EIFF: 16/06/10
Festival time is kicking off again in Edinburgh with the start of the 2010 Edinburgh International Film Festival. Over the next ten days, we will be bringing you regular updates on the films we see, and letting you know what we think you should go and see. For those of you in Edinburgh with us, please get in touch and let us know what you think are the films to see. Here are the screenings I attended on my first day at the festival.
9am – The People Vs George Lucas
My first day at the film festival kicked off with fan-culture documentary The People Vs George Lucas. I had extremely low expectations for this, I expected it to be ninety minutes of fanboy whingeing about Jar-Jar Binks. While there was an element of that, it was a surprisingly warm and balanced take on the Star Wars fan universe, and had a few interesting things to say about possession of art and the role of the creator-as-custodian of their own art. It also brought a focus to the fact that Star Wars has inspired more amateur (and professional) fiction writers, directors, phycisists, graphic artists, and a million other things than probably all of the higher education institutes in Scotland combined. Well worth a watch even if you are not into Star Wars.
11.45 – The Illusionist
2003’s Belleville Rendezvous took the international awards scene by storm – and rightly so. Sylvain Chomet’s inimitable skill as an animator and steadfast dedication to an “old school” way of doing things produces films of such charm and warmth that you wonder why anyone would ever dabble in such witchcraft as 3D.
His latest feature is an adaptation of an unmade Jacques Tati script, originally set in Paris and Czechoslovakia. However, having relocated to Edinburgh over five years ago, he could not resist bringing it to life in his mesmerising style of animation. It is the story of a struggling stage magician in fifties Paris, whose audiences are rapidly migrating to exciting rock and roll. Forced to cast his nest ever-wider to obtain paid work, he ends up in the islands of Scotland, where he enchants a young girl with his sleight of hand, and together they travel to the capital.
Chomet’s portrayal of Edinburgh is quite simply astonishing. The thrill of seeing an already beautiful city rendered in such fine, lovingly handcrafted detail does not dissipate throughout the whole running time. While Edinburgh natives have the combination of familiarity and well, being Scottish to dull the aesthetic effect of Edinburgh’s landscape, it has taken a French virtuoso draughtsman to give a proper evocation of Auld Reekie’s majestic, sweeping terrain.
What’s more fascinating about the film however, is that spellbinding visuals play in the background to the delicate, sweet, comic relationship between the magician and his adolescent charge. Largely dialogue-free, the communication between the two is limited to a drop of the shoulders here, a raised eyebrow there, and is all the more potent for it. By the end of the film, despite not understanding a full sentence either have said, there is a sense of real, palpable emotional attachment.
The Illusionist is one of those rare cinematic artefacts, one that conveys everything it has to say through elements of cinema that make it unique – mood, mise-en-scene, tone, the unquantifiable magic of cinema, in essence. Quite simply a gem of pure, uncut cinema. If you get an opportunity to see it, grab it with both hands.
13.45 Ollie Kepler’s Ever Expanding Purple World
This low-budget British drama by writer/producer/director Viv Fongenie focuses on how easily a personal tragedy or set of circumstances can send an otherwise perfectly sane person into the realms of “madness”. The film follows the titular Ollie Kepler as a trained astrophysicist who makes his living as a web designer. After a quick setup of him, his friends, family and life, he suffers a tragedy that sends him down a spiralling path of mental ill-health.
The plot plays alongside allegorical voiceovers from Ollie about quantum physics and how it defies all logic and accepted common sense. The comparison actually works, and gives some credibility to Edward Hogg’s performance. This is the beginning of the film’s problems. The acting begins a little on the student-level and some of the dialogue sounds fairly unnatural. the lighting is also very inconsistent, and some shots are dark enough to make you squint.
However, these are fairly minor technicalities. For the resources at their disposal, this is an ambitious film, in terms of plot, scope, structure and performances. While it certainly has it’s problems, it hits more than it misses and Hogg’s performance develops into something quite dark and believable.
The film has a lot to say about issues of mental health and it’s effect on people and the people around them. However, it has enough difficulties that a wide release might not be forthcoming.
So do any of those arouse your interest? Or are you holding out for something else? Let us know below.
Catching The people vs George Lucas on Saturday. Quite looking forward to it. Watching The Last Rites of Ransom Pride later that night, quite excited about that also.
Sorry, friday night i should have said.
Cool, let me know what you think of it.
I thought The People vs George Lucas was really good. The genuine love these people have for a franchise that they feel they partly own is amazing.
It is George Lucas’s complete unwilingness to release the original version which is ridiculous, despite the fans demanding it. Definitely worth a watch, funny, but also a superb insight into just how much of an impact Star Wars has had on people’s lifes.