The honeymoon is wonderful and I've fallen in love with Paris. A photo from today's boat ride on the Seine to tide you over until I get back home later this week...

Tomorrow morning, the Mrs. and I are off to Paris for our honeymoon. I'll be taking a break from the blog (obviously) as we explore the city of my dreams; I've never been before and I can't wait to take it all in for a week or so. A much needed break. Of course, we may be visiting the Victor Erice/Abbas Kiarastami exhibit at the Centre Pompidou and will probably take in a little bit of the Gus Van Sant retrospective at La Cinémathèque française, but mostly, I am just hoping for a relaxing time. I'll be sure to post photos and a summary when I get home. In the meantime, trivia hosting tonight, packing tomorrow and we're off. Back soon.

Despite my strong opinions and feelings on the subject, I have never written about my own experience on September 11, 2001 on this blog, primarily because my own experience pales in comparison to many of my fellow New Yorkers, the passengers on the planes, and the victims in Washington D.C. who lost their lives. I believe that this experience is something that everyone holds closely; In the days after September 11, individual experience was an issue open for conversation among New Yorkers who, sharing drinks in pubs or conversation on the bustling sidewalks, sought a connection with their fellow citizens. Shortly thereafter, things returned to semi-normal and people justifiably stopped talking about it; The need to try to move on was obvious. I still have a difficult time watching the footage of the day, I have no desire to watch fictionalized accounts of September 11 and I rarely (if ever, I honestly can't remember) have written anything about the attack. Post-September 11 policies and politics? Sure. Documentaries? Yes, a couple of them. But writing about the experience? Never.

That policy ends right now. Tonight, I was catching up on an episode of HBO's Real Time With Bill Maher when all of a sudden, this broke out:

Now, while that is good TV, I would like to make it clear that I have had enough of the September 11 "Loose Change" conspiracy crowd and their condescending disrespect for the the reality of what happened on what was the worst day of my life. In the same way that I won't listen to the nonsense spouted by Holocaust deniers who spew the most outrageous nonsense in their complete dismissal of the experiences of millions of the dead and the thousands of survivors of the Nazi camps, I can't sit idly by and allow this bullshit to slide knowing full well that thousands of people who lost their lives are being completely misrepresented by this group of liars. I am not going to give a line of my own ink to the idiocy that passes for analysis from these people, so let me just state my own experience so I can deal with this issue honestly and openly.

On September 11, 2001, I took the D Train from Brooklyn into Manhattan to go to work in the Empire State Building. When I arrived in my office on the 24th Floor, a co-worker mentioned that he had heard that an airplane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. I immediately put on WNYC FM on the internet and listened to the reports from nearby the area and as the reports came in, the host of the show stated that it appeared as though another plane had hit the other tower. Immediately, my colleague and I looked out of the north-facing window of our own building to see if a plane was on its way toward us, because we had no idea what was going on. We mentioned to our boss what was going on and we decided not to wait around and to leave the building. I took the elevator down to the first floor, out the door on 34th street and I ran back to the subway. I caught the last D train back into Brooklyn and as that train crossed over the Manhattan Bridge in absolute silence and stopped there for a good 5 minutes, we watched the Towers burn. When we finally got to my stop, I bolted from the station to find traffic in the Grand Army Plaza area at a stand still, with police turning cars around, sending people back where they came from. I distinctly remember someone screaming at a traffic cop to let her through as she was already late for work and the officer saying "no one is going to work today, ma'am. You have the day off. Now head on home." By the time I walked into my apartment, the first tower had already fallen. I watched the second one collapse from my couch. I didn't move for days.

More than my own experience, which was not that of someone at the scene, the experience of so many of my friends and colleagues, people who had to walk uptown through the dust, people who saw and recorded the event in person; None of them have ever indicated that anything these conspiracy theories want us to believe are true. Sure, there are suckers born every minute, but why do they always seem to be on the side of trying to manufacture a conspiracy where there is none? I'm simply astonished that so many people could fall so hard for something that is so blatantly false; It's like the whole Protocols of The Elders of Zion hoax, or this "idea" of Creationist "science" or any of the other nonsensical pieces of bullshit floating around the dumbed down American zeitgeist, each lie aping the methodology of science and academic research, but forgetting that the only tenet to which these disciplines subscribe is the truth, not some previously held grudge masquerading as a search for "what really happened."

