In Contention

Tag: Michael Haneke

  • CANNES CHECK: ‘Michael’

    The director: Markus Schleinzer (Austria)

    The talent: An actor and accomplished casting director — whose credits in the latter field include several films by his compatriots Michael Haneke and Jessica Hausner — 39 year-old Schleinzer has cast his debut feature as writer-director with several actors he previously tapped for other directors’ films. Lead actor Michael Futih won’t be an especially familiar name to international audiences, while his young co-star David Rauchenberger is a newcomer. Overall, the film has less name appeal than of its Competition rivals, making it one of the lineup’s more intriguing prospects.

    The pitch: This may disappoint you, but Schleinzer’s debut isn’t an arthouse remake of Nora Ephron’s 1996 Travolta-as-angel romcom of the same title. Something rather more somber awaits. Only a one-line synopsis has been issued, describing the film as a study of “the last five months of 10-year-old Wolfgang and 35-year-old Michael’s involuntary life together.” That coy “involuntary” evidently refers to a kidnapping: the film is allegedly inspired by the real-life case of Natascha Kampusch, the Austrian girl abducted at the age of 10 and held captive for eight years. With Austria having been rocked both by this and the Josef Fritzl case in recent years, Schleinzer’s film looks likely to touch on a few nerves.

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  • OSCAR GUIDE: Best Foreign Language Film

    The Milk of SorrowThe foreign Language film category has been marred in controversy for the last few years. When films like “4 months, 3 weeks and 2 days” and “Persepolis” were unceremoniously nixed from the field a few years ago, a special new “executive committee” was established to have final say on the fallen, hopefully saving the committee (which has to see all the titles to vote) some embarrassment.

    Still, there is an inherent bias throughout the votership here. Violence rarely plays well, and they are loathe to be accepting of non-traditional filmmaking. One need only look back one year to 2008’s “Departures” upset for evidence. For thee reasons, the category always seems ready to surprise.

    The nominees are:

    “Ajami” (Scandar Copti and Yaron Shani)
    “The Milk of Sorrow (La Teta Asustada)” (Claudia Llosa)
    “A Prophet (Un Prophète)” (Jacques Audiard)
    “The Secret in Their Eyes (El Secreto de Sus Ojos)” (Juan José Campanella)
    “The White Ribbon (Das Weisse Band)” (Michael Haneke)

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  • Calling the longshots

    Sharlto Copley in District 9So this Steve Pond piece, titled “How Oscar Could Surprise — and Scare — Us,” is what we like to call hedging our bets.  It’s a chance to address some bubble matters so that we have something to point to and say, “Look, I toldja!”

    (Is that officially trademarked by Nikki Finke yet?)

    Anyway, I do like the guessing game fun, and Pond touches on a couple of things that I would likely mention if I were to do a similar piece.  One we can all understand is his #10, the potential snub of “Invictus” in the Best Picture category.  It has kind of been in the water for a few weeks now that the film just isn’t as strong as it could be, likely lacking passionate top tier votes.  It is, frankly, in the #10 spot on my list of final predictions.

    I do like Pond’s mention of Sharlto Copley as a potential Best Actor spoiler, but failing to even make the longlist with BAFTA (a group that wasn’t shy on the “District 9” love) makes the actor (who gave the year’s best lead actor performance in my book) the darkest of dark horses.

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  • OFF THE CARPET: The time is nigh

    George Clooney in Up in the AirIn so many words, this is it.  The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveils it’s slate of nominees bright and early tomorrow morning, and this being the first year with a 10-film Best Picture field, all eyes will be on the top category to gauge which way the wind blew on this AMPAS experiment.

    Will populist entertainment reap the benefits of an extra five slots or will independent cinema finally get its foot in the door?  That’s been the question all year long.  The answers are around the corner, and less than 24 hours out, they still feel as elusive as ever.

    I learned long ago that to forecast “surprises” is folly.  They’re called surprises for a reason.  All you can do is try to find the pulse on the season and make your judgment calls, and in most cases, that means understanding what the Academy is high on, and when.

    For instance, is “The Messenger” poised to surprise in the supporting actress and original screenplay races, as well as Best Picture?  Or did the discussion stir up a bit late (which it did), too late, perhaps, to register?  The screener showed up earlier than most.  Did members find time in that lull to pop it into the player?

    Meanwhile, how will the BAFTA contingent affect the race?  We see it every year.  Contenders left dangling on the vine get their due from a membership that has considerable AMPAS cross-over.  Just ask Alan Alda.  With that in mind, could Alec Baldwin or Alfred Molina find themselves sliding into an incredibly fluid supporting actor category?

