|
Telluride's celluloid feast
Aseem Chhabra has the time of his life at the Telluride film festival
|
Friday, August 30: A day after unexpected snowfall, sun shines on Telluride, an old mining town in southwest Colorado and now a trendy ski resort.
By 5 pm, the Telluride Film Festival pass holders have lined up in the centre of the town for the opening night feed, which is a buffet meal and wine provided by Sterling Vineyards.
Three-and-half days later, by the time the festival will be over, I would have seen 18 film programmes with very little sleep, huge dosages of caffeine, water and bananas (potassium reportedly helps calm the system in high altitudes).
I rush through my dinner and then walk to The Max, a high school gymnasium that has been converted into a 700-seat auditorium, equipped with Dolby sound system. The first film I watch is Michael Moore's thought-provoking and very busy documentary, Bowling For Columbine.
In exploring the causes of violence in the US, Moore looks at several different issues, like the presence of guns in this country (a bank in Michigan gives free guns to new account holders), the history of race relations, the 9/11 terrorist attacks, America-sponsored coups and support for dictatorships. Moore's main target is the National Rifle Association (the film ends with a disturbing interview with actor Charlton Heston), but he also takes on other symbols of Americana, from Dick Clark to Kmart.
Two hours later, I rush out to stand in line for the next show, This Is (Almost) Cinerama, a 50th anniversary celebration of the three-camera and three-projector film medium. We see actual footage of the film form, rollercoaster and ferris wheel rides and a flight across America.
It is a marvelous experience, and a great way to end the first night.
Saturday, August 31, 8.15 am: I am in line at the Galaxy, a 400-seat auditorium created inside the town's elementary school gymnasium. The tribute to Peter O'Toole is one of the highlights of this year's festival. An hour-long clip covering O'Toole's 40-plus years of film career are shown, including Lawrence Of Arabia, Beckett, The Lion In Winter, The Ruling Class, What's Up Pussycat and The Last Emperor.
Later, film critic Leonard Maltin interviews O'Toole. The 70-year old actor is cheerful and full of stories about film personalities he has known, like David Lean, Omar Sharif, Kate Hepburn, etc. I have heard rumours about O'Toole's drinking problems and him wasting his career, but Maltin does not venture into those unpleasant terrains.
Before the conversation is over, I leave the theatre and head to the Minnie, a 135-seat theatre and the smallest venue at the festival. Alberto Barbera, former director of the Venice Film Festival and this year's guest director at Telluride, introduces Bitter Rice (1949) an Italian neorealist classic. A melodrama about migrant workers on an Italian rice farm, Bitter Rice is an important historical document of the post-war Italy.
At 3 pm, I catch Cuckoo, Russian director Alexander Rogozhkin's charming tale of friendship between three unlikely people who do not understand each other's language. In the tradition of No Man's Land (shown last year at Telluride), Cuckoo, set at the end of the Second World War, with its anti-war statement should be a strong contender for next year's foreign film Oscar race.
Later that evening, I stand in line at the Nugget, a 200-seat theatre and the only year-round film screen in Telluride. Blind Spot is an engrossing documentary in which Traudl Junge, an articulate 80-plus year old woman and one-time personal secretary to Adolf Hitler, offers a meticulous account of the days prior to the Fuhrer's death.
The day ends with a midnight screening of director and screenplay writer Paul Schrader's new film Auto Focus. Schrader and actors Greg Kinnear and Willem Dafoe introduce the film, a dark and often sleazy tale of sex addiction. Although the film starts with a promise, its lead character Bob Crane (Kinnear), the star of the sitcom Hogan's Heroes, is so unlikeable that I am left feeling empty.
Auto Focus ends after 2 am. Five hours later, now Sunday morning, I am up in line at The Galaxy to see a brand new print of Singin' In The Rain. Warner Bros' digitally remastered print marks the 50th anniversary of the American classic.
This is my first viewing of Singin' In The Rain. Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times refers to it as the best American film of all time. He is right. Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor win my heart and I am laughing, singing and clapping through the screening.
At noon I am back at The Max to see Italian filmmaker Emanuele Crialese's Respiro. A New York University film school graduate, Crialese worked at an Italian restaurant in Manhattan, while working on the film's script. Winner of the 2002 Cannes' Critics Week Award, Respiro is a lyrical and a heart-warming tale set on a picturesque Sicilian island, with Valeria Golino (Rain Man) playing a seductive and troubled mother of three teenage kids.
That afternoon the festival organisers schedule a sneak preview, a screening of Frida. Based on the life of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (Salma Hayek), her tumultuous marriage to Diego Rivera and her relationships with other women and men (including Leon Trotsky), Julie Taymor's (Broadway's Lion King, Titus) film is a visual delight, incorporating the artiste's works within the format of a biopic.
Frida is one of the strongest films I have seen in the recent months, and Hayek's performance and Taymor's direction is bound to earn them Oscar nominations.
At 5.30 pm, I am back at the Nugget to see Larry Clarke's Ken Park, a disturbing portrayal of skate boarding teenagers in a Los Angeles suburb. With its abundant, mostly gratuitous, nudity (often bordering of what appears to be child pornography), and violence, it is doubtful if Clarke's film will be released in the US.
Before the day ends, I watch two brilliant films, David Cronenberg's Spider with Ralph Fiennes (he has left for London, by the time I see the film), playing the role of a schizophrenic who may or may not have killed his mother; and Pedro Almodovar's latest exploration of human relationship, Talk To Her, where two men in a hospital develop a close friendship when they discover they are both in love with women in comas.
Monday is Labour Day. I am at the Telluride courthouse to attend a conversation between Salman Rushdie, last year's guest director at the festival, and filmmaker Terry Gilliam (Brazil, Twelve Monkeys). In the process, I skip Rabbit Proof Fence (I saw the film earlier this summer in Australia), Philip Noyce's powerful saga of three aboriginal girls' escape from a racist white run school.
The discussion should focus on Lost In La Mancha, a film I watch later in the afternoon at the Sheridan Opera House. It is a fascinating documentary about Gilliam's unsuccessful attempts to make his version of the Don Quixote story. But the two are inspired and the conversation flows from Steven Spielberg's messy science fiction films (Gilliam uses the f-word to describe AI: Artificial Intelligence), Gilliam's battles with Hollywood, and Rushdie being strip-searched at the San Francisco airport during his first trip to the US.
At noon I watch Rogue Male, a 1976 British television film in which Peter O'Toole plays a man attempting to assassinate Hitler. Never before shown in the US, Rogue Male is a great treat.
City Of God is director Fernando Meirelles's violent film that looks at the Rio de Janeiro's inner city children's gangs. A devastating film, City Of God leaves one feeling numb although there is one bright ray of hope. One of kids from the slums becomes a photographer for a local newspaper, chronicling the violence that he has fled from.
The festival ends for me with a perfect bookend, a screening of David Lean's Lawrence Of Arabia. I saw the film 25 years ago, and it still appears as gripping as it must have been when it was first released in 1962.
I am back in my hotel a little after midnight, the earliest I will sleep in four nights. Three-and-a-half days later, I have missed 20 other film screenings, several seminars and the Labour Day picnic.
I keep remembering a mantra that I have heard at Telluride before: You will never be able to see everything and you will certainly miss something you were very keen on seeing. But you will have the time of your life.