Wadjda (***1/2)

Purportedly the first feature filmed in Saudi Arabia as well as the first by a female Saudi director (Haifaa Al-Mansour), Wadjda would be an accomplishment even if it sucked. But it doesn’t. Not only that, where you might expect a political drama, it’s kind of a feel-good film. The social commentary is secondary to story-telling.

True, no one will miss the implicit critique of the treatment of women in Saudi Arabia. Watching this, I had the thought that if I were a female in Saudi Arabia, I might want to remain 10 or 11 forever. I would be too young to worry, like Wadjda’s mother does, about having to rely on a male driver to get to a job, about a husband possibly acquiring a second wife. I could go about without a veil covering my face. I could pal around with a boy.

Wadjda is a girl of such an age. She’s not so good in school, but clever outside of it, earning money by selling bracelets to classmates, cadging discounts from a local storekeeper. The Converse sneakers she wears to school and the T-shirt she wears at home (saying, in English, “I’m a Great Catch”) suggest a rebel. But really, she just wants to do her own thing.  Her only two problems are the disapproval of her school’s headmistress and her inability to afford the bike she wants to ride. That she doesn’t know how to ride a bike, and that everyone tells her girls don’t ride them, is less of concern. Meanwhile, a school contest presents a potential solution to both problems.

Some of the particulars of the story, like the strict religiosity of the headmistress, and the need to avoid being seen by men, are particular to the Saudi context, but mean teachers, coveted objects, and conflicts between one’s parents are universal childhood experiences. The combination of these familiar experiences with the novel context is the most striking aspect of the movie, along with its young lead actress. Possessing a wide smile and camera presence, Waad Mohammed gives the most appealing performance by a child since Onata Aprile in What Maisie Knew. The personality she breathes into the character should make this film irresistibly winsome for anyone old enough to be able to read the subtitles.



IMDb link

viewed 10/10/13 7:40 pm, at Ritz 5; posted 10/11/13 and updated 10/12/13

Won’t Back Down (**3/4)

This starts out like Waiting for Superman, the Davis Guggenheim documentary about parents hoping to win the lottery-style drawing that will let their children get into a charter school. But Jamie (Maggie Gyllenhaal), single mom to a poorly taught third-grader, loses one such lottery, and Nona (Viola Davis), who doesn’t trust the Pittsburgh school where she teaches to educate her own son, doesn’t even get to enter. So when Jamie hears about a law that might allow her to turn the school into a charter, she enlists Nona as her natural ally. To succeed, they’ll have to get half the parents and half the teachers on board. That’s a touch of dramatic license; the small number of states that have such laws don’t include Pennsylvania, and most only require parent signatures. But requiring both gives the movie twin dramatic arcs and a window into the teachers’ perspective, and the state is actually considering such a law.

While sympathetic to teachers, this is not a movie that fans of teachers’ unions are likely to embrace. True, a couple of characters, in a couple of scenes, do praise their historical protective function — one even name-drops United Federation of Teachers founder Albert Shankar — but, it would seem, only so to make the larger point that they’ve outlived their usefulness. Yet the problem is not union bashing, although the film gilds the lily a bit — the one in this movie won’t even let teachers voluntarily stay late to help students—but rather that it’s more overfamiliar underdog story than a thoughtful critique of the educational system.

That is, it’s a lot like the crusading teacher movies (Dangerous Minds, Freedom Writers), possibly with a touch of Norma Rae, ironically, about a crusading labor organizer, except that here we have a crusading mom, plus some stirring speechifying, swelling music, cheering, and late inning heartstring-tugging parent-child melodrama, which Davis totally sells, but still…. What we don’t have much of is what it actually takes to improve a school and teach difficult kids. We don’t have much insight into the things — violence, lousy parents, chaotic family arrangements—that make the job of teachers and administrators alike in tough neighborhoods difficult. This is not to say those things can’t be overcome, only that this movie makes it as simple as really really wanting to do it. To be sure, there is a plan, but we don’t get to see it. If there are no union contracts, how will it be decided what teachers will be paid? On what basis will their performance, or that of their students, be rated? How will the children actually be taught differently? And so on.

Of course, systemic obstacles to change are real, too, and the film gets about a B in terms of showing those. It does suggest that when employees, teachers in this case, are not allowed to innovate or deviate, and when they see mediocrity rewarded, it can beat them down, decreasing performance. It shows how nervous people can be at the notion of change. By making people aware of parent-trigger laws, the movie may even inspire such change. But, notwithstanding the vague basis in fact, there is too much programmatic gloss on the story, something that could not be said of director Daniel Barnz’s previous film, the far more subtle teacher-student story Phoebe in Wonderland. This is geared to make people cheer at the end, but replacing the superteacher as savior with the superparent as savior is not necessarily a hopeful message. It suggests that rescuing students in our worst schools is a herculean task, one that will need to be done one school at a time. It suggests that, in their hearts, parents really are waiting for Superman.

