A QUADRUPLICATE OF MIFFS AT MIFF 68 1/2

I miss going to the movies..... 

    Especially in August.  The Melbourne International Film Festival or MIFF is one of those great times to be alive in Melbourne.  Every year when the smell of spring hints the edges of the Antarctic Winds you can experience three weeks jammed with movies spread over multiple theatres scattered around the city.  Huddled together in all weather and over large jackets waiting in line, trying not to break your neck as you hurry over slippery streets to get to your next screening.  Living on a combination of wine, energy drinks and cheap cheese burgers because you are living in a theatre.  Who needs sleep when there are hundreds of movies on offer.  I'm not a critic, I just really love movies.  Sitting in a dark room that sliver screen portal open up, listening to the hummed reactions of the people around you.  MIFF is the best and worst way to watch movies, a lot of different movies but because you can easily watch up to five a day sitting in comfortable seats trying to take everything in.  MIFF usually is a dream like experience.  The best part of MIFF is that there is a great community feeling.  Whether seeing movies with friends or on your own, you are with a community of people who generally love movies are well, whether it's joining in conversations in line or sitting beside you, on Social Media, seeing your own misspelled tweet up on the screen before the pre-show.  As I said it's a wonderful time to be alive.  

    Sadly, due to the real life horror show that is Covid 2020 the Melbourne International Film Festival has slunk back into our households, laptop's and screen casters.  In this new MIFF 68 1/2 I didn't watch as many movies as I usually do.  But I did see a collection of interesting movies and here is a selection of thems.

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SHIRLEY - DIRECTED BY  JOSEPHINE DECKER 

    Josephine Decker's narrative feature debut about author Shirley Jackson is a quietly witchy movie.  I wouldn't describe Shirley as a traditional biopic.  Yes, the movie traces the writing of Jackson's second book The Hangsaman and her marriage to Stanley Edgar Hyman.  But Jackson played by an always great Elizabeth Moss is a delicious unreliable narrator of her own movie.  It feels director Josephine Decker and screen writer Sarah Gubbins feel like they are also making an adaption of Hangsaman, which is about a young woman driven mad and disappears while at University.  Like the book, the characters especially Moss and Odessa Young are often in a dream like world that slips in and out of reality.  Shirley is heavily fictionalized account of the time, and mainly focuses on a relationship between Shirley and her Husband and a couple who is staying in their home.  While watching you can't help compare Shirley to another directorial feature debut;  Mike Nicol's Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf.  There is a delightful posionous way Shirley and Stanley's relationship seeps into everything around them.   It creates a hazy realitly within the movie that I loved.  Shirley is a movie about toxic relationships fused togethher by obligations of the time and jealousy and infidelity.  It's delightfully witchy in it's way.

FIRST COW - DIRECTED BY KELLY REICHARDT

    I'm not going to bury the lead.  Kelly Reichardt's First Cow is one of my favourite movies of the year.  It's exquisitely construction and shone brightly, even on my old tablet.  During this Global Pandemic my Partner has taken control of the television, and no amount of a pitching and cajoling could convince him to watch 'The Cow Movie'.   First Cow is glorious in every respect.  I've only seen a couple of Reichardt movies but I love how she will often let the quiet moments play out and become the focus.  Like Reichardt's movies are about the quiet spaces in between the action.

  

    The more I watch movies I gain a greater appreciation of Westerns. More than that, I am starting to love the hard bitten Northern Western.  The Oregon Territory is still all forest and mud.  The makeshift town is a collection of tents and make shift structures from what is available.  First Cow reminded me slightly of Anthony Mann without the cynicism.  A lot of Mann's Western's feel like they are about people trying to bring a type of civilization to a place that does not care about nor want it.  And like Mann, Kelly Reichardt does not play in the magical manifestation of the colonised West.  First Cow is the first western Lady in the area, but our lady cow is not a mere status symbol.  Our Lady Cow is a resource.  She  is a also a Colonial tool to bring the Colony to the wilds of Oregon, or in another way, the impetus of the American Dream and the entrepreneaurial basis of that.  The American Dream is the immigrant dream.  John Magaro and Orion Lee want to make money to start a new life.  To their customers it's a taste of home, as Toby Jones so eligantly puts it.   First Cow is a wonderful movie.  It's so incredibly joyous, sad, smart and full of colour and light in a beautiful simple way.

SHE DIES TOMMORROW - DIRECTED AMY SEIMETZ

    Amy Seimetz's debut is more about conveying a feeling more than anything else.  And that feeling is an incredible relatable one.  Depression and anxity can make things woozy.  I've always described my own Depression as akin to being in Dorothy Gale's House as it turns in the Tornado. It's a discombobulating feeling, but often I feel incredibly certain about things I shouldn't feel certain about.  Like about dying tomorrow.  Jane Adams in her pajamas taking over her sister in law's birthday party hit me hard.  That feeling of being stuck in your own head when you know you are bringing down the room, but wont stop, it's a combination of being the centre of attention, and trying to communicate something you are certain about, or too certain about in that moment.  Amy Seimertz's feature debut is a sharp and darkly fun movie that delves in that woozy  certainty feeling of anxiety and depression and but how it can spread.  This new infection of sorts creates all sorts of reactions of how approach this new perseptive.  Since the the movie is strucured around these small set pieces the movie can feel a little repeative at times, but that doesn't take away the overall impact of the movie.  There's a sense of freedom and oppression from the characters as they grapple with what they are certain is their last day.  She Dies Tomorrow is one of those genre bending movies that settles on the uncomfortable, the awakard and the silence.  She Dies Tomorrow is a fascinating movie.

JUST 6.5 - DIRECTED SAEED ROUSTAYI

    Now for something completely different.  For most of this festival I've been watching movies that are about the spaces in between the action.  Just 6.5 is a testosterone driven crime drama set in Iranian.  From the get go Just 6.5 moves, all you can do is hold as characters are often talking over the top with one another, it can be a dizzying experience trying to keep up with everything.   There is a lot happening in Just 6.5 as you fall into an Iranian holding cell and all you can do is look at the  cracked lived in faces of the many bodies crammed in there.  Think of the Wire.  Director Saeed Roustayi pulls off the cool trick of making a stylized movie that feels authentic.  

  

    I found Just 6.5 fascinating.  I don't know a lot about Iran, so it was great to see a filmic version of how Iranian justice system wheels grind.  As every where else Bureaucracy is indifferent and cruel, the people within in it aren't but are grinded withing the system just as everything else.  Roustayi never comments just presents.  I loved the touch of suspects and those caught up in being being truely terrified, it feels realistic as well as upping the tension.  Just 6.5 is a tapestry of a movie, it keeps leveling up, within Iranian social strauas, from harsh concrete piping to the mansions, and going through piece by piece of the justice system.  It's a fascinating window into a society I need to read more about.  

As I said it's wonderful time to be alive.