Pope Francis — A Man of His Word

Posted on May 18, 2018 at 7:30 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG for thematic material including images of suffering
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Images of tragic circumstances including illness and oppression
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	May 18, 2018
Date Released to DVD:	December 3, 2018

Wim Wenders’ unabashedly admiring documentary about Pope Francis is an intriguing and inspiring look at the man who is breaking a number of precedents in the Holy See. He is the first pope from South America after 265 predecessors, mostly from Italy. He is the first Jesuit, an order known for scholarship who “seek to find God in all things.” And he was the first to choose the name Francis, after the 16th century saint who was devoted to animals and nature.

He is unaffected, explaining that he wants to live very simply. He speaks to audiences and to us via the camera with candor and sincerity on topics ranging from the environment to interfaith understanding to the “three T’s” he says should be the foundations of our lives: in English, they are work (for dignity and contribution to the community — “to imitate God with your hands by creating”), land (to support sustainable resources), and roof (home, family).

Wenders interweaves a re-enactment of moments in the life of St. Francis to show parallels with his namesake. But the heart of the movie is seeing His Holiness interact with the crowds of people who are palpably moved by him. Visiting an American prison, he reminds the inmates that the very first man to become a saint was a prisoner like them. And then, in an act of infinite tenderness, he washes and kisses prisoners’ feet. A girl asks him why he has renounced wealth. He tells her that poverty around the world is a scandal, and “we must all become a little bit poorer…poverty is central to the gospel.” We can see the lugubrious faces of some of the Vatican priests and cardinals, looking as though this is not a welcome interpretation. Later, visiting his home country of Argentina, the crowd almost ecstatic with pride, he reminds them of a local expression: “You can always add water to the beans.”

One of the most striking scenes in the film has images of environmental damage projected onto the outside of St. Peter’s Basilica. “The poorest of the poor is Mother Earth. We have plundered her.” And he reminds us that it is the poorest of the poor who suffer first and most from environmental degradation.

His Holiness appears before the United States Congress and goes to Jerusalem to meet with rabbis and imams. He sits alone in a cell at the Holocaust museum Yad Vashem. He speaks movingly to groups and to us about the importance of listening. He misses the connection of taking confession. He says smiles are “the flower of the heart” and speaks of the importance of of having a sense of humor. He tells us the prayer of St. Thomas More he says every morning that always makes him smile.

“An artist is an apostle of beauty,” he tells us. Wenders has taken that to heart and created a film that gives us a rare chance to hear directly from a man whose devotion and compassion will inspire anyone.

Parents should know that this film includes some footage of suffering, including illness, poverty, and abuse.

Family discussion: How do the “three T’s” appear in your life? Why is listening especially important to Pope Francis?

If you like this, try: “The Letters” and “Nuns on the Bus”

Bobby Kennedy for President: Interview with Dawn Porter About Her Netflix Series

Posted on May 18, 2018 at 8:32 am

Dawn Porter’s four-part Netflix series, “Bobby Kennedy for President,” examines the life of one of the central political figures of the 1960’s. In an interview, she described the process of collecting the extraordinary and surprisingly intimate archival footage and her interviews with people who worked closely with Bobby Kennedy and are still deeply moved by the experience.

They say that history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes. I felt like there was a lot of rhyming in this series, which takes place during the politically tumultuous 1960’s. What parallels do you see going on today?

We’re in a really confusing and chaotic era right now where people are choosing sides. The country is never a hundred percent united but it certainly feels as if we are more divided than we have been in recent years. It’s unsettling and I think that it is very similar to the middle through late sixties the series covers. I think the big difference is there was more confidence in the leadership and people felt acutely behind one candidate or the other and so there was confusion and chaos but I don’t know that there was the same amount of fear but more anger I think than in the 1960’s. There was more activism then and I think we’re seeing a more resurgence of that activism, now so I think that’s actually a good thing.

People say today, “oh goodness, it’s never been worse,” but we had the Vietnam War, a huge racial divide, poverty like in the Deep South, assassinations happening routinely, you don’t want to do a misery comparison but you could certainly say that things were as bad or as serious. That’s when we really do value leadership and Kennedy stepped into that role.

If you were making a film about a historical figure from even a decade before you would not have anywhere near the wealth of archival footage that you had here. It was really breathtaking because there were so many scenes where he seemed unaware he was being filmed, not just giving speeches but talking to his staff, being with his family.

I used to work for ABC News and I remember a colleague there telling me that there was all this film footage that had been shot during the time period that I was interested in. So one of the things that I thought would be really effective is to allow the viewers as much as possible to experience the footage themselves, to experience the time. And so there were two things to do. You can see at the beginning there was more black and white, there was more sometimes grainy/sometimes smooth footage. This was a period that coincided with the shift in news coverage. Upstart news entities such as ABC News began shooting in film and shooting in color and sending really gifted cinematographers out to do political coverage. So you get this feeling not only of the candidates but of the era: the clothes, the cars, the light. I think that helps point you in time in a way that still pictures can’t even quite accomplish.

