Ojai Film Society - Spring 2008 Schedule

We have three seasonal schedules each year: winter, spring and fall. Our current schedule is reproduced below. Films are shown on Sunday afternoons at 4:30 p.m. at the Ojai Playhouse, 145 E. Ojai Ave.

Prices are: $8 - General admission $5 - Seniors 65+ $5 - Students (with ID) FREE - OFS sponsors

The Diving Bell & the Butterfly
April 6, 2008 France/USA 2007 (1 hr, 52 min) Rated PG-13

Nominated for four Academy Awards, and called by film critic Andrew Sarris “the best foreign-language picture of the year, if not, flatly, the best picture in any language,” this is a remarkable adaptation of the best-selling memoir of the same name. Celebrated painter and filmmaker Julian Schnabel won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival for this critically acclaimed biopic.

The film tells the extraordinary story of Jean-Dominique Bauby (in a pitch-perfect performance by Mathieu Amalric), editorin- chief of the French magazine Elle who suffered a stroke and was paralyzed by the “locked in” syndrome at the age of 43. Bauby’s only way of communicating was by blinking with one eye, and after several dedicated helpers helped him speak through this small gesture, he began to produce the words that would form his memoir. Along the way, as he swims in and out of consciousness, memories from his past swell into the present, resulting in a cinematic experience that is at once heartbreaking and hopeful.

Schnabel and screenwriter Ronald Harwood somehow manage to convey Bauby’s internal life with remarkable clarity, employing striking cinematography by Janusz Kaminski (winner of the Cannes Technical Grand Prize) and Bauby’s pained, life-affirming monologues. The stricken man realizes that two essential characteristics are not paralyzed – his imagination and his memory – and uses both to escape from the deep-sea diving bell that symbolizes his encasement. “Ravishing to look at,” wrote Newsweek, “mercifully unsentimental, blissfully avoiding almost every cliché,” the film soars above and beyond the genre. “The movie has done what those who’ve cherished the book might have thought impossible,” wrote The Wall Street Journal, “intensified its singular beauty by roving as free and fearlessly as Bauby’s mind did.”

The Savages
April 13, 2008 USA 2007 (1 hr, 53 min) Rated R

Moviegoers who value character interaction will enjoy this touching, humorous film about an elderly father who is being forced to move to a nursing home. The father in question is emotionally withholding and was chronically absent. When he is diagnosed with dementia, the disaffected children he ignored are themselves forced to learn how to care for a father who has never cared for them. As these middle-aged siblings must work together to resettle their unpleasant parent in the nursing home where he will eventually die, they confront old rivalries, long-held grudges and the unsettling awareness that they’re getting older, too.

Director/screenwriter Tamara Jenkins has described the film, her second, as a “coming of middle age” story. Wendy and Jon Savage, the two adult children, are smart, articulate and knowledgeable about drama, she an aspiring playwright, he a professor and author of books about theater. Neither of these two self-centered siblings is prepared for the phone call telling them that their father is descending into dementia and the further news that his dead girlfriend’s children want him out of what is now their house. They decide to move him from his dreamlike idyll in Sun City, Arizona, to a fluorescent-lit nursing home in Buffalo, New York, in the middle of a Rust Belt winter that cinematically symbolizes a long, slow death. The Savages, father, son and daughter, are fascinating, three-dimensional individuals who draw us into a profound meditation on what it means to lose first one’s memory and then one’s life.

“The Savages is terrific,” wrote reviewer Lisa Schwarzbaum, “a movie of uncommon appreciation for the nature and nurture that go into making us who we are, a perfectly calibrated drama both compassionate and unsentimental.”

Alice’s House
April 20, 2008 Brazil 2007 (1 hr, 32 min) Not Rated

Winner of numerous international film festival awards, this small but fetching first feature by documentary filmmaker Chico Teixeira perfectly captures the workingclass life of a family in São Paulo, Brazil, and their struggles to live together in peace.

Marriage and motherhood are frequently the implied happily-ever-after to a romantic tale, but in Alice’s House, they are challenging, disappointing and exhausting. This slice-of-life drama conveys how our familiar existence can unravel through the accumulation of small shocks.

The house in question is a cramped apartment shared by Alice, her husband, her three sons and her mother. Alice, a nail-salon worker, is a proud beauty who fears she’s withering on the vine. Her husband has grown cold, and his cabdriving job offers plenty of opportunity to stray. Her mother holds everything together by cooking, cleaning, ironing and generally trying to meet the needs of the men in the household, even as she is growing blind.

As in a documentary, Teixeira brings his camera into Alice’s home and watches from afar as his characters go about their day-in, day-out activities, quietly recording the details of their daily life. The result is a carefully observed film about one woman’s growing dissatisfaction. When she discovers that her first boyfriend is now the wealthy husband of one of her clients, Alice begins an affair with him that brings her an infusion of the hope that had long ago disappeared.

