Capital Projections: Hard copy edition
Capital Projections is The DC Line’s selective and subjective guide to some of the most interesting arthouse and repertory screenings in the coming week.
NON-FICTION
One of the defining conflicts of 21st-century culture has been the war between physical and digital media. Whether you choose books made of paper or their electronic equivalent, your preference may be strongly held — but is it the stuff of drama? The latest from French director Olivier Assayas (whose Personal Shopper was one of the best films of 2017) is a soap opera set in Parisian literary circles where print rubs up against e-books and bored lovers seek out other beds. Guillaume Canet (Tell No One) stars as Alain, an old-fashioned publisher who still believes in hard copies. He hesitates to take on the latest semi-autobiographical novel from his friend Leonard (Vincent Macaigne), perhaps because Alain suspects that the shaggy author is having an affair with his wife Selena (Juliette Binoche). As I wrote in my DCist preview of last year’s European Union Showcase at the AFI Silver where the film had its local premiere, the film “isn’t Assayas at his best, and some of its lengthy conversations about the nature of publishing may well work better on the printed page — or in a blog rant. But it all works well enough thanks to a reliable ensemble cast, who may have trouble selling some of the script’s ideas but totally sell its sometimes unlikely relationships.”
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, May 24, at Landmark E Street Cinema, Landmark Bethesda Row and Angelika Film Center and Café. $12.50.
MEETING GORBACHEV
German director Werner Herzog, unlikely champion of internet cat videos, is best known for films like Grizzly Man and Aguirre, the Wrath of God that depict man’s eternal struggle with nature. His latest documentary, co-directed with Andre Singer, presents a human conflict with a different kind of unstoppable force: history. Through interviews and news clips, Herzog charts the former Soviet leader’s life and pivotal role in the collapse of the Soviet Union. What could be a dry Wikipedia-like book report of a movie instead captures the excitement of a volatile era, and Herzog manages to make history come alive on a personal as well as a global scale. The film opens with a conversation marked by something that seems increasingly uncommon: forgiveness. When Gorbachev tells Herzog about his first encounter with Germans, who invaded the Soviet Union during World War II when he was a child, the director apologizes on behalf of the German people and his subject graciously accepts, noting that the invaders did make great pastries. Meeting Gorbachev is oddly touching. Herzog uses lengthy excerpts from a 2001 Russian documentary that shows the fallen president mourning his wife Raisa, who succumbed to leukemia in 1999. While footage of Gorbachev wandering around an empty courtyard and following a stray cat is baldly manipulative, it demonstrates that propaganda can be heartbreaking even if we know somebody’s pulling the strings.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, May 24, at Landmark E Street Cinema. $12.50.
THE SPY BEHIND HOME PLATE
I’ve told several people about the intriguing premise behind this film, which tells the story of Morris “Moe” Berg, a professional baseball player who worked as an intelligence agent for the U.S. during World War II. They’ve all asked to hear more, yet for some reason, two recent attempts to portray Berg’s life have fallen short. Last year, it was The Catcher Was a Spy, which starred Paul Rudd as the enigmatic athlete and was by most accounts uninvolving. Now, local director Aviva Kempner’s documentary weaves this curious tale, but the film turns out much drier than one might expect. How is it that such a fascinating real-life figure doesn’t translate to cinematic drama? As I wrote in my Washington Post review, the stoic Berg simply didn’t have much charisma: “He blended in, in other words. While this may have served him well in espionage, it’s not great on screen.”
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, May 24, at the Avalon Theatre. $12.75.
THE BUTLER
Next week the Avalon Theatre’s quarterly cinePolska series presents a 2018 historical drama set among the Kashubians, a Slavic ethnic group that lived in Eastern Pomerania (now northwestern Poland). The Butler tells the story of a forgotten regional conflict through the eyes of a Kashubian orphan who’s taken in by a Prussian aristocratic family and falls in love with their daughter. PopMatters writes that the film invites a comparison to Downton Abbey and successfully “condenses four decades (1900-1945) of Prussian, Kashub, and Polish interaction into an accessible 150 minutes that’s part soapy family saga and part noble historical epic.”
Watch the trailer.
Wednesday, May 29, at 8 p.m. at the Avalon Theatre. $12.75.
POLICE STORY
Jackie Chan wrote, directed and stars in this 1985 action comedy, but most importantly, he nearly gets killed in it. The martial-arts legend plays Ka-kui, a Hong Kong police officer who’s charged with protecting a crucial witness (Brigitte Lin) set to testify against an elusive crime lord. Meanwhile, Ka-kui has to explain his assignment to his girlfriend (Maggie Cheung, in an early role that’s a far cry from her elegant work in Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love). Chan instructed co-writer Edward Tang to build the plot out from a number of elaborate filming locations that included a run-down village and a shopping mall that had to be cleaned up after shooting so it could open for business the next day. While the crime story and goofy comedy don’t always hit their marks, Chan’s stunt work is some of his most impressive and death-defying. As was typical in making his films, he was injured, suffering second-degree burns and a dislocated pelvis after a scene in which he jumps onto a pole and slides several stories down to a crash landing. The AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center is screening a 4K digital restoration of this international hit.
Watch the trailer.
Friday, May 24, at 9:45 p.m.; Saturday, May 25, at 10:45 p.m.; Sunday, May 26, at 10 p.m.; Tuesday, May 28, at 9:30 p.m.; and Thursday, May 30, at 9:30 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. $13.
THE BAKER’S WIFE
In this 1938 classic from director Marcel Pagnol, revered French clown Raimu (whom Orson Welles called “the greatest actor who ever lived”) plays Aimable, a middle-aged baker who’s devastated when his young wife (Ginette LeClerc) runs off with another man. When the heartbroken baker refuses to make bread for his small village, the hungry villagers plot to bring the errant wife home. With its ribald supporting characters, The Baker’s Wife sometimes plays like a series of Benny Hill sketches mixed with romantic tragedy. The Washington Post, in a 1940 piece written after the film’s local premiere, described it as “an essentially human film, an adventure in mortal foibles that is as surely universal as its location is definitely southern France.” The National Gallery of Art is screening the Washington premiere of a new 4K digital restoration.
Watch the trailer.
Sunday, May 26, at 2 p.m. at the National Gallery of Art’s East Building Auditorium. Free.
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