SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL PREVIEW #3

THE TREE OF LIFE

Icon Film Distribution

http://www.sff.org.au/films-container/the-tree-of-life/

Booed at Cannes yet winner of that Festival's top prize, the Palme D'or, The Tree of Life will no doubt similarly divide audiences at this year's Sydney Film Festival: beautiful, epic, ambitious or self-indulgent artistic wank?

Perhaps the most anticipated film of 2011, certainly for cinephiles and lovers of cinema (Harry Potter fans, understandably, have other things on their mind), The Tree of Life is director Terrence Malick's first film since 2005's The New World and just the fifth of his almost 40-year filmmaking career. It's that kind of limited output, combined with the all-round secrecy surrounding every Malick film, which makes this one not just a film but an event.

Following Cannes, some of the surrounding The Tree of Life mystery has been removed. Yes, there are dinosaurs. And Sean Penn, but neither has much screen time. There is, however, a solid performance by Brad Pitt as a 1950's father and husband whose disappointment with his life has him practising a form of tough love on his three sons; it is through the eyes of the eldest boy which we view this world.

Post-Cannes reviews have also revealed The Tree of Life to be concerned with no less than the birth of the universe, the meaning of life and, possibly, the afterlife. The beginning and end sections of the film are mostly pre-occupied with this 'before and after' life with Malick depicting the former in a series of beautiful images and the latter in a beach-like Heaven. These segments of the film, for all their beauty, will test many peoples' patience; so, too, the whispered dialogue.

But it's in the film's middle section, in small town Texas with Pitt, the boys and their mother, played by Jessica Chastain, where the film finds its rhythm and heart. Malick avoids traditional narrative, even dialogue, but the journey of this eldest boy as he navigates the competing influences of parents, is no less involving for that.

You can decide for yourself if The Tree of Life is a masterpiece or merely overrated, but if you do have the opportunity to catch it at the Sydney Film Festival then by all means do.

The Tree of Life opens in Australian cinemas June 30. A full review will be posted on The LennoX Files closer to its release.

FILM REVIEW: X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

20th Century Fox Films
Now Showing

Having missed Bryan Singer's X-Men when it released in cinemas in 2000, I have tried (and failed) repeatedly to watch the first film in the Marvel Comics-inspired trilogy; never getting much further than about an hour in each time. Try as I might, I just can't engage with the mutants-versus-mutants-versus-humans struggle which is at the centre of these films. That's odd, because I'm convinced the adolescent me would have loved it. Damn you, adulthood!

X-Men:First Class is a prequel to that trilogy, an origin story of how some of the characters from the trilogy came to be, and an explanation for the animosity between the two factions of mutants, led in the future by Professor X and Magneto (Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellan, respectively, in the trilogy).

I had hoped that First Class would provide the opportunity to re-engage with the films from a new angle. And the early signs were promising, beginning with the cast: Michael Fassbender, James McAvoy, Jennifer Lawrence, Rose Byrne, Nicholas Hoult and January Jones. Unfortunately, the problem I had with the original X-Men (a failure to engage – admittedly, not entirely the film's fault), hampered my enjoyment of First Class.

Which is not to say that it is a bad film. I'm sure fans and non-fans of the X-Men will enjoy director Matthew Vaughn's (of Kick-Ass fame) origins story, where most of the action unfolds in 1962-63 and a world more concerned with US-Soviet aggression (the Cuban missile crisis is adopted as a major plot point) than the emergence of mutants. Or rather, humans the next step up the evolutionary ladder, as Professor Charles Xavier (McAvoy) believes them, including himself, a powerful telepath, to be.

Xavier and his proxy sister, Raven (Lawrence, fresh from an Oscar nod but under used here), are enlisted by Agent Moira MacTaggert (Byrne) and the CIA when she stumbles upon the existence of mutants during a stakeout of suspected communist spies; Moira finding Xavier when she goes in search of a genetics expert to explain what she's just uncovered.

Those communist-sympathising mutants are led by Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), who is determined to bring about World War III and mutually assured destruction for the human race. Traversing the globe in his submarine, Shaw has the whiff of a bond villain, an impression not helped by January Jones as Shaw's brassieres-as-outer wear right hand girl, Emma Frost. A telepath with a diamond-encrusted defence mechanism, Jones' Frost comes off more like an Austin Powers parody of a Bond villainess (though to be fair, the costume and production design of First Class are wonderfully retro and shiny shiny).

Also in search of Shaw is Erik Lehnsherr (a terrific Fassbender), a survivor of the Nazi death camps and in possession of the power to bend metal to his will (hence his moniker Magneto). Erik teams up with Xavier and his group of young yet keen mutant recruits to bring down Shaw, but it's these two alpha males' differing opinions of human nature and the place of mutants in human society which will drive a wedge between them.

