Secret Agent Gal Movie Reviews

The First Grader ***1/2

 
 

Controversy erupts when 84-year-old Maruge enrolls in a rural elementary school with a simple request: “I want to learn to read.”  The unusual student spurs furious debate among parents, school administrators and the media in the drama based on a true story, The First Grader.

Passionate to learn, Kimani Ng’ang’a Maruge enrolled in a rural Kenyan grade school in 2003. He felt entitled when the country enacted universal free education. This led to widespread resentment. Why spend scarce educational resources on an old man? A Mau Mau veteran, Maruge swore an oath of allegiance to a free Kenya, leading to his torture and imprisonment. The Republic of Kenya was formed in 1964.

Oliver Litondo plays the farmer and Kikuyu tribesman with dignity and warmth. Tragedy haunts him. As Maruge meets resistance on all sides, he digs in his heels. Fashioning his own school uniform, he stands outside the school gate with his walking stick. Finally, one teacher cannot resist his determination.

What Maruge’s detractors missed was his innate value as a Kenyan elder and a citizen who passionately wanted to improve himself. Making an executive decision, Teacher Jane (Naomie Harris) names him her teaching assistant. Maruge’s delight in learning and helping his young classmates is clear. When he begins to share his patriotic beliefs during recess, the teachers become nervous.

Harris (Miami Vice; Pirates of the Caribbean) has created a potent symbol of the inspiring teacher who first believed in us. “Learning is about having fun,” she tells her class. This is a revolutionary statement about education in any culture or language. Anyone lucky enough to have had such a teacher remembers him or her right away. That teacher saw something special within us. Renewing our self-confidence, they suggested a life direction. They may even have changed our lives.

Harris is memorable as Jane Obinchu, a resourceful, caring principal and teacher. It’s remarkable how much excitement and zest she brings to her sparse classroom each day. Forget computers and PDAs. These children have nothing more than a sharp pencil a blank composition book. Teacher Jane’s arsenal includes a blackboard and some chalk. Still she engages each student. Challenging and praising them, and seems to genuinely love each one.

In an interview with Collider.com, Harris describes the making of The First Grader. "In a little movie like this, there are only seven of us that flew from England, and the rest were all local hires. We really felt like we were immersing ourselves in the culture and the community, and we were much more collaborative." Many of the child actors here had never seen a movie in their lives.

The First Grader loses focus with excessive flashbacks about Kenya’s fight against British colonial rule and Maruge’s torture as a prisoner of war. Justin Chadwick’s film lurches between learning and politics so often that its adult literacy theme stalls.

This National Geographic production feels Disney-like at times with social tensions simplified and resolved too easily. When students demand the return of Teacher Jane, her replacement suddenly turns tail and drives off into the dust. If only social change were this easy. 

Maruge’s visit to a Nairobi high school evokes the troubled, urban classrooms of Stand and Deliver and Dangerous Minds. He flees the rowdy school and barges into a meeting of national school administrators, insisting that he be heard. They listen.

Rob Hardy’s cinematography reveals rural beauty and urban social change. The trees of the bush symbolize Kenya as well as grisled Maruge and the idealistic young teacher who stands up to bureaucracy and personal threats.

Tony Kgoroge plays Jane’s husband Charles Obinchu, an education official who’s threatened by his wife’s notoriety.  Mumbi Kaigwa (The Constant Gardener) stars as the Secretary of Education.

 

Literacy is "the ability to read, write, compute, and use technology at a level that enables an individual to reach his or her full potential as a parent, employee, and community member," according to the international group ProLiteracy.

The right to literacy at any age seems to be the primary theme. ProLiteracy reports that, in the United States, 14 percent of those age 16 or older do not have the reading and comprehension skills needed to complete a job application. First Lady Laura Bush has championed family and women’s literacy worldwide.

This film also suggests the vast, often untapped wealth of knowledge and experience held by older citizens. Maruge exemplifies the student as teacher when he devises flash cards to help students who have trouble with word sounds and meanings.

The First Grader ends with satisfying irony. The media’s kneejerk reactions to those on the forefront of social change can run icy cold one day and warmly enthusiastic the next.

Eventually Maruge was invited to address the United Nations in New York City, becoming a source of pride for Kenyans. He was named to the Guinness World Records as the oldest person to begin primary school in 2004. Maruge died in 2009.

If you like The First Grader, you might enjoy:  Man Push Cart; Precious; The Blind Side.

