SXSW 2008: FILM

Politics, war dominate SXSW

Film festival turns sober in this election year.

Thursday, March 06, 2008

If you hadn't noticed, it's an election year. A big one. Maybe the biggest in a generation.

And filmmakers have noticed. The overwhelming theme of the 15th South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival, which starts Friday and continues through next week, revolves around the political sphere, with documentaries, dramas and comedies dealing forthrightly with the current election, American leadership and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It often takes moviemakers awhile to catch up with controversy. The first wave of major Hollywood movies dealing with the Vietnam War — award-winner "The Deer Hunter" and "Coming Home" among them — came at least three years after the U.S. withdrawal. Though less divisive, the terrorist attacks of 2001 were considered sacrosanct, too hot for cinematic treatment, years after the terrorist attacks. Hollywood is finally catching up with the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Though only "Charlie Wilson's War" broke through at the box office last year, "Taxi to the Dark Side," which dealt with the torture at Abu Ghraib prison, won the Academy Award for best documentary.

At SXSW, other filmmakers are ready to ask tough questions about war, peace and other pressing issues in 260 shorts and features, with screenings scattered at theaters across town. Several combined Austin artists or locations. All seem appropriate in a year when Americans appear to have turned sober about the future of the country. — Michael Barnes

'Stop-Loss'

With her second feature "Stop-Loss," which arrives nine years after her Oscar-winning debut "Boys Don't Cry," director Kimberly Peirce shows again that she can address hot-to-the-touch topics without purposely stirring the pot of controversy.

Human themes — love, friendship, family, duty — remain her focus, even if the subject is a true, tragic story about a transgender teenager in "Boys" or the personal repercussions of the Iraq war in "Stop-Loss." She's more interested in how extreme situations tap immediate personal concerns and how we deal with them.

"I don't think people want to see a polemic. They don't want messages," says Peirce, who shot the film during the broiling summer of 2006 in and around Austin. "What interests me are human emotions and good scenes."

The term "stop-loss" derives from U.S. military policy, which states that soldiers can be forced back to duty even after their contracted term has been completed. Peirce says that 81,000 soldiers who served in Iraq have been stop-lossed — "patriots who have done their time and want to get out."

This is what happens to Sgt. Brandon King (played by Ryan Phillipe). Home after a rough stint in Iraq, he is called back by the Army. He makes a wrenching decision to go AWOL instead of returning to battle.

King wants to be a great leader, Peirce says. "But when he realizes he can't save his men under the current circumstances, he won't go back. He says he doesn't want to lead more men to being wounded or killed. 'Because they won't let us fight the way we need to win it,' he says, 'I don't want to keep fighting it.'

"His patriotism, camaraderie and need to be a leader is what wins out," Peirce says. "That's what it's really about."

Calling "The Deer Hunter," "Best Years of Our Lives" and "Apocalypse Now" the "psychic blueprints" for her movie — "profound human stories that transcend the war genre" — Peirce refuses to call "Stop-Loss" an Iraq war film.

"These young men go to war, but it's about them coming home and trying to retrieve the lives they left behind," she says. "It's about the moving relationships between the men and between the men and their families."

— Chris Garcia

Screens at 6:45 p.m. March 13 at the Paramount (and opens theatrically March 28).

'Body of War'

Eddie Vedder's guitar gently weeps during key passages in Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue's documentary "Body of War," a wincingly intimate portrait of a soldier as a young disabled man.

Riding into SXSW on a gust of accolades — it was short-listed for the best documentary Oscar this year and crowned best documentary of 2007 by the National Board of Review — and graced with an original score by Vedder, "Body of War" captures the dramatic homecoming of Tomas Young after he was paralyzed by gunfire mere days into his tour of duty in Iraq.

Bound to a wheelchair, requiring constant care from his mother and wife, Young, 26, doesn't get mad, he gets educated, and you witness an anti-war conscience blossom fully formed from the heaped wreckage of his body. Young began to question the Bush administration's argument for war — intercut footage of the Senate voting for the Iraq war resolution provides distressing counterpoint — and swiftly became a linchpin of America's organized anti-war brigade.

Donahue tapped Spiro, an Austin documentarian and University of Texas film professor, to shoot the movie after he met Young. The result, Spiro says, "personalizes the war. When viewers watch it, they feel compelled to take action to end the war because they feel as if they know Young and his family, that they have a personal connection to the war."

The goal was to keep it truthful "without stigmatizing Tomas," Spiro says. That makes for sometimes squeamish viewing.

"The scene in which Tomas is most vulnerable, when his mother is changing his catheter in the van, reverses the power dynamic between viewer and subject," Spiro says. "Tomas and his mom are making fun at their situation, laughing at themselves in a way that makes the viewer uncomfortable and gives them the upper hand. They are comfortable but the viewer is agitated."

In a movie this outspoken and emotionally fraught, agitation is a good thing.

— C.G.

