the dam

On a sunbaked desert in Sudan, Maher (Maher El Khair) appears, the principal character of Ali Cherri's film The Dam. He silently works among his fellow brickmakers. Meanwhile, a violent revolution is going on in the country. It's on the radio (which takes some tampering with to get reception), on TV. Him and his mates listen and watch, but do not discuss. Off in the distance, on the Nile, the waters of a dam roar--a monstrous development of technology and humankind that in power and scope is in such ferocious contrast to the menial, physical work we see. But there are similarities too--cyclical, ritualistic-like aspects that mirror the daily lives of the brickmakers. Contrast, and some parallels, are found in some of the film's visual cues: the lit-up car of their boss shelling out little (and sometimes no) pay; a tarp painting for tourists of the Nubian pyramids--labor of centuries and centuries ago.

Simmering disquiet and distress, both bodily and emotional, runs throughout and also plays within Maher's own individualistic, yet fablelike tale.  The idea of the fable, with its surreal touches (a wobbly, mud caked mountain speaks to Maher in a shuddery voice in daydreams and nightmares, with twitching branched roots) and visual flourishes are interlinked with Cherri's down-to-earth, near-documentarian presentation (the cast are made up of "non-actors"). Because of global and local events and logistical challenges, The Dam was filmed over the course of five years. The film ends up feeling delicately executed, assiduously edited by Isabelle Manquillet and Nelly Quettier. Some of the movie's quietly stewing anguish is inferred in the subtle use of electronic artist ROB's throbbing score.

Cherri, a visual artist, collaborates particularly well with cinematographer Bassem Fayad. Fayad's work--its play with imagery, with shadow and light, sun hours and moon hours--is often stirring and stunning. There are the most minute bits of movements within still frames (soap suds quietly drifting across the frame until no longer evident; mud moving in the most fine-drawn way, as if captured in prisms of convection, but also unreal as if alive). Fayad and Cherri end up capturing the unearthly in earth itself. ***

-Jeffery Berg 

film score tu(n)esday!

Here are some of my favorite film scores so far from this year!

Shane Carruth - Upstream Color

The score by the film's director / actor / writer (impressive) was really alluring, inventive and was my key into a movie which, at times, was a bit murky.

Alexander Ebert - All is Lost

Ebert's (of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros) melodic score made Robert Redford's trials and tribulations at sea a little more interesting to watch.

"Popular music usually has a chorus that needs to repeat, and people need to remember the song. That's sort of the major guideline when you're writing a song. And to be able to write something that did not have a chorus — and that would play for as long as it needed to and naturally disappear and come back whenever it needed to ... for me, that was very natural, actually. It was super liberating." -Alexander Ebert

Explosions in the Sky & David Wingo - Prince Avalanche

"Alone Time" is my favorite cue and its placement in the film is quite lovely.

Jóhann Jóhannsson - Prisoners

So I fell for this wacky, overlong melodrama mystery set in a wintery suburb in Pennsylvania.  The laconic score by Icelandic composer Jóhannsson is a good match with Roger Deakins' beautiful, moody photography.

Cliff Martinez - Only God Forgives

After Drive, this movie and its use of music was a bit of a letdown but Martinez offers a memorable cut "Wanna Fight?" that's pretty much the film's only highlight.

Thomas Newman - Side Effects

Chilly and repetitive, but with a slight playful tone, Newman's score to Steven Soderbergh's is very fitting and guides the movie's eeriness and myriad of plot twists.

Steven Price - Gravity

Some have complained that Price's score is a bit overwrought but I thought it added nicely to the tension and the movie's thrill-ride mentality.  It makes sense that Price was previously a music editor, since this score plays a lot with bombast and silence.

"The visuals are incredibly beautiful, but equally, it's the most terrifying thing you've ever seen in lots of ways. So the music had to do both of those things and feel kind of very organic and very textural, but equally kind of help your stomach to drop when things were spinning around you." -Steven Price

Max Richter - Wadjda

Modern classical composer Richter provided some soulful music for this deceptively simple Saudi Arabian tale.

