It's not that Guns is lacking in good ideas. It's got a bunch of them, any two of which might have made a pretty good start to a funny film. For instance there is the idea that this is a documentary gone bad about a film gone bad. And here I give a shout-out to Keith Scales (who does a plausible Richard Attenborough) as the frustrated documentarian Nigel Nado. Then there's the idea of the director being a sociopathic con artist. Yes, you are saying, but what makes that different from any other film... and that's my point. Or there's the sudden death of the entire cast from bad pasta salad. Now death by pasta salad has to be funny any way you look at it and here in Guns it does get dangerously close to funny.
More nuance and less wackiness might have saved Guns
Tony is a proud urban artist in a Paris suburb. He paints graffiti. He has a sidekick, Jockey, a twelve-year-old kid who has never left the city. Jockey's dad has a heart attack one night, and a nurse comes to attend. Her name is Gloria. Tony and Jockey steal a car only to find that there's an old man in the back seat who had been asleep.
Leon (Yves Montand) rounds out the trio of mismatched buddies as they set off in search of their own personal blisses. Tony wants to find his nurse. Jockey wants to see real snow on a mountain. And Leon wants to find that place called Island of the Pachyderms where he fell in love with that girl all those years ago.
Island of the Pachyderms doesn't play like a very deep movie. It's a sentimental buddy picture, and not enough more. The "road trip" format is a structure that allows lots of time for dialogue. The characters are always moving, searching, meeting tangential characters, and talking. Beineix often puts them in the great outdoors, walking through forests, making their way across a wide screen of hay bales, or looking out into the water. Leon says that nobody shouts anymore, meaning we're too urban, we never test our voices against the entire world, only against the human world.
By the end, the characters have achieved their individual goals, but they haven't really grown. The film proves to be a melody and not a chord; it has a strong arc but weak depth.
Since much of Plympton's colored-pencil animation isn't seen outside of film festivals, Bill Plympton's Dog Days will be a treat for his fans, and a good introduction to his work for those who have never heard of him. It has seven short films made from 2004-2008, music videos, segments from television specials, documentaries, as well as some interesting bonus features.
The dog in the title is the protagonist of three of the shorts, Guard Dog, Guide Dog and Hot Dog. He's pudgy and yellow, and inexplicably, has a belly button. His body vaguely resembles a bulldog, while his attitude is that of a smaller dog. He wants very badly to please humans, but he's much more enthusiastic than competent.
Plympton's best work toys with audience expectations. The dog is an appealing character who deserves to succeed, but things never work out the way we or he hope. Another example is Spiral, which starts out as abstract animation. Just when viewers might start feeling bored, the story takes a surprising turn.
The most interesting bonus feature is an episode of "Art or Something Like It," a show on a New York City cable channel. The 22-minute segment features an interview of Plympton illustrated with clips of his work. It's a good overview of his career and Plympton makes a good subject. When he was finally offered that dream job with Disney in the early '90s, he was able to turn them down.
The Saragossa Manuscript is being pitched as a cult film once championed by Jerry Garcia. Why that would validate it as a great film (which it is) is not clear. Also on the fan list is Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese whose cinematic opinions do carry more weight.
It is a better film than its obscurity warrants, and I wonder why it is so relatively unknown. Perhaps when it was filmed in Poland in 1965 it was already 10 years out of fashion.
Saragossa Manuscript is taken from a Polish novel of approximately the same name written in 1815 and both are built around the literary device of a "frame narrative," a story that serves to introduce another story. The sense I got was that the characters are themselves simply frames for their stories like the story-tellers in Canterbury Tales. And that story often leads to yet another one... a tale within a tale within a tale like a Russian nested doll. The joy in watching this film comes in the flow of one story opening up within another. Trying to keep all the plots in order or in relation to each other may be futile. But then I've only seen the film once and this is a film that begs to be seen again and again.
The film becomes a sort of X-Files meets Barry Lyndon with its satin and powdered wigs, dueling aristocrats, supernatural secret agents, hidden agendas, and mystic societies. More stories are told... and stories within stories. Curiously the deeper we go into the nested narratives, the more un-supernatural they become. It is the uppermost narrative that has all the ghosts and is most bizarre.
After making several films with inscrutable, psychologically damaged characters, Jean-Jacques Beineix directed a surprisingly straightforward film in Roselyne and the Lions.
