Two documentaries that benefit from being viewed on a big screen (Film reviews)

Most, if not all, movies benefit from being viewed on a big screen 

Into the Inferno (UK-Germany-Canada, 2016)

- Part of the HKIFF's Galas program

- Werner Herzog (who also scripted) and Clive Oppenheimer, co-directors 

It may have been made for Netflix, whose customers stream the movies they watch onto computer and smartphone screens or watch them on TV screens courtesy of DVDs, but Into the Inferno really is one of those documentaries that really is best viewed on a big theater screen.  An ambitious, sprawling work which transports its audience to far flung places with landscapes that can look incredibly unearthly, it also has truly incredible footage that not only shows the power of volcanoes but also how mesmerizingly as well as frighteningly beautiful lava can look when it churns about, erupts and/or flows out to envelope whole landscapes.

Peter Zeitlinger's cinematographer makes sure that Into the Inferno is no run of the mill documentary but what really makes certain of this is the distinctive imprint that director Werner Herzog (who also scripted this effort) leaves on it.  And while the German auteur may have given Professor Clive Oppenheimer a co-directing credit and had the Cambridge University volcanologist be the main man in front of the camera, the fact that this work takes pains to explore the spiritual side of volcanoes rather than just their scientific aspects is something that comes from Herzog steering the production towards subject matter that truly interests him.

Over the course of the film, Herzog and Oppenheimer -- who met in Antarctica, when Herzog was filming his Encounters at the End of the World (2007) -- journey to the Vanuatu archipelago in the South Pacific, Indonesia (the country with the most volcanoes in the world), Iceland, Ethiopia and North Korea (home to an active volcano that all Koreans consider sacred).  In addition to getting up close with some really spectacular volcanoes and related physical features (such as caldera lakes), they also interact with a diverse group of individuals, including members of a cargo cult, outwardly super-patriotic North Koreans (who often act like they too belong to a cult), and paleoanthropologist Tim White and his dedicated crew as well as volcanologists from various countries.

In the hands of lesser (or plain different) filmmakers, the different sections of Into the Inferno wouldn't feel like they could all fit into a single work.  However, Herzog successfully weaves them into a pretty fascinating exploration of the passionate -- often to the point of obsessiveness -- human quest for meaning, all of which involve volcanoes in one way or another.  

My rating for the film: 8.0

Makala (France, 2017)

- Part of the HKIFF's Global Vision program

- Emmanuel Gras, director, scriptwriter and cinematographer

- With: Kabwita Kasongo, Lydie Kasongo

One of the sights that invariably strikes visitors to the African continent is of people -- men, women and children -- forced to walk far distances because they don't have money for public transportation, let alone a car or even motorcycle of their own.  Adding to the misery is that many of these people are effectively their own beasts of burden, carrying all manner of things on their heads as well as in their arms and on their backs.    

Even when the subject of Makala (charcoal in Kiswahili, the native language of its protagonist), a Congolese charcoal maker and seller by the name of Kabwita Kasongo, has use of a bicycle, it's to load with many heavy bags of charcoal and then push into town rather than actually ride.  Observing the massive effort this takes, one can't help but feel for him.  Knowing that considerable effort also is required beforehand to do such as cut down the trees whose wood then gets turned into charcoal gets one concluding that his is a life that so many of us would not be able to lead and endure for long at all.

While much of this affecting film is taken up documenting mundane activities, there are elements in it which can disturb despite being depicted in a matter of fact way rather than sensationalist manner.  One example is rat being part of the diet of the protagonist and his family.  Actually more upsetting though is how it can seem that the closer he gets to town (and supposed "civilization"), the more unpleasant Kabwita's encounters with his fellow humans get.  In addition, there are scenes in this documentary that get me questioning why he has so much faith in God when there seems to be so much inequality and suffering in this world.

Rather than look upon him merely as an unlucky wretch condemned to a Sisyphean existence, however, I came away from my viewing of Emmanuel Gras' documentary thinking that Kabwita Kasongo is one of those heroic as well as admirable individuals who, somehow, against the odds, manages to not only eke out an honest living but also provide for his wife Lydie and their children, and continue to dream of, and plan for, a better future for them all.  And it is my sincere hope that he's been amply rewarded for agreeing to appear -- nay, star -- in this work which has gone on to garner a number of accolades, including the Critics' Week Grand Prize at last year's Cannes Film Festival.

My rating for this film: 7.0

Another 2011 HKIFF report (The not so viva edition)

Director Cheung King-wai (far left) answers audience queries
after the world premiere screening of his One Nation, Two Cities

Chalk it down to my being a glutton for punishment -- or just a fanatical movie geek. For despite having being down to view four Hong Kong International Film Festival screenings this weekend, I couldn't help but also go to the Cine Art House to check out Road to Dawn, a 2007 Mainland China-Malaysia co-production focusing on the time that Dr. Sun Yat Sen spent in Penang directed by Hong Konger Derek Chiu and starring Taiwanese actor Winston Chao.

