Indie Focus: Joaquin Phoenix meets ‘Gunda’

Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

Even though the DGA and BAFTA awards were given out last weekend — Chloé Zhao and “Nomadland” won at both — the biggest Hollywood news this week actually came from Hollywood proper, as it was announced that Pacific Theatres and ArcLight Cinemas, including the historic Cinerama Dome, would not be reopening.

Ryan Faughnder dug into what that means for the exhibition business, while Jessica Gelt took a look at whether the Dome itself is in danger of demolition.

Mary McNamara wrote about how she will miss her local ArcLight location in Pasadena.

Jen Yamato and I reached 14 filmmakers for their memories of favorite moments at the venues. Many expressed disbelief, as well as a concern that the theaters reopen. Among those who answered our call were Rian Johnson, Aubrey Plaza, Victoria Mahoney, John M. Chu, Adam McKay, Liz Hannah and Karyn Kusama.

They shared a mix of personal memories and thoughts on the bigger meaning of the theaters’ closure. There has been much chatter online that a successful filmmaker like Quentin Tarantino or Christopher Nolan should buy and run the theaters, but as Edgar Wright put it, “The solution is, as it has always been, to make films for the cinema screen, and then for studios and exhibitors to work together so we can see them safely and, by doing so, encourage the audiences back. Both those filmmakers, and some others, have stood by the power of the cinema experience, and feel keenly what people often forget, that exhibition and the big screen experience is still the foundation of the business. It’s been easy, in the pandemic year and the dominance of streamers, for many to forget that people like going to the movies.”

For “The Envelope” podcast, this week I spoke to Amanda Seyfried, nominated for an Oscar for her performance as Marion Davies in “Mank.” In playing the role, she said she had to both find connections between herself and Davies, an actress who was often underestimated, and give herself up to the role. As she put it, “All the things that make me me can serve me well if utilized correctly. And I don’t even know what I used at this point — like I shed most of me for this role.”

‘Gunda’

Directed by Victor Kossakovsky and executive produced by Joaquin Phoenix, the documentary “Gunda” follows a few animals, some cows, a chicken, a pig named Gunda and her new litter of babies, as they go about their lives on the farm. With no dialogue, no subtitles or interjection, the movie is an immersive view of the animal world, with Gunda in particular emerging as an astonishing character. The movie is in limited release where theaters are open.

For The Times, Jessica Kiang wrote, “The shimmering result is that we feel empathy for Gunda not because she is like us, not because she looks happy or sad or Insta-ready or occasionally a bit like Larry David just before the “Curb” music plays, but because we are like her. We don’t need to map Gunda’s reactions onto the planes of the human experience, because we can see that our true natures, so deeply buried beneath layers of socialization, civilization and sophistication, spring from exactly the same, animal place as hers. Kossakovsky doesn’t anthropomorphize the animals; if anything, he zoomorphizes us.”

I spoke to Kossakovsky and Phoenix about the film. As Phoenix said of what drew him to lend his name to the project, “I’ve never experienced a film the way that that I’ve experienced ‘Gunda. And so I automatically felt like this was something that I wanted to get behind. It was just an honest reaction to something that I’d witnessed. So that’s as much as I thought about it. I saw this film, I was struck by it, I’d never seen anything like it and so I was honored to support it in whatever way.”

For the New York Times, Manohla Dargis wrote, “The astonishing documentary ‘Gunda’ offers another way of looking at animals. Sublimely beautiful and profoundly moving, it offers you the opportunity to look — at animals, yes, but also at qualities that are often subordinated in narratively driven movies, at textures, shapes and light. It’s outwardly simple: For most of its 93 minutes, the movie focuses on a sow and her piglets. In a short section we roam with chickens, including an impressively agile one-legged bird. In another, cows gallop into a misty field to graze, an interlude of pastoral dreaminess that invokes other representations — in novels and landscape paintings — yet is itself visually transfixing.”

For rogerebert.com, Carlos Aguilar wrote, “Kossakovsky begets meaningful character development, at once disarming and unvarnished. It’s in the way the cows stare straight into the camera or how they help one another swat insects away, in how Gunda mothers her brood or placidly lounges in mud, or in how an angelical piglet bathed in the warm morning light curiously steps into the outdoors. ‘Gunda’ operates with the spiritual grandeur of a Terrence Malick film and an underlying, non-militant plea to rethink our relationship with animals we have dismissed as subservient and only valuable in the measure that they serve as our food.”

A still from the documentary “Gunda” directed by Victor Kossakovsky.

(Neon)

‘In the Earth’

Written and directed by Ben Wheatley, “In the Earth” finds the filmmaker returning to his cult-horror roots after last year’s remake of “Rebecca.” In the new film, as a deadly virus afflicts the world, a scientist (Joel Fry) is led by a ranger (Ellora Torchia) deep into the woods, where they encounter an unstable hermit (Reece Shearsmith) and another scientist (Hayley Squires). Things go wrong from there, as nature, science and ancient rituals collide. The film is playing in theaters where they are open.

