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June 13, 2006
Fiennes, Edwards Lead the 'Blind' Once More in Tribeca
As I have mentioned before, the Tribeca Film Festival never really ends so much as it meanders for 355 days before exploding through the city over the other 10. Case in point: Last night at Tribeca Cinemas, senior programmer David Kwok showed up to introduce a screening of the 2006 TFF selection Land of the Blind, which opens Friday in New York. Actually, he introduced the film's writer/director Robert Edwards, who in turn introduced the capacity crowd to his star, Ralph Fiennes, who finally joined Edwards for a Q&A after the film. It felt like late April all over again: Hormones and hype to spare, but without the publicists, street-corner popcorn or the glut of shitty films.
Deja vu all over again: Land of the Blind director Robert Edwards (left) returns to Tribeca, this time with star Ralph Fiennes (Photo: STV)
"I won't say too much about the film, because I think it should speak for itself," Edwards told the crowd before the film. "This was my first fiction film, because I came out of documentary. And the only reason it got made was because of Ralph. He was the first actor we sent it to. When I signed with CAA, they said, 'Who do you want to be in your film?' I said, 'Wish list? Or realistically?' They said, 'Wish list. Anybody in the world.' And I said, 'How about Ralph Fiennes? ' And they said 'OK,' and they sent him the script.
"He read it and we met. He agreed to do it, and that is the only reason this film got made. And more than that, he stuck with it through three years of roller-coaster attempts to get it financed--false starts and dashed hopes. He didn't have to do that, and he didn't have to make this film. And he didn't have to do all the things that we made him do onscreen."
Like what, you ask? Oh, you know, just the typical actor abuse things: Shaved head, staged torture, bloody prosthetics... the list goes on. But what Fiennes did have to do for the film to have any chance theatrically was to excel, and he manages that as well. As Joe, a prison sentry guarding a playwright-turned-dissident (Donald Sutherland) in some anonymous fascistic state, Fiennes represents the sturdy moral order that long ago fled his nation's political crisis. Joe befriends Thorne over several years, gleaning a sense of patriotic duty more urgent and authentic than that of the despot (Tom Hollander) whose security detail he is eventually assigned to oversee.
After Thorne's release from prison, Joe opens the door (literally) for a coup d'etat that launches the insurgent to power. In the nightmare scenario that follows, however, the revolution erodes into another totalitarian ruse, and Joe faces his own violent stretch of prison for daring to resist. The themes here are nothing especially ground-breaking; you could choose to spot Marx, Castro or both in Sutherland's shaggy, demystified revolutionary, and despite Edwards's authorship of Land of the Blind before 9/11, viewers will no doubt equate the president's infantile bloodlust (he murders his father to ascend to the throne, natch) to a certain American analogue.
Edwards shares a moment on the Land of the Blind set with the new-look Donald Sutherland (Photo: Nick Wall)
Moreover, the film's wheedling attempts at satire strain and die in the shadows of its excellent lead performances. Fiennes and Sutherland share a half-dozen fine scenes here that make Land of the Blind easy to endorse, and Edwards's intense close-ups capture the nuance of each power transfer and each idea exchange that compose the bulk of Joe and Thorne's relationship. "I was I awe of Donald," Fiennes said after the film. "I really looked forward to working with him. They were wonderfully written scenes; they were a gift to actors, I think, and the relationship between them was great on the page. We seemed to find a rhythm together quite quickly, and we sparked off each other. ... As you can see, he has this extraordinary kind of fierce intelligence and latent energy in him, and he's very compelling to be in the room with. So the relationship fed itself, I think."
But a little too much of the director's other exposition occurs through unfunny newscasts pairing government platitudes with sitcom endorsements, or bizarre presidential advising sessions taking place everywhere from a bathroom to a minstrel show. That said, the film's flaws reflect its spectacular ambition as much as any of its technical attributes, from cinematographer Emmanuel Kadosh's saturated imagery to Ferne Perlestein's canny editing down to the costume and makeup design that elevates Lara Flynn Boyle to a spellbinding archetype resembling Cruella DeVille as first lady.
Even more impressively for an allegory (and documentary veteran Edwards's narrative film debut), Land of the Blind manages to get inside viewers' heads without inspiring von Trierian levels of self-loathing. That is not to say it will solve anything, but that is not its job. "Joe opens the door and allows a political assassination to happen, trying to do the right thing," Fiennes said. "What is the right thing? I mean, I think I ask that question of myself all the time, every newspaper I read: What is my role as a citizen in the world today? Do I just sit back and think, 'Oh, that's all happening over there? Do I get angry about Iraq? Do I get angry about Israel and Palestine? What do I do? I don't have any answers. I suppose a film like this might keep provoking the questions in all of us, and incrementally, we might make better choices."
Posted by stvanairsdale at June 13, 2006 10:54 AM
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