And now, a group of loudmouthed cretins tries to bully their way onto a TV show and shout down the host by spreading more of their insane nonsense about the collapse of Building Seven being an inside job by the New York Fire Department working for a Jewish "conspirator." It's the same anti-Jewish nonsense that has permeated conspiracy communities for years and more than anything else, these untruths undermine legitimate inquiry into actual governmental misconduct, allowing liars in positions of power to brush aside legitimate questions about their activities. I know I shouldn't be bothered by yet another group of intellectually irresponsible liars, I shouldn't let them get to me, but watching that clip on Real Time, I just don't know why so many Americans laugh it off or brush it aside any more. I have to say, I was proud of Bill Maher for going after them but so troubled by the fact that, with so many other issues plaguing us, this nonsense continues and worried that the further away from the actual events of September 11th we get, the more of an audience these lies will find. More disgusting to me is that someone like Alex Jones, the conspiracy monger and radio host who sells these ideas in his videos and books, is actually profiting from these lies. Only in America.

More than anything, I'm tired of the intellectual dishonesty that finds an audience in this country; People with an agenda trying to hijack the reality of our collective experience and discovery, be it the development of the theory of Natural Selection or the experience of September 11, in order to satisfy their own misunderstanding of the world around them. Really, people; Enough is enough.

A good day for staying in...

and for listening to old records...

I've been taking the last few days off from film; It's our annual "back to reality week" here at the ol' BRM. I've been catching on up on e-mails and planning for the 10th Annual Sarasota Film Festival, which takes place April 4-13, 2008. Last year, we had over 200 films and 150 filmmakers, producers and industry guests attending the festival and this year's 10th Anniversary edition should be the biggest and best yet.

We've recently opened our Call For Entries, and I hope that you'll consider our festival as a terrific place to showcase your film.

Holly and I really pride ourselves on programming challenging, diverse work at the festival and we hope that our commitment to excellence in cinema, from shorts to fiction to documentary, provide a platform for artists of all stripes to share their work and garner some much-deserved regional and national attention. If you're interested, a complete list of last year's films can be found here; We're looking forward to seeing what you've made!

The past week has been a constant stream of images, ideas and conversations; Before everything blurs together in my head, I wanted to take a moment to try and get things down so that I can address the events and ideas each in their own turn.

Early Wednesday evening, I stopped by NYU's La Maison Française to take in a moderated conversation between my favorite filmmaker, Arnaud Desplechin, and Cahiers du Cinema editor-in-chief Jean-Michel Frodon about issues surrounding "globalization in cinema and its effects on 'French' film". The conversation, attended by about 50 or so (filling the small, charming room at La Maison) was engaging and primarily focused on Frodon's hypothesis that Hollywood as an industry was the primary force behind a certain set of standards and practices (editing, acting, narrative structure, heroic characters toward which audiences aspire, etc.) that have become a hegemonic global idea of cinema. And while Frodon rejected the moderator's ideas of French film clichés (smoky, talky and sexy) as being only signifiers that allow audiences to not ask anything more meaningful of French cinema, Desplechin took a different route, describing his own individual cinephilia (and love of an Emmersonian 'low-culture' in Hollywood films) as being a key to his own ideas about and love of films.

I asked both men if the international cinephile community might not offer a path of resistance against the dominance of the Hollywood movie, if we as individuals in local communities all over the world might not be able to bridge the divides through our own (hyper)links, but Frodon (whose own magazine recently launched an electronic edition in English, to which I have now dutifully subscribed) thought the idea was both hopeful and dangerous, providing cinematic pleasures, but existing in a bubble that may cut us off from real world concerns and the suffering of others. I countered that, instead, cinematic humanism may instead be a doorway into real-world empathy, a way to connect with one's feelings about the world around us, but while Desplechin agreed, Frodon didn't seem too interested in the idea. Cést la vie. The discussion carried on, touching on Desplechin's influences (a great anecdote about how his leftist mother allowed him to take in the Disney's The Jungle Book despite her cries of racism and his own desire for political solidarity with his mom) and the decline in African cinema production, and after greeting some friends, we all slipped away into the cool air (finally!) of an autumn night.

The next day, a group us headed to the DGA Theater in Manhattan for a cocktail reception and the North American premiere of Desplechin's moving new documentary L'Aimee. The room was full of familiar faces, everyone finishing their wine and slipping into the plush DGA screening room in time to hear Frodon introduce the film. Once the curtains parted and the film began, I felt as though I fallen down the rabbit hole, transported to the first time I saw La Vie Des Morts and to the familial concerns at the heart of all of Desplechin's films. L'Aimee is basically the story of a woman, Thérèse (Desplechin's paternal grandmother) and her ghost-like relationship with her son Robert Desplechin, Arnaud's father. The father and son sit and discuss the story of Thérèse (who died when Robert was only two years old), the two men having come together to pack up Robert's family home as he prepares to move out. Images are shown; Old photographs, stained and worn, browned letters and documents, and most engagingly, a painted portrait of Thérèse that hangs in Robert's bedroom. The film, which is gorgeously shot in 35mm by Caroline Champetier, takes time to explore the slowly-emptying spaces of Robert's home against the lively backdrop of a visit by Arnaud and the family of his brother, the actor Fabrice Desplechin, and as such, is a very simple, poetic story that ruminates on life and loss, that which is no longer physically present but which we long to know and remember anyway.