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The First Grader     2010  /  PG-13  /  1 hour, 43 min

Cast Overview:  Naomie Harris, Oliver Musila Litondo, Lwander Jawar, Tony Kgoroge, Alfred Munyua, Shki Mokgapa, Vusumuzi Michael Kunene, Mubi Kaigwa

Director:  Justin Chadwick

Genre:  Drama, Foreign Film

Happy *****

 

Oscar-nominated director Roko Belic’s film shares insights from psychology, neuroscience, and multicultural wisdom to discover the keys to deep and lasting joy in the documentary Happy.

Belic, who shared a 1999 Oscar nomination with his brother Adrian for the musical documentary Genghis Blues, asks why the United States, one of the wealthiest nations in the world, ranks low in happiness.  He traveled to 14 countries, interviewing positive and optimistic individuals both rich and poor.

Happiness is 50% genetic, 40% intentional, and only 10% circumstance, according to scientists. This contradicts the widespread belief that attaining wealth and material things guarantees delight. Once our basic human needs are met, researchers say, $50K and $5 million look very much the same to our brains.

Adversity can kick start happiness, giving our brains the biochemical contrast needed to create new, better realities, according to scientists. Melissa Moody recounts her comeback from despair following a truck accident. While recovering from multiple reconstructive facial surgeries, long-buried memories of childhood abuse resurfaced. Her husband left her. She contemplated suicide. Moody hung on for the sake of her children. Today she says she has reached a more centered, happy place. She helps others with physical rehabilitation. She met and married someone new.

The happiest countries promote community. Denmark offers co-housing groups where families share chores and rewards. Anne Bechsgaard, a divorced mother, says she rebounded from depression after moving into co-housing. She and her children enjoy many friends and caring neighbors there. Communal dining has lightened her workload. Bechsgaard cooks supper and cleans up afterwards only twice a month.

 
 
A rickshaw driver living in the slums of Kolkata, India, Manoj Singh exudes happiness through arduous work days in extreme heat and monsoons. His family and neighbors are key, he says.

Bhutan’s government now weighs Gross National Happiness as well as Gross National Product, according to government official Dasho Kinley Dorji. For example, flooding a valley for a new dam would bring economic benefits, but would not be feasible because many would be displaced, and places of worship would be destroyed. The Gross National Happiness experiment is relatively new and results are forthcoming, we are told.  

Andy Wimmer, a former West German banker, volunteers at Mother Theresa’s Home for the Dying in Calcutta, India. As he moves about the hospice room filled with the destitute, he helps them eat and clean themselves. He feels deep peace knowing he is doing “something more” with his life.

 “It’s the values we have that are the biggest indicator of our happiness,” Belic learns. Intrinsic goals such as compassion, friendship and contributing to one’s community are much more conducive to happiness than extrinsic goals like money, power and social standing, he discovered.

Connectedness, generosity, play, flow, health and longevity are parts of the puzzle. New twists on traditional approaches are offered. “Nature is good medicine,” we’re reminded. Exercising in novel ways increases the brain’s dopamine levels most effectively, say neuroscientists. Choosing a new running or walking route can accomplish this.

Among the experts featured are “Dr. Happiness” Ed Diener, who has studied happiness in America for over 35 years, and Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies meditation’s effects on individual happiness.

Not for cynics, this decidedly upbeat exploration will appeal most to those who yearn for genuine contentment, and to others who are already happy to some degree.

Like his producer Tom Shadyac (who directed blockbusters such as Bruce Almighty and, more recently, the documentary I Am), Belic sold his home and moved to a trailer on the beach in Malibu. He enjoys surfing and a sense of community, he told Paste Magazine. “Within the first two weeks of moving here, I met more people than I did in 10 years of having a house in the suburbs of San Francisco.”

Happy is narrated by Marci Shimoff, author of Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul.

If you like Happy, you might enjoy:  I Am; 2012: Time for Change; Thrive.

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Happy     2011  /  G  /  1 hour, 18 min

Cast Overview:  Ed Diener, Daniel Gilbert, Gregory Burns, Read Montague, The Dalai Lama, Matthieu Ricard, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Nic Marks, Richard Davidson, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Tim Kasser, Andy Wimmer, Chikanobu Okamura, Anne Bechsgaard and family, Hiroko Uchino, Kundo Bo and family, Manoj Singh and family, Melissa Moody, Michael Pritchard, Ronaldo Fadul, Roy Blanchard and Family

Director:  Roko Belic

Genre:  Documentary

 

Incendies *****

 

A daughter investigates her mother’s life and her own roots in the Oscar-nominated mystery Incendies. Denis Villeneuve writes and directs this suspenseful family drama that intertwines the daughter’s journey with scenes from her mother’s traumatic early years in the Middle East.

When their mother dies, grown twins Jeanne (Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin) and Simon (Maxim Gaudette) arrive for the reading of her will. They are stunned when Jean Lebel (Remy Girard), a notary public and their mother’s former boss, hands them two envelopes. Jeanne is asked to deliver a letter to their father. Simon is asked to deliver a letter to their brother.

