That's all folks. Rakkautta&Anarkiaa is over, once again. The post-festival feeling is always a classic example of "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone".
Luckily we're blessed with Elokuvasyksy. Someone is always showing something good and ambitious. It's still not quite the same for me, though, 'cause only R&A for me equals tradition, which equals a peace of mind and an ease in one's existence.
My R&A 2010:
The Good Heart (Hyvä Sydän). Intriguing and fresh in the beginning, but turned quite predictable once the stage had been set. Enjoyed the way the context was left "timeless" and the message conveyed mostly outside the dialogue.
The Eclipse. I love Ireland, I love literature, so I had to love this film a little. Particularly, I loved Ciarán Hinds in it, as well as the way in which it escaped genre-classifications. Always a welcome feature in this world of categories.
Ciarán Hinds and Iben Hjejle in The Eclipse
Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives. I went to see this alone. Boy, do I wait to meet my Mom tonight so I can finally discuss it with someone! Many scenes progressed way too slow for me, but then again that got me thinking about the different concepts of time - a good topic to continue after seeing Mr. Nobody.
Brotherhood. Danish filmmakers did not let me down this time either. Despite the pretty standard, Shakespearean basic elements, the way love and lust is described between two men has never been this appealing and convincing to me. The film's message is also really important in this brave new world of increasingly popular neo-fascism, "immigration criticism", etc.
Nothing Personal. A friend gave me tickets to this aesthetically inspiring little piece of work. The two roles are impressively played, but despite the film's general slow pace I think the development of their mutual dynamics was still portrayed somehow too quickly - or then too much was left unsaid for me to really feel I knew how they were feeling.
(Untitled). I gave this film three stars in the voting, because immediately after seeing it it felt too predictable and elitistic, actually the topic was really good and the execution - the script in particular - where pretty good. I regret the three stars, since it would have been nice to have it run in Finnkino theatres for others to see, too. Look it up if you missed it in R&A!
La Tournée (Kiertue). J'absolument adore Mathieu Amalric. He did a great job in his role here, once again, but as regards direction and script, this movie was a bit of a let-down. I think it missed depth and direction. The ladies were genuinely lovely but as characters they remained pretty shallow, and the theme of an attempted homecoming couldn't carry the movie on alone for two hours. Dommage.
Mr. Nobody. Now this was a movie - The Movie - to my liking. Its complex structure was challenging. Its larger-than-normal amount of patterns, balanced with strong emotions in the story, really appealed to a semi-neurotic yet romantic mind such as mine.
Rakkautta & Anarkiaa, your loyal friend would like to thank you in the same sincere manner that Mr. Lanerva always thanks the audience (in what always feel like exactly the same words) before the Closing Film, every year!
Adam Goldberg is the artist with the greatest integrity in (Untitled)
P. S. A piece of dialogue from (Untitled) has stuck with me. I'm not sure if it was insightful or not, but from the way I keep thinking about it I think it must have been. At a dinner party someone asks Adam Goldberg, who plays a composer of atonal contemporary music (kicking the bucket and all that, and the pun was certainly intended) "What's the difference between art and commercial art?" and the cool gallerist lady with good intentions answers before him, that "commercial art has never posed a question it could not answer". The script was full of witty insights like this - earlier in the same table conversation Goldberg's character Adrian snaps at someone questioning his atonal music with: "Harmony was created so that capitalists could sell more pianos!"
P. P. S. Obviously that film also pleased me particularly for its choice of a title!
