Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: NEW ORDER [Denver Film Festival 2020 – Virtual]
The aspect of dystopian movies is the matter of relation in terms of how close to the truth they can stay. The more disturbing ones take notes from history and place them within new context and modern settings. With “New Order” set in Mexico or in a version of Mexico City, the film starts showing the extreme separation from the rich and “the help”. Establishing during a wedding between Marianne & Cristian, the film moves more like a “Short Cuts” stream of consciousness through different rooms while showing the different moving perspectives of different classes. Specific aspects of need pour right on the doorstep during this celebration and sets up the conflict (however internal). But things aren’t going right. There is a sense of disturbance with the essence of green paint. Encroachment slowly comes in with invading forces but what becomes interesting is the flip that happens. Even while one area is subjugated, another area takes advantage and that is where the real damage lies. Production values are realistic as different landmarks almost look like news footage melded with a cinema verite quality which shifts from the earlier elegant camerawork (a tone shift obviously done with purpose). The reality is that those who tell the eventual story of history dictate how it is told. The use of phone camera is interesting although not used in the way one would think. Without giving too much away, the machinations move to the very end and are slicing. No one is safe. Human cruelty is brutal especially in desperate circumstances. Some of the scenes inside a certain garrison are harrowing because political correctness does nothing in those situations. It is about surviving when their seems there is no hope and the power struggle is apparent. There is no line between man and woman and yet the ignorance of the characters (even as a caricature of sorts seems extremely harsh). The film is very effective in displaying that movement while also showing that people one thinks are friends or confidants can easily manipulate aspects to their own advantage to the immense tragedy of others. Some of the images are downright horrible and yet one knows they happen all over the world. In a country that faces its own governmental problems currently in what is supposed to be one of the most free countries in the world, it brings into sharp focus the small crevice between light and darkness. The film also shows people exist with good souls but it sometimes it doesn’t reach mass effectiveness and rather is swept under the rug. “New Order” is a vicious take on a story told once too often that bears repeating as it continues to happen but arts is always a reflection of the life seen.
B
By Tim Wassberg
Fest Track On Sirk TV Film Review: DAVE’S NOT COMING BACK [Austin Film Festival 2020 – Virtual]
The context of “Dave Not Coming Back” is almost mythic in its progress. A feature film in narrative style would have harmed its poignancy but the irony of a documentary film that was initially being made to document a rescue of sorts in a deep water cave located in the desert plains of South Africa is mind boggling in its own structure of Bushman’s Hole. This freshwater sinkhole descends to close to 1000 feet underwater. Many have dived it. one such diver, not a full professional, (the title character of Dave) set the world record by going to the bottom where he found the body of a former diver who was lost a decade earlier. The initial documentary footage done in 2005 was created to capture that effort and its success. What it turned into was something much darker and human. The only way to recover the body was to have a string of divers almost relay the body up since otherwise they couldn’t rise to the surface that quick or risk bad decompression sickness. From nearly 1000 feet it takes near 12 hours stopping at different depths to decompress. Without giving too much away, something went wrong but watching the layers being pulled away including footage actually taken by the man who went down to the very bottom is both harrowing and strangely prescient and moving but also disturbing. These kinds of stories are the ones that sometimes people who lived them don’t want to tell because of guilt but with others, it is about setting the record straight. Don, who was almost hand-in-hand with Dave (who didn’t come back – hence the title), recreates in a way but also shows his path without overwhelming the story (which on its own is harrowing as well — yet he survived). Balancing the new info, underwater recreations (to a point) [done by Don] and footage going down into a mine shaft plus some beautiful drone bridges of the actual sinkhole from above, it is a story that perhaps most of us in the US never heard about but it is universal. It also needed time to simmer and manifest if you will. This event was very unique, tragic but also deeply human and ambitious but also fraught wit themes of regret, ego and legacy. Ultimately it creates a texture vision into the mindset of explorers, the motivations that drive them and the ones that are left behind. Many of the worlds and footage are prescient yet paint a distinct picture of a moment in time, perhaps secular from the world but undeniably global in its universality.
A-
By Tim Wassberg