Jeanne and Simon had no idea that their father was alive. They never knew they had a brother. Nawal Marwan (played by talented Belgian actress Lubna Azabal) had been quiet, and worked as a secretary. Bewildered, Jeanne tries to make sense of her mother’s words. If the twins deliver these messages, “the silence will be broken, a promise kept.”

Simon balks and remains in Montreal. He does not want to delve into the past. He’d rather abandon his family history and any unseemly details. The strain of his mother’s nervous illnesses has been enough for him. Simon urges Jeanne not to go.

A graduate student in mathematics, Jeanne seeks the advice of a professor. He compares mathematics to her complex relationship with her mother: “Now, you enter an entirely different adventure. The subject will be intractable problems that always lead to other problems, just as intractable. People around you will repeatedly say that your struggles are in vain. You’ll have no argument to defend yourself, for the work will be exhausting and complex. Welcome to pure mathematics, the land of loneliness.”

Jeanne insists on going alone if she must, compelled to hunt down the truth so her heart can be at peace. She sets out for the unnamed Middle Eastern country.

We witness the daughter following each clue, talking to people who knew Nawal, or knew of her. A group of village women is cruel and judgmental. Desormeaux-Poulin (Taking the Plunge) gives an intense but nuanced performance, filled with insatiable curiosity and growing dread. Much later when she faces danger, Simon rushes to her side to help complete the search. Gaudette (Polytechnique) conveys the male heart with pitch perfect acting.

Renowned Canadian actor Girard crafts a memorable character in Lebel, who guides and protects the twins. He assures them that their mother was of sound mind, but indelibly marked by her early years.

 

Nawal was beset by tragedy from early girlhood through the horrors of her country’s civil war. Key scenes from Nawal’s life are shown as Jeanne walks the same streets her mother once did. Azabal (Body of Lies) evokes great dignity which explodes into anger as she struggles to overcome unimaginably painful personal ordeals.

Nawal is rebuked by her Christian family when she falls in love with a Muslim. Her brothers track the lovers down in an orchard and murder her beloved. Later her grandmother helps her deliver a baby boy, who is quickly given up for adoption to save the family from shame. The grandmother tattoos three dots on the baby’s heel, an identifying mark. “I’ll find you again one day,” Nawal promises him.

Nawal is sent away to live with relatives. She becomes a student and political activist. Deciding to search for her son, she sets off on a bus filled with Muslims. When Christian extremists detain the group, Nawal pretends she is still a Christian to save herself. Helplessly, she watches as all aboard are massacred, flames exploding in the middle of the desert.

Rage takes over as Nawal joins an extremist group, assassinating a Christian leader while posing as a tutor. She is sentenced to 15 years in prison, where she is tortured and raped. Nawal survives by singing in solitary confinement. This enrages her captors. Jeanne and Simon eventually meet a midwife who worked at the prison. She remembers Nawal fondly as “The Woman Who Sings.”

Villeneuve defines the title Incendies as an inferno, “something totally destroyed, totally transformed . . . destruction that you cannot change afterwards.” Filmed in Montreal and Jordan, it is based on the play of the same name by the Lebanese-born writer Wajdi Mouawad. The scars that violence leaves, and its senselessness, are stark in Incendies’ explosive conclusion.

Beautiful and devastating, the film features wrenching imagery and ominous sound. As it opens, young Muslim boys are having their heads shaved, apparently being prepared for terrorist training. The eyes of one boy stare back into the camera, bottomless, empty.

“Death is never the end of the story,” Lebel reminds us. “There are always details.”

If you like Incendies, you might enjoy:  Nora’s Will; A Prophet; Lemon Tree.

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Incendies     2010  /  R  /  2 hours, 10 min

Cast Overview:  Lubna Azabal, Melissa Desormeaux-Poulin, Maxim Gaudette, Remy Girard, Abdelghafour Elaaziz, Allen Altman, Mohamed Majd, Nabil Sawalha, Baya Belal 

Director:  Denis Villeneuve

Genre:  Drama, Mystery, War, Foreign, Drama Based on the Play

Languages: French and Arabic with English subtitles

 

 

Hesher **1/2

 
 

Just when we start to like Hesher, he talks about his balls at a funeral or trashes someone’s backyard for fun. Natalie Portman appears in and co-produces the indie mashup Hesher.

Hesher is an enigmatic drifter played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception; 3rd Rock from the Sun). Long-haired and dirty with a middle finger tattooed along his spine, Hesher is a juvie survivor, homeless wanderer and self-styled avenger. He drives a battered pickup truck that blares death metal music. An anti-hero who loves to blow things up, Hesher spouts filth, eats like a caveman, bangs chicks and watches porn.