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  • 1/19 Oscarweb Round-up

    Robert Downey Jr. at the 2010 Golden Glone Awards• Searching for meaning in Robert Downey Jr’s Stark-esque Globes beard.  Perhaps too much meaning. [CHUD]

    • Roger Ebert dives back into the enigma of Michael Haneke’s “Cache.” [Chicago Sun-Times]

    • Stretching to compare “Avatar” to “Slumdog Millionaire” because of it’s “out of the blue” success. [24 Frames]

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  • Sight for sore eyes

    Three weeks into the new decade, the flood of lists rounding up the last one seems to have abated, but I enjoyed Stale Popcorn’s countdown of the decade’s best film posters, whose #1 coincides with that of a similar list on The Auteurs last month. (They have an interesting interview with designer Akiko Stehrenberger here.) The same poster is one I’m starting to see crop up on the walls of assorted designer/cineaste locales — plainly a modern classic, even if the film is plainly not.

    Funny Games

  • 12/29 Oscarweb Round-up

    Stephen Lang in Avatar• John Campea talks to “Avatar” star Stephen Lang. [AMC Entertainment]

    • Scott Feinberg spotlights 50 performances that “shoulda been contendas” in the 2009 Oscar race. [And the Winner Is…]

    • Nikki sez Warner Bros. has broken the studio’s own domestic box office record by crossing $2 billion across the States.  Wowsers. [Deadline Hollywood Daily]

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  • ‘White Ribbon’ triumphs at European Film Awards

    The White Ribbon

    (UPDATE: Due to an error on the EFA’s own website, we initially reported that the technical Prix d’Excellence had been awarded to “Vincere.” This is incorrect: the sound design team behind “A Prophet” took the prize.)

    Foreign-language Oscar favorites “The White Ribbon” and “A Prophet” have been locked in something of an awards duel since May, when they took the top two prizes at Cannes.

    However, while the latter film has been hogging the spotlight of late — pipping “Ribbon” to the post at the London Film Festival, the NBR Awards and even the Spirit noms — Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winner clawed back some momentum at tonight’s European Film Awards, taking the top three prizes for Best Film, Director and Screenwriter.

    “A Prophet,” which entered the race as the most-nominated contender, had to be content with a well-deserved Best Actor award for sensational newcomer Tahar Rahim, as well as the technical Prix d’Excellence for its sound team.

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  • British critics fall hard for ‘The White Ribbon’

    Bianca Mey and Mika Ahrens in The White RibbonAmerican audiences will have to wait until 30 December to see Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winner “The White Ribbon,” but today marks the film’s UK release — and critically, at least, it’s off to a flying start.

    The film has received unanimously glowing notices in the four major British broadsheets, with the Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw and the Telegraph’s Sukhdev Sandhu both affording it five-star reviews. This reception should position the film well for the BAFTAs, whose foreign-language category has few rules and restrictions than the Academy’s, and tend to go for titles with the greatest balance of publicity and acclaim.

    Bradshaw gushes:

    It has chilling brilliance and icy exactitude, filmed in black and white with the lustre of liquid nitrogen, and its director, Michael Haneke, achieves a new refinement of mastery and audacity. He has created a film whose superb technical finish and closure seems to me in contrast to its status as an “open” text, a work which resists clear interpretation … This is a profoundly disquieting movie, superbly acted and directed. Its sinister riddle glitters more fiercely each time I watch it.

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  • The Times names Haneke’s ‘Caché’ the decade’s best

    Cache (Hidden)I’m not sure why the British broadsheets are all falling over themselves to publish their ‘best of the 2000s’ lists in early November, but mere days after The Telegraph critics declared Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” the film of the decade, The Times has weighed in with their own Top 100.

    In their list, a different Michael comes out on top: Haneke’s cryptic and rather brilliant 2005 thriller “Caché” (or “Hidden,” if you prefer), which only came in at #44 on the Telegraph list, is their pick of the last 10 years. (Has that threat of a Ron Howard remake gone away yet?) I must say, I’m happier with that choice than the Moore film, which doesn’t even feature on The Times list.

    That said, the lists’ objectives are different: The Telegraph aimed to gather the most significant films of the decade, disregarding aesthetic worth in some cases, while The Times has gone for a blunter ‘best films’ claim. Both lists are equally contentious and sometimes silly, as such group-think collectives tend to be. (“Team America” in the top 10 is an obvious attention-seeking ploy, but what of the British bias that places “Casino Royale” and “The Queen” similarly high?)

    (More, and the Times Top 20, after the cut.)

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  • THE LONG SHOT: Mind your language

    (from left) Niels Arestrup and Tahar Rahim in A ProphetYou might not be aware of it, but the competition is already formally under way in Oscar’s most perennially problematic category, Best Foreign Language Film.

    For almost two weeks now, official Academy screenings of the longlisted contenders in the race have been in progress, and will continue through January, until all 65 titles have been subjected to the foreign-language committee’s scrutiny.

