Jump Cuts
by Dennis Lim
New York independents in Berlin
February 25 - March 2, 2004

pair of years-in-the-making experimental narratives from independent-minded New York filmmakers were among the highlights of this year's Forum. The Time We Killed, by accomplished shorts director Jennifer Reeves (Fear of Blushing), burrows into the restless perspective of an agoraphobic poet (Lisa Jarnot) confined to her Brooklyn apartment. Reeves shoots the housebound scenes in uninflected DV and assembles the memory montages from beautifully high-contrast 16mm images. (The dialectical approach means that choosing outdoors over indoors, community over solitude, also represents a vote for film over video.)

Jem Cohen (Benjamin Smoke) premiered his first narrative feature, Chain, previously shown as a multi-channel installation in New York. Berlin's Wall-to-mall Potsdamer Platz provided an ideal context for this movie about corporate creep and architectural anonymity—I saw it in the bowels of the Sony Center, a building that actually appears in the film, along with airport hotels, theme parks, strip malls, and mixed-use complexes from four continents. Most of the locations are pointedly unplaceable—they could be anywhere, and are everywhere. Cohen weaves his footage into a global-sprawling "superlandscape," against which he sets the voice-overed stories of a Japanese executive in America (Miho Nikaido) and a young New Jersey transient (Mira Billotte). An Arcades Project for the age of globalization, Chain, at its best, has the oneiric power and fierce political intelligence of a Chris Marker cine-essay.

Dialogue: Dawn Hudson
The IFP executive director discusses the MPAA screener ban and other issues facing the indie community.

When the MPAA announced that its member companies were not going to send screener tapes out this Academy season, the Independent Feature Project turned the situation into a David vs. Goliath-style battle, filing a lawsuit in New York Superior Court that ultimately saw the "screener ban" ruled unconstitutional. IFP executive director Dawn Hudson was seen by many to be the driving force behind that turning tide. On the eve of the IFP's Independent Spirit Awards, Hudson talked with Scott Tobias for The Hollywood Reporter about the battle of the ban, the ceremony itself and a host of issues facing the independent film community.

The Hollywood Reporter: You were heavily involved in the effort to reverse the screener ban. What do you take away from that experience?
Dawn Hudson: At the very beginning, I thought, "This is crazy. As soon as it's brought to Jack Valenti's and the studio heads' attention how detrimental this will be to the independent film business, they'll understand and they'll reverse this ban immediately. Maybe they just didn't think about it or something." I was much more naive when I started the process of how to challenge that concentration of media power. In the film business, from the studio heads down to the small indie producer, you feel like you're part of one big family. A large, extended, dysfunctional family, maybe, but still a family. Especially at IFP, because we broker relationships between young, new filmmakers coming through the ranks and studio executives and studio filmmakers. It's part of our job to help the independent movement sustain itself and thrive in the larger filmmaking community. And that's how we approached (the ban) when it was first announced: We were just going to write letters to studio heads and explain how detrimental this will be to how independent films are marketed. But that didn't evoke a response at all, much less the response we wanted. We realized, "Oh, this is very tight little world here." So we had to fight fire with fire and challenge them legally to get them to understand how wrongheaded this was. When it got to the point where we were deciding about litigating, I thought we had very little chance of a judge ruling in our favor. The resources of the studios are infinite. What they spend on a conference to talk about anti-piracy is more than the budget of many of these (independent) films. I remember when someone was deciding to join us as a plaintiff in this suit, that person said, "I just don't think -- and our lawyer doesn't think -- you can win this suit." And I was thinking, "Win?! Of course we're not going to win. We're going up against the MPAA!" But you have to make the statement. You have to challenge it because it's wrong. That's what IFP is for. We have to stand up for independent filmmakers, and pursuing that lawsuit was just the right thing to do. I guess I didn't have enough faith in the American justice system. But even in the initial hearings, the judge clearly got it and picked up a lot about the film business very quickly. I thought, "How does someone outside our family understand so much of the way things work?"

THR: What impact, if any, did the screener ban have on the awards process?
Hudson: Our nominating process is so early that our deadline was actually before the ban was announced. So most of the films that were submitted for consideration were prior to the ban. Our committee wasn't hurt, but there were a few films in which the videotapes themselves weren't available before deadline and they couldn't submit them to us later because of this rule. One was "In the Cut," one was "Sylvia." And to be painfully honest, I don't feel like those films completely got their due because screeners weren't available. Some people had seen them in theaters, but not the entire committee. Another one was "House of Sand and Fog." Now this is the great thing about the resources of the studios. DreamWorks scheduled daily screenings of that film, twice a day, at a centrally located theater in L.A. They made it really easy to see that film. But I think it's important to point out that these examples are just a tiny microcosm of what goes on in the larger nominating process. This is a 12-person committee of people who dedicate two months of their lives to watching films. That's all they do. They take on another full-time job to be on this committee. It's incredibly taxing. And just the few instances of not getting a screener affected that film's consideration. If you extrapolate from that to the Academy nominating process or the Golden Globes or the SAGs or whatever, when you have 200 people nominating or 80 people nominating, you can really see how not having a screener will affect a film's chances of being nominated. And that affects the whole marketing campaign.