Of course 12-year-old T.J. Forney (Devin Brochu) is fascinated. Hesher follows him home one day after T.J. throws a rock through a window at a construction site, accidentally dislocating the squatter. Hesher arrives at T.J.'s dysfunctional household not long after the boy's mom dies in a car accident.

Hesher's reluctant hosts are zombie-like. T.J.’s dad (Rainn Wilson of The Office) is whacked-out on anti-depressants. His grandmother (Piper Laurie, creepy, sly and sweet) is not all there, but manages to cook meals. “Life is like walking in the rain,” she says. “You can hide and take cover, or just get wet.” They let T.J.'s "friend" stay, not knowing he has threatened the horrified, spellbound pre-teen.

Wounded T.J. pilfers his dad’s money via an ATM, hoping to escape to somewhere better. The boy tries to buy back his family’s totaled car from an auto wrecking yard. The owner (John Carroll Lynch, consistently great) warns him to stay away. T.J. falls asleep in the wreck one night, desperate to feel his mom’s loving presence. Brochu is the saving grace of the film, a young actor to watch out for.

Set pieces, especially the pool scene, are original and memorable. The premise of Hesher is good. Yet the misfit’s bizarre behavior overpowers and detracts from the story.

 

When T.J. develops a crush on a plain, sweet convenience store clerk Nicole (a lovely role for Portman), Hesher offers unwanted man advice. Nicole struggles in her dead-end job and life. When she rear-ends another car while giving T.J. a ride home, Hesher comes to the rescue. “Some days a day is bad and you discover whole new ways it could get way worse,” Nicole laments.

When times get tough, is screaming and violence the key to recovery? Hesher blows up a bully’s car in the name of justice. When T.J. tells him never to do that again, the dude is temporarily nonplussed.

Hesher is a primal scream in a world where bad things happen to the good. His footfalls thunder like a herd of rhino. Anger guides him. We get it, but does he have to be so repulsive?

There’s principled disobedience, and then there’s Hesher. His venting doesn’t have a point. Any good that comes out of his visit to the Forneys is pure accident. Bad Santa he’s not.

Writer-director Spencer Susser has created an incoherent film with some fresh moments. Hesher’s heart may be in the right place, but he leads T.J. in immature and dangerous ways. The rebel's exercise of power is wrong-headed and pathetic. Everyone except grandma has forgotten his original self-worth and sacredness. They believe they are powerless, and so they are.

What were the producers thinking in making this film? A line of Portman’s dialogue could be her answer: “I really just did it for myself ‘cause I’m selfish. Sorry.”

If you like Hesher, you might enjoy:  I’m Still Here; Greenberg; Please Give.

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Hesher     2010  /  R  /  1 hour, 42 min

Cast Overview:  Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Devin Brochu, Rainn Wilson, Piper Laurie, Natalie Portman, John Carroll Lynch

Director:  Spencer Susser

Genre:  Indie Drama, Indie Dramedy

 

Everything Must Go *****

 

Nick Halsey is getting fired. It doesn’t matter that he’s been top dog in his sales district. His brawl with an important customer, and arrest for a DUI, show that he’s lost his grip. Will Ferrell stars in the deadpan comedy Everything Must Go.

Nick’s day gets worse. He arrives home to find all his possessions – clothes, old records, trophies – dumped on the front lawn.  His wife is gone. The locks have been changed. Nick leaves a message on her voicemail. “Can’t this happen another day?”

Based on the Raymond Carver short story Why Don’t You Dance?, the film develops beautifully the modern day loneliness of Carver’s characters. Ferrell (Stranger Than Fiction) nails it with an open, vulnerable performance. Writer director Dan Rush keeps it unsentimental, following Nick’s plodding and occasionally delightful progress.

Marooned on his front yard, his car repossessed and bank account frozen, Nick is forced to take stock and embark on an odyssey. Luckily it seldom rains in Phoenix (although there are lawn sprinklers to contend with). He settles back in his leather easy chair, gulping his way through two six packs. An unexpected ally Kenny (Christopher Jordan Wallace of Notorious) shows up, riding his bike, asking questions.

Kenny is a chubby neighborhood kid, smart, enterprising and fatherless. Samantha (Rebecca Hall of The Town) is Nick’s pretty, pregnant new neighbor, a good listener who’s waiting for her husband to arrive from across the country. Delilah (dynamic Laura Dern), with her exquisitely pained smile, is the soulful, empathetic high school friend who signed Nick’s yearbook.

