Genova (2008) dir. Michael Winterbottom
Starring: Colin Firth, Catherine Keener, Willa Holland, Perla Haney-Jardine, Hope Davis

**1/2

Michael Winterbottom’s latest film tells a grim story of a family dealing with the death of their mother. Winterbottom adequately applies his on-location immersion modus operandi to this film, but the grim material is missing a spark of optimism to keep its audience from drowning in excessive grief.

The opening scene is played out with ominous tension. Winterbottom shows the tragic car accident which takes the life of devoted mother and wife (Hope Davis) to Joe (Colin Firth) and his two daughters Kelly (Willa Holland) and Mary (Perla Haney-Jardine). After the funeral, Joe decides to uproot the kids and move them to Genova Italy where he has been offered a teaching job.

Once in Italy, it’s culture shock for the kids. Kelly is a typical teenager and thus despises having to hang around her father and her pre-teen sister. At every opportunity she abandons Mary and Joe to exercise her burgeoning sexuality with local Italian boys. Mary, the youngest, is having the most difficulty with the loss. Her only method of coping is her waking visions of her ghostly mother which keeps her safe when alone. Catherine Keener plays Joe’s friend who guides them around the city and acts as their surrogate mother. Unfortunately for the family the city of Genova acts as both an enabler and an inhibiter to the grieving process.

Winterbottom and his crew appeared to have had a wonderful time filming the movie. The location is stunning and serves as a great promotional piece for Genovese tourism. Marcel Zyskind, Winterbottom’s frequent collaborator lenses the film with a light and mobile handheld digital camera. While the colours becomes muted by the video-ness of the image, the camera is free to move covertly through the public streets interacting with real live Italian pedestrians.

At times the documentary-like location shooting can feel self-conscious and draw attention to itself. Winterbottom, listed as a co-editor, often cuts randomly to locals in the background who seem unaware they’re being filmed. While it’s authentic, it’s also an obviously attempt to be authentic, when authenticity isn’t required.

The heart of the story is how each of the family members deals with the mother’s death. Kelly’s coming-of-age story is the most accessible because it’s structured with a traditional and familiar character arc. Unlike some of his other films, Winterbottom keeps the content PG13. Some tasteful skin is flashed, just enough to remind us of those days of innocent love and sexual discovery. Both Joe and Mary are characterized with less completeness. Joe ‘reacts’ more than ‘acts’. Once he’s in Genova he’s a passive character and does nothing to advance the story. Mary drives the film. All the tension and action is motivated by her decisions. But Mary serves more as a device than a developing character.

Winterbottom crafts only a couple of ‘cinematic’ set-piece scenes of danger – both involve Mary getting lost. The finale is a contrived conversion of the three characters. It’s a clichéd scene, which we’ve seen in a number of Hollywood genre films. Though it seems out of place for Winterbottom’s free-form techniques, I certainly welcomed the satisfying suspenseful climax.

“Genova” frustrates because Winterbottom never adequately defines his characters’ goals and instead lingers too long with the grief. I’m still questioning if it’s a coming of age story, or a thriller, or an art house mood film. It’s all and none of the above. Whatever it is, we desperate need a spark of optimism, even a dash of what Danny Boyle supplied us with in “Slumdog Millionaire”.

A Mighty Heart (2007) dir. Michael Winterbottom
Starring: Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Will Patten, Archie Panjabi

***1/2

With “The Kingdom” out in theatres, Peter Berg’s immature take on Americans/Islamic relations, it’s the absolute best time to release on DVD “A Mighty Heart” – a more accurate and ultimately compelling version of essentially the same issues and themes. “A Mighty Heart”, which tells the story of the investigation into the kidnapping of American journalist Daniel Pearl in Pakistan, is a powerfully realistic film about the resolve and determination of Pearl’s wife Mariane to find her husband amid the powerful force of global politics.

In 2001, Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl was kidnapped by Muslim extremists in Pakistan. The film is told from the point of view of Mariane (Angelina Jolie) who patiently manages to navigate through the false rumours, politicking, and worldwide press fervour surrounding the case and focuses on finding Daniel. Dan Futterman is well cast as Daniel whom we get to know in the first act of the film and periodically in flashbacks throughout. Prior to his capture, he is a soft-spoken dedicated journalist and husband. The Pearls travel to Pakistan the day after Sept 11 to report on the activities of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. When Daniel gets a chance to interview Sheikh Gilani, a notorious terrorist, he knows he’s entering dangerous territory. Everyone Pearl talks to warms him but Pearl is ambitious and puts the story ahead of his safety. The night Pearl is to meet Galani, he disappears, never to return home.

When the Pakistani police become involved a complex web of terrorist connections slowly unravels. Like “All the President’s Men” one suspect leads to another, which leads to another etc etc. The names are so hard to keep track of Mariane and her friend Asra (Archie Panjabi) have to use a whiteboard to keep track of everything. We aren’t meant to follow or understand the trail, only to know that Pearl’s kidnapping was not random but a targeted and premeditated act of terrorism.

The film is directed by the multitalented Michael Winterbottom, a British filmmaker, who can work in any genre, but who recently has developed a naturalistic style of on-the-fly street filmmaking. Winterbottom and cinematographer Marcel Zyskind shoot the film with local non-actors, in authentic locations with documentary-like believability. Watch, “24 Hour Party People”, “In this World”, and “Road to Guantanamo” to see the evolution of this style. The result is a film with 100% authenticity.

The film is edited with great pace. The lead-up up Pearl’s kidnapping is told with a fractured non-linear montage technique. Winterbottom enters conversations already in progress and exits before they are finished. At times this can be frustrating, especially when a new character is introduced but whom we don’t get to know until many scenes later. For example when we first see Will Patton, who plays an American authority, we only get a few lines out of him before Winterbottom cuts away. It’s a shame because Patton is such a good actor and I wanted to hear what he had to say. So this style can be obtrusive to the story, but since this is Mariane’s point of view I guess the motivation was to mimic the chaos of the event.

Unlike, Peter Berg, who turned his story into kill-at-all-costs action film, Winterbottom avoids all possible Hollywood traps. It would have been easy to inject internal conflict into the film by portraying the Pakistani police as backwards and unaccommodating to the Americans, instead the captain of the Pakistani counterterrorism unit who leads the investigation is as smart, dedicated and unwavering in his search as any of the Americans. Winterbottom is also able to create tension and suspense without resorting to guns, overt violence or action scenes. There’s a couple of moments of gunfire, but it’s not embellished.

Much of the credit of the film should go to producer Brad Pitt, who had the courage to put the film into Winterbottom’s hands as opposed to someone like Peter Berg’s. As a result “A Mighty Heart” may be a less accessible film, but it’s been told the best way possible, by preserving the integrity of Daniel and Mariane Pearl and all those involved in bringing the terrorists to justice. I hope the academy doesn't forget about this film come Oscar time. Enjoy.