The Memory: A Painting of Thérèse from Arnaud Desplechin's L'Aimee

It also, as Desplechin discussed in the clumsily-moderated post-screening Q&A, has much to do with Desplechin's cinema. Thematically, the Director discussed the film's relationship to Vertigo, and how a man might be helpless to save the life of a woman he loves, be it Scotty in Vertigo or Desplechin's own father and the mother he barely knew. There are other references as well, including the painting of Thérèse in the father's room (which haunts him and inspires the creation of his mother in his own mind), a slow sequence where two cars follow one another through the streets of Croix, and of course, the relationship between Robert and Thérèse, that between a living man and his own ideal of a dead woman. I couldn't help but be surprised by some of the biographical details of Robert's life that have become powerful themes in the films of Desplechin fils; Having lost his mother at an early age, Robert's step-mother officially adopted him when he was 50 years old. This revelation, which comes late in the film, is important not only as a key to many of the stories and themes in Desplechin's films (the adoption of an adult in Kings And Queen, the death of a parent in the same film, the adopted son/adoptive father relationship in Léo, etc) but also seems to settle the controversy about the issue raised by Marianne Denicourt, who famously sued Desplechin for "distorting her life" in his films. If the details of Robert's experience seem to have been the creative impetus for so many of Desplechin's own ideas, the house in Roubaix, which takes on a life of its own in L'Aimee, seems to harken back directly to La Vie Des Morts, Desplechin's first film. The shots of the house's interior seem directly tied to that film, the tall stairwell, the bedrooms and windows, and while I have not seen Un Conte de Noël yet, the description of the film seems to spring directly from some of the stories and ideas on display in L'Aimee as well, especially the idea of replacing a dead relation with another person and the location of the family gathering at a home in Roubaix; It all weaves together to form an overwhelming sense of autobiography and coming to terms with one's family and experience. I asked Desplechin about this in the post-film Q&A and he frankly acknowledged as much, adding the caveat that while we the audience can observe these things, they are too close to him and he "can't see it anymore."

I know my writing on Desplechin's films borders on the obsessive, but the more I see and the more I get to know his films, the more interwoven they become, with a thematic and aesthetic consistency that I just can't find in most contemporary filmmakers. Desplechin's films are mobius-like boxes within boxes; You open one film up and uncover something that exists in each, which only leads to more to uncover and more to see. As such, every time I see a new work by him, it makes me want to run back and watch them all, to unlock what is hidden so subtly in each film, to revel in those relationships between characters and stories, artist and art, all of which end up residing in my own mind, my own experience of them. While L'Aimee will be classified by some as a documentary, it is truly an exploration of a fractured story, of a memory and how it survives among the living, but most of all, it is a love story between a son and lost mother. As such, it finds a home comfortably within Desplechin's body of work, opening as many doors as it closes, echoing Robert's experience and his son's cinematic concerns at the same time. A little marvel, I think.

I was able to make a VERY lo-fi recording of most of the Q&A, which I have embedded below. I apologize for the audio and video quality, but I just grabbed this on my point and shoot on the spur of the moment.

Part 1

Part 2

Insert Requisite Spoiler Alert Here

Everything you need to know about what will be remembered as Joel and Ethan Coen's masterpiece can be gleaned from the two sequences that open the film; The wide open spaces of the West Texas desert, empty yet forbiddingly beautiful, are seen in near-silence, until a familiar voice (Tommy Lee Jones) intrudes on the solitude and begins to talk about what is inherited in places like this. Here, we learn, things get passed along from one generation to the next without as much as a perfunctory question; A man follows in his father’s footsteps and does what comes naturally to him. Fate is something one experiences as intimately as anything else in his life, and as you look at the barren landscape, the desolate roads, you learn that here, even here among nothing, things change. There was a time, a while back you learn, when some lawmen in places like this didn’t even bother wearing a gun, when the police were able to solve problems without need of a peacemaker. Times change, people change. Something new is on the way, even here among what seems to be nothing, and your fate is going to be to know it intimately. And suddenly, there he is; A shadowy looking man is pulled over by a police officer, both men seemingly insignificant in all of this nothingness. The man is taken to the station and, while the officer makes a phone call, slips his cuffs over his feet and strangles the deputy. Blood is everywhere as, wild-eyed with something that looks like pleasure, the prisoner extinguishes the life of the lawman. It is here, now. Change has come, even here. Something as old as nature, as inevitable as death itself.

