Dilip's Cultural Event Blog

Film Paris, I Love You (Paris, je t'aime; Various Directors, 2006)

2007-06-18T23:49:00.001-07:00

I saw the film Paris, je t’aime at nearby Galaxy Theatre tonight and hope to be writing a review for Saathee Magazine in the next day or so. If I do, I will fill more details in here. For now, you can see the trailer:

American Dance Festival: Martha Clarke's

2007-06-08T23:40:00.000-07:00

We had a great time enjoying the first 2007 performer at the American Dance Festival, Martha Clarke's Garden of Earthly Delights. Many are familiar with Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516) and his The Garden of Earthly Delights, depicting the descent of mankind after creation into temptation and destruction. Using a remarkably integrated cast of dancers, many of whom doubled as musicians and all of whom were stage hands hoisting each other on aerial scaffolding, Martha Clarke shared an interpretation of the painting. The near-transparent costumery, powerful emotion, and tremendous aerial aspects made for a powerful performance. We picked tonight because it featured a post-performance discussion; many of us, including me, were fortunate to be able to get our questions answered (I asked about how difficult it was to dance while "flying", and how the aerial wiring could have been less noisy).

Day 4 of 4 of Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

2007-04-15T22:07:00.000-07:00

Sadly, Full Frame is over! It was an excellent Festival with many touching and important films.
We started the day with Nobody, a film about a free-spirited man who decides to leave any responsiblities behind (including his job, which he had left some time ago) and meander through Memphis and then on to New Orleans from his home in Indiana via canoe.

We had a friend visiting from Virginia so that he could attend yesterday, stay overnight with us, and see more films today, so he saw Run Granny Run in the same time slot. I included a short recommendation for this excellent film in my current magazine review, and we were excited to meet 97-year-old Doris ("Granny D") Haddock, her son, and producer and director Marlo Poras.

My wife went on to see a film about Ariel Dorfman's life, A Promise to the Dead, that she said was inspiring. I attended a panel discussion, Reaching out on Global Warming, and interjected my frustration that though it is well documented that the biggest impact we make on the environment is eating a non-plant based diet, few in the environmental movement even mention moving away from meat and dairy as something we can try doing. That generated some exciting discussion amongst others in the audience afterwards, including a writer and film maker/professor, who think that a story featuring our Thanksgiving (the country's largest vegetarian Thanksgiving) would be a good one to put together!

There was a long break, during which the awards were announced. We missed it and I hope to post all the winners, but we had an opportunity to see some of the winning films in the afternoon. I first attended Prisoner or; How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair, a shocking but calmly related story of a man in Baghdad who was, by all counts groundlessly, arrested on a house raid by the U.S. Army on suspicion that he was plotting to kill Tony Blair. Even when no evidence was found, he was kept in jail, ending up in Abu Garaib, and subject to cruel treatment.

That put me more than an hour into War / Dance, one of the winning films (really, all of them are winners!). It was very moving, about war-torn Northern Kenya, describing war crimes against rural people (difficult to see), interwoven with the promising story of children, some of whom had endured terrible losses to their families and all of whom had to flea their village, practicing for a national music and dance competition.

The last film that we saw was the winner Monastery. It was a unique and delightful film about a fascinating older Danish gentleman with many peculiarities (I only noticed one time when he isn't frowning) who decides to donate use of his country estate to a Russian monastery.

Day 3 of 4 of Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

2007-04-14T21:44:00.000-07:00

Full Frame is winding down quickly - it goes by too fast! We started off today with a 9:15-11a film, The Ants, about Japan's imperial past. It is a documentary about a man who served as a 20-year-old in Japan's WWII army in China. The Japanese were brutal warriors, and he relates awful things he had to do, like practice bayoneting on innocent peasants. His country didn't have some of their China-based forces stop fighting even after the war's end and he didn't return to Japan till, as I recall, 1953; this shows his attempts to use the Japanese courts to get his country to acknowledge the sacrifice and apologize. It was well presented and powerful.

I saw Revolution '67 preceded by the short Conjure Bearden next. The short was a lovely 17-minute retrospective of the photography of an African-American and African-American neighborhoods near Charlotte, NC from 1938-1941. The main film was a shocking narrative of the Newark, NJ riots and how injustice, lack of opportunity, corruption, and lack of concern grew into the calamity and continues in many ways.

Power of Ten: A Conversation had the ten curators, including Michael Moore and Mira Nair, of this special series in a panel moderated by an NPR radio figure dicussing their work, documentary film, and their films they were screening. It was a good and lively discussion.

I watched the first 45 minutes of In the Shadow of the Moon, a film with Apollo astronauts talking about their experiences in space flight and lunar landings. The clips, including President Kennedy's inspiring moon speech and fabulous rocket film, were great to see again; hearing the astronauts thinking back to what they were feeling at the time helped to personalize it.

As good as that film was, I left to see the unique Helvetica. It was all about typefaces, focusing on the Helvetica font. Many typographers and designers were interviewed in a lively paced and fun film, with a delightful soundtrack, that makes one more aware of the fonts used all around us; many said that Helvetica is the face we see most often and is timeless in its beauty, but some argued for more unconventional fonts. The film was just completed, as I recall from the Q&A session afterwards with the filmmaker, 3 weeks ago and has already been shown in 7 countries; it is apparently the only film about typography and is going to be shown at design conferences, museums, other film festivals, ... - there are something like 45 screenings in the near future lined up.

I saw another film about Japan, but on a diametrically opposite theme, next - The Great Happiness Space. This fascinating and enjoyable peek is into the life of a club that has men who cater to clients in Osaka as in-house companions. They give company, express (lying) confessions of love, and sometimes have sex with the lonely women who come at something like $100 an hour - and when the women order champagne, that adds another $200, 500, or even $1000+ to the tab. It was sad to see how the men string the women on to keep them coming, though they have no intention of marriage or proper dating with these clients.

My wife and I both ended up at Blockade, a striking almost-silent, black and white documentary about the Siege of Leningrad taken from the Soviet side. Seeing the depravations and dead bodies was quite sobering.

Day 2 of 4 of Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

2007-04-13T22:27:00.000-07:00

Today was a long day with the first film at Full Frame that we attended starting at 9a and my last film ending around 1a! In the first slot of films, we saw the short Metacarpus about human hands. The led to Nömadak Tx, a film that I previewed and wrote a review about that is running in the current issue of the magazine that I write for (and is included below). I love this film and the only thing more exciting than seeing it on the large screen was meeting the three filmmakers, with whom I've been emailing since I saw their film. We're supposed to all get together for dinner after the Festival ends on Sunday and they may jam (they played their txalaparta just after the film ended today!) with my wife, who is a sitarist.

