Alex Deleon-Pevney <filmfestivals.com>
"... the invincible Martians against whom all of mans weapons were as useless as toys were finally stopped (on the verge of destroying Mankind) by bacteria, the littlest things that God in his wisdom had put on the Earth".
With these exalted words ending Paramount's magnificent 1953 adaptation of the famous H. G. Wells sci-fi opus I decided to call it a night and pass up.still another film for which I had a ticket and go back to my hotel without even bothering to find out which films had won which awards.
Why bother when you've had a perfect evening at the movies and the awards blahblahbla will all be in the papers in the morning anyway.
This year I actually saw more competition films than ever before -ten out of the eighteen in the running for the Bears -- but no strong favorites or disfavorites. One of the ones I didn't see will probably win the Golden Bear (they always do) and Berlin Festival awards, unlike Hollywood Oscars, are little more than symbolic and have little effect on the eventual market appeal of the winners. However Berlin bear winners are usually picked up by other festivals later in the year and find their audience that way. The only big name in the competition lineup is Finland's Aki Kaurismäki with a politically minded film called "The Other Side of Hope". Because I have always like his dry humor and minimalist style Aki will be my sentimental favorite, however I will not be surprised if a weird film from an odd country comes in out of the cold to cop the Golden Bear best film award.
The festival officially ends today, Saturday, but the Berlinale wisely tacks on an extra day -- Always on Sunday -- for frustrated film fans to catch up with important films they couldn't get to during the overcrowded offerings during the week.
Tomorrow I will be see the Kaurasmäki I missed during the week because all showings were sold out before I made my bid. Another one I am hot for on Sunday is "Viceroy's House" is about the last English viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, on the verge of the traumatic partition of the country in 1947 and the creation of a new country called Pakistan.
One of the hottest numbers of the festival, Haitian director Raoul Peck's documentary on James Baldwin "I am not your Negro" which is based on Baldwin's last unfinished book, has been sold out all week and is sold out as well tomorrow on Getaway Day but will undoubtedly turn up at other festivals throughout the year. Yesterday's International New York Times carried a lengthy discussion of this film testifying to it's more than merely cinematic importance. One wonders whether America will ever get over the sticky legacy of the slavery on which the nation was built.
Negro American writer James Baldwin as seen in the film "I am not your Negro"