THR: Do you feel, in general, that the voting membership gets around to considering some of the more low-profile nominees?
Hudson: No. I think the nominations are a very considered process, with everyone seeing all of the films. That's why you have "Virgin" nominated, (as well as) "Anne B. Real," "Better Luck Tomorrow," "Blue Car," "Quattro Noza," "OT: Our Town," "Power Trip." You have all of these films and so many other small films that were considered by this committee. Those nominations were very carefully vetted. Then you go to a 9,000-person membership -- and we schedule screenings for that membership -- but they've got to go out to those screenings. So the smaller films are at a disadvantage because "In America" is in theaters, "Lost in Translation" is in theaters. However, I think often the distribution process does tend to reward the better independent films. I think "Lost in Translation," for example, is a near-perfect film, so the fact that that got wider distribution ... hey, it deserved wider distribution. I feel the same way about "American Splendor." But then again, "Raising Victor Vargas" wasn't as widely distributed, so I don't know how that will do. The distribution system in place now leaves out tiny independent films or quirky independent films or more difficult independent films. I think that's a gap that needs to be filled, but I don't know how. Maybe Internet distribution.

THR: Could you talk a little bit about the "economy of means" requirement?
Hudson: The IFP board did not want to set an exact budget limit for the Spirit Awards because if they say, "The limit is $12 million," well, then there's going to be this $12.5 million film that the committee would love and it's kind of crazy to leave it out. One year, the committee honored "Bullets Over Broadway," which was a $22 million film. They felt that it met the economy of means because it's Woody Allen and if anyone else would have made it, it would have been $50 million, and it's obviously his vision and it should be nominated. And the board said, "OK, now you've gone crazy. We don't consider $22 million to meet the economy of means." So it was back to the drawing board. I know it causes a lot of confusion among everyone that we don't set an exact number, but the committee every year looks at the crop of films and says, "Mmmm, we're going to stick with a number around $15 million, and anything over that will not be considered." One year, we didn't nominate a film over $12 million; another year we didn't nominate a film over $10 million. Usually it's around $15 million or $16 million.

THR: Why would a studio picture like "House of Sand and Fog" be deemed eligible for nomination and not something like "21 Grams"?
Hudson: Because "House of Sand and Fog" had a $15 million budget and "21 Grams" had a $21 million or $22 million budget.

THR: What stands out to you about the year in independent film? Do you see any significant trends and patterns in this year's Spirit Awards nominees?
Hudson: I feel like there's a trend towards diversity -- different voices, different technologies, different approaches, different ways of telling stories. I think there's a wide spectrum of storytelling, and that's what has been really exciting for me. You have "Shattered Glass," with its classic cinematography, and "American Splendor," which employed all sorts of innovative filmmaking techniques. Then there's the improvisational feeling of something like "Raising Victor Vargas" and veteran filmmakers like Jim Sheridan doing a small personal film like "In America." I feel like one of the things that's remarkable about this year's nominees is that independent filmmakers are really branching out from making movies about their lives to bigger, more ambitious subjects.

THR: With Halle Berry and Adrien Brody winning Oscars recently, and films like "Lost in Translation" in contention this year, do you feel the continued emergence of specialty divisions as awards-season contenders might herald a time when the Spirit Awards will have to reinvent itself?
Hudson: No. I hope all these great independent films are nominated for Oscars. Until the Academy Awards are wholly taken over by independent films, I don't see the Spirit Awards needing to change itself.

THR: Practically speaking, have you been able to measure the impact the Spirit Awards has had on the nominees and winners, particularly in some of the smaller categories?
Hudson: Absolutely. We moved the nomination process up in order to give the filmmakers more time to use the nominations in support of their work and their careers. We used to announce them in mid-January, and now we announce them in early December. When films are in the theaters, I feel people use the awards as one more way to promote them, like on display ads. But I think the real benefit of being nominated for the Spirit Awards is more specific to a filmmaker's career. With Academy Awards, you get that boxoffice bump. With us, it's a little different. We're supporting a lot of emerging filmmakers with the Spirit Awards.

Published Feb. 26, 2004

Dialogue: John Waters
The notorious writer-director considers his fourth outing as host of the Independent Spirit Awards

By Scott Tobias

The Hollywood Reporter: You're a pretty voracious moviegoer. What stands out for you this year in independent film?
John Waters: This year, I think the independent films have the strongest competition from Hollywood that they've had in a long time. On our awards show, I used to joke that whatever comes in first in the Independent Spirit Awards comes in sixth at the Oscars. But my tastes have never fit in any world, really. I certainly have my favorites and films that I really, really loved on (the Spirit nominees) list: (Fine Line's) "American Splendor" (and) "Elephant," (as well as Newmarket's) "Monster." There are moments in (Miramax's) "The Magdalene Sisters" that rival (1970's) "Multiple Maniacs" for insane Catholic scenes.

