Capital Projections: You can’t handle the truth 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.
COLD CASE HAMMARSKJÖLD
It wasn’t long ago that feature-length documentaries were for the most part relegated to public television and arthouse cinemas. But as nonfiction films have gained a higher profile through streaming services and even commercial multiplexes, the potential for manipulation and questionable methodology comes under greater scrutiny. This fascinating movie from Danish provocateur Mads Brügger (who directed the similarly mischievous The Saint Bernard Syndicate) examines the filmmaker’s own biases as, on the surface, it attempts to solve a decades-old mystery: the 1961 plane crash that killed Swedish economist Dag Hammarskjöld.
Then secretary-general of the United Nations, Hammarskjöld was on his way to negotiate a cease-fire in the former Belgian Congo when he died. But the unusual circumstances of his death — mysteriously, an ace of spades playing card was tucked in his collar — has given rise to suspicions that he was murdered. Brügger conducts his investigation by deliberately artificial means, at one point donning a pith helmet before he uses a metal detector to search the crash site. In another gambit, he hires two different African actresses to play a secretary to take dictation (a word Brügger seems to choose quite carefully). Despite the director’s attempts to undermine his own credibility, he seems to uncover a more serious conspiracy than even he imagined (I won’t spoil that twist). Although news coverage has raised doubts about Brügger’s findings, the brilliance of Cold Case Hammarskjöld isn’t really journalistic anyway. The film smartly demonstrates that a filmmaker’s style — from fashion sense to visual approach — can affect how their authority is perceived.
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, Aug. 23, at E Street Landmark Cinema. $12.50.
AMERICAN FACTORY
This slick Netflix Original documentary (released concurrently on the streaming service and in theaters) tells an all-too-familiar story of labor struggles. The residents of Moraine, Ohio, were devastated by the 2008 closure of a General Motors auto factory, but are optimistic when Chinese glass manufacturer Fuyao takes over the plant some six years later. Naturally, things don’t work out as hoped. CEO Cao Dewang, used to staffing 12-hour shifts in China, resists unions and thinks American workers are slow and inefficient. Perhaps more troubling, he’s prone to arbitrary decisions, ordering a factory entrance to be moved at a cost of $35,000 (he later complains that the factory is bleeding money). Meanwhile, former GM staff are happy for the work but disappointed to bring home less than half their old paycheck.
Directors Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar, who live and work in nearby Dayton, depict the triumph and decline of good ol’ American ingenuity, but this is tempered by the drudgery and potential danger of an unsafe workplace. What makes American Factory more than just a position paper is the filmmakers’ attention to personalities and the inevitable culture clash. For instance, a consultant tells Chinese employees that while Americans have the freedom to be who they want to be, a culture of encouragement has led to an overconfident population that can be hard to deal with. Americans, on the other hand, try to welcome their new coworkers, but their friendly overtures aren’t always accepted. A vote for unionization is the central dramatic conflict, but the show-stopper is the spectacle of American supervisors visiting Fuyao’s overseas operations. The congenial Midwest men face a world where Maoist propaganda somehow lives side by side with Western pop culture. When the Americans dance to the Village People’s “YMCA” in a Chinese New Year stage production, one wonders if the home office is making fun of their underperforming conquest.
Watch the trailer.
Now playing at Landmark West End Cinema ($12.50) and on Netflix.
THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE
As part of its United Artists Centennial Retrospective, which continues through Sept. 11, the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center is celebrating the 45th anniversary of this quintessential New York movie from 1974. Walter Matthau plays Lt. Zachary Garber, a veteran transit cop facing a new problem: A man known only as Mr. Blue (Robert Shaw, also seen at the AFI this weekend in Jaws) has hijacked a subway car full of passengers and demands a huge ransom. While the Chinese CEO of American Factory has his doubts about American efficiency, this taut, well-oiled thriller demonstrates that, even in the face of a ’70s Manhattan plagued by ambitious criminals, the nation had a shaggy resourcefulness that could beat any foe. Prolific television director Joseph Sargent, whose credits include less successful pictures like Jaws: The Revenge, crafted this lean, gritty entertainment machine.
Watch the trailer.
Sunday, Aug. 25, at 11 a.m.; Tuesday, Aug. 27, at 9:20 p.m.; and Wednesday, Aug. 28, at 5 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. $13.
THE BIG CITY
Director Satyajit Ray is best known for his essential Apu Trilogy, which charted the coming-of-age of a boy from rural Bengal who grew up to become a young man of the world. This 1968 drama from Ray tells a story of the conflict between tradition and modernity in his hometown of Calcutta. Arati (Madhabi Mukherjee) is a young housewife who shares a crowded apartment with her husband, their two children and her husband’s parents. Her in-laws are of a generation that frowns upon women working outside the home, but as the family struggles to make ends meet on her husband’s salary as a bank clerk, Arati is compelled to take a job as a saleswoman. Her work exposes her for the first time to modern women, like the Anglo-Indian Edith (Vicky Redwood), who faces discrimination from both the British and from Indians. Roger Ebert, in a four-star review, noted that this very specific cultural story is indeed universal, writing that “Ray’s characters have more in common with me than I do the comic-strip characters of Hollywood. Ray’s people have genuine emotions and ambitions, like the people next door and the people in Peoria and the people in Kansas City. There is not a person reading this review who would not identify immediately and deeply with the characters.”
Watch the trailer.
Sunday, Aug. 25, at 7 p.m. at Suns Cinema. $10.
I BOUGHT A VAMPIRE MOTORCYCLE
In this 1990 horror comedy from director Dirk Campbell, who went on to direct British children’s TV series like The Worst Witch, a courier (Neil Morrissey of Men Behaving Badly) unwittingly purchases a vintage motorbike that’s possessed by the evil spirit of a man killed by a biker gang. I’ll let the programmers at the Washington Psychotronic Film Society explain the movie’s central conflict: “Little does the bike’s new owner, Noddy, know that it runs on blood, wants revenge, and will kill anyone else who gets in the way! It’s up to Noddy, his girlfriend, a garlic-breathed inspector, and priest Anthony Daniels (Star Wars) to stop the bloody thirsty bike.”
Watch the trailer.
Monday, Aug. 26, at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel. Free.
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