Berlin is probably not as glitzy as the opposite massive European festivals, Cannes and Venice, but it surely is aware of take advantage of what you may name “moral starpower”. Therefore Steven Spielberg, current this 12 months to accept the Golden Bear for lifetime achievement, who made an eloquent and imposing speech about longevity, therapeutic and – as befits the locale – the load of historical past. And therefore serious-minded Hollywood actor Kristen Stewart heading a jury together with Iranian-French star Golshifteh Farahani and former Berlinale-winning administrators Carla Simón and Radu Jude – a lineup that appears extremely prone to make some daring awards decisions.
However there’s additionally that long-standing Berlinale custom of mixing red-carpet status with a sure earnestness that doesn’t all the time flourish on the display. A primary instance this 12 months was Golda, a solemn, sluggish drama about Israeli premier Golda Meir and the Yom Kippur battle, with Helen Mirren giving a stable, considerate efficiency, solely to be upstaged by her uncanny prosthetic make-up. After which there was Sean Penn’s documentary about Ukraine, Superpower, co-directed with Aaron Kaufman, through which an understandably starstruck encomium to Volodymyr Zelenskiy was overshadowed by a lot narcissistic hyperventilating about what an incredible factor it was to be Sean Penn caught up within the Whirlwind of Historical past. It was a phenomenally gauche, ill-advised piece; in contrast, Eastern Front, from Ukraine itself, was the true deal, a sober, pressing, profoundly troubling documentary by Vitaly Mansky and Yevhen Titarenko, primarily based considerably on the latter’s footage, shot on obligation with a volunteer medical crew.
In the meantime, the competition started on a crowd-pleasing word, even a facetious one. Rebecca Miller’s opening movie She Came to Me was a souffle of a comedy a couple of blocked opera composer (Peter Dinklage) who recovers his mojo because of a romantically addicted tugboat skipper (Marisa Tomei). It awkwardly combined urbane sophistication with wilful goofiness, however was tartly acted – not least by Anne Hathaway as a repressed shrink – and hardly unlikeable.
Berlin has typically been seen as programming too earnestly, its regard for cinematic artwork typically eclipsed by its sense of political duty. As of late, nonetheless, below the directorship of Carlo Chatrian and Mariette Rissenbeek, the competition is fearless about foregrounding cinema with a capital C, with a watch to journey. This 12 months’s competitors included some movies that have been as difficult as we’ve seen right here shortly, together with others that have been massively accessible. There was an all-out crowd-pleaser within the type of Suzume, from Japanese anime maestro Makoto Shinkai (Your Identify, Weathering With You). Current at a weird juncture of YA romance and race-against-time apocalypse drama, it requires a sure tolerance for visible kitsch and kawaii cuteness, however there’s no denying that the adventures of a teenage woman, a demonic cat and a speaking chair had deranged invention to spare.
A extra muted competitors spotlight got here direct from its Sundance premiere: Past Lives, a debut movie by Korean-Canadian playwright Celine Tune. It’s about two Korean kids who go their separate methods however reunite years later when the boy (performed as an grownup by Teo Yoo) travels to New York to go to the woman, now a author (Greta Lee, having fun with a serious breakthrough second). This fantastically acted, richly nuanced movie muses on time, identification and a Korean idea referred to as in-yun, regarding future and the layers of connection between individuals. Previous Lives proved {that a} commercially interesting drama today can nonetheless mix grownup intelligence and emotional delicacy. It was most likely Berlin’s most generally admired, certainly adored movie – and, whether or not or not it wins prizes right here, it’s certain to beat the awards circuit a 12 months from now.
It was actually probably the most emotionally direct movie in competitors, together with Tótem, a household drama by Mexican director Lila Avilés, following her debut The Chambermaid. This bustling ensemble piece covers sooner or later within the lifetime of a creative Mexico Metropolis household, as they have a good time the birthday of their terminally unwell brother; it’s all largely seen by means of the eyes of his seven-year-old daughter, fantastically performed by newcomer Naíma Sentiés, and once more, carried actual emotional cost with out crossing into sentiment.
