In Contention

Tag: Mammoth

  • Defending the Berlin outcasts

    Several days into the Berlin Festival, it remains a rather quiet affair from the outside. A couple of starry titles have been thrown to the wolves, while we’re still awaiting news of a breakout film or performance along the lines of “Happy-Go-Lucky” last year.

    However, tonight’s screening will bring the first word on Stephen Frears’ eagerly anticipated “Chéri,” which has been prompting awards talk since mid-2008. (Nat Rogers, for one, idly muses on the Oscar chances of the film’s stars, Michelle Pfeiffer and Kathy Bates, here.)

    As for two of the films that have already been rather harshly received across the board, I was interested to hear a voice of positive dissent from one of my favourite critics, as Salon’s Stephanie Zacharek finds much to like in both Tom Tykwer’s “The International” and Lukas Moodysson’s “Mammoth.” In particular, she argues that the former, a “strange and beautifully made thriller,” may be a victim of an overt anti-Hollywood sentiment among festival critics:

    The movie I saw and loved felt “Hollywood” to me only in the best sense: Tykwer obviously had some money to work with here, and he spent some of it on the kind of elaborate, elegantly constructed set pieces that few mainstream directors know how to do anymore. (Wait until you see what he does with the Guggenheim Museum.) What’s more, “The International” is a leisurely thriller, which means it’s automatically a contradiction in terms: It can be called too slick, too boring, too “unlike anything else out there” and too “just like everything else out there” all at once. Those very conflicts are exactly what make it interesting.

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  • ‘Mammoth,’ ‘Rage’ land with a thud at Berlin

    Oh dear. Colour me very disappointed indeed. “Mammoth,” Lukas Moodysson’s would-be entry into the mainstream, had me so hopeful — not least because it features Gael Garcia Barnal and Michelle Williams, arguably the two most exciting actors of their generation. But judging from a hostile crowd reception and cool-to-icy reviews, it appears the film isn’t likely to join Moodysson’s “Fucking Amal” or “Together” in the pantheon of greatness.

    IndieWire’s Eugene Hernandez reports that the film actually elicited boos at its screening — something that should always be taken with a pinch of salt, given the weird, unnecessarily cruel crowd mentality that often reigns at European festivals. (Just ask Sofia Coppola.) But Screen International’s trustworthy Jonathan Romney’s review isn’t much more merciful:

    Mammoth is an elephantine dud from a director who has plenty to say about the state of the world – and not a whit of new insight to offer nor artistic invention to express it … Moodysson’s humourless, finger-wagging script ticks every expected box, and he’s not averse to heavy visual underlining … The film’s title (alludes) – geddit? – to the capitalist global system, a wasteful titan doomed to extinction, though it applies equally well to the lumbering shaggy monster that Moodysson has created here.

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  • Berlin fest gets under way

    As far as press coverage goes, the Berlin Film Festival tends to get a bit drowned in the flurry of Oscar season, so you could be forgiven for failing to notice that it actually kicked off last night, with the world premiere of Tom Tykwer’s corporate thriller “The International.”

    Sadly, as I suspected, the film doesn’t seem to be much to write home about. Screen International describes it as “ploddingly talky,” describing stars Clive Owen and Naomi Watts as “leaden” and “struggling,” respectively. Variety is no more enthusiastic, deeming it a “mostly ho-hum” exercise. As a fan of both stars and the director, it’s disheartening to see them all punching so far below their weight; Owen, in particular, needs to have a word with his agent. (Why is one of the best actors of his generation stuck in a rut of identikit thrillers? Is “Inside Man 2” really called for?)

    Anyway, onwards and upwards. Tonight sees the premiere of “Ricky,” the new one from François Ozon, who is always interesting even when he misses the mark. (And I must admit that, after the unholy mess that was Ozon’s recent “Angel,” I don’t have the greatest of confidence in this new fantasy-comedy experiment.)

    The weekend will shed some light on two very intriguing titles. Sally Potter’s “Rage,” which features (amongst other things) Judi Dench, Eddie Izzard and Jude Law in drag, promises to live up to the batty eccentricity of Potter’s best work — check out Nat Rogers’ illustrated preview here. Meanwhile, Lukas Moodysson’s “Mammoth,” a seemingly “Babel”-flavoured story of families in crisis, stars Gael Garcia Bernal and Michelle Williams, and has long been one of my most anticipated films of the year. Fingers crossed.

