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NEWS OF ATHENS' CINEMA SCENE
Real People in Real Dreams: A friend of mine,
Derek Hill, just gave me a book he wrote
about the generation of maverick young
filmmakers who began to infiltrate the main
stream of American film in the 1990s: Wes
Anderson, Sofia Coppola, Richard Linklater,
David 0. Russell, Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry
and the screenwriter Charlie Kaufman, whom
Derek places at the heart of the movement
he identifies. I'm reading the book now, and
the first director whose films Derek looks into
is Linklater. This prompted me, on a recent
evening, to watch—back to back, for the first
time ever—Before Sunrise and Before Sunset
which I have always regarded not only as the
twin pinnacles of Linklater's career, but as
small, fragile miracles.
The central thesis of Derek's book is that
the body of work compiled by the above direc
tors deserves to be discussed as analogous
to the output of the French New Wave of the
'50s and '60s: an assemblage of films that met
with significant critical and commercial suc
cess while aggressively challenging the staid
conventions of the dominant cinema of the
time with an eschpwal of its glossy aesthet
ics, a heightened engagement with reality and
bold, if not necessarily unified, formal values.
Linklater's companion films, made nine years
apart, certainly meet those criteria for com
parison: they manage to be two of the most
breathtakingly romantic movies I've ever seen
despite each being composed almost entirely
of an extended conversation between two
decidedly unromantic (though very appealing)
people. In the second one, the lovers don't
even kiss.
As most of you surely know, Before Sunrise
(1995) follows Jesse and Celine (Ethan Hawke
and Julie Delpy), two college students (he's
American; she's French) who meet on a train
bound for Paris, on the brief odyssey of their
one night together after he impulsively con
vinces her to disembark with him in Vienna.
Linklater uses the exotic, monumental Old
World locations not for postcard tableaux,
but to create a sense of the young visitors'
isolation together as their initial attraction
quickly and believably grows into a deeper
bond. Delpy and Hawke's performances are
so naturalistic, and the dialogue by Linklater
and Kim Krizan so intuitive, that it's hard to
believe the film was written—or even acted—
at all.
The decision to make Before Sunset (2004),
practically alone among sequels, strikes me
not as an act of laziness or vanity, but as one
of sincere generosity. For Linklater, Delpy and
Hawke (who collaborated on this screenplay—
again, amazing for its existence) to have
brought Jesse and Celine back together seems,
in retrospect, like a crucial imperative to the
characters themselves- an obligation to
which their creators were morally bound. It's
here we realize that the magic of the chem
istry between Hawke and Delpy is in the way
they have gotten Jesse and Celine to under
stand each other: the way they listen. It's the
truth that's conjured by their incontrovertibly
human connection that makes them real peo
ple—like Pinocchio, or Antoine Doinel.
Derek Hill's book, Charlie Kaufman and
Hollywood's Merry Band of Pranksters,
Fabulists and Dreamers: An Excursion into
the American New Wave, is available as an
ebook through www.kamerabooks.com, or you
can get a used printed copy through Amazon.
It's terrific, by the way. The movies. I'm pretty
sure, you can find at Vision Video or Video
Link.
y Welcome, Stranger: The above indulgence is
a longer-than-usual introduction to the nuts
and bolts of this biweekly column, which,
if you've just arrived in Athens for the new
school year or are for some other reason read
ing it for the first time, deals with the kinds
of cinematic experiences you can have here
without being asked to sit through a solid 10
minutes of huge, loud, bit
terly insulting commercials
before you even get to the
previews. A lot of those will
be offered at the university,
which sponsors various
annual festivals, periodic
lectures and roundtables,
and regular series like the
excellent ICE-Vision (soon to
return for fall semester).
But the majority of
Athens' alternative film
culture is situated at Cine
(www.athenscine.com), the
downtown movie theater at
234 W. Hancock Ave. That's
where most foreign and independent films
are shown in town; it's where festivals like
EcoFocus, AthFest FilmFest and the Athens
Jewish Film Festival have most of their screen- |
ings, and it's where groups like Film Athens
(www.filmathens.net) and CineClub UGA hold
most of their events (here's where I don't
forget to mention the folks who put together
the monthly Bad Movie Night, which will next
become incarnate the night of Aug. 24 with
a bad double feature of Shotgun and Deadly
Prey). Cine also organizes plenty of special
events on its own, and as its operations are
transferred to the newly formed nonprofit
Athens Film Arts Institute, you can probably
expect even more of that.
The next couple of things to plan for, out
side of Cine's regular schedule, are coming up
next week. Dr.- Christine Hasse, an outstand
ing professor of German (and German film)
at UGA, will introduce a special screenig of
Wolfgang Peterson's 1981 breakthrough Das
Boot at 7 p.m. Aug. 24. And the following
night, writer/director/actor Michael Tully will
be in attendance to present his new feature
Septien, which has been garnering loads of
national press and which you'll surely be hear
ing a good bit more about in the near future.
Joining Tully will be local musician/writer/
gadabout Jim Willingham, who has a promi
nent supporting role in the film. Don't say I
never told you anything useful, and don't be
a stranger.
Dave Marr tilm@flagpole com
Michael Tully s Septien will be screened at Cine Thursday. Aug 25
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