 

Nick’s A.A. sponsor Frank Garcia (Michael Pena), a police detective, can keep him out of jail for five days as long as Nick calls his situation a yard sale. He’s losing patience with his friend’s on-again, off-again sobriety.

Nick consoles himself by breaking into his own back yard and pissing in his wife’s fishpond of Japanese koi. He watches home movies outdoors. His father was a mean drunk. His mother did love him. Nick bumps into his kinky neighbor (Stephen Root, hilarious) and his ex-boss (Glenn Howerton, textbook obnoxious).

Are we friends? Nick’s turning point is teaching Kenny baseball, embracing “a little less me and a little more we.” Eventually he faces the truth: he’s got to let go of his possessions, the debris of his life. He hires Kenny to help him with the yard sale.

“Give the customers what they want,” Nick coaches Kenny. “Make it easy for them to buy.” It turns out that Kenny has a knack for people pleasing and making sales. Soon he’s reading The Sales Bible, negotiating the best deals and slowly clearing the front yard.

Lashing out at sweet Samantha one day, Nick realizes how difficult he can be. Still he yearns to win back his wife, who we never meet. Visiting Delilah, Nick sees her making the best of raising two kids on her own. “You have a good heart, Nicholas. That doesn’t change,” she tells him.

There’s no grand epiphany in Everything Must Go. Change is ongoing, sometimes maddeningly slow. Friends can help.  

If you like Everything Must Go, you might enjoy:  Solitary Man; Barney’s Version; A Serious Man.

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Everything Must Go     2010  /  R  /  1 hour, 36 min

Cast Overview:  Will Ferrell, Rebecca Hall, Michael Pena, Christopher Jordan Wallace, Glenn Howerton, Stephen Root, Laura Dern 

Director:  Dan Rush

Genre:  Indie Drama, Dramedy, Dark Comedy

 

The Beaver *****

 

Mel Gibson bares his demons in The Beaver, the dark family drama about Walter Black’s unusual route to redemption from depression. Gibson’s friend Jodie Foster directs and co-stars as his wife Meredith.

Gibson’s alcoholism has been marked by bigoted rants and assaults on a former girlfriend. The film’s release was delayed to allow public outrage to cool. But there’s another Gibson: the actor who delivered raw, poignant performances in The Man Without a Face and Conspiracy Theory, and the gifted director of the much darker Braveheart, The Passion of the Christ and Apocalypto.

Gibson’s contrition is tangible as self-conscious, shambling Walter finds a ratty hand puppet in a dumpster. The use of The Beaver is bizarre and clever. Walter dubs him a “prescription puppet” who speaks to and for him in a cockney accent while the man comes to life. “I’m The Beaver, Walter, and I’m here to save your goddamned life.” Walter’s inner child is the only one who can save him.

Walter is a husband, father and toy company CEO who has checked out. Plagued by alcoholism and suicidal depression, his illness is generational. Gibson runs the gamut as Walter – vulnerable, withdrawn, submissive loser; effective CEO and sexual tiger; and raw, violent masochist. Like John Nash in A Beautiful Mind, Walter exorcises his illness in his own way. He seems to battle his father’s demon too, hoping to spare his own sons a living hell.

The Beaver marks a return to the profound dramas (The Accused; Little Man Tate; Nell) that Oscar winner and director Foster is known for. She conveys grim dignity here, a muted, nervous mom unlike her espresso-driven characters in Panic Room and The Brave One.

Following her success in Taxi Driver, the legendary Foster won Best Actress for both The Accused and The Silence of the Lambs. She also received a Saturn Award for the sci-fi drama Contact. Foster, who has two sons, directed Little Man Tate and Home for the Holidays, recently starring in Nim’s Island.

 “I make personal films,” the director said in a recent interview with indieWIRE. “When you know that you’re going to be on something for two years and it’s going to be the story of your life and you have to wake up at three in the morning and have ideas…it’s an obsession. In order to be obsessed with something, it has to be something that speaks from an incredibly primal place.”

It was brave to make a film so sunk in everyday darkness and despair. Walter eschews self-help books, therapy and drugs. He stopped seeing his shrink a year ago. Only his youngest son Henry (Riley Thomas Stewart) shares a pure, open connection with his Dad. It’s he who gives Walter a toy brain.

 

Anton Yelchin (Pavel Chekov in the 2009 Star Trek, and a repentant serial killer in Criminal Minds) plays cynical Porter Black who openly loathes his father. Porter sells term papers with great empathy. “I’m much better on paper,” he tells his friend Norah (Jennifer Lawrence). Oscar-nominated Lawrence (Winter’s Bone) plays a sensual cheerleader and 4.0 student who needs Porter to ghost her valedictorian’s speech.

