Capital Projections: Snakes alive 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.
WHITE SNAKE
This new fantasy from the Chinese studio Light Chaser Animation puts a modern spin on an ancient folk tale. Directors Amp Wong and Ji Zhao begin the story with a kind of fall from grace. Blanca (voiced by Stephanie Sheh in the English-language version of the film) and her sister Verta (Vivian Lu) are suspended in the air above a magical forest. Blanca is in a mental fog; she has intermittent visions of her life but for the most part has lost her memory. What she has forgotten, temporarily, is that she and her sister are snake demons who have taken human form. Dark forces order Blanca to murder a general (Vincent Rodriguez III), but thanks to her better nature, she resists the call to evil. She instead falls in love with a naive peasant (Paul Yen) — but what will happen when the young man discovers he’s fallen for a snake?
White Snake is the most recent film adaptation of a myth that originated in seventh-century China. Director Tsui Hark’s terrific 1993 film Green Snake used live action to create its visually inventive fantasy world, but the depiction of women as serpents (In the Mood for Love star Maggie Cheung portrayed a more sinister version of the Verta character) might be jarring to viewers today. The 2019 rendition is less essential than Hark’s film, but it’s surely more optimistic, transforming the supernatural battle into a young adult romance about accepting others — even if they’re snakes. In my Washington Post review, I wrote of White Snake: “Even if you’re not familiar with the source material, this Chinese production provides plenty of supernatural thrills for the modern young adult.”
Watch the trailer.
Opens Friday, Nov. 29, at Landmark E Street Cinema. $12.50.
MARIA’S PARADISE
The AFI Silver Theater and Cultural Center launches its annual European Union Film Showcase next week, and this year’s lineup is particularly strong. It’s so strong, in fact, that even less promising titles in the series provide at least some fascination. Loosely based on a scandal that rocked Finland in the 1920s, the 2019 drama Maria’s Paradise tells the story of controversial cult leader Maria Åkerblom (Pihla Viitala) through the eyes of one of her acolytes. Salome (Satu Tuuli Karhu) is a teenage orphan who falls under the spell of Maria, a charismatic figure who claims to have had religious visions. In a remote woodland mansion, Maria houses a group of followers who must adhere to a strict regimen, and she takes Salome under her wing as her favored daughter.
Unfortunately, the group home is no idyll. Having run afoul of the law, Maria has some of her followers physically threaten witnesses to her crime, but circumstances threaten her grip over her followers. When Salome befriends the pickpocket Malin (Saga Sarkola), the pull of the outside world may become too strong for the cult to survive.
The problem with Maria’s Paradise — as history at least — is that director Zaida Bergroth and screenwriters Jan Forsström and Anna Viitala have taken great liberties with the truth. While Åkerblom did spend some time in jail, the characters of Salome and Malin are entirely fabricated, introducing a forbidden romance to add tension to a narrative that had plenty of genuine dramatic potential on its own. The film is nonetheless compelling for much of its two-hour run time, until it succumbs to a messy final act that makes it fail as drama as well. Still, it’s a fascinating tale — just one that should be taken with more than a few grains of salt. Read about some of the more successful titles in this year’s EU Film Showcase in my Washington City Paper preview.
Watch the trailer.
Thursday, Dec. 5, at 5 p.m.; Saturday, Dec. 7, at 2:45 p.m.; and Sunday, Dec. 8, at 4:50 p.m. at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. $13.
ON HER MAJESTY’S SECRET SERVICE
The AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center is hosting a 50th-anniversary screening of the only James Bond film to star George Lazenby in the role of 007. The plot in this 1969 espionage thriller revolves around Bond’s formidable foe Ernst Stavro Blofeld (Telly Savalas), who has an ingenious and sexy plan to bring the world to its knees: He’s hypnotized 12 beautiful women from around the globe and given them orders to spread bacteria that would devastate crop production. Only Bond, with the help of an adventurous countess (The Avengers’ Diana Rigg), can save the planet, and if he seduces a few women along the way, that’s all in a night’s work.
With its stylish fashions, casual misogyny and colorful jet-setting locations, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service features iconic Bond elements at their peak. The villain’s mountain lair has become a staple of action movies, and director Christopher Nolan credits this particular set piece as one of the inspirations for his 2010 sci-fi thriller Inception. For his part, Lazenby seems a less substantial spy than Sean Connery in terms of both physique and charisma, but Rigg is a marked improvement on the typical Bond-girl assembly line. At 142 minutes, the movie takes awhile to pick up steam, but the final 45 minutes provide a steady stream of thrills — and even heartbreak.
Watch the trailer.
Thursday, Nov. 28, at 8:15 p.m.; Sunday, Dec. 1, at 8:15 p.m.; Monday, Dec. 2, at noon; Tuesday, Dec. 3, at 9:15 p.m.; and Wednesday, Dec. 4, at noon at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. $13.
A STORY FROM CHIKAMATSU
The Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery continue their monthly series of Japanese Classics with this 1954 tragedy from director Kenji Mizoguchi (Sansho the Bailiff). Based on an 18th-century play by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, the drama unfolds around a misunderstanding. Mohei (Kazuo Hasegawa) works at a printing house owned by the wealthy Osan (Kyôko Kagawa). Osan’s wife Ishun (Eitarô Shindô) needs money to help out her brother, but she’s afraid to ask her husband and so she goes instead to Mohei, who agrees to doctor the accounts. Osan interprets his wife’s attention to his employee not as a financial transgression but as unfaithfulness. Accused of adultery, Ishun and Mohei are sentenced to be crucified. In an essay for the Criterion Collection, critic Haden Guest writes that the film “renders a harshly critical portrait of Japan’s past, in this case a dark vision of Tokugawa-era Kyoto as a venal, petty, and paranoid society thoroughly corrupted by a blind obsession with wealth and social status.”
Watch the trailer.
Wednesday, Dec. 4, at 2 p.m. at the Freer Gallery of Art. Free.
THE BRAIN FROM PLANET AROUS
In this 1957 sci-fi thriller, scientist Steve March (B-movie icon John Agar) gets his brain taken over by Gor, a criminal from the planet Arous. And how would having a brain from planet Arous affect a respectable scientist? Ask Steve’s fiancee Sally (Joyce Meadows), who is at first pleased, then horrified, by the marked increase in romantic fervor. A 1957 review from the Los Angeles Times concludes: “Having investigated The Brain From Planet Arous, we are left wondering about the brain from Howco International, its producers.” Naturally, this is a presentation of the Washington Psychotronic Film Society.
Watch the trailer.
Monday, Dec. 2, at 8 p.m. at Smoke and Barrel. Free.
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