My wife saw Angels in the Dust, a sad story about an orphanage in HIV-ravaged Johannesburg. I saw Leila Khaled: Hijacker and Promised Paradise. The first film is a documentary about the first woman to hijack a plane, which she did for Palestinian demands. It was very interesting to see her now, decades after two hijackings, as well as to see interviews with staff from the two hijacked planes. The second film was about a famous pupeteer in Indonesia who uses his performance art to question why people commit acts of terrorism, even confronting the Bali nightclub bomber in his jail cell; it was also well worth seeing.

We caught the beginning of The Last Days of Yasser Arafat, about an Australian reporter's attempts to interview Yasser Arafat before he died. We left to see Everything's Cool, a film that we loved about global warming and what the U.S. and its citizens could do about it. (One thing that frustrates me, however, about many environmental films and other material is that they usually seem to miss the elephant in the room - not eating a plant-based diet creates a bigger impact on our planet than automobile driving.)

I was disappointed that I was unable to interview Mira Nair, who was attending today and tomorrow; I had contacted her several months ago and the kind folks at the Festival were trying to arrange it, but she was just too busy. It would have been an excellent article for the magazine that I write for and I think would have helped the Festival draw more folks next year. We did attend her introduction to The Battle of Algiers, one of the most influential films on her craft (ten filmmakers are screening films of importance to them), and watched for about a half hour, but have recently seen the film (on the large screen, as well), so left to eat.

My wife went home but I came back and caught portions of Vietnam Romance, an animated film of video game clips about war in Vietnam that didn't appeal to me; films of Jen Cohen; and about a half hour of Larry Flynt: The Right to be Left Alone, an interesting look into the life of this very controversial man. I watched another film in the curated series, Do the Right Thing, this one introduced by St. Clair Bourne. It's a film that has been widely distributed, but one that I had never seen. It is, as expected from the director, Spike Lee, a hard-hitting social commentary on race.

My April 2007 review in Saathee Magazine of Nömadak Tx follows.

I sat down to see Nömadak Tx on DVD with little expectation, only knowing that it was a film about traveling percussionists. Music and travel – my interest was piqued. It is a road movie documentary of Igor Otxoa and Harkaitz Mtnez. de San Vicente of the Basque Country of northeastern Spain who take their ancient txalaparta percussion instrument to India, the Arctic Circle, Mongolia, Algeria, and the Saharan Desert, looking for native peoples in remote areas with whom they could integrate their talents through music, building bridges and relationships.

The txalaparta is a traditional wooden or stone percussive instrument said to be up to six thousand years old. Deeply resonant, it was used millenia ago as a means for villagers to communicate events into the countryside. Long boards are beat using sticks (makilak) by two performers (txalapartaris), one of whom maintains a fixed binary rhythm representing balance, while the other tries to break that balance with zero, one, or two beats in between. Reminiscent to me of the classical Indian sawal-jawab question-answer dialogue between tabla players, there is often some friendly competition with increasingly fast rhythms in an improvised musical encounter.

Txalapartaris were becoming increasingly rare with only a tiny number of peasants maintaining the tradition by the 1950s, before a resurgence of interest by folklorists in the 1960s. Contemporary musicians such as Otxoa and de San Vicente started experimenting with materials besides wood and stone, such as metal or even blocks of ice.

The film’s title, I learned from correspondence with one of the musicians, is simply a combination of the word meaning “nomadic” or “nomads” in the Basque language, along with the first two letters in the name of the instrument. And so we have a journey of this fascinating instrument, or at least its concept for it to be constructed anew onsite. During the opening credits, an interesting quote is presented that playing this instrument “and travelling are very similar. You do not know what will happen in either case.”

The film moves fast and keeps your attention right from the opening credits with dramatic photography. Interspersed with the credits we see the musicians creating a txalaparta, with closeups of saws cutting, sawdust flying. Throughout the film we hear txalaparta sounds.
As soon as the credits end, the film abruptly switches to Mumbai, the first stop on the road trip. As in each stop, we experience visuals and sounds of the local scene.

That the instrument is played by two is not incidental – it is an inherent part of the sense of “encounter” in the project that the film is part of, that of traveling as nomads with their traditional instrument in order to share, build bridges spanning communities, and form a meaningful cultural exchange, as well as experiment with new materials for the instrument. The whole is greater than the parts and, it is posited, one plus one ends up being greater than two, but the actual value cannot be predetermined. Adding to that mixture, the intent was to collaborate with traditional local artists, learning from each other in the genesis of compositions.

After working with Mumbai musicians and giving a concert, off the musicians go to the tribal lands of the Adivasis. The film lingers briefly when it needs to, but keeps on its nomadic quest. The editing reflects this combination of positive restlessness and purposeful striving – from a scene of traditional Adivasi music accompanied by singing of their cosmological ideas, we cut right to the nighttime catching of a train and then immediately to the bright daytime snowscape of the musicians on skis, creating music out of ice and performing for the Sámi (Laplander)
people of northern Scandinavia.

If nothing else, the film is an exciting travelogue accompanied by the unique rhythms of the txalaparta. It’s “cool” to see them clowning around in the Arctic and jumping into near freezing water after partaking of a sauna, as well as to watch them cutting ice blocks and shaving them just so in order to tune them. In the Sahara, it’s amazing to see them make their music out of desert stone.

Whether on the Mongol steppe, driving through Algeria, in the Arctic, or in urban or tribal India, seeing the musicians engineer versions of their instrument out of local natural materials and hearing the magnificently resonant sounds from it all is a feast of the senses. The musicians have a lot of fun on their travel and bring smiles to their coopted performers, their audiences, themselves, and, no doubt, their film viewers.

But the film is more than a travel film. We hear notes that strike both our ears and our hearts – there is an ancient wisdom that is being transmitted. One could argue that it is a gently meandering film of peace, an exercise reminding us that we have so much in common and yet so much to learn from each other.

The sharp editing cuts; mixture of human activity with that which is in nature; everyday sounds as well as those, sometimes haunting and primordial, that we hear from the txalaparta; and subtlety through which the film gently presents itself, all effectively further the goals of the work. In less talented hands, such artistry can actually backfire and result in a trivialized production with techniques being exposed for the sake of themselves and not to further a story or feeling, but it works superbly here.

