Tuesday, October 8
Alright, as with the last one of these, i'll just dive right into it, since most of the film fest experience for the day is captured in the regular blog post. There may be some repetition from the short blurbs i gave in the blog.
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THE UMBRELLA FAIRY
This movie absolutely devastated me.
It's an anime film, and from the description on the Sitges web site, i had gone in expecting something like Princess Mononoke. It starts out with a narration giving the lore of the world. Warring kingdoms, dead royalty, it is now a time of peace, pretty standard stuff. Then we move to the inside of a museum for enchanted artifacts, and meet the fairies that live inside of them. Since these are artifacts, their proper owners tend to be long gone, and all of these fairies without masters struggle with the idea that they aren't able to carry out their missions.
I guess the seeds of what would eventually put a bullet in my heart were there right from the start, but i didn't see it that way at the time. For the first twenty or so minutes, everything feels very lighthearted and silly. It's beautifully animated, but the tone was not working for me. I felt like i was not the target audience, as i am not a seven year old. I wondered how this even got into a festival like Sitges. I thought about walking out, but that is not a thing that i do. I've seen plenty of bad movies in the theater and have yet to walk out of one. Other than Black Hawk Down, but that was because my date puked on me. In the nearly quarter-century since, i've never revisited the movie, though.
Once the characters embark on their journey and leave the museum, though, things get deep quickly. Heavy themes of loss and grief, outliving your purpose, failing to protect your loved ones, and trying desperately to find meaning after they're gone. It's everything i've been grappling with for the last year and a half.
A lot of people have said a lot of things to me, but the worst thing i've felt, which has hung around my neck this whole time, is the sense that i have outlived my usefulness, that i am beyond my final mission, which i had failed. In the end, i couldn't protect her. And now i have no purpose.
This movie is the first thing i have encountered that addresses that feeling directly. In all of the things i've done and people i've talked to and materials i've read and seen, i have not yet had that feeling addressed.
I'm going to fully spoil the end of this movie, by the way, so if you don't want that, skip ahead to the next section.
By the time we got to the scene where the artificer repairs the flute, i was openly weeping in the theater. I couldn't stop, as hard as i tried. My face didn't get this wet in the rain last night. It only gets harder from there.
...
i have to stop. I'm writing this on the train and i have to stop. i'll finish this tonight when i'm at the hostel alone.
Full spoilers from here (highlight to read). I'm gonna end up keeping this short, though.
Mo Yang, the human artificer, is a rarity, in that he can fully interact with fairies; most humans go about their lives unaware of the fairies' existence. There's only one other character in the film that can hear fairies, but not see or touch them.
Across the course of the film, Mo Yang and the Umbrella Fairy, Qingdai, get very close, and near the end start calling each other partners. They make a pact that, after all of this is done, they'll go travel the world together.
During the final confrontation - i won't call it a battle, that's not really what happens, but there is a struggle - Qingdai has to enter the mirror dimension to save the lives of the other fairies. A human cannot enter, though, it would be certain death. Qingdai is able to defeat one antagonist, her own sister, not by violence, but by healing her trauma. It is strongly implied that her sister dies anyway. There's no way she can kill the main antagonist, so the plan is just to get the other fairies out of the mirror dimension, and seal it, but she's overwhelmed and can't both save the fairies and hold off the villain.
With no other choice, Mo Yang enters the mirror dimension, taking care of the villain while Qingdai gets the fairies to safety. He ages by decades before our eyes in doing this, but is able to repair the rips that have been made in reality. Qingdai refuses to leave him, but he pushes her back out of the portal, and seals it from the inside, as he dies.
Back in the real world, Qingdai finds that she's able to interact with physical objects, something fairies are not able to do. The oldest and wisest fairy, Grandpa Turtleshell, reveals that if a human gives their life to save a fairy, that fairy becomes human. She is now free of her bond to the Umbrella and can liver her life as she pleases.
There is a montage that goes on for a couple of minutes of Qingdai and the others mourning Mo Yang, in various states of broken down crying during otherwise routine parts of their days. It's implied that this goes on for some time - days, weeks, longer, i don't know.
Right as the credits roll, we see Qingdai packed and ready to leave the museum.
Then there are the last spoken lines in the movie, between Qingdai and Grandpa Turtleshell.
"We were supposed to see the world together."
"You'll just have to go and see it for him."
I broke.
