October 6 2018 at the Hamptons International Film Festival
started off for me with the Hungarian movie ‘One Day’ about
a family of five, memorializing their usual day of waking up,
eating breakfast, getting dressed, going to school, forgetting
and losing gym bags and phones, putting on someone else’s
shoes while hurriedly being dressed after kindergarten, moving
on to the next thing that must happen within a grinding busy schedule.
The movie begins with mother Anna having a conversation with a
woman named Gabi who has seduced her husband, and apparently
will not relinquish her probable future trysts with him. Poor Anna
has to put this melodramatic portion of her life in the back of her mind
as she struggles through her day, satisfying everyone but herself.
The details and the look of gray ?Budapest are very well documented,
as all parents will probably relate to much of the little day-to-day things that
happen/happened in their own lives to much of what happens with the
kids and the parents as depicted in this film.
Zsofia Szilagyi is the award winning director of ‘One Day’ – which actually
covers 36 hours in the lives of the Szamosi family. The film won the
Fipresci prize in the Critics Week section of the 2018 Cannes Film Festival.
This is not the brightest most optimistic movie in the festival, but many viewers
will relate to it, and it happens in a foreign country: Hungary; yet the story,
the stress, is universal in today’s rush-rush-rush world that most of us
will identify with, though it is occurring on another continent.
https://filmguide.hamptonsfilmfest.org/films/one-day-egy-nap/
‘Burning’ is probably the most awaited film in the festival, sold out at 8 PM both
Saturday and Sunday nights. I made it inside via the ‘Rush Line’ – an extra line
for people who could not buy tickets because the film is supposedly sold out.
Sunday’s Rush Line will probably also get you into tonight’s show. ‘Burning’ is
based on a short story from the very celebrated Japanese writer Haruki Murakami,
entitled ‘Barn Burning.’ It starts out in a mundane way, as most Murakami stories
do, and then veers off into an unusual, unique, bizarre direction that intrigues the
reader/viewer as the plot thickens and takes unexpected turns, with many subtle
clues laid to tantalize the lucky moviegoer. The typical dialogue of Murakami
is filled with cryptic insights and statements, expressed from an enticingly existential
point of view.
Jongsu is the main character, who wants to be a writer. He comes to Seoul
and meets the beautiful uninhibited Haemi, who comes from his hometown.
They interact, and the romance seems to be blooming, but then in comes Ben,
and from there…WHEW!!! One day, Ben drives up in his expensive Porche with Haemi,
to Jongsu’s father farm near the North Korean border, where Jongsu is staying
alone, while his father is in jail for assault brought on by his anger issues,
and Ben reveals – after smoking a marijuana joint he has brought along – that
he likes to burn down barns, maybe every two months. He bespeaks that
there is no right or wrong, just the random workings of nature. Haemi says
that she wants to disappear without a trace. She tells Jongsu that she’ll
never forget falling into the well near her house when she was little, crying
and looking up at the sky, before he, Jongsu saved her! But Jongsu can’t remember
this, though maybe he was too young, he wonders? Perhaps he was seven, he figures.
So, was there a well? that Haemi says she fell into? Was there a cat called Boil
that Jongsu never sees in Haemi’s one room apartment, when he comes to feed it
every day while she’s gone to Africa? He calls and calls and never even hears a
meow – despite fruitlessly searching for him, or any signs of him besides the
kitty litter box under the bed with a couple of deposits therein that we see once…
Jongsu says “To me, the world is a mystery.’ As is this mysterious intriguing
film, the ending of which, and the resolution, I am still trying to appreciate exactly.
I’m sure I will have to see it again. Especially with my son, whose favorite writer
is Haruki Murakami. Lee Chang-dong is the director. The movie is South Korea’s
official entry for the Best Foreign Film Oscar. MURAKAMI!!!
https://filmguide.hamptonsfilmfest.org/films/burning/