THR: It seems the definition of "independent" keeps shifting. How would you define it?
Waters: Independent films are made with blood and guts -- your own, rather than having it on the screen. That's a good definition.

THR: What about the dominance of these studio specialty divisions? Do you feel that's a healthy development?
Waters: I think it's a good thing, but I don't think many of them have had great success. In a way, the studios that are their bosses are coming at the independent world from completely the wrong perspective: They're trained to make films for everybody, and the whole point of independent films is finding the right audience for your films that can make them successful -- they're two diametrically opposed systems. There are certainly films that have crossed over: "American Splendor" not only is nominated for Spirit Awards, but it won the (Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. Award) for best movie. There's a perfect example of a movie that has completely crossed over, but it's still a strange, very independent movie.

THR: So you think these companies would be more successful if they shrugged off a studio mentality?
Waters: If they were really independent themselves -- because right now, their bosses are suits, completely within the Hollywood mindset. I'm not naming names here, but they want "edge" until they get it. I remember when we had to test some of my studio movies, the NRG guy said to me, "What's the norm we test you against?" The reason that the people liked them is because some people hate them -- and that's something that doesn't come out in the tests because they're hoping for consensus.

THR: It seems absurd to gather a group of people in a multiplex to evaluate something they would never see voluntarily.
Waters: That's the good thing about the Spirit Awards. Those people in Middle America -- who are perhaps a little less adventurous -- they might like it, but it has to be a hit somewhere else first. The Spirit Awards lets them know about great movies that haven't played there yet.

THR: What if (1972's) "Pink Flamingos" or (1977's) "Desperate Living" were made today? Would there be a place for them in the art house?
Waters: Yes. The difference is, if "Pink Flamingos" came out today, it would open in maybe 30 Landmark theaters -- but if it didn't work the first weekend, it would be gone. "Pink Flamingos" played in Los Angeles for 10 years, off and on, one or two nights a week. That's what's gone: There's no time for word-of-mouth for movies that come from nowhere. You'd think it would be easier with the Internet or something, but without a big ad campaign, there are so many movies waiting to take your place. One empty seat, and you're outta there.

THR: What keeps you coming back to host the Spirit Awards every year?
Waters: It's my audience, God knows. I'm in a million unions -- I'm in the DGA, the writers guild, SAG, the Academy -- but in every case, I think there's a little bit of irony that I'm a member. There's no irony that I'm a speaker at the Independent Spirit Awards; it's the only place where I'm the norm.

THR: What makes a good host?
Waters: Somebody who doesn't take themselves too seriously but works really hard and writes their own material. You have to do jokes that are within the industry -- but at the same time, the people that are watching it can get it. I try not to dumb things down; if an audience member doesn't get the joke, maybe they'll ask someone and learn something later on. I think everyone who watches these awards has a sense of humor about the film business -- or at least, I hope they do.

Published Feb. 26, 2004

Runaway production worries city
Concessions discussed by industry, economists

By Rick Orlov
Staff Writer

Los Angeles city officials, fearing further harm to the region's $30 billion-a-year entertainment industry, sought Wednesday to offer new support and incentives to counter runaway production.

Mayor James Hahn convened a two-hour summit at his official residence, Getty House, where some three dozen entertainment industry leaders discussed ways the city could help improve relations.

"We've heard a lot of talk before and it's time for us to follow up on that," Hahn said. "We are making a commitment that we will take action to resolve problems and keep the industry here."

Hahn also signed an executive order instructing all city agencies to designate a liaison to expedite filming permits in cooperation with the Entertainment Industry Development Corp., the scandal-plagued city-county agency that has been reorganized.

"The film and entertainment industry is one of the most important industries in the city," Hahn said, estimating that some 200,000 jobs are directly related to the business.

Hahn was joined by council members Wendy Greuel and Martin Ludlow, who proposed eliminating the business tax on individual writers, actors and musicians in order to encourage local filming. Their incentive plan also would restructure how the city taxes productions to provide help for small- and medium-size businesses.

"It is targeted tax relief to attract and keep good, well-paying jobs and to support Los Angeles' economic engine," said Greuel, who was an executive with DreamWorks SKG before her election. "Just like New York wouldn't let Wall Street leave and the Silicon Valley works with the high-tech industry, we have to work with Hollywood."

Greuel said hearings could begin within a week on the tax reform package.

Although officials estimate the package would reduce city revenues by $2 million a year, Mel Kohn of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association and head of the city's Business Tax Advisory Committee, said it is a necessary incentive.

"It's time to send a message to the industry and the rest of the world that we are serious about keeping the entertainment industry in Los Angeles," Kohn said.

Jack Kyser, chief economist of the Economic Development Corp., said the loss in revenue is trivial compared with the economics of the industry.

"Runaway production is a real threat and we have to take it seriously. It is not just the entertainment industry itself. It's all the related businesses that benefit, from catering to furniture stores," he said.