Given that X-Men: First Class ends some 30 years prior to the first X-Men film, we can assume there will be at least one more sequel (probably two, since all franchises inexplicably must be trilogies), and perhaps it will expand and advance upon this competent set-up in much the same way X-Men 2 (X2) is widely considered to have done for its predecessor.

I'll leave it up to the fans to decide where this film ranks in the X-Men's cinematic oeuvre, which I guess must include Wolverine (2009), a film I have had the misfortune of watching from beginning to end (and there's going to be a sequel - eek!). But in a year flooded with superhero films, First Class is, thus far, ahead of the bell curve.

SYDNEY FILM FESTIVAL PREVIEW #2

THE BEAVER

Icon Film Distribution

http://www.sff.org.au/films-container/the-beaver/

The Beaver, directed by Jodie Foster and written by Kyle Killen, is an odd film. You'll no doubt already know it involves Mel Gibson's Walter Black, toy company CEO and family man, who in the midst of a breakdown turns to a discarded beaver puppet to communicate with the world and articulate his thoughts and emotions.

Understandably, Walter's family, friends and employees don't know how to engage with the beaver, who sounds a lot like Gibson's Edge of Darkness co-star Ray Winston. Audiences, too, may find it a little hard to digest at first but if you go with the conceit, you'll witness one of Mel Gibson's finest moments in front of the camera.

Impressive, too, is Anton Yelchin (of 2009's Star Trek) as Walter's eldest son, Porter. Unlike his dad who is struggling to find the man he once was, Porter is trying hard to be anyone else; his greatest fear was becoming his father, even before the beaver showed up.

Head cheerleader Norah (recent Oscar nominee Jennifer Lawrence), who is dealing with her own pain, provides some relief from Porter's home life, where mum (Foster) and younger brother, Henry (Riley Thomas Stewart), have more or less accepted the new member of the family.

In her third outing as director, and her first in 16 years, Foster doesn't always successfully navigate the emotional and satirical elements of the film but then, they may be just as much a result of the structural flaws in Killen's screenplay.

You may choose not to see The Beaver due to your opinion of its leading man Mel Gibson, and that's completely understandable. But for those who divorce art from its creators and accept it on its own terms, you may just be surprised.

The Beaver opens in Australian cinemas August 4. A full review will be posted on The LennoX Files closer to its release.

FILM REVIEW: HERE I AM

Footprint Films/Transmission Films

Now Showing

Comparisons are odious. They are also inevitable when it comes to films. And Australian films. And Australian indigenous films. Within the space of a week I saw Mad Bastards, Brendan Fletcher's road movie musical (already in release), and writer-director Beck Cole's Here I Am, and while each is very much their own film – and as unfair as it may be – I find it difficult not to compare the two.

But first the differences. While Mad Bastards is very much a film about the male aboriginal experience, Here I Am is focused on the female, in particular Karen (Shai Pittman). We meet Karen as she is released from prison and makes her way to the city, stopping off at a hotel where she spends the night with a stranger. Karen awakens the next day only to be discovered, as bad luck would have it, by her mother, Lois (esteemed academic, Marcia Langton) who just happens to be one half of the hotel's cleaning crew.

Karen had a daughter before she went to prison and Lois has been raising her in the interim. Daughter and mother do not see eye to eye and Lois won't be giving up her granddaughter easily. But parenthood is put on hold for Karen; she must reside in a women's refuge as a condition of her parole. It's here we're introduced to a collection of indigenous women who, like Karen, have had unfavourable encounters with the law, the system and men.

These women are played by a mix of professional and non-professional actors, and it shows. Unlike Mad Bastards, where the similarly pro/non-pro cast were uniformly good, the performances in Here I Am are inconsistent, ranging from solid to stilted. But props to Pauline Whyman who as Skinny, Karen's best friend in the refuge, proves to be a breath of fresh air and provides a comic antidote to the somewhat leaden proceedings.

For me, Here I Am was too heavy handed, and with much too much talking. That's ironic given the film is produced by the same team behind Samson and Delilah (2009) (that film's director Warwick Thornton assumes DOP duties here), the closest example of a silent film Australia has produced in a long time.

I'm not denying the themes and issues which Beck Cole wishes to address are important, but perhaps the talkative nature of the material would have been better suited to the stage rather than the screen. Unlike Mad Bastards, which tackled its subject matters nimbly but with no less potency, Here I Am makes its points too heavily; preaching has its place but the cinema isn't it.