Up the Yangtze (2007, Yung Chang)

Andy Johnson, CTV.ca News Staff

Up the Yangtze follows one peasant family as their home and way of life is swept up in the rising tide of China's march towards progress.

The epic documentary by Chinese-Canadian filmmaker Yung Chang captures some of the final moments before the Three Gorges Dam chokes off the river and the rising waters displace two million people.

* Read the complete story here

"There Will Be Blood" (Directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, starring Daniel Day Lewis)

“There Will Be Blood” is essentially about greed and the downfall of a capitalistic society where individual empire building is encouraged and even lifted up as a hallmark of the society’s success.

Starring Daniel Day Lewis and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, it’s a grim, dark tale about the life of Daniel Plainfield, a stubborn, determined, self-serving oil prospector who finds the precious substance in the late 1890s as America is just beginning to develop a dependency.

Plainfield goes on to build a successful oil business, through sheer grit and greed and a willingness to push anyone out of his way to accomplish his own ends.

Though it’s not black and white, there’s almost no colour in this film. Long, still images of bleak, rocky hills are accompanied by spine-chilling, drawn out, single notes played on violin that adds to the constant tension through the film.

Most of the characters seem purposefully non-descript compared to Plainfield. Their stark black clothes and hard-working faces provide some contrast to the frames but little more. This film is clearly about Plainfield – his greed, selfishness and ultimate descent into a dark mine shaft of his own creation.

Paul Thomas Anderson is known for dark subject matter. “Magnolia” and “Hard Eight” both looked at human weakness and the dark side of people. But there is usually some redeeming qualities that allow the viewer to connect and relate to the characters, despite – or maybe because of – their flaws and weaknesses.

TWBB is different, though. Maybe Anderson is taking a shot at U.S. oil dependency and greed by looking closely at how that industry began. Or perhaps he’s offering a warning about the dangers if being a slave to the dollar. But there’s little cause for sympathy towards Plainfield – who is played brilliantly by Lewis, by the way.

In the early days of his career his determination and grit are admirable – you can’t help but admire his toughness as he chips away in a lonely mine shaft, drags himself out of a hole with a broken leg, or huddles beside a fire at night, wind-battered on an exposed plain.

Little by little that respect shifts to disgust, as it becomes obvious that the sole motivation for all of his decisions is greed.

What is compelling, is Lewis’ portrayal of Plainfield. It’s breathtaking and absolutely convincing. When he says “I hate most people,” or when he heartlessly dismisses someone whom he is close to, from his life forever, or when he murders in cold blood, you feel it in your bones and you know he was fully immersed -- in typical Lewis style – in the role.

TWBB is also a visual masterpiece. An oil well gushing a black baptism over Plainfield, a derrick fully immersed in flame contrasted with a dusky desert sky, the construction of a church juxtaposed with the erecting of an oil rig.

You should be in the right mood to see this film, but you should see it nonetheless.

Maus: A Survivor's Tale (Art Spiegelman)

The Holocaust has always had a place in my mind as a tragic, sad, incredibly important moment in human history, but one that has also always been inaccessible and foreign to me.

I guess I studied it in school. I vaguely remember an animated history teacher trying to capture the realities of concentration camp life during a classroom exercise. But I’ve had no real portal or entry point to achieve a personal connection to what took place. After reading “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale” by Art Spiegelman, I feel differently.

True, no one in my family lived through that ordeal. None of my relatives ever sheltered Jews or fled the Nazis. But this Pulitzer prize-winning graphic novel has given me a new insight and allowed me to connect in a new way to the events that led up to, and occurred during, the Second World War.

Told in two volumes, “Maus” is the story of Spiegelman’s father Vladek’s experience living through the Holocaust and struggling to survive, narrowly escaping death numerous times, watching almost all of his family and friends die at the hands of the Nazis. It’s gripping and haunting and all the more touching because it’s based on a true story.

In Spiegelman’s unique treatment of this story, the Jews are portrayed as mice and the Nazis as cats. Done badly, this technique could have come across as tacky or insensitive. But it doesn’t. It only takes a page or two to just accept it. And it really is effective – as seen through Jewish eyes, the Nazis really were ruthless predators with little sympathy for their prey. And the Jews, at least in Vladek’s experience, were the hunted – hiding out, trying desperately to avoid drawing attention to themselves and with little or no resources to protect or defend against the enemy.

The first page of Book 1, titled “My Father Bleeds History,” has a grim image of dozens of Jews staring towards a single point. They’re well-dressed and stoic but there’s a common look of fear and bewilderment in their eyes, as if they know there’s something foreboding on the horizon, but they have no idea what form it will take.

