ELFF, Day 2

Treeless Mountain (Kim, 2008)
So Yong Kim’s Treeless Mountain takes the problems of children quite seriously. Granted, they are fairly unusual problems: when their mother leaves town, sisters Jin and Bin are sent to live with their aunt—a woman who lacks the motherly affection and ability to provide for them. As Jin and Bin cope with the bleakness of their situation, they rapidly mature, doing all they can to bring their mother home. With a fairly minimalist style, the film beautifully captures both the loss of childhood innocence and the simplicity of childhood fantasy. I was especially struck by the claustrophobia of the extreme close-up shots of people’s faces as contrasted with the very open landscape shots. The story and style are simple yet powerful. An amazing and beautiful film.
Rating: 5/5


My Winnipeg (Maddin, 2007)
Surrealism tends to distance viewers rather than draw them into the film. I’m not against such distancing, and it can certainly be enjoyable, but it’s not usually so much fun. Guy Maddin’s surrealist documentary My Winnipeg, however, is just that—sheer fun. Maddin endeavors to explain what makes it so difficult for people to escape from his hometown of Winnipeg. In order to explore the lasting effects the city has had on him personally, Maddin hires actors (and his mother) to re-create memorable scenes from his childhood so that he can study them in the hopes of understanding why they stand out in his memory. The film is intensely personal and yet entirely universal in its treatment of childhood and nostalgia. This was the first of Maddin’s films that I’ve seen, and it’s a testament to how much I enjoyed it that I immediately went home and added the rest of his films to my Netflix queue.
Rating: 5/5

The Edge of Heaven (Akin, 2007)
The situations and plot are obviously quite contrived, but the characters are interesting enough that the film doesn’t feel overly forced. In fact, the first two of its three main sections begin by announcing the death of a character, yet these deaths are still startling and saddening. The characters feel utterly real, and the film succeeds at making viewers understand them and to some degree sympathize with them, even when we don’t want to. I felt completely drawn in if only because I wanted to know what each character would do next and how he/she would handle the latest devastating obstacle. Though the pacing is a bit slow, for the most part this works to showcase the characters and give us more time to get to know them. The Edge of Heaven is a solid and alluring film, and a good way to close out an incredible day of film-viewing.
Rating: 4/5