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Telluride, Day
1
by
Ian Waldron-Mantgani, August 30, 2002
So this morning I leave my mountain village hotel
room and take one of those terrifying cable cars into the town of Telluride,
Colorado, and by my watch, I arrive in town at exactly 10.30am. At 10.31am,
I'm walking up to the main street and saying good morning to Willem Dafoe.
Telluride might be a small town, but it is not a sleepy one.
The programme for this year's Telluride Film Festival
was released at noon, in-keeping with the event's long-standing tradition
of keeping schedules secret until opening day. Films on the lineup include
"Bowling for Columbine", a documentary about American gun culture by great
satirist and social commentator Michael Moore, which premiered at Cannes
and has yet to find a release date; "Spider", the new film from David Cronenberg;
"Auto Focus", by Paul Schrader; "Rabbit-Proof Fence", a huge hit in Australia
that follows the abuse of Aboriginal children in the 1930s; "Morvern Callar",
the big budget graduation of "Ratcatcher" director Lynne Ramsey; "Ken Park",
codirected by cinematographer Ed Lachman and controversial filmmaker Larry
Clark; "Naqoyqatsi", another of Geoffrey Reggio and Philip Glass's follow-ups
to their amazing experimental hit "Koyaanisqatsi"; and "Russian Ark", a Russian
film using high-definition video to create a single 96-minute
take.
Also playing are "Lost in La Mancha", the much-hyped
documentary about Terry Gilliam's failed attempt to film "Don Quixote", and
"Talk to Her", the new Pedro Almodovar picture. Both of these have opened
in the UK, but they did so while I've been away, and thus I did not review
them. "Talk to Her" was screened for press members and festival patrons this
afternoon, and while I am not a huge fan of Almodovar, I found the film to
be rather impressive. There are less of the director's strained attempts
to be quirky in this latest work, which follows two women in a coma, the
brooding husband of one and the obsessive nurse of both. It's colourful in
a rich visual sense, and yes, there are a few silly jokes, but the tone is
absorbingly restrained, with strange characters and situations interestingly
and sympathetically played. The last act didn't quite evoke the emotion it
was seeking, as the relationship of the two main men needed to be developed
a little more substantively, but hey, it was at least convincing enough for
the film to avoid being a bore.
Things here are supposedly laid back by film festival
standards, but they're hectic enough for me, and getting in line an average
of 45 minutes prior to the start of most screenings is not unwise. I will
certainly miss some of the other potentially interesting films on offer,
which include "Irreversible", "Safe Passage", "The War", "Cuckoo", "City
of God" and "Respiro". Unmissable is the restored fiftieth anniversary print
of "Singin' in the Rain" being shown on Sunday morning. Yes, the movie is
regarded as the essential Hollywood musical, but somehow I have managed to
never see it before. Now, by divine grace, I shall get to lose my cherry
on the big screen -- so to speak. Details about films playing and a full
programme listing can be found at the festival's website, located at
http://www.telluridefilmfestival.org.
I say 'full programme listing', but there's really
no such thing. A multitude of slots in the current guide are marked To Be
Announced, and it is possible that important stuff could be waiting for us
in secret. Last year David Lynch's amazing "Mulholland Drive" filled a TBA
slot, and was considered by many to be the highlight of the long
weekend.
As for today, much of it was spent getting orientated:
finding the hospitality centre, meeting some folks in the know, scoping the
location, adjusting to both the altitude and the sight of this tiny town
crammed with 5,000 visitors. I chatted a little with Chris Gore, the editor
of filmthreat.com, caught up with my longtime e-mail correspondent Betty
Jo Tucker of reeltalkmovies.com, as well as her husband Larry, and said hello
to fellow Online Film Critics Society member Walter Chaw, who writes for
filmfreakcentral.net.
Celebrities spotted on the street include Salman
Rushdie and Paul Schrader… and I keep seeing director Werner Herzog
around, while not summoning the courage to go up and shake his hand. The
guy looms large and intimidating in my imagination; I was around seven years
old when I saw his bold epic "Fitzcarraldo", one of the first art movies
to make an impression on me, and probably a formative factor in the cinematic
obsession that haunts me to this day.
