CineSkinny 4: GFF16, 26-28 Feb

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N0 4 | 26 – 28 FEB

Sun 28 Feb, GFT, 8pm

Poetry in Stop Motion Charlie Kaufman, the king of the oddball movie premise, gives us the lowdown on existential comedy Anomalisa

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ince Being John Malkovich, his screenwriting debut from 1999, in which a failed puppeteer discovers a portal into the soul of the eponymous actor, Charlie Kaufman has been one of the most inventive and unpredictable minds in American filmmaking. His distinctly offbeat screenplays have charmed both audiences and critics, with their delicate dissection of the human condition matched only by the sheer audacity of their cerebral premises. Kaufman returns to

filmmaking seven years on from Synecdoche, New York with the Oscar-nominated Anomalisa, which he co-directed with Duke Johnson.

At first glance, this low-key romantic drama appears unusually reserved from a writer whose previous work has been as reliably unpredictable as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Adaptation. However, Kaufman devotees will have already clocked that Anomalisa is not the typical romantic drama that usually attracts the attention of the Academy. For starters, that aforementioned Oscar nomination is for best animated feature.

You’ll be pleased to hear that Kaufman hasn’t been drafted in for a last-minute rewrite of the latest chapter in the Ice Age franchise. Instead, Anomalisa is an

INTERVIEW:

John Thorp

entirely stop-motion adaptation of a Kaufman play, which was performed only twice at a New York theatre in 2015.

It’s an involving study of existential angst and paths not followed. The focus is Michael Stone (David Thewlis), a depressed but successful author specialising in customer service. In the film we find Michael on the road, away from his wife and family, spending an evening in a city hotel ahead of a public appearance, and desperately in need of a fulfilling human connection. Upon meeting an unassuming and lonely fan named Lisa (Jennifer Jason Leigh), he falls into an instant state of infatuation.

“I had no interest in doing anything after it was a continues…

HIGHLIGHTS

FRI 26

Heart of a Dog

Heart of a Dog CCA, 6.30pm Queen of New York cool Laurie Anderson’s first feature in decades is a dreamy montage letting us into the mind of the idiosyncratic artist and her relationship with her pooch.

Top Gun IMAX, 7.30pm A silver lining to Tony Scott’s untimely death is that critics have been rethinking his bombastic style. Was Top Gun brainless Regan propaganda, or an expressionistic exercise in pure cinema? Judge for yourself on the (very) big screen.

Lucky Star with Live Score Mackintosh Queen’s Cross, 7pm This recently rediscovered melodrama from 1929 gets the live score treatment from Glasgow-based vocalist Ela Orleans.

play,” Kaufman is keen to stress over the phone from Paris, where he’s close to winding up a day of press. “We did two performances of it, back in 2005; when it was over, it was over. And I even liked the fact that it was ephemeral; if you didn’t see it, you didn’t see it.” He had a change of heart around 2012, however. “I was kind of really desperate to get something made; I’d been struggling to get a movie made since 2008, and this was a possible opportunity. There was no harm in trying. And then we got the money and it became a real thing and I was excited about the prospect of figuring out how to turn this into a movie.”

“ Animation is stigmatised in America.”

Duke Johnson The money Kaufman refers to arrived largely from a public Kickstarter campaign, founded by co-director Johnson, and his producer Dino Stamatopoulos, who had become friends with Kaufman and acquired the script to the littleseen play. Kaufman is unwilling to comment on whether the stop-motion aesthetic might have appealed to his fans (“I really don’t want to think about that, it’s a bad road to go down,” he adds), but suggests the involvement of Dan Harmon, creator of cult television hit Community, also had something to do with the overwhelming support.

Synecdoche, New York, Kaufman’s first film as director, earned the usual plaudits from critics but – despite its grandscale ambition and a career-best performance from the late Philip Seymour Hoffman – failed to connect with audiences and recoup much of its budget. Having openly discussed his struggle to get another film made in the wake of its commercial failure, Kickstarter funding represented relative freedom for Kaufman and Johnson, who were eventually approached by Paramount Studios.

“I thought it was a great experience,” Kaufman reflects.

“If we do it again, we’d love to have the same kind of freedom,

and to have a bit more money – that would make things comfortable in a way that might not have been the last time.”

With the exception of Thewlis and Leigh’s affecting performances as Michael and Lisa, all of the other characters in Anomalisa’s painstakingly detailed world are voiced by Tom Noonan, who offers only minor variations between male and female or adult and child. The key to the film’s visual power is its minuscule renderings of the subtleties of human emotion, as well as the cripplingly mundane course of everyday interactions. A contrary surreal style to witness in stopmotion, this vision reaches its affecting peak during an extended sex scene that’s so intimate and uncomfortable it demolishes all risk of comparison to Team America: World Police’s absurd puppet fornication.