    Pete Hammond has details of the screening schedule and voting rules, as well as some gossip on audience reaction to the screenings thus far: Mexico’s “Backyard” and Switzerland’s “Home,” starring Jimmy Smits and Isabelle Huppert respectively, have apparently gone down well; Croatia’s “Donkey,” thanks to incomprehensible subtitles, not so much. Add a pinch of salt to taste.

    Coincidentally enough, courtesy of the London Film Festival, I’ve been simultaneously working my own way down the contenders list, though my personal tally has stalled at eight titles. (It could have been 11, if scheduling and admin obstacles hadn’t kept me away from the Australian, Colombian and Serbian entries. I am but one man.) Only 57 to go, then.

    I will offer a more detailed assessment of the films in another post, but by and large it’s been a pleasure making their acquaintance. Of course, my own selection has been filtered through that of the fest’s generally thoughtful programmers, safeguarding against any real horrors – but I don’t mind saying that an unembarrassing list of nominees could theoretically be assembled from just my scant sampling of the longlist.

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  • REVIEW: “The White Ribbon” (***1/2)

    The White RibbonLondon Film Festival

    With apologies to Pete Townshend, the kids are most certainly not alright.

    Such is the message we seem to be gleaning from the cinema of 2009, as a vast range of unrelated titles – “Precious,” “Coraline,” “Dogtooth,” “Antichrist,” “Fish Tank,” even “An Education” – appear united in visiting the physical and/or psychological damage wrought upon children by either obliviously or maliciously neglectful parents, in some cases planting the seeds of trauma for further generations.

    No film this year, however, addresses the matter with more thematic exactitude and near-scientific scrutiny than Michael Haneke’s grimly riveting “The White Ribbon,” a film which differs from the ones previously mentioned by taking an entire community, as opposed to a solitary family, as its allegorical subject. More expansive in its focus than any previous Haneke work, it nonetheless surprises with the intimacy of its gaze and the social responsibility of its treatise.

    Eternally fascinated by human behaviour, yet never a director much associated with the humane – his trademark chilliness reaching new heights (or depths, if you prefer) with last year’s “Funny Games” remake, which treated its papery characters with even more diagrammatic dispassion than the 1997 original – Haneke finally marries these two approaches here, empathizing with its considerable ensemble of characters even as it dissects them.

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  • FIPRESCI names ‘White Ribbon’ best film of the year

    A scene from The White RibbonIt’s been a very good week for Michael Haneke’s Palme d’Or winner “The White Ribbon.” One day after being selected as Germany’s official entry in the Oscar race, it has received a prestigious addition to its trophy cabinet in the shape of the FIPRESCI Grand Prix for Film of the Year. (Before you complain that the award is a few months premature, the eligibility period runs from July 2008.)

    You probably recognize FIPRESCI (International Federation of Film Critics) as the body that hands out its own awards at a wide range of film festivals throughout the year. (Of course, “The White Ribbon” also nabbed a Cannes FIPRESCI gong back in May.)

    But the Grand Prix, which was inaugurated in 1999 and is (rather randomly) handed out at the opening ceremony of the San Sebastian fest in September, represents the culmination of a year’s worth of honors, and must rank as one the most all-inclusive awards in existence. As you can see from the list of previous winners below the cut, Haneke’s win here places him in some illustrious company.

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  • Germany submits ‘White Ribbon’ for Oscar

    The White RibbonIt should come as no surprise to anyone that Germany has selected Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” (trailer here) as their official candidate for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. No foreign-language Palme d’Or winner has failed to be entered in the race since Japan’s “The Eel” in 1997, and “The White Ribbon” has both breathless critical acclaim and a recognizable auteur name going for it.

    Still, the severe arthouse work remains an adventurous choice for Germany, given that Haneke’s icy formalism hardly sits very comfortably in the Academy’s wheelhouse.

    The Austrian filmmaker has previously had four of his films submitted for Oscar consideration by his home country, each time failing to make the Academy’s grade: most recently, 2005 critical darling “Caché” was controversially disqualified for not being in the submitting country’s own language. (The resulting outcry prompted a revision of the rules.)

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  • International ‘White Ribbon’ trailer

    Okay, so your appreciation of this trailer for Michael Haneke’s lavishly acclaimed Palme d’Or winner will obviously be enhanced if you have at least a working knowledge of German. (No subtitles here.)

    But since it’s the first substantial glimpse most of us have had of what is clearly a major work, I thought it worth posting. The imagery and atmospherics on display here speak for themselves, anyway. Hat tip to Jeff Wells for digging it up. (Trailer plays after the cut.)

    The White Ribbon

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  • Haneke lands Palme d’Or, Gainsbourg takes Best Actress

    Charlotte Gainsbourg winning Best Actress at the Cannes Film FestivalAs it turned out, the most logical on-paper prediction turned out the be the right one. After emerging as the bridesmaid from several festivals past — winning the Grand Prix in 2001, Best Director in 2005 — the venerable Austrian auteur Michael Haneke has finally won the Palme d’Or for his stark moral drama “The White Ribbon.”