Hahn said he also wants to work with industry executives on issues such as state and national tax incentives to keep production in the United States, as well as issues such as film piracy and intellectual property rights.

Rick Orlov, (213) 978-0390 rick.orlov@dailynews.com

Some fear `Friedmans' may capture Oscar
By Elaine Dutka
Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times
Published February 26, 2004

HOLLYWOOD -- Faced with the prospect that a provocative film about a case of child abuse may win the Oscar for best documentary feature, advocacy groups and some of the victims have launched a belated campaign to discredit "Capturing the Friedmans."

The film, directed by Andrew Jarecki, is one of the favorites in the documentary race, along with "The Fog of War," a portrait of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara.

Voting for the Academy Awards ended Tuesday, so it's unclear whether the groups' actions will have an effect on the outcome.

A notice that one of the groups posted Saturday on the Internet triggered responses from 1,700 people who e-mailed three top executives of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the producer of the Oscars show and the president of ABC television, which will air the ceremony Sunday.

The academy acknowledged receiving an unsigned letter purported to have been written by two men molested as children by Arnold Friedman and his son Jesse during computer classes in the basement of their Great Neck, N.Y., home in the 1980s.

Jesse Friedman, who pleaded guilty to sexual abuse charges in 1988, was paroled after 13 years in prison. A registered sex offender, he is hoping that evidence revealed in Jarecki's documentary will help him obtain a trial in which his guilty plea will be retracted and his conviction overturned. In 1995, his father, an admitted pedophile who was convicted of sending child pornography through the mail, died in prison of an antidepressant overdose.

Irene Weiser, founder of New York City-based StopFamilyViolence.org, came across an Associated Press story late last week that raised questions about the movie's portrayal of the case. After contacting a psychologist quoted in the piece, she launched the Internet campaign.

"We're all for freedom of speech," Weiser emphasized, "but when a project receives the industry's highest recognition, that gives it credibility."

Last week, the Leadership Council on Child Abuse and Interpersonal Violence, a group of psychologists and other professionals, submitted to several newspapers an op-ed piece critical of the documentary.

"Clear evidence is omitted, facts distorted, and uncertainty is created about the guilt of these two confessed pedophiles," the letter said.

Abbey Boklan, a retired judge who presided over the Friedman case, has verified that the purported authors of the letter to the academy were among the 13 victims. She also said that "the movie was unfair."

Jarecki defends his work.

"People wanted me to take a position. ... `Did they do it or not?' But I wanted people to make up their own minds."

"The Friedmans couldn't have been pleased with my description of Arnold's affinity for pornography and the full-color portrayal of his guilty plea," he added. "And, though you can't reduce individuals to a single adjective, law enforcement would say that showing them as human beings is unfair. Everyone is unhappy, which is the earmark of a balanced piece."

Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune

Film Forum: Excruciating? Excellent? Reviews of The Passion of The Christ

by Jeffrey Overstreet | posted 02/26/2004

The words excruciating and crucifixion are related. It's easy to see why when you read the reviews of Mel Gibson's The Passion of The Christ.

Having access to the film at last, critics find themselves divided. Some applaud the portrayal of Jesus' final twelve hours while others are throwing rotten tomatoes. Nevertheless, they would all agree that watching it is an excruciating experience. For many, seeing Jesus' torments vividly, graphically and relentlessly illustrated only serves to heighten their appreciation of Christ's love for humankind. For others, Gibson's hyper-realistic violence is gratuitous, an act of cruelty carried out upon the audience by an agenda-driven, heavy-handed, insensitive director.

In this column, I first shared news about the film on August 19, 2002. There has been news on an almost weekly basis ever since. Film Forum readers even shared their suggestions on how to make a good Jesus movie. It has been a long and painful process, monitoring the debates, the mudslinging, the defense, and the speculation. So it is with a sense of relief that I am glad to finally share a few thoughts on the finished work, and links to the responses of other critics as well.

Now that I've seen the film, I find myself with a foot in each of the two critics' camps. The Passion of The Christ has commendable strengths, but it has flaws as well. Gibson's film is not The Fifth Gospel—it is a work of art by a human being. Thus, it is not sacrilegious to point out the work's weaknesses. (Critics who consider it imperfect are sure to receive angry letters, as though their comments about artistry are directed at the Gospel itself instead of the way this version is illustrated.)

Gibson includes the basic events of Christ's last hours, and adheres remarkably well to the dialogue and descriptions in the Gospel. Thus, his film is powerful. How could any decent account of the events on Calvary fail to move audiences? The way the director and star of Braveheart weaves together Christ's suffering with flashbacks to earlier events creates interesting juxtapositions. At each stage of Jesus' torture, we are reminded that he prophesied these very events and that he willingly and courageously gave himself up to them. With every new stage in his anguish, we are reminded that these punishments come as a response to his teachings about love and turning the other cheek. Each blow struck by the enemy is the antithesis of the sort of power the Son of God endorsed.