Johnson refers to conversations he and producer Dino Stamatopoulos had prior to Anomalisa, expressing a desire “to use stop-motion to explore more adult stories and more sophisticated emotional ideas and characters.” And while the occasional European or Japanese animation might eventually find success in the US film market, either re-dubbed or backed with significant awards buzz marketing, ‘adult’ animation is more often than not relegated to television in the West. Might more sophisticated animation eventually find a future in mainstream cinema?

“I’m not an expert on animation,” responds Johnson. “I can say that I agree that animation is stigmatised in America, at least as something that’s for children. And I believe that it’s a medium for storytelling like any other.”

Written just over a decade ago, one aspect of Anomalisa might have seemed less resonant had it been written more recently. Near the beginning of the film, Michael nervously attempts to get in contact with a face from his past by means audience members won’t have used in years: scrambling through a phonebook. Was it important for Kaufman, a regular on the theme of isolation, to ground his protagonists in a world without social media?

“I think there’s an element of that,” Kaufman muses, but the reason might be simpler: technology dates art. “If I watch an episode of Seinfeld now, and he gets his phone out, and it’s forty feet tall and got an antenna, it’s really distracting.”

R E VIE WS

“ Captures an alienated state so completely”

Time Out of Mind  Director: Oren Moverman Starring: Richard Gere, Ben Vereen, Jena

Malone, Kyra Sedgwick, Jeremy Strong, Yul Vazquez, Michael K. Williams, Steve Buscemi, Brian d’Arcy James, Geraldine Hughes, Colman Domingo Homeless on the streets of Manhattan, George (Richard Gere) lives in the same city as everyone else and in an entirely different world from them. Like another dimension overlaying the one occupied by those who walk the sidewalks on their way to homes and jobs and coffee shops, George wanders the same physical space while remaining separated from the crowd.

Sun 28 Feb, GFT, 3.45pm

Conversations happen all around him but always pushed off to the edge of the frame, the speakers half-obscured or altogether invisible. He’s there but noone sees him because no-one wants to; even when they are forced to interact with him the disconnect remains. Without a home or a job, he doesn’t fit into the city’s machinery and spends most of the movie looking for quiet, in-between places where he can rest undisturbed.

The film captures this alienated state so completely that by the end the average citizens strolling by seem foreign – Moverman draws the viewer into George’s world so effectively that the one they really live in becomes uncanny. (Ross McIndoe)

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HIGHLIGHTS

SAT 27

Danny Says

“ A ‘Johnnie To musical’ in big, bold letters” Office 

Sat 27 Feb, CCA, 8.30pm

Director: Johnnie To Starring: Sylvia Chang, Chow Yun-fat,

Tang Wei, Eason Chan, Lang Yueting, Wang Ziyi In the crime and caper films of director Johnnie To, there’s always been a rhythmic element to how he composes procedural action or violent executions; were it not for the shakiness of the term’s definition, one might be inclined to incorporate ‘musicality’ when describing something like the climactic shootout mayhem of 2012’s Drug War or 2006’s Exiled. As such, it’s not especially shocking that Hong Kong cinema’s elder statesman has

Finders Keepers  Director: Bryan Carberry, Clay Tweel Starring: John Wood, Shannon Whisnant,

Marian Lytle, Tom Lytle, Gene Whisnant Don’t be fooled by its outlandish premise; Finders Keepers is a tale of Southern families in decline, reminiscent of Gone with the Wind. The documentary explores the undoing of John Wood and Shannon Whisnant, and the strange set of circumstances that saw their lives interconnect, and the qualities we’ve come to value as a society.

When junk trading entrepreneur Whisnant finds Wood’s mummified leg inside a grill he’d bought at auction, his initial surprise is overcome by an unfathomable

made a foray into the musical genre with Office. Nor is it surprising that this is very much a ‘Johnnie To musical’ in big, bold letters, as this is set around the 2008 financial crash. Shot in 3D! But it’s really fun!

The star-studded cast (including Chow Yun-fat) are great and the tunes catchy in the moment, if maybe not too memorable post-viewing. The real highlight is the simultaneously bare-bones and elaborate modernist structures To places them in, production design perhaps best described as a blend of Lars von Trier’s Dogville and Jacques Tati’s Playtime, as incompatible as that sounds. [Josh Slater-Williams]

ONLINE REVIEWS Head to theskinny.co.uk/cineskinny for more reviews, including...

Mustang  Anomalisa  Man vs. Snake: The Long and Twisted Tale of Nibbler  One Floor Below 

Danny Says GFT, 5.45pm We’ve been hearing great things about this doc following label executive Danny Fields, who seems to have been at the epicentre of every notable music moment of the 60s and 70s.

FrightFest GFT, all day This weekend of horror began on Friday. Some of the films will be great, some terrible. The real draw, though, is FrightFest’s gorehound audience, who always create a fun movie-watching atmosphere.

Journey to the Shore GFT, 6pm With this story of a piano teacher who’s reunited with her missing husband when he returns as a ghost, Kiyoshi Kurosawa looks to be combining a more mature style with his J-horror roots, which is fine by us.