There are few films that I have ever seen that create as perfect a blend of thematic unity, visual mastery and narrative eloquence as No Country For Old Men. Each scene is like a lesson in cinematic tension without ever feeling remotely didactic; There are no morals here, no judgments about politics or the state of the world. No Country For Old Men is the story of a man named Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin), a Viet Nam veteran living on the fringes of society with his wife Carla Jean (Kelly Macdonald) in the summer of 1980 when, hunting in the desert, he spies a pit bull limping away from what turns out to be a bloody mess of a crime scene; A drug deal gone bad, and everyone dead or on death’s door. The lone survivor asks for some water, but Llewelyn doesn’t have any. Instead, he goes in search of the money and, finding it, takes the two million dollars along with him. Late in the night, something human inside of him decides to return to the crime scene with a gallon of water. Maybe the man is alive. When his wife asks what he is up to, he tells her he’s about to do something dumber than hell. He’s right. When he opens the satchel of money, Pandora-like, he unleashes horror into the world.

If anything, No Country For Old Men is a film about characters locked in a battle with their own natures, with destiny seemingly a force pulsating inside of every frame, which is the essence of all great storytelling and classical drama. While all credit is due Cormac McCarthy’s novel (to which the Coens profess a deep loyalty and which I have admittedly not yet read), there is no mistaking the way in which the language of the cinematic thriller has been perfectly, poetically summarized and then transcended. There is nothing hurried or frantic about anything in the film, and while the explosions of violence send the heart racing, it beats faster because of the deliberate pace, the perfect predetermination of the dramatic conflict; This is how it must go. It feels like the slow clicking of the car as it ascends the first giant hill of a rollercoaster; You know what's coming on the other side, and you dread it while at the same time hoping for the relief it will bring. Even when the film surprises, twisting and turning, every conclusion makes as much sense as the sweat-inducing build-up. Not surprisingly, one of the most powerful weapons in the Coen’s arsenal in this film is sound; The decision to not use music (despite a composing credit for the great Carter Burwell, whose music graces the closing credits) is a powerful choice that eliminates the emotional cues or ironic dissonances of a musical score and instead gives way to both contemplation and the physicality of the film’s world. And so, with room to breathe, the film’s sound design becomes a gateway to almost all of its dramatic tensions and dénouements. The sound of a door closing, an unanswered telephone ringing on the receiver and in the distance, footsteps approaching from the other side of a closed door, the single beep of an electronic device, the silence after an explosion of violence, an approaching siren; Each sound in the film is a part of the chase, every moment filled with the anticipation of the ultimate confrontation between a bad decision and the retribution that follows.

Oh, Death: Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) in Joel and Ethan Coen's No Country For Old Men

Which is why, haircut be damned, the remorseless, merciless killer Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem) is so absolutely frightening; Like death itself, Anton operates without discrimination, without the guidance of reason and with the force of inevitability. The equation is hauntingly simple. In order to illustrate the point with clarity, Anton offers one of his potential victims mercy with the flip of a coin; In Anton’s universe, one which we inevitably share, life boils down to chance, to making life and death choices regardless of whether we’re ready to stare death in the face or not. Anton being a force of nature, our own sympathies immediately align with the tragically flawed Llewelyn, whose own mistaken pride and confidence mark him as a human being, someone we can comprehend if only long enough to curse him for fucking up again. And smack in the middle of this chase between a thief and the man who is going to bring what is coming to him, we have Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones), the symbol of justice, of law and order, whose own desire to avoid risk despite his interest in Llewelyn’s fate places him as the narrative fulcrum that perfectly balances the film’s concerns. In the final third of the film, once some more nasty business is unexpectedly resolved, the film naturally shifts focus to Bell and his own search for answers, none of which solve the crimes but all of which impact Bell’s understanding of the changing world around him.

Anton, on the other hand, doesn't like unresolved questions; He is not a character who can leave without getting satisfaction, without delivering on his promises. And so, when he is denied narrative closure of his own, he takes matters into his own hands and pays dearly (if not wholly). As such, the film allows justice to be served in a unique way that doesn’t satisfy narrative convention but instead summarizes the film’s classical presentation of human nature; Things move along, they shift, they change and people act according to their own nature, seemingly without a choice, as if every decision was excruciatingly unavoidable. As such, some fall into death’s cold embrace while others pass close enough to death’s door to know when it’s time to stop asking questions and to get on with living. Either way, death endures, hand in hand with life. No Country For Old Men is a masterpiece, as fine (and as bloody) a story as you’d find in Shakespeare or Sophocles, sharing the classical concerns of those great dramas in the context of our own violent times. Without question, one of the finest, most authoritative pieces of filmmaking and storytelling I have seen in a long, long time.

