Cinema should be with giblets – Newspaper Kommersant No. 162 (7363) of 09/05/2022

Half of the competition program has already been shown at the Venice Film Festival. Tells Elena Plakhova.

The festival opened with the film “White Noise” by Noah Baumbach. Although this is an adaptation of a nearly 40-year-old novel by Don DeLillo, the film’s atmosphere tangibly echoes today’s time of epidemics, environmental disasters, and violence in the air. Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig play a married couple who find themselves at the mercy of their phobias. Jack is a student of the Hitler era, and there is something painful about his obsession. Babette is on heavy medication, subjecting herself to dubious medical experiments, and unwillingly cheating on her husband. In addition, both are haunted by the fear of death. “How terrible to live”: unfortunately, the film does not move beyond this banality.

Todd Field’s Tar is a nuanced, colorful portrait of a female conductor, an international celebrity leading a German orchestra. Cate Blanchett, fully armed with her talents, easily mastered the conductor’s stand and created the image of a brilliant, powerful woman with an exaggerated ego. With her erudition and wit, she can literally crush her opponent, and she builds personnel policy in the orchestra, choosing her favorites and favorites. In the first half of the film, the heroine delivers an angry speech against woke and cancel culture, but it is they who eventually overtake her, and one cannot say that without reason. One critic called the story of a ruined career an “epic downfall”, the same can be said about the form of the picture, which loses its edge and unfortunately falls apart in the second half.

The Bardo by Alejandro González Iñárritu is even more chaotic. This movie is about the ulcers of colonialism, about the historical confrontation between the United States and Mexico. But Iñárritu is no less concerned about self-presentation: his hero, the famous journalist Silverio Gama, is the director’s “alter ego”. He is in an identity crisis, being a Mexican patriot, and at the same time kind of bought, lives in Los Angeles, is welcomed by the American establishment. Like fellow Mexican Alfonso Cuarón at Roma, Iñárritu chooses Fellini as a source of “cleansing”. Only Cuarón makes his version of Amarcord, and Iñárritu makes Eight and a Half. And she, overloaded with grotesque images, discussions of colonialism and references to Buddhism, turns out to be much less convincing – despite several powerful crowd scenes and poetic allegories.

Those who are tired of the author’s narcissism got simpler, moreover, strong emotions while watching “Athena” by Romain Gavras. The framework of the ancient tragedy successfully laid down on the story of the misadventures of black immigrants living in an enclave and turning their house into an impregnable fortress that can only be blown up. Gavras is the son of the Greek-French classic of political cinema Costa-Gavras, and the screenplay for Athena is signed by Laj Lee, director of the Oscar-nominated social thriller Les Misérables on a similar theme.

The loudest film of the first half of the festival is called “Bones and All”, which is tempting to translate into Russian “With giblets”, and was shot by Luca Guadagnino based on the bestseller Camilla DeAngelis. Maren and Li – two young lovers – cannibals, they find each other by smell. There is also a party comrade, he is much older and pursues the main characters, believing that he has “unfinished business” for the girl. The action moves from one American state to another, and it takes place in Reagan-era America. Like the heroes of Twilight, beloved by young people, Maren and Lee are associated with marginalized people living on the margins of a conservative society that rejected them and receives a return.

The main “gastronomic” lure of the film is the lead actor Timothée Chalamet. And the film, which to unimaginative viewers will surely seem naturalistic and nauseating, is actually full of black romantic innocence. This is the best work of Guadagnino and so far the most emotional film of the Venice competition.

Darren Aronofsky’s “Kit” by Samuel D. Hunter is a typical mass culture simulacrum dressed in intellectual garb. Here you have Moby Dick, and Whitman, and the entire American literary tradition. The main character – a pathological fat man weighing 270 kg – left his family eight years ago for the sake of his lover, then lost him and, as a result of all the troubles, earned a hormonal failure. Now, in his apartment, crammed with pizza boxes and packages of chocolate, a seventeen-year-old daughter appears, and then his wife, which leads to an unbearably tearful showdown. The only achievement of the film is the acting benefit performance of the handsome 1990s Brendan Fraser, who, together with the director and make-up artists, performs miracles of reincarnation.

Against the backdrop of extravagant genre-plot fantasies, documentaries stand out, which are many in the Venetian program. The Kyiv Trial by Sergei Loznitsa, shown out of competition, is ascetic, built entirely from the chronicle of the trial of Nazi criminals in January 1946. Dry, without visible emotions, testimonies of executioners and victims of terror: the mass extermination of Jews in Lvov and Rovno; the destruction of children from mixed marriages in Melitopol, the executions and burning of corpses in Babi Yar. Sometimes the remarks of the defendants sound unexpectedly. One explains why not only suspected partisans, but even children were shot in the village: “Because they ran everywhere.” The other, in his defense, says that he acted on orders, but not too actively, and someone else in his place “would be better off doing this job.” The third in the last word curses fascism, promises to devote his future life to the fight against it and asks the Russian people to help him in this. Too late: the film ends with chilling footage of a public execution by hanging. The vast square is filled with jubilant people; the last spasms of the bodies in the loops. This is the end of the war, which can hardly be considered final.