I fully enjoyed this unique documentary film and am delighted that I had the opportunity to see it. Nömadak Tx is a joyful ride showing how music is universal and brings happiness and shared understanding. As enchanting as it was to see, I look forward to experiencing it on the large screen when it is shown at the Full Frame Festival in mid-April 2007 (I have another article on the Festival in this issue).

8 stars out of 10
Note: all pictures are from the filmmakers, who took them, and are used with their permission.

Day 1 of 4 of Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

2007-04-12T21:56:00.000-07:00

We love attending Full Frame, the country's largest documentary film festival. I'll copy below the review of the Festival that I published in the current issue of Saathee Magazine, for which I am the film reviewer.

Today we were at the Festival from its first film at 10a through one of the last, ending at almost midnight. Robert, Mary and Katrina was a film my wife and I both liked that had no action but was an interview with an elderly couple who survived Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans; their story and how they talk, one's thoughts intertwined with the other, makes for a good story. Radiphobia was shown immediately after and was a chilling and beautifully made film about the aftermath of the Chernoybl nuclear powerplant disaster.

Our favorite films were For the Bible Told Me So, which looked at contemporary Christianity and its varied views on homosexuality, and The Rape of Europa, a film 7+ years in the making that comprehensively covers the Nazi targeted wholesale theft of artwork as well as their goals of destroying Slavic culture. A short film, Rückenlage, dreamily describes Rudolf Hess' solo 1941 flight to Scotland to offer peace to England.

The opening night film, Castells, was somewhat disappointing. Indeed, it was an interesting story about a Spanish team of human pyramid builders; they carefully craft building towers of themselves. But the approximately 2-hour film could have been, my wife and I both think, much more effective at keeping the viewer's interest if it were much shorter.

In the approximately 10p-midnight slot after the opening night party, there was a short that I didn't much like about indoor motorcycle acrobatics called Motodrom. But the film Comrades in Dreams was quite good, portraying folks in Maharashtra India, Burkino Faso, North Korea, and Wyoming, each of whom had a love for film and showed enthusiastic audiences films. One thing that was particularly interesting and quite humorous about the North Korean story was the strong indoctrination seeming implicit in so much of the daily life, including praise for North Korean culture, to the point of a woman's not responding to a man's photograph in an attempted arranged marriage was seen not just as an affront to him, a kim chi reseacher (!), but to kim chi itself!! (Indeed, never fear, she atones!)

My review in the April 2007 Saathee Magazine, which is oriented toward a South Asian readership follows.

April showers may bring May flowers, but April also brings the country’s leading documentary film festival, Full Frame, to Durham, North Carolina. Saathee readers in the Carolinas are lucky to have so nearby this Festival, which attracts an international audience to well-attended screenings. Many of these films premiere at the Festival and filmmakers are usually present to take questions immediately after the screening of their films.

At the Festival, you can select sometimes from seven well-made and interesting films playing at the same time, meet people like Mira Nair or Ken Burns and ask them a burning question that you’ve always had about one of their films, be moved by brand new films never before screened and meet their directors, attend parties, rubbing shoulders with industry executives and filmmakers, participate in discussions, and much more.

The Festival is a great venue for dispelling any notions that documentary films may be dull. At this year’s Full Frame Festival, for example, one can experience stories masterfully told about topics such as a Catalonian 400-person human pyramid building team who engineer human towers more than 30 feet tall in their travels; an unconventional British gangster; a 91-year-old violinist’s trip, fulfilling a decades-long desire, with his grandson; global warming; seeking reconciliation in Greensboro, NC; Iraq; Nazi plundering of art; the first woman to hijack an airplane; the last absolute monarchy in the world, a country with the highest HIV infection rate and lowest (under 33 years) life expectancy (Swaziland); “Nollywood”, the new Nigerian film industry; 20 years worth of answering machine greetings; an Indonesian pupeteer and performance artist; a humorous look at human hands; and the Helvetica font.

I had reported, in the May 2006 issue of Saathee, that at the 2006 Festival there seemed to be more films about India than any other country except the United States and Iraq. This year the statement may stand if expanded to South Asia. Nömadak Tx (Raúl De la Fuente, 2006, 89 minutes), reviewed in detail in this issue, is a not-to-be-missed film with the opening scene in Mumbai and about a fifth of the film taking place in India.

Shame (Mohammed Naqvi, 2006, 110 minutes) is about Mukhtaran Mai and her shocking story that ends with much promise. In 2002, the 30-year-old woman from Meerwala, a remote Pakistani village, was sentenced by the tribal council to be raped by a group of men in retaliation for an alleged crime that her brother had committed. With no police presence in the village and with the feudal precedent of self-victimization or suicide, she musters the courage to travel to town to file a police case, in spite of death threats. Her case attracts governmental and then international press and human rights attention, and results in her being praised with awards for bravery and travel abroad to speak, as well as being given a handsome amount of money with which she builds the village’s first school. I recommend this film not just for its sensitive treatment of the matter and the inspiring story of Mukhtaran Mai, but also because of the beautiful cinematography that paints, at times, a welcome and almost surrealistically dreamy veneer on a chilling episode.

The Begum family of Bangladeshi origin living in London have taken Simon Chambers under their wing, partially out of concern for his remaining a bachelor. As he witnesses the remarkable pressure to get their London-raised daughters married off, preferably to men in Bangladesh from respectable families, he gets their permission to film them and directs and produces Every Good Marriage Begins With Tears (2006, 61 minutes). The characters are interesting – an overbearing eldest married sister, foul-mouthed sister Shahanara whose father had exorcised her from the family because of her Western demeanor, and religious sister Hushnara who is engaged (in periods when she doesn’t change her mind) to marry a man in Bangladesh and leave England.

Match Made (Mirabelle Ang, 2006, 48 minutes), though not about the subcontinent, is about a Singaporean matchmaking agency. Apparently, there is an industry of searching for attractive young women in impoverished rural Vietnam and bringing them to homes in Ho Chi Minh City. There, the women bide their time doing chores until a client appears to evaluate them. Three at a time and often giggling in embarassment, they are brought in for an immediate assessment (on no meaningful criteria that I could discern). Within minutes, perhaps a dozen or more women are considered and, as in this case, one may be selected. Seventy-two hours later they have married, after a “medical check” for “purity”, and the client is driven to the airport to return to Singapore, the bride’s immigration matters pending. What kind of marriage do the couple in the film have and how do they communicate as they speak different languages? A documentary worth seeing, I felt that the bride selection process was not only demeaning to the women, but also insulting to their sense of pride in their country and culture.

