen Johnson
‘Bad Guy’ Drama. Written and directed by Kim Ki-duk. In Korean with
English subtitles. (Not rated. 100 minutes. At the 4-Star.).
Kim Ki-duk doesn’t make things easy for you. His subject matter is often
grim and off-putting, yet it’s impossible to turn away from his movies, so
it’s good news for adventurous film fans that “Bad Guy” (2001), his landmark
work made before “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter … and Spring” and the
forthcoming “3-Iron,” finally gets a theatrical release in the United States.
“Bad Guy,” playing on a double bill with the Hong Kong police thriller
“Infernal Affairs,” is about a low-class pimp who, spurned during a chance
meeting with a privileged college girl, kidnaps her and makes her into a
prostitute to teach her a lesson. He does, but the main lesson is the one she
teaches him.
The film is filled with lovely images (Kim studied painting in France),
and ultimately becomes, against all expectations, quite moving.
Kim once told me in an interview for The Chronicle that some people find
communication through dialogue impossible, that “violence is a kind of body
language for some people, but it’s more than just violence. … I think all
relationships are a collision of energy, and the tension that comes from that
collision moves the world — it’s the motor of change. Without love or sex,
those changes wouldn’t happen, ever.”
Kim grew up poor and angry, working in factories and getting in trouble
with the police. Indeed, his films are less about violence and sex than a
sharp critique of the social class structure in South Korea. The college girl
in “Bad Guy,” Sun-hwa (Won Seo), is from the privileged class while the pimp
Han-ki (Jo Jae-hyeon), is from the working class.
Only at the end does Kim falter — up until the last 15 minutes, “Bad
Guy” is a masterpiece. Nevertheless the film became his first box-office
success at home after years of success in Europe and at film festivals, and he
has now emerged as one of the world’s most original film artists.
– Advisory: Strong violence, nudity and scenes of rape.
– G. Allen Johnson
‘Mughal-E-Azam’ Drama. Directed and produced by K. Asif. Starring Dilip
Kumar, Madhubala, Prithviraj Kapoor, Durga Khote and Nigar Sultana. (Not rated.
173 minutes. In Hindi with English subtitles. At the Naz8 in Fremont and IMC6
in San Jose.).
One of India’s greatest feature films has been restored and colorized,
giving a new generation of filmgoers a chance to see what all the fuss was
about when “Mughal-E-Azam” (The Great Mughal) was first released 45 years ago.
At the time, it was the most expensive film ever produced in India (costing
more than $3 million) and the only one that took nine years to make —
factors that gave buzz to “Mughal-E-Azam” and helped turn it into India’s
biggest commercial success of the 1960s.
Every adult in India knows the story depicted in “Mughal-E-Azam”: Prince
Salim, the only son of the great Indian emperor Akbar, falls in love with a
courtesan named Anarkali; upset that Salim would choose a onetime slave girl
as the future queen of India, Akbar literally wages war against his offspring
– and also tries to kill the beautiful Anarkali. The story has been told
many times on film and on paper, but this version by director K. Asif may be
the most epic one of all. Not only is it long (at nearly three hours), its
main set is fantastical — like stepping into a Mughal palace that’s 30
times fancier than the Taj Mahal — and its costumes (thanks to
colorization) glitter with stunning shades of gold, pearl, wine, chartreuse
and other rich tones.
The acting and the dialogue in “Mughal-E-Azam” hold up less well after
four decades, but it’s still a treat to see Madhubala (a one-named actress
whose fans liken to Marilyn Monroe) portray Anarkali and sing to Prince Salim,
“When our eyes meet, my thirst will be quenched.” Equal in spectacle: When
Salim (Dilip Kumar) says to her in a later scene, “Love that fears is not love,
it is lust and sin,” and when Salim chastises Akbar for punishing his
relationship with Anarkali. “The emperor should also punish unruly moths who
fall in love with the flame,” he tells Akbar, whom he calls a “bigot.”
“Mughal-E-Azam” has a smattering of Bollywood songs that add to the
film’s allure. The score (re-recorded by the movie’s original music director)
sets the right mood for the love, betrayal and revenge that take place on
camera. In the beginning and the end, Asif has the state of India literally
rise from the ground and talk about the legend of Akbar, Salim and Anarkali. A
Muslim who married a Hindu princess, Akbar ruled over India from the 16th to
17th centuries. Many of the details in “Mughal-E-Azam” are made up, though
Salim really did have major run-ins with his father, and their onscreen
battles over love and inheritance have a real-life resonance that makes this
updated version of Asif’s film worth watching in its fully colorized glory.
– Jonathan Curiel
