Beyond
Hollywood: Border, Capernaum
Hollywood’s biggest party, the Oscars,
is coming up and will no doubt indulge in some of the usual
self-congratulation. So it’s good to
look beyond the tinsel of an American-dominated industry, especially in a year when
a “foreign-language” feature—Roma—has
a decent shot to win best picture.
Border (Sweden/Denmark)
Iranian-born director Ali Abbasi’s
bizarre Scandinavian tale was tops in the Un Certain Regard sidebar of the 2018
Cannes film festival and Sweden’s entry to the Oscar foreign-language category. It did
manage one Oscar nomination—for makeup and hair styling—as well it should.
Based on a short story, the central character is Tina (Eva Melander in a raw,
fearless performance) who works as a Swedish custom agent at a seaside port of
entry. To say that this is not a movie
with beautiful people is an understatement. Tina has forbidding,
Neanderthal-like features and quite literally a nose for sniffing troubled
human emotional states (along with a kinship for wild animals). The job makes
use of her uncanny ability to sense border-crossing offenders (both physical
and ethical)—from illicit booze to child porn. Tina lives with a long-haired
housemate Roland who raises attack dogs but at best it’s an arrangement of
convenience not romance.
Then
Tina does a border check of a transgender insect-loving, maggot-eating
character named Vore (Eero Milonoff) who shares similar caveman-like features
and believes that “humans are a disease”. So begins a very strange
gender-bending relationship that culminates in an ecstatic sexual encounter
that while explicit is not gratuitous. With
Vore, Tina is able to confront her addled father and discover her true troll
nature and origins. But that connection
is broken when Tina discovers something more terrible about Vore than what is
in his fridge, leading to a grim nightmarish turn that could be out of Grimm’s
fairy tales.
Some
may find Border too weirdly off-putting.
I found it one of the most astonishingly unusual movies I’ve ever
seen. A-
Capernaum (Lebanon/France/U.S.)
Child actors do amazing work in three of
this year’s Oscar nominees for best foreign-language film; the other two being Mexico’s
Roma and Japan’s Shoplifters. But this
absorbing story from Lebanese director Nadine Labaki, in which a child is the
central character, stands out, awarded the jury prize at the 2018 Cannes
festival.
Capernaum (meaning “chaos” not a biblical
reference) focuses on Zain, a skinny boy of about 12 years of age (he has no
birth certificate) from the mean streets of Beirut’s underclass. The unusual aspect is a court case in which
Zain, imprisoned for stabbing the man who was given his beloved deceased 11-year
old sister Sahar as a child bride, sues his parents to demand they stop having
children. Mother Souad and father Selim make
for an impoverished pathetic pair who seem unable, or unwilling, to comprehend
their responsibility. Most of the movie is the backstory to this broken family
confrontation before a judge.
Zain runs away when
Sahar is taken, joining children living by their wits on the street. He meets
an Ethiopian menial worker Rahil whose undocumented infant son Yonas is still nursing.
Finding shelter with her in a shantytown, Zain looks after Yonas during the day.
When Rahil is arrested for lacking a valid permit and risks deportation, Zain becomes
the caregiver and protector of Jonas. In
some of the most affecting scenes Zain jerry-rigs a stolen skateboard with cooking
pots to transport Jonas while navigating an urban jungle rife with exploiters
of the vulnerable.
Zain is played by Zain Al Rafeea, actually
a Syrian refugee now living in Norway. It’s
an incredible performance, and the depiction of dire circumstances includes the
dream of escaping to safer “pretty places”.
The movie is a timely reminder of the struggles that too many of the
world’s children face. Still it ends with a note of hope as Zain manages a
smile for the first time. Maybe a better
future is possible? A
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