After being invited to moderate a terrific conversation with Darren Aronofsky at the Apple Store last November, I am happy to announce that indieWIRE has once again been generous enough to invite me to moderate another Apple Store conversation, this time with Director/Producer/Cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld this Thursday, October 4, 2007 at 6:30 pm. I am really excited to sit down with him a day after his new TV show, Pushing Daisies, premieres on ABC. It should be a lively discussion about Mr. Sonnenfeld's career and his thoughts for aspiring filmmakers participating in the Insomnia Film Festival (who are sponsoring the event); I'll be sure to make plenty of time for audience questions. Hope you can join us at the Apple Store SoHo.

A Conversation With Barry Sonnenfeld
Thursday, October 4, 2007
6:30 pm
The Apple Store SoHo
103 Prince Street, 2nd Floor
New York, NY 10012
(212) 226-3126

Director Barry Sonnenfeld on the set of RV

I refer the right honorable gentlemen to the reply I gave some moments ago...

A.J. Schnack's gorgeous About A Son

Tony Kaye's amazing Lake of Fire

Knocked out of my socks by Paranoid Park and I'm Not There today. I feel incapable of commenting on the Todd Haynes film until I see it again, but my thoughts on the Gus Van Sant coming soon; One of the best films of the year. This is the best time of year, no? So much to see, so much to say.

Oh, Michigan. Sigh...

I was born in Michigan, raised in Michigan, went to college at the University of Michigan, spent untold hours watching films from the balcony of the Michigan Theater, was MARRIED a couple of months ago in the Michigan Theater; Let's just say I have some deep roots in that place. I consider myself a product of the very special set of circumstances that existed in my home state during the decades I lived there. I have been watching with great sadness at the latest news coming out of The Ann Arbor Film Festival, where the moronic libertarian streak in some of my home state's most conservative neanderthals has somehow, someway won the day. After a libertarian "think tank" made claims that the Ann Arbor Film Festival showed 'pornographic' material (HILARIOUS!), frightened legislators refused to honor funding from the State of Michigan for the organization, one of the best avant-garde film festivals in the country, before the festival itself decided to forgo state funding to preserve its artistic integrity and challenge all attempts by the State to impose content-based restrictions.

From the festival's website:

" In 2006, the AAFF was targeted by a special interest groups and state legislators in Michigan who oppose public funding of the arts. Legislators unjustly claimed that our programming was pornographic and offensive (citing films they did not even watch), and had our state funding rescinded through unconstitutional means. When they asked us to alter our programming in order to receive their support, the AAFF refused to apply for future funding in order to protect our artistic integrity. This created an immediate gap in our annual budget. In March 2007 we challenged dubious state laws that harm the First Amendment rights of artists with a Federal lawsuit spearheaded by the ACLU. While we strongly believe in supporting artists’ freedom of expression, this lawsuit has also required excessive time and energy on behalf of staff. See our Censorship Controversy page for more. The Ann Arbor Film Festival agreed to be the plaintiff in this lawsuit to ensure that these unconstitutional state laws would not be used against other arts organizations in the future."

While I am so ashamed of the State of Michigan for its ignorance, I am more concerned about the chilling message the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and its lackeys in state government are trying to send. You have to know a little about Michigan politics and culture to understand the true tenor of this action, so let me put some things into perspective for the outsiders who see this issue as purely an issue about a film festival and its right to show whatever movies it wants to show.

Ann Arbor is home to the University of Michigan, which is one of the finest public Universities in the country (if, as an alumnus, I do say so myself). As such, Ann Arbor is seen by many people in the state of Michigan as a bastion of liberal elitism, the place where snobby intellectuals sit in espresso cafes and at sushi bars corrupting the impressionable minds of young undergraduates. It is, quite literally, the epicenter of class tensions in Michigan, where blue collar moral conservatives (and greedy white collar fiscal conservatives who pose as moral conservatives so they don't have to share their income or have any sense of responsibility toward their fellow citizens) clash with the so-called educated liberal elites (the shame!). It is not a coincidence that when Michigan conservatives wanted to challenge Affirmative Action laws in Michigan, they went after the University's Law School admissions policy. It is also no surprise that when they want to go after state arts funding, they would attack something called The Ann Arbor Film Festival. The words 'Ann Arbor' basically function as code for liberal, diverse, queer, feminist; Winning a battle against an Ann Arbor institution is like planting a flag with a middle finger on it in the heart of liberal land. What better way for conservatives to send a message and feel triumphant?