There are many other excellent films at Full Frame. In a real sense, each film has earned its place; 82 films in competition eligible for awards were selected out of over 1000 submissions.
A film that I highly recommend is Run Granny Run (Marlo Poras, 2007) about legendary activist Doris “Granny D” Haddock. At age 90, she had walked 3200 miles across the length of the United States, including climbing the Appalachian Mountains in a blizzard and skiing in to Washington, D.C. to draw attention to campaign finance reform. This film picks up in 1994 when “Granny D” at age 94 jumps in to run for the Senate when one candidate unexpectedly drops out with just four months before Election Day. How does she proceed, refusing money from special interests while running against a well-funded incumbent? Seeing democracy in action through the campaign of this lovable, persistent, and principled woman is a story that is heart-warming, inspiring, and downright fun.

A total of over 100 films will be shown. In addition to the films in competition, there are other curated films, films in the Southern Sidebar Series about the American South, and special films, including the new <frameset>, featuring short videos that premiered online. There are also panel discussions, workshops about filmmaking, and parties. This year, there will be a curated series of ten important filmmakers, including Mira Nair, Michael Moore, and Martin Scorsese, each showing a film important to their own growth as an artist. For example, Mira Nair will be screening The Battle of Algiers (La Battaglia di Algeri; Gillo Pontecorvo, 1966), a powerful neorealistic film shot in documentary style about the savagery of urban warfare in the context of the Algerian struggle against French colonial rule.

The festival runs from Thursday through Sunday. The days are quite full from 9a or 10a till past midnight, with multiple concurrent venues. There’s a lot to choose from! I recommend taking Thursday and Friday off or at least attending those evenings, and spending the entire weekend at the Festival in downtown Durham. The best way to experience the Festival is to purchase a pass (if still available; they sometimes sell out), but you can also purchase tickets to particular screenings or events.

Visit Full Frame online at www.fullframefest.org for complete details. You can also reach them by phone at 919-687-4100.

Note: All pictures and Full Frame logo courtesy of the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, and used with their permission.

Film The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen; Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2006)

2007-03-31T00:47:00.000-07:00

Tonight we saw The Lives of Others; I had been looking forward to seeing this and fully expected to like it. Indeed, it was a film about the chilling era of the Stazi East German secret police, made unique in its understated style and lack of predictability. We really enjoyed it but are puzzled why it won the Oscar over Deepa Mehta's Water.

Full Frame Documentary Festival previewing

2007-03-15T23:59:00.000-07:00

I'm preparing for the Full Frame Film Festival, the country's largest documentary film festival held here in Durham, NC and just a few weeks away, and have previewed a few films on DVD the last few days. Several nights ago I saw Every Good Marriage Begins with Tears (Simon Chambers, 62 minutes) about two young English sisters of traditional Bangladeshi backgrounds who struggle between two cultures in terms of their marriage choices.

Just before that, I saw Zo is dat (The Way It Is; Elizabeth Salgado, 2006, 31 minutes), a Dutch film about 73-year-old farmer Jan's daily routine in Groningen in the north of the Netherlands. The Full Frame site offers this description: "in this meditation on the intrigues of the everyday, a bachelor farmer eats breakfast, does chores, cooks dinner and every so often shaves and goes out for a drink."

Last night I saw an interesting but sad film, Match Made (Mirabelle Ang, 2006, 48 minutes), about a marriage agency that finds Vietnamese women for men from Singapore to marry, in spite of language and socioeconomic differences. It was difficult to see how the women, as well as the economically poor country they were from, are exploited.

Tonight I fully enjoyed the unique documentary Nömadak Tx, a joyful ride showing how music is a universal that brings happiness and shared understanding. Two musicians from Spain's Basque country, Igor Otxoa and Harkaitz Mtnez. de San Vicente, go on a road tour far afield with their Txalaparta traditional percussive musical instrument; it issaid to be up to six thousand years old. The instrument is traditionally made from wood and played by two musicians.

The two musicians travel the world looking for native peoples in remote areas with whom they can integrate the Txalaparta in fun musical jams, building bridges and relationships. They visit India and the Adivasi tribal people, the Sámi (Laplander) people of northern Scandinavia, inhabitants of the Sahara desert, and nomads on the Mongol steppe. Seeing them engineer versions of their instrument out of ice and desert stone and hearing the magnificently resonant sounds from it all is a feast of the senses. The musicians have a lot of fun on their travel and bring smiles to their coopted performers, their audiences, themselves, and, no doubt, their film viewers.

Film A Face in the Crowd (Elia Kazan, 1957)

2007-02-24T00:57:00.000-08:00

As part of the NC Museum of Art winter film series, I saw A Face in the Crowd tonight. You can read my friend and curator "moviediva"'s notes; here is the description that she posted:

Directed by Elia Kazan. Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, Lee Remick, Walter Matthau (127 min.)
Lonesone Rhodes, a country boy with the gift of gab, is discovered by an ambitious producer and catapulted into, and corrupted by, television fame. A Face in the Crowd was ahead of its time in anticipating mass media power; a cautionary tale that many 1950s reviewers viewed as both unrealistic and unpatriotic.

What an interesting and scary character that Andy Griffith plays!

Film The Namesake (Mira Nair, 2007)

2007-02-16T00:32:00.001-08:00

Thanks to Fox Searchlight and Faisal Irshad who successfully arranged with them to bring the film down to Raleigh-Durham, I was able to see The Namesake at a special pre-release showing at Galaxy Cinema (thanks to them, too!). I loved reading the book by Jhumpa Lahiri (you can read my description on my books page), and have been looking forward to seeing this film by Mira Nair, due to be released on March 9th. I am publishing a review in Saathee Magazine, to appear in their March issue. Below is a version of that review.

Back in 2003 days after its publication, I could hardly put down Pulitzer-winning Jhumpa Lahiri’s novel The Namesake. Lahiri was born in London to Bengali immigrants, raised in Rhode Island, and now lives in Brooklyn. In both of her books (The Namesake and the 2000 collection of short stories Interpreter of Maladies, which won her the Pulitzer), she writes about the Bengali immigrant experience, particularly about families who have moved to Boston and New York.