Norah has a secret passion – tagging. “I like to do it big and fast,” she says of her graffiti art. Like so many artists, she paints from a cloud of tragedy and loss. Vulnerable and honest, both teens embrace grief. “Crazy is pretending to be happy,” says Porter.

The Beaver tackles big issues – mental illness; life meaning, and honoring our weirdness to become who we truly are. Walter is even willing to leave his family in the quest for self-love. When The Beaver is no longer needed, Walter must realize that he is not alone.

Gibson was "the first person I thought of" to play Walter Black, Foster told The New York Times. His turmoils gave him great insight into the character. Gibson "has a very, very rare quality to have lightness, to maintain charm but still go to a darker place.”

Foster just completed her part in Roman Polanski’s Carnage, and is about to start work on Elysium, a sci-fi thriller where she stars with Matt Damon. 

First-time screenwriter Kyle Killen develops his fresh idea and approach while challenging audiences to grow. Spot-on editing and beautiful production values make an enduring film that embraces the dark monsters we work so hard to flee.

If you like The Beaver, you might enjoy:  Win Win; City Island; In a Better World.

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The Beaver     2011  /  PG-13  /  1 hour, 39 min

Cast Overview:  Mel Gibson, Jodie Foster, Anton Yelchin, Jennifer Lawrence, Cherry Jones, Riley Thomas Stewart

Director:  Jodie Foster

Genre:  Drama

 

Miral ***1/2

 

A schoolgirl flirts with terrorism and falls in love in the controversial drama Miral. Jewish American director Julian Schnabel directs this film from a Palestinian perspective.

Miral follows four generations of Jerusalem-born Muslim women beginning in 1948, before Israel was formed. Hiam Abbass (The Visitor; Lemon Tree) plays Hind Husseini, an affluent woman who converts her father's estate into an orphanage for war refugees. Graceful Abbass conveys matter-of-fact compassion, especially in a scene where she finds children, huddled and dirty, abandoned on a street.

The character of Hind is based on the real social activist who founded the Dar El-Tifl El-Arabi orphanage and school. Hind meets quirky, charming Col. Edward Smith (Willem Dafoe) at a holiday party. The two sparkle together, but she chooses to devote her life to displaced Arab youth. Vanessa Redgrave shines in a very brief appearance.

The film also depicts the life of Nadia (Yasmine al Massri), beginning with a rape by her father. Schnabel (Before Night Falls; The Diving Bell and the Butterfly) reveals the scene by focusing on a bed frame moving up and down. Nadia flees home. Later, we see Nadia’s belly in slow motion, dreamlike, as she performs at a club. By the time Nadia gives birth to Miral, she is full of self-hate and drowns herself in the ocean.

Thrown into prison for punching a heckler on a bus, Nadia meets her compassionate cellmate Fatima (Ruba Blal), a nurse who helped a Palestinian prisoner escape from a hospital, and later left a bomb in a crowded theater.

After her mother’s death, Miral will live at Hind’s orphanage but will be allowed to visit her father Jamal (Alexander Siddig) every weekend. Siddig (Syriana) is wonderful as a devout Muslim.

Indian actress Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire) brings depth and complexity to the role of Miral. Following the Intifada in 1987, Miral is asked to teach Palestinian children in a refugee camp. She becomes radicalized and begins to fall in love with revolutionary Hani (Omar Metwally). 

 

Miral is detained for 24 hours, questioned and whipped. After the girl is released, Hind urges Miral not to get involved in politics, for it might endanger the orphanage. Jamal forbids Miral to hang out with Hani and his crowd. She screams at him, “You just don’t understand anything!”

Jamal sends Miral away to her aunt’s home in Haifa, where she meets her cousin’s Jewish Israeli girlfriend Lisa (played by Schnabel’s daughter Stella). As the friendship unfolds, Miral asks, “How can you love an Arab man?” He is a good man who "kisses like an angel," Lisa says. 

Can a budding terrorist reform? Miral comes full circle by the end of the film. Metwally (Munich; The City of Your Final Destination) is convincing as his idealism ultimately leads him in the direction of peace.

Miral is a moving study of personal transformation set in geopolitical turmoil. It is worth seeing despite numerous flaws. The project is marred by occasional preachiness, weak dialogue, uneven editing, odd musical score, and poor makeup to simulate aging for Hind.

Produced by the Weinstein Company, Miral’s screenplay was adapted by journalist Rula Jebreal from her own semi-autobiographical novel.

If you like Miral, you might enjoy:  Lemon Tree; Ajami.