Of course, with the state economy in a huge downturn after the loss of thousands upon thousands of manufacturing and other jobs, the case against funding for the arts is particularly emboldened; If the state needs an economic stimulus, they argue, why not offer tax breaks, cut state budgets and trim the fat? The first place to look is, of course, arts funding because, as the Mackinac Center For Public Policy puts it so eloquently, "one person’s highpoint of artistic achievement may be deemed a cesspool of silliness by another." Interesting. I guess you say the same about anything, no? "One person's tax break may be deemed the inability to afford a meal by another." Or how about "one person's Center For Public Policy may be deemed a dimwitted front group for unrestricted capitalism without regard for any sort of social contract by another"? Attacking arts funding is so so easy, especially since the value of the arts in this country is constantly degraded. I have an idea; Since "one man's invasion and occupation may be deemed a war crime by another" why don't we pull state funding for the Michigan National Guard while we're at it? Let's demand objectivity and intellectual honesty in government! Right. Oh, subjectivity, you great, amorphous concept that literal-minded tax-evaders can't seem to navigate...

Snark and outrage aside, this campaign is truly about intellectual freedom and the responsibility of government institutions to support the artistic pursuit of ideas, regardless of their content. I applaud the Ann Arbor Film Festival for telling the State of Michigan to stick their caveats where the sun doesn't shine, but why should they have to do so? Most disturbing to me, the State of Michigan has a Democrat as a governor, two Democratic senators in the U.S. Senate, and a long-standing tradition of supporting intellectual and creative freedom in its artistic institutions. I'll be talking to all of my friends and family back home to see if I can get them to withdraw their support from their state representatives who have supported this outrageous act, but in the meantime, I've just made a $75 contribution to the Festival's ENDANGERED FUND on behalf of myself and my wife. I encourage all free-thinking people to help the festival offset the loss of state money and the cost of mounting a legal fight by helping in whatever way you can.

As much as I loathe this shift in the responsibility of government, migrating the sacred trust between taxation and public spending to a new dynamic of unaccountable private support for everything from social services to the arts, this is one issue I can't let go. The Ann Arbor Film Festival is important to me not just as a symbol of intellectual freedom, but because that theater and its movies, that city and that state are a part of who I am. I was there in 1989, and I'll do my part in 2007.

Below, a clever little video explaining the festival's Endangered campaign. Give a look, and give a little money to help the festival and its pursuit of laws that support funding for the Arts.

Everyone is someone's child. As a narrative device, I think it's fairly obvious that the relationship between parents and their children has served as one of cinema's most sturdy tropes; From serving as a gauge of changing times and a platform for the political divide among generations (Guess Who's Coming To Dinner, say) to the basic unit of big-stakes melodramas (Imitation of Life, Stella Dallas) and their more muscular counterpart, the family-in-jeopardy thriller (Firewall, Panic Room) all the way to broad comedies (Parenthood) and family films (Freaky Friday), there is probably nothing more tried and true, dyed-in the-wool red white and blue than the cinematic representation of the American family. There is no denying that, in this case, the cinema is more a mirror than an inspiration; This country is positively cult-like in its worship and adoration of kids, so much so that we impose deep social and cultural restrictions on adult intellectual freedoms in order to preserve the perceived innocence of our children. Books are banned from libraries, battles are waged over access to information and the world seems to stop when a child goes missing ; Culturally, we are romantic idealists about children and their lives, and while we constantly overlook the paucity of education in our public system and the growth of poverty and hunger among families in our nation, we prefer our imaginations to maintain dewy-eyed, gauzy images of children picking daisies in golden fields, symbols of our own desire to return to the fantasy of an innocence that never was.

Thank god for the rest of the world. While few American films have the courage to take on the imperfections and perils of parenting (Lodge Kerrigan's Keane is, for me, a masterpiece for its nightmarish vision of parental anxiety), cinema in the rest of the world seems more interested in exploring the adult conflicts inherent in reproduction than in merely venerating children (shhhh... don't tell the Academy...). Whereas parental mistakes and sacrifices in America are seen through a judgmental cultural gaze that wouldn't be out of place in a Hawthorne novel, artists elsewhere seem more interested in empathy and grace, the meaninglessness of propriety and the possibility of redemption. Last week's New York Film Festival screening schedule featured several films that explored the idea of human imperfection in the form of women who take diverse routes on the way to fulfilling their maternal roles, and the breadth and power of these stories was palpable for me; As a man on the verge of starting my own family, I breathe easier knowing that my own fears, doubts and concerns are not an isolated response.

