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Kaurismäki & Loach make comic-drama debuts at Europe on screen Day 2
âLe Havreâ: (Courtesy of Europe on Screen)Europe on Screen (EoS), back for its 14th edition this week, is looking to take cinema from the Continent out of the art house ghetto
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âLe Havreâ: (Courtesy of Europe on Screen)" border="0" height="331" width="498">âLe Havreâ: (Courtesy of Europe on Screen)Europe on Screen (EoS), back for its 14th edition this week, is looking to take cinema from the Continent out of the art house ghetto.
âWe are here to introduce films from the European Union, and to break with the opinion that European films are inaccessible,â said the film festivalâs manager Suryani Liauw on Friday.
On Saturday, two notable films from two notable directors make their bow in Jakarta.
First is The Angelsâ Share made by the British master filmmaker Ken Loach.
The film, which won the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival upon its release, presents an optimistic take on the life of the British working class â not an alien theme for Loach, who is praised for his social realism style and themes.
Loach is the man who released the gritty childhood drama Kes in 1969 to the praise of critics, establishing him as a filmmaker giving voice to the little man, while his 2006 The Wind That Shakes the Barley, which won the Golden Palm â the highest prize at the Cannes Film Festival, looks at the British/Irish conflict from a personal perspective.
The Angelsâ Share chronicles the life of four friends near Glasgow who visit a whisky distillery to commit âmisdeedsâ, planning to smuggle some of the valuable whisky to sell on the black market.
Through a touch of comedy, Loach plays on the term âmisdeedâ. In The Angelsâ Share, the acts of the friends are misdeeds only if seen from a bourgeois perspective, namely the owner of the distillery. From the other side, it is in no way a misdeed.
Considering the strong social content in the filmography of Loach, there is no way the smuggling could be categorized as a misdeed. These four friends are just desperate, and in desperation, they decide to take some of the bourgeois property to be shared to them.
Colin Covert in his review for the Minneapolis StarTribune mentioned that The Angelsâ Share contains a layer of metaphor (the distilling process as a symbol of the charactersâ evolution) and social-realist commentary amid the gentle, life-affirming laughs.
Loach brilliantly twists the term The Angelsâ Share from its etymology as the portion of a whiskyâs volume that is lost to evaporation during aging in oak barrels to an entirely another meaning.
âLe Havreâ: <)
'Le Havre': (Courtesy of Europe on Screen)
Europe on Screen (EoS), back for its 14th edition this week, is looking to take cinema from the Continent out of the art house ghetto.
'We are here to introduce films from the European Union, and to break with the opinion that European films are inaccessible,' said the film festival's manager Suryani Liauw on Friday.
On Saturday, two notable films from two notable directors make their bow in Jakarta.
First is The Angels' Share made by the British master filmmaker Ken Loach.
The film, which won the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival upon its release, presents an optimistic take on the life of the British working class ' not an alien theme for Loach, who is praised for his social realism style and themes.
Loach is the man who released the gritty childhood drama Kes in 1969 to the praise of critics, establishing him as a filmmaker giving voice to the little man, while his 2006 The Wind That Shakes the Barley, which won the Golden Palm ' the highest prize at the Cannes Film Festival, looks at the British/Irish conflict from a personal perspective.
The Angels' Share chronicles the life of four friends near Glasgow who visit a whisky distillery to commit 'misdeeds', planning to smuggle some of the valuable whisky to sell on the black market.
Through a touch of comedy, Loach plays on the term 'misdeed'. In The Angels' Share, the acts of the friends are misdeeds only if seen from a bourgeois perspective, namely the owner of the distillery. From the other side, it is in no way a misdeed.
Considering the strong social content in the filmography of Loach, there is no way the smuggling could be categorized as a misdeed. These four friends are just desperate, and in desperation, they decide to take some of the bourgeois property to be shared to them.
Colin Covert in his review for the Minneapolis StarTribune mentioned that The Angels' Share contains a layer of metaphor (the distilling process as a symbol of the characters' evolution) and social-realist commentary amid the gentle, life-affirming laughs.
Loach brilliantly twists the term The Angels' Share from its etymology as the portion of a whisky's volume that is lost to evaporation during aging in oak barrels to an entirely another meaning.
In the film, the angel ironically refers not the natural process of distillery but to a gang of scoundrels, for whom a portion of whiskey, a product that is tightly associated with high class people, should be shared for.
The second notable film making its bow at EoS on Saturday is Le Havre, released in 2011, the latest work of Finnish deadpan comedy master Aki Kaurismäki.
Kaurismäki shifts the action from his usual Scandinavian setting to France, while bringing along his favorite collaborator, actress Kati Outinen (The Man without a Past, Lights in the Dusk).
In Le Havre, Kaurismäki tells the story of young boy smuggled from Africa to the eponymous port city. A stranger in a strange land, the boy meets a shoeshine man who tries hard to protect him.
Le Havre is hilarious, albeit in an understated way, while talking about a very serious issue in contemporary France: the flood of migrants from Africa.
In the film, Marcel Marx the shoeshiner and his wife, played by the outstanding Outinen, are the only people who is willing to save the boy. Le Havre implicitly tells a story of the global working class at a point where nobody is willing to save them except themselves.
Both The Angels' Share and Le Havre are works by two masters in European filmmaking.
Many of Loach's films were the strongest voices of their respective eras, such as Kes, Riff-Raff, Hidden Agenda, My Name is Joe and The Wind That Shakes the Barley.
Meanwhile, Kaurismäki is another legend. He and his brother Mika are known as the filmmakers who brought Finnish cinema to international recognition. Le Havre, was nominated for international awards 25 times and won 15.
The Angels' Share screens on May 3 at the Goethe Haus and May 10 at Instituto Italiano di Cultura, while Le Havre screens on May 3 at IFI Salemba and May 6 at the Erasmus Huis in Jakarta and on May 9 at the Lawangwangi in Bandung, West Java. For more information visit europeonscreen.org.
