The Conical Glass: At the festival: Part 1

Monday, May 07, 2007

At the festival: Part 1

The 50th annual San Francisco International Film Festival is winding down, and it remains to be seen how it compares to previous fests in terms of attendance, but all of the screenings I attended were pretty full. Every year, there seems to be some hand-wringing in the press about how SFIFF compares to other festivals in terms of scoring prestigious films and premieres. A few years ago, the Film Society hired an executive director primarily because of her "Hollywood connections," and no one seemed happy with the way things worked out, despite the fact that she did get Warren Beatty and a few other notables to travel north to accept awards. The current director, Graham Leggat, is a bald, 47-year-old Brit with a lilting accent who seems to have been embraced by Film Society members; having attended a number of members' events over the past few years, I know how contentious they can be. (Things that make the membership testy: too many films in English, and too many films that are "mainstream" enough to have already secured distribution deals. If SFIFF had presented something like "Spider-Man Week," which was part of this year's Tribeca Film Festival, Leggat would have been run out of town on a rail.)

Leggat seems perfectly content to aim the festival at the film-crazed fans of San Francisco, which is as it should be. The award recipients also seemed calculated to please: always-edgy Spike Lee received the directors' award, while Peter Morgan, who was rather obscure in this country until his script for "The Queen" was nominated for an Oscar, got the Kanbar Award for excellence in screenwriting. Robin Williams received the Peter J. Owens Award for acting, but since he's local, I guess we can cut him some slack. (Did anyone at his Q&A ask about the brave cinematic choices he made in his magnum opus "R.V."? What about "Patch Adams" or "Bicentennial Man"?)

Joe and I attended both Lee's and Morgan's special events. Spike Lee was interviewed onstage by former San Francisco critic Wesley Morris at the Castro Theatre, and proved himself to be a man of few words. It wasn't easy for Morris to draw him out. If it had been me, I think I would have been sweating bullets after the first few minutes. At one point, Morris tried a few "Inside the Actors' Studio" type oddball queries ("What is your favorite word?"), and Lee was having none of it. He seemed a tad more animated when he responded to audience questions. Luckily, Lee communicates beautifully with a movie camera; after the Q&A, Parts 2 & 3 of his HBO documentary "When the Levees Broke" were screened. It's a documentary about Hurricane Katrina and, not surprisingly, was incredibly depressing; Part 3 ends with the funeral of a 5-year-old victim who was swept away by the rising floodwaters. Nevertheless, it's an important piece of work, and Lee did entertain as well as enlighten in '06, since the wonderful "Inside Man" also came out last year.

Peter Morgan was far more loquacious than Lee, enjoying a friendly chat with local critic/legend David Thomson. The film chosen to represent Morgan's oeuvre was "The Deal," a precursor to "The Queen," made by the same director (Stephen Frears) and also starring Michael Sheen as Tony Blair. Morgan gave us a bit of a rundown on British politics so we Yanks would understand what was going on in the film. It covers Blair's career as a Member of Parliament, focusing on his friendship with Gordon Brown, another young, ambitious and fast-rising Labour Party politician. When the head of the Labour Party dies and the search for a successor begins, the slick, Southern-friendly Blair faces off against the Northern, more rough-hewn Brown. "The Deal" isn't quite as compelling as "The Queen" because, well, it doesn't have Helen Mirren, but it was surprisingly entertaining and seemed to delight the Anglophile audience. Morgan tantalized with the prospect of a Part III, which will cover Blair's relationship with George W. Bush.

Still to come: we see & review approximately 1/40th of the films screened at SFIFF!

posted by 125records @ 11:11 AM

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