Book 2, “And Here My Troubles Began,” begins with another image of dozens of Jews, all men this time, wearing matching prison stripes. Their eyes are also staring towards a single point but this time their eyes display a glazed-over muted fear and it’s clear they have seen terrible things and have little hope for a happy ending.

And through Vladek’s recounting of the central story of his life, we experience these deeds first hand – murder, extermination, genocide – all the worst things that come to mind when one thinks of the Holocaust, are represented in Vladek’s story.

But "Maus" doesn’t just dwell on the past. It flips between the images of the past and the present as Art and Vladek try to bridge the generational and cultural divide that separates them and causes friction.

“Just thinking about my book – it’s so presumptuous of me,” Spiegelman says to his wife in one of their conversations.

“I mean, I can’t even make any sense out of my relationship with my father. How am I supposed to make any sense out of Auschwitz, of the Holocaust?”

But somehow, you see them getting closer through the course of this book. Over the years it took to collect the entire story and set it down. Something does happen. Art does, somehow, make sense out of his relationship with his father and why he is the way he is, by extension, why he has become the man he is.

Through asking and learning and trying, despite the obvious difficulties of doing so, he achieves some sort of understanding, some sort of reconciliation, and that achievement gives this story – which becomes as much his as his father’s – legitimacy and credibility.

And somehow I was taken along for the ride on Spiegelman’s journey and gained my own new connection and understanding of this moment in history and its real impact on real lives.

Gone Baby Gone (Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck, Ed Harris)

“Gone Baby Gone” triggered a two-hour conversation between my brother and I about morality, integrity, honour and living with the consequences of doing the right thing.

Directed by Ben Affleck and starring his younger, until now overshadowed brother Casey Affleck, it’s a gripping thriller about two men investigating a grim missing-child case in a rough, poor area of Boston.

Right from the beginning, the film provides a believable, seemingly accurate illustration of Dorchester, one of Boston’s grittiest neighbourhoods and an area where Affleck’s character Patrick Kenzie grew up and still remains connected.

The film opens with footage of the area where the crime has taken place, accompanied by narration as Patrick describes his life – the images of shabby homes, children, young mothers, and people barbecuing on their front stoops, reminded me of Toronto’s Regent Park and the families I volunteer with there.

Patrick and his girlfriend Angie (Michelle Monaghan) are low-level private investigators who make their living tracking down people who are dodging debts. When Amanda McReady, a four-year-old girl goes missing, her aunt and uncle come to Patrick for help, believing he may have local connections that the detectives, led by Ed Harris as Det. Remy Bressant, don’t.

Though the case is bigger than anything they’ve ever tackled, they grudgingly accept the job and begin talking to Patrick’s old friends, and soon find his ‘from there’ status opens doors, though it also gets them into some tight spots.

Asking too many questions in a shabby bar where the missing girl’s mother spent most of her nights, Patrick and Angie soon find the door locked and a tough, imposing crowd confronting them.

Patrick, a slight, not-so-intimidating guy, quickly rises to the challenge with a determined, unflinching gaze that suggests he’s ready for anything.

This willingness to face any challenge head on, despite the impossible odds against him, quickly comes to characterize Patrick, whether he’s threatening a Haitian gangster, challenging the integrity of the detectives working the case, or repeatedly defending his girlfriend’s honour. And it’s believable. You quickly understand that Patrick’s heart is much larger than his shoe size and his stubborn nature will accomplish great things.

That determination quickly becomes the driving force of this film. Big obstacles arise and we soon learn there’s much more to this story than what is seen on the surface. And ultimately it becomes a story about two men and their very different moral compasses and how that affects their handling of the investigation.

While Patrick almost always tries to do the right thing no matter what the consequences, he has his weaknesses, as demonstrated when he executes a child-molester and murderer, in cold blood.

Bressant, on the other hand, is a corrupt cop who admits to his willingness to bend the rules to accomplish his own ends – though his motivation is often rooted in a twisted sense of moral justice and an attempt to do the right thing.

This film is full of unexpected surprises and twists and turns, and in addition to raising deep moral questions, it keeps you on the edge of your seat, and guessing, right up until the stunning finish with Morgan Freeman that leaves a moral question mark that hangs over the credits and will haunt you for days afterwards.


Both Casey and Ben Affleck are receiving Oscar buzz for their respectable efforts on this project.