    Whether or not jury president Isabelle Huppert, a two-time Haneke leading lady in the past, wielded much influence on this decision — or indeed, whether she even needed to — is something for the pundits to debate. (I personally doubt it, though there was no mistaking the sly smile on her face as she announced his name at the podium.) Either way, there’s little denying that Haneke was overdue for world cinema’s highest honor; perhaps there was a career-achievement angle to the award, but the critical acclaim for “The White Ribbon” has been extensive.

    From watching the ceremony, it was clear that Haneke wasn’t the most popular winner of the night; that designation clearly goes to hometown favorite Jacques Audiard, whose “A Prophet” — like “Gomorrah” last year — was by and large deemed the favorite for the Palme, but ultimately had to be content with the silver-medal Grand Prix. The rousing standing ovation he received, however, spoke for itself. (I should add that a second-place finish for Audiard was, embarrassingly, the only correct call I made the whole night.)

    The real talking point of the awards, however, will likely remain Charlotte Gainsbourg’s Best Actress prize for her evidently courageous work in “Antichrist” — a clear gesture of support by the jury for a film that has provoked prolonged media outrage since its unveiling, and a blatant slap in the face of Cannes’ alternative ‘ecumenical’ jury who went out of their way to condemn it. The irony of handing a female performance award to a film that has been repeatedly pelted with accusations of misogyny is rather delicious; at the very least, it’s an indication that this is a film to be taken seriously.

    (More commentary, and a full list of winners, after the cut.)

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  • What will take the Palme d’Or?

    Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw in Bright Star It’s all over bar the voting. Tomorrow, Cannes jury president Isabelle Huppert will meet with her formidable, female-dominated team of eight – including the diverse likes of Robin Wright Penn, Asia Argento, James Gray and Hanif Kureishi – to pick over the 20 Competition titles they have seen over the last fortnight and select their collective favorites.

    As I’ve said before, the most surprising thing a Cannes jury can do is not to surprise: to hand the Palme d’Or to the critical and/or popular favorite. It can happen, of course – critics and pundits alike called it for “4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days” the day it screened in 2007, and were proved right – but the list of upsets is long and illustrious.

    As you’ve probably heard by now, if the bookies have their way, French auteur Jacques Audiard will be brandishing the Palme this time tomorrow, his prison drama “A Prophet” having wowed critics and audiences across the Croisette. I’ll be delighted if he does, but I’ve questioned whether a French production can win two years running, after a two-decade drought to boot.

    Of course, such streaks aren’t unheard of: the U.S. held onto the Palme for three years between 1989 and 1991. Other questions running through my mind are whether Frenchwoman Huppert might want to avoid making the festival too much of a local affair, and whether Audiard’s all-male film will resonate as strongly with a mostly female jury.

    If not, there are a number of alternatives. By my count there are six titles seriously in the hunt for top honors. Michael Haneke’s “The White Ribbon” is fancied by many to finally land the director the top prize. Earlier today, the film made its presence felt by claiming the FIPRESCI critics’ prize for best in show, though it should be noted that the jury’s and FIPRESCI’s choices have only lined up three times this decade.

    (More speculation, and my final predictions, after the cut.)

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  • Strong reviews for Haneke’s ‘White Ribbon’

    Michael Haneke's The White RibbonCould this year bring a close to Michael Haneke’s bridesmaid’s run at the Cannes Film Festival? Haneke has come within touching distance of the Palme d’Or before, taking the Grand Prix in 2001 for “The Piano Teacher” and Best Director in 2005 for “Caché,” but the big prize has so far eluded him.

    Now Haneke’s latest, “The White Ribbon,” has screened to largely admiring reviews from the Cannes press. The film, a black-and-white, score-free period drama studying the social disintegration of rural German community, was written with the collaboration of master scripter Jean-Claude Carriere, and is now inspiring repeated comparisons to the work of Ingmar Bergman. Nonetheless, it apparently still serves up the clinical narrative jolts we have come to expect from Haneke. IndieWire’s Eric Kohn raves:

    Pairing visual mastery with a quietly immersive story, “The White Ribbon” plays like a morbid version of “Our Town,” patiently revealing the inward discord beneath the surface of a settled community. It’s a frightening depiction of mortality.

    With this detailed exploration of anonymous retribution, Haneke returns to the haunting terrain he last explored in “Cache,” although in this case, the retribution expands from a personal level to a larger critique of religious zealoutry. As the violent acts cumulate, they expand to the larger world surrounding the village – especially with the political assasination and the eruption of World War I closing the movie. However, these events remain notably off-screen. Absence in “The White Ribbon” is the quality that makes it a harrowing work of art, rather than a historical soap opera.

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