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Talking (in French) with Michel Hazanavicius & Berenice Bejo of THE ARTIST

The Artist was an unprecedented film. Movies don’t come in black and white anymore. And no one would think to make a silent black-and-white film in 2010.

When you chat with the brains behind the film, it makes sense. These are incredibly French, reserved folk who speak in hushed tones. I’ve spent a lot of time in France (my Grandma lives in Paris) and I’ve grown up all around their culture. For me, Paris is the Seattle of Europe: people are a little cold and abrasive, but witty and intelligent. The French tend to keep to themselves, but they’re warm at heart.

Michel Hazanavicius and Berenice Bejo started collaborating back in 2006 when she starred in Michel’s OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies alongside Jean Dujardin. Since then, they’ve made three more films together and along the way won plenty of awards for their 2011 silent black-and-white The Artist — including Oscars for Best Feature and Best Director for Michel. Both are incredibly talented, humble, quiet and fairly unflappable — Michel wasn’t impressed at all when I told him that he went to school just 20 kilometers from my Grandma’s apartment. They’re married with two kids and the fame doesn’t seem to have gotten to their heads. I got a chance to chat with them both (in French) at SIFF Cinema about their lives after the Oscars, their upcoming film The Search (a remake of the 1948 movie about war-torn Chechnya), and their filmmaking progress. Read More

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Out in Theaters: THE PAST

“The Past”
Directed by Asghar Farhadi
Starring Bérénice Bejo, Tahar Rahim, Ali Mosaffa, Pauline Burlet, Elyes Aguis, Sabrina Ouazani
Foreign, Drama, Mystery
130 Mins
PG-13

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The Past is an extraordinarily difficult film loaded with powerhouse performances of perpetually grieving characters and a blanket of dreary subject matter. While it’s nice to get a break from the mindless drudge of early year releases, The Past goes too far in the opposite direction, offering a piece of work so harrowing and relentlessly gloomy that it’s near impossible to find any joy in watching it.

Bérénice Bejo (The Artist) plays Marie Brisson, a forlorn woman who we meet through a pane glass window as she picks up Ali Mosaffa‘s Ahmad from the airport. At first their relationship is ambitious and we’re left guessing their status. Director Asghar Farhadi (A Separation) seems to want to keep us in the dark for as long as possible as we’re not able to gather much about these two and the relationship they share. They could be friends, lovers, roommates or even family. As we try to piece together the details, the only thing that’s clear is that they have history. They have (sigh) a past.

As recklessly dour as A Separation, The Past quickly explodes into a series of accusations, abjection, and atonement; a collection of difficult scenes that provides the cast a series of lofty showcases but does little to stimulate our need for dramatic solace. We’re constantly grieving alongside the characters, breathing in their misery and sighing at the folly of their crumbling affairs.

Bejo, Rahim and Tahar Rahim (A Prophet) are each afforded a bevy of opportunities to exhibit their dramatic capacity and with so much attention paid to the characters, it’s their exceeding commitment to the work that makes The Past compelling when it is. Each brings a sense of life to their character; shades of good and bad, airs of hope and despair. Their roles are fully human, peppered with fault and wound up by life, and that’s what keep the film afloat, demanding our interest and earning our empathy. Regardless of their mighty work though, the film is still 100% glum.

Ostensibly, the narrative comes down to our human capacity for guilt and blame and how the two can affect our lives in irrevocable ways. It’s about discarded relationships, rekindled flames and the connections we forge on our way to the grave. But all this harrowing philosophizing just goes to show how it’s no fun to watch people argue about who’s to blame for someone’s suicide attempt.

The character dynamics carry weighty gravitas and their tempered interactions hue closely to the real world but, for me, movies are at least partially about escapism and there’s no semblance of escape here. Watching The Past is like watching life through the window of a death ward. It’s dark and unforgiving and can take anything from you at any moment. Seeing the crusted loose ends of existence, confronting regrets and admitting the purposelessness of it all is an exercise we have to confront in the privacy of our own minds so watching Farhadi and his cast do so doesn’t astonish so much as depress. His Hakuna Matata is decidedly grim and certainly not sing song.

C