IMDb link

viewed 9/13/12 7:30 pm at UA Riverview [PFS screening] and reviewed 9/13/12 and 9/27/12 and 9/29/12

New Boy (***1/2) [2009 Oscar-nominated shorts program]

An African boy confronts a slur-slinging bully on his first day at his new Irish elementary school. This charming adaptation of a Roddy Doyle story covers comedy, drama, politics, and racism in a mere 11 minutes.

IMDB link

viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 2/11/09

Breakfast with Scot (***)

You could program an interesting film festival centered around stories of people getting saddled with other people’s unwanted children and learning to love them. They come as arty as Central Station and as mainstream as kid comedy The Game Plan. This movie comes in arty trappings—it’s about two gay guys, and it’s Canadian—but is actually pretty mainstream, and broadly comedic. The star is Tom Cavanaugh, onetime star of TV’s Ed, here playing a onetime Toronto Maple Leafs star who plays down his sexuality. He’s what the personal ads call “straight acting.”

The eleven-year-old orphan he ends up with (a creditable Noah Bernett), on the other hand, is more the get-beat-up-on the schoolyard sort of gay. He likes make-up and clothes, not so much hockey. He’s so gay that you wonder exactly why he hasn’t already learned to tone it down just for self-preservation. Even in liberal Toronto, trying to kiss your male classmate doesn’t fly. The sexuality of Cavanaugh’s character, on the other hand, is so toned down that you can hardly believe he actually, you know, sleeps with men. (Costar Ben Shenkman doesn’t have much to do, since there’s no focus on their relationship.) Still, his niche in the gay world—out, but as quietly as possible—is common enough. He is actually a perfect stand-in for straight people watching the movie, and much of the humor comes from this. The reaction to his new ward is exactly what I’d expect from most straight parents—embarrassment followed by attempts at reform (of the boy, not the parent).

The drama is about when the boy’s ne’er-do-well guardian will come to get him, and what will happen then, and everything there’s what you’d expect. If the subject matter (handled extremely chastely) and overly earnest ending aren’t deterrents, this actually makes a decent family film.

IMDB link

viewed 7/18/08 at at Prince Music Theater (Philadelphia Gay and Lesbian Film Festival) and reviewed 7/19/08

Buddha Collapsed Out of Shame (***1/4)

I really enjoyed this simple tale of an Afghan girl who determines to get an education. Leaving her home, a room cut into the side of a mountain, she sets out to follow the neighbor boy to his school. Impediments await—she has no money for pen or notebook, and the boys’ school will not teach her. Significantly, there’s a Lord of the Flies style interlude as local boys cast themselves as Taliban in training. The title and the opening/closing image of a giant statue of Buddha being destroyed by the Taliban suggest a rather heavy-handed film, but it’s best viewed as a story of an unbelievably (take that word literally or not) determined girl, whatever allegorical purpose may have been intended by its 19-year-old director, Iranian Hana Makhmalbaf, or the screenwriter, who is her mother. Makhmalbaf coaxes wonderful performances from the children, including her five-year-old leading lady. The young boys who harass her can be seen as Taliban-in-training, but the ending of the movie suggests that maybe they were just playing the Afghan version of cowboys-and-Indians.

IMDB link

viewed 4/11/08; reviewed 4/27/08; screened at Philadelphia Film Festival

Bridge to Terabithia (***1/2)

? Katherine Paterson’s Newbery Medal-winning novel, published in 1977, is the basis for this story of pre-teen misfits (AnnaSophia Robb and Josh Hutcherson), who become the king and queen of a magical world of imagination. Paterson’s son David, an inspiration for one of the main characters, is one of the two credited screenwriters.
+ The preview for this movie makes it appear to be a pure fantasy movie in the manner of The Chronicles of Narnia. While the imaginary world is explicitly inspired by the C. S. Lewis classic, the story is less about escapism than the need to escape. It’s mostly set in the real world, where suburban middle-schoolers look down on a poor farm kid and a brainy tomboy type. These two main characters are beautifully realized, the sort of precocious kids that nonetheless manage not to seem merely like the miniature adults that you too often see in lesser films. As in last year’s Monster House, this is a story that looks at the middle period of childhood as a time when kids first grapple in a serious way with such issues as religion, loss, jealousy, and guilt. The casting is solid, and Robb (of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Because of Winn-Dixie) particularly stands out as the next-door neighbor who’s the free-spirited daughter of writers who don’t own a TV.
- The fantasy sequences are nice, but perhaps too few.
= ***1/2 A wonderful movie that’s great for parents to watch with children (but not ones much younger than the two main characters, given the subject), or even if they’re not around.

IMDB link

reviewed 2/23/07