Saints' day

MLK weekend M4

It's unusual to encounter the word "hagiography" in two reviews in a single Friday Times, and even more unusual for me to go see both films thus characterized. As I said my good-byes on my way out of work that day, I told some of my colleagues, "Do something to honor Dr. King this weekend," which was sort of a joke and sort of not, and while I can't claim to have given the birthday boy any thought in framing my itinerary, it's undeniable that his spirit is present in half the films I saw--and even his image in one of them.

La Promesse (1996)

IFC

Igor is no saint (though he does share with Lula an apprenticeship as a machinist)--the first thing we see him do is steal a wallet from a customer at the gas station where he works, and he is clearly and uncomplainingly on his way to becoming his father, a construction contractor and slumlord who exploits his illegal immigrants/tenants perhaps slightly less that some such exploiters. But when one worker is fatally injured in a jobsite accident and extracts from him the titular promise--to take care of the wife and infant son he has just brought from their native Burkina Faso--Igor takes his responsibilities to heart, even at the expense of his complicated but loving relationship with Roger.

The film rises about its clichéd deathbed-promise premise on the the performances of Jérémie Renier as the adolescent Igor, Olivier Gourmet as his myopic father, and Assita Ouedraogo as the fiercely determined widow (whose widowhood is concealed from her).

Lula, o Filho do Brasil (Lula, the son of Brazil)

Quad

Not a documentary, but documentarish, as Stephen Colbert might say, this is a straight-line, episodic account of the rise of Luiz Inácio da Silva from the poverty first of the Brazilian back country and then of São Paulo to national prominence as a union activist, though it ends before his unlikely ascendancy to the presidency of the country and his brilliant tenure in that office.

He is depicted in saintly terms, but the brighter halo is worn--and arguably the central role of the fictionalized account borne--by his mother, Lindu (Glória Pires, a veteran of Brazilian TV). If Lula is, per the subtitle, Brazil's son, by the transitive principle his mother is Brazil, and Brazil could hardly ask for a more positive embodiment. When Lindu dies, the story is over.

Jodaeiye Nader az Simin (A separation)

FF

No one and everyone is a saint in this extraordinary tale of moral complexity and personal tribulation: Simin's (Leila Hatami) imperative is to remove her 11-year-old daughter Termeh (Sarina Farhadi, in a heartbreakingly perfect performance) from Iran (why is not made explicit, but the implication is that it is to escape the theocratic system of whose machinations we get more than a glimpse); Nader's (Peyman Moadi) is to care for his Alzheimer's-muddled father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi); these irreconcilable differences are the basis for divorce proceedings neither wants. So the story is impossible even before the woman Nader hires to care for his father leaves him tied to the bed for what we later learn was a medical emergency, and Nader as a result pushes her, she falls and miscarries, and each side sues the other in the shari'a courts.

Brutally painful and profoundly beautiful--the sort of film that makes you wish for a magic wand to wave and make everything turn out OK for everyone. But that's not going to happen, as the excruciatingly long final shot makes clear: we watch Simin and Nader wait to learn the results of the story's final Sophie's choice, Termeh's announcement of which parent she will live with.

Sing Your Song

IFC

Harry Belafonte has many virtues, but modesty is perhaps not the most prominent. It would be wrong to say that he takes credit for popularizing King and the civil rights movement, or that he claims to have sprung Nelson Mandela from Robben Island, or even that he believes that he ended hunger with "We Are the World," but it's probably fair to say he'd be disinclined to concede a greater role to anyone else.

Still, the man has been on the right side of just about every question in his three-quarters of a century, and he has given literal and figurative voice to his rightness, and if he wants to crow, well, he has earned the crowing.

The film itself is much stronger in the first half, showing his seemingly logical evolution from concerned entertainer to activist. After the terrible events of 1968--the assassinations of King and Bobby Kennedy, the self-destruction of the Democratic Party in Chicago--chronology becomes scrambled and activism becomes a bit of a smorgasbord, but never is there any hint that Belafonte's motives are not pure. And the fight goes on, now on behalf of children in prison. Lula's mother taught him, we are told, never to give up. Belafonte's mother had much more ambition for her son: to wake up every day with an agenda for making right something that is wrong.

Trailers

• Crazy Horse--Just read a feature about this in the Times: Frederick Wiseman's latest documentary, about the legendary Paris strip club. Hell, yeah!
• This Is Not a Film--A film about a film that can't be made by banned Irani filmmaker Jafar Panahi. Yes.
• Gianni e le donne (The salt of life)--Looks like a charming sequel to Pranzo di ferragosto.
• How Much Does Your Building Weigh, Mr Foster?--Potentially interesting architecture doc.
• La guerre est déclarée (Declaration of war)--Love, parenthood, and cancer.
• The Pruitt-Igoe Myth--The broken promises of urban renewal in St. Louis's most notorious project.