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Miral  2010  /  PG-13  /  1 hour, 52 min

Cast Overview:  Hiam Abbass, Freida Pinto, Alexander Siddig, Omar Metwally, Yasmine Al Massri, Ruba Blal, Willem Dafoe, Vanessa Redgrave, Stella Schnabel

Director:  Julian Schnabel

Genre:  Drama, Foreign, Drama Based on the Book

Language: Arabic and English with English subtitles

Ajami ****

 

The Israeli drama Ajami reveals what it’s like to live in the Arab-Jewish city of Jaffa today. With a cast of mostly non-professional actors, it immerses us in a frenzy of desperate, heart-breaking episodes. Ajami won Best Picture at the Israeli Ophir Awards and was nominated for an Academy Award.

The Crash-like film’s myriad actors, stories and relationships are often difficult to follow. Writer-directors Yaron Shani (an Israeli from Tel Aviv) and Scandar Copti (a Palestinian from Jaffa) frenetically shift time and perspective. The same events are reenacted from different points of view. Chapter headings are used, but more linearity would have helped. Very late flashbacks clarify the big picture. 

Centuries long Middle Eastern animosities play out as the directors zoom in, initially on Arabs of various socioeconomic backgrounds. To their credit, Shani and Copti show rather than tell the stories. Absent are the maudlin emotions and farfetched coincidences of the American Oscar winner Crash.

Shot with hand-held cameras in medium close-up, Ajami is set in the streets, homes and restaurants of Jaffa.

Ajami is a tragedy. Bickering and animosity fill its dialogue as both sides struggle to exist. Survival dictates every breath. People scurry and hide. No one wants to be snuffed out in the latest shooting or bombing. If a drug lord or powerful family is offended, meetings are held and large fees paid to correct real or imagined offenses.

Family ties become an excuse for violence. Senseless murders happen. Ajami’s beginning and end are sickening and inevitable.

Crime thrives. Arab on Arab violence and exploitation (Muslims by Christians and Palestinians by Israeli Arabs) poisons the community of scarce resources and few options. Poverty is more compelling than racism.

Several major stories emerge. Omar (Shahir Kabaha) is a Muslim Israeli Arab teen whose uncle shot a gangbanger in self-defense. Omar’s neighbor is shot when Bedouin assassins mistake the boy for Omar. Now his family is deeply indebted to a Christian Arab godfather Abu Elias (Youssef Sahwani) for protection.

 

Omar and his artistic kid brother Nasri (Fouad Habash) scramble to raise cash. They steal car parts and sneak into Israel to work as illegals. A profitable drug deal lures them. Omar takes a huge gamble with the help of naïve Malek (Ibrahim Frege), a Palestinian teen who works with him in Abu Elias' kitchen. Malek needs money to pay for a lifesaving bone marrow transplant for his mother.

A dangerous love affair between Omar and Elias’ beautiful daughter Hadir (Ranin Karim) adds even more tension. Meanwhile an affluent Palestinian Binj (played by Copti) yearns to live with his Jewish girlfriend in Tel Aviv.

Dando (ex-policeman Eran Naim) is an exhausted, brutal Tel Aviv cop who’s also a dedicated family man. His soldier brother was kidnapped from an army base. Dando’s search for his brother eventually leads him to a drug bust.

First impressions and unreliable information lead the characters to wrong conclusions. Disastrous decisions are carried out.

Ajami, along with recent Israeli films The Band's Visit, Beaufort and Waltz with Bashir, is notable for its innovation and human perspective on Middle Eastern conflict.

For a region locked in violence, the directors suggest that the new generation, with its internet savvy and willingness to cross racial and religious divides, may hold a key to peace.

If you like Ajami, you might enjoy: Lemon Tree; Miral.

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Ajami    2009 / NR / 2 hours

Cast Overview: Fouad Habash, Nisrine Rihan, Elias Saba, Youssef Sahwani, Abu George Shibli, Ibrahim Frege, Scandar Copti, Shahir Kabaha, Hilal Kabob, Ranin Karim

Director: Scandar Copti, Yaron Shani

Genres: Drama, Foreign

Language: Arabic and Israeli with English subtitles

In a Better World *****

 

 

A father becomes a peacemaker in the Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning drama In a Better World.

Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier explores violence, courage and responsibility in this rich, mature drama, her tenth feature. She’s known for complex, well made films including Open Hearts (2002), Brothers (2004) and After the Wedding (2006).

Mikael Persbrandt (Everlasting Moments) stars as Anton, a surgeon working in a Kenyan field hospital. While he treats refugees, he’s interrupted by bloody emergencies as a local thug, Big Man, butchers pregnant women for sport.

Anton struggles to rescue his marriage to Marianne (Trine Dyrholm), also a doctor, who lives in Denmark with their two sons. Often away from home, Anton spends quality time whenever possible with 10-year-old Elias (Markus Rygaard), a gentle boy who wears braces.