I was therefore excited when I heard that Mira Nair would be directing a film based on the novel. Readers will probably be familiar with Nair’s films, including Monsoon Wedding (2001), Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love (1996), Mississippi Masala (1991), and Oscar-nominated Salaam Bombay! (1988); she is also in pre-production on a crime drama due out next year called Shantaram.

Mumbai-based Sooni Taraporevala, a graduate of Harvard (where she met Mira Nair) wrote the screenplay, as she also did on Mississippi Masala and Salaam Bombay! (incidentally, I understand that she is directing her first film, based on her own screenplay, due to be released this spring). I don’t know why, but the setting of the film version is changed from Boston and its suburbs to the New York area and moved about a decade forward.

The story is that of the Gangulis - Ashoke (Irfan Khan) and his wife Ashima (Tabu, born Tabassum Hashmi and niece of social activist and actor Shabana Azmi), Kolkata (Calcutta) immigrants to the U.S. in the early 1960s (1970s in the film), their son Gogol (Kal Penn), and his younger sister Sonali or Sonia (Sahira Nair). As a bachelor in India, Ashoke suffers terribly from a train wreck, but his life is saved because, instead of sleeping on the nighttime journey, he had been reading “The Overcoat” by Russian writer Nikolai Gogol.

When Ashoke and Ashima’s first child is born (in 1968 in the book), they are surprised that they cannot leave the hospital without naming him; they prefer to wait for the great-grandmother’s suggestion. The name of the Russian writer occurs to Ashoke, and he assigns “pet name” Gogol. The "good name" that the great-grandmother mailed never arrives, so the name Gogol sticks. As the boy grows, his name bothers him; it is neither Indian nor American, nor even a first name, and he doesn’t care to familiarize himself with anything beyond parroting that Nikolai Gogol is one of his father’s favorite authors. He legally changes his name at college to "Nikhil".

The story follows Gogol/Nikhil as he goes to Yale University, is inspired to be an architect on a family trip to India when they visit the Taj Mahal, goes to graduate school and on to a job in New York City, and experiences several romantic relationships. Wittingly or not, he follows the advice to “play the field” as much as he wishes, but to reserve marriage for a woman of Bengali origin.

How do the US-born children relate to India? Where is home for the parents and how do they stay in touch and perform their duties while geographically separated from their extended family? The Namesake is a story of the power of a name and of family; the immigrant experience; the search for love, context, and identity.

I enjoyed the film but, as often is the case, I found it to fall short of the book, whose power made me an instant fan of Lahiri’s (watch for a cameo appearance by her in the film as Aunt Jhumpa). Armchair criticism is easy, however, and perhaps more meaningful insight is gained by asking if the medium is effectively used to convey the ethos of the story.

The answer is a gentle “yes”. One of Lahiri’s strengths as a writer is an attention to detail revealed in a matter-of-fact style that doesn’t belabor the obvious. But of course the film cannot fairly be expected to reveal all of the original’s subplots, such as Gogol’s first relationship with his college sweetheart Ruth, or the myriad details beautifully presented in the book surrounding multicultural celebrations of birthdays, for example.

The film effectively contrasts the chaotic vibrancy of Kolkata with the much more restrained and anonymous big city life of the States through foundational scenes of bridges – the Howrah Bridge over the Hooghly River and Manhattan’s 59th Street Bridge. In New York, we can see the business of modern city life rendered mute through a small apartment’s glass windows; in India, no such respite from daily life is readily found. Another effective motif is the recurrence of the Travelogues exhibit at JFK Airport, reminding us through changing holographic images about the transition in space and culture that the Gangulis experience traveling between America and India.

There are some particularly well composed, emotive scenes, such as the timidly uncertain wave goodbye of Ashima to Ashoke on their first morning together in the New World when he leaves on dismal snowy streets for work. I wouldn’t, however, characterize the film as a whole as having consistently memorable cinematography, though it is rather effectively subtly understated and helps the story to progress.

The soundtrack could have been more appealing. Perhaps I was too focused on fidelity to the book which of course can simply be an irrelevant distraction, but I didn’t relate to the music of high school student Gogol as characteristic of either the late 1970s or late 1980s. Strictly speaking, the JFK exhibit was installed in 2000, which is inconsistent in fact and in technology with most of the trips that the Ganguli family makes through the airport starting in the 1970s.

All that said, Mira Nair has made a sensitive, touching, and very interesting film that triggers an authentic collection of emotions from joy to despair, with dashes of convincingly real everyday humor and chance. I was happy to see in the closing credits two of the three best known Bengali filmmakers mentioned, “For RITWIK GHATAK and SATYAJIT RAY, gurus of cinema with love and salaams”; only Mrinal Sen is missing.

I recommend both the film (expected to be theatrically released on March 9) and, especially, the book for first and second generation immigrants and their friends, as well as to anybody who has felt significant loss, detachment, or uncertain change in their life. It is a story that is remarkable in its subtle depiction of the flip sides of the coin of history and promise.

7 stars out of 10

Note: all pictures are copyright ©2006 by Twentieth Century Fox, and used with their permission. Photographs by Abbot Genser and Mira Nair.

References:

Wikipedia entry
Official film website
imdb page and my version of the review there
Blog by Kal Penn about the film

Film Volver (Pedro Almodóvar, 2006)

2007-02-09T22:16:00.000-08:00

Tonight we had hoped to make it to the art museum to see the 1957 Jayne Mansfield and Tony Randall film Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? but were in Chapel Hill visiting with friends and their family who lost their 85-year-old father to burns resulting in a housefire. Tragic. Tomorrow we will attend the funeral.

We did go to see Volver, the first Almodóvar as well as Penélope Cruz film that I have seen. This was one of the first films that I have seen with my wife that she liked significantly more than I did. It was an interesting film about possible life after death, Spanish village superstitions, and poorly behaved husbands, but I just must not get it and certainly don't see why it received a nomination (for Cruz as leading actress) for an Oscar. You can see its trailer below.

Speaking of Oscars, I am rooting for a film few match in terms of acting, cinematography, or intensity, Deepa Mehta's Water, my fervent choice for winner of best foreign language film. I have not seen any of its competitors - the Danish Efter brylluppet, Algerian Indigènes, Mexican
El Laberinto del Fauno, or, a film that I am looking forward to seeing, the German
Das Leben der Anderen. I also hope that Forest Whitaker wins best leading actor (as Idi Amin) in The Last King of Scotland - what amazing acting.