“What Teixeira has set out to do, and accomplished brilliantly, is to find drama and pathos in the mundane details, thoughtless betrayals and casual cruelties,” Carina Chocano wrote in the Los Angeles Times. “What lingers after watching Alice’s House are not the moments of conflict but the inexorable rhythms of daily life.”

Purple State of Mind
April 27, 2008 USA 2008 (1 hr, 20 min) Not Rated

John Marks, director of the film and author of the companion book, Reasons to Believe, will attend this event and take part in a Q&A session with audience after the screening.

Twenty years ago, Craig Detweiler and John Marks were college roommates. Today Detweiler is involved in filmmaking and teaches film at Biola University and Fuller Theological Seminary. Marks, who worked for 60 Minutes, now lives in Massachusetts and is a writer. His latest book is Reasons to Believe, a look at Christianity in the U.S. While in college, each man had an epiphany with very different results.

Detweiler, after a rather wild youth, discovered Christianity, while Marks left it. Though the two men had lost touch over the years, they had not lost the desire to challenge each other as they had in college. This eventually resulted in the documentary Purple State of Mind, codirected and edited by Detweiler and Marks, in which they address the Red State/Blue State divide as it pertains to the belief (or non-belief ) in Christianity.

In their wide-ranging discussion, the men treat each other with respect. While their conversations are sometimes humorous, often heated and always relentless, they are also respectful and compassionate. We learn of the inner conflicts that led one man to reject faith and the other to embrace it. Most important is the discovery that they actually do share many of the same beliefs and values, however differently they might manifest them.

Ultimately, there is no “winner” or “loser” in their debates. As Detweiler repeatedly emphasizes, the idea was not that they would try to change each other’s views, but that they would help all of us to better respect and understand our differences.

Recipient of an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature, Persepolis is based on Marjane Satrapi’s internationally acclaimed graphic novels about her life. Using the same simple black and white line drawings that characterize her books, Satrapi and her cartooning codirector, Vincent Paronnaud, bring her books to life with a charm and fluidity that has a cross-generational appeal. Equally appealing is the heroine, Satrapi herself, whose story reflects the upheaval experienced by her home country, Iran.

We meet Satrapi at age nine. Voiced by Gabrielle Lopes, she is a spirited child from a liberal, cosmopolitan family. Although they suffer oppression under the Shah, it is nothing compared to what they will soon experience after the Islamic Revolution. The outspoken little girl grows into a defiant teenager (now voiced by Chiara Mastroianni) who talks back to her pious teachers and buys forbidden western music from illegal street vendors. For her protection, her parents send Satrapi to school in Vienna, where she finds herself a lonely misfit. Eventually, she returns to Iran, only to leave again, this time for good, for France.

Marjane does have support throughout her struggles from both her sympathetic mother (voiced by Mastroianni’s own mother, Catherine Deneuve) and her strong, elegantly feminist grandmother (the wonderful Danielle Darrieux). This nourishes her and helps her to survive. Despite her unusual life, Marjane’s core need to find a place where she can feel at home, both within the world and within herself, is universal. Carina Chocano of the Los Angeles Times describes Persepolis as “A familiar story set in an unfamiliar context... a paean to the universality of human experience... and a reminder that even the most complex situations, identities and stories are heartbreakingly simple.”

Caramel
May 11, 2008 France/Lebanon 2007 (1 hr, 35 min) Rated PG

USA Today described this small, enchanting film as “a sweeter and more believable version of Steel Magnolias, Middle Eastern style.” Set largely in a neighborhood beauty parlor in Beirut, where women of various shapes, sizes, ages and backgrounds gather to bond and gossip, the film traces the complications and contradictions in the lives of five women who are looking for romance and fulfillment in a city divided not only by tensions between Christians and Muslims, but by the daily clash – sometimes subtle, sometimes horrifying – of tradition and modernity.

The film’s chief focus is the bonding between women who rely on each for support. The thirty-something owner of the salon is a Christian named Layale (played by Nadine Labaki, who also co-wrote and directed) who is having an affair with a married man. This is her only chance for love, since – like most single women in Lebanon – she still lives with her parents. Her best friend, Nisrine, is a Shiite Muslim whose family is so strict that she must change clothes before returning home. In Nisrine’s neighborhood, sitting in a car and talking to a man can lead to arrest for indecent activity. Perhaps the most poignant situation of all, however, is that of Rima; she is attracted to women in a society that will not even acknowledge, let alone condone, same-sex romance.

