REVIEWS
The Galapagos Affair: Satan Came To Eden Reviewed by Mark Adams
Things People Do Reviewed by Fionnuala Halligan The end credits on film editor Saar Klein’s directorial debut pay “special thanks” to his mentor, Terrence Malick, but the tribute is not really necessary: Klein’s debt is writ large on-screen throughout Things People Do, a seductively flawed tale of the middle-class American dream gone adrift in the desert. The film’s finely calibrated rhythms, impressionistic visuals and repeated motifs pray an attractive hymn to the man Klein worked with on The Thin Red Line and Tree Of Life, and the result is an intriguing, occasionally haunting work of some power where the ethereal visuals ultimately threaten to overpower a more grounded narrative. Israeli-born, German-national Klein sits his film on the arid edges of the New Mexico desert, where his isolated characters maintain a tenuous grip on their lives. There, in the quasi-wilderness, he switches between the oblique visual style of his mentor and the more linear pursuits of a morality play, but the two components do not always gel. Much rides on the shoulders of Wes Bentley as nice guy Bill Scanlin, a debt-ridden insurance adjustor and father of two who, we learn, has been let go from his job — although he keeps up the day-to-day pretence of normality in front of his family. A key motif in the film is a swimming pool that Bill has installed in this drought zone, for which he borrowed $40,000; it is a stunning, repetitive visual, emblematic of Bill’s poor decision-making. Bill is a straight-up guy, too nice for the dog-eat-dog world in which he is trying to live (in fact, he seems to identify with a stray dog in the desert). With a complicated family background — his father, a cop on the take, committed suicide, while his rich father-in-law considers him inferior — Bill places great emphasis on honesty. He wants to be a stand-up man, but is being tested to the point of no return in a society where there is no quarter given to those who stumble. A chance meeting with a police detective in a bowling alley gives Bill a friendship that is a little more shaded. Frank (Isaacs) says, “I don’t make judgments,” which is helpful, because a suicidal Bill is about to make a series of very bad choices, starting with an accidental hold-up in a show home and escalating to armed robbery. Producers Sarah Green and Hans Graffunder, like Klein, have worked extensively with Malick, while cinematographer Matthias Königswieser makes a noteworthy feature debut here. Music, from Marc Streitenfeld, also calls to mind Malick, with Chopin, Bach, even Bizet featuring in a string-based score. Locations are vividly memorable — even though they are shot through Königswieser’s bleached lens — and Chad Keith’s production design is also a star.
PANoRAMA SPECIAL US. 2014. 110mins Director Saar Klein Production companies Brace Cove Productions, Faliro House Productions International sales Celluloid Dreams, info@ celluloid-dreams.com Producers Sarah Green, Hans Graffunder Executive producers Nicolas Gonda, Ryan Rettig, Michael Macs, Kurt Billick, David Klein, Doug Liman Screenplay Saar Klein, Joe Conway Cinematography Matthias Königswieser Editors Hank Corwin, Saar Klein Production designer Chad Keith Music Marc Streitenfeld Main cast Wes Bentley, Jason Isaacs, Vinessa Shaw, Haley Bennett
At the highly charged dramatic core of Dayna Goldfine and Dan Geller’s intriguing documentary, there is a dramatic feature-film version crying out to be remade. Sex, violence, bitter conflict and an unresolved murder mystery are the defining aspects of its story of how a plan to set up a new life in a idyllic island location goes so badly wrong. The film, which has been shorn of some nine minutes since its first screening at Telluride Film Festival, may be rather too padded with tangentially linked contemporary interviews, but at its heart is some wonderful material and a gripping real-life story. The film should interest buyers (it has been picked up by Zeitgeist for the US) as well as other film festivals. The voice casting of top talents such as Cate Blanchett, Thomas Kretschmann, Diane Kruger and Connie Nielsen will also be appealing. Goldfine and Geller — who made acclaimed doc Ballets Russes — focus on an idealistic plan in 1929 by 43-year-old Berlin physician Friedrich Ritter, who left his wife and brought his younger lover, the also married Dore Strauch, to live in isolation on Floreana, one of the Galapagos Islands. He was determined they should live off the land, though she was not as physically able to cope with the rigours of their new life. Home-film footage, photographs and newspaper accounts of their new life provide a vivid glimpse into this Eden — a solitary paradise that was interrupted by new arrivals. First were rather staid married couple Heinz Wittmer, his pregnant wife Margret and their teenage son, Harry, who appeared three years later, inspired by what they had read about Ritter. Ritter just about managed to put up with them, but the relative harmony of island life was thrown into disarray with the arrival of the so-called Austrian Baroness Eloise von Wagner Bosquet and her gigolos, Robert and Rudolf. She was a personality of epic proportions, and while hardly beautiful she brimmed with sensuality and relished her unconventional sexual arrangement. Following a drought in 1934, there were a series of fatal incidents and people vanished from the island never to be seen again — prompting one interviewee to say it would take Sherlock Holmes to solve the mystery. The fact the character voiceovers are handled by actors such as Blanchett (Strauch), Kretschmann (Friedrich Ritter), Kruger (Margret Wittmer) and Connie Nielsen (the Baroness) gives the film an additional edge. It veers into melodrama at times, and there is a niggling sense that modern-day interviews with tangentially linked locals provides rather distracting padding when what the viewer wants is the story of Ritter, the Baroness and their fractured Eden.
BERLINALE SPECIAL US. 2013. 120mins Directors Dayna Goldfine, Dan Geller Production company Geller/Goldfine Productions International sales The Film Sales Company, www.filmsalescorp.com Producers Dan Geller, Dayna Goldfine, Celeste Schaefer Snyder Executive producer Jonathan Dana Screenplay Dayna Goldfine, Dan Geller, Celeste Schaefer Snyder, based on the books, journals, articles and letters of Dore Strauch, Margret Wittmer, Friedrich Ritter, Heinz Wittmer and John Garth Cinematography Dan Geller Editor Bill Weber Music Laura Karpman Voice cast Cate Blanchett, Diane Kruger, Connie Nielsen, Thomas Kretschmann, Sebastian Koch, Josh Radnor
February 11, 2014 Screen International at Berlin 11 n