Hello Contra Zoom readers. After many overdue months dealing with some issues on my end both at work and in my personal life, I am here with my recap of the films I watched at the New York Film Fest in September. While obviously a lot (though not all of these films) have already been reviewed elsewhere perhaps, I think it’s still useful to read this as a review of the entire film festival going experience as a whole. After all, one of the benefits of film festivals is being able to lock yourself away in a theater for a few hours and watch films back to back, which were often curated by programmers to have through lines and related themes throughout, as opposed to a mishmash of whatever happens to be on your backlog.
Day 1 – Pictures about Power
Day 2 + 3 – Asian Slice of Life + Oscars Contenders
Day 4+5+6 – Exploring Foreign Countries + The Brutalist
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Day 1 – Pictures about Power (Sept 20)
The first day I was able to take off for the film festival was Friday the 20th (funny sidebar, I had wanted to do the double feature of The Seed of the Sacred Fig and The Brutalist on Wednesday the 18th. Unfortunately for film coverage, I had actually already committed to going to a K-pop concert with my wife at the same time. Which may have been for the better as apparently the press line to get into those screenings was insane). The films I really wanted to watch here were Happyend (A Japanese film about surveillance), No Other Land (the much lauded film that won Best Documentary at Berlin), and Searchlight’s A Real Pain (which had a lot of buzz out of Sundance as a potential Oscar player). The other two films that happened to be that day were Scénarios and Exposé du Film annonce du film Scénario (a pair of short films related to the late Jean-Luc Godard), and Harvest, a medieval drama. I ultimately couldn’t make it in time for the 10am screening of Scénarios, so my first film of the day was Happyend.
One of the things I love about film festivals is how the act of curating films causes one to draw parallels and comparisons between them, particularly in finding thematic throughlines. For this first day, the films I ended up seeing all had to do, in one way or another, with the idea of those without power facing those with it.
Happyend – Dir Neo Sora
Final Rating: 4/5
As an Asian American interested in both Asian and Asian American film, I sometimes have to make clear that I don’t view both those subcategories as one and the same. Asian American cinema up to this point often (though not exclusively) deals with the role of being a minority and the other in this country (despite many claiming we live in a post-race country). On the flip side, because many Asian countries are largely homogenous, racial minorities aren’t really talked about as much. I remember meeting international Filipinos in college who didn’t really get why Filipino-Americans like myself made such a big deal about our heritage, having grown up where they didn’t have the concept of being a racial minority.
All of that to say, what I find most interesting about Happyend is how it sheds light on a part of Japanese society that up until now (in my over two decades of consuming Japanese media in one form or another), I haven’t really come across before. The film follows a club of rebellious music lovers led by Yuta (Hayato Kurihara) and Kou (Yukito Hidaka), with Yuta being Japanese through and through while Kou is a 4th generation Korean-Japanese. Their motley crew are rounded out by Ata-chan and Ming (of Chinese/Taiwanese descent), and Tom (half African American). After a prank on their uptight principal gets a bit out of hand, an Orwellian surveillance system (complete with a gamified social score system docking points for being out of class at the wrong time or wearing one’s uniform in a non-standard way) is installed in the name of peace and social harmony. All of this unfolds in the foreground as a fictional political crisis emerges in the background complete with activist protests. What I took away from Happyend was an examination of how those with privilege can be (sometimes willfully) oblivious to injustice, as well as a reminder for those who are aware to lend their voice to those without, not just in words but also in action. Though that’s not to say that the underprivileged are helpless – one of my favorite sequences in the film was a student protest about two thirds of the way through.
Ultimately, Happyend functions as a satisfying coming of age story with this (at times out of focus) moral. The acting, by Yukito Hidaka in particular as Kou, is particularly noteworthy. And while there are perhaps some improvements to be made in the screenplay in terms of pacing and such, for a first time directorial feature effort by Sora, I certainly was impressed and will be keeping an eye out for his next film.
Harvest – Dir Athina Rachel Tsangari
Final Rating: 2/5
Adapting the 2013 novel of the same name by Jim Crace, the film tells the story of an English village that has a pastoral life that is threatened economically as the control of their land changes hands and a man comes to draw a map of the area. Scapegoats are found for crimes that no one will confess to, and someone is waterboarded in piss.
I’ll be honest, while this film is gorgeous to look at between being shot in 16mm and having some fantastic production and costume design, it was a bit of a struggle to get through; the sound mixing was a bit uneven and the heavy accents with no subtitles made it a bit hard to be immersed in the story. What I did understand, it felt like the film was trying to say one thing about power and belonging and community, while not quite making those points as clear or pronounced as it could have. Perhaps that ambiguity is intended but it didn’t quite work for me. For another film I watched earlier this year about discord within pastoral life, I strongly recommend the Polish film The Peasants.
