Parky at the Pictures (In Cinemas 30/4/2019)

In addition to Keith Behrman's Giant Little Ones, Don McKellar's Through Black Spruce and Daniel Cockburn's How Not to Watch a Movie, the programme also contained the following factual and fictional features:-

CLARA.
Akash Sherman was still only 22 when he completed Clara, a follow-up to his 2015 debut, The Rocket List. Indeed, this is something of a companion piece, as, while his sophomore effort is concerned with locating intelligent life somewhere in the galaxy, its predecessor followed four friends completing and documenting their bucket lists to fire them into space to provide a last testament of a dying civilisation. Realising such ambitious storylines on modest budgets speaks volumes for Sherman's ambition and resourcefulness. However, this fanciful sci-fi fable need a much sturdier script to support its well-intentioned metaphysical ideas. 

Struggling to cope after losing his newborn son and drifting apart from scientist wife Kristen Hagen, astrophysicist Patrick J. Adams declares lasting love to be an impossibility and devotes himself to the detection of habitable planets. The more he withdraws into his work, the more he alienates himself from his colleagues and students. But itinerant optimist Troian Bellisario rekindles his faith in humanity after she arrives in town with her faithful dog and responds to Adams's advertisement for an unpaid assistant. Their extracurricular activities land the professor in hot water and he is forced to appeal to Hagen for help, only for the truth to emerge about Bellisario's health. 

Overlooking the Philosophy 101 standard of much of the dialogue, this is a sincere, if ultimately melodramatic attempt to say something profound about the human condition and our place in the grand scheme. But, while Sherman is capably served by the brooding Adams and the pixieish Bellisario, his views on the cosmos, spirituality, romance and destiny are so fuzzily superficial that only star-gazing sixth-formers are going to be convinced by them. The air of mawkish solemnity might have been less stifling without the swirling strings and swooning synthesizers on Jonathan Kawchuk's insufferably cloying score. 

EDGE OF THE KNIFE.
Gwaii Edenshaw and Helen Haig-Brown make a little bit of screen history with SGaawaay K'uuna/Edge of the Knife, as this is the first feature to be made in the Haida dialect that is only spoken by around 20 people in the Haida Gwaii community in the remote archipelago off the coast of British Columbia that was formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. Set in the 19th century and drawing on Haida folklore, the film took four years to make and involved the cast members having to learn to pronounce dialogue in an almost extinct tongue. But this is anything but a linguistic curio. 

In the mid-1800s, neighbouring clans gather on the island of Haida Gwaii for their annual fishing trip to stock up for the long winter months. The dashing Adiit'sii (Tyler York) takes the son of his best friend, Kwa (Willy Russ), out to sea in his boat. However, the boy is killed in a tragic accident and Adiit'sii feels such remorse that he retreats into the woods, where he punishes himself with such disfiguring severity that he descends into the state of Gaagiixiid that renders him a wild man. When he emerges a year after the tragedy. Adiit'sii is taken in by his father (Brandon Kallio) to recover his wits. But, while they are shocked by his transformation, Kwa and his wife, Hlaaya (Adeana Young), are still harbouring thoughts of revenge. 

Co-scripted by brothers Gwaai and Jaalen Edenshaw with help from their grandmother, Diane Brown, this tale of the Gaagiixiid (or Gaagiid) takes its title from the Haida proverb, `The world is as sharp as the edge of a knife; as you go along you have to be careful or you will fall off one side or the other.' Produced to encourage people to learn the language, the action dwells upon states of mind and being that recall Ciro Guerra's Embrace of the Serpent (2015). Made on a shoestring in the village of Yan with a non-professional cast, the picture has a ring of authenticity through the involvement of the Haida community, who produced the costumes and the tattoo designs, while Edenshaw himself carved the mask, headdress and dagger seen on screen. Edenshaw's evocative use of the landscape has a feel of Werner Herzog about it, as the untameable forces of Nature reflect the ferocity of Adiit'sii's unflinchingly feral ordeal. 

THE FIREFLIES ARE GONE.
Taking its title from a Pier Paolo Pasolini essay about Fascism, The Fireflies Are Gone is Sébastien Pilote's third feauture and differs from predecessors The Salesman (2011) and The Auction (2013) in focusing on a protagonist at the start of their lives rather than in their small-town twilight. Bearing a passing similarity to fellow Quebecois Pascal Plante's Fake Tattoos (2017), this odd couple saga artfully blends a low-key tone with a fulsome Philippe Brault score that ironically counterpoints the deadpan action with mock romantic grace notes. 