Any review of that movies will have to wait for another day, however -- as this time around, my focus will be on the film I viewed before it and that which I viewed after it; both of which have little in common with each other besides the fact that they both are part of this year's HKIFF programme (and attracted my attention and got me to part with some money to purchase tickets for admission to their screenings!):-

Viva Riva! (Congo-France-Belgium, 2010)
- From the Global Vision programme
- Djo Tunda Wa Munga, director
- Starring Patsha Bay, Manie Malone, Hoji Fortuna, Marlene Longage

To whoever came up with the title from this movie: It seems you want the audience to cheer for Riva, the film's flamboyant protagonist who definitely is not without his share of physical charm. But if that really is the case, couldn't you have made him less reckless to the point of downright stupidity?

By this, I don't mean his having gone ahead and stolen some valuable items (in this case, a truckload of petrol-filled barrels) from his dangerous boss but, rather, his looking to have more or less completely let down his guard once he and his bounty made it across the border from Angola into his home country of Congo (formerly Zaire and -- in colonial times -- the Belgian Congo). Put another way: it's one thing to effect a heist against your employer when he's not looking but quite another to baldly risk getting tracked down and caught by him and his murderous henchmen because you've become way too fixated on spending your share of the takings on women, booze and generally having a good time.

What with Viva's successful theft taking up only something like the first five minutes of the film, much of the rest of it gets spent telling an essentially simple story of a man who becomes obsessed with a woman he doesn't really know (and turns out to be a local kingpin's moll) and whose open pursuit of her is so blind that he doesn't seem to realize (or care) that he is being intently pursued in turn by his vengeful ex-boss who is determined to reclaim what he considers rightfully his as well as make his former employee pay for having stolen it.

One way in which Viva Riva!'s makers flesh out the story is by taking time to show the social as well as moral corruption that appears to taken for granted -- or just as a fact of life -- among the Congolese these days. Another is by peppering the movie with a plethora of erotic sequences that, along with certain scenes of brutal violence, make for the work's Category III rating being well deserved.

Even while I was not too enamored by the sex scenes (that were so powered by lust that they are among the most unromantic I have ever seen), I'm not going to blame them for my actually developing a migraine while viewing the movie. Rather, I think this was the result of the pulsating music that never seemed to let up -- some of which was energetically rhythmic but others of which came across as noise that looked to have not only affected my brain but drowned reason out of many of the movie's characters -- none of which, as a consequence, I was inclined to cheer for, let alone care for and empathize with.

My rating for the film: 5.5

One Nation, Two Cities (Hong Kong, 2011)
- From the Humanitarian Award for Documentaries programme
- Cheung King Wai, director

Before the screening of One Nation, Two Cities commenced, its director announced to the assembled audience that the film was completed less than 24 hours ago and that it actually had turned out to be 69 minutes in length (rather than the 100 minutes in length that it had been stated as being in the Hong Kong International Film Festival booking guide). The process of editing the documentary, he said, had presented great difficulty -- and it is interesting that at the Q&A session after the screening, he admitted that upon viewing the work, he thinks he had cut too much from the early sections of the film... and also that many of the questions he was asked concerned what was not in the offering (and whether those parts had never been filmed at all or had been cut in the editing room).

Although Cheung King Wai also stated that this version of his documentary about a Mainland Chinese woman who does not have Hong Kong residency status (despite her parents and her children having it) is his final one, I too am one of those who is of the opinion that perhaps the film would be better served by being re-edited -- and preferably, made lengthier. In particular, although the audience does learn quite a bit about the woman in question from the film (by way of interview with her, her uncle and a couple of friends and more), it really feels like a glaring omission that there is no interview footage with with her parents with whom she stays on her visits to Hong Kong and her ex-husband with whom she stays during her time back in her hometown in Mainland China.

Also at the post-screening Q&A, Cheung King Wai made what I thought to be quite a surprising as well as frank admission that he had found the woman at the center of One Nation, Two Cities to be thoroughly "commonly ordinary" and thus hard to make a film about. (This in contrast to the individual at the center of his previous film, KJ.)

To judge by the audience reaction, it would seem that many people agreed that she wasn't particularly interesting -- including in contrast to her mother who actually was the subject of more than one audience query. One reason might be that whereas it seems easy enough to understand why this documentary's central character would want to become a Hong Kong resident, the question of how her mother, whose brothers are all university educated, came to have a life in Hong Kong where she works as a cleaner and lives in impoverished circumstances (not to mention has a husband who seems disinclined to talk much at all).

All in all, too much felt like it had been left unsaid and unexplored -- or been left on the cutting room floor -- for this Cheung King Wai directorial effort to approach the level of his two previous works that I've seen (KJ and the earlier All's Well With the World). At the same time though, there's little doubt that he has once again commendably cast light on subject matter that doesn't usually get filmed -- which in this case includes broader social-cultural issues such as the effects on official government policies on individuals and their families, and also what appears to be a contemporary tendency in Mainland China towards having more and more families and marriages being broken up (be it by official policies or personal actions such as married men having affairs as was the case with the ex-husbands of the main woman in this documentary and her also divorced best friend).

My rating for this film: 6.0