But Gibson's lack of attention to other chapters in Christ's life does indeed pose challenges to viewers—especially those who do not know the gospel story. We receive only glimpses of the Sermon on the Mount and the Last Supper. We are given no reference to how Christ entered the world. Each audience member is left to seek out the missing pieces and put together what it all means. Will they? That depends. It is possible that the anxiety and exhaustion they experience viewing the film will give some of them an aversion to exploring Christ's life any more deeply. Others may be inspired to investigate.

In The Passion, the path from the garden of Gethsemane to the cross is such a marathon of bloodshed—Jesus is beaten and bloodied even before he leaves the garden—that I found myself a bit dizzy from the violence only an hour into the film. It became harder and harder to focus on what the director was trying to reveal concerning Christ's teachings and his love.

Any decent human being portrayed in physical agony will draw an audience's sympathies. I left wanting to know more about this suffering figure. I wanted to see more about what made him distinct. Seeing so much brutality, my emotional responses went numb, and I was merely watching, wondering what kind of body cast the actor Jim Caveziel was wearing in order to make it appear that barbed whips were ripping chunks out of his flesh. Endless cracks of the whips, the wearying mockery of the tormenters, and the numerous sequences that show Jesus collapsing in every imaginable way made me wish the film had a different editor.

Gibson is the sort of filmmaker for whom the image of a dead camel being devoured by maggots is not merely a subtle accent that suggests corruption. No, he gives us long close-ups on that decomposing corpse, so that even the most distracted or hard-hearted viewer will be sure to squirm. His tendency towards excessive force interferes with his attempts at visual poetry. The realism of the portrayal is indeed impressive, but it comes at the cost of thoughtful storytelling. Flannery O'Connor said that for deaf audiences, a storyteller must shout. Contemporary audiences may indeed be somewhat deaf to the story of Christ, but I would add that if you shout too loud and too much, you'll only further cripple your audience and bring your credibility into question.

Let's move on—there is more to examine here than violence.

Let us be done with the question of anti-Semitism in this film. The bloodthirsty Roman soldiers abuse Jesus and his faithful Jewish followers, using the word "Jew" as an expletive. Clearly, Gibson's sympathies lie with the persecuted Jew, his mother and his companions, and those who would persecute an entire people are clearly monsters. No one would admire or feel any sympathy for these beastly soldiers. It is true that Jewish religious leaders are portrayed as calling for Christ's crucifixion, but that is not cause for anti-Semitism. That is a warning about the dangers of religious power—in any religion, even Christianity.

Several prominent Jewish characters are shown having deep sympathy for Christ. In fact, Simon of Cyrene, one of the few supporting characters given any sort of personality or character, has an even more inspiring task here than the gospels describe. During the long march to Golgotha, he develops a wordless, intimate bond with the Savior that becomes one of the film's most resonant and beautiful highlights.

Aside from the film's firm scriptural foundation, Caleb Deschanel's cinematography is The Passion's greatest strength. His mastery of light and darkness, his careful framing of panoramic pain captures some of the most breathtaking religious imagery ever filmed. Experienced in smaller doses, I would find any section of this film deeply moving on that basis alone.

It helps that Deschanel has such talented actors to film. Jim Caviezel's commitment to showing us a convincing Jesus Christ is unnerving in its intensity. Not only does he speak Christ's words in Aramaic as though he grew up with the language, giving us the feeling of time travel back to the real events, but his physical manifestation of Christ's internal turmoil is as compelling as the blows his body suffers. Acting his way through layers of makeup and special effects, he communicates Jesus' immeasurable restraint. We can see in him, and in the amazement and dismay of his followers, that Christ is holding back, refusing to indulge his heavenly influence to save himself. This Jesus speaks volumes through the silent gazes he shares with his faithful, especially Mary.

Romanian actress Maia Morgenstern is a strong, believable, sympathetic Mary. The intuitive mother/son bond between her and Christ plays more intensely than I have ever imagined it. In one moment, when Christ pauses, exhausted from carrying the cross and yet having only just begun, he turns to her and groans, "See mother, how I make all things new?" It is a moment loaded with irony and anguish. And yet he speaks the truth—his endurance of crucifixion will transform the abuse, making it possible for his followers to suffer persecution while never losing grasp of their faith and their hope.

In one of Gibson's few truly inventive choices, Mary's grief, suffering, and love are mocked by the most sinister Satan audiences have ever seen, an androgynous figure who can only mock and lie, a warped mirror that distorts everything good, including, in one horrifying instance, traditional images of Mary cradling the Christ child. Actress Rosalinda Celentano brings to life a truly alien presence, something that does not belong in a world God has made, something that exists solely to destroy.

Hristo Naumov Shopov's performance as Pilate is also worthy of note. The Pilate of the script by Gibson and co-writer Benedict Fitzgerald does not demonstrate the cruelty that history attributes to the figure. But Shopov gives us the Pilate of the Gospels, a man desperate to rid himself of any matters concerning the Jewish law and the brusque, manipulative religious leaders. Pilate's quiet intelligence, fear, insecurity, and sympathy for this innocent, accused man are a fascinating confusion as he interrogates Christ and weighs his options.

