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by Leonard Heldreth

Rivers, seasons and a stop at the station

The films this month include a documentary about a remarkable artist, an independent American film, a Korean film in five parts and an Oscar-winning blockbuster from previous months.

Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working With Time
Documentary films about artists can be deadly—a catalogue of talking heads about someone’s framed works in which scholars hold forth on artistic creation, like architects trying to explain how to dance the tango. The prize-winning Rivers and Tides is as far from those documentaries as a film can be and still be in the same genre.
First, the only person talking about the works is Andrew Goldsworthy, the artist himself, and he knows better than to try to explain them too much. Goldsworthy is, by choice, totally opposed to creating great works that will last forever.
No Ozymandias is he. He knows that nothing will last, that nature, with her wind, water and erosion eventually will bring it all back to primal materials, so whether the creation lasts a few hours or a few thousand years is just a matter of degree in the natural timeline.
So Goldsworthy creates things from nature and then gives them back to nature to see what will happen. For him, the important thing is the process–getting to know the materials, what they will do, how he can work with them, and what the outcomes might be.
In an early sequence on a Canadian seacoast before sunup, he gathers icicles, breaks and bites them into pieces, and fastens them to a spike of granite protruding from a rock. The result looks like an ice snake weaving in and out of the granite. Then the sun comes up and illuminates the ice, and it flares into brilliance, but, of course, this same sunlight quickly destroys the creation. Only the memory (and in this case the pictures) of this lovely effect will remain.
Using thorns as fasteners, he creates strings of leaves that undulate down the river, and he grinds river rocks into colored powders that temporarily stain small backwaters into pools of red and green. Almost all of the film occurs outside where Goldsworthy works on natural materials with his hands, which are often scratched and bloody.
Although some of Goldsworthy’s works are temporal (the outline of his body on the dirt after rain comes down around him makes a pattern), others are more permanent–stone cones that he builds, rock by rock, and a massive, long stone wall that he designed in New York, which weaves in and out of the trees like a granite snake, descends into a pond, emerges on the other side and goes in a bee-line to a super highway where it stops dead. But no mortar is used, and rocks piled on rocks, no matter how skillfully, eventually will fall, and the gradual deterioration of these objects will be part of the art itself.
The German documentarian Thomas Riedelsheimer is wise enough just to let Goldworthy talk about what he is trying to do and why, although a couple of times the artist drags him into the picture to help him move rocks or gather ice. The photography is beautiful and complements the artist and his vision.
Goldsworthy is a humble man in the best sense–he knows what he does know and what he doesn’t, and he makes no attempt to be other than what he is. We see him at home in Scotland with his wife and several tow-headed kids, where he works at getting to know the village and its inhabitants and their relationships to the time and life of the village. But he also knows that at the center of most artistic creation is a huge mystery, probably unexplainable, and at times he simply runs out of ways to explain what he is talking about and shrugs.
If you value artistic creation beyond just looking at the classic artists, watch Rivers and Tides: Andy Goldsworthy Working with Time. Hearing such an artist talk, even on DVD, is an enormous treat and nothing short of exhilarating. Top

The Station Agent
Independent films are notorious for being character-driven and slow and not having conventional narratives. The Station Agent fits these expectations—and that’s why it’s interesting. Written and directed by Tom McCarthy, a Sundance Festival favorite, the film deals with loneliness and friendship in a sometimes-humorous fashion.
Finbar McBride (Peter Dinklage) works for a model train store called the Golden Spike, and when its owner (and Finbar’s only friend) dies, Fin inherits a parcel of land in New Jersey on which a railroad station is situated. Although trains still pass the station, none stop, so the station has been neglected, but Finbar moves in anyway. By the way, Finbar is a dwarf.
As he settles into his new home, Fin meets, through no fault of his own, a number of the local residents. He is almost killed (twice) by Olivia Harris (Patricia Clarkson), a woman who has come to her summer place to paint and try to cope with the accidental death of her young son. Joe Oramas (Bobby Cannavale) runs a coffee truck a short distance from Fin’s station, and Joe, bored and talkative, nearly drives Fin crazy with his conversation, attention and curiosity. Cleo (Raven Goodwin), a young black schoolgirl, is determined to bring Fin to her school to talk about trains.
The local librarian, Emily (Michelle Williams) helps Fin get a library card and confides to him that she is pregnant. These four and others are drawn to Fin, about whom we learn almost nothing–he says he’s just an ordinary, boring person. There are echoes of Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter without the tragic overtones.
The acting is all solid with Dinklage keeping the attention on the basis of almost no character revelation or explanation. Cannavale exudes annoying energy and non-stop conversation without making us dislike him. Goodwin, who was memorable as the adopted child in Lovely and Amazing, has a presence in the film matched only by Dinklage. And Clarkson manages to be almost ditzy, yet still sympathetic. McCarthy keeps all of the characters balanced and real.
Don’t expect any great revelations, any climactic endings, any passionate love affairs. Do expect to get to know some interesting, ordinary people trying to live and share their lives without too many compromises, no matter what their heights. The clichés don’t materialize and the sentimentality generally is avoided, but the ending of the film leaves you satisfied. The Station Agent is a good example of how effective and different an independent film can be. It’s a film with which to settle into a quiet evening at home. Top

