
The award-season cinematic banquet continues this week, although it’s becoming something of a moveable feast. Both RaMell Ross’s stunning Nickel Boys and Tim Fehlbaum’s gripping September 5 have, at one point, been scheduled to open in Oregon on January 17, but your opportunity to see a couple of last year’s most accomplished feats of direction has, apparently, been indefinitely postponed. Perhaps too many area screens have been dedicated to Wolf Man this weekend—more on that below. In any case, a pair of international films that command just as much respect will grace a small number of theaters in Portland. The very existence of one is a minor miracle, while the other is a late masterpiece from an auteur whose decades-long career has been the embodiment of integrity.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig is Germany’s submission for Best International Feature Film, which might seem odd considering that it was filmed in Iran by an Iranian director, Mohammad Rasoulof, and is spoken entirely in Farsi. However, Rasoulof shot the film in secret and was promptly sentenced to eight years in prison before production was even completed, forcing him to flee the country, partially on foot, in order to attend Sacred Fig’s premiere at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. These sorts of stories are, sadly, not uncommon in a nation whose proud and innovative filmmaking tradition all too often runs up against its authoritarian government’s violent intolerance toward any public critiques.
And a potent critique it is. Set against the backdrop of the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, the film centers on Iman (Missagh Zareh), a newly appointed judge in Iran’s Revolutionary Courts. His promotion means more pay and better living conditions for him, his wife (Soheila Golestani), and their two daughters (Mahsa Rostami and Setareh Maleki). It also means that he’s expected to approve, pro forma, an avalanche of death sentences resulting from the ongoing protests. Iman is provided by the government a handgun for protection, out of concern that, even though his work is anonymous, he could be targeted by dissidents.
While he’s disillusioned by his new job, Iman remains devout and dedicated to serving the regime. His daughters, however, are aware of the brutal reprisals against those publicly decrying the death, in “morality police” custody, of Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for failing to wear a hijab. After a friend of theirs is shot during a protest, they bring her to their apartment to provide first aid, but decide to keep it a secret from Iman. Later, when Iman discovers that his gun is missing, he quickly descends into paranoia, subjecting his family to interrogations and becoming increasingly unhinged.
The Seed of the Sacred Fig begins as a slow-burn tale of everyday life under a theocratic, fascist regime, but by its finale nearly three hours later, it has become as tense a thriller as you’ll see this year. The performances are never less than utterly convincing, especially Zareh’s work as an initially decent man who’s corrupted by the system he embraces and tortured by a conscience he labors to ignore.
There are echoes here of Jonathan Glazer’s Zone of Interest, in the sense that both films offer portraits of people who lose whatever moral bearings they may have in service to immoral governments. While the Nazi family in that film has completely abandoned conscience by the time we meet them, Sacred Fig conjures less cold fury but more heartbreak as it captures the inexorable corruption that results when “obeying in advance” is the easy way out, and blind obedience to authority supersedes compassion and humanity. (Opens Friday, Jan. 17, at Living Room Theaters)
Mike Leigh directed his first feature, Bleak Moments, in 1971. He didn’t make his second until 1988, spending the intervening years crafting a series of delightfully acerbic, darkly hilarious portraits of working-class life for the BBC. (Most of them are available on the Criterion Channel and are well worth your time.) Now, as he prepares to turn 83 next month, there’s speculation that career may be winding down with the release of Hard Truths, his first film in six years. If that’s true (and the likes of Ridley Scott and Clint Eastwood demonstrate it certainly may not be), it’s a shame. He’s lost little, if any, of his mastery at storytelling or his ability to, in collaboration with genius performers, create memorable, unique characters.
For the latest of these, he’s reunited with Marianne Jean-Baptiste, who secured an Oscar nomination back in 1996 for Leigh’s Secrets and Lies, which still ranks among his best. (Only the scabrous, unforgettable Naked clearly exceeds it.) Jean-Baptiste embodies Pansy, a desperately unhappy woman who takes her frustrations and loneliness out on the world around her and everyone in it. Pansy is miserable and angry all the time. She lives with her husband Curtley (David Webber) and her 22-year-old son Moses in a small, modern, and very tidy rowhouse in London with the typical back garden. Pansy never enters the garden, though, much less the pigeon coop at its rear. It’s filthy, and more to the point, it can’t be controlled.
We all know people like Pansy, and most of us, I’d wager, have been, or could at least identify with, her at some (hopefully brief) points in our lives. Wearing contempt like armor, they/we move through the days constantly perturbed, frequently outraged, by everyone around us and the commonplace inconveniences of life. On one day alone, she manages to insult and harangue a supermarket cashier, the customer behind her in the grocery queue, a doctor, and a dentist. Imagine if Larry David lacked all self-awareness and sense of humor.
