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.



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

Circumstance (***)

The Pig (***1/4) [2009 Oscar-nominated shorts program]

An older man’s fixation on a painting of a pig (it comforts him during a hospital stay) turns from quasi-comic to philosophical in 20 minutes. The Danish film winds up asking what it means to be considerate, and tolerant.

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viewed at Ritz Bourse and reviewed 2/11/09

Religulous (***)

Religion is “detrimental to the progress of humanity,” says comedian Bill Maher at the outset of this comic documentary. After a short look at his own religious history, including an interview with Mom and early standup clips, he spends about 90 minutes ridiculing its defenders. The movie is directed by Larry Charles, whose experience directing Borat must have come in handy. (In each case, Charles arranged interviews without explaining the viewpoint, or in this case identity, of the person doing the interview.)

There’s Protestants, Jews, Mormons, and Muslims, who get the roughest treatment. No Hindus or Quakers. There’s the actor playing Jesus at Orlando theme park, and creationist Arkansas senator Mark Pryor. There’s a rabbi displaying inventions that essentially employ technicalities to get around rules relating to Sabbath prohibitions. What can it mean that all of these people are so certain about beliefs that contradict each other? (Unfortunately, Maher doesn’t make this point.) Catholicism, perhaps, comes off best, thanks to Maher’s interview with a hilariously skeptical Vatican historian who dismisses many aspects of the faith as, essentially, opiates for the masses. But the movie doesn’t really engage with the ideas of those who are able to reconcile religion with the modern world, and science. The closest it comes is an interview with scientist Frances Collins of the Human Genome Project, who admittedly seems a little fuzzy explaining his beliefs.

Maher ranges from skeptical to disrespectful to smug, not unlike on his HBO show. Typical of the smug Maher is his explanation that he disbelieves the story of Jonah and the Whale because “I’m not ten.” His shorthand for a literal interpretation of Genesis is “a talking snake.” Humorously inserted among the interviews are on screen subtitles that contradict what the interviewees are saying, and cheesy film clips on which the producers obviously spent a bundle. (Apparently nothing was left to edit out all the visible boom microphones.) A Flintstones clip, for example, illustrates the idea that humans coexisted with dinosaurs.

Those looking for an amusing look at some of the unusual ways people express their spirituality and aren’t offended by Maher’s derisive views toward religion will find the movie funny. But if we take his argument seriously, as he means us to, there are flaws. For one thing, he spends way too much time with fundamentalists and biblical literalists. It’s overstating it to call this a straw-man argument, because such people are a significant part of the American religious scene. And from a humor standpoint, a dinosaur with a saddle, found in Kentucky’s Creation Museum, is more amusing than an anecdote about Gandhi. But if you’re making an argument that religion generally is a force for bad, and Maher does, then you need to come to grips those who take more nuanced views. If you show religious fanatics, like the Muslim rapper in this movie who seems to defend violence, then you need to argue their actions outweigh those of people who have been inspired to good by religion.

It’s an issue I’ve wrestled with myself; I have the same view as Maher, that it makes no sense to believe something on faith alone, but I can’t say for certain that the world would be a better place if everyone agreed. To use the obvious religious metaphor, Maher is preaching to the converted, who will have lots of fun. The movie’s too scattershot, and too disrespectful, to be seen as a serious attempt to convince believers that they’re wrong, but they won’t be watching anyway. What he does want is for the faithless to go public. Given polls showing that fewer Americans would vote for an atheist for president than even a Muslim, this makes sense and justifies the movie’s existence on some other ground besides comedy.

IMDB link

viewed 9/25/08 at Ritz Bourse (screening)

The Kingdom (**3/4)

Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper, and Jason Bateman play a team of FBI agents who travel to Riyadh to investigate a series of bomb blasts that have killed hundreds in an American-controlled zone in the Saudi capital. The opening credits play over a series of chronological film and sound clips that telescope the history of American economic and political interests in the country, which of course are almost solely tied to the presence of oil in the region. But this montage promises more than what the movie delivers, which is an earnest but sometimes-sterile tale that celebrates the derring-do of the FBI, climaxes with a rock-’em sock-’em shootout, and ends with an ironic reminder that shootouts may solve a crime but not resolve the hatred that led to it. Director Peter Berg brings the same earnestness and sense of realism that he did to his previous effort, Friday Night Lights. However, it suffers from the same flaw, a dry approach that makes the characters fairly forgettable, even if the performances are entirely creditable. (Bateman shows the most personality.) Given the tragedy its center, I felt like I should have felt a greater emotional investment in the story.

That action-packed finish will, depending on your taste, strike you as a preposterous gloss on, or a welcome relief from, the quiet detective story of the first 90 minutes. I thought it was both. Berg and screenwriter Matthew Carnahan bring a certain veneer of authenticity to the proceedings. Garner’s character learns about a woman’s place in Saudi culture. The wise Saudi policeman in charge of aiding the FBI men, and even some of the other Saudis, are depicted with more subtlety that you might expect. But still, the basic premise, that four spunky Americans with guns and a copy of The Koran for Dummies will be able to save the day, is never in question.

IMDB link

reviewed 9/30/07

Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World (**1/2)

Albert Brooks plays Albert Brooks, on a government mission to study Indo-Pakistani humor. The amusing premise is stretched a bit too far to sustain a feature.

The premise is the most amusing thing about Albert Brooks’s latest, his first as a writer-director since 1999’s The Muse. Brooks stars as…Albert Brooks, an out-of-work comedian actor hired by the U.S. government to find out what people in India and Pakistan think is funny. Perhaps enemy hostiles can be won over with some disarming humor. Brooks has gotten the job, he’s told, because the government’s first few choices were working. Brooks knows comedy, but nothing about research. His methodology consists of asking people, “What makes you laugh?” and putting on a show and seeing what goes over. Brooks’s dour persona is something that probably either works for you or doesn’t, but this isn’t among his better films (which would include Lost in America and Defending Your Life). His ongoing concern about being able to fill a 500-page report was funny to me; so was Brooks’s reprisal of one of his old routines, the world’s worst ventriloquist. On the whole, though, I felt that a thin idea was being stretched too far, the way I did about two other show-biz comedies, Hollywood Ending and Bowfinger.

IMDb link

posted 9/17/13