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring
Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring has elicited extravagant praise among critics and reviewers. It certainly is one of the most beautiful films of the year and worth seeing for that quality alone, although its polished surface seems to conceal much more.
South Korean director Ki-duk Kim has made a film a year since 1996, and, while I have not seen any of his films, they are notorious for their beauty, brutality and marginal characters—criminals, prostitutes and self-destructive individuals. His recent The Isle (2000) concerns a prostitute and a fugitive who meet on an island, and involves attempted suicide by swallowing fishhooks.
Thus, Spring, Summer... was seen by Korean critics as marking a radical departure for the director. A closer look at the film, however, indicates that while beauty is emphasized to an almost hypnotic degree, and the small amount of violence and sex generally are kept offstage or at a distance, the center of the film is nihilistic in the best religious sense of saying that all is vanity, and that the cycle of life keeps repeating itself.
Each of the film’s five parts is introduced by a title card and the opening of a set of carved gates to show a small one-room monastery floating in the center of a serene lake. A middle-aged monk presides over the retreat and observes the events of the first three seasons.
In Spring, an eight-year-old boy learns that cruelty to animals leads to retribution; in Summer the same boy, now about eighteen, succumbs to the pleasures of the flesh when a young woman comes to the monastery to be healed; in Fall the same character, now in his thirties, flees back to the monastery, but the police come and collect him; in Winter, with the elderly monk now gone, the same character returns to the retreat and carries out his penance before, in the final sequence, he acquires an abandoned child that sets up again the film’s initial situation. There is no escape from the wheel of life.
Each section also is associated with an animal—a puppy (young like the child), a rooster (lusty like the young man), a scruffy white cat (aged like the mentor monk), a snake (lithe and self-contained as the adult monk) and a turtle (perhaps symbolizing the hardened exterior of the monk). The animals also may indicate the passage of time in the Korean calendar, although the turtle is an anomaly.
The film has only two main characters, neither of whom is given a name. Yeong-su Oh, a famous Korean stage actor, plays the old monk who serves as mentor through most the film, and four different actors play the young boy as he grows to adulthood. In the last two segments he is played by Kim. The minuscule amount of dialogue is in Korean with English subtitles. Minor characters include a mother and her daughter, two policemen and a woman with a young child. The acting is excellent throughout.
Much of the film’s visual beauty comes from its setting on Jusan Pond, an artificially created lake in Korea’s North Kyungsang Province. The director constructed the floating monastery there, and the splendor of the lake, its surrounding mountains and the small building are seen through the changing seasons. Fall and winter are the most beautiful, but each shot in each season is composed carefully to maximize the natural beauty.
The director’s only significant failing is making some of the symbolism too obvious. As the monk climbs the mountain dragging a small millstone behind him, the director cuts to shots of the fish with a stone tied to it, then to the frog with a stone, and finally to the snake with a stone. The symbolism of the monk’s load is obvious from the beginning, and belaboring it with three flashbacks to his childhood is a gross miscalculation of the audience’s intelligence.
Many reviewers saw the film as an attempt to convert viewers to a Buddhist point of view, but that seems unlikely since the director was raised as a Christian and, according to one critic, is a fairly devout Catholic.
Further, most of the rituals were fabricated by the director and his crew. Finally, the film does not present an attractive or successful picture of Buddhist life. The teenager succumbs to lust, marries and murders, pays his penance and begins to repeat the cycle again. Through his actions, the old monk acknowledges his own lack of success with the boy, and nothing is told of what earlier actions led to his isolation at the monastery.
The most emphasis on Buddhist teachings is the old man’s insistence that the young man carve the Prajna Paramita into the deck of the monastery with the murder weapon. Whether the director means for this mantra to be the message for the audience or just for the young man is not clear and probably is not important. Does it work? The answer is not clear. Indeed, the film itself is somewhat of an enigma. Like many Buddhist teachings, it is a system that will return to the viewer only what the viewer brings to it.
For those who enjoy film, such philosophical musings are more appropriate for the textbook and the teaching experience. What is important, and what the film has in abundance, are visual images. What will be remembered about this film are the shots of the monastery at night, the blue mist floating on the water, the dripping sheets of ice, the trees framing the lake and the monastery.
Powerful human images include the elder monk with papers pasted over his eyes and mouth with the words “shut” printed on them; the enigmatic purple scarf wrapped around the head of the woman in the winter sequence; the old monk painting words on the floor using a white cat with its tail dipped in black ink; the Buddha carved from ice with a red cloth frozen inside it, and wrapped in the red cloth are the relics of the mentor.
Although it is a meditative, quiet film, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring is highly recommended for its visual beauty, its fine acting and whatever philosophical message you may find in it. And when you have finished this Zen film, be sure to clap with one hand. Top