Roselyne is the title character, but the movie opens on Serrurier clowning in class and doing poorly in his studies. Before long he's volunteering at a chintzy zoo in Marseilles where a pretty young lion-tamer-in-training catches his eye. He signs up as the only other student in lion-tamer school, and they grow together. Their teacher, Frazier (Gabriel Monnet), is a gruff and stout man, and he gives them the stern and sturdy advice they'll need later on.
They work their way up to the biggest circus in Europe, in Berlin, where they prepare for their big debut. They work harder than ever before with professional colleagues like Klint (who looks as though he might have once been an East German intelligence officer) who runs the tiger show. The finale is a grand piece of circus art, at once classy and kitschy. It's what the protagonists were striving for the whole three-hour movie. There are a few surprises at the finale, but only in the style, not in the dramatic arc.
After Beineix's more cryptic films, one might reasonably ask if there is something going on beneath the surface of Roselyne and the Lions. I think not. I think it's a straightforward story about the shape of an artistic career. At one point in Berlin, a local reporter interviews Roselyne about their new act. To him, the appeal of lion taming is obvious: it's a half-dressed woman with a whip and a crop, in a cage, dominating. But Beineix plays it very straight. Maybe lion taming is a strange enough profession that you don't need to build a gratuitously twisted story around it.
A woman lies dead in a gutter. Her brother Gerard (Gerard Depardieu) broods about it. Gerard lives with his father in a cheap house with his stepmother and his girlfriend. At a bar he meets Loretta (Nastassja Kinski), the woman with the red car who might sweep Gerard away from his girlfriend. There is a love triangle. There is jealousy. Someone hires a hit man.
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect to this whole soap opera is that it's impossible to tell why people act the way they do. Loretta turns every head in the bar but chooses Gerard. Gerard lets this strange woman woo him even though he doesn't seem particularly horny or lonely. The hit-man subplot comes from out of the blue.
It's possible there's a dramatic point somewhere in all the ennui and mysterious motives. It's possible the film lost something on video or in the translation. More likely, Beineix's vision, assuming there was one, didn't translate well to the screen.
Give credit where it's due, The Moon in the Gutter is a torrid, steamy, Tennessee Williams-esque story. The lighting and sets contribute to the film's atmosphere -- characters slouch and sweat and fan themselves under red and green night. The sets are often stagey, especially Gerard's front yard and the alley where his sister was killed. But it's a long, slow, torpid slog. If only it had the simmer and boil of Betty Blue the heat might have been more bearable.
There is no film footage from Johnny Cash's milestone live recording at Folsom Prison, so anyone making a documentary called "Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison" is in for a real challenge.
Writer Michael Streissguth and Director Bestor Cram make as good an attempt as possible. At the same time they happen to reveal why, without primary footage, "as good as possible" isn't perfect.
Writer Michael Streissguth tells a comprehensive story about the album Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison. He gives a bit of background on Cash himself, on the appeal of performing for prisoners, and on the decision to record at Folsom. He analyzes the set list and takes a tangent to introduce the songwriter of one of the songs, Glen Sherley, who was incarcerated at Folsom at the time. He follows Cash and Sherley beyond the recording and on toward their deaths.
Crams uses newly created animations from four different animators to make music videos. One of the styles looks hand-animated. One of the neater styles uses computer cutouts of vintage photographs to give them the illusion of depth and motion.
We're all selfish and greedy, and we'd all compromise our principles for the right price. So says a fast-paced, densely packed black comedy from Poland called Wesele, or Wedding.
Our story takes place over the course of a single evening, beginning with a wedding. The priest sets the tone by working into the ceremony the maxim that the love of money is the root of all evil. Before long, the father of the bride interrupts the joyful proceedings with his lavish gift: a new silver Audi sports car. His generosity is competitive. It's self-aggrandizement through generosity.
Writer/director Wojciech Smarzowski keeps things moving like a screwball comedy, with one development after another introducing more and more chaos into the story. The Wedding is probably funnier in Polish, but even to this American the timing looks impeccable. The casting and costumes help the comedy immensely. There are rugged, authentic faces, women of impressive girth, and only-in-the-sticks hairdos like the greasy combover of the local notary public.
What makes The Wedding one notch better than a mere decent comedy is the careful that keeps most of the jokes and situations focused around greed. One guest, insincere but polite, unknowingly curses the family with "May your whole life be as beautiful as this night."
Most of the details in the early "parts" of this documentary on composer Philip Glass are of limited interest. If they serve a purpose, it's to get us acquainted with Glass -- intelligent, hard-working, soft-spoken, yet impatient, verging on short-tempered.
