Charlottesville, Virginia
Logistically speaking, I was expecting this year’s Virginia Film Festival to be a nightmare. Tucked in between the rolling hills of central Virginia and the sprawling horse farms of Albemarle County, Charlottesville played host to some 60 events in a half-dozen locations sprinkled throughout a city with increasingly congested thoroughfares and minimal public transportation. Not to mention the tens of thousands of football fans expected to roll into town on that first November weekend to see the 23rd-ranked University of Virginia Cavaliers take on the 24th-ranked Wake Forest Demon Deacons.
But I was pleasantly surprised, both by the ease of movement around the university and its environs and by the impressive program that the organizers had thrown together. Celebrating its 20th anniversary this year, the Virginia Film Festival pulled off its usual trick of mixing classics and new releases to create a filmgoing experience at which any cinephile can find something to enjoy.
“We are absolutely unique,” the festival’s artistic director, Richard Herskowitz, explains. “There is no other film festival that has our particular kind of intellectual and educational emphasis.” Unlike Tribeca or Cannes, film festivals in which the art of procuring a big distribution deal is just as important as the art projected onto the screen, Herskowitz’s festival is all about the movies.
Each year, the festival is tailored to fit a theme; this year’s was “Kin Flicks: Families in Film.” And each year, one of the key draws is the number and quality of speakers that Herskowitz and his staff lure to Charlottes ville to educate filmgoers about the productions they have just seen. For years Roger Ebert was dedicated to the festival, running shot-by-shot workshops on films as diverse as Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup and Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction; he also served as chief interviewer of the cinematic luminaries in attendance. Since illness has forced Ebert to cut down on public appearances, David Edelstein, lead reviewer of New York magazine, has assumed the role of grand inquisitor.
An impressive array of filmmakers make the trek to engage with audiences on films both old and new. Tamara Jenkins, writer/director of 1998’s Slums of Beverly Hills and this year’s Oscar-buzzy The Savages, was on hand to present those pictures and a rare treat: her short film, Family Remains. Stewart Stern, the screenwriter behind James Dean’s seminal tale of teenage angst, Rebel Without a Cause, was also on hand to conduct a shot-by-shot workshop on that 1955 classic. Though his long, frequently off-topic, Grandpa Simpson-style answers forced many of the shots to be skipped, some very interesting facts and insights about Dean’s contribution to the film could be gleaned.
The discussions and workshops were nice appetizers, but the real meat here was the lineup of features. Worry crept in when my weekend viewing schedule didn’t get off to the greatest start. I took in a screening of Killer of Sheep on Friday, a film I’ve been hearing about for years but never had a chance to see. Sheep is a student film shot some 30 years ago and universally hailed as both a lost classic and one of the preeminent examples of African-American cinema–something of an indictment of the dearth of quality African-American films. Director Charles Burnett summed up my feelings when he told the audience afterwards that his film “wasn’t made to be entertaining.” I was not thrilled to be informed of this fact after spending 90 minutes watching ham-handed metaphors brought to life by a largely nonprofessional cast in an exquisitely trying style best described as Watts Neorealism.
But the evening’s double feature more than made up for that tedium. First up was Persepolis, a French animated feature about an Iranian expatriate–a tale of youthful rebellion set to the music of Iron Maiden that begins with the fall of the shah and runs through the Iran/Iraq war. Throw a coming-of-age story, together with a tale of international political intrigue, into a martini shaker, shake vigorously, and pour. It was easily the highlight of the festival–for me, at any rate–and if there is justice in the world, Persepolis should have a decent shot at an Oscar either for animated feature or foreign language film.
With any luck, both.
Following Persepolis, a choice needed to be made: Travel across town to get hectored about the evils of the Iraq war by the director of Battle for Haditha, or stick around the theater I was already in for Sidney Lumet’s latest project, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead. It was a more difficult call than you might think; Lumet, after all, hasn’t made anything of note since 1976’s Network. But the 83-year-old director won out, and the right call was almost certainly made. Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is fantastic. A tightly wound thriller that jumps around chronologically–in the vernacular, it was Tarantinoesque–Lumet’s latest features Philip Seymour Hoffman playing a psychotic Michael Corleone to Ethan Hawke’s Fredo, while Marisa Tomei channels her inner Sharon Stone to reveal more of herself to the audience than ever before.
As you might expect from any festival hosted by a major university, there was the requisite political correctness. “Part of what precipitated the choice of the theme was the passage of the marriage amendment last year in the state of Virginia,” Herskowitz told me, adding, “One of the first thoughts that came to my mind was ‘well, [marriage] may be resolved in the legislative realm, but it’s not resolved in the cultural realm.’ The cultural and the cinematic realm can’t stop making films questioning what family is, and what kind of alternative families exist.”
Things were similarly silly at the “Women in Film” panel. As the six speakers prattled on to an audience of 14 (at least two of whom, besides me, were journalists), questions from my subconscious about priorities in life began floating to the surface. “Women still earn 60 cents on the dollar,” one female filmmaker (inaccurately) claimed, and that nagging little voice finally snapped: “Bunch, are you really missing a college game between two Top 25 teams, one of which is your alma mater, literally taking place down the street, in order to listen to this nonsense?”
I didn’t have an answer–not a good one, anyway–but that voice quieted a little once I got back to the business of the weekend: watching movies. My final screening for Saturday evening was probably the most important event of the festival, a showing of Romance and Cigarettes, followed by a question-and-answer session between the film’s director, John Turturro, and David Edelstein.
The musical revolves around a cheating husband (James Gandolfini) and his relationship with his long-suffering wife (Susan Sarandon). A post-partum Kate Winslet shows up as a bodacious temptress, Christopher Walken shows up as, well, Christopher Walken, and Turturro directs the film with a firm and loving hand. Romance and Cigarettes verges on the experimental, a toned-down version of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge set in the suburbs of New Jersey.
“It’s a hard film to watch without an audience,” Turturro told Edelstein. “If you watch it from a distance, it’s a much harder film to watch.” And he was not far off. The comforting sound of others enjoying the spectacle allowed a deeper immersion than might have been possible watching the film in isolation. And the audience made a difference in my enjoyment for one crucial, totally accidental, reason. While watching the film, I noticed Herskowitz squatting next to me. When he stood up, I realized that he had been talking to Turturro, who was catching the flick as if he were just another member of the audience, sitting one row up and across the aisle from me.
Watching John Turturro watch his film, seeing him laugh along with a theater full of fellow patrons, clearly enjoying his creation as much as a crowd experiencing it for the first time–these are the moments of which great festivals are made.
Sonny Bunch is assistant editor at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