The rest of the characters are disappointingly flat. There's nothing memorable about Peter, who merely gapes, denies, and cowers. John remains misty-eyed and solemn. Mary Magdalene, presented as the woman caught in adultery (a tradition in Christian art, but not a detail of Scripture), remains marginal, notable only for the way Monica Belucci's beauty stands out in a crowd of despairing onlookers.

But there is one monumentally disappointing detail in Gibson's finished product. It is painful to imagine what might have happened had the music been written by a great composer. When Gibson showed early versions of the film, before the soundtrack was finished, he reportedly "borrowed" tracks from The Last Temptation of Christ's soundtrack—music by Peter Gabriel. While Last Temptation was condemned as a blasphemous film by most Christian moviegoers, its soundtrack is a masterpiece, a highly original fusion of differing styles, ancient and contemporary, from several different nations. Now that we have Gibson's final cut, we discover that composer John Debney turned in something that sounds like musical plagiarism. Those familiar with Gabriel's album Passion, the stand-alone symphony that grew out of his Last Temptation soundtrack, may find themselves frequently distracted, as I was. The themes and flourishes here are so similar that some will swear it's exactly the same music. It would only have been fair to credit Gabriel's influence.

In the end, it is hard to know whether or not to recommend The Passion of The Christ. And, if it is recommendable, to whom do we recommend it? These vivid images are clearly Gibson's version of the Passion. Most Christians would say they have a picture of Christ that has come to them through their own encounters with the text. Some may wish to preserve the version they have imagined while reading the Gospels, rather than allow these blunt, bloody images to burn indelibly into their minds.

Others may want to steer clear—teenagers and adults alike—because it is entirely possible to understand and appreciate Christ's sacrifice without having to swallow a blow-by-blow account of the destruction of his body. So rather than dissuade readers from attending the film, I'd encourage them to ignore "Christian peer pressure." Weigh heavily whether you are prepared, and whether you can maintain a sense of critical discernment as you watch. One Christian critic suggested that those who avoid the film because of its violence share the cowardice of the disciples who fled the scene. That is a ridiculous claim. Avoiding the film may, for some, be the braver choice.

It is worth nothing that, while Protestants are enthusiastically embracing the film, it is a Catholic work through and through, from its adherence to the Stations of the Cross to its reverent attention to Mary's experience of the ordeal. These aspects of it impressed Catholic film critic Steven D. Greydanus (Decent Films). "The film is an imaginative, at times poetic reflection on the meaning of the gospel story in light of sacred tradition and Catholic theology," he writes. "[It is] a preeminently important cinematic expression of the faith—probably one of the most important religious films of all time."

Greydanus, whose review impressed Roger Ebert so much that he quoted it in his own review, also defuses the allegations of anti-Semitism in the film.

Elsewhere, Andrew Coffin (World Magazine) calls the film a "powerful, emotionally wrenching viewing." But he also argues that the film's limited focus on the "passion" is both a strength and a limitation. "It may be best to liken The Passion to a painting of Christ by one of the old masters. Rendered in vivid detail, these works of art focus the mind and imagination on one aspect of Christ's life (very often the crucifixion), but lack the context and completeness to be anything more than one piece of the whole."

Michael Elliott (Movie Parables) says, "Mel Gibson is an accomplished filmmaker—one with an obvious and established artistic vision. God bless him. There are minor points with which I might find disagreement. But regarding the overall thrust of the film—what Jesus Christ had to do to redeem us—I can find no fault."

Steven Isaac and Bob Smithouser (Plugged In) call it "a stirring, reverent and significant motion picture for believers and nonbelievers alike." They also quote Dr. James Dobson as naming it "among the most powerful and important [films] ever made."

Isaac and Smithouser encourage parents to take their teenagers to the film. "Many teens ride the coattails of their parents' faith, only to waver when pressures and temptations arrive. They need to make a conscious decision to own their faith. The Passion is the kind of 'fish or cut bait' movie that will challenge them to make a firm decision about what they believe and how they will live."

Phil Boatwright (Movie Reporter) says it is "justly rated R" for its violent content. "But Gibson wisely cuts to past moments in Christ's life to help us cope with the brutality. The Passion … is meant to shock, unnerve and clarify the ordeal of Christ's sacrifice. It is not a movie one sees, then goes out for pizza. Mel Gibson uses the medium of film as Michelangelo did with stone, chiseling away superficiality and carving out a cinematic masterpiece. This Passion stirs the soul."

Mainstream critics are divided over the film, a phenomenon that seems to accompany any artistic expression of the Gospel. Here are a few revealing excerpts:

David Poland (The Hot Button): "I am not shy about movie violence. And, almost embarrassingly, I have to admit that Gibson's excesses left me feeling very little after a very short period of time. But it wasn't just the gore. It was the lack of real conviction. It is almost always a sign that a discussion is lost when one of the parties has to resort to yelling … and it is usually the person who is screaming who has lost. Gibson screams at the top of his lungs through 80% of this movie. Unfortunately, I feel like I have as much additional insight into Christ after seeing this film as I did about heroin abuse after seeing Pulp Fiction or into police work after seeing Lethal Weapon. And that ain't much."