Typically, although, the competitors was outlined by its confrontational edge. Disco Boy, a French-made debut by Giacomo Abbruzzese, starred German actor Franz Rogowski and depicted the parallel lives of an African activist and a recruit to the French Overseas Legion; it’s a movie of steely intelligence and hard-edged, dislocated model that promised a lot however didn’t fairly attain a satisfying ending line. And Manodrome, by South African director John Trengove, is the newest in what is going to absolutely be a long-running cycle of “poisonous males in disaster” films. Jesse Eisenberg stars, atremble with barely suppressed rage as a taxi driver who comes below the affect of a misogynistic maleness cult, led by a easily sinister Adrien Brody. It’s intense as hell however once more, doesn’t fairly know the place to go.
Different movies, although, knew precisely the place they have been heading, however had the extra confidence to maintain the viewers guessing. One which completely created its personal world and its personal guidelines was The Survival of Kindness by Australian veteran Rolf de Heer. This can be a beyond-dystopian drama with out dialogue – or moderately, with speech solely muttered in only unidentifiable tongues. A middle-aged heroine, listed within the credit as “BlackWoman” and performed by newcomer Mwajemi Hussein, frees herself from captivity in a steel cage, then wanders throughout a wilderness earlier than arriving at a hellish industrial website ruled by a ruling individuals carrying fuel masks that make them resemble human aardvarks. Partly a parable about race, colonialism and resistance, partly a dream imaginative and prescient with a contact of Jorge Luis Borges, it was one of the vital unique and imposing movies right here, though hardly the simplest to love.
It was one among two audacious Australian movies in competitors: the opposite was Limbo by indigenous director Ivan Sen, which can absolutely don’t have any hassle discovering a wider viewers. Set within the lunar landscapes of a Queensland opal mining territory, and dazzlingly shot in black and white by the director himself, it’s a pared-to-the-bleached-bones existential thriller a couple of heroin-addicted cop (a taciturn Simon Baker) reviewing the chilly case of a lacking Aboriginal lady. It really works completely in its personal phrases and at its personal leisurely tempo, hollowing out the detective style to coolly thrilling impact.
However no competitors title was fairly as radically sui generis as Music, by hardcore German experimenter Angela Schanelec. She was right here in 2019, along with her mesmerisingly inscrutable I Was at Home, But, which did very odd issues with chunks of Hamlet. Her new movie is an nearly wordless fashionable variation on the Oedipus delusion, set initially in Greece earlier than abruptly and inexplicably leaping to Berlin (together with scenes set only a stone’s throw from competition hub the Palast). A younger man, born within the Greek mountains throughout a storm, grows up with chronically sore ankles, then is imprisoned for manslaughter. He kinds a pair with one of many feminine jail guards (French arthouse common Agathe Bonitzer), later changing into a singer in Berlin – by which era, any apparent correspondence with the unique delusion has turn into obscured by a dense community of symbols, echoes and enigmas. Music is much less like narrative cinema – even of the artiest, most Godardian selection – than it’s conceptual artwork, or a cinematic type of opaque modernist poetry. It could be near-hermetic but it surely’s totally transfixing. It proves that the Berlin selectors aren’t afraid to stay their necks out, and if Kristen Stewart’s jury observe swimsuit, Schanelec’s movie might be the boldest Golden Bear in years.
The very best of Berlin
Finest characteristic movies Music (Angela Schanelec); Limbo (Ivan Sen); Previous Lives (Celine Tune).
Finest documentaries Jap Entrance (Vitaly Mansky, Yevhen Titarenko); and On the Adamant, Nicolas Philibert’s movie a couple of Parisian day centre for psychiatric sufferers which provides a social – and for some, creative – refuge to the people who use it.
Finest performances Congolese-Australian newcomer Mwajemi Hussein in Rolf de Heer’s The Survival of Kindness; Greta Lee in Previous Lives; Mia Goth as a pampered hedonist from hell in Brandon Cronenberg’s fresh-from-Sundance nightmare fantasy Infinity Pool.
Finest music Chris Taylor and Daniel Rossen from US band Grizzly Bear, for Previous Lives; Doug Tielli (plus Handel, Vivaldi and co) in Music
Weirdest speech Bono’s onstage tribute to Steven Spielberg, because the director was awarded the Honorary Golden Bear. The U2 singer revealed his admiration for Spielberg’s 1974 movie The Sugarland Specific: “The mom is performed by the good Goldie Hawn, however all I see is my very own mom, as I noticed her as a toddler, gigantic, imperfect. I cry although my coronary heart is stuffed with pleasure as a result of I do know that my very own mom will all the time come searching for me. That’s pure cinema. No, that’s pure Spielberg.” Please God, nobody get him began on ET.