Elias is viciously bullied at school by Sofus (Simon Maagaard Holm) and his followers, who make anti-Swedish comments. School officials misread the dangerous situation and seem unable to take effective action. Anton urges his son to ignore Sofus. Fighting would accomplish nothing except to lower him to the bully’s level, he says.

Elias is befriended by Christian (William Johnk Nielsen), a quiet, intense boy who moves to the area after his mother dies of cancer. Christian advises Elias to fight back so others won’t dare pick on him.

Christian corners Sofus in a school bathroom one day, beating him with a bicycle pump and holding a knife to his throat. Horrified Elias looks on. Police are called, but charges are dropped when they are unable to find the knife.

It’s attack or be attacked, Christian tells his father Claus (Ulrich Thomsen). He accuses the man of wanting his mother to die. Claus tries to explain his complex emotions during his wife’s painful decline.

 

At the park one day, Anton breaks up a fight between a boy and his youngest son as Elias and Christian watch.   Suddenly Anton is insulted and slapped by the boy’s father Lars (Kim Bodnia).

Anton walks away and attempts to forgive. He swims off his anger later in the cold lake of his summer home. Elias asks his dad why he is such a wimp. Anton next tries to craft a teachable moment, revisiting Lars with the boys.  He speaks out and is slapped again.

Christian builds a pipe bomb using internet instructions, planning to blow up Lars’ van. Outwardly calm and serious, he urges Elias to accompany him. The explosion will happen early Sunday and no one will be hurt, he promises. Reluctantly, Elias agrees.

Back in Kenya, Big Man has been seriously wounded and is brought to the hospital.  The warlord orders Anton to save his leg, and offers him a bribe. The surgeon treats him because he must. When villagers take matters into their own hands, Anton is a helpless witness.

A flawed man struggling to live his truth, Anton chooses peace and surrenders the satisfaction of being right. He can’t change the world, but he can be present and loving. In a Better World suggests that all children belong to us.

Bier skillfully manages many story elements to craft a majestic film. Morton Soborg provides stunning camerawork. Screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen, composer Johan Soderqvist and editor Pernille Bech Christensen lend their talents.

If you like In a Better World, you might enjoy:  Win Win; The Kids Are All Right; Precious.

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In a Better World     2010  /  R  /     1 hour, 53 min

Cast Overview:  Mikael Persbrandt, Trine Dyrholm, Ulrich Thomsen, Markus Rygaard, William Johnk Nielsen, Bodil Jorgensen, Elsebeth Steentoft, Martin Buch, Anette Stovlebaek, Kim Bodnia

Director:  Susanne Bier

Genre:  Drama, Thriller, World Cinema

Language:  Danish and Swedish with English subtitles

 

 

White Material *****

 

 

As very white, very petite Maria Vial (Isabelle Huppert) hangs on to the back of a bus full of locals in a war-torn, African nation, it’s tempting to see her as tenacious, naïve and arrogant.

Claire Denis directs this purposefully disjointed, unsentimental look at postcolonialism in her native Africa. This is Denis’ most potent drama since Beau Travail (1999). She is also known for a more nuanced look at colonialism in Chocolat (1988).

Huppert and other characters emerge as symbols late in this well-wrought tale. By then we are engrossed in their personal struggles as violence threatens their family-owned coffee plantation. Vial refuses to be intimidated. She respects her workers and treats them well, firmly convinced of her right to be there.  

Workers abandon the crop when they hear that Vial is sheltering The Boxer (Isaach De Bankole, quiet and mysterious as ever), a rebel leader.  Struggling to harvest the coffee beans, Vial pauses to feed and care for the injured Boxer. She confides that her native France holds nothing for her. Life on this frontier is all she wants.

 

After warrior children invade the estate, they gorge on junk food.  Finally they pass out, sleeping peacefully amidst toys and guns.

Where will the whites go and who will they become? Nicolas Duvauchelle is terrifying as Vial’s radicalized son Manuel. Her ex-husband Andre (Christophe Lambert) pleads with her to escape with him to safety.

A radio announcer scorns the colonialists as “white material,” a phrase coined to describe the cheap trinkets they brought with them to Africa.

If you like White Material, you might enjoy:  35 Shots of Rum; Even the Rain; The Last Lions.

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White Material     2009  /  NR  /  1 hour, 42 min 

Cast Overview:  Isabelle Huppert, Isaach De Bankole, Christophe Lambert, Nicolas Duvauchelle, William Nadylam, Adele Ado, Ali Barkai, Daniel Tchangang, Michel Subor  

Director:  Claire Denis

Genre:  Drama, Foreign

Language: French, African with English subtitles