Rob - Maniac

Throbbing mosaic of music from the Phoenix bandmate with traces of Air and John Carpenter.

"I wanted to do something very melancholic and sentimental that's related to his childhood trauma—very naive melodies and a very soft and childish mood, so that it can contrast with the violence and the horror." 

-Rob

Skrillex & Cliff Martinez - Spring Breakers

The garishness of Skrillex and the moodiness of Martinez's usual music is well-matched to the vibe of this raw, neon-hearted farce.

Hans Zimmer - 12 Years a Slave

I guess the main complaint is that Zimmer's music sounds so similar to his work on Inception and The Thin Red Line. I definitely get it and Zimmer has never been one of my favorite composers, but I found the dreamy string motif "Solomon" was used so hauntingly and beautifully throughout--doggedly stuck in different scenes of different emotions.

maniac score

One of my favorite elements of the new film Maniac was Italo-electro inspired score.

Love the Get a Room! remix (free mp3!) of the main theme.

Here's a behind-the-scenes clip with Rob discussing his work on the film.

clip via Bloody Disgusting

soundtrack vinyl available on Death Waltz Records

check out my review of Maniac here

he's a maniac

Don't go on internet dates. That was one thing I took away from Franck Khalfoun's Maniac, a deeply lurid remake of the grimy and macabre exploitation 1980 horror flick of the same name.  On Halloween's first person POV killer's heels, the original film was a controversial one and a midnight matinee hit, pushing the limits of cinematic violence.  In an era of countless low-budget gross-out torture porn (though perhaps more glossily so nowadays) horror movies, this remake of Maniac seems somewhat superfluous, though it finds its own stylish and gruesome retro groove.  Co-scripted by Alexandre Aja (The Hills Have Eyes, Haute Tension), Maniac literally gets us in the head of serial killer Frank (Elijah Wood) who scalps his victims and sometimes uses their hair for his collection of mannequins in his warehouse buzzing with flies.  Unaware of Frank's hunting knife murder prowls, pretty French photographer Anna (Nora Arnezeder) happens to admire one of his mannequins in his warehouse window and soon enlists him in helping with a gallery show.

The original Maniac was a grimy downtown Manhattan affair, this reboot lurks around downtown L.A. Sometimes darkly satirical about the city's pretentiousness, throughout, Khalfoun stages operatic, gory killings, set to a dirge-like, electronic score by Rob (of the French pop band Phoenix). Overall the film seems Drive-inspired. I loved the contrast between the sense of a larger population of people within the buildings of twinkling neon with the film's sense of suffocating isolation in all those dark desolate lots, apartment hallways, train stations, and alleys.

Maniac is a movie for horror fans. There are noticeable references to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Silence of the Lambs.  For those who like gross-out gore, this one definitely doesn't disappoint, including a very sanguinary coda with makeup special effects from Tom Savini's (who did the memorable effects for the original) protegee Mike McCarty.  I'm a horror fan, especially of the retro sort, but I do prefer a bit of a distance from my movie killers. Maniac goes for the jugular by almost always focusing things through Frank's perspective. This includes his victims' elaborate deaths, bright, shattering migraines, steel wool hand-washings and crude childhood flashbacks.  In this regard, Khalfoun's film is impressively mounted with compelling cinematography by Maxime Alexandre and skillful editing by Baxter, both of whom have worked on Aja's films.

The director notes, "Using Frank’s hands became very important to the concept. How to shoot his hands without it seeming comedic was a challenge onto itself. Now focal length, depth of field, and the actual rigs we used became dominant factors in telling the story. For some scenes, we had three actors playing Frank’s hands because of camera movements, and they had to be coordinated. Many days were trial and error and sometimes it took building three or four different rigs until we figured out a shot. Even though it seemed very simple and very low-tech at first, it was incredibly challenging."  This experiment is often pulled off quite well and I admired it, even if it may leave you, as it did I, deeply queasy.  **1/2