This year the festival celebrates its 50th edition with revivals of: Alexander and Natural Born Killers, introduced by director Oliver Stone; Roger and Me, introduced by director Michael Moore; four features starring French actress Isabelle Huppert; and numerous features that have played in past years. Unless otherwise noted, screenings are at River East 21 and tickets are $14.
A half century of CIFF milestones, from Scorsese’s debut to Lee Daniels’s achievement award
Read our reviews of films screening during the first and second weeks of CIFF.
Fanny and Alexander Ingmar Bergman’s 1983 feature, condensed from a much longer TV series, is less an autumnal summation of his career than an investigation of its earliest beginnings: through the figure of ten-year-old Alexander (Bertil Guve), Bergman traces the storytelling urge, developing from dreams and fairy tales into theater and (implicitly) movies. The film doesn’t so much surmount Bergman’s usual shortcomings—the crude contrasts, heavy symbolism, and preachy philosophizing—as find an effective context for them. Tied to a child’s mind, the oversimplifications become the stuff of myth and legend. As in The Night of the Hunter, a realistic psychological drama is allowed to expand into fantasy; the result is one of Bergman’s most haunting and suggestive films. With Ewa Fröling and Gunn Wållgren. In Swedish with subtitles. —Dave Kehr 197 min. Mon 10/13, 2 PM.
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest This slick and entertaining 1975 film of Ken Kesey’s cult novel will inevitably disappoint admirers of director Miloš Forman’s earlier work. Jack Nicholson plays McMurphy as if he were born to it, and the supporting cast provides fine, detailed performances. But there is little of Forman’s real personality in the film, which smooths over the complexities of his Czechoslovakian work in favor of some mighty simpleminded conceptions of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. With Louise Fletcher, William Redfield, Michael Berryman, Scatman Crothers, and Sidney Lassick. —Dave Kehr R, 133 min. Sat 10/18, 4 PM.
White Material In a fictional African country, a helicopter hovers over a French coffee plantation, bringing news to the stubborn white owner (Isabelle Huppert) that France is pulling out and leaving the country to civil war; refusing to evacuate until her crop has been harvested, she takes her chances with the rebel army and its child soldiers. This haunting 2009 drama by Claire Denis (Beau Travail, 35 Shots of Rum) burns with a mute fear and rage at the ongoing atrocities in central Africa. In keeping with the title—an African character’s reference to French material goods—Denis seems at first to be mapping the usual postcolonial tensions between native Africans and European entrepreneurs. But as the characters are all swallowed up by war, their little world gradually polarizes into humanity and savagery, with the young (including the woman’s unstable grown son) notably inclined toward the latter. With Isaach De Bankolé, Christopher Lambert, and Nicolas Duvauchelle. In French with subtitles. 105 min. —J.R. Jones 105 min. Tue 10/14, 8 PM, Music Box, $5.