  • Frears’ ‘Chéri’ to premiere at Berlin

    New works from Costa-Gavras, Bertrand Tavernier and Andrzej Wajda are among the 14 titles that have just been added to the Competition programme at next month’s Berlinale, meaning 25 of the 26 slots have been confirmed.

    The most high-profile inclusion, however, is Stephen Frears’ period romance “Chéri,” which was at one point mooted as a 2008 release with an eye on awards season, before getting bumped. It’s a film I’ve been excited about for some time, not least because it’s something of a “Dangerous Liaisons” redux, reuniting the director, writer (Christopher Hampton) and star (Michelle Pfeiffer) of that 1988 Oscar-winner, again within the context of a French-set costume drama.

    An adaptation of Colette’s novella about an affair between a young man and a decades-older woman in 1920’s Paris, it strikes me as an ideal proposition for both director and star. A new Frears film is always worth noting, but I find his work rather more interesting  when he’s visiting themes of taboo and desire (the aforementioned “Liaisons,” “Prick Up Your Ears,” “The Grifters”).

    Meanwhile, Pfeiffer — still, I think, arguably the greatest of her generation — hasn’t had a project equal to her gifts in over 15 years. Could this be one to keep an eye on for next year’s awards derby? It’s ridiculously early to be thinking about such things, but don’t forget that one of the big winners at last year’s Berlinale was a certain Ms. Sally Hawkins. However oddly positioned, it’s always a festival worth paying attention to.

    Among the other intriguing titles set to bow at the fest, which will be opened by Tom Tykwer’s “The International,” is “Rage,” the latest from avant-garde UK auteur Sally Potter, with an eclectic cast including Jude Law, Judi Dench and Steve Buscemi. Another impressive ensemble (Robin Wright Penn, Alan Arkin and Julianne Moore, to name but three) features in Rebecca Miller’s “The Private Lives of Pippa Lee,” while Lukas Moodysson’s “Mammoth,” starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Michelle Williams, has long been one of my most eagerly anticipated films of 2009.

    For a complete list of the Competition entries so far, check out the press releases here and here.

  • INTERVIEW: Michelle Williams

    Fate can have a bittersweet sense of timing, and Michelle Williams understands this better than most. A 2008 that started bleakly with the passing of Heath Ledger, her former partner and the father of her daughter, has ended as a professional banner year for the 28 year-old actress.

    A triptych of startling performances in a disparate array of projects — Sharon Maguire’s “Incendiary,” Charlie Kaufman’s “Synecdoche, New York,” and, most prominently, Kelly Reichardt’s “Wendy and Lucy” — have made this the year Williams consolidated the Oscar-nominated promise she demonstrated as a member of strong indie ensembles in the likes of “Brokeback Mountain” and “The Station Agent,” and emerged as a great, free-standing actor in her own right.

    Further accolades have rolled in, with her tricky, film-carrying performance in “Wendy and Lucy” earning her an Independent Spirit nod and a Best Actress award from the Toronto critics, while in the background, her late ex remains the year’s most talked-about thespian. When she sighs wistfully over the phone from New York and says that it’s been “a weird year,” that barely seems to cover it.

    It’s another curious reversal that the film largely responsible for making this such a big year for Williams truthfully couldn’t be any smaller. “Wendy and Lucy” is a brilliant, elegiac piece of Americana that easily ranks among the year’s finest films. The story of a young, broke drifter, Wendy, whose already fragile existence collapses when she is separated from her best friend Lucy, a yellow-gold mongrel, it inauspiciously came her way as a short story (“Train Choir,” by co-scripter Jon Raymond) with a brief note attached — the lean script still uncompleted.

    “Todd Haynes recommended it to me,” she says, referring to the iconoclastic auteur who directed her in last year’s “I’m Not There.” “He’s a mutual friend of mine and Kelly’s, and he thought we’d be a good fit. So I read it — I mean, I’d be stupid not to trust the judgment of someone like Todd.”

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