Popcorn & Candy: Slumdog Serenade
DCist's highly subjective and hardly comprehensive guide to the most interesting movies playing around town in the coming week.
As Slumdog Millionaire bears down on Oscar night the odds-on favorite to capture plenty of little golden statue glory — hopefully at the expense of potential big-time loser Benjamin Button — it seems a good time for a screening of another film about the oft-ignored under-classes of a major city. In the case of Marcel Camus's Black Orpheus, the city is Rio de Janeiro, and the time is carnival. While not as gritty as City of God (or even Orfeo, the 1999 remake), this 1959 film gave world audiences a look at life in the poorer quarters of Rio they'd never seen before, as well as introducing Antonio Carlos Jobim, and bossa nova music in general, to many outside of Brazil for the first time.
Camus's film is a modern recasting of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice — it's a popular story for film, literature, and musical adaptations and references, perhaps because of Orpheus' position as both a venerated poet & musician and a brave mythical hero. And his tragic end after coming this close to accomplishing the impossible in his attempt to rescue his deceased love from Hades-fire makes for an excellent story. In Black Orpheus, Camus makes Orpheus a poor trolley driver (and aspiring musician) bound to a fiancée he doesn't really love. His Eurydice is a mistress, who is being pursued by a death-masked reveler in the impending Carnival, as well as by his jealous fiancé once she catches wind of their affair. If you know the myth (or Greek tragedy in general), you can see where this is headed; but despite its inevitably dark ending, Camus uses the bright colors of Rio and the bouncy rhythms of the bossa nova to create a vibrant and inspiring landmark of a film.
View the trailer.
Wednesday at 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. at the Anacostia Community Museum. Free.
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You probably figure you've seen this movie before, right? Inexperienced teacher gets stuck in a class of rambunctious minorities from the rough part of town, and everyone rises above their differences and is inspired by the unsullied beauty of knowledge instilled with passion and talent. This plot has been done so many times it practically writes itself. The fact that French director Laurent Cantet has made a movie within this framework yet turned the entire formula on its head is probably a big part of the reason for the film's huge success, which includes the top prize at Cannes last year and a nomination for best foreign film at the Oscars. Cantet's film is based on François Bégaudeau's semi-autobiographical novel of his own experiences as a teacher; Bégaudeau stars here, essentially in a fictionalized version of his own life. That, combined with Cantet's rigorous and lengthy preparation with the student actors and his constant use of multiple cameras within the classroom (where most of the film takes place) gives the film a sense of documentary realism that trumps the inspiration-by-numbers of the average student/teacher drama.
View the trailer.
Opens tomorrow at Bethesda Row and E Street.
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It's difficult not to raise a skeptical eyebrow while watching the trailer for The Matador. It's a story of love, we're told in standard movie sloganeering. Of a boy for his family, a people for their culture. And then comes the money line: "and of a man for the bull." Ah, so it's love that prompts the taunting, torturing, and eventual death of the beast. I guess when they stab him, it feels like a kiss. The disconnect between the brutality of the sport and the vision of the matchup between matador and bull as a noble battle is one of the subjects of this documentary, which addresses these paradoxes non-judgmentally. The titular subject is David Fandila (aka El Fandi), a wunderkind of the bullfighting world who set out to become one of only a few bullfighters to ever compete in over 100 bullfights in a single year. The film follows his quest to become the top-ranked toreador as it examines the cultural and familial forces that brought him to his current revered position.
View the trailer.
Wednesday at 8 p.m. at The Avalon with local co-director Nina Gilden Seavey in attendance for a Q&A. $10 ($8.50 for Avalon members).
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While not the best, and far from the best known, film for either of the principals involved here, Mr. & Mrs. Smith is well worth checking out if only to see the unlikely combination of thrill-master Alfred Hitchcock directing a screwball romantic comedy. And one with Carole Lombard, the acknowledged queen of the genre. Lombard is married to Robert Montgomery, and the couple have a little game they play every month where they get to ask each other one question and must answer honestly. Eventually, Lombard asks if her hubby would marry her again given the chance. It seems odd that it's taken this long for the couple to get to a question this dangerous in this ill-advised game of candor, but when Montgomery answers that he might not, trouble is brewing. By the kind of coincidence these movies thrive on, the couple finds out separately that their marriage is, in fact, not legal. Hilarity ensues.
View the trailer.
Tomorrow, and Sunday through Tuesday, at the AFI.
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Black Maria Festival shorts collection
Black Maria was the name that Thomas Edison gave to the New Jersey building that would essentially become the world's first movie studio. He'd invented a means of showing films, so naturally he needed to make some content for showing them. And Black Maria was born. Now Black Maria is the name of a long-running New Jersey-based festival of experimental film and video. Their mission is to "advocate, exhibit and reward cutting edge works from independent film and videomakers". Following the festival's award ceremony in early February, the festival takes its award-winning films on the road. From now until June the collection will screen at dozens of locations across the country, and D.C. gets its turn this weekend, as the feature-length program has a single showing at the National Gallery.
Saturday at 2 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art. Free.