A clip from the movie "Gloria!"
(2024)/tempesta srl
Not everyone can win something.
This is not a boomer statement about modern education methods, it is simply a matter of statistics - 20 films competed in the official competition of the Berlin Film Festival, of which eight came out of the closing ceremony of the festival with a statuette of a bear.
The golden one was picked up by "Dahomey", a documentary film by the director Mati Diop, and the silver of the jury award - "A Traveler's Needs" by the director Hong Sangsoo.
Among the other winners are director Nelson Carlos de los Santos Arias for his film "Pepe" and actors Sebastian Stan and Emily Watson for their performances in "A Different Man" and "Small Things Like These", which I wrote about in previous texts.
"Gloria!"
It is one of the competition films that left the ceremony empty-handed, but let me bet that this film will become a hit.
Maybe a modest hit, the kind distributed in cinemas or quality cinemas of all kinds, but a hit.
"Gloria!"
is the debut film of Margherita Vicario, an Italian pop singer and actress who comes from a film dynasty that includes a director father, an actor and creator grandfather and an actress grandmother.
It's a musical film, of course, which has received obvious comparisons to films like "The Blues Nuns", "Marie Antoinette" or "Amadeus".
This musical comedy drama takes place in a Venetian church in the 18th century, where orphans and young women from the margins of society live and study.
Under the direction of a bitter composer, the girls and women in the place play and sing in a choir meticulous classical music for the visitors of the church.
At the bottom of the food chain is the maid Theresa (Galathea Belluji, "The Cauldron") - the powerful people prey on her, the students gossip about her freely, thinking she is mute.
Dedicated to female musicians that history has forgotten.
"Gloria!"/tempesta srl
A transformation takes place when Teresa finds in the basement a special gift that just arrived on the scene - a pianoforte, a new musical instrument at the time that will become over the years the modern piano.
With the help of the instrument, she rediscovers her voice and gives free rein to her musical skills, which until then were reserved for daydreams and playing occasional or improvised instruments.
Her music attracts four young musicians to the basement who share the valuable instrument with her, some to practice playing timeless and classic pieces and some to create her own personal music.
Soon all this turns into a conflict between old and new - musical and values - against the background of the echoes of the French Revolution.
The film is dedicated to generations of real female musicians who worked in monasteries and churches for generations and most of their work has been lost in the mirror of time, so you can see it as a fairy tale that imagines a happy ending for them.
Accordingly, the music that Teresa and her new friends create is quite far from authentic music from the Baroque period and is more reminiscent of pop or modern musicals, when outside of the musical plot the film also uses a distinctly modern soundtrack.
The plot of the film also reserves the right to do a little nonsense, in the name of fantasy, even though the film does not ignore the depressing fate that often befell women of low status (or at all) at that time.
It's a bit silly at times, but there's enough creativity here and above all enough heart to make it work.
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Adam Sandler in "Spaceman"/Netflix
And speaking of films that will probably get more love from the general public than at fancy film festivals, this year the festival program also included a Netflix film by Adam Sandler.
This choice raises several questions, chief among them "what the hell", but it is important to remember that Sandler has previously starred in films slightly more ambitious than "Grown" or "Stuck on Vacation".
The first was Paul Thomas Anderson's wonderfully weird 2002 Love Struck and later films like Watch Over Me, in which he played a man who lost his family in the Twin Disasters, Noah Baumbach's excellent The Meyerowitz Stories, and The Safdie Brothers' Diamond in the Unpolished. A critic's favorite that many believed (in vain) would earn him an Oscar nomination.
The new film, "Spaceman", probably won't get him the coveted nomination next year, but it totally scattered some stardust on the Berlin red carpet.
It also features Paul Dano, Carey Mulligan and Isabella Rossellini, but the crowd gathered around the red carpet must have come to see him, judging by the signs bearing his photos and captions like "Thanks for everything, Adam."
Particularly moving was the meeting between him and a woman who defined herself as his biggest fan, and received an autograph and a hug from him.
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The film, which will arrive on Netflix this Friday, is an adaptation of the book called "Spaceman of Bohemia" by Jaroslav Kalfer, which, according to its name, tells the story of a cosmonaut who is sent alone into outer space on behalf of the Czech government.
That cosmonaut, Jacob, experiences severe loneliness even though the spacecraft allows him continuous contact with the mission team on Earth and even with his wife Lenka, who talks to him through a special communication device installed in their home.