Film Tokyo Story (Tokyo monogatari; Yasujiro Ozu, 1953); Glorydive (musical group) performance

2007-01-26T23:28:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned back when I saw it in July, Tokyo Story is one of my favorite films and is also often rated as one of the top fifty films of all times by film critics. I teach a course on the films of Yasujiro Ozu, the filmmaker (and Satyajit Ray, a Bengali filmmaker), and adore Ozu's style. Tonight, my friend "moviediva" showed this masterpiece as part of the art museum's winter film series, and, though I've seen the film almost a half dozen times, couldn't miss it. You can see moviediva's excellent comments about the film. I am including a clip that I found online here with the delightful actor Setsuko Hara, who often plays the dutiful, happy, and unselfish daughter (called Noriko in this and other films) showing just how unselfish she is near the end of the film.

My wife performed in 2005, and is scheduled to perform in the next event, delayed from the fall to early 2007, for A Night of Dreams, a charity event in downtown Raleigh. One of her sitar pieces introduced the group Glorydive (which was then called Taylor Roberts Music; check out their MySpace page). We enjoy their music, especially the masterful electric violinist Mark Nippert and quite enthusiastic hand drummer Brian Tavener, as well as guitarist and lead singer Taylor Roberts and bassist Alex McKinney. It had been a while since we had seen Glorydive, and they were performing in downtown Raleigh tonight at the Pour House Music Hall, so we went to see them.

Luckily, they only allow smoking on their second floor, but it still was a little smoky. They had a backup band, that we didn't much care for, with Glorydive coming on a little after midnight. We enjoyed them, as always - a rock band, they play mainly original compositions but also some covers (such as Bono and U2's I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For and Charlie Daniel's Band's The Devil Went Down to Georgia), but what makes them special is the violin and so-fun and energetic drumming. It was by no means the perfect combination - sentimental Ozu followed by rock music - but was a fun evening.

Film Solyaris (Солярис or Solaris; Andrei Tarkovsky, 1972); Magical Anjali British synthpop sitarist

2007-01-24T23:08:00.000-08:00

Wow, what an experience my wife and I had tonight seeing Solaris, based on a novel by one of my favorite science fiction writers, Stanislaw Lem (my favorite work of his is his humorous set of short stories, The Cyberiad, written in Polish in 1967 and translated into English in 1974 , about two inventors of robots, who themselves are robots). It was the first film in the They Came from Beyond international science fiction film series at the Duke Screen Society.

As we knew from reviews we had seen, it is a very long film at 165 minutes with many drawn-out but compelling scenes. Though it's a classic and has much to recommend it highly, I must admit that the first half I found a bit difficult to sit through - having just had a nice pasta dinner and some chocolate didn't help :-). It is such a complex film that it probably takes at least two or three viewings to feel that one has understood much of it.

The basic story is that a Russian spaceship in orbit around a planet has been sending back confusing status, and Kris Kelvin (Donatas Banionis) is sent to investigate. He finds out that the crew has been experimenting with sending pulses of radiation into the planet's vast ocean and are in turn manipulated by some sort of innate intelligence on the planet. "Guests" materialize on the ship, crafted from mental elements of the crews' minds.

The first night there, Kris himself wakes up to find his long-dead love Hari (Natalya Bondarchuk) by his side. The other two crewmates, scientists Dr. Snaut (Jüri Järvet) and Dr. Sartorius (Anatoli Solonitsyn) puncture any misconceptions that Kris may have by clarifying that "she" is not real, and invite Kris to try looking at a blood sample, which clearly is not human ("she" does "bleed" when hurt, but the "blood" can be easily wiped away). The scientists in fact want to experiment on sending an annihilation sacrificial pulse of radiation to the ocean below, and imply, it seems, an interest in using Hari for that purpose.

The film is unlike anything that I have seen before, and begs many philosophic questions about the nature of reality and existence, the meaning of love, time and timelessness, and much more. The sterile and very unnatural milieu of the spaceship, as well as the melancholic and minimalistic music and sound effects, make one despair for being in nature, and reflect on the early lakeside scenes. The ending (no spoilers here!) leaves room for interpretation and even understanding of just what happened. Hauntingly amazing.

On a more upbeat note, a friend sent a link to a UK commercial, below, with very nice music from a popular sitarist who goes by Magical Anjali (Anjali Bhatia). She is apparently planning a US album release. Check out her MySpace page; the song accompanying the commercial reminds me of Beat Generation 60s party music with beautiful sitar. Rock on!

Film The Last King of Scotland (Kevin Macdonald, 2006)

2007-01-20T23:50:00.000-08:00

My wife and I saw The Last King of Scotland tonight; it was a powerful piece of historical fiction with impeccable acting and cinematography that aptly captured the temperament of Idi Amin's reign. In addition to the imdb page, you can visit the official film website.

Charlie Rose - MacArthur Fellows including my wife's friend Dr. Atul Gawande

2007-01-18T23:52:00.000-08:00

I often watch Charlie Rose, a captivating, in-depth, interview show that comes on at night for one hour each weekday. Tonight as the show was starting, my wife mentioned that she knew Dr. Gawande who was on! His father and her father are particularly close friends. It's great that he is a 2006 MacArthur Fellow!

Segment 1: A discussion with four of the recipients of the MacArthur Fellowship: artist Anna Schuleit, author George Saunders, physician John Rich, and surgeon Atul Gawande.

Segment 2: Author Adam Gopnik talks about his latest book, "Through the Children's Gate".

Segment 3: Director Anthony Minghella and actress
Juliette Binoche talk about their new film, "Breaking and Entering".

Nine Short Films

2007-01-16T22:46:00.000-08:00

Tonight as part of the Duke Screen Society, nine short films were shown. I missed the first, but am copying here the description from the Screen Society about all nine, with my comments {in curly brackets}. I'm glad that school is back in session and the Duke films have begun!

