Knee Deep In The Evening
Posted on | November 18, 2007 at 5:39 pm | Comments Off
I’m still reeling in shock from Brad’s death, and my heart goes out to his family.
But the blog must go on. Along with some out of town friends, I attended a couple of days of the Denver Film Festival. We saw two films on Friday, both of which I enjoyed.
The first one was a documentary called Knee Deep. It was about a guy who tried to kill his mother (or did he?) when she tried to sell the family farm out from under him, even though it had been promised to him. The farm is in rural Maine and the movie was an interesting portrait of a world I wasn’t at all familiar with. There were definitely some highly comic undertones to the movie, but it had respect for its subjects. You got a good look at a hard way of life that is rapidly disappearing. Why anyone would covet that life is somewhat beyond me. Especially when you consider that Josh Osborne, the subject of the film, coveted that hard farm life so much he (allegedly) went to such extraordinary lengths to preserve it. But to each his own. I suppose if that’s the only thing you know and it gives you satisfaction and a sense of purpose, that’s all you need. I liked that the movie made its points and got out, without lingering. Some documentaries can be too long. It was well filmed and the subjects were interesting. The director did a Q&A after the screening, and it was cool to get his point of view on the events in the movie, as well as some behind the scenes information about it. Recommended. This film won the documentary award at the festival.
The second movie we saw on Friday was a feature film called Starting Out In The Evening (awkward title). It’s the fictional story of aging novelist Leonard Schiller, played meticulously by Frank Langella, who is the intended subject of a master’s thesis by a female graduate student played by Six Feet Under’s Lauren Ambrose. Her character Heather is enamored of Leonard’s first two books but can’t figure out his later two, and she wants to know what makes him tick. Leonard’s books are out of print and he’s been working on a new novel for something like 10 years, hoping to get back in the game. Heather is kind of a creepy, obsessed fan who seems to be using the old man to further her own game, but as played by Ambrose, there’s always that note of ambiguity there that makes you wonder just what her deal is.
There’s another story in the movie involving Leonard’s daughter Ariel, played by Lili Taylor. Ariel is a nearing-40 single gal in NYC, an ex-dancer who teaches pilates. Her biological clock is ticking and she’s obsessed with having a child. An old lover of hers, played very well by Adrian Lester, re-enters the picture and stirs up things in her life. There are some interesting parallels in the stories between father and daughter that serve to bring the movie full circle. I enjoyed this movie a lot, even though it wasn’t much more than a character study of these people. There were a lot of nice little moments in it, including a hilarious scene between Leonard and Heather involving honey. And hey, Leonard wears a tie in almost every scene, and you have to admire that. The only thing that bothered me was that I thought Lili Taylor was somewhat miscast. Maybe I’m used to seeing her in other type of roles or something, but her performance didn’t ring totally true to me. It was almost like the lines she was saying were coming out of someone else’s mouth. I have to say she was gorgeous in this movie though.
That’s it for now. Saturday’s report soon (two more documentaries).
Jogged Today: No, slept in.
Today’s Weight: Don’t know. Wasn’t around a scale this morning.
Lunch Yesterday: Salmon and lemon sauce crepe at the Crepes N Crepes in Writer’s Square.
Pet Peeve of the Day: Seeing holiday decorations up everywhere and hearing Christmas music already.
Latre.