When a giant spider-like extraterrestrial appears in his spaceship he is not sure if it is a pest or a delusion, but soon the two become friends and he gives him the name Human.
Lenka, who is in advanced pregnancy, plans a unilateral separation from her husband, while in the meantime he and his new friend try to understand what used the love story and whether it is still possible to restore it.
"The Space That Remains" is science fiction of the contemplative, depressing and philosophical kind, where the journeys in outer space make it possible to discuss the human condition from a new and interesting angle.
Examples like "Interstellar" or "Solaris" come to mind while watching.
Indeed, Johan Renk, a music video director who progressed to television and is best known for the acclaimed mini-series "Chernobyl", directs this story with the same seriousness.
It would have worked for him too, if the script had been able to keep up.
Mulligan and Dino are excellent as Lanka and the human, the cinematography is good, the animation is not bad, the music is beautiful and the melancholic and romantic atmosphere that really begs us to cry and remember our lost past loves.
Every once in a while there's even a successful Sandler comic moment, or a scene where the human savors a jar of chocolate spread so he doesn't drown heavily.
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Still, the script is there, preventing the film from turning from a mediocre and reasonable romantic drama into something truly special.
A quick reading of the synopsis of the original book and comparing it to the film version reveals a possible explanation for the problem - excessive Hollywoodism.
Although the characters still have Czech names and some history related to that of the European country, many political, sadder or darker elements from the book have faded on their way to the screen, to create a universal and easier to digest love story.
This doesn't have to be a problem, but the film just feels incomplete and full of unrealized potential, probably because it's really just part of another story that doesn't stand on its own.
The hasty psychological treatment that the human provides to Jacob is not entirely convincing, and the medical aspect also only half works. Lanka's plots are even less interesting, and amount to beautiful photographs and generic insights at the level of "young people make mistakes". By the way, if we are talking about familiar and disgusting Hollywood nonsense - These young people are Mulligan, who looks down on her 40s, and Sandler, who is closer to 60, but apparently claims to be both young in love and confused. Similarly, the alien calls Sandler's character a "skinny human," an epithet repeated so often that I began to suspect it was as a hypnosis attempt for viewers.
We will end on a more positive note with one of the happiest events at this year's festival - the awarding of the Golden Bear Lifetime Achievement Award to director Martin Scorsese.
Scorsese's name goes before him as one of the most prominent and influential creators in the history of cinema, when this month he recorded another achievement with a tenth Oscar nomination for best director, more than any other director alive today.
Scorsese received his Golden Bear from another legendary director - Wim Wenders - who received this honor at the 2015 Berlin Film Festival. Scorsese even hosted an in-depth conversation with director Johanna Hogg ("The Souvenir"), which is available to watch in its entirety on YouTube (see above).
In the conversation, he talks about the films and cinematic movements that influenced him at the beginning of his career, about the production of some of his most notable films, as well as about spirituality and its expression in his films, including his next planned film that is expected to deal with the character of Jesus.
At the press conference held with him at the festival, Scorsese referred to the future of cinema as he sees it - and refused to eulogize it prematurely: "I don't think cinema is dying, it's changing. Cinema was never supposed to be one thing. I grew up with it as one thing: if you wanted to see a movie you went to the cinema. Whether the hall was good or bad, it was a hall. It was always a shared experience. But technology changes so quickly and so exhaustingly, that the only thing you can really hold on to is the personal voice. This voice can be expressed in a Tiktok video as well as in a film by Four hours or in a two-hour mini-series."
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Martin Scorsese receives a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Berlin Film Festival from director Wim Wenders/Richard Hübner/Berlinale 2024
Scorsese also referred to the importance of film festivals and their ability to make the world "closer and smaller" and allow people to get to know each other and cultures that were foreign to them.
The desire to bring people and cultures together is also behind the activities of the projects he initiated, The Film Foundation and the World Cinema Project, for the preservation and restoration of motion pictures from around the world: "As a young person, seeing films from other places opened me to the world. The way it affected me, a child who came From the neighborhood, with parents who weren't intellectuals and didn't read, maybe other kids around the world will be able to see a movie and be influenced by it. Maybe they won't make movies themselves, but it can change their lives."
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Adam Sandler
Martin Scorsese
Berlin Festival
Gloria!
- 2024 movie