Mt. Head/Atama Yama ( dir. Koji Yamamura, 2002, 10 min, Japan)A stingy man eats some cherry seeds, only to find that a cherry tree has grown from his head. Mt. Head was nominated for an Academy Award® for best animated short. {I'm sorry that I missed this - from what I heard, it sounds interesting with a recursive plot.}

Recycle (dir. Vasco Lucas Nunes & Ondi Timoner, 2004, 6 min, USA) Recycle is a portrait of a day in the life of Miguel Dias in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park. The homeless poet is recovering from substance abuse through the philosophy of recycling life. Diaz uses all the thrown away items he collects to make a community garden in the median of his street, while offering his insights on survival and nature. It has played at Sundance and Cannes and won the Sustainability Award at the Media That Matters Film Festival. {I did not find this to be particuarly interesting.}

The Box Man (dir. Nirvan Mullick, 2002, 5 min, USA) In a cold empty city, a man encounters a cardboard box. The box has a small rectangular slit that compels him to take a closer look inside. A tale of urban paranoia and the desire to remain hidden. The Box Man was Winner of the AFI Fest Audience Award and a Student Academy Award® Finalist. {It was somewhat interesting, but disturbing.}

Black Rider/Schwarzfahrer (dir. Pepe Danquar, 1993, 12 min, Germany) Pepe Danquart's Academy Award winning short film captures the dignity of a man confronted with a problem many of us may have faced in a foreign culture. And when dealing with ignorance and intolerance, nothing makes more of a statement than the power of humor. {Somewhat interesting but I didn't follow the importance of some seeming irrelevant quirks, such as time spent on a man whose motorbike wouldn't start - what role did they have especially in such a short film?}

Time Out (dir. Robbie Chafitz, 2003, 8 min, USA)In this dark comedy, which was originally performed live onstage, two hard-bitten kindergartners--played by adult actors--share a "time out" in a remote corner of the school playground. Together they enter a world of anxiety, despair, revenge and cooties. This film premiered at Sundance and was named Best Comedy Short at the New York International Film & Video Festival. {I quite enjoyed this unique film! It was quite funny!}

Birthday Boy (dir. Sejong Park, 2004, 10 min, Australia)The Korean War, 1951: it's little Manuk's birthday and he is playing on the streets of his village dreaming of life on the front lines where his father is a soldier. When Manuk returns home he opens a birthday present that will change his life. Birthday Boy was nominated for an Academy Award® for best animated short film. {I didn't quite appreciate the film's significance.}

Lick the Star (dir. Sofia Coppola, 1998, 14 min, USA)Sofia Coppola's directorial debut revisits adolescence and explores the politics of teenage girls during a pivotal time in their lives. Four middle school girls obsessed with the V.C. Andrews novel, Flowers in the Attic, plot to poison the school's boys. Their campaign: poison the boys in their school in a secret plan, codename: "Lick the Star." {I didn't enjoy the film or its unreal and cruel plot.}

Two Cars, One Night (dir. Taika Waititi, 2005, 11 min, New Zealand) Three children in two cars, wait for their parents one night outside a rural pub. A little love story. {Cute and fun.}

The Mantis Parable (dir. Josh Staub, 2005, 9 min, USA)Created in its entirety by first-time filmmaker, Josh Staub, The Mantis Parable is the tale of a humble caterpillar trapped in a bug collector's jar and in need of a helping hand. This film has won awards at over 10 film festivals, including the Seattle International Film Festival. {The best of the films shown tonight, the animation was phenomenal and the story engaging!}

Film The Painted Veil (John Curran, 2006)

2007-01-15T23:33:00.000-08:00

Tonight, I saw the film The Painted Veil, based on W. Somerset Maugham's 1925 novel. The story is of an independent-minded woman, Kitty (Naomi Watts), in mid-1920s England. Her family is anxious to marry her off, and she finds herself with Dr. Walter Fane (Edward Norton), M.D. and presumably Ph.D., researcher of infectious diseases. He takes her to Shanghai and then the remote village Mei-tan-fu in Guangxi in the interior of China, where he has volunteered to help, without even asking Kitty, to help combat a deadly cholera epidemic.

The story is one of marriage to a man so focused on his research that he only speaks when something needs to be said, a passionless relationship that almost formulaically leads to extra-marital passion. Almost as penance, Walter announces that they are going to a place that Kitty feels no (English) woman belongs, without, it seems, regard to Kitty's interests or well-being. The stark choice is to face shameful divorce or join in; when Charlie Townsend (Liev Schreiber) all too predictably declines to leave his wife and marry his love, Kitty, there seems to be no choice at all.

Despite strong performances, particularly by Naomi Watts, a pleasant appearance by Diana Rigg as a nun in charge of an orphanage, gorgeous scenery, and strong expectations to like what I thought would be a romantic period film like many films I have seen and enjoyed (such as Merchant Ivory Productions' 1992 Howards End or 1985 A Room with a View), I wasn't so enamored by The Painted Veil. I thought that the story was rather predictable.

Walter, I found, was unrealistically coldly detached, and Kitty bore the cross of her predicament in a manner that didn't seem consistent with her pre-marital characterization. Their relationship never made sense to me, though at the beginning I was able to see it as a pressure-imposed one. Dr. Fane's almost total self-absorption and lack of sensitivity (such as initially banning all of the villager's sources of water without considering how they would drink - not much of a boon to the community or a cogent public health approach) further hardened and distanced his characterization.

Clearly there was Dr. Fane's attitude, but in general there was little plot development about anti-colonialistic resentment of the Chinese toward the English - precious little to appropriately set the stage for elements key to the story. More could have effectively been done, I think, without using up much time. Much as Kitty's character is developed reasonably well, with few exceptions (such as slightly eccentric neighbor Waddington played by Toby Jones), the other characters are relatively flat.

Though I was a little disappointed, the scenery and its portrayal was fabulous. Kitty's spirit and the scenes in the orphanage provided much needed respite from the stern, unsharing Walter. I am not at all averse, and in fact generally quite like, romantic period pieces (if this film can be called "romantic"), and, based on other reviews I had seen, quite expect many others to enjoy The Painted Veil more than I did. I do recommend for those that those who want to see it to see it while it's on the big screen; the impact of the mountains, rice fields, and landscapes in general needs to be appreciated in the large.

In addition to the imdb page on the film, you can visit the Warner Independent Pictures official film site. Also, the trailer follows below.

Exhibit Monet in Normandy

2007-01-08T23:22:00.000-08:00

We had the great fortune of getting tickets to the Monet in Normandy exhibition at the NC Museum of Art. I wish we had gone earlier; it opened October 15 and runs through this Sunday, January 14. We became members of the museum and took among the last tickets remaining for 4:30p today; they are going to be open 24 hours over the weekend and even those tickets are now sold out (the last to go were, I heard, for 3:30a Sunday morning entrance)!

Impressionistic painter Claude Monet (1840-1926), of course, is a great French painter whose painting Impression, Sunrise defined the term impressionism. He spent much of his life in Normandy painting outdoors en plein air. This amazing exhibit collects 50 of Monet's paintings from private and public collections, exploring his work while in Normandy (and Giverny, such as his famous waterlilies from his garden). The exhibit, I believe, is visiting San Francisco, Cleveland, and Raleigh only (last June 17-September 17 in San Francisco's Legion of Honor, and opening next month February 18-May 20 in the Cleveland Museum of Art).

