Out of a possible four stars:
| The Cup | ** |
| East is East | **1/2 |
| East-West | **1/2 |
| Time Code | ** |
The Cup -- (In Tibetan, with subtitles) The producers might have subtitled this film "Monks Behaving Badly", though that may leave a misimpression which overstates the movie's G rating. The two star rating that I give it understates how much I enjoyed it or how much I might recommend it to some people. The Cup, in this case, refers to the World Cup Soccer Championship, and was inspired by a true story of a group of Tibetan monks determined to tune-in to the live satellite broadcast of the 1998 event from their Tibetan Monastary in Exile, in a remote area of Northern India. They do this in spite of technical, financial and spiritual difficulties. A rather uneventful and slow-moving script, as one might expect from such a simple plot, nevertheless provides interesting insight into universal concerns common to each new generation of parents, educators and religious leaders in any culture. How does one instill traditional values and knowledge into young people when more modern ways seem to be corrupting them? Do we have anything to fear from these changes? (children -- yes, but perhaps the movie's a bit slow for them; young teens -- yes, but way too slow; older teens -- yes) **
East is East -- The light-hearted humor of this movie competes with sadness and family violence, both verbal and physical, and it's hard to say which comes out the victor, though the ending perhaps gently tips the hat to the former. A Pakistani man immigrates to Britain, opens a fish-and-chips shop, marries a British woman, and together they raise a family of seven children in a neighborhood where foreign-looking people are not warmly-appreciated. As with so many others movies, East is East explores the conflict between traditional and modern values in a cross-cultural environment. Special attention is given to topics such as circumcision and arranged marriages. The advertisements say it "bubbles with life". Indeed, it does! It's poster suggests that it is a screwball comedy. Hardly -- though it has several such moments. Om Puri, who played the sympathetic rickshaw puller in the 1991 movie City of Joy, plays the patriarchal father who is also a dictatorial and abusive ogre, but one who is trying to do right by his immigrant community and through force trys to instill in his family proper respect for his cultural traditions. His wife and children have various coping mechanisms that lend to the movie its lighter moments. However, the sense of renewal and hope at the end may seem insufficient to moviegoers hoping more for entertainment than for sadness. (kids -- probably not, young teens -- if they are somewhat mature, older teens -- yes) **1/2
East-West (Est-Oest) -- (In French and Russian, with English subtitles) After World War II, Soviet expatriot families living abroad were encouraged through patriotic messages and promises of productive lives to return to help rebuild their motherland. Amazingly, many families bought the government line and did return to the Soviet Union. A Russian man persuaded his French wife to go back to Russia with him and their son with the promise that if they didn't like it, they could all return to France. Not so fast, said Premier Stalin and his vast network of spooks and thugs. Taking place over a period of 8 years (1947-1955), East-West is primarily about imprisonment and escape from behind the Iron Curtain. Although it is purely fiction, it is based on generally true circumstances. It is filled with the kind of nuanced irony and contradictions that both Russians and French seem to like in their dramas. Well known Russian actor Oleg Menshikov (who, among other credits, starred in the acclaimed 1992 Russian film Burnt by the Sun) plays a man silently determined to get his family out of the country, but by more-patient, less-risky means than his wife is willing to attempt. French actress Sandrine Bonnaire plays his determined wife who believes her best hope for leaving the country might be with the help of an internationally-competitive swimmer, played by Sergei Bodrov Jr. (from the 1997 Best Foreign Language Film nominee Prisoner of the Mountain), a young man who may be granted permission for foreign travel. It helped that I was accompanied by a Russian-immigrant friend who could provide additional depth of meaning to what many in the West might not fully appreciate; but even lacking such depth, this film successfully puts in stark and frightening context the terror faced by families during the Stalin era, and because it's French, it does so without resorting to the typcial Hollywood penchant for graphic violence. (Children -- no; young teens -- if they are patient about reading subtitles; older teens -- yes) **1/2
Time Code -- This patently experimental film is one where the screen is split into four equal parts, and no cuts or edits occur on any of the four sub-screens for the entire 90 minutes. During that time, a bevy of no-name actors improvise around a pre-defined but losely-structured plot. For both artistry and technique, Time Code is likely to warrent the attention of film students for generations to come. For innovation alone, the film deserves four stars. For plot, however, it deserves hardly any. So, split the difference, and call it two stars. The actors and actresses improvise remarkably well, but since they expected that no editing would be performed on anything they did, it was essential that non of the cadre fall out of character at any time during the 90 minutes, in spite of flub-ups that may occur, lest they piss-off the director, the crew and the other actors by having to start all over again. The film requires audience participation, demanding that they perform their own visual editing, deciding which of the four screens on which to focus their attention at any given moment. At times, I found myself focusing on the action in one screen until I heard folks laughing about something occurring in another screen drawing my attention it. To keep it from overwhelming the audience, director Mike Figgus (who made Leaving Las Vegas, one of my favorite movies of the 1990s) deftly balances the subplots so that very little action and dialogue would be occuring in two or three of the screens at a particular moment, so that one could more easily pick out the most interesting while keeping track of the others. What passes for plot is mainly a bunch of Hollywood types auditioning, performing, doing business, doing drugs and having spontaneous sexual intercourse with each other. The subplots intersect, and the actors cross freely from the view of one camera (on one corner of the screen) into the view of another camera (on another corner of the screen). The film ought to win an Acadamy Award for something, though I'm not sure they've developed a category for this yet. The film editing is remarkable in some ways, and still, any one of the four subplots by themselves would make a painfully boring film. Thankfully, they are all shown at once, and taken together, the magnified effect may be greater than the sum of the parts. Sexual scenes may make this not one for kids. (Children -- no; young teens -- probably not; older teens -- generally okay) **
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