Told with gentle humor and steering clear of pat resolutions, the movie celebrates the power of female friendship and the importance of safe havens in repressive cultures. “Sweet but not saccharine,” wrote Kenneth Turan in the Los Angeles Times, “this is an intimate film that doesn’t stint on the desperation and anxiety that go along with the search for love.”

Taxi to the Dark Side
May 18, 2008 USA 2007 (1 hr, 46 min) Rated R

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, Taxi to the Dark Side explores the systematic use of torture and other harsh interrogation techniques sanctioned by the Bush Administration in the war on terror. Wrote The New York Times, “If recent American history is ever going to be discussed with the necessary clarity and ethical rigor, this film will be essential.”

Written and directed by Alex Gibney, the film begins with the story of an Afghan taxi driver named Dilawar who was detained by the U.S. military in 2002. Never charged with a crime or linked to Al Qaeda, Dilawar was subjected to inhumane treatment ranging from sleep deprivation to severe physical abuse. He died in custody at Bagram Air Base.

The main point of Gibney’s film is that what happened to Dilawar was not an isolated incident, but rather an early application of what would soon become a widespread policy ranging from Bagram to Abu Ghraib to Guantanamo. Supported by remarkably candid interviews with soldiers, interrogators and their victims, Gibney makes the case that cruel and illegal punishments, far from being the work of a few “bad apples” (as the Pentagon claimed), were common practice, encouraged by those at the top. Indeed, it was Dick Cheney who famously said, shortly after 9/11, that in the war against terror, “we need to work the dark side.”

Powerful and disturbing, this film is ultimately cathartic and redemptive. “It is not after all about America at war in Iraq or Afghanistan but America at war with itself,” wrote Salon.com. “It’s about what we have done and whether we have the honor and decency to stop it. If America still has a soul, Alex Gibney is trying to save it.”

4 Months, 3 Weeks & 2 Days
May 25, 2008 Romania 2007 (1 hr, 53 min) Not Rated

Writer/director Cristian Mungiu won the Palme D’Or at Cannes as well as European Film Awards for Best Director and Best Film for this powerful tale. With aching authenticity and absolute clarity of storytelling, it confirms the current Romanian cinema renaissance and “deserves to be seen by the largest audience possible, largely because it marks the emergence of an important new talent,” says The New York Times, calling it “a haunting and haunted intellectual and aesthetic achievement.”

Set in 1987 in the last days of the Ceausescu dictatorship in Romania, the story begins as a young woman named Otilia sets out to help her friend and roommate Gabita obtain an illegal abortion, and follows the ensuing series of frightening developments from morning to night. Knowing that she is risking prison if caught, Gabita is unable to cope, so it’s up to Otilia to arrange the doctor and hotel room.

In a series of mesmerizing long takes and real-time scenes, the film casts an unblinking eye on life during the final throes of communism in Romania. The camera doesn’t merely follow the action, it reveals consciousness itself. Through performances called “brilliant” by the BBC, the film shows how, in a place ruled by faceless authority, those with a small amount of power can grind others into compliance and complacency.

Unfolding in a mood of constant paranoia, petty irritations and a kind of mass bickering, the film suggests what life under Ceausescu was like. Social realism elevated to the realm of art, it was called a “masterpiece” by such diverse sources as the San Francisco Chronicle, Entertainment Weekly and the Christian Science Monitor. It is a “tale that powerfully affirms one’s faith in people,” wrote the Boston Globe.

Winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, this compelling tale, based on historical events, offers a riveting examination of the complex moral shadows that make us capable of cowardice and courage at the same time.

In 1936, the Nazis were already in power. Yet Salomon “Sally” Sorowitsch, known in Berlin’s bohemian underworld as “King of the Counterfeiters,” is sure of his own ability to survive. This overconfidence leads to his arrest and internment in Mauthausen Concentration Camp. Finding himself not in a prison but a death trap, Sorowitsch cleverly displays his artistic abilities to his captors, and earns special treatment in exchange for painting glorified portraits of the officers and their families. He survives this way until he is transferred and given a special assignment: to lead an operation counterfeiting British and American money in a scheme to disrupt those nation’s economies.

The men assigned to the counterfeiting operation are segregated from the other prisoners. They have decent food and clothing, clean beds and showers that provide water, not poison gas. Still, they cannot ignore what is happening around them. Here, the central theme of the movie becomes apparent: is one justified in cooperating with evil to stay alive? Sorowitsch has no doubt that survival is everything. Still, rascal that he is, he does have his own sense of honor. This leads him to protect Adolf Burger, an idealistic printer who attempts to sabotage their work.

Austrian director Stefan Ruzowitzky, who wrote the script based on Burger’s autobiographical book, The Devil’s Workshop, makes the struggle between the two men come powerfully alive as they fight for their respective views. The fresh perspective and challenging moral questions make for a historical drama with vital relevance to our own time.

