Every year I’m a participant in several of the film festivals here in San Francisco – the International Film Festival, the French Film Festival, the Italian Film Festival and occasionally the Taiwan Film Festival. My favorite, by far, is always the International Film Festival. This year I bought tickets to four films – “Key to Life” (Japanese), “The Act of Killing” (Danish), “Populaire” (French) and “Therese” (French). My schedule was to see two films yesterday (getting a haircut in between), one tonight and one on Monday night.
The first film I saw yesterday was “Key to Life.” It’s a Japanese comedy about a down-and-out actor who ends up trading places/assuming the identity of a gangster. When the film first began, I wasn’t sure if I’d be into it. Everyone else was laughing about little things that I didn’t think even deserved much of a smile. As the film went on, though, I began to enjoy it. The plot thickened, so to speak. During the last 15 or 20 minutes of the film, however, there was a fire alarm, of all things! Everyone was forced to evacuate the theater while the fire department came in and checked everything out. We walked back outside to chilly, windy weather, so it wasn’t a pleasant wait. Admittedly, they had us back inside the theater within about 20 minutes. Everyone was able to see the ending. Although it was rather predictable, I really enjoyed the movie much more than originally anticipated. I would have loved to stay for the Q and A with the producer, but had about 30 minutes to get to my haircut downtown.
Last night was a much more serious film, “The Act of Killing.” It was a documentary on the Indonesian death squads of the 1960’s. I won’t pretend to be up on politics in any way, shape or form, particularly those of Indonesia. Apparently, the military overthrew the Indonesian government in 1964 and their mission was to exterminate all Communists, including many ethnic Chinese. The film focused on two of the main assassins, Anwar Congo and Herman Koto. In many ways, the film was stupid in the sense that those two men actually thought this documentary was being made to glorify their atrocities to mankind. There were also some ridiculous dance scenes punctuated by even more ridiculous costumes. Yet it was disturbing to see the men discuss their crimes with both nonchalance and pride. Watching them extort money from Chinese shopkeepers, listening to one man talk about the joy of raping 14-year olds and having another describe how he cut off one man’s head with a machete (and how his eyes remained open) are not easy things. Â What’s more disturbing is that they may never be made to atone for their crimes; they believe themselves to be untouchable, fully protected by the Indonesian government. While this may be true, it’s such a sad statement on the amount of war crimes that go unpunished. It was a less than pleasant way to end my Saturday evening. I almost stopped off at Pa’ina Lounge for a drink, but continued on my way home.
Tonight I will see “Populaire,” which seems to be reminiscent of those old Rock Hudson-Doris Day movies that I used to watch with my Grandma all the time. Oh, how I loved those old romantic comedies! This film might even be in black and white!