But as Glass starts talking about the meaning of music, the depth of his genius starts to emerge. Glass begins to talk to Hicks's camera as an equal. And that's when we get some really interesting insights into how a composer views music. Hicks manages to bring the audience in to the hot molten core of a deep conversation with Glass. I loved hearing a composer talk about the limits of hearing, as though he were speaking to another gifted composer about the perils of their profession.
But Hicks presents Glass warts and all. Glass can seem impatient and overbearing. His wives generally speak well of him but acknowledge his personal flaws. While one wife speaks intimately to the camera about the rocks in their relationship, Glass barges in and demands her computer password. The movie shows Glass' spiritual journey, but also hints at his being suckered by shaman half his age whose philosophy, from what I can gather, is one of humiliation and endangerment.
The best part of the film is the middle act, which builds on the factual foundation from the first part, and moves into the meaning of music. The conclusion involves a lot of footage from a new Glass opera, which is visually interesting and gives the audience a chance to hear some new music. But Glass was better when we were talking about the subject with the man himself.
A new documentary about Garrison Keillor (creator of the radio show A Prairie Home Companion) is subtitled The Man on the Radio in the Red Shoes. The documentary, however, does not explain the origin or meaning of Keillor's red shoes. That might have been a minor quibble, but it turns out to be a symptom of deeper flaws with the documentary.
Filmmaker Peter Rosen got very good access to Keillor's home and work while shooting The Man on the Radio. As he told our film-festival audience, and as is apparent from the movie, Rosen was a fly on the wall. Rosen and his video equipment would stay in the room with Keillor while he worked, to the point where Keillor would begin talking to himself, apparently unaware that Rosen was still listening in. Rosen occasionally uses these internal monologues over video footage of Keillor going about his business. Keillor rides in a cab or walks on the streets of New York, a monologue from another time and place running on the soundtrack.
But a fly on a wall is limited in what he can learn. He can't ask questions, steer the conversation, or challenge someone who is telling a lie. He can only observe. I am not a fan of the talking-head documentary, but The Man on the Radio might have benefitted from some direct questions. Rosen seems unable to tell his story very directly. For example, Keillor doesn't mention the red shoes, and Rosen never asks, so we're left not knowing the meaning of the title.
What the movie does present is a peek into how Keillor's work habits (big, heavy laptop - always on, Keillor focused and oblivious to the rest of the world, lips moving as his internal voice leaks out) and his relationship with his colleagues (high expectations, little direction, friendly but impersonal).
Sonny (Ryan Carnes) dreams of entrepreneurial success. Instead he wakes up to a blaring alarm, a high-maintenance girlfriend you want to punch in the face, an obese dog and an annoying neighbor. Welcome to the life of a man who's tired of working for and living with schmucks but doesn't know it yet.
The theme of exploring corporate burnouts pursuing their personal and entrepreneurial ambitions is an interesting theme that deserves more exploration. At some point we've all questioned whether we can do it better under our own shingle than under the corporate roof.
But choppy editing combines subplots and supporting characters that do not service the master plot or propel the main characters toward any kind of playable action. The viewer is asked to traverse huge and consecutive story gaps with repeated leaps of faith. Insult cameos featuring Morgan Fairchild (Chandler's Mom from Friends) and Tony Sirico (The Sopranos) are equally unfulfilling.
This movie should be Office Space meets Wall Street with an Austin Indy South-by-Southwest spice. Instead, it's a choppy and predictable 85 minute mess. This is a shame because the premise drew me in, the trailer was slick without giving too much away and I really wanted to like this movie.
On paper, The Pink Panther 2seems solid. Start with the cast. It features John Cleese, Jeremy Irons, Alfred Molina, Andy Garcia, Lily Tomlin and the outrageously ravishing Aishwarya Rai. Throw in a screenplay that works better than the first Martin Panther and all seems primed for gold.
But then there's the weak link. Steve Martin seems more cloying and annoying this time around. For Sellers, it was one element of a broad, seamless caricature, a nasally voice behind a mouth that butchered whatever language was being spoken. For Martin, the accent is an excuse to mug for the camera and make cutesy faces. Martin's is a caricature of a caricature.
Perhaps next time yet another reboot is in order. And next time recruit another British actor to play Clouseau. Chat up Sacha Baron Cohen and see where he can go with the role.