That is why working with Netflix was so great because we convinced them to give us investigation room. We ended up digitizing over 140 hours of news footage and one of the things I’m really, really happy about is that footage is now available to others who want to explore the period for whatever storytelling they’re doing. It was quite a project of discovery in that way but we went through about 2,000 reels of film and our archivist ended up using 100 different sources so it was quite a massive undertaking but once we got our rhythm it was really fun. All the news organizations might cover the same event but they would shoot it differently and so we could have different angles from different news organizations. But 100 percent of that material had to be licensed, so we were constantly trying to figure out what we could afford to actually use.

There was another exciting thing that was happening. It was also the era of growth and excitement about that type of verite filmmaking. So there were filmmakers like D.A. Pennebaker, Robert Drew, like Charles Guggenheim who had sent a bunch of independent cinematographers out to cover Bobby Kennedy. We used all of those sources and got outtakes from them and I even visited Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus in their office and got material from them personally. So there is also quite a bit of film history contained in the series.

I think the most powerful moment in the series is the John Lewis interview.

I wanted to only have interviews with people who worked very closely with Bobby Kennedy, who were either staffers or people like Marian Wright Edelman. We had known that John Lewis was involved with Kennedy and he agreed right away. One of the things that I think was very helpful for these interviews was we would show people footage that was material they hadn’t necessarily seen of themselves as young people and I think that that helped them go back in time and remember. John Lewis is a spectacular interview. He’s very giving, he’s a very open, very, very, very generous and Kennedy was really important to him and he wanted to communicate that. He’s also not a person who is afraid of being emotional and didn’t try and stop it and that was really quite a gift to a project like this.

What do you think is Bobby Kennedy’s most enduring legacy?

I am really moved by his curiosity, his ability to change and grow, his inclusiveness (particularly to minority groups) and this kind of resilience and relentlessness which can be a blessing and a curse but in the end I think he made it a blessing and really refused to give up on things that are too important to give up on.

Interview: Andre Borschberg of “Planet Power” and Solar Impulse

Posted on March 29, 2018 at 2:54 pm

“Planet Power,” is a stunning documentary about the round-the-world flight of the Solar Impulse, the first-ever plane completely powered by sunlight to circle the globe. It is now in IMAX theaters across the country. It was developed and piloted by two Frenchmen, Andre Borschberg and Bertrand Piccard.

What did you learn about the world by flying over it that way that you didn’t know before?

Lots of things! But first of all it’s an incredible experience when you look about the airplane and you see the sun and you see the sun rays and then you start thinking that these rays and this radiation is sufficient to make the airplane fly, to climb and fly through the night. It’s absolutely incredible. Normally you always have an eye on the fuel gauge and then you know you only have a few minutes to go and then you have to land. So to think that you have an indefinite unlimited endurance, it’s a totally different world. Of course the entire project was incredible in the sense that we were told by the aviation industry that to build such an airplane was not possible. We were convinced on our side that there was a solution so we decided to do it ourselves. These fifteen years were a sequence of hurdles, of success, of difficulties and all this done with a fantastic team; so it’s a life experience.

I imagine that it was very quiet there because you didn’t have the humming of the engines. Is that right?

It is. If you have a chance to fly in an electric airplane, you will see how quiet it is because you don’t hear much, there’s no vibration. It’s like being in a glider which suddenly can climb like a normal plane. And in this plane I was alone. We will have a two-seater flying this summer in Switzerland and my goal is really to take lots of people in this airplane just to see the difference. The experience is something else.

One of the things that really captured my attention in the movie was that while a passenger plane can tip to a degree of 30 degrees this plane because of the size of its wings was much more limited. Did that make it difficult to maneuver?

What was tricky was the sensitivity of the airplane towards turbulence and this is why we also always try to take off very early and land late at night so we’re away from the turbulences created by the sun during the day. So that is certainly one characteristic of the airplane. On the other side, as I said, we have this freedom to be away from the clock and having the possibility if necessary to be one more day in the air when I flew across the Pacific from Japan to Hawaii, we thought it would take 5 days than have taken 6; I would say even so much the better because of the incredible experience but to have this feeling of no limit on the energy, of course, it’s a major plus.

The movie explains that you come from a family with a history of innovation. What did they do to influence you to become an innovator yourself?

When I was a really young kid I was taken by the books I read about the aviation pioneers, about what they did, about their lives, about the way they went about trying, exploring, building something that nobody did and then flying without having been coached by a flight instructor on how to do that. For me this created a strong dream and appeal in fact to be part of this world as well; so when I met in fact Bertrand a few years later, it was like getting into this world I’ve been dreaming about when I was a young boy.

Tell me a little bit about more about the partnership with Mr. Piccard, what is it that each of you contribute to that partnership?