Any one painting of Monet's is moving. But seeing fifty is an amazing treat. I particularly loved images of the Seine river (including one, The Seine at Giverny, Morning Mists (1897), that is in the permanent collection of the NC Museum of Art itself!); The Cliff Walk, Pourville (1882); The Path of La Cavée, Pourville (1882); Wheat Field (1881); and images of the huge arched Manneporte in Etretat. By the way, the local Raleigh News and Observer newspaper has a nice page online that includes multimedia, including a display of 23 of the paintings in the exhibition.

Film The Pursuit of Happyness (Gabriele Muccino, 1962)

2007-01-07T23:51:00.000-08:00

Tonight, I saw The Pursuit of Happyness directed by Gabriele Muccino and featuring Will Smith as the protagonist Chris Gardner along with his real-life son Jaden Smith playing Chris Gardner's son Christopher. It was entertaining and interesting, a story of a man who struggles in 1980s America for making a living, though not particularly memorable.

By the way, a friend forwarded this amazing video of marionette-like puppetry; there's a little bit of French at the beginning and end, but it's worth watching the full 8+ minutes of this otherwise dialogue-less performance:

jerome murat
Uploaded by segalier

Film Army of Shadows (L' Armée des ombres; Jean-Pierre Melville, 1969)

2007-01-05T23:32:00.000-08:00

The NC Museum of Art Winter Film series began today with the film Army of Shadows (French L' Armée des ombres) directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. Though it is a film from 1969, apparently it was released in the States recently in 2006.

It is a difficult film to see about the French Resistance to Nazi occupation in WWII. It moves quietly and quickly through intrigue and, for me, difficult to see violence and assasinations for the larger cause. A well made film, it takes some strength to get through, especially for sensitive viewers, but is an unforgettable story of the dedication of an underground resistance and its will to use any means necessary to achieve its goals.

My friend "moviediva", the curator of the films, has always interesting notes about the films, which she uses for her introductions and posts a day or so after the screening. You can read her comments about Army of Shadows.

Dance/Music/Culture - Last day of the 21st annual KwanzaaFest, Durham, NC

2007-01-01T23:08:00.000-08:00

We enjoyed, as always, seeing "Baba" Chuck Davis and his African American Dance Ensemble last night at First Night. He mentioned that there is a Kwanzaa celebration underway and today would be the last day. I enjoyed attending much of the event; you can see a gallery of images and videos that I took.

Film Night at the Museum (Shawn Levy, 2006)

2006-12-29T23:57:00.000-08:00

I took two friends, ages twelve and almost thirteen, to the theatre today; they wanted to see Eragon, which seems to be an adventure story ala Lord of the Rings but which I found poor reviews of. Instead, we went to another film they wanted to see, Night at the Museum. It turned out to be a film that I liked much more than I had expected to - it was fun to see the animation and special effects of a museum coming to life at night, and to see such great actors as
Dick Van Dyke (Cecil), Mickey Rooney (Gus), and Bill Cobbs (Reginald) as the three retiring security guards.

In addition to its imdb page, you can visit:

the film's website,
its Wikipedia page (I didn't know that WikiPedia has pages on films!), and
its YouTube page (from which I got one of the trailers, below).

Film The Queen (Stephen Frears, 2006)

2006-12-11T22:10:00.000-08:00

Today we met a friend to see The Queen, a film about the English monarchy's insistence on privacy upon Princess Diana's death. The public is anxious to have a chance to share their grief and hear some words of consolation from their Queen but family strains and the divorce of Diana from Charles, Prince of Wales (Alex Jennings), as well as their historic sense of public decorum, keeps them from reacting to the unprecedented outpouring of grief. Newly elected Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) is portrayed as helping to alert the Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II (well played by Helen Mirren) to the terrible disservice he sees the monarchy doing to its own position in public opinion in her silence.

It was a good film that was enjoyable to see. I can't judge its authenticity, but presumably is based on fact. The music, particularly the last piece, added to the film's pulse and tone.

In addition to the film's official site, you can also see its imdb entry. The film's trailer appears below.

Film My Uncle (Mon Oncle; Jacques Tati, 1958)

2006-12-08T23:20:00.000-08:00

As part of the Masters of French Film series at the NC Museum of Art, we saw the delightful 1958 film, Mon Oncle. It was my first exposure to Jacques Tati's work; he directs this film and also stars as the rather clueless uncle M. Hulot to a bored child. The child's father is head of a factory and the mother keeps their satirically portrayed ultra-modern home, with unusual fish fountain turned on whenever somebody to be impressed ventures in, rather antiseptic.

The opening credits below give a sense to the lighthearted spirit of the film. I also found another clip, in French, which shows children teasing passersby with the hapless uncle taking unfair blame.

Film Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles (Qian li zou dan qi; Yimou Zhang, 2005)

2006-12-07T23:35:00.000-08:00

Tonight, my wife and I very much enjoyed seeing Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles at a Chapel Hill, NC theatre. It was a beautiful film of a Japanese man, Gou-ichi Takata (Ken Takakura) sadly estranged from his son, Ken-ichi. The daughter-in-law, Rie Takata played by Shinobu Terajima, ever hoping to bring the family together, calls to tell the father about Ken-ichi's sudden hospitalization with liver cancer. Takata-san rushes back to Tokyo, but the son won't see him, even though he has made a long journey to the hospital from a remote fishing village.

Trying to reconcile a non-communicative relationship, the father visits rural China to attempt to complete the filming that the son had begun of a Chinese opera, "Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles". The film is the sometimes-funny, often poignant, and always scenic story of Takata-san's journey - a lead actor imprisoned, unable to perform as he weeps for his son whom he has never met; a Chinese guide who speaks only broken Japanese; villagers who roll out an amazingly long and warm welcome mat (literally covering what seems to be the main street with a linear banquet that goes as far as one can see) to introduce Takata-san to the actor's son; the actor's son who may not be ready to meet his unknown father; and Rie and her cell phone updates about Ken-ichi.

It's a beautiful film with just-enough sparse dialogue, spectacular mountain scenery, lovable and realistic characters, and a soul that speaks to family relations. You can visit both the film's website and its imdb entry for more information and images, including English language trailers.