Blowing off her family birthday party because she has not forgiven mother Marie-France Marcotte for divorcing union activist father Luc Picard and marrying smug talk radio host François Papineau, teenager Karelle Tremblay seems set to waste her summer on acts of petty rebellion. However, she agrees to take a job as the night guard at the local baseball field and embarks upon guitar lessons after a chance meeting with Pierre-Luc Brillant, a thirtysomething musician who lives in his mother's basement and dashes off riffs ranging from classical to thrash without being able to sum up the energy or ambition to join a band or play some solo gigs around his harbour hometown. 

With Brilliant living up to his name while clutching a plectrum and Tremblay doing a passable impression of Ellen Page in Jason Reitman's Juno (2007), this is a meanderingly engaging glumcom that keeps hinting at romance with a disarming lack of conviction that matches the shrugging attitude of a central couple who would rather walk his mother's dog than make out. The sub-plot involving Tremblay's parents and the contrasting personalities of her working-class dad and bourgeois stepfather feels more than a bit contrived, while the firefly denouement comes perilously close to being twee. But Michel Le Veaux's photography and Stéphane Lafleur's editing contribute to a laid-back vibe that is pleasingly out of keeping with teenpic convention. 

FOR THOSE WHO DON'T READ ME.
Inspired by the life and work of Quebecois poet Yves Boisvert (1950-2012), Yan Giroux's For Those Who Don't Read Me introduces a writer whose iconic status has not travelled widely outside his native Quebec. There's a hint of Charles Bukowski about his reckless approach to life in a doomed love story that takes its title from Boisvert's assertion that he wrote primarily for those who didn't read him and sees the debuting Giroux graduate from shorts after an unexpected digression into documentary in the form of Français: Un 14 Juillet à Marseille (2012). 

Living out of a suitcase and railing against a world that doesn't understand him, Yves Boisvert (Martin Dubreuil) accepts a sofa for the night from graphic designer Dyane (Céline Bonnier) after they meet at a reception thrown by his publisher. Much to the dismay of her studious teenage son, Marc (Henri Richer-Picard), Dyane begins to develop feelings for the self-centred poet and he tries to undermine their romance. However, he slowly falls under Boisvert's subversive spell and not only begins exploring his filial limits, but also his artistic inclinations. But domesticity sits as easily with the maverick vagabond as subtitling cookery shows and hardcore pornography. So, he decides to sabotage his situation by indulging in a boozy reunion with old flame Maryse (Marie-Eve Perron) that leaves him homeless and painfully aware of the limitations of fame and the treachery of words. 

While the bohemian lifestyle seems temptingly cinematic, film-makers have often failed to convey the psychological turmoil and instinctive creativity of the lone wolf poet. It's much easier to place the camera beside a canvas to show a wayward artist channelling his angst into angry daubs of paint. But nibs scratching on paper are markedly less visually thrilling or emotionally stirring and Giroux struggles to capture Boisvert's inner life, despite staging some exhilarating performance set-pieces. Nevertheless, Martin Dubreuil seizes the role with a self-destructive ferocity that often overshadows his earnest co-stars. However, Ian Lagarde's energetic camerawork and Jocelyn Tellier's thoughtful score keep pace in reinforcing the crippling melancholia that made Boisvert's work so memorable and his life such a trial. 

HUGH HEFNER'S AFTER DARK: SPEAKING OUT IN AMERICA.
Having already profiled the founder of Playboy magazine in Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel (2009), documentarist Brigitte Berman returns to what seems to be the niche topic of his TV career in Hugh Hefner's After Dark: Speaking Out in America. However, this turns out to be a fascinating study of how the American chat show in the Swinging Sixties reflected the attitudes of the times, as Hefner challenged both format conventions and network restrictions to bring black and white guests together for discussions that went way beyond the anodyne anecdote and shameless plug rubric of today. 

Launched in Chicago in 1959, Playboy's Penthouse was hosted by a tuxedo-wearing Hefner from what purported to be his apartment. He mingled with his guests rather than making a fuss of them and, as contributors like Whoopi Goldberg and Bill Maher point out, it's intriguing to see that Hef threw down the gauntlet to the likes of Ed Sullivan by inviting along mavericks like comedian Lenny Bruce and such African-American musical icons as Nina Simone, Sammy Davis, Jr., Sarah Vaughan and Ray Charles. Altough the show only survived for two seasons, Hefner returned in 1968 with Playboy After Dark, which used the setting of a Hollywood nightclub for conversations about Civil Rights, Vietnam and the race for the presidency. Once again, the guest list raised eyebrows, as folk singers like Joan Baez and Pete Seeger  rubbed shoulders with author Gore Vidal, American football star Jim Brown, comedian Dick Gregory and Rat Packer Joey Bishop.