No Other Land – Dir Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor
Final Rating: 5/5
It’s almost impossible to talk about this film without talking about the situation in the Middle East. Obviously there’s the subject matter (though it should be noted this is specifically about the decades long displacement of the Masafer Yatta community by the Israeli army, albeit with a quick epilogue discussing the after effects of October 7th). There was controversy about this film winning at Berlinale. How it’s not yet picked up for US release in the same way that no one wanted to pick up The Apprentice for a while, or how the Amazon labor documentary Union still doesn’t have a distributor either. And I’m sure something that will be weighing on Oscars prognosticators minds going into awards season will be how a Pro-Palestine film like this will do in an Academy that frankly has a significant pro-Israel population (against other films such as September 5).
I’m not going to do any of that or inject my own personal political view here. What I would like to think should be universally applaudable is the work Adra and his colleagues have done in documenting what has been going on around them despite threats of violence, retribution, arrest and worse against them. In fact, the very day that I was watching this film being screened, Adra’s father was taken by IDF soldiers, blindfolded and held at a settlement without cause. That certainly made for a powerful screening experience, knowing that while they wrapped on the edit for this film, the story is yet ongoing.
I think the only real endorsement I have to say about this film is this – of the 85 films I’ve seen this year, I’ve given 14 five stars (and two of those were films from last year for the Oscars that I was late getting to). Of all of those films, I would say that No Other Land is the singular film I think is a must watch; above classics like Seven Samurai or Lawrence of Arabia. Above other films I’ll talk about in this NYFF diary including The Brutalist. No Other Land is urgent, it is singularly human, and it is a testament to what one man with a camera can do.
A Real Pain – Dir Jesse Eisenberg
Final Rating: 4/5
Something I don’t think I’ve ever written out in public online: I have depression. I kind of joke with both my psychiatrist and therapist that I think that most folks of my generation have endemic low grade depression due to the state of the world but at least for me it’s something that’s been diagnosed and that I’m receiving treatment for. While it’s not as bad as it has been in the past, complete with panic/anxiety attacks and literally being unable to get myself out of bed, it’s there and waxes and wanes over time. Part of why I’ve been so late with getting these reviews to Dakota (many apologies to him for my tardiness and many thanks for his understanding and patience) has been wrestling for the past few months with my own inner demons. Frankly I don’t think I could have gotten out of my slump alone; it took the support of my wife and my medical team and even having these reviews for Dakota as a goal for me to work toward. And while I won’t really elaborate for privacy’s sake, I also have been helping loved ones with their own mental health journeys.
This very public confession all to say that I’d like to be able to think I have some lived experience of what we see in A Real Pain – both as a Benji (Keiran Culkin’s character) and also as a David (Jesse Eisenberg’s character; sidenote it got a laugh out of me that he’s a digital ad sales guy since I also work in digital advertising). The film follows two Jewish American cousins who take a heritage trip to Poland after their grandmother passes. Their very different personalities clash particularly over the course of the trip with Benji’s volatile mood swings sending him from charming the rest of their tour group to having outbursts causing them to get off schedule.
For me the film really comes down to two scenes. One is a dinner scene where David talks through his complicated feelings regarding Benji, and the other the final night of their trip talking about the future while smoking marijuana on the roof of their hotel, particularly how they’ve drifted apart. Months later I’m still not sure how I feel about the ending of this film. I don’t know whether or not David has perhaps improved his perception and relationship with Benji and that things will be better in the future, or that perhaps cynically they won’t and they’re still stuck in the cycle of highs and lows and that that’s just life. While the former is certainly more narratively satisfying, I know the reality can often be the latter and it feels disingenuous to suggest that just one trip like this will be all it takes without hard work from all involved to make real progress.Obviously, this element of the mental health aspect is but one part of what makes A Real Pain a great film – you have for example Eisenberg’s stated desire to reconcile the trauma of his ancestors against his modern daily challenges. Again, Eisenberg’s writing and Culkin’s acting are superb and honestly the best chances for nominations at the Oscars, though I want to call out supporting actor Kurt Egyiawan as Eloge, a Rwandan refugee who is part of the Heritage tour as a convert to Judaism. At this point it does seem like a Best Picture nominee, though I personally think for me it personally is lacking some X factor I can’t quite pinpoint – perhaps it’s that ambiguity I dislike about the ending, even if it is intentional. Regardless though, obviously this film has a lot to say and will mean a lot to different people, myself included.
The following films were seen during the 2024 New York Film Festival.
