Jornal da Mostra
The Road to Guantanamo
Nº 395 > 29ª Mostra > 13/02/2006
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Leon Cakoff, de Berlim, para o Jornal da Mostra
Edição:
Renata de Almeida e Leon Cakoff
Edição:
Renata de Almeida e Leon Cakoff
A German Festival with a touch of melancholy
The geniuses in painting with their gaze set on melancholic themes are just across the other side of the boulevard that separates the auditorium for the 56th Festival in Berlin from the Neue Nationalgalerie in the Potsdamer Platz, with the opening of an exhibit inspired on feelings of Melancholia. Dieter Kosslick, director of the festival, is imbued with the same feeling with a touch of glamour, amusement, globalization, and conflict as aggregate to his formula for selection. As always, one must be well and truly aware. The main competitor for the Oscar for best foreign film in 2006 - "Paradise Now", by Palestinian Hany Abu-Assad (also at the 29th Mostra) originated in Berlin, this melting pot of ideas, in 2005, with the financial participation of the festival itself.The competition, with a jury presided over by vibrant actress Charlotte Rampling, should hold to the tradition of the festival in lending importance and awarding prizes to films from independent producers, with a helping hand to the exhibiting market. The task, however, is complicated, with veterans such as Robert Altman ("A Prairie Home Companion"), Sidney Lumet ("Find me Guilty"), and Claude Chabrol ("L`Ivresse du Pouvoir/ Comedy of Power"). The pressure on German films, that also demands a hand in a year when a drop of 17% in public turnout at cinemas has been announced, is also strong in the competition with "Der Freie Wille/ The Free Will", by Matthias Glasner; a co-production with Argentina "El Custodio", by Rodrigo Moreno; a co-production with Austria-Bósnia/Hezergovina-Croatia "Grbavica", by Jasmila Zbanic; "Réquiem", by Hans-Christian Schmid; and "Shnsucht/ Longing", by Valeska Grisebach.
With the film "Snow Cake/ Bolo de Neve", by the Canadian, signed by Welsh film maker Marc Evans and selected to open the festival, the evidence of melancholia is strong. With a veritable duel in acting on the part of Alan Rickman and Sigourney Waver, we are introduced to two characters in torment - he for his criminal past, and she for her autism. The tragedy draws them closer, but with all of the contagion of the cold winter outside. The autistic woman is indifferent over the death of her daughter, involved in a road accident, caused by the man visiting her. Only the availability of Sigourney Waver for the date of the opening of the festival justifies such a choice.
Two other films in the official selection are indirectly reminiscent of this dangerous and delicate political moment in which furious mobs in the world of Islam assault Christian and western symbols subsequent to the impact of the cartoons on symbols sacred to the Moslems. The Austrian film "Slumming", by Michael Glawogger (the excellent documentarist of "Megacities" and "Workingman`s Death/ Trabalhos Mortais", selection for the 29th Mostra), has an alcoholic poet blaspheme against the image of Saint Mary, and refer to her as a whore. Can one imagine hordes of catholics threatening the producers of the film and even Austrian citizens? Obviously not. The radical power of the Vatican based on fear and ignorance is divided.
Concomitantly, the excellent U.S. film "Syriana", by Stephen Gaghan, presented outside competition, and the second rare American political film of the season with George Clooney, concludes, by coincidence, what has been happening in feudal territories with tyrannies or monarchies sustained by American interests in extraction of oil: a centuries-old tradition that does not change, lack of jobs and of education, fascist asphixia of censorship and domination. And one single light: religious mysticism. And woe and betide those who are progressive in a world of radicalism.
The ills in North-American politics will also be remembered in a film that should not be missed - "The Road to Guantanamo", directed by Englishman Michael Winterbottom (the Golden Bear Award in Berlin, 2004 with "In This World/ Neste Mundo"). With a blend of documentaries with images from files, interviews and a great deal of imagination, Winterbottom transports us to a lawless territory in Cuba where an illegal American base recklessly spends millions of dollars in intelligence and questioning of supposed terrorists to decipher the ill that besets them. The answer would not be too difficult - ignorance - were the interests of the war industry not to distract us with cinematographic explosions. And melancholia there shall be to translate all of these ills we witness at a distance.
Translation into English: Clare Elizabeth Charity(clarecharity@uol.com.br)