American Splendor (the book by Harvey Pekar)

I think many writers and artsy types in general often find themselves frustrated by the lack of appropriate medium or venue to tell the simple but compelling stories of everyday life. I know I often feel that way.

The other day I was driving down Dundas Street just around the corner from my house. While I was stopped at a red light at Parliament, I noticed an older black man on the far corner of the intersection. We made eye contact, and he gestured to the north in a questioning manner, and it was pretty obvious he wanted a ride somewhere. I wasn’t in a hurry, so I called him over. He hopped in and we had a really interesting conversation about his experience growing old in St. Jamestown and the Cabbagetown neighbourhood we both call home.

After I dropped him off at Bloor Street I couldn’t help but feel somewhat inspired from the conversation, and wished desperately for the means to tell the story in a way that people could easily access –- and it’s a feeling I get about once a week, usually due to some interesting, chance encounter I’d like to share before it fades away into a vague anecdote.

Harvey Pekar has found a way to do it. If you’ve seen the film ‘American Splendor’ starring Paul Giamatti you have a bit of the back-story, and you understand a little bit about this complicated writer/hospital file clerk from Cleveland. You should watch the film, definitely, but more importantly, I think, you should read his comic books.

My friend Phil recently loaned me an anthology of American Splendor comics, and I spent about three straight days locked up in my house, unable to put the book down. I ended up feeling like Harvey Pekar was someone I had known for years.

That’s to be expected, I think. Pekar’s stories are always about his everyday life, and they’re brutally, bravely honest, completely willing to be vulnerable and exposed. He describes his life and the people in it exactly the way he sees them.

He once said his stories focus on the mundane moments in life and how they add up to make an impact in the long run: “If you’re of the misery-loves-company persuasion, chances are you’ll find it comforting,” he added.

R. Crumb, an old friend of Pekar’s and one of the artists who illustrates his work, summed it up pretty well in the introduction to the book:

“The subject matter of these stories is so mundane it verges on the exotic! It is very disorienting at first, but after a while you get with it. Myself, I love it. Pekar has proven once and for all that even the most seemingly dreary and monotonous of lives is filled with poignancy and heroic struggle. All is takes is someone with an eye to see, an ear to hear, and a demented, desperate Jewish mind to get it down on paper,” Crumb says.

“It takes chutzpah to tell it exactly the way it happened, with no adornment, no great wrap-up, no bizarre twist, nothing. Pekar’s genius is that he pulls this off and does it with humour, pathos, all the drama you could ever want, and in a comic book yet.”

I once interviewed Todd McFarlane, the creator of Spawn and one of the artists to illustrate Spiderman -- pretty much a giant in the comic book world. He had a slightly different perspective on Pekar’s work.

"I don't know if it's necessarily the heroism we relate to, I think it's the flaws," he told me. "We understand that our life is completely imperfect, and these guys are completely imperfect, but somehow they're getting along and it's just called life at the end of the day and it's not meant to be perfect."

American Splendor is mostly autobiographical, with Pekar sharing anecdotes from his life in Cleveland – everything from the old Jewish guy who drives him to work, to a conversation between a veteran bus driver and the new, young driver he is training, and quite often his stories chronicle his struggles with the women in his life.

And it’s all so deeply personal. In one story he goes into great depth about losing his voice for several months, just after getting married, and all the anger, depression and worry this caused him.

“I felt anxious and guilty. My wife hadn’t known me very long before we got married. I lost my voice on the first day of my honeymoon and had barely talked for weeks after that. What kind of a husband was I? Would she forget what I was like when I could talk? What if there was something bad wrong with me?”

In another story he describes his desperate addiction to buying records and the internal battle he waged to overcome the weakness. In another, he describes helping an acquaintance that he didn’t care for all that much, to move, and how he later received a favour in return from this person.

You get the feeling that all the embarrassing parts are left in –- the self-doubt, the bad habits, weaknesses and addictions – nothing is skipped over. The stories are told with a level of transparency and honesty that gives Pekar’s writing credibility and adds integrity and value to what he has to say because he’s willing to expose so much of himself to his readers – something few writers, including myself, are willing to do on a consistent basis.

The few times I have been that honest still haunt me, and I still get butterflies thinking about how I’ve put myself out there publicly on one or two occasions. It’s scary to do that, and much easier to present a version of yourself that is slightly smarter, slightly better looking, and has fewer bad habits. I think the fact that Pekar seems to do the opposite to this, all the time, is partly what makes it so unique and intriguing.

It also helps that he has somehow convinced some really credible artists -- often by begging, harassing and cajoling – to illustrate his stories, following his pages of scribbles and stick-figure diagrams to come up with some truly beautiful works of art.

