Our Lady of Perpetual Hell

It was recommended to me by a friend that I consolidate my film-related writing so I have set up another blog specifically for that over here.

I am gradually copying the majority of my film posts from Our Lady of Perpetual Hell to Cinemusing and that’s where any future film-related posts will be written. The rest of my unhinged ranting will remain here.

Click the image to see some clever wedding photos!

This is a really interesting (and long overdue) investigation into the story behind the story behind the NHL’s Bill Masterton Trophy by Toronto Star writers Robert Cribb and Randy Starkman.

I felt like I could use a long hot shower after watching Family Instinct.

It’s shot in a Latvian community where everyone shares a miserable existence of booze and brutality. Although we do learn that this used to be a collective farm before the fall of the Soviet Union, I never really got a feel for the geography of this community and am unsure if they all lived in one big labyrinthine clapboard shack or a bunch of separate ones. But, God, these people have nothing going for them–they lead bleak and brutal lives of poverty and alcoholism.

The focus of the film is Zanda, a twenty-something mother of two young kids sired by her brother. The brother Valdis–an abusive alcoholic–is imprisoned at the beginning of the film and the story (such as it is) plays out over his one-year sentence (which feels like real time… it sure felt a lot longer than the posted 58-minute running time!), while Zanda awaits his release and return home.

Everyone in the community seems to look forward to Valdis’ return with dread. Except Zanda, who mostly seems to be looking forward to it. Now, generally, I don’t mind films that don’t provide all the answers to questions it raises, but this one is left perplexingly dangling. Is it because even this twisted form of affection is better than none? Is it because Valdis has some ability to provide for his family? Beats me. In fact, I’m not even sure what the film’s title refers to… It certainly can’t refer to Zanda’s mother’s relationship (again, such as it is) with her children, which amounts to “who gives a shit”. It can’t be the siblings’ incestuous relationship… surely (?). Zanda’s other brother and his girlfriend move in while Valdis is in prison, and all they do is lie in bed and watch television (Who the hell pays the cable bill? Is television free in Latvia?) and taunt Zanda. Even Zanda’s relationship with her own children is shit-stained as she refuses the help of social workers who try to intervene and help her while Valdis is imprisoned. I felt so hopeless for these kids. We don’t see much of them–just reaction shots here and there, in response to one drunken and/or violent scene or another.

The film doesn’t really go anywhere. It just sort of deposits the viewer in this hopeless pit for an hour. Afterwards, it felt great to get outside and catch a breath of fresh air.

I stuck around for the Q&A afterward and director Andris Gauja said that, eventually, Zanda did agree to accept the social workers’ help and relocated with her children (without Valdis, that is) to another part of Latvia to raise them. So I guess there is, at least, a glimmer of hope for those kids.

When I was choosing my Hot Docs ‘11 screenings, I hadn’t planned to see it but I unexpectedly ended up at a screening of Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop thanks to a friend snagging tickets to the sold-out show.

Too bad it’s about one year too late for this film. I mean, does anybody still care?

The film was shot during O’Brien’s 30-city “The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour” last spring and summer. I think O’Brien’s a funny dude, so I enjoyed that aspect of it, but I really could’ve lived without all the concert footage. But that may be more the fault of my dislike of musical comedy and “funny” songs than the fault of the film (although the person I went to the film with agreed with me on this point). And, of course, the concert was the setting of the film. The offstage footage was more interesting to me and I liked that he allowed himself to be shown behaving like a prima donna sometimes–taking out on his team his anger over the tragedy of his situation. There is a particularly awkward sequence where he belittles a former-”Late Night” actor, Jack McBrayer, which would’ve made me squirm in my seat if there wasn’t that kernel of doubt about whether or not McBrayer was playing along… I still dunno if he was. What was eye-opening was how hard the guy pushes himself. He really can not stop. He says “no” to practically no request–no matter how ridiculous. For example, he is invited to perform at Bonnaroo and then asked to introduce all the other acts, as well; he (rightfully) kvetches about it to the camera and anyone else who’ll listen but does it, anyway, and by the time he takes the stage for his own performance, he’s exhausted.

The film isn’t festival calibre–surely only included at Hot Docs for the marquee value of O’Brien’s name–feeling like not much more than a television special, but it is fun if you like his brand of humour. If you don’t mind that whole sulk about being paid millions to leave his job, look for it on VOD.

I don’t know a damned thing about chess, but that didn’t matter when I sat down to watch Bobby Fischer Against the World. I knew who he was and I knew that he had a reputation as a bit of a, er, nutter, but I had forgotten how much of a big deal his 1972 battle with Soviet chess star Boris Spassky was when they met in Iceland in a 21-game match to determine the World Chess Championship. It was given high profile coverage and featured on the nightly newscasts as well as the sportscasts. The sportscasts. This match is at the heart of the film–perhaps because his whole life had been building towards it and because his whole life went kerflooey after it. This part of the story–the psychological warfare that Fischer employed against Spassky–is told well in the film. Even if you know the outcome, you can’t help but sit at the edge of your seat as the story–and match–is played out.

But, in the end, the film offers little insight into the rise and fall of Bobby Fischer. He is portrayed as distant, self-absorbed, and determined from childhood–a self-taught genius when it came to chess–and ended up a scraggly-bearded anti-Semitic and anti-American loon, exiled from his homeland. I’m not a doctor (but I played one on TV), but it seems pretty obvious that the guy had some kind of mental illness, and that subject is like the proverbial elephant sitting, undiscussed, in the room. It’s an interesting and, I think, important part of Fischer’s story, but it remains untold in this film.

It’s a 6-foot green and red painted post topped with an insignia-stamped metal plate in the middle of what appears to be snowy nowhere. But signifies the edge of Russia and it requires guarding. So six members of the Russian army are stationed at a primitive camp at the arctic extreme of their country to keep out intruders.

At this particular station, the newest member of the troop is Alexei–a 19-year-old soldier who just wanted a break from school for awhile and is stationed here for a year-and-a-half stint–and he is our eyes. He is put through “training” exercises by his 5 veteran comrades… training that includes digging a path through six feet of snow and ice and then pulling on a gas mask and running an obstacle course that’s been set up in the narrow corridor he’s dug.

Not really sure why… There are twelve such stations that were set up along the northern border during the ’50s and none has ever been involved in any military action whatsoever. There is more chance of encountering a bear than a human being on the foot patrols these soldiers must make. It is a fairly absurd assignment, really.

The film alternates between claustrophobic close-ups of the men’s faces as they entertain each other with stories and songs and extreme long-shots that place them in that vast landscape of nothingness where your eyes can’t quite make out the horizon because the land and sky are the same colour. I hunkered down in my seat and pulled my jacket over my shoulders. Brrr…

‘Not everyone is meant to walk on the edge of the nation,’ one of his comrades tells Alexei. Indeed, each of them must have a reason for wanting this assignment. Trouble is, in most cases, we don’t really find out what those reasons are. We get an inkling about a couple of them men, but the film fails to address in any detail the reasons why these men have chosen this particularly harsh, isolated assignment. One of them is nearing the end of his 3-year assignment there and says, ‘The last days are the hardest.’ He gives the impression that he’d just as soon stay there. I would like to have learned more about why they chose this assignment–why they were willing to spend up to three years confined with 5 other men in a cramped (bunk beds!), primitive, cold camp, patrolling a border that nobody has ever troubled to invade.