For The Times, Katie Walsh wrote, “Wheatley’s film works on a purely elemental level; like nature itself, the film is a sensory event, the narrative often subsumed by the aural and visual experience. Clint Mansell’s brilliant score vibrates and reverberates through time, synths and bells blending with the atmospheric, often punishing, sound design. Every cinematic element is designed to unnerve the viewer. Some choices, like Wheatley’s unique approach to film editing — making rapid little cuts when you least expect them — are more successful than others, such as the abstrusely hallucinatory montages. … Wheatley crafts a plague film that isn’t necessarily about a plague, but that captures the anxiety and fear of invisible forces beyond our control impelling us, unknowingly, into danger.”

For the New York Times, Ben Kenigsberg wrote, “Wheatley, who led hit men into a den of occult ritual in ‘Kill List,’ isn’t one to let coherence get in the way of a good high concept. Expecting “In the Earth” to reconcile its influences (is this a plague movie, a folktale or science fiction?) is missing the point. … The director operates with a faith that almost any plot element can be assimilated in a climactic freakout of editing. (Wheatley did his own.) And if the bigger picture of ‘In the Earth’ doesn’t appear fully realized — this is a movie not just of the moment, but perhaps rushed to meet it — it would be difficult, this year, for at least some of its atmosphere of isolation-induced madness not to inspire a chill.”

For The Guardian, Benjamin Lee wrote, “In a flawed yet fierce return to form, Ben Wheatley has crafted a phantasmagoric treat with ‘In the Earth,’ an ambitious, atmospheric little woodland horror filmed on the sly last August. … While not a total win, ‘In the Earth’ remains a much-needed leap back in the right direction for Wheatley, coming off the back of his redundant remake of Rebecca, a shrug of a film that could have been directed by just about anyone rather than someone of such verve and perversity. The reason he makes so much of it work as opposed to the other directors who have rushed together pandemic productions is that he knows exactly how to maximise a limited budget while also making the most of the creative freedom that comes with it.”

For Vulture, Alison Willmore wrote, “‘In the Earth’ is the latest contribution to the small questionable canon of COVID cinema, having been shot by writer-director Ben Wheatley quietly over 15 days in August of last year. Movies so far have struggled with how to tell stories about life lived under the shadow of a virus, but one thing ‘In the Earth’ is unusually good at is summoning a sense of shared but unevenly distributed trauma across its small set of characters. … COVID has proven a difficult subject for fiction, but ‘In the Earth’ feels as though it sets up an emotional parallel that it doesn’t follow through on, abandoning the virus as a backdrop for a horror story that’s slapdash and never very creepy. It’s another instance of pandemic cinema that feels as if it could use more distance to figure out what it wants to say.”

Joel Fry and Ellora Torchia in the movie “In the Earth.”

(Neon)

‘Jakob’s Wife’

Directed and co-written by Travis Stevens, “Jakob’s Wife” is the story of Anne (Barbara Crampton), the wife of small-town pastor Jakob (Larry Fessenden), the two of them having settled into a comfortable if unequal dynamic that leaves her wanting more. When she is turned into a vampire, both of their lives are upended. The film is in limited release where theaters are open and also on digital and VOD.

For The Times, Noel Murray wrote, “The themes of ‘Jakob’s Wife’ are a bit simplistic, but the lead performances are incredibly complex, drawing on the two stars’ decades of screen (and life) experience. These two have such strong chemistry, whether she’s comically rolling her eyes at him as he blusters, “This is what I was trained for, to fight evil,” or he’s sincerely appreciating her passion and personality for the first time in decades. More than a depiction of a curse turned opportunity for a morose, aging housewife, ‘Jakob’s Wife’ is a portrait of a marriage in a rut, saved when the husband stops sucking the life out of his spouse and instead helps her suck the life out of everyone else.”

For Variety, Jessica Kiang wrote, “Low-budget necessity is often the mother of low-budget invention, but sadly not so much in Travis Stevens’ ‘Jakob’s Wife,’ a thin, half-hearted reworking of the vampire mythos that can’t quite decide if it’s spoofy or serious, and doesn’t have the smarts to be both. While it’s theoretically promising to attempt a hybrid tone in which schlocky effects and spurting necks are offset by genuine psychological insight into the discontented life of a long-married small-town pastor’s wife, in practice, the impulses just cancel each other out, whittling down the movie’s stakes long before they’re plunged into anyone’s chest.”

For rogerebert.com, Sheila O’Malley wrote, “After 40-odd years in the business, Crampton is now developing her own projects, and if the witty “Jakob’s Wife” is any indication this is a very exciting development. In “Jakob’s Wife,” the classic vampire theme is looped into an insightful and often very funny commentary on marriage and the limitations placed on women. … Stevens really pushes the absurdity in an almost slapstick fashion, and then Fessenden and Crampton play it real. ‘Jakob’s Wife’ is part ‘The Hunger,’ part ‘Scenes from a Marriage.’”

Barbara Crampton as Anne Fedder in “Jakob’s Wife.”

(Ava Jazlyn Gandy / RLJE Films and Shudder)