Screenings, page 12
Calvary Reviewed by Tim Grierson
Black Coal, Thin Ice Reviewed by Dan Fainaru The unadorned, unflattering, raw and lifelike portrait of a mid-size northern Chinese town in winter, all frozen over and covered in thick layers of snow, is the best thing in Black Coal, Thin Ice (Bai Ri Yan Huo), the new film from Diao Yinan (Night Train). What’s missing is a solid, well-told plot to keep audiences alert and justify the painstaking trouble taken with the background. The film — which won Berlin’s Golden Bear — is a mystery story presented almost exclusively from the point of view of an ex-cop, and dealing with a series of grisly murders, with the victims’ bodies chopped to pieces and spread over a large territory, hundreds of miles apart. Divorced policeman Zhang Zili (Liao) is seriously wounded and two of his colleagues are killed while attempting to arrest a couple of culprits suspected of committing the first in this series of crimes. Once released from hospital after a long convalescence, he is retired from the force, takes a job as a security guard and drowns his frustration in alcohol. Five years later, after meeting Wang (Yu), an old colleague who is now a police inspector, Zhang finds out that more crimes of the same kind have gone unsolved and decides to investigate, if only to give a sense to his empty existence. All the victims seem to have been connected at some time with the same woman, Wu Zhizhen (Gwei Lun Mei, looking forlorn, lost and melancholy), who works in a small laundry. He tries to approach her, inevitably falls in love with her but, once a lawman always a lawman, and he goes on digging for new facts and information that might reveal the truth. Major leaps of faith are required to follow the story. You have to ignore all the red herrings strewn throughout, and once the case seems to be solved, there is a coda, the plot twisting itself around once more for the final revelation, before ending in a spectacular display of fireworks.
Panorama
Chi. 2014. 106mins Director/screenplay Diao Yinan Production companies Jiangsu Omnijo Movie Company International sales Fortissimo, www. fortissimo.nl Producers Vivian Qu, Wan Juan Executive producers Bu Yu, Daniel Jonathan Victor, Han Sauping, Hong Tao, Hang Xiaoli Cinematography Dong Jinsong Editor Yang Hongyu Production designer Liu Qiang Music Wen Zi Main cast Liao Fan, Gwei Lun Mei, Wang Xuebin, Wang Jingchun, Yu Ailei, Ni Jingyang
Panorama
A loyal Irish Catholic priest spends what he believes is the last week of his life pondering whether he has made any difference at all to his community in Calvary, a rich character drama that is equally eloquent and despairing. Building on the promise of his feature debut, comedythriller The Guard, writer-director John Michael McDonagh travels into more philosophical terrain, ruminating on the limits of faith and basic human decency to bring meaning to our often empty and random existence. A fine lead performance from The Guard star Brendan Gleeson grounds Calvary in a weary resignation that feels lived-in and deeply considered. As the film opens, Father James (Gleeson) is hearing confessions when an unseen parishioner tells him that he was molested by a priest, who is now dead, when he was a boy. As retribution, the parishioner says he will kill Father James in one week, an act he hopes will prove shocking to the community since Father James is respected for his good deeds and loving demeanour. In another kind of movie, Father James would set about to determine the identity of the parishioner, but McDonagh is not so much concerned with that mystery as he is in watching Father James use this startling announcement as a prompt to explore his legacy as a priest. Although chiefly a drama, Calvary retains from The Guard McDonagh’s skill with pithy dialogue. There are not so much comedic sequences in this film as there are comically flawed individuals, and one of the movie’s sadfunny running jokes is that these people do not really see themselves as lost souls. Wherever James looks, his parishioners are selfabsorbed, self-righteous or just plain clueless. There is a gentle comedy to these scenes, but Calvary’s sombre tone intentionally undercuts the laughs: for James, there is nothing funny about his failure to elevate his fellow man. Gleeson brings his usual gruffness to the role, but in Father James he has found a character whose tough exterior belies his warm, steady manner.
Ire-UK. 2013. 101mins Director/screenplay John Michael McDonagh Production companies Irish Film Board, BFI, LipSync Productions, Reprisal Films, Octagon Films International sales Protagonist Pictures, www.protagonistpictures. com Producers Chris Clark, Flora Fernandez-Marengo, James Flynn Executive producers Robert Walak, Ronan Flynn Cinematography Larry Smith Editor Chris Gill Production designer Mark Geraghty Music Patrick Cassidy Main cast Brendan Gleeson, Chris O’Dowd, Kelly Reilly, Aidan Gillen, Dylan Moran, Isaach De Bankolé, M Emmet Walsh, Marie-Josée Croze, Domhnall Gleeson
July 11-12, 2014 Screen International at Jerusalem 11 n