Opinion Pompous Premieres at Berlin Film Festival
Self-indulgence is an entertaining if painful part of any film festival and it's in plentiful supply at this year's Berlin Film Festival.
In the case of Holllywood's "The Good Shepherd", about the birth of America's foreign intelligence service, the pain is quite physical after 167 minutes without a break. It's a bit like going through a Cold War interrogation.
The slow-moving plot is replete with poetic symmetry which conveys great depth and no doubt boosts the movie's chances in the competition for the Golden Bear award at the Berlin Film Festival. Yet its central message appears to be that life in the CIA puts a strain on your personal life -- not a groundbreaking revelation.
Assuming that the point needs to be made at all, it could have been conveyed more effectively in half the time, for example by cutting some of the endless scenes in which Matt Damon, who plays the central character, stares pensively at the floor saying nothing.
Length isn't the problem with Steven Soderbergh's "The Good German," 62 minutes shorter at 105. The drama set in post-war Berlin aims to recreate an authentic film noir look and to this end is filmed in black and white with 1940s sound and lighting technology, and with fixed focal length camera lenses from the period. Whether this approach and the unusual title will help the film's chances of winning an award remains to be seen.
The film begs the question: Why bother? 1940s film-making was perfected in the 1940s. Can a 1940s film made today even come close to the classics of the period? Sure enough, this one doesn't. This film, which is also in the Berlinale's main competition, looks like an exercise in cinematography and to the ordinary viewer its main point seems to be a show of directorial talent.
Hot air
But then, actors and directors celebrating themselves and each other is as much part of any film festival as the squelching red carpets rolled out all over rainy Berlin this week.
The 140 minutes of the Berlinale's opening film, worthy French biopic "La Vie en Rose" about the tragic life of Edith Piaf, are forgivable given that it packs in 30 of her songs. More difficult to excuse is the hopelessly complicated structure of the film, which keeps jumping back and forth to different chapters of the life of France's most cherished singer, who died of cancer aged just 47 in 1963. After being transported from 1918 to 1959, back to 1920, then to 1963 etcetera, it's tempting to give up on the storyline and wait patiently for the next song.
The film culminates with "Non, Je ne regrette rien." Not all paying viewers will share the sentiment of that particular Piaf classic.
Swiss-Jewish director Dani Levy's comedy about Hitler, "My Führer - The Truly Truest Truth About Adolf Hitler," being shown in the Berlinale's German cinema section, is show-stoppingly pretentious. "I do not want to accord this cynical, psychically desolate person the honour of a realistic depiction," says Levy. No one was asking that. It just had to be funny.
There's nothing wrong with ambition, and cinema has always been about experimentation. But the principle 'less is more' holds true in the cinema world like in any other. Film-makers gathered in Berlin should take a break and watch Stephen Frears' Oscar-nominated "The Queen" about the days following Diana's death in 1997. Understated, simple and just 97 minutes long.