For me, the most powerful of film the bunch was Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days, this year's Palme D'Or winner at Cannes. The film details an illegal abortion (the title describes the moment in gestation when the procedure is performed) in Bucharest in 1987 during the dying days of the Ceausescu regime; Otilia (Anamaria Marinca) is a college student whose roommate Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) is saddled with an unwanted pregnancy. Determined to terminate, Gabita makes some confused, half-hearted arrangements with a back-alley abortion provider and soon, she and Otilia find themselves in a dimly lit hotel room with the man hired to do the deed. After some blackmail and horrible compromises, the procedure is performed and suddenly, 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days is transformed from something out of the Dardenne Brothers into a film that would not be out of place in a late-period Hitchcock movie. Mungiu brilliantly sets the table for all types of terrible violence and tragedy; Otilia discovers a pocket knife among the abortion provider's personal effects (filling the entire film with dread), we hear the man describe the possible (and seemingly inevitable) complications that could arise from the procedure itself (hemorrhaging, hours and days of potential suffering) and we soon discover that he left his identification behind, throwing his identity into doubt while simultaneously worrying us that he may actually return to collect his identification. And then, Otilia leaves for a rendezvous with her boyfriend and his snobby parents, closing the door on the hotel room and leaving our imaginations to run wild as the clock ticks behind the locked door.

What Remains: Cristian Mungiu's 4 Months, 3 Weeks And 2 Days

It is no surprise at all that the tensions of a Dardenne-style social realism and the MacGuffins and unseen horrors of Hitchcock's brand of thriller would work so well together, but Mungiu makes certain by leaving no anxiety unexposed, no outrage unspoken. What heightens the life and death stakes of the film into the cinematic stratosphere is, of course, the outrageousness of the situation from the get-go; Without access to benefits of reproductive freedoms, an operation that should be performed safely and cleanly by a medical professional becomes a horror show. Anxiety is bad enough, but coupled with the outrage and anger at the situation (an anger that Mungiu clearly expresses through Otilia's point of view), the tension is at times unbearably brilliant. The women in the film make some costly mistakes (Gabita's casual approach to the details of her agreement proves especially frustrating), but one can't help wondering why they should have had to experience this at all. As the right to choose an abortion is continually evaluated in the political context of a world where feminism's hard-won victories seem commonplace, the film provides a painful reminder of the indignities suffered when politics and morality are imposed on the private decisions of individuals. Gabita's decision to not become a mother, as late as it arrives in the process, is as difficult and painful a choice as could be made, but it is Otilia's experience, that of a woman forced into the role of a criminal for facilitating that choice, that allows the film to escape the clichés of a cautionary tale and transcend as great drama.

Equally brilliant but antithetical in tone, Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Flight Of The Red Balloon is a moving re-imagining of Albert Lamorisse's The Red Balloon as the story of a collective maternal experience of sorts. While Lamorisse's film is a simple tale of a boy and the titular balloon as they traverse Paris, Hou's film combines the experience of Simon (Simon Iteanu) and his babysitter, a film student named Song (played by Fang Song) as they explore the City Of Lights. In this lovely re-telliing, the red balloon follows both Song and Simon through their daily routines, showing itself above Parisian rooftops, dancing against Simon's window, appearing as the subject of one of Song's short films and reminding both characters of the beauty of life outside the cramped apartment they share while waiting for Simon's mother, a frazzled puppeteer named Suzanne (Juliette Binoche as the epitome of a Parisian mother), to come home.

Imagine: Song (Fang Song) and Simon (Simon Iteanu) in Hou Hsiao-hsien's The Flight Of The Red Balloon

As such, Song and Suzanne become a sort of bifurcated figure of maternity for Simon; While the patient, soft-spoken Song spends plenty of time allowing Simon to explore his interests on the streets of Paris, Suzanne is a harried single mom struggling to balance her creative career (which she obviously loves) with her maternal obligations. As both women are kind and generous toward Simon and one another, Hou's vision of single motherhood as community seems to line-up directly with his established concerns; In films like A Time To Live, A Time To Die and My Summer At Grandpa's, the collective sense of responsibility for the children in the film is expressed as a sort of poetic reality of life in the provinces (one Hou himself is said to have experienced personally). For me, The Flight Of The Red Balloon fits perfectly among Hou's earlier 'coming-of-age' films as being focused on the wonders of childhood while simultaneously exploring the sacrifices and concerns of maternity. The film expresses plenty of empathy and understanding for Suzanne, whose late-arrivals and real-estate problems are portrayed with pure grace by the lovely Juliette Binoche and Hou's camera provides plenty of juxtaposition, alternating between the messy, cramped interiors of family's apartment and the wide-open spaces of the Paris skyline, graced by a fluttering balloon. The film is absolutely lovely, an expression of compassion and artistry that captures the feeling of family and imagination as tenderly as I have ever seen.