Already an Oscar winner for Artie Shaw: Time Is All You've Got (1985), Berman is shrewd enough to realise that Hefner's softcore porn empire scarcely makes him a poster boy for freedom of speech and sexual responsibility in the #MeToo era. But she applauds the courage he displayed in giving a two bunny-eared salute to the American Establishment and the die-hard bigots who continued to advocate the cause of white supremacy. Coming across as a suaver, but less astute version of Dick Cavett, Hef proves a canny inquisitor, with excellent taste in music. There's too much dirty laundry to remove all of the stains from Hefner's reputation. But, notwithstanding the surfeit of scantily clad women decorating the sets, these all-but forgotten shows clearly did enough boundary pushing for them to be shunned in the Deep South. 

MOUTHPIECE.
Patricia Rozema will always be remembered for I've Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987), which put her at the forefront of both the Toronto New Wave and the nascent lesbian cinema scene. Yet, while UK audiences got to see such follow-ups as White Room (1990), When Night Is Falling (1995) and the Jane Austen adaptation, Mansfield Park (1999), Rozema has been less visible in recent times. In addition to features like Kit Kittridge: An American Girl (2008) and Into the Forest (2015), she has worked a lot in television, notably co-scripting Michael Sucsy's Grey Gardens (2009). So, it's good to see her back on the big screen with Mouthpiece, a meditation on grief, guilt and getting on with life that has been reworked by Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava from their own award-winning play. 

Indeed, the duo share the role of Cassandra, a 30 year-old writer who has agreed to give the eulogy at the funeral of her mother, Elaine (Maev Beaty), in spite of the misgivings of her father Chris (Ari Cohen), brother Danny (Jake Epstein), Aunt Jane (Paula Boudreau) and best friend Roxanne (Jess Salgueiro), as Cass is aware that Elaine never forgave her children for the loss of her own promising writing career, while the tensions between them continued right up to their last Christmas and the series of voicemail messages left by the stroke-stricken Elaine that Cass had been too drunk to hear. 

Between flashbacks to childhood confrontations, Cass debates the tall (Nostbakken) and the short (Sadava) of her maternal relationship and even comes to blows with herself in front of the altar of a church that is also the scene for a musical number that is twinned with another tuneful pastiche in a supermarket. While they amuse, these interludes feel a little self-conscious, while much of the poised dialogue reflects the material's theatrical origins. But Sadava and Nostbakken deliver compelling performances, while Rozema colludes with cinematographer Catherine Lutes and editor Lara Johnston to open out the action without diminishing its potent intimacy or stinging wit. Echoes of Ingmar Bergman's Persona (1966) and Luis Buñuel That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) ripple through proceedings. But this is a distinctive and timely feminist tract that deserves the widest audience.

PROSECUTING EVIL: THE EXTRAORDINARY WORLD OF BEN FERENCZ.

During Matthew Shoychet's admirably balanced documentary. The Accountant of Auschwitz (2018), one contributor notes that society owes it to those who perished to honour their memory by prosecuting their persecutors. He is Ben Ferencz, the Nuremberg Trials prosecutor who turned 99 on 11 March and continues to fight for the cause of justice. He comes centre stage in Barry Avrich's profile, Prosecuting Evil, which confirms that an actuality's stylistic shortcomings sometimes have to be overlooked when the content is so compelling. 

Born in Transylvania, but raised in New York's Hell's Kitchen by his Hungarian parents, Benjamin Ferencz graduated from Harvard Law School and joined the US Army in 1943. Dispatched by General Patton to gather evidence in the concentration camps, he was seconded to the legal team of Telford Taylor and made such an impression at the Nuremberg Trials that he was given his first case, the prosecution of the Einsatzgruppen death squads. All 22 defendants were found guilty, although only four of the 13 capital sentences were carried out. Dismayed by the ease with which decent people could become mass murderers, Ferencz played a crucial role in the foundation of the International Criminal Court in The Hague and his views on the rule of law continue to carry weight and make considerable sense. 

Alan M. Dershowitz, Rosie Abella and Fatou Bensouda are among those paying tribute to an inspirational figure. But the most valuable insight comes from Ferencz's lawyer son, Don, who remembers his father asking his four children at supper each evening what they had done during the day for the benefit of humanity. Few can match his contribution and the cogency of his recollections makes this otherwise visually drab so informative and enthralling. It's not Avrich's fault that the archive material he uses is so familiar, but he doesn't always tell his tale with complete clarity, with the account of the Einsatzgruppen trial and the evolution of Ferencz's idea of a tribunal to resolve disputes and handle war crimes cases being a bit more than a little vague.