The Anchorage International Film Festival 2007

Reviewed 12 December 2007


Last weekend I watched eight films at two venues in the Anchorage International Film Festival. Overall, it was a good experience. I toyed with the idea of reviewing all the films I saw, but instead decided just to focus on the three I liked best. The other films I saw (and enjoyed) were Unraveling the Wind, Nailed, Your Beautiful Cul-de-Sac Home, Body/Antibody, and Donovan Slacks.

REVIEW #1 – PORTRAIT OF A LEGEND: CLIFF HUDSON

This is a documentary about an Alaskan bush pilot who lived most of his life in Talkeetna and holds the records for the most airplane landings on Mt Denali, the highest peak in North America. In its opening moments, the film’s narrator describes Hudson as a quiet, unsung hero. So it seems fitting that through much of the film, Hudson himself seems upstaged by the incredible rural Alaska scenery and by the assembly of typically eccentric Alaska characters who’ve come together to discuss the details of this man’s life.
I must disclose that this movie was made by a friend of mine, Tom Stagg. And I also must say that I envy him the experience of making the movie, of traveling around the area around Talkeetna junction, of traveling the aerial mail route Hudson passed on to his son, and sitting in the living rooms and kitchens of Alaska old-timers, soliciting their stories and reflections.
There’s a strong undercurrent in the movie about the way Alaska’s quirks are sold to tourists. We come out with an impression that Hudson is a man who sold his services as a pilot, but never sold himself, and we get a glimpse of a certain Southcentral Alaska way of life that was once authentic and is now in the process of being turned into a product of great value to the tourist industry.

REVIEW #2 – FAT STUPID RABBIT

In today’s culture of Second Life and Reality TV, it’s useful to remember that Shakespeare himself posed the metaphor of life as a stage. As with all Shakespeare’s metaphors, this one maintains its potency in spite of massive and flagrant misuse, abuse and overuse. This Russian romantic comedy is proof.
The hero, Arcady, is an aging Russian actor stuck in a rut. He’s performed 300 times as a rabbit in an inane children’s play about woodland animals in which. Lately, he’s been drawing ridicule for breaking into Shakespearean soliloquies in the middle of performances.
To me, this film captured more of the true spirit of Shakespeare than many of the direct adaptations of Shakespearean work that have come out on the screen in my lifetime. Arcady is cast as a King Lear figure, and his character is built up with all the highlights and shadows of the original Lear. The symbolism is obvious but not overdone. The rabbit costume Arcady wears onstage is ridiculous, but as the plot goes on we have a stepwise chain of associations reminding us of the associations of the rabbit with Easter, childhood, springtime and renewal and the Christ story, but because of the initial silliness these parallels never outweigh the story itself. There are obvious parallels and allegories: the theater company is taken over by a merchant who wants use it as a vehicle to promote sausage sales; the lecherous producer tries to seduce the beautiful young girl Arcady is in love with. It’s a story about the way art is corrupted by money and cronyism, and the way that idealism in general is corrupted by cynical calculations. But the story is so full of magnificent specifics and authentic bits of comedy stolen from everyday life that it can’t possibly be reduced to mere symbolism.

REVIEW #3 – CTHULHU

Illustrators have long since discovered the graphic possibilities in Lovecraft’s stories of monsters and monstrous deities intent of preying on the world. There are lots of wonderful images of Cthulhu, the octopus headed giant asleep in his palace beneath the sea, or Azathoth and Shoggoths, Lloigers and the Old Ones. Someday soon there will be some large budget movie that attempts to capture the whole vision in lavish computer generated animation. Sadly, it’s only a matter of time.
I sensed that this movie was something better than that when I saw how the director used images of the ocean, casting it as a vast but none-to-comforting alternative to the complicated and frustrating world on the land. Most importantly there’s the conflict of Russ, a college professor whose open homosexuality has brought him into conflict with his family’s constricting religious beliefs.
This conflict itself is a worthy basis for a wholly “serious” film, and would benefit from all the clichés that would place it firmly in the Drama section of your local Video Bargainville. But inevitably there would be a lot that’s lost.
Along with being a good writer of scary fiction, HP Lovecraft was able to root out and exploit the sensation of feeling like a stranger in your own flesh in a way no other writer could, not even Edgar Allen Poe. The creative team of Dan Gildark and Grant Cogswell are absolutely right in approaching Lovecraft’s work from this angle, of using Lovecraft’s storytelling with all it’s grim suggestiveness and slow emergence of unearthly details to explore the way the judgments of modern conservatism can suffocate the sense of individuality in anyone who is different.
Images of the ocean are used brilliantly in this film. As the inevitable apocalypse draws near, two mysterious barges dominate the seascape. The plot is driven forward by a white-bearded old sailor who admits to going out on the sea for five days tripping on acid when he netted a creature that was “like a gigantic baby.” Russ’s early memories of his first romance, simultaneously sublime and profane, play out on the planks and struts of an old pier. And a scene of predatory seduction is carried out in front of an aquarium tank where two massive polar bears swim and gobble fish.
With all its quiet, slow moving scenes this movie is exactly the sort of guilty pleasure I love best in movies. Its quality is likely to go unrecognized for some time by people who need everything to fit into their perfect pigeonholes. Don’t believe such critics. If you’re looking for inspiration and new ways to make storytelling fresh, this is a great place to go.