Mystic River
M ystic River, based on Dennis Lehane’s novel, is Clint Eastwood’s attempt to create an epic story that taps into the wellsprings of violence, emotion and trans-generational trauma in the ways that Greek tragedy does. He almost succeeds.
The core of the film centers on an event that took place in 1975 when three boys—Dave Boyle, Jimmy Markum and Sean Devine–are playing in the street. A dark sedan stops, a man displaying a cop’s badge takes Dave into the car, and the car drives off. The men actually are child molesters who subject the boy to sexual degradation for four days before he escapes. But the trauma of what has happened to him, and the fear that it puts into the other boys, never goes away.
Twenty-five years later, Dave has a wife and a son of his own; Jimmy owns a convenience story and has three daughters; Sean is a police detective whose wife suddenly has left him. Then an event occurs that triggers significant interaction among the three men for the first time in years. Katie, Jimmy’s daughter, is killed; Dave is a suspect; and Sean is a principal investigator. The rest of the film focuses not only upon solving the murder, but on how the event affects the three men involved.
Sean Penn received an Oscar for his role as Jimmy Markum, and it was an award long overdue. Penn is excellent, conveying tenderness as he grieves for his daughter and brutality as he pledges to avenge her death.
Tim Robbins also won an Oscar for his role as Dave Boyle, and his hunched walk, slack face and protective stance toward his son perfectly portray a man who has been hurt so deeply that there’s no cure. Kevin Bacon as Sean Devine has the difficult role of trying to play the decent cop trying to do his job and caught in the emotional middle.
Laurence Fishburne as Detective Whitey Powers, Marcia Gay Harden as Celeste Boyle, and Laura Linney as Annabeth Markum provide an excellent supporting cast.
Although most of the film is strong, the last two scenes, especially the penultimate one, undercut the power of much that has gone before. Jimmy’s wife holds onto how strong he is even though the audience knows that his strength has led him astray.
The last scene shows a parade, implying that normalcy has returned to the neighborhood, when exactly the opposite has happened. In the best Greek tragedy, people are destroyed by their mistakes, usually through their own self-confidence. In Mystic River, that closure does not happen—nor does the person suffer—rather, he turns up his hands in a final gesture that says, “Well, what did you expect?”
The emotional catharsis that tragedy demands was missing. A much weaker film, Jack Nicholson’s The Two Jakes, supplies that quality when someone asks Jake Gittes if the pain ever goes away, and he says “Yes,” and goes out the door. Then he suddenly flings the door open again and shouts, “No! It never does!” At the end of Mystic River, it seems to go away.
Eastwood has created a very powerful film about some of his favorite subjects–the effects of violence, the futility of revenge and the never-ending cycle of human hurt. It’s his best picture since The Unforgiven. If it doesn’t quite make the depths of true tragedy, it gets closer than most films, and that’s no small accomplishment. Top
—Leonard G. Heldreth

Editor’s Note: All films reviewed are available on DVD or VHS from local stores.

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