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YAN DEUSSING
The Village Voice, March 10, 1998
The word among film-makers is that the Berlin International Film Festival (the Berlinale in Eurospeak) has grown increasingly commercial in recent years, perhaps in an attempt to attract major-league cash to the city's once-thriving film industry. Be that as it may, Berlin is still a festival where a strong film can come out of nowhere and get the recognition it deserves. There were actually just a handful of Hollywood productions storming the festival this year, and even fewer celebrity appearances, though it seems that's not the impression the festival wanted to give. Throughout the 12-day event, bright lights were on and the red carpet was out in front of the Zoo Palast theater, as if a fabulously important person might arrive at any moment. The man everyone was wait-ing for--Robert De Niro--was busy being hassled by the police in Paris, but an expectant crowd hung around just the same.
An overlooked gem of this year's program was The Boys, a harrowing first feature from Australian director Rowan Woods, in which an eldest brother (David Wenham) gets out of jail and sets about reestablishing control over his younger siblings, ultimately driving them to kill. Employing unsettling flash-forwards that reveal just enough to raise hairs, the film combines horror technique with an almost documentary style. ''I liked Dead Man Walking, but it became a very strong influence in terms of what not to do,'' says Woods. ''That film moved toward some sort of resolution, whereas I knew with our film there wasn't going to be any definitive answer--the audience is left to struggle for their own meaning.'' As a result, the film strikes a pitch of terror that's deeply disturbing.
Neil Jordan's The Butcher Boy, another film that flirts with psychosis, follows the tribulations of young Francie Brady (Eamonn Owens), who is left to fend for himself after his mother commits suicide and his father dies of consumption. Though a comedy on the surface, the film's darker side reveals how Francie's maniacal fantasies--which initially allow him to cope with tragedy--gradually take control. In one of the final scenes, while the town patiently awaits a visit from the Virgin Mary (Sinead O'Connor), Francie enacts a plan to destroy his archnemesis, one of the neighborhood's most upstanding housewives.
Documentaries were also well represented in Berlin this year, with one of the strongest programs pairing Elizabeth Schub's crowd-pleasing short Cuba 15 with Midnight in Cuba, Dmitri Falk's portrait of Cuba's forgotten generation. In Cuba 15, Schub follows Tzunami, an unflappable 14-year-old girl, as she prepares for her 15th birthday and traditional passage into adulthood. Caught at the moment that she first imagines herself a woman, Schub's subject comes across as an almost heroic mixture of innocence and maturity. The subjects of Midnight in Cuba, meanwhile, are Cuban youth forced to reconcile their worldly ambitions with the scant opportunities available in a country wracked by economic embargo.
One of the best-received films of the festival, Lisa Lewenz's A LETTER WITHOUT WORDS is an homage to her grandmother, a German-Jewish amateur filmmaker who used some of the world's first color-movie film to document the emergence of Nazi rule and the plight of her Jewish friends and acquaintances, including Albert Einstein and Gerhard Hauptmann. In addition to her grandmother's footage, which was found in an attic after her death, Lewenz's film includes interviews with surviving relatives about the unreality of being methodically removed from society--first by law, then by violence. With stunning color images of prewar Berlin awash with swastikas, the film also serves as a powerful reminder of how the past is close behind us.
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