Pansy’s sister Chantelle (Michele Austin), on the contrary, is a successful hairdresser and single mom to two well-adjusted young adult daughters. She does her best to mollify Pansy, who has, it emerges, been unable to move past the Anger stage of grief since the death of their mother five years earlier. These dynamics come to a head on Mother’s Day, when the sisters visit mom’s gravesite and return to Chantelle’s for a meal. The contrast between the two families reveals a blatant divide based not on race, or politics, or socioeconomic status, but on happiness. Chantelle and her daughters operate in the social sphere with a freedom and ease that Pansy and her victims (for that is what they are) cannot even imagine mustering.
On multiple occasions, Pansy, who complains of sleeplessness and migraines, is roused from a midday slumber, only to erupt in a panicked spasm in the process of coming to consciousness. Clearly, the only time her self-hating, narcissistic brain is able to exist without a thousand pinpricks of resentment, guilt, and rage piercing it in an arpeggio of pain is when she sleeps, and her porcupine persona intuitively pops into place as soon as the on switch is tripped. This is a role that could all too easily have curdled into a “curmudgeon with a heart of gold” cliché. But Leigh and Jean-Baptiste have far too much respect for Pansy to allow that. Pansy is an open wound, a Sarlacc pit of pity, a grief sponge who can never comprehend that others may also have weaknesses, struggles, and emotions. Frankly, she’s something of a sociopath. But she’s also a very damaged human, for reasons the film hints at but does not excavate, and, as Renoir taught us, everyone has their reasons.
Leigh’s films always feature impeccable, naturalistic castings, and Hard Truths is no exception. I’ve become a trainspotter of sorts for appearances by cast members of the late, lamented Netflix series Sex Education, and one shows up here: the imperious boss of one of Chantelle’s daughters is played by Samantha Spiro, aka Maureen Groff, the wife of the headmaster of Moordale Academy. Austin is a veteran of three other Leigh films (including Secrets & Lies), while Webber tackles the meatiest role in a career largely spent pretty far down on the call sheet. The ensemble meshes, the writing is raw and real, and Hard Truths hits home. (Opens Friday, Jan. 17, at Regal Fox Tower and Living Room Theaters)
ALSO OPENING
Wolf Man: Not, disappointingly, a biopic of the famous goateed deejay from American Graffiti, this is instead a stripped-down thriller that’s technically inspired by the classic Universal monster movies of the 1940s starring Lon Chaney, Jr., but takes very little from those films’ lore. For one thing, the titular terror isn’t even named Larry Talbot! Blake (Christopher Abbott) is a sad San Fran dad who’s close to his young daughter Ginger (Matilda Firth), but less so these days with his ambitious journalist wife Charlotte (Julia Garner). When Blake receives word that his estranged father, an angry survivalist we meet in an opening flashback, has finally been declared dead after having gone missing years earlier, he packs the family up for a trip to the spooky forests of Central Oregon (played here by New Zealand) to gather pop’s belongings.
Along the way, of course, they encounter a furry, bipedal beast in the middle of a dark winding road, which leads to the movie’s first and only exciting set piece as their moving van gets lodged sideways in tree branches, necessitating a harrowing escape. Blake has, however, suffered a wound. Is it a claw wound? Will he slowly transform over the course of one night into what we call in the Dungeons & Dragons world a “hybrid” lycanthrope form? Does he eventually do battle with the feral beast who sired his horrifying new self (and maybe his old one as well)? The answers to these questions are as obvious as the lupine nose on Blake’s once-handsome face. Restricting the action to one location over the course of one night should have led to a distilled sense of menace, but instead it just leaves you pondering the places where silver bullets, wolfsbane, or Maria Ouspenskaya might have helped Wolf Man transcend its own genericness.
Director Leigh Whannell’s reimagining of the Universal classic The Invisible Man incorporated Me-Too era themes and a modern sensibility around a solid lead performance from Elisabeth Moss. This second bite at the apple proves considerably less tasty. The makeup effects, predominantly practical, are impressive as Blake gradually wolfs out. But the scares are mostly predictable and perfunctory, and narratively there just isn’t any there there. The initial scenes set us up for a story that brings these troubled spouses closer together, and the werewolf mythos should be fertile fodder for an exploration of primal masculinity’s pros and cons. But nothing of the sort is even teased, and the movie’s abrupt denouement leaves you feeling like the filmmakers simply ran out of gas. (Opens Friday, Jan. 17, in wide release)
Better Man: Speaking of animalistic protagonists, this bizarre biopic of the British pop star Robbie Williams is this year’s Aline. If you recall, that was the 2021 take on the life of Celine Dion in which the lead performer nervily but unnervingly plays the Canadian icon from childhood through middle age. Here, Williams is represented on screen as a CGI chimpanzee (superimposed over the body of actor Jonno Davies) who rises from a modest upbringing to become a member of the boy band Take That, experience de rigueur bouts of exploitation, drug abuse, egomania, and redemption, and emerge as the world famous (in England) figure who boasts fourteen number one singles (in England) and was named Entertainer of the Decade for the 1990s (in England). He also, as part of Take That, had one song reach number 69 on the Billboard Top 100 in the U.S. back in 1995. The fact that he’s never had much success on this side of the pond doesn’t make him any less interesting as a person, although the rote procession of pop star biography cliches and the apparently perceived need to resort to the monkey gimmick make one wonder. It does make puzzling, though, the decision to release the movie on such a wide scale over here. Director Michael Gracey (The Greatest Showman) does what he can, and things move along briskly enough that you’re never given much time to ponder the silliness of it all. In addition, there’s a minor thrill to seeing the motion-capture technology employed in the recent Planet of the Apes films in such an unorthodox fashion. Despite that, Better Man is a must-see, or even a should-see, only for devoted fans of its subject. And it doesn’t seem like there are many of those stateside. (Currently playing in wide release, but probably not for long.)