(Last year, so I'm told, Kirsten Dunst was at
Telluride, promoting Peter Bogdanovich's "The Cat's Meow" but sporting that
sensational red hair she got for "Spider-Man". No such luck this time around,
but the ladies volunteering at the hospitality centre and press desk are
charming indeed, plus I think Nastassja Kinski is around here somewhere.
It's all good.)
This evening, visitors to the Sheridan Opera House
venue got to see a fabulous tribute to Peter O'Toole. Full-length scenes
from such films as "Lawrence of Arabia", "My Favourite Year", "Becket", "The
Lion in Winter" and "The Ruling Class" were projected for about an hour,
followed by O'Toole receiving Telluride's Silver Medallion and being interviewed
onstage by Roger Ebert. Watching the clips I was struck by the sustained
dramatic clarity of O'Toole's onscreen speech, and by the great wit and power
in his individual, roguish persona. He's one of those actors whose presence
is so deeply ingrained in moviegoers' consciousnesses that we do not stop
to ponder it.
As an interviewee, O'Toole was a dry, wonderful
crowd-pleaser with many a tale and aside to tell. Asked by one audience member
if he ever found himself at odds with directors, the actor declared, "I have
never found myself at evens." Someone else wanted to know if O'Toole's feud
with producer Sam Spiegel ever waned, and he said that it did not, but he
got great pleasure out of sneaking onto the man's yacht one night and thieving
his cigars. Ebert confessed at one point, as we could sense he might have
to, that, "I feel like my questions are really just interruptions, and you
could pretty much talk all night. I think you might have a truly great story
for every question we could ask you."
O'Toole will be appearing in two productions over
the course of the festival. Unfortunately we don't seem to be getting a print
of "Lawrence of Arabia", but we will have the opportunity to view a filmed
performance of the stage play "Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell" (shown on British
television last year), as well as the rare but allegedly sensational TV movie
"Rogue Male", adapted by the BBC in 1976 from the Geoffrey Household novel
about a man whose one mission is to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
Tonight's festivities were for me round up with
the screening of "Ikiru", directed by Japanese master Akira Kurosawa in 1952.
That's another classic I had shamefully not seen until tonight, and if I
had trouble keeping my eyes open towards the finale, let that be no reflection
on the picture, which was very engrossing indeed. It's the story of a civil
servant widower who lost all passion for his job decades ago; his excuse
in plugging away without joy has been that leading a dull life is okay if
it's for the purpose of being a responsible single parent. As the movie opens,
the man realises that he has stomach cancer, and must do something of value
or fun before his life ends. Kurosawa dips into flashbacks, but two sections
dominate the structure of the film: the story of the old man struggling to
master his final months, and his eventual wake, in which colleagues discuss
the actual merits of his seemingly noble and diligent final
acts.
At the centre of "Ikiru" (which translates as
"To Live") are the massive issue of mortality and the thoughtful, poignant
performance by Takashi Shimura, but Kurosawa also managed to find moments
of humour in the oddest places. The wake sequence is brilliant in the way
it gets laughs both sad and pure out of drunkenness and bad logic, satirises
bureaucracy and its servants, and also lets us think about the meaning of
life, whether a wasted life can secure a legacy by attempting to redeem itself
near the end, and whether those attempts at redemption, if successful, actually
qualify a life as meaningful.
Tomorrow I'm scheduled to see "Bowling for Columbine"
and "Ken Park". I should also be attending a tribute to Paul Schrader, followed
by the screening of "Auto Focus". If I can get up for 7am, I can make it
to the 9.15am revival of "Scarecrow", the acclaimed 1973 picture by Jerry
Schatzberg starring Al Pacino and Gene Hackman. I'm writing the first draft
of this at about 3.20am. How do you like my chances?
COPYRIGHT© 2002 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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