No doubt in the mind of artistic director Lizzie Francke, there were many ways she hoped the 54th Edinburgh Film Festival would begin. Having the opening film, Lars Von Trier's Dancer in the Dark, stop mid-reel can not have been one of them. It was a minor hiccup to what was her strongest programme yet, and another key step in protecting Edinburgh's place on the international circuit.
Unlike Cannes, Edinburgh doesn't award notable prizes - nor does it host thousands of industry insiders negotiating deals on future productions. It does host a lot of buyers, looking for new films to distribute, and thousands of addicts staring at the flickering light in the dark. What they saw was an art form in a state of transition, trying out new equipment and story structure.
A host of film-makers shot their movies on digital cameras. The advantage is simple; it is a lot cheaper and the equipment is much easier to come by. The effect of this is huge; it eliminates many of the time- and money-consuming tasks which film-makers have grown to accept as part of the industry. It should democratise film-making, which might go some way to breaking up the tight knot of actors and filmmakers responsible for so many lousy British films of late.
What is certainly happening is that film-makers are rejecting in droves the classic Hollywood story structure formula of set-up, conflict and neat resolution. Mike Figgis's Timecode, with its split-screen, four-story structure, has attracted a lot of attention, for obvious reasons, but filmmakers across the globe are finding new ways of telling stories.
Michael Haneke's Code Unknown shows us a series of meetings between people where it gradually appears they all have some connection. What that connection may be, is up to the audience. If this seems a trifle too abstract, the international premiere of the Australian film Chopper offered a different take on character development. Based on the life of a violent criminal called Mark Brandon "Chopper" Read, played brilliantly by Eric Bana, the film opens in jail. There are no glib explanations about why he is jail, nor why he viciously attacks a fellow inmate. When he is let out, he might be working for the police and conducting a vigilante war on other criminals -or he might still just be a ruthless thug. What makes Chopper so compelling is that it shows us a clever, articulate and violent character but leaves his motives open to question. It also has one of the funniest cocaine scenes in cinema history.
While Chopper has a straight storyline, many other films opted for the looping, interconnected structure of Robert Altman's Short Cuts, a film which appears increasing significant. It spawned Tarantino's Pulp Fiction which, in turn, influenced Amores Perros, a remarkable Mexican film telling three tales from lowlife Mexico City. The connections between the three stories emerge slowly, confusing the audience's sense of time and revealing a miserable world where love is craved.
Where Amore Perros shows a familiar Latin American grittiness (think Pixquote or Central Station) Segi-mal reveals a little-seen world of South Korean hardship. This fascinating film has three interconnecting stories depicting a society corrupted by its quest to play a part in global capitalism. An idealistic scriptwriter, a pessimistic academic and a businessman, playing "realistic" for all its grubby worth, show what happened when the Asian tiger got shot.
The premiere of Terence Davis's House of Mirth was a rare moment of excellence for the UK industry. Davis, adored by many for his Distant Voices, Still Lives, has put Edith Wharton's book on the screen with astonishing grace. His camera fetishises the lush interiors of the homes of New York's turn-of-the-century wealthy and their verdant gardens as well as dwelling on Gillian Anderson's ornate curls. We travel at a novelistic pace, not missing any of the detail but still enraptured by a gripping story. The Coen Brothers' O Brother, Where Art Thou pulls off a similar structural trick by rejecting a three-part narrative structure for a steady progression towards its conclusion, though a much jollier one than that of House of Mirth.
Where the Hollywood structure is seen best is in the wonderfully black 69 from Thailand. Arsenic and Old Lace and Eating Raoul are just two examples of movies where killing people is fun, and 69 enters the genre with relish. A recently-sacked secretary finds a box of money outside her Bangkok flat. As various crooks and cops cross her path they are bumped off as this decent young woman tries to make her way in a thankless city. It's a very funny tale that borrows from Shallow Grave and deserves wider distribution.
No British film on display compares with Shallow Grave or Trainspotting, though Robert Carlyle, who starred in the latter film, does crop up in There's Only One Jimmy Grimble, a tale of a young lad with plenty of skill but none of the nerve to play competitive football. There may only be one Jimmy Grimble, but there are a million takes on the story of young hope being tested and triumphantly realised in the final scene, redeeming all around. Compared to either the Spanish Krampack or the Danish Love At First Hiccough, both showing at the festival and also dealing with young men coming of age, it looks old fashioned.
In fairness, one British film which did prompt a lot of positive criticism but which this reviewer had not seen at time of going to press was The Low Down. It shows that awful moment in life when young people decide that pints should give way to mortgage payments and it was hailed as being "warm". It looks set to get a wider distribution soon.
Special bile is reserved by this critic for Everything Put Together, an American film about a couple whose baby dies from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and the despair the mother subsequently feels. There may be an audience somewhere which needs to be told that the death of a child is harrowing, though I don't know where. There might also be a school of therapy which thinks such a tragedy should be dressed up with all the tics and gimmicks of a cheap horror movie. I might be alone, but I found this film so base it left my heart numb.
