Sarasota Scene: Film Fest

FILMS!

We have been immersed in film this week taking advantage of some of the offerings of the Sarasota Film Festival.  One of the things we’ve noted is how difficult it is to make a film that has momentum with a clear dramatic arc that engages and holds the viewer’s attention.  A filmmaker can have a meaty topic or a good story line, but fail to turn this into a film that doesn’t drag or sag.  That said, our scorecard so far this week is one excellent film, one very good, one tedious, and one slightly weird.  Here are the films (in order of viewing):

Frame by Frame.  Challenging our (Americans’) view of Afghanistan, this documentary traces the careers of four Afghan photographers (one female) as they navigate a post-Taliban media world.  The firm bursts with unexpected color and  gorgeous scenery juxtaposed with shots of conflict.  It takes too long to make its focus clear, but I’d still give it B+/A-.

Five Nights in Maine.  This was one of the so-called Centerpiece films in the festival and I expected to really like this feature.  Alas, the story of widower Sherwin (played by David Oyelowo of Selma fame) who goes to Maine to visit his late wife’s mother is slow to the point of tedium.  The scenery is vintage rural Maine, but there were lots of missed opportunities to enrich the narrative—what was Uncle George’s role; how might nurse Anna have connected more with Sherwin; and what was his wife Fiona’s backstory with her mother.  My rating:  C minus.

Raising Bertie.  This documentary takes on an important issue:  How do you nurture and motivate poor black young men to become productive adult citizens.  Focusing on rural Bertie County in northeastern North Carolina, the film follows three young men over the course of six years as they repeat grades in high school, age out of the public school system, and struggle to find purpose for their lives.  It is a close look at the devastating impact of poverty and meager educational resources.  Like first novels, this film could have done with more editing (I’d cut about 15 minutes), but it is still worth seeing.  My grade:  B/B+

Embers.  A science fiction feature, Embers presents an “end of the world” scenario in which society has been destroyed, buildings are bombed out, and a few individuals roam around, mostly unaware of and unconnected to each other.  They have lost their memories and if they do meet and connect, as one couple does, the next day they start afresh with no recollection of the day before.  A father and his grown daughter have escaped this fate by living sealed in an underground bunker.  Intriguing premise, but never quite comes together in a suspenseful way.  Even the ending seems less than it could have been.  My rating:  Wacky; but one of the reasons one goes to film festivals is to experience what you might not otherwise have!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

I’ve read selected chapters of Andrew Solomon’s tome, Far from the Tree, and plan to take it up again, so was prompted by this brief acquaintance to read his essay about why he travels.  I love traveling to new places and the trip I made that was the most different and probably the most enlightening was three weeks in Madagascar in 2009.  The quote below from Solomon’s article, “Dispatches from Everywhere” in the April issue of Conde Nast Traveler resonated with me.  I think it also relates to how a film about photography in Afghanistan (see above) can change one’s perspective—not the same as going there, but still being exposed through a different lens.

 “Some of my traveling has been glamorous, some of it terrifying, but it has had a cumulative humbling effect.  I started traveling out of curiosity, but I have come to believe in travel’s political importance, that encouraging a nation’s citizenry to travel may be as important as encouraging school attendance, environmental conservation, or national thrift.  You cannot understand the otherness of places you have not encountered.  If all young adults were required to spend two weeks in a foreign country, two-thirds of the world’s diplomatic problems could be solved.  Travel is a set of corrective lenses that helps focus the planet’s blurred reality.”