Gene Seymour (Newsday): "Mel Gibson shows once again that he's skilled at depicting violence. But you'd be hard pressed to find evidence of 'tolerance, love and forgiveness' that the producer-director-co-writer insists he's trying to communicate." (Did Seymour miss the scene in which Jesus heals the ear of his attacker? Did he miss Jesus words of forgiveness for his persecutors? Did he miss the way Christ refrained from striking back at his enemies, dying so he could rise again?)

David Denby (The New Yorker): "The movie Gibson has made from his personal obsessions is a sickening death trip, a grimly unilluminating procession of treachery, beatings, blood, and agony."

Roger Ebert praised the film on his television show and in his Chicago Tribune review, and spoke respectfully and honorably about the Gospel message.

So, at last, The Passion is playing to audiences. It will be interesting to see how it fares with audiences after the throngs of churchgoers have finished their theater buy-outs. It will also be interesting to see if the entirely deserving work of Caleb Deschanel and Jim Caveziel is remembered a year from now, at Oscar time.

Charlize Theron, Angels in America, Six Feet Under big winners at SAG Awards

A cast of Hollywood hobbits and a Monster killer played by Charlize Theron won top honors at the Screen Actors Guild awards on Sunday, but a fishy pirate portrayed by Johnny Depp stole the show in an upset best actor victory. The award for best film actress solidified Advocate cover girl Theron's position as a front-runner for an Oscar, the film industry's top honors to be given out on February 29. It also cemented the bid for the best movie Oscar from the hobbits of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. But Depp's victory added an element of suspense to next week's Oscars by giving him an award no one expected over favorites Bill Murray and Sean Penn. The actors of Rings were named best cast, and last year's winner in the same group, Chicago, earned the Oscar. The SAG awards often provide strong clues to potential Oscar winners because actors make up the largest branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which gives out the Oscars. It has some 1,300 members of the 5,800 voters for the Academy Awards.

Onstage, Theron thanked "my angel and my date tonight, my mom, who put me on a plane with a one-way ticket to Hollywood when I was 19 years old. Thank you for being so brave and for letting me go to make my dreams come true." In the low-budget film Monster, South African-born Theron plays lesbian multiple murderer and former prostitute Aileen Wuornos, who was executed for murdering men who picked her up. Theron gained 30 pounds for the part, and her makeup and posturing masked her true beauty. "I knew we were working on something very special. It felt different than anything I have ever done before," Theron told reporters backstage. Speaking for Rings, John Rhys-Davies, Gimli in the movie, said, "At the risk of sounding immodest, we deserved this award. This is the most enormous undertaking in film history."

Bill Murray in Lost in Translation and Sean Penn in Mystic River were believed to have had a lock on the favorite's position for best actor after earning Golden Globe awards for acting in January. Depp, who played the wild-eyed and fanciful Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, was not on hand, but backstage, Al Pacino, who won the actor award for his role as duplicitous gay lawyer Roy Cohn in the cable TV miniseries Angels in America, amplified the shock of everybody in the crowd. He lifted an eyebrow and declared himself "really surprised" and "really thrilled" about Depp's win. "He's done so many interesting parts over the years that he got a reputation for being quirky, but he really wasn't. He's a fine actor," Pacino said.

Tim Robbins won best supporting actor for crime thriller Mystic River, and Renee Zellweger won supporting actress in the Civil War drama Cold Mountain. It was her second straight SAG award after winning best actress for Chicago. SAG also gives out trophies for television, and HBO's shows earned five awards, including Sex and the City, which won the best ensemble cast in a TV comedy on the very night it was airing its last episode. "We will all miss you so much," said Sex star Kristin Davis. Davis, who played Charlotte on the series about the love lives of four single women in New York, also thanked HBO for being so daring in letting the sexually frank show on the air. HBO drama Six Feet Under earned the award for best cast in a drama for the second consecutive year.

Meryl Streep was named best actress in a TV movie or miniseries for Angels in America, about the AIDS epidemic in New York in the early 1980s. Tony Shalhoub (Monk) won the SAG trophy for best actor in a TV comedy, and Megan Mullally earned the honor of best actress in a comedy for playing Karen Walker on the gay-themed sitcom Will & Grace. Kiefer Sutherland earned the SAG award for best actor in a TV drama for 24, and Frances Conroy was named best actress in a drama for HBO's Six Feet Under.