Beaufort
June 8, 2008 Israel 2008 (2 hr, 5 min) Not Rated

Israel 2008 (2 hr, 5 min) Not Rated An Academy Award nominee for Best Foreign Language Film and winner of the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, Beaufort is a passionate and humane antiwar story that, in the words of the Village Voice, “traffics in the mad illogic of battles whose long-forgotten purpose has hardened into mindless routine.”

It is the year 2000. The Israeli occupation of Lebanon, which began 18 years before – literally a lifetime for the young soldiers we meet in the film – is finally ending. But, for the contingent of troops occupying Beaufort Castle – an ancient fortress that has been fought over for centuries – the order to withdraw is maddeningly slow to come. If this is absurd, because there is nothing left to defend and the army has been instructed to destroy the fort when they leave, it is also perilous. Hezbollah rockets keep landing and soldiers continue to die on a mission that has long ago become completely pointless. The continuing waste, along with the slow erosion of his nation’s ideals (along with his own), gradually cause the commanding officer to become unhinged.

Intricately scripted by director Joseph Cedar and award-winning novelist Ron Leshem, Beaufort has the contained intensity of a Samuel Beckett play, and rises to the universality of classics like All Quiet on the Western Front. Cedar’s understated humanism – passionate but never glib or easy – renders all the more painful the unstated fact that, six years after Israel's retreat from Lebanon, the wounds opened all over again. “This is a movie of tremendous power,” wrote Lisa Schwarzbaum in Entertainment Weekly, “nerve-racking, astute, and neutral enough to apply

“There is just one thing wrong with The Band’s Visit,” wrote movie critic Peter Howell. “It’s fiction, not a documentary. You want a story as warm as this to be real, because good news is scarce from the Middle East.” Though first-time writer/director Eran Kolirin’s story may be imaginary, the central message, that individuals are capable of great kindness that transcends artificial cultural barriers, is a very welcome one.

A charming film, filled with humor, pathos and abundant wit, it begins with Egypt’s Alexandria Ceremonial Marching Band arriving in Israel to perform at the opening of an Arab Cultural Center. When they arrive at the airport, dressed in their baby-blue uniforms and military hats, they discover that no one is there to meet them. The bandleader, Tewfiq, serious and formal, and his young trumpeter, Khaled, who fancies himself a playboy, manage to get the band on a bus to town.

Unfortunately, it’s the wrong town, and another bus won’t be available until the next day. Tired, hungry and confused, they find shelter at a restaurant run by the pretty but brash Dina, who manages to be kind, sexy and world-weary all at once. Over the course of the night, Tewfiq and Dina bond, Khaled helps a hapless local discover his inner Romeo and the other band members become embroiled in a troubling domestic situation.

Winner of numerous international awards, including a special Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and the eight top awards offered by the Israeli Film Academy, including Best Picture, this endearing film has delighted audiences around the world. “With luck,” wrote Ann Hornaday in the Washington Post, “filmgoers who discover this gem will make it the must-see movie of the season.”

Woman on the Beach
June 22 - South Korea 2006 (1 hr, 40 min) Not Rated

South Korean writer-director Hong Sangsoo belongs to a growing category of international filmmaker: the accomplished master whose work has been shown all over the world, but remains almost unknown in the U.S. Hong has been compared to Eric Rohmer, the French master of low-key, ordinary-life comedies. In this film, wrote Newsday, “Hong Sang-soo reinvents the contemporary battle-of-the-sexes comedy with a precision and confidence we haven’t seen since Eric Rohmer took out the patent.”

Nominated for three Asian Film Awards, the movie is a witty and universal portrayal of how we all get stymied by the impulses and options inherent in the simple acts of living. It begins with filmmaker Joong-rae who finds himself suffering from writer’s block and unable to finish his script. Looking to take a break, he pleads with his friend and production designer Chang-wook to join him on a trip to the west coast.

Chang-wook and his girlfriend Moonsook have already made plans, but eventually agree to join Joong-rae. The three set off to visit the cherry-blossom covered Shinduri Beach Resort. Not long after their arrival, Joong-rae and Moonsook are sneaking off for long walks on the strand. Already a fan of his films, Moonsook falls for Joong-rae’s advances and the two spend a heated night together. The story becomes more convoluted as Joongrae, unable to commit, parts with Moonsook and later succumbs to yet another romantic encounter.

Marvelously acted and memorably atmospheric, this serious-minded romantic comedy-drama beautifully captures the natural flow of ongoing conversation, with its inevitable pauses, quicksilver changes of direction and alterations of tone. This “immaculately constructed movie,” said the Village Voice, is “a rueful tale of karmic irony, self-deceived desire, squandered second chances, and unforeseen abandonment.”