I know American Splendor isn’t for everyone and I understand why. It’s rough, really intimate, and resembles in no way the Hollywood style of storytelling most of us have been force-fed our entire lives. But that’s refreshing to me. That’s why, I think, this type of work is valuable. It takes an honest look at life, even if it’s through the eyes of one pretty unimportant, normal guy who has worked mediocre jobs and barely scraped by for years in order to just keep telling his stories and putting his work out there. Hmmm. I think there’s something honourable about that…I take it back. These stories ARE for everyone. We can all learn something from them, and we should – even it’s the simple lesson that there’s beauty and poignancy in all those little life moments and they’re worth sharing with someone else…

This is my promise: I’ll listen to your story about standing in line at the grocery store, or the streetcar drivers who held up traffic both ways to talk about a party they were both at last week, if you'll listen to mine. Those moments are important, they're inspiring and they're worth sharing. I think we’ll all be better off if we make an attempt. Who’s with me?

Once (2007, directed by John Carney, starring Glen Hansard, Marketa Irglovna)

It took me about three days to get over Once after the first time I saw it. I found myself humming the songs, re-thinking the conversations – even working out what I would have said and done differently if I were in the lead character’s shoes.

The film occupied my thoughts and conversations almost unceasingly, and just as my fascination was starting to ebb away my friend Susan gave me the soundtrack – all original songs written by the musicians who play the main roles. That triggered another wave of Once-inspired moments and I just couldn’t seem to escape the grip this Irish film had on my heart.

I guess I’m a glutton for heartache and crying myself to sleep, because I watched it again this weekend with a friend, and it set in motion a whole new wave of melancholy and bittersweet emotions and ideas.

Not that Once is a sad film. It’s not really. It’s an honest story about a brief moment in the lives of two kindred-spirits trying to get by in Dublin. But it’s told in such a sincere, genuine, compelling way that if it doesn’t break your heart your soul is probably dead.

The indie film, directed by John Carney, was shot on a tiny 130,000-Euro budget, which amounts to something like $270,000 Canadian, and the original plan was to make 1,000 DVD copies and see what happened. The film made it into the Sundance Film Festival and won the audience award. It got added momentum when Bob Dylan saw it and invited star Glen Hansard and his Irish band the Frames, to tour with him.

Now the film has people talking about Oscar possibilities and the Frames, who have put out seven albums in 17 years in Ireland but have received little international attention, are finally getting noticed outside of the island.

If you go to see it, which you definitely should, you’ll understand why.

Hansard stars in the film, playing a scruffy 30-something singer-songwriter/vacuum cleaner-repairman-busker struggling to survive in Dublin, which is apparently not much of a stretch for Hansard.

During the day he plays well-known songs that passersby can sing along to, and it’s only late at night when the streets are empty that he plays his own intense, broken-hearted ballads.

It’s during one of these moments, performing Say It To Me Now, a heart-wrenchingly honest tune about, what else, a girl, on an empty Dublin street, lost in the obvious pain of the song, that he meets Marketa Irglova’s character.

A Czech immigrant selling flowers on Dublin’s streets, she’s magnetized by his music and proceeds to enter his life, although he does his best to resist at first.

His protest doesn’t last long, and the two embark on a brief but intense friendship/romance that reminded me of Lost in Translation or Before Sunrise.

Irglova’s character is also a musician, and helps inspire him to follow his heart, both in relation to his music and a long-lost love.

This film is classified as a musical, and the genre wavers somewhere between a documentary, romance or comedy. The simple story is woven around Hansard and Irglova’s songs, which form the backbone to this film, saying just as much or more about the two nameless individuals, than their words.

The songs Falling Slowly, All the Way Down, When Your Mind’s Made Up, Say It To Me Now, The Hill – on their own would make this film worth watching, but on top of that it’s shot simply and beautifully and has a believable, real quality that sets it apart from anything else I’ve seen this year.

I think the fact that neither of the lead characters are played by professional actors just adds to this film. Even their conversations are simple and uncontrived, and just like real life they’re often awkward and painful to watch but compelling too, because they accurately capture real life moments we’ve all experienced.

The subtitle of the film asks the question “How Often Do You Find the Right Person?”

But the story, just like real life, doesn’t set about providing a simple, black and white answer to the question. Instead it says ‘here’s one story about two people, take it and come up with your own answer.’

I’m still working on it…

Go here for videos and to hear the songs: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/once/

'Once' (Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová, director John Carney)

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