Bertrand and I basically had different educations; we have different backgrounds and skills and at the end we were extremely complementary as a partnership through these differences. It’s one plus one equals three; one for each and one when we’re together. In that sense we are truly different but we understood that this difference was a source of creativity so very early we gave up basically the tendency to argue and to try to defend own ideas and we were more interested when we were not having basically the same understanding of a situation. I think we were always interested to understand what the other was thinking, knowing that at the end the solutions would be neither his solution nor mine. So regularly once every two weeks, once every month we would sit down and expose our feelings to the other one to try to find a common ground. We had a clear understanding that it’s only by sticking together that we could have a chance to succeed.

What of the innovations in the plane do you think will be most useful to consumers?

I think very simply electric propulsion. It is not just that solar energy is renewable. It is also much more efficient than a combustion engine. If you take your car, two liters or two gallons out of three that you put in the tank are lost for heat so it’s a totally inefficient technology. With electric propulsion we’ve changed the world of aviation for a lot of reasons but it will make aviation quieter, cleaner, safer and more affordable and you can use it not only for propulsion but also to stabilize the airplane. There are few moving parts, it’s only software, it’s only electronics, which are (things we know how to produce very cheaply and very safe today, so you can start imagining that you will have new ways to transport people, for example from one side of Los Angeles to the other side. There are many projects aiming in fact to provide this added value that will all use electric propulsion. I didn’t want basically to do a commercial project after flying around the world but I couldn’t resist to continue and develop this technology because I think it will be a game changer.

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Trailer: Mr. Rogers Documentary, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor”

Posted on March 20, 2018 at 1:43 pm

The gentle lessons of Mr. Rogers are timeless. I am really looking forward to this documentary, “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” It will be in theaters June 8, 2018. And Tom Hanks stars as Fred Rogers in an upcoming feature film.

Actors of Sound

Posted on February 25, 2018 at 10:01 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Not rated
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Brief archival footage has some violence
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	February 26, 2018

It’s the climax of the film. The hero and heroine finally kiss. The power of the moment comes from the emotion built up by the story, by the acting talent and screen charisma of the performers, by the heart-tugging swell of the music — and by the sound of the kiss itself, probably so subtle you don’t notice it, but if it wasn’t there, you would notice its absence. That sound was not made by the tender touch of two beautiful movie stars’ lips. It was made by a Foley artist, the “actor of sound,” whose profession is the subject of this documentary.

Skip this next part and go to the next paragraph if you want to preserve the illusion: the slight smacky sound you hear is probably some burly guy kissing the back of his hand. And when a beautiful actress walks down a hall or street in high heels, that same burly guy is probably wearing a t-shirt, shorts, and high heels, stepping on one of the dozen or so different surfaces in the studio to match the shot. The sound of the trudging footsteps of the enormous football player in “The Blind Side” was created by a woman, who explains, “I had to become a 300 pound man who was feeling alone and like no one cared about him…I gave myself a sense of heaviness.” Another woman “was” Mr. T in “The A-Team,” at least the sounds of his feet.

The Foley artist is the person who provides everything from hoofbeats on dirt to the clacks of high heels on a wood floor, from the sound E.T. makes when he walks to the sound of Walter White taking off the mask he uses for cooking meth to the sound Robert de Niro makes when he slams a baseball bat into a guy’s head in “The Untouchables.” That last one, we learn in this fascinating and engaging documentary, was made with a combination of a raw turkey (gizzards still inside) and a coconut. We learn about sounds like the snap of Batman’s cape, the flutter of paper floating through the air, and the “hyper-real” coin toss in “No Country for Old Men.”

Foley was a real person, a pioneer in the field. While the technology for recording and editing the sounds has advanced along with most other aspects of filmmaking, the technology for creating the sounds has not. They are still using the same kinds of props — and sometimes even the exact same props — that go back to the heyday of radio. If it’s a period film and someone needs to dial a phone, you’re going to need a dial phone to create that sound. And nothing beats corn starch for the sound of walking on snow.

The documentary includes archival footage showing how sounds were created for some of the most iconic moments in film history. ET’s walk? Let’s just say that when the Foley artists were served Jello at lunch, it gave them a good idea. It also includes Foley artists from around the world and some discussion of how changes in the industry and technology may affect the future of the profession.

All of the participants are wonderfully imaginative and dedicated, and their stories and perspective make this essential viewing for anyone who is interested in film. “The sound has to pan, too,” to help create the illusion of movement. And they will do anything to get the sound just right — even a condom over the microphone.

As one of them says, a Foley artist has to be “an athlete, a musician, and an actor all in one,” and as another says, they are “painting a picture with sound.” So far, no one has been able to produce sounds digitally or via a sound library that feel real, not robotic. Being a Foley artist requires “imagination, tempo, coordination, and love,” and this film is filled with all of that as well, a welcome appreciation for an essential and often overlooked profession.

Parents should know that this film includes brief violent footage from films being discussed.

Family discussion: What movie sounds do you remember? How will this movie make you listen more closely?

If you like this, try: “Harold and Lillian”