Month: July 2011

In 1999, Nebraska police officer and divorced mother of three Kathryn Bolkovac decided she’d like to travel and see the world. Her grandfather was Croatian, immigrating to the United States in the 1920s, so eastern Europe sounded attractive. When her police department received a recruitment flyer from military contractor Dyncorp promising generous pay and high adventure, she packed her bags and joined the elite brotherhood of the U.N. peacekeeping mission in Bosnia.

What she finds in former Yugoslavia is not what she expects. It’s not that her expectations are unreasonable though.

• She expects that the 45-nation U.N. police force is comprised of highly trained and dedicated officers. In reality, not everyone has a law enforcement background (or even a driver’s license). Though it’s hardly mentioned during the film, Bolkovac and her “skilled” colleagues donate a portion of their days to teaching peacekeepers from underdeveloped nations how to write reports, use computers, and drive.
• She expects that her fellow peacekeepers are of the highest moral caliber (or at least not a band of thugs and felons). In reality, many of them are patrons of the local brothels where a blind eye is turned to human trafficking and kidnapped women are held in never-ending servitude. With the exception of a few local police that aren’t corrupt, Kathryn has no allies and begins to fear the other members of the mission who are supposed to have her back.

Shortly after arriving in Bosnia and donning a blue jumpsuit, Bolkovac (played by Rachel Weisz) is promoted to the position of human rights investigator. She spends the next year interviewing and photographing over 100 women, visiting them in hospitals, and modeling an impressive variety of subtly different blue jumpsuits.

Eventually, Bolkovac is ordered out of Bosnia and cut loose from the U.N. mission. In real life, she filed a lawsuit in Great Britain against DynCorp for unfair dismissal. On August 2, 2002 the tribunal unanimously found in her favor. Nowadays, she’s an advocate for the public awareness of human trafficking, no longer an activist.

There are actually two threads to this movie, one about Kathryn Bolkovac and her struggle to uncover the truth regarding peacekeeper involvement in human trafficking, and another about how two of the girls are sold into the slave trade by one of their uncles. We learn over the film’s course that it’s not uncommon for young girls to be tricked into servatude by family members or people that they trust.

This movie landed filmmaker Larysa Kondracki the audience award for Best Director at SIFF 2011. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that was largely due to the accessible nature of the film (no subtitles, big name actors) and not because it was the best directed movie at this year’s festival. The cast is impressive, but the writing feels like a 118 minute long television movie-of-the-week.

• Rachel Weisz — much too “beautiful” for a war-torn country (someone mess up her hair)
• David Strathairn — much too “good” for someone in internal affairs (more anger David, more ANGER!)
• Vanessa Redgrave — a plausible UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (tea and crumpets anyone?)

Venue: Seattle International Film Festival, 2011
Country: Canada
Language: English
Genre: Drama

IMDB

The film opens on the streets of India. The scene is one of movement, a sea of people and cars surrounded by a parade of brilliant colors. The vibrance of mid-day almost makes the poverty pleasant to look at. The pick-up truck in which we’ve been riding pulls up and stops in front of a crowd of small children and a Danish man begins handing out bowls of food.

Twenty years ago, Jacob Pederson was a drunk. His intentions to save the world were many, but he couldn’t make good on those intentions. After an act of adultery, his girlfriend left him and returned to Denmark. He’s finally put all of that behind him though, and is now helping to run an orphanage. But the orphanage isn’t doing well, in fact they’re almost out of money. Their last chance to keep the orphanage open is a rich, Danish philanthropist.

There are probably some things I should fill you in on. When Jacbo’s girlfriend left him, she was unknowingly pregnant with their child (a daughter). After she returned to Denmark, she married a portly billionaire (good for her) and settled down. Now the billionaire is terminally ill (bad for him), but he’s keeping that fact a secret from everyone … until after the wedding.

I liked this film for many reasons. First and foremost, the characters are well written and behave as you’d expect them to. There aren’t any random plot twists that contort the story and force us to re-evaluate how we feel about anyone. To me, sudden character modification is a cheap trick used to build interest in the absence of a well written story.