Unstoppable: If you’ve got a familiar, even formulaic story, you don’t need to resort to digital simians to make it worth the telling. Hot on the heels of the inspirational fact-based boxing drama The Fire Inside comes this inspirational fact-based wrestling drama about Anthony Robles, who became a collegiate wrestling champion despite being born with only one leg. Like The Fire Inside, it confronts the economic realities of supremely gifted and accomplished athletes who aren’t fortunate enough to specialize in the sports Americans generally pay to watch. The impressive cast is led by Jharrel Jerome, who was so good in Boots Riley’s series I’m a Virgo, as Robles, who rose from being a walk-on at Arizona State University to winning the national title by defeating an opponent from the college wrestling powerhouse of the University of Iowa. There’s no reinvention of the wheel here: Jennifer Lopez is Robles’s hard-working, always supportive mother, while Bobby Cannavale plays his excessively tough, unreliable prison guard father. The character is fortunate enough to be coached by Michael Pena at the high school level and Don Cheadle in college, two actors who exude the tough-love vibe the roles require. Director William Goldenberg, a veteran film editor who won an Oscar for Ben Affleck’s Argo, makes his directing debut. (Affleck and Matt Damon’s Artists Equity company produced Unstoppable.) That background helps explain how seamlessly the actual Robles is incorporated as a stand-in for Jerome during the actual wrestling scenes. It’s so easy to make a motivational tale like this a cheesy, sappy mess, but the combination of Robles’s genuinely amazing achievements and the restraint with which they’re related makes it work. (Available to steam via Amazon Prime)
STREAMING PICKS
In the Shadow of Beirut: Life in present-day Beirut is no walk in the park for a large portion of its residents, but the neighborhoods of Sabra and Shatila represent some of the worst living conditions in Lebanon. This crisply shot, powerfully empathetic documentary focuses on four families living in its poverty-stricken environment. (The neighborhoods were the site of infamous massacres perpetrated by Christian militias and overseen by the Israeli army in 1982.) Historically, the place has been a dumping ground for immigrants and members of other disfavored communities: one family is headed by members of the Doma, a segment of the Indian Dalit, or untouchable, caste; another is composed of refugees from Syria. Their stories are harrowing but presented without pathos. A little girl suffers from a painful, disfiguring skin condition for which she cannot receive treatment; a spirited young boy is forced to work as a waste collector rather than attend school. And yet, again without descending into mawkishness, the filmmakers highlight their determination.
