Potemkin

Saturday, June 5, 1999
One year ago: Under Heaven
Two years ago: Relentless Survivors

I don't think I've yet pointed here to Whiteboard News. It's a good compilation of funny/weird wire service stories and such. Joe Harper is a former Microsoft person, which is where I first started reading this, but he's moved on to Oregon now.

I got caught up on this journal this morning, then made my way down to the Egyptian theater. The film festival is winding down, with just today and tomorrow left to go! But why is the weather so cold? I'm not expecting real summertime yet -- that doesn't happen until July around here -- but I shouldn't be wearing a jacket in the first week of June! The good side of that is that the unairconditioned Egyptian is still comfortable.

• Element of Crime
  (IMDB page for this film) This film, though well made technically, wasn't at all to my taste! It's in English, though made in Denmark. A detective is investigating an old crime. If he follows the path of the murderer, will he be drawn to reenact the crime? Lots of horrid things happening in the background that have nothing to do with the story. I found the nightmarish atmosphere very unpleasant. Every view out the window looked like a Bosch painting! The walls were oozing and dripping. The dreamlike state reminded me of Zentropa, and indeed, it's the same director, Lars von Trier. I was amused by the short film about the director and his Dogme95 program (self-applied rules that restrict what the filmmaker can do), since in his earlier films he did exactly the opposite of every rule!

Film buddy A---- and I took the bus down to the other end of Broadway for the next film. This was part of the "Rising Star" program the festival was running: they'd show the newest film by their selected rising star on Friday evening (Run, Lola, Run in this case -- I missed it due to fatigue), then an earlier film by the same director on Saturday afternoon. The director, Tom Twyker, was amusing in expressing his appreciation of the crowd that turned out for the older film. Unfortunately he wasn't able to stick around till the end to answer questions.

• Deadly Maria
  (IMDB page for this film) I was impressed by this quiet drama that just gets stranger and stranger. A woman seems to be trapped in a loveless marriage, and she's the sole caregiver to her disabled father as well. Should she approach the neighbor that she exchanges looks with across the back court? I liked it, but its downbeat ending depressed me. If someone is trapped in a stagnant life situation, and zie makes a move to change things, I prefer an ambiguous ending or a hopeful one to an ending that has all characters on a steep downward slope to hell!

We had a bit of a gap before the evening program, so A---- went grocery shopping and I went home for an hour or two. It wasn't a long enough time to actually nap, though. I started walking downtown, because I'd missed the bus that would have gotten me to the theater early enough due to the rarity of buses on Saturdays.

I met up with Jon Newman by chance, at the community college parking garage, and we walked down the hill together, exchanging views of how the festival is going. He'll be working late tonight, compiling the votes on the Fool Serious ratings for the festival. That's one of the really neat things about SIFF for me, seeing what others think who've seen most of the same movies.

We were heading towards the Paramount theater for a special showing of The Battleship Potemkin, with full orchestra accompaniment from the Bellevue Philharmonic. I'm ashamed to say that I've never been to the theater before. It's a beautiful place, now that it's been restored to full glory by a former Microsoft person. This was a hard ticket event, with assigned seats, so I wasn't particularly near anyone I knew. The crowd was about half symphony patrons and half film fans, I'd say.

• The Battleship Potemkin
  (IMDB page for this film) I'm also ashamed to say that I've never seen this film all the way through before, though I've seen clips from it. Seeing all of it does help one appreciate the originality of technique! The score, adapted from Shostakovich symphonies in 1976, was suitable, and the sound was great!

Unfortunately, my cough started to bother me during the film. In a normal movie, this would have been only a minor annoyance to me and those around me, but because the music was live, I was forced to eventually leave the theater and watch the monitor in the lobby! The waves of hate rising around me made this necessary, although I was supressing the cough as much as I could. Ah, well...

When the crowd was exiting the hall, I helped with collecting the Fool Serious ballots for a few minutes, then took the bus back up the hill with Jon and a few other folks.

This day ended early, with only three films seen! But the special-event nature of the Potemkin screening made it worth it, even though I was only in the hall for part of it.

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