Screens at 4 p.m. March 13 at the Paramount, then opens for a theatrical run March 14 at the Dobie.

'Crawford'

"I was duped," David Modigliani says. Like a lot of people, the Austin filmmaker didn't know that President Bush wasn't really from Crawford.

"When I found out he had moved there just a couple of months before his candidacy in 1999, I was surprised," Modigliani says. "I had bought the origin myth, the political narrative of a folksy, small-town man, hook, line and sinker."

Bush would love it. We were all supposed to buy his self-stylized image as a true-blue, hay-chewin' cowboy from Texas, until reality, that tattle-tale, slipped us something altogether different. True-blue was more like blue-blood and so on.

Disabused of the swaggering Bush fantasy, Modigliani "began to wonder what it was like in this one stop-light town when the whole world came crashing in."

With the president of the United States living part time at the "Western White House," rural Crawford, population 705, became a media magnet and tourist mecca. Along with the Bush cabinet and visiting heads of state came protesters — remember Cindy Sheehan and her 200,000-strong troops? — and locust swarms of video cameras.

Modigliani joined the throngs to document "the human impact of political stagecraft" and to meet the "people who've had a front-row seat" as Crawford mutated, with souvenir shops, rising property values and a dubious media makeover, into something it no longer recognized.

Befriending local pastors, teachers, students, ranchers and shop owners, the filmmaker, a graduate of the University of Texas' Michener Center for Writers, discovered ranging political views and conflicting opinions about Crawford's insta-celebrity.

"They generally felt that they were made out to look a lot more podunk than they really are," the filmmaker says.

Modigliani and his cast of "warm, funny, intelligent people" fix this with a fair and fine-grained snapshot of the town, locating many surprising truths that obliterate expedient mythmaking.

— C.G.

Screens at 4 p.m. Saturday, 11 a.m. Monday and 1:30 p.m. March 15 at the Paramount.

'Full Battle Rattle'

Out in the Mojave sits a gigantic, fake Iraq. There, 13 imaginary villages are populated by real Iraqi Americans — immigrants hired to role-play with U.S. soldiers in assignments that last weeks at a time, long enough that trainees nearly forget they're not actually in Iraq.

Filmmakers Jesse Moss and Tony Gerber lived here for a full three-week training cycle; one of them in the imaginary village and one with the battalion (a group from Fort Bliss) sent to win villagers' confidence and deal with scenarios crafted to resemble what they'd face overseas.

One of the first things viewers see is a room full of simulation planners, mostly white, who are writing character profiles for their immigrant employees. Though it's clear that everyone involved is well intentioned, it isn't hard to see in this setup — native-born Americans creating fictional Iraqis in order to show our soldiers what to expect from real ones when they deploy — a problematic parallel to the way the Iraq war has developed.

"I think there are metaphorical implications there," Moss admits. But neither filmmaker wants to be nailed down to specific interpretations of the fascinating footage they've captured. "That scene personally makes me a little uncomfortable," Gerber says, "but the world is an awfully complex place, and two people will have completely different takes on that question."

The battalion is led by a lieutenant colonel whose high-minded approach (early on, we see him correcting a soldier's dismissive attitude toward foreign customs) makes him vulnerable to over-optimistic evaluations of a mission that's not going well. Did the setbacks suffered during this role-play immunize the men against pitfalls in their actual assignment, which lasted 15 months? Some of the officers will be present for Sunday's premiere, and Moss says, "I hope that's the first question put to them."

— John DeFore

Screens at 7 p.m. Sunday at the Austin Convention Center and at 2:30 p.m. Tuesday and 8 p.m. March 14 at Alamo Ritz.

'Secrecy'

Many of this year's political docs might face a public that feels it by now knows more than enough about the Iraq war and the Bush administration.

Peter Galison and Robb Moss have the advantage of a subject that will remain relevant long after every American soldier has left Iraqi soil, no matter how many decades that takes. In "Secrecy," they dig into the way our government handles delicate facts — those that could endanger American lives if leaked and those that would simply prove embarrassing.

Harvard professor Moss was the director of 2003's well-received doc "The Same River Twice," but where that film won audiences with its memoir-like intimacy, this one hews to a much more conventional documentary standard: talking heads, gathered data, opposing viewpoints — with a bit of room left for moody animation and "X-Files"-ish effects illustrating the unseen forces that control so much information.

The filmmakers address the subject from multiple angles, letting FBI agents offer compelling illustrations of the need for iron-clad secrecy (and bemoaning specific instances in which investigative reports in the press have led to the loss of life) while balancing them (substantially outweighing them, actually, in terms of screen time) with well-documented cases in which secrets were kept for nefarious reasons or out of sheer bureaucratic inertia.

Viewers may wish the film had, for once, jettisoned convention and brought its secret-keepers together with its dirt-diggers, offering each a chance to address the other's complaints in a well-moderated, civil discussion. Unless the TV news/talk marketplace undergoes some highly unlikely evolution, that kind of thoughtful debate won't happen there, no matter how much the American people might benefit from it.