Fox has once again released a technically superb Blu-ray disc. The picture pops with color and rich detail, all the better to appreciate Aishwarya Rai... and film grain.
Blame it on the economy, blame it on a new presidency or a new sense of consumer conservatism, whatever the case, Confessions of a Shopaholic didn't find a lot of buyers during its theatrical run. Actually, that's a shame. It's a mighty happy little movie with a lot of spunk and a decent message. Aside from a jab at a CEO raking in the bucks while his company's investors eat a (modest in the current economy) 8% loss, Confessions doesn't have the satirical bite of The Devil Wears Prada (the book, not the movie) and it doesn't have the sophistication of Mike Nichols' Working Girl, but it does have Isla Fisher.
Fisher ( I Heart Huckabees) stars as Rebecca Bloomwood, a woman who prefers the security of a good sale to the love of a man (after all, you can't return a man like you can cashmere, she says). Fisher, who was born in Oman to Scottish parents, really gets her role as a fashion-obsessed New Yorker. She's gorgeous, funny, quirky -- she is perfectly cast. It doesn't matter if she's indulging in some really, really bad dance moves or embarrassing herself in a really, really bad job interview, she's really, really funny. And this should've been a breakout movie for her.
A journalist with her sights set on working for the fashion-fabulous Alette magazine, Rebecca winds up getting her foot in the door by taking a job at Successful Saving, a money magazine run by the same publishing house. The joke is Rebecca has no dollar sense, yet she winds up earning international fame as "The Girl in the Green Scarf," serving up financial advice in laywoman's terms. Unfortunately for her, she's run up quite a bill and has a pit-bullish debt collector hot on her trail. Sharing in her world is a terrific supporting cast that includes a number of A/A-/B+-listers, including Kristin Scott Thomas, John Lithgow, Julie Hagerty, John Goodman, Joan Cusack, Lynn Redgrave and Wendie Malick.
Careful storytelling and emotional power make Dear Zachary one of the best documentaries in years.
Like Surfwise and51 Birch Street, Dear Zachary tells its story in several distinct acts. Director Kurt Kuenne withholds some information for dramatic effect and to give his story a feature-film-sized arc. What initially looks like an amateur's home movie (in fact that's what it is) turns into a gripping drama about a lost friend, and the emotions of pain, grief, and longing for justice (or revenge?) that go with it.
Part of what makes Dear Zachary such a great documentary is the power of the story that it uncovers. You could go so far as to say that the film is about good and evil. The film presents a rare and genuine example of evil, along with the reactions of the rest of humanity. The film reveals that humanity gives evil the benefit of the doubt. And evil, predictably, takes advantage of that. Evil destroys without reason. On the other hand, good is reluctant to destroy anything -- even evil -- because destruction should not come lightly or easily.
Dear Zachary is a powerful film. Midway through, you may find yourself uncomfortable, outraged, saddened, and indignant. But Kuenne guides you through the emotional landscape safely, and leaves you back where you started, touched by the journey, but safe and sound.
While Jason finally dons the infamous hockey mask for the first time, the abandonment of any and all drive-in Hitchcock aspirations sends this third slasher party into a ho-hum state of gore for gore's sake.
The action then picks up directly after the events of Part 2, with a TV newscaster reporting on the recent horrors. What follows is a series of 3D effects that help explain why the resurgence of 3D back in the '80s was a short-lived phenomenon. The bulk of the effects involve the equivalent of a poke in the eye. There's the replacement of a laundry line pole, with the pole jabbed out into the audience before getting put back in its place; there's also, quite literally, an eyeball handed out to the audience and there's also that timeless classic: the passing of a joint into the crowd.
This Blu-ray incarnation of the 3D experience is by no means ideal, but it is a decent novelty for a little amusement. Those wishing to concentrate on the finer aspects of the film, such as characterizations and plot points, can do so with the accompanying 2D presentation. Rest assured a far more high-tech take on 3D for home presentation is in the works, seeking to take advantage of the increased popularity of the once-again resurgent theatrical 3D presentation.
Part 2turns out to be a decent sequel thanks in large part to a creepy finale that, as with the first movie, slices and dices Hitchcock's Psycho.
One year after the first movie scared up big box office, but five years after the events at Camp Crystal Lake, Jason's all grown up and at the center of a new spree of murderous mayhem. Unfortunately, by virtue of the fact he's essentially a feral man-boy with limited formal education, he ain't the sharpest blade in the drawer.