Spinning in a wholly other direction is Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine. (Note: It is impossible for me to talk about this film without discussing its revelations, so let me issue a spoiler alert right now.) Set in a small-town in South Korea called Miryang (a Chinese word, we learn, that means 'secret sunshine'), the film is the story of Shin-ae (Jeon Do-yeon, who won the Best Actress Award at Cannes for this performance), a young widow who wants to raise her son in her late husband's home town. She is befriended by an auto-mechanic named Kim Jong-chan (the brilliant Song Gang-ho, star of The Host and Memories Of A Murder) who has a bit of a crush on her, but she doesn't have time for him; Shin-are sets up shop as a piano teacher and spends her days raising her son and working hard to overcome her grief. That task proves absolutely impossible when her suffering is exponentially compounded by the kidnapping and murder of her son.

The Calm Before The Storm: Lee Chang-dong's Secret Sunshine

At this point, about 45 minutes into the film, the entire enterprise shifts tone as the inconsolable mother searches for any way to relieve her suffering. When she and Gang-ho visit a prayer vigil at an evangelical church, Shin-ae surrenders to the allure of protestant fanaticism as a way to forgive herself and cope with her loss. As she grows to understand the complexities of her faith, she decides to go and visit her son's murderer so that she can follow god's example and forgive him for his terrible sins. In what will rank as one of my favorite scenes in a movie ever, the smug self-satisfaction of this proposal is brilliantly exposed when she finally speaks to the killer, only to discover that he too has found god and feels that god has already forgiven him, thankyouverymuch. Stripped of the moral high ground and the catharsis of controlling forgiveness, Shin-ae spends the film's third act waging a war against god and his followers, looking for a single moment of peace that will take her away from her suffering. I loved this movie; Some have complained it is too long, but the seemingly interminable suffering of a mother who has lost her child is precisely the point. Just when Shin-ae seems on the verge of embracing her new provincial life, she makes a seemingly harmless mistake (leaving her son at home alone while she finally has a little fun at a karaoke bar) that proves to be the most punishing decision of her life. That Chang-dong refuses to take shortcuts in his examination of grief is, for me, the right decision; Shin-ae is one of the most difficult characters in this year's festival because of the singularity of her emotions, but at the same time, the monotony of grief and its consequences may never have been more precisely examined.

Last and least among the maternal portraits at the festival is Juan Antonio Bayona's The Orphanage, a stylish Spanish horror film that provides cheap thrills and breaks no new ground while going bump in the night (again, spoilers follow). It is, however, one of the most grim portrayals of maternal anxiety at the festival; An orphan herself, the adult Laura (Belen Rueda) moves with her husband and adopted, HIV-positive son Simón (Roger Príncep) back to the orphanage of her youth in order to fashion the place into a home for mentally disabled children. Trouble brews when Simón, whose imagination already provides him with invisible friends, discovers new, unseen playmates among the caves of the nearby seashore. And then, he is gone; Just as Laura throws a party to welcome her new charges, a creepy burlap-masked child named Tómas arrives and apparently steals Simón. The rest of the film is about Laura's quest to find her child in the haunted orphanage, but despite some moody atmospherics in the visual and sound design, the film never mounts a truly frightening vision of an obsessed mother gone mad. Instead, the movie forsakes psychology for horror movie trickery and instead of building any real tension (like, for example, the ticking clock in the aforementioned 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days), the film relies on tried and true methods to make you jump; Slow, crawling dolly shots down dimly lit hallways (Hello, Mr. Kubrick...) serve as misdirection for things jumping into the frame (boo! surprise!), objects fall suddenly (windows crash, doors open)-- almost all of the frights in The Orphanage spring from the classic 'gotcha!' school, and almost none come from any true psychological insight.

Sacked: Juan Antonio Bayona's The Orphanage

That said, in the age of torture porn, The Orphanage feels like a good old fashioned ghost story, and as such, it is certainly a good movie that should please fans of the genre. At the same time, like many horror films, its narrative world makes very little sense; Who in their right mind would cover the face of a physically deformed child with a burlap sack with a ghoulish face drawn on it? If, as the film suggests, Laura was actually physically attacked by the ghoulish child and locked in the bathroom, how is it that the entire ghost world turns out to be her misinterpretation of real-world events? Did Simón dress up as Tómas and then hide away? If so, who leaves the series of clues for Laura that lead her to her gristly discovery? Of course, the improbability of any and all of the film's story shouldn't stand in the way of the suspension of disbelief and the enjoyment of a good tale, and The Orphanage, though slight, has enough creepy style to keep you entertained. But in the shadow of films like Secret Sunshine and 4 Months, its life and death stakes feel slight, its tensions manufactured and its portrait of a maternal crisis rather silly. Standing on its own merits, I know The Orphanage will be the biggest box office winner of the four films I've discussed here, but it is the film's conventional accessibility and shallow portrait of maternity in crisis that makes it feel pale in comparison to the company it is keeping at this year's NYFF.