— J.D.

Screens at 11 a.m. Saturday at Alamo South, 12 p.m. Wednesday and 2:30 p.m. March 15 at Alamo South.

'Bulletproof Salesman'

At mini-feature length (70 minutes), this new doc is tightly focused on a single man: Fidelis Cloer, a car dealer whose sales pitch leans not on GPS and plush interiors but on a vehicle's ability to withstand automatic-weapons fire in war zones. Cloer represents a German company that retrofits cars with heavy armor; for him, making a cold call means driving into Baghdad or Ramadi without an Army escort to clear the path.

Co-director Michael Tucker sees the film as something of a trilogy-capper: "We've filmed soldiers (in "Gunner Palace"), we've filmed civilians (in "The Prisoner"), and now we have filmed a man whose business is war." He and partner Petra Epperlein first show Cloer in 2003, when they and their subject "were standing in downtown Baghdad with no body armor on ... driving freely through the city." But as the situation in Iraq worsens, Cloer finds that his job as pitchman gets easier (clients require no convincing) even as practical matters get more difficult: "In the beginning," Tucker says, an outing with Cloer involved carrying only "one machine gun. In the end, the last time we drove in, we had skilled operators in each vehicle and a dozen weapons. The operational mindset wasn't 'if (we get attacked),' it was 'when.' "

Over the course of four years, we watch as Cloer improves his offerings, watching the evolution of insurgent attacks and shifting focus from protection against bullets to armor that can withstand the direct blast of an "improvised explosive device." As he says matter-of-factly at one point, "People have to die to improve the product."

— J.D.

Screens at 6:30 p.m. Saturday, 6:30 p.m. Monday, and 7:15 p.m. March 13 at the Austin Convention Center.

'Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay'

One of the most subversive political movies of the year comes from the people who brought you the charmingly juvenile road picture "Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle." The title for the sequel is a dead giveaway, even if our stoner heroes escape the prison of the title very early in the movie. Their fugitive road trip from Miami to Texas lampoons bigotry by turning prejudice on its head, including perceptions of President Bush, granted a surprisingly sweet treatment in the movie's best scene, given that its main target is his contorted War on Terror.

— M.B.

Screens at 9:30 p.m. Saturday at the Paramount (and opens in theaters everywhere April 25).

'Frontrunners'

With impeccable cultural timing, filmmaker Caroline Suh follows a passionate, sometimes prickly presidential campaign that just happens to unfold, dramatically, in a New York high school. That school is the frantically competitive Stuyvesant High, a prestigious, high-pressure performance school where students aspire to exceptionalism. Glib comparisons to films like "Election" fizzle in the face of the sophisticated campaign machine at work here. Hyper-articulate teens, flaunting mountainous extracurricular résumés, demonstrate advanced political savvy — keep those smiles beaming and hands pumping — while learning the rules of realpolitik, be it the social science of picking a running mate or calculating the exact dash of charisma required for a televised debate.

— C.G.

Screens at 9 p.m. Monday, 1:30 p.m. Tuesday and 6:30 p.m. March 14 at the Austin Convention Center.

'Battle in Seattle'

Irish actor Stuart Townshend makes his writing/directing/producing debut with a fictionalized account of the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle. The picture got a respectful, sometimes enthusiastic reception at September's Toronto Film Festival, where critics admired its stabs at social critique despite occasionally drawing unfavorable comparisons between this star-heavy re-enactment (Charlize Theron, Woody Harrelson, Ray Liotta) and Paul Greengrass' bracing protest film "Bloody Sunday."

— J.D.

Screens at 9:45 p.m. Monday at the Paramount.

'Heavy Metal in Baghdad'

Directors Suroosh Alvi and Eddy Moretti plunge into war-torn mayhem to trace the dream-busting arc of Iraq's sole metal band, Acrassicauda, from the toppling of Saddam Hussein to now. In excellent English, salted with endless "dudes," bandmates mourn their country's combustion as war pulls the plug on their power chords. Shot with urgency, the documentary quickly veers from the music to examine the challenges facing fringe artists in a Muslim country — the musicians don't grow their hair long for fear of harassment — as their hopes are almost literally blasted away. Only snippets of music make the cut: The concussion of bombs and bullets drowns out the melodious thunder of metal.

— C.G.

Screens at 9:30 p.m. Wednesday and 8 p.m. March 15 at the Alamo Ritz.

The 15th annual South by Southwest Film Conference and Festival

When:Friday through March 15

Theaters: Alamo Ritz (320 E. Sixth St.), Alamo South (1120 S. Lamar Blvd.), Austin Convention Center (501 E. Fourth St.), Dobie (2021 Guadalupe St.), Paramount Theatre (713 Congress Ave.). The film and interactive conferences are at the Austin Convention Center.

Tickets: $400 for festival and film/interactive conference badge; $70 for film passes; $10 for single film tickets, available 15 minutes before screenings at theater based on available seating