Arthouse films
Opening this week on the local film-society circuit:
This low-key comedy, named after an Elton John song, belongs to the badly named indie sub-genre known as mumblecore. True to the genre, writer-director Robert Byington prizes awkward wording and well-etched missteps. As in his "RSO [Registered Sex Offender]," uncomfortable interactions make for character-driven humor.
A Madonna song supplies the opening line in a voiceover by despondent Harmony (Justin Rice): "Something in your eyes is making such a fool of me." The desultory plot observes Harmony not getting over Jessica (Kristen Tucker, doubling as the producer). "She's breaking my heart but she hasn't finished the job," whimpers Harmony. "She's still at it. She's like a bear with a fish in its paw."
Byington, who plays Harmony's mean older brother, observes Harmony at a piano lesson, a wedding, a funeral, a birthday party at a bowling alley and in a self-induced coma after overdosing on chocolate. "I'm pretty sure I grew up with limited access to mental health," Harmony confesses. The film's end credits thank the Coalition for Emotional Literacy, which sounds like a joke, but it's not.
Byington writes a wicked kiss-off for Jessica: "You know how when you're watching a movie and you really don't care about the characters anymore? You don't care what happens. They could get cancer or turn out to be terrorists. It really doesn't matter. You're like them with me. For a bunch of reasons or no reason."
Rice, from the band Bishop Allen, also appeared in the micro-budget mumblecore films "Funny Ha Ha" and "Mutual Appreciation," and the bigger "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist." In "Harmony and Me," he's a twentysomething pup with a hangdog mien who doesn't get his heart back from his ex, but you really do care what happens.
No MPAA rating. Running time: 71 minutes. Opening today at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
"Labor Day" was partly financed by the SEIU, "who cooperated fully with the filmmakers," notes director Glenn Silber at the end of this back-patting video that credits the Service Employees International Union for electing Barack Obama. SEIU got what it paid for, but Silber's access gets the rest of us no inside angle on labor's leverage in the 2008 presidential race.
For this documentary, Silber's crews shot in nine states, plus Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. He interviews SEIU leaders, including Tom Balanoff, president of SEIU Local 1 in Chicago, and rank-and-file members campaigning for Obama. One is Pam Keeley, who started a gay activist group in Springfield in 1972. Now a nurse in Seattle, she attends the Democratic National Convention in Denver and rhapsodizes: "This is the culmination of my life's consciousness; all the work I've done over the years as a nurse, as an organizer, as a humanitarian. To reach this point and go into that building with this sense of possibility is profound."
Less than hardhitting reporting is supplied by Jonathan Alter of Newsweek and Karen Tumulty from Time magazine. There are plenty of self-congratulatory scenes of card-carrying unionists canvassing neighborhoods and proudly holding up signs. There's nothing about candidates SEIU backed or fought in the past, or what other unions did in 2008. "Labor Day" is also mum on Obama's platform on unions.
Fans of Silber's "The War at Home" (1979), the incisive documentary he co-directed about radical politics in Madison, Wis., might expect more than an infomercial. Since then, Silber has produced prime-time segments for CBS News and ABC News, while his co-director on "The War at Home" went on to edit eight Spike Lee films. Of the handful of documentaries on presidential races that recently have played in Chicago, "Labor Day" does the least work.
No MPAA rating. Running time: 74 minutes Opening today at Facets Cinematheque.
After showcasing "Shirin," Abbas Kiaroastami's latest and most original film, the Film Center's 20th Festival of Films from Iran takes a wrong turn with two weak documentaries about Iranian actors and cinematographers.
The more polished of the pair is "The Iranian Cinematographers" (2006), a 67-minute survey by Aziz Sa'ati. He starts with a promising visual concept: A cinematographer peers through a frame he creates with four fingers, then a moving image magically appears within this two-hand screen.
But Sa'ati frames the actual content of his film with far less imagination. His doc is merely a chronological listing of the title artisans, one after another. Uninformative bios list mentors and training stints in countries outside Iran. Clips display a variety of styles with scant context or commentary. The result is a superficial sampling of Iranian cinema.
Sa'ati earlier served as Mohsen Makhmalbaf's cinematographer for "The Actor," "The Cyclist" and "The Peddler." His salute to his peers, though, looks more like the backdrop for an awards dinner than an Iranian take on "Visions of Light," a 1992 documentary look at American cinematographers.
In "Another Salute," Iranian-American filmmaker Hossein Khandan follows Iranian actor Khosro Shakibaie around Chicago and California. Shakibaie, who made his mark playing a tortured intellectual afflicted with interior monologues in Dariush Mehrjui's "Hamoun" (1990), goes exterior in this indulgent 50-minute video.
Khandan co-directed "American Burqa," which screened at the Film Center's 2004 Iranian festival. He starts his new work with shaky, murky video of the 2000 festival's tribute to exiled Iranian film star Behrouz Vossoughi. Shakibaie visits Navy Pier, rides the Ferris wheel and free associates on random stimuli. His ponderous free verse is set against overly literal visuals.
Khandan observes Shakibaie standing outside the apartment building on West Catalpa where Iranian director Sohrab Shahid-Saless lived before his death in 1998. In California, Shakibaie visits the residence of exiled Iranian actor Behrouz Vossoughi and versifies, but no one is home.
Shakibaie, who died in 2008, made his last screen appearance in "Heiran" (2009), which played earlier in this year's fest. Meanwhile, Vossoughi will return for a salute Nov. 21 at the Film Center.
No MPAA rating. Total running time: 117 minutes. In Farsi, with English subtitles. Screening at 8 p.m. Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday at the Gene Siskel Film Center.
Bill Stamets is a Chicago-based freelance writer and critic.