Linklater's romantic nine-years-later sequel shines through a cloudy Berlin Film Festival
The Sun Also Rises
by Dennis Lim
February 25 - March 2, 2004

BERLIN, GERMANY—Four years after its big move east, the Berlin Film Festival can sometimes seem as awkwardly stranded as the reborn city center it occupies. A busy Third Reich crossroads, later a Wall-bisected dead zone, now a mall-island made possible by landfill and the deep pockets of Sony and DaimlerChrysler, Potsdamer Platz remains encircled by construction sites, cut off from the hipster Berlin of nomadic techno nights and makeshift Comme des Garçons boutiques. The Berlinale—or at any rate, its glamour-hungry competition—likewise exists in a kind of no-man's-land, with some cinephile edge lost to Rotterdam and many art-house heavies inclined to wait for a Cannes premiere.

The sheer volume of films keeps the prospect of discovery alive, especially in the sidebars: the progressive Panorama and the erratic but adventurous Forum. Back in the official selection, this year's best entry effortlessly floated to the top. In 1995, Richard Linklater won the Berlinale's directing Silver Bear for Before Sunrise, which sent two strangers on a train out into the Viennese summer for an all-night rap session. Before Sunset quickly establishes that the young lovers failed to rendezvous a few months later as promised. Jesse (Ethan Hawke) has written a novel inspired by their tryst; Céline (Julie Delpy) shows up at his Paris reading. In the remaining hour or so before his New York-bound flight, the two stroll down Left Bank streets and along the Seine, riffing up a storm—a digressive, lifelike torrent of nervous niceties, banal chat, cagey evasions, earnest philosophizing, and strategic confessions—all the while trying to keep regret at bay.

Hawke's Jesse has lost some of his narcissistic pretensions (and the actor gamely leaves his novelist alter ego open to mockery), but as in the first film, Delpy's the heartbreaker. Her grown-up Céline—at turns spontaneous and self-conscious, given to righteous tirades and goofy balladeering—is a heroine Jacques Rivette would adore. (In a presumable homage, Céline and Jesse even go boating at one point.) From Slacker to Tape, Linklater has always worked well with compact durations, and in this ultra-brief encounter (a mere 80 minutes), the director and his actors (all three share writing credit) thrillingly orchestrate an entire movie's worth of real-time momentum. The basic tonal difference between original and sequel is what gives Before Sunset its enormous poignancy—the twentysomething Céline and Jesse viewed their chance meeting as ripe with endless possibility; their wiser, sadder, older selves understand that the unexpected reunion leaves them with finite options, none of them easy.

Given the Berlinale's political tradition, the most disappointing entries were the ones that purportedly engaged the real world—and yet contained little trace of recognizable human behavior. John Boorman's South Africa-set Country of My Skull preposterously locates truth and reconciliation in a Samuel Jackson-Juliette Binoche clinch. The refugee drama Beautiful Country, directed by Hans Petter Moland from a story by Terrence Malick, is at once unsentimental and patronizing, following an inexpressive young man from Vietnam to Texas in search of his ex-G.I. father. An entire village was built from the ground up—and subsequently flooded—for The Weeping Meadow, Theo Angelopoulos's three-hour dirge chronicling a woman's tragic life between the world wars. Amid a near total absence of character depth and narrative urgency, the pictorial majesty and unvarying vocabulary of sternly languorous zooms and pans grow numbing.

The most mysterious film in the program appeared out of nowhere—and will likely stay there. Directed by shadowy former New York art-world figure C.S. Leigh, Process attracted attention for its celebrity-death-match casting (Béatrice Dalle vs. Guillaume Depardieu, in his last pre-leg-amputation role) and its ostentatious art-core high concept: 29 shots in 93 minutes, including an 11-minute suicide. Adding to the enigma, the movie—which suggests a Leos Carax parody (indeed, Carax has a brief cameo)—premiered with live music by John Cale, who alternated between lugubrious crooning and poetry recital. The abiding impression of an elaborate prank is reinforced with the incongruous end-credit blast of the Jam's "That's Entertainment." Elsewhere, controversy seekers had to be content with Matteo Garrone's First Love, in which an Italian goldsmith sets out to turn his bizarrely acquiescent girlfriend anorexic—the experiment goes terribly wrong after an illicit forkful of fettuccine.

A few young French directors picked up the slack: Red Lights is another intriguing partial success from Cédric Kahn (L'Ennui), a black-comic Georges Simenon adaptation about an emasculated husband's drunken, road-raging tear from Paris to Bordeaux—the movie's disorienting notion of suspense is so deadpan it flirts with boredom. Abdellatif Kechiche's L'Esquive is a Raising Victor Vargas with much naturalistic swearing and a neatly reflexive framework: Teens in the Paris-suburb projects put on a Marivaux play and find themselves in a real-life comedy of manners. Another Panorama highlight, Sébastien Lifshitz's jagged mosaic of bruised lives, Wild Side, has a premise that sounds like a barroom joke—ever hear the one about the gay Russian army deserter, the Algerian rent boy, and the transsexual French hooker? But there's nothing lewd about the punchline, which proposes a polyamorous threesome as a sustainable, nurturing living arrangement—a quietly utopian vision, one as romantic in its way as Before Sunset.