Venue: Netflix streaming
Country: Denmark, etc …
Language: Danish, etc …
Genre: Drama

IMDB

Over Your Cities Grass Will Grow

United Kingdom

105 minutes of atonal sounds comprising the film’s soundtrack nearly drove me insane. The large scale sculptures and processes by which Anselm Kiefer creates his art are interesting to see. If the film was shortened to a 25 minute loop and played in one of the side rooms of a local museum exhibit honoring his work, that would be appropriate.

We are the Night (Wir sind die Nacht)

Germany

A trio of feminist vampires welcome a new girl into their coven. They’re all rich, beautiful, and devoid of men. They race each other around town in exotic sports cars, live it up at a 5-star hotel, and treat themselves to midnight shopping sprees at the local mall. Their lifestyle is pretty much every little girl’s dream, the end.

The Poll Diaries

Germany

On the eve of WWI, 14-year-old Oda Schaefer arrives at the house of her father, an ostracized German doctor who likes to experiment on people. It’s impolite to visit someone without bringing a gift, so Oda brings two–the corpse of her mother and a two-headed fetus in a jar (her father’s lab is full of similar oddities). It’s a period piece that combines the best parts of The Addams Family, The Sound of Music, Frankenstein and could well have been directed by David Lynch.

Detention

USA

Some of the most creative and entertaining opening credits I’ve ever seen. They go on for a long time, much longer than you’d expect. This is a teen slasher movie in the same vein as Scream.

Disclaimer: I am not a historian.

From a historical perspective, the Merja were a Finnic people who inhabited central Russia before the Slavic conquests (circa 1000 AD). Although it’s not known exactly what became of them, some were assimilated into the Russian empire during the 17th century. “Near present day Jaroslavl areas of Rostov and Pereslavl, there are large lakes, Nero and Plescheevo, which are mentioned in ancient Russian chronicles as the Merja’s lands.” It is one of these lakes that is the final resting place of Tanya’s body, where Miron and Aist place her atop a funeral pyre and stand in silence as smoke billows across the water.

The film has a slow but deliberate pace, and there is very little dialog. The camera follows the two men as if a third person. In one of several long, uninterrupted shots, we ride along in the car’s back seat as the two scavenge supplies for the funeral. However, in what feels like an after-funeral epilogue, we eventually find ourselves in the Russian equivalent of Costco, standing and staring at aisles of electronics. I guess the Merja are not so different from Americans in that they like to go walk around Costco when they’re bored and buy things they don’t really need? (I’m kidding. Well, not about the Americans.)

Director Aleksei Fedorchenko has made a couple of previous films, one a fake documentary revealing that it was actually a Soviet who first walked on the moon.

Venue: Seattle International Film Festival, 2011
Language: Russian
Genre: Drama

IMDB

The year is 1940 and Japan is at war with China. Apparently there are people at home who would openly oppose Japan’s aggression and not classify the fighting in China a “crusade” (as the emperor’s regime refers to it). The rederick on the street is that Japan will soon conquer all of Asia, and then defeat the United States and England. After Germany takes over Europe, Japan will confront and defeat Germany to at last rule the world. That’s the rumor at least.

Shigeru “Tobei” Nogami is a professor whose books are repeatedly rejected by the censors. One night, the thought police arrive at his home and “detain” him indefinitely for his “anti-government” views. I don’t know whether he’s a communist, but the officials keep referring to him as a “Red”. Clearly, there is a lack of free speech in pre-war Japan.

Everyone in this film has a nickname, so make note of the following:

• Kobei (the professor)
• Tobei (the professor’s wife)
• Teru-bei (the professor’s artist daughter)
• Hatsu-bei (the professor’s doctor daughter)
• Aunt Hisako (the professor’s artist sister)
• Yama (the professor’s former student)

Venue: Netflix streaming
Language: Japanese
Genre: Drama

IMDB
Official site