Amanda and i had this exact conversation.
After she got her Stage IV diagnosis and we started having to have conversations about what would happen if she didn't make it, i said i would probably sell everything and just travel, just see the world, and make YouTube videos.
As another year ticked by and it started to look like treatment wasn't working, i tried to convince her that we should just go do it anyway. While she still could.
As we got closer to the end, she said something about me traveling on my own, after. I wish i could remember her exact words. But i clearly recall my own. I started crying immediately. "But wanted you to go with me."
And now here i am. I haven't sold anything and i'm not out doing this permanently. But part of the reason for the trip was to get a taste and see if i could. And now here i am, fifty-six days into the longest trip of my life, thousands of miles from home.
And seeing the exact thing that i've been doing to cope with my grief, represented on screen, at a film festival that i've dreamed of going to for years.
I'm not okay.
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THINGS WILL BE DIFFERENT
This was one that i'd skipped at the last couple of film festivals. It looked interesting, just not enough that i felt like it was a must see, so i prioritized other things, and the schedule never lined up for this one.
I thought this movie was good. It's pretty well made, anyway. The director's introduction was a bit off-putting, though. He talked about how his parents and siblings are all scientists, so he, as an artist, is the "black sheep." His words, not mine. So he wanted to make a movie for his scientist family that loves science fiction. He thought they would enjoy picking it apart and figuring out how everything works, with the time travel and the technology.
He said something to the effect of, "It's okay if you don't figure it all out, in fact i'd be surprised if you did figure everything out." Which just.
Kinda rubbed me the wrong way.
Don't talk down to me, buddy.
I didn't figure out Primer on the first viewing, either, but i felt okay about that. Didn't figure it out on the second or third. Still don't know if i've got everything. But i'm okay with that, because Primer is a smart movie, and there are a ton of little details that add up to something.
I did not feel like this movie had that. And i probably would have enjoyed the ride more if he hadn't slapped me with the gauntlet before the screening.
I'm pretty sure everything was straightforward, though, is the thing. I don't know what it is he thinks that the audience isn't going to figure out on a first runthrough, other than the villains' motives. I don't know why they're doing this. I don't feel like it was ever established.
I could be wrong. I doubt that i'll give this movie a second look, though.
Still. If there'd been a ballot, i'd have given it a four.
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NADIE INQUIETÓ MÁS - NARCISO IBÁÑEZ MENTA
I feel like i said everything i have to say about this one in my regular blog post. This movie wasn't for me. It's a documentary about an actor, originally from Spain, but made his mark on Argentinian television for decades, before returning to Spain to become a legend for a few more decades. As i am neither Spanish nor Argentinian, i had never heard of him.
The documentary was largely about his films and his stories from working on them. I don't know any of his films. I didn't really get much out of this. But, it's a film made from lots of archival sources, including interviews spanning decades, behind-the-scenes footage, and obscure films, which is a type of filmmaking that i enjoy putting together, so it was nice to see how the whole thing was assembled. Also, there were some discussions of lost media, which is a hobby of mine.
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DICK DYNAMITE: 1944
"Get ready for the worst film of the festival!" Dick Dynamite director Robbie Davidson said in his introduction. "And after it's done, go on Letterboxed and leave a review about how the makeup looks weird in one scene like everyone else does - or better yet, fuck those guys, write a good review!"
This film was funded with Kickstarter and has a total budget of around $10,000, which is what the industry calls a "no-budget film." The strict definition of even "Micro-Budget," as defined by the Screen Actors Guild, starts at $35,000.
It's honestly really fucking impressive what they were able to accomplish with just $10,000. This looks like an Asylum movie, and i don't mean that in a bad way; i think The Asylum usually has budgets around $200,000 - $300,000, and they shoot those movies in six days. Dick Dynamite took five years to complete.
I don't think there's really much use in doing a blow-by-blow review of this movie. It's a passion project, a thick slab of cheese riffing on the tropes of 80s action schlock. People's heads explode into tapioca and beans from punches. The Nazis invented zombies. There's a guy named "Motherfucker" who is described as, "He has an IQ of 168 and his vocabulary consists entirely of two words, 'mother' and 'fucker.'" If this played at GenCon, it would fit right in among the highest echelon of GenCon films. By which i mean, it could play alongside a Dead Gentlemen film, although it's not as smart.
I had a good time. Definitely recommend seeing this one with your friends while under the influence.
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