One of the movie's saving graces is a fun, but sick, sense of humor that plays with horror movie conventions as it serves up false starts, red herring showers and vicious scene shifts, such as focusing in on a sweet little dog named Muffin then cutting to a grill full of hot dogs. And there's also a skinny-dipping scene that plays on the riff from Jaws.
Clocking in at a scant 86 minutes, including that prior episode recap, this first sequel holds pretty steady in its own sordid way, but the finale is extremely abrupt, almost as if they simply ran out of film and decided, "OK. Well... that works..."
The biggest visual shock in The Machinist is Christian Bale himself. In a move that takes "dedication to the craft" to a whole new level, Bale shed more than 60 pounds, a full third of his body weight, to tackle the role of Trevor Reznik.
What's Trevor's problem? Why is he so skinny? Well, he's haunted; he hasn't slept in a year and he consumes more java than grub. He's one troubled soul who spends his evenings cleaning his bathroom floor with bleach and a toothbrush.
The Machinist: Hiding in Plain Sight (14 minutes) is a nifty little segment that details the story's use of symbolism and divulges some of the bits of classic literature that served as inspiration. It's a great analysis of the minutiae and provides food for thought while revisiting the movie.
The picture (2.35:1) is quite well done, in spite of some edge enhancement that is glaringly obvious in spots. On the bright side, the more often than not the image offers loads of detail (the hairs on Bale's bony chest, for example) and the black level is perfect, especially given the amount of deep, dark blackness used in the movie.
In 1975, Sydney Pollack and Robert Redford played a tense spy game called Three Days of the Condor. But in 2009, as the film sees its Blu-ray debut, it's hard for this gen x-er to take the tension seriously. It's still fun, but it has a dose of camp that might not have been intended 30 years ago.
Robert Redford plays an academic. He works among the tweed in a converted genteel brownstone. He reads for a living -- books, magazines, anything -- and then reports to the CIA any surprising trends or codes or ciphers. Returning from lunch, he discovers his colleagues have been gunned down. Now he has to find out why they were targeted, and whether to trust his life to his CIAs superiors whom he's never met. He takes a woman hostage in trying to escape some suspicious-looking spooks. She warms to him and then decides to help him.
The story is just as suspenseful as the modern day Bourne movies. But Three Days of the Condor is much slower paced, which might frustrate younger audiences (personally, I like the rhythmic contrast). Really, the movie is mostly about the chase, but the MacGuffins are energy production and the flow of information, two topics that are still timely today. These larger themes help the movie seem less anachronistic.
The disco-influenced jazz score from Dave Grusin sets the era; it's hard not to chuckle at the funk with strings. And then there are the halo silhouettes filmed in soft focus with a star filter glinting off Redford's lower lip. Some of this '70s stuff looks silly, but it's not out of place within the context of the movie.
Although it is a documentary about the 1960s, don't expect to see hippies and Woodstock in A Cat Without A Grin. Those tired American stereotypes play no part in Chris Marker's four-hour, three-ring-circus of a film. The main attraction in A Cat Without A Grin is Paris in May of 1968... which was a sort of a French Woodstock in that it's a watershed event by which all others are judged. Student demonstrators took to the streets and battled with police and a general strike almost toppled the government.
Marker is an accomplished filmmaker... he directed La Jetée (1962, the inspiration for12 Monkeys), Sans Soleil (1983) and the Akira Kurosawa documentary AK (1985). In the 1960's he was making Left-looking documentaries on politics in France and Europe and of course filming on the streets during May '68.
Crowded onto the same stage of A Cat Without A Grin are Russian tanks in Prague, Che Guevara in South America, the American War in Viet Nam and Chairman Mao's Red Guards in China. The common thread connecting all of them was the sudden appearance of a new international Leftist movement hell bent on confronting the conservative "Establishment"... whoever that might be.
The film is one long montage of images and impressions from around the years 1967 to 1973. Unless you are really up on your history, most of it will be a jumble of people marching in the streets and cops cracking heads. Occasionally I would see a scene I recognized ... National Guard troops marching across the lawn at Kent State, Ohio, and the effect on me was electrifying. To a French audience familiar with the history, the film as a whole must be quite a ride. This will probably confuse an American audience whose repressed understanding of history can allow the names 'socialist' and 'fascist' to be equated without a blush.
