December 2007 Movies
Francis Ford Coppula’s New Movie:
Youth Without Youth
Youth Without Youth , the remarkable new movie by Francis Ford Coppola that marks his return to the screen after a decade's absence, is a gorgeous, baffling, slow-paced edifice of a film entirely worthy of the man who conceived and directed it. It is sometimes boring and often stunning, and no doubt will be one of those films people either love or hate, in proportion to how much they want their movies to be fast-paced and full of action—as opposed to lingering and reflective and, at some points, glacially slow.
Visually, it as beautiful throughout as the first scene of The Godfather [Don Corleone is in his study on the day of his daughter's wedding reception, talking to the undertaker whose own daughter has been outraged]—filmed in a Caravaggian chiaroscuro with lots of deep reds and polished mahogany, in frames one sometimes wants to freeze and put on a museum wall somewhere because they are so pictorially rich and symbolically evocative.
The showing that this reviewer saw, at a small press screening in San Diego, left nearly everyone in my conversations afterward wanting to see it again—in fact, many of them at a loss for words, unusually, as what we'd say about it until able to have a second look. Some were actually angry at the film, and at Coppola, for the obscurity and strangeness of much of it, while others were clearly transported, very ‘with' the whole spirit of the film, and eager to discuss and revisit it over different sorts of spirits in a nearby beer-and-wine bar until closing time.
Coppola's screenplay is based on a novella called The Secret of Dr. Honigberger (1940) by Mircea Eliade, a Romanian intellectual and expatriate primarily known as a philosopher of religion and a comparative mythographer, whose many scholarly books betray a fascination with time, religious experience and the phenomenology of ritual. For thirty years the Chairman of the History of Religions Department at the prestigious University of Chicago & the editor-in-chief of Macmillan's Encyclopedia of Religion, Eliade nonetheless has a substantial body of work as an author of science fiction & fantasy, much of it unpublished and/or untranslated. The novella in question is about an aging professor named Dominic Matei, who is nearing the end of a failed personal life and an unfinished life's work when he is suddenly and mysteriously granted a second chance after being struck by lightning. “I was excited to discover in this tale by Eliade, the key themes that I most hope to understand better, “ says Coppola, “Time, consciousness and the dream- like basis of reality.”
The director actually was led to the story in the first place by a quest of his own: to complete a long-blocked screenplay he was working on during a long and tenacious period of creative doldrums, despite great success as a vineyard owner and as the father of an Academy-award-winning screenwriter gaining acclaim as a filmmaker in her own right. He sent the work to a high school friend called Wendy Doniger, whose mentor at the University of Chicago was none other than Mircea Eliade. A quote from whose story she included in her comments about the screenplay. Intrigued, Coppola read the novella and was quickly hooked: “When I read the story I knew that if I made the film, I'd learn how to express time and dreams cinematically. Making a movie is like asking a question, and when you finish, the movie itself is the answer.” So the Eliade quote became the way out of the slump—and the realities of filmmaking today lead the way in deciding to make it on the budget and with the tools of a student filmmaker, who can work anywhere with a small crew and very compact equipment. “For me,” he says, “it is indeed a return to the ambitions I had for my work in cinema as a student.” Like the hero of his movie, Coppola was given a second chance and found himself taking up the dreams he'd left behind in his youth—though in the world this rejuvenate has enjoyed enormous commercial and critical success.
Aided by a subtle and career-altering performance by a now middle-aged Tim Roth, Youth Without Youth will fascinate and frustrate. Already, the early reviews are running 60-40 against, probably a percentage that will hold. One reviewer quipped, “ Youth Without Youth will lead to theaters without audiences.” I doubt that this strange tale of rejuvenation, reincarnation and regression will ever appeal to a mass audience or even to most of the people who loved the Godfather trilogy and Apocalypse Now. But those who like its twists and turns and long stretches of imagery will surely see it many times and discuss and write about it endlessly, and its appearance (along with news that Coppola is off in his mini-van with a crew of brilliant neophytes on the wings of another project) is sure to return its progenitor to the front row of the brilliant American filmmakers of his generation.
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Mira Nair’s Laughing Club of India
Lifts Your Spirits & Immune System
Rumor has it that the world-renowned director Mira Nair (Moonsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair, The Namesake), was in Bombay, stuck in traffic on Marine Drive and in the midst of a movie-maker's equivalent of writer's block when she discovered the source of traffic was hundreds of women dressed in all white crossing the street. She was so intrigued, that she ditched her cab and followed these women with her DV camera—some time later, The Laughing Club of India was born.
In this compassionate and entertaining documentary, award-winning director Nair has captured a unique slice of life in contemporary India, the Laughing Clubs. From shop workers laughing to relieve stress, to widows cackling to forget their grief and to children gleefully giggling with their teachers; The Laughing Club of India documents the thousands of people who come together foregoing their caste or class, to laugh for 40 minutes and to belong to a community dedicated to creating more joy in the world.
This delightful film explores the power of laughter through the popular phenomenon of laughing clubs founded by Madran Kataria, a jovial, energetic, laughter-loving Bombay cardiologist. Dr. Kataria's passion for bringing the healing power of laughter to the world comes from a deep belief that laughing daily is the key to happiness and well being. In the early days Dr. Kataria would begin club meetings with jokes to get people laughing but he soon discovered that by just pretending to laugh or simulating laughter, real laughter would soon follow. He invented several different kinds of laughs; the greeter, milkshake, and lion.
You have to see them to get the full comic effect.
More than 1300 Laughter Clubs now exist throughout the world. The Laughing Clubs meet in parks, offices, private homes, community centers and rooftops—just about anywhere. Throughout the film we get up close and personal with club participants including Dr. & Mrs. Kataria, a stockbroker, three bawdy women, a musician, a widow laughing to cope with grief, and two old men, friends since school days who meet daily to laugh.
The healing power of laughter has been well documented and has been shown to boost the immune system. The Laughing Club of India will not only make you laugh till you cry and double over in stitches, but will inspire you to make laughing a daily practice.
The Spiritual Cinema Circle, America's fastest growing DVD club, will feature The Laughing Club of India in the January 2008 collection along with Knights of the South Bronx starring Ted Danson and two short films. For a limited time, new subscribers to the Circle can receive a free trial membership (for a nominal shipping fee) by visiting: www.spiritualcinemacircle.com or by call: (800) 556-0129.
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