REVIEWS FORUM
Can-Fr. 2012. 72mins Director Denis Coté Production companies Metafilms, LeFresnoy International sales FunFilm Distribution,
www.funfilm.ca Producers Sylvain Corbeil, Denis Coté Cinematography Vincent Biron Editor Nicolas Roy
their antics amusing motivated by a kind of guilt? And do they find us equally hilarious? Resolutely poetic, testingly slow and fairly laid-
back about whether we like it or not, this short (72-minute) feature, which played in the Forum sidebar after its Sundance debut, is nevertheless a reliable festival pleaser. Theatrical action outside of Francophone Canada is less obvious — though it could reward more adventurous arthouse pro- grammers. The film opens with a close-up of a young
woman. She looks just to the left of the camera, looks down, looks up again. She is drawing, trying to get the lines right. What she is drawing eventu- ally turns out to be a stuffed deer, mounted on a plinth decorated with a few desultory tufts of grass, in an otherwise bare concrete room. We cut to the dark, hulking forms of a herd of
Bestiaire REVIEWED BY LEE MARSHALL
French-Canadian director Denis Coté’s latest oeu- vre is a taciturn yet poignant documentary about the way we look at animals and the way they look at us. In a series of artfully framed, sharply focused fixed-camera shots, we observe the animal and human denizens of what at first appears to be a rather down-at-heel zoo; it is only gradually that we realise it is a safari park.
Death Row REVIEWED BY JONATHAN ROMNEY
Further pursuing his investigations into the extremes of human experience, Werner Herzog follows last year’s documentary Into The Abyss — about a Texan homicide case and the individuals facing execution as a result — with a TV four- parter about five more US prisoners. This project is not specifically about capital
punishment and its rationale, nor is it strictly a series of portraits, as the titles promise; in fact, it is never entirely clear what Herzog’s logic is in edit- ing together his material. But the frank and self- aware — if, one sometimes suspects, misleading — revelations from his interviewees are always fascinating. There is also less of Herzog’s personal eccentricity than fans are used to. Whether or not the English-language series has big-screen poten- tial outside festivals, its solid content and Herzog’s prestige as a documentarist should ensure a roar- ing TV presence internationally. The first portrait is of James Barnes, who was
serving a life sentence for strangling his wife, then confessed to an earlier murder, for which he now faces execution. The calm, articulate Barnes is the most unnerving interviewee, with his lucid trans- parency in discussing his crimes, and teasing inti- mations of further confessions to come — some of which indeed emerge. The second case, ebullient Hank Skinner, denies responsibility for a grue- some triple homicide, and has been studying the law to try and get his sentence repealed. Portrait three is more strictly narrative, telling how Joseph Garcia and George Rivas ended up on
n 14 Screen International at the Berlinale February 11, 2012 Silent except for a soundtrack of noises, this is
one of those documentaries whose effect lies more in what it doesn’t do than what it does. It doesn’t preach about the evil of zoos or
anthropomorphise its often kooky animal subjects — though its leisurely, not to say sluggish, pace gives the audience room to indulge in both of these activities and to reflect on the activities themselves. Even the film’s funniest sequence (and there
are a few, though nothing approaching a belly laugh), involving a curious ostrich, raises ques- tions. Is our need to humanise animals and find
bison, pacing in an enclosure in the snow; then to a close-up of a bison looking straight at the camera. Like many of the film’s animal glances, it is a pow- erful and slightly unsettling image, partly at least because of the guessing game we are forced to play when we look at animals, and partly because we know this is the kind of animal we eat. Yes, the wire and steel cages are depressing
places, and the animals — in particular a pair of restless zebras — seem to resent their confine- ment. But at the same time most of them possess far more power and grace than the glum zoo attendants, or a pair of taxidermists whose hands pluck and cut the carcasses they are about to stuff, their brains barely engaged; or the mournful girl who is filmed in a staffroom climbing into her big kitty costume to entertain the kids.
BERLINALE SPECIAL
US-UK-Aust. 2012. 188mins Director/screenplay Werner Herzog Production companies Creative Differences, Skellig Rock, Spring Films, Werner Herzog Film International sales ZDF Enterprises,
www.zdf-enterprises.de Producer Erik Nelson Executive producers Dave Harding, Henry Schleiff, Sara Kozak, Andre Singer, Nick Raslan, Lucki Stipetic Co-producer Amy Briamonte Cinematography Peter Zeitlinger Editor Joe Bini Music Mark Degli Antoni
Death Row in the aftermath of an audacious jail- break — a story in which Rivas emerges as a char- ismatic figure of astonishing capabilities. Finally, British citizen Linda Carty is the least
readable subject, and the one who spends least time in front of Herzog’s camera. Her harrowing story involves the kidnap and murder of a young Mexican woman, supposedly because Carty wanted to steal her baby. When Carty, insisting on her innocence, talks about being a DEA informant, it sounds like the tallest of tall stories — yet, fol- lowing testimony from others, the truth of the case becomes increasingly opaque. The series is frustrating in some ways, oscillat-
ing tantalisingly between up-close profiles and true-crime stories bolstered by testimonies from family members, detectives, attorneys et al. As an interviewer, Herzog has neither the detachment of Frederick Wiseman nor the strategic logic of Errol Morris, and often asks leading questions, or shows a casualness that at times can feel almost facetious. Even so, he touches on some grim truths, both
about the troubled backgrounds of these people and about absurdities in the US legal system — which, in Rivas’ case particularly, comes across as a Kafka-esque series of traps. It is a frustrating, uneven venture, but compellingly watchable.
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