Back in the '80s, John Hughes was an unrivaled cinematic trailblazer. During the course of seven wildly productive years he directed seven popular, epoch-defining flicks.He also wrote and/or produced a slew of other hits before tanking with Curly Sue in 1991. In the thick of Hughes' hay-making period was Ferris Bueller's Day Off, a mild success in theaters that achieved "cult classic" status thanks to home video, much like Napoleon Dynamite several years later.
In brief, Ferris Bueller is a high school kid with a charmed life. His parents adore him, his sister is insanely jealous of him, everyone else at school admires him (except for the principal) and his girlfriend is incredibly hot. Taking yet another day off from school, Bueller spends the morning managing the parents, the principal and the implementation of his free day. Then he's off with friends Sloane (Mia Sara, Legend) and Cameron (Alan Ruck, Ghost Town) to check out an art exhibit, hijack a parade float and basically reaffirm the message that life is short. Live it up!
Compared to the majority of high school comedies these days (and just about anything with the names Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen attached), Ferris Bueller's Day Off is a lighthearted, inoffensive affair. Thankfully, Ben Stein, one of the financial gurus on Fox and former host of Win Ben Stein's Money, is on the scene as a teacher of economics. His half-hearted conversational manner bores all his students into a borderline catatonic stupor. And because of that droll, monotone voice, the infamous line, "Bueller... Bueller..." is entrenched in the American lexicon.
All of the video supplements are presented in standard definition (1.33:1) and are rehashed from the 2005 DVD release. It's disappointing to report the John Hughes running commentary from last year's "I Love the '80s" edition DVD is NOT included. That's really lame, Paramount. Certainly a lack of disc space cannot be the excuse.
Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) tries to drive out the new priest in town, Father Brendan (Philip Seymour Hoffman). She suspects him of starting an inappropriate relationship with a boy.
The boy's mother tells Sister Aloysius that her son needs a father figure because his father is disgusted by his homosexual tendencies. Father Brendan is happy to be a father figure, but whether he wants the boy that way is an open question. Hoffman's history of playing sexually dubious characters makes him a great choice for the role, because, as the very title tells us, we will never know whether the accusations against Father Brendan are true.
Some stagey aspects of this drama don't play as well on the big screen. The look is stagey. The dialogue is wordy and stilted and heavy with belabored metaphors. In the scene of highest drama, Sister Aloysius and and Father Brendan try to upstage each other using props and lighting.
While the presentation quality of Sin City on Blu-ray is superb, the clumsy handling of the Blu-ray exclusives and the omission of one of the better standard-def features make this a disappointing release. Those with the deluxe box set DVD are probably better off staying put until another iteration comes around, probably when the oft-rumored Sin City 2finally makes it to the big screen.
While there's another stylized bar fight, believe it or not the best extra footage involves Marv and his mother -- and it's played for laughs. More surprisingly, they're really good laughs.
Nonetheless, Sin City does manage to create a giddy sense of sick, twisted fun as the unflappable good guys battle the Hell-bound bad guys. With that in mind, as far as schlock goes, Sin City is pretty good stuff. As an added bonus, there are plenty of quotable lines ("Kill him for me, Marv. Kill him good.") and it is satisfying to see the bad guys get their comeuppance.
There are a couple things missing from the standard DVD edition. There's no Sin-Chroni-City interactive tour, a real shame since it's a standout feature of the standard DVD release. In their place are two new items. One is Cine-Explore on the theatrical version and the other is Kill 'em Good, an interactive comic book on Disc 2.
Americans don't go to cemeteries to have a good time. We are not as a rule a contemplative people. But in Paris, France, where culture is not a bad word, they have the Père Lachaise Cemetery, an elephant's graveyard of genius and talent.
Consider some of the artists in residence: Balzac, Bernhardt, Callas, Chopin, Delacroix, Méliès, Moliere, Piaf, Proust, Wilde (his memorial is peppered with kiss-marks). If all of that draws a blank, Père Lachaise is the place where Jim Morrison of the Doors is buried. If people still come to Jim's grave 100 years from now then he too can join this elite club.
Though this is a documentary set in a cemetery, it is the living that are the real story in Forever. Honigmann's method is to show a grave and then the people who come to pay their respects. The Japanese piano student who visits Chopin, the Iranian ex-pat paying his respects to the Iranian author Sadegh Hedayat. Of course not everyone buried at Père Lachaise is a star and Honigmann does not neglect the relatives and loved ones of the un-famous who also come to visit. It is through their interpretations and explanations that we understand why this pilgrimage has been made.