One recurring image is a woman sweeping trash and water from the courtyard, an apt symbol for the steady, persistent, quiet efforts of the subjects of the film toward creating a clean, safe space for themselves and their families amid the squalor and hopelessness of the neighborhoods. It’s a fine line between treating the impoverished residents with dignity and romanticizing the moments of stark beauty to be found in their lives. There are probably a few too many wistful shots of flocks of birds whirling in silhouette against an orange sunset sky, but it’s hard to begrudge the film, or its subjects, for indulging in the occasional dream of flight. (Available on all major VOD platforms)
La Pietà: The ranks of Oedipal cinema were increased by one when this 2022 fantasia from Argentine director Eduardo Casanova saw the light of day. It’s a brightly colored, formalistic melodrama about the ironically named Libertad (Ángela Molina) and her hyperdependent son Mateo (Manel Llunell), who live together in a sparsely decorated apartment. She obsessively controls him and lives her life through him, to such an extent that when he’s diagnosed with brain cancer, she takes it harder than he does. When Mateo’s father Roberto (Antonio Durán), who left shortly after his birth, also turns out to be terminally ill, it precipitates a fraught reunion between the three and Robert’s new wife (Ana Polvorosa). Meanwhile, Casanova occasionally shifts over to scenes set in North Korea, where another family tries to escape the oppressively paternal (or is it maternal?) clutches of a totalitarian state. If all the film were saying was that obsessive parenting can be equivalent to dictatorial rule, that’d be nothing new. But there’s enough visual originality and operatic flair, plus more than a couple scenes that test the bounds of good taste, to make La Pietà a unique entry in the overbearing-mother genre. (Available to stream via Film Movement Plus)
ALSO THIS WEEK
Hold My Beer: “A scripted comedy-drama that takes you into the life of an autistic young adult from Vancouver, Washington who discovers a passion for craft beer and embarks on a mission to open his own brewpub. Set against the vibrant backdrop of Vancouver’s arts, music, and craft beer scenes, this short film celebrates local talent and neurodivergent creativity.” (Thursday, Jan. 23, Kiggins Theatre)
Porcelain War: This Oscar short-listed documentary profiles a pair of Ukrainian artists who stay behind in Kharkiv after the Russian invasion to not only defend the city but continue to practice their craft, in a potent rebuke of militaristic terror and an inspiring example of, as Portland writer Lidia Yuknavitch would put it, “making art in the face of fuck.” (Friday, Jan. 17 through Tuesday, Jan. 21, Hollywood Theatre)
The Edensphere Saga: “This will be a one night only world premiere screening of international filmmaker David Torres II independent project that he has been working on for the past 4 years.” (Sunday, January 19, Hollywood Theatre)
Jacquesrates Double Feature: A pair of efforts from San Francisco- and Portland-based underground filmmaker Jacques Boyreau, including 2002’s Candy Von Dewd, described as “stoner-juvenile, punk-psychedelic, nerd-clever, & even cryptoFeminist,” and the 2019 “grunge giallo” experimental slasher Black Strawberry. (Tuesday, Jan. 21, Hollywood Theatre)
Before MTV: An assortment of music videos dating from the pre-Martha Quinn but post-Scopitone era of American culture. (Wednesday, Jan. 22, Hollywood Theatre)
Food Foray: “A documentary series that takes us on a food journey through east Portland and Gresham produced by MetroEast Community Media.” (Thursday, Jan. 23, Tomorrow Theater)
ALSO OPENING
Autumn and the Black Jaguar: “Growing up in the Amazon rainforest gave Autumn the rarest of friendships — a lost jaguar cub she named Hope. When a tragic event forces her to leave Hope for New York City, she dreams of going back to the rainforest and her friend. That opportunity soon comes when Autumn decides to return to the Amazon to save her beloved jaguar from animal traffickers who threaten her childhood village.” (Movies on TV)
One of Them Days: “Best friends and roommates Dreux (Keke Palmer) and Alyssa (SZA) are about to have One of Them Days. When they discover Alyssa’s boyfriend has blown their rent money, the duo finds themselves going to extremes in a comical race against the clock to avoid eviction and keep their friendship intact.”
FRIDAY
- The Boy Friend [1971] (Clinton St. Theater)
- The Color of Pomegranates [1969] (5th Avenue Cinema; through Sunday 1/19)
- Fargo [1996] (Academy Theater; through Thursday 1/23)
- Gone Girl [2014] (Tomorrow Theater)
- Mad Max: Fury Road [2015] (Cinemagic; through Sunday 1/19, also Wednesday 1/22 and Thursday 1/23)
- Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure [1985] (Cinemagic; also Sunday 1/19 and Tuesday 1/21)
- Robocop [1987] (Academy Theater; through Thursday 1/23)
- Time Masters [1984] (Academy Theater; through Thursday 1/23)
SATURDAY
- An American Tail [1986] (Hollywood Theatre, also Sunday 1/19)
- Cry-Baby [1990] (Tomorrow Theater)
- Heaven Adores You [2014] (Clinton St. Theater)
- Serial Mom [1994] (Tomorrow Theater)
- Se7en [1995] (Cinemagic; also Monday 1/20 and Wednesday 1/22)
- Snow White [1916] (Clinton St. Theater, with live harp/viola score)
- Vertigo [1958] (Cinema 21)
SUNDAY
- 9 to 5 [1980] (Tomorrow Theater)
- Bird [2024] (Tomorrow Theater)
- The Goonies [1985] (XXX)
- Kiss Kiss Bang Bang [2005] (Cinemagic; also Monday 1/20 and Thursday 1/23)
MONDAY
- Beatriz at Dinner [2017] (Hollywood Theatre)
TUESDAY
- Barry Lyndon [1975] (Cinemagic)
- In the Mood for Love [2000] (Clinton St. Theater)
WEDNESDAY
- The Demon (Il Demonio) [1963] (Clinton St. Theater)
- Talk to Me [2023] (XXX, in IMAX)
THURSDAY
- Matewan [1987] (Hollywood Theatre)
- Summer of Soul [2021] (Clinton St. Theater)
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