Having reached the halfway point of the 22nd annual Austin Film Fest, more red carpets were laid out for actors and filmmakers out to celebrate the role of the screenwriter in the creative process. Day number four included a handful of slice-of-life pictures, from today all the way back to biblical times, and here’s how they all stacked up.
Memoria
[rating=4.00]
James Franco, whose prolific creativity alternates between inspiring and parody, produced and co-starred in this film, based on the second book in his book series. He was there to explain that the film’s protagonist, Ivan, was based on a friend of his from high school, who was intended to be in the first installment, Palo Alto, before getting pushed into this follow-up.
With a runtime of only 70 minutes, roughly the same length as this week’s The Walking Dead, the movie plays out less like a story and more like someone dropped the pages of a screenplay, hastily picking them back up before filming. Starting off like a poor man’s Boyhood, but without a central theme or conflict (an alienated teenager IS NOT enough to carry an entire film), the film mostly staggers outside of a few genuine moments. These tend to come when the camera simply hangs on the actors, letting their dialogue feel like it’s playing out naturally.
It’s clearly drawing an influence from Kids, which one of the co-directors stated as an influence during the Q&A, though they stated the reason for such was the film was so “dark.” I know it’s not exactly a bright, sunshine-y movie, but “dark” hardly seems like the right word. It’s misappropriation, coupled with Franco’s inability to separate the wheat from the chaff, make it seem like overly indulgent, half-baked idea.
Last Days in the Desert
[rating=6.00]
Set during the end of Jesus’ self-imposed exile in the desert, writer/director Rodrigo Garcia’s is, on one hand, visually mesmerizing, on the other, proudly carrying on the tradition of white, British actors playing biblical-era characters. Sometimes using contractions, sometimes not, it reads like a trite complaint, until you hear Lucifer (played by Ewan McGregor) ask Jesus (called “Yeshua,” also played by McGregor) about his “daddy issues.”
After wandering towards Jerusalem, Jesus encounters a family, and after a scattered few scenes, he asks for work, then leaves, then is caught up with and asked back, and is given a challenge by Lucifer: resolve their conflict and he leaves him alone. It’s an absolutely brilliant premise, particularly as their conversations about God range from genuine human curiosity (“does he have a face?”) to Lucifer’s faith-testing revelations that he plays out the universe time and again, only caring about himself.
There is truly a great film buried in here somewhere—the idea of a Jesus stripped of any divinity—that gets lost somewhere. Ciarán Hinds, better known as Mance Raydar from Game of Thrones, as the family’s stubborn but loving patriarch provides a human backdrop which Jesus’ story is projected, layering its meditative look at fathers and sons.
Burning Bodhi
[rating=5.00]
It sounds like a cop-out to simply label this as The Big Chill re-told for millennials, but it’s nothing if not accurate, simply retrofitted to generational expectations. A group of old friends from high school get together to mourn the loss of their friend, Bodhi, who dies suddenly of a brain aneurysm. Whereas its predecessor made the artful decision to never show the face of the deceased, this one opts to in its second shot.
The film is best at weaving in the technological incarnations of how we communicate. Characters find out about the death on Facebook, entire scenes are shot with the only communication between characters comes from texting, and at times are truly heartfelt. It loses ground through hackneyed dialogue that feels like it was written solely for exposition, as well as relying on the assumption of deep-seeded issues in high school harbored by young adults years later.