Sat 27 Feb, CCA, 6.30pm ☺

desire to milk it for TV exposure. His acquisition becomes the talk of international news providers as he exhibits it to paying customers and finds himself embroiled in an ownership dispute with Wood. While the deluded Whisnant fixates on the appendage as a ticket to celebrity status, it similarly embodies the life of privilege and security from which his injured, substance-abusing nemesis has fallen.

Wood is self-aware but desperate throughout his humiliating ordeal, all-too conscious of the shame he brings upon his family. Whisnant’s pathetic lack of integrity, meanwhile, ensures pathos undercuts his villainy, even as we root for his downfall.

(Lewis Porteous)

“ Explores the qualities we’ve come to value as a society”

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Sat 27 Feb, GFT, 8.30pm | Sun 28 Feb, GFT, 11am

HIGHLIGHTS

SUN 28 “ In Turkey, there’s this filter of sexualisation that women are perceived through” Deniz Gamze Ergüven

House Arrest Deniz Gamze Ergüven ruffles feathers with Mustang her spiky coming-of-age tale following five young girls who are demonised in a remote Turkish village. She discusses the controversy

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t the start of Mustang, a group of schoolchildren celebrate the freedom of the summer holidays by heading to the beach and playing in the sea. They are a picture of joy, exuberance and innocence, but not everybody sees it that way. When they return home, five sisters are admonished for their disgraceful behaviour. They find themselves under lock and key, their ‘provocative’ clothing replaced with drab, shapeless dresses, and their futures narrowed to one single possibility: they aren’t going anywhere until husbands are arranged for them.

This reaction might seem absurdly draconian but it is a reality for many young women in Turkey. Deniz Gamze Ergüven has spent much of her life in France, and she feels it has given her a fresh perspective on her native country.

“There’s this thing that I feel strongly when I get into Turkey: it’s this physical thing you feel on your body, this filter of sexualisation that women are perceived through,” she says.

“I guess the fact of being in France maybe made me feel that strongly, whereas if I was in Turkey the entire time I would have felt too familiar.”

Even after having long discussions with her director of photography about the most neutral way to shoot these scenes, Ergüven has been faced with questions by male interviewers about the film’s sensual atmosphere. “It happened once in France when a journalist told me on television that the film is very erotic, and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ It’s in his look, the film is so not erotic. And in Turkey I get that a lot,

Butch and Sundance

Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid GFT, 10.30am GFF’s Dream Team retrospective ends with cinema’s greatest bromance, made three decades before the subgenre was even coined.

Time Out of Mind GFT, 3.45pm Hollywood ledge Richard Gere is in the house, bringing with him a work of urban poetry in which he gives one of his finest ever performances.

INTERVIEW:

Philip Concannon

from the first scene with the wet clothes. I mean, come on.”

Unsurprisingly, Mustang has divided opinion in Turkey, and instead of representing the country at the Oscars, the film was nominated as France’s official entry. “We were told it wasn’t Turkish enough,” the director shrugs. “Our film is more personal and intimate and not like the usual mainstream Turkish films, which are almost like the commedia dell’arte style of acting.” Still, the film’s reach to date has far exceeded any expectations that Ergüven and her talented young ensemble may have had, and she takes great pride in the fact that her film is presenting a more authentic depiction of Turkey than we have seen before, in films such as Alan Parker’s Midnight Express. “That film was a big pile of bird shit dumped on my country,” she says with some conviction when Parker’s name comes up.

But Mustang’s biggest achievement is to connect Ergüven with so many women from around the world who have been emboldened by the film to share their stories. “What surprised me the most was when people from countries with no historical, geographical or even religious intersection with Turkey said, ‘I completely relate to your story.’

In America there are women who come and discuss the sexual abuse thing and relate to it – it’s crazy, the amount of people who have come spontaneously to say that,” she says. “I showed the film in a women’s prison with women from all over the world and they were responsive to even virginity being a huge issue in so many cultures today – and the virginity tests, a lot of women had done that.”

Of course, perhaps there was another reason why Mustang was such a hit at that prison screening. “For me, after the first draft of the script, the very obvious cousin for Mustang was Escape From Alcatraz,” Ergüven adds with a laugh. “I did think it was a little strange to show that movie in prison!”

Peace Officer GFT, 4pm A big winner at Sundance, this timely doc investigates the culture of brutal force doled out by US cops with little or no cause. It centres around a former Utah sheriff whose own S.W.A.T. team unlawfully killed his son-in-law.

Produced by The Skinny magazine in association with the Glasgow Film Festival: Editor-in-Chief Rosamund West Editor

Jamie Dunn

Subeditor

Will Fitzpatrick

Lead Designer

Sigrid Schmeisser

Picture Editor

Sarah Donley

Digital Editor

Peter Simpson

Comm. Director Nicola Taylor Sales

George Sully

Claire Collins

Illustration

Elena Boils

GFF Box Office Order tickets from the box office at www.glasgowfilm.org/festival or call: 0141 332 6535 or visit: Glasgow Film Theatre 12 Rose Street, Glasgow, G3 6RB info@glasgowfilmfestival.org.uk

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