About Flagpole. (Athens, Ga.) 1987-current | View Entire Issue (Aug. 17, 2011)
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 Cillies*Athens now has SuperCool Feather Hair Extensions;!!! rr rpiDw. ALO. 19 AVERY DYLAN ^ UWrdPifst Boa i* /ttans! 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