Many days life is not precisely film. The alarm sounds and you have to work to eat, so that the wheel continues to turn. It is worth asking how we get to this. Everyone will have their answer. That of Teddy Gatz, protagonist of Bugonia, Of Yorgos Lanthimos, presented at the Venice Festival contest, is peculiar: a biotechnological submission that the Andromedians imposed us. Something may not be right: difficult to explain the impeccable skin and luck of so many senior managers. They must be aliens. Or maybe the rare are everyone else, for not understanding anything. In the face of unknowns, more and more conspiracy theories sprout. But those attending Venice’s Mostra found a much more solid alternative on Thursday: the new Greek director film landed at the Festival. He brought rhythm, ideas, debates. And to another creature from the stars: Emma Stone.
The last time director and actress arrived together at the festival, two years ago, they took the Golden Lion with Poor creatures. Stone also left one of the most notable interpretations of his career. With high risk included: much of the footage passed naked. This time, instead of clothes, he removes his hair. “It was very easy. Just use the blade,” he joked before the press about his shaved. His talent, in any case, knows how to shine in any project and condition. That is why a young woman had a day and a half planted in front of the red carpet of the Mostra with a poster: “Fan (de) Emma Stone”. Indication, in passing, of the status that the interpreter has reached, even in a day that hosted the Divo de Divos, George Clooney, the protagonist of Jay Kelly. Another track came with the first question of journalists: how does Stone manage his fame? “Somehow, today we all deal with that, we identify with that feeling that someone believes to know who you are and that you do not have much control of your avatar out there. I am, and the other me. The one that comes here, and the one I am with my family and friends. In my mind I separate them to keep myself healthy.”
Among their loved ones surely already appears Lanthimos. Here is the fourth collaboration followed between them. And a notable improvement in the face of the previous one, Kinds of Kindness: The director does not seek to epatar at all costs, which has sometimes weighed his cinema, but puts his talent at the service of history. No free provocations. With visual flashes, suspense, squeaky music, irony and a great script by Will Tracy, remake of the Korean feature film of 2003 Save the Green Planet!, of Jang Joon-Hwan. And with an amazing interpretation of another star that repeats with the Greek: Jesse Plemons. “One of the best things is to always invite the same team. A very safe environment is created within which we can explore and be free,” said Stone. The whole movie, thus, becomes a duel. For saving, between a man obsessed with the extraterrestrial machinations and the executive he kidnap. Of action, between two heavy pesos. And, perhaps the most fascinating, of issues, arguments and criticism.
The character of Plemons unleashes a usual repertoire: it is not reported through the media, it refuses “the cultural axioms” of mass, erects granitic certainties on any matter, which I swears having read thousands of pages. Poor the millions of sheep who still believe in the system: he has managed to get out of the Gray. “It is a soul sorry and tortured, which seeks with all its strength to help, even if it seems crazy,” said Plemons. What makes it impossible, basically, talk with your character. Although the directive is not missing contradictions: it is tired of repeating “diverse” in a course on … diversity. And it opens doors only apparent in your company, to close them immediately after: proclaims the freedom to leave at 17.30, except, of course, that there are pending tasks. And that will also sound familiar to more than one.
“They had never given me a script that was so relevant. Three years ago and now, unfortunately, more. I would not define this film as a dystopia. A good part is quite real, it is happening. People will soon have to choose a right path. If not, I don’t know how long we will have,” Lanthimos said. Climate change, their denial and some more transcendence issue came up. There was even a question about the possibility that we are not alone in the universe. The director said herself unable to answer such a serious matter. Stone considered the “quite narcissistic” idea, hence he jokes that he does believe in aliens. In addition, he confessed his passion for the series Cosmosby Carl Sagan. Before dilemmas of this magnitude, the end of the film offers an answer again: we do not know if humans are the only living beings in space. Yes, certainly, the most idiots.
The show faced more unfathomable mysteries. When Francis Ford Coppola, yesterday Wednesday, he delivered the Golden Lion of Honor to Werner Herzog, he recalled Aguirre, the anger of God, Fitzcarraldo o Gaspar Hauser’s enigma and celebrated like this: “I had never seen films like those, all unique and very different from each other, magnificent.” The legend of the German director now extends with the documentary Ghost Elephants, out of competition. At 82, the myth is still wanting to take the road behind a story. And film it. This time, it follows a scientist who enters Angola in search of the largest elephants who have stepped on the planet. The ghosts of the title. To its cause are added Bosquimanse trackers, descendants of the first population that inhabited Africa. Hence the film mixes ancient techniques and traditions with technological avant -garde, knows how to marvel, but also entertain and, above all, infect the spectator the mystique of exploration. Although the film itself questions the objective: “Would it be better to find the ghost elephants or to remain a dream?” In the end it turns out. Tell having seen a beautiful movie. And confirmed that Herzog continues in full form.
László Nemes, on the other hand, does not find the way to triumph again. Your prima opera, Saul’s sonhe shook the world of cinema in 2015. He took enthusiastic criticism, an Oscar and the stupefaction before a risky success: he showed the horror of the holocaust only through the face of an Auschwitz prisoner, without ever taking off his camera. With Sunsetin 2018, he repeated the technique, but much less the result, or the impact. Rather, the opposite. Eight years have passed, and the Hungarian filmmaker returns with his third length, Orphan (Orphan). He tells the story of a child who, after World War II, loses the father and lives in the constant hope that he will return. The Nemes parent really happened. And surely, unfortunately, many more. However, the plot is the best trick that the film has. Legitimate, no doubt. But insufficient for the world’s oldest film festival.