For the 2015 American Film Institute’s opening night gala, director Angelina Jolie showed off the slow-burner to end all slow-burners. “By the Sea” features Jolie and husband Brad Pitt as a married couple trying to recuperate after several years of lackluster love and non-interaction by staying at a oceanside hotel in France.
For over two hours of running time, nothing really happens, save for one surprisingly erotic twist about halfway through. It’s one thing that Jolie and Pitt’s characters don’t want to be at the hotel, or even near each other, but it’s another that they don’t belong there. Jolie directs with a delicate prose that suggests this American marriage is wholesomely out of its element where happiness is concerned.
The theme of people stuck in a place where they didn’t want to be, seemed to be overarching Friday’s selection of movies at the AFI Fest. But unlike Jolie, most of the filmmakers on show did more with their subjects, framing them not only as people who did not belong, but people who also had a job to do. These film selections worked because the characters have an ultimate purpose, despite the fact their mentality is to flee as quickly as possible.
This can be seen in AFI’s first midnight selection, “Southbound,” a film composed of five short, gory stories that all intertwine. A horror movie is, of course, the easiest place to find characters running away from terrible situations. But although “Southbound” stutters with making its five stories work out to a coherent tale, some of its segments are truly exhilarating. One, involving a pedestrian quickly improvising surgery to save the life of a young woman he just hit with his car, is edge-of-your-seat breathtaking.
The seven directors who make up “Southbound’s” filmmaking team try to place their many characters into a sequence with an overarching story, thereby giving a purpose to their terrified actions. Compare that with a film like “Field Niggas,” a documentary depicting the lives of homeless, black individuals living in Harlem, New York, and you have a fascinating contrast.
Director Khalik Allah named the film as a reference to Malcolm X’s “Message to the Grassroots” speech, in which he distinguishes between slaves that worked in the house and those that worked in the yards. The beautifully framed characters of “Field Niggas,” all of whom are in dire need of help and protection from their daily harassment, are as out of their element as the field slaves were long before them. And yet they have fashioned a home for themselves on the concrete, and a culture to thrive off of in a place they cannot leave.
All of the above films are striking, but not the universally fulfilling pieces that AFI Fest is known for. That’s where a film like “The Lobster” comes in. “The Lobster” is the idea of the displaced human condition taken to its extreme. The logic of the world that director Yorgos Lanthimos’ film works in is hard to understand, completely absurd and comedically genius.
The film stars Colin Farrell as a newly single man who is taken to a resort to find a new wife. If he does not achieve this within 45 days, he gets turned into an animal of his choice and released into the wild. But the hotel, full of surreal personalities who don’t seem to grasp how conversation works, has plenty of other rules one must follow. These include forbidding self-pleasure and the forced romance of those who end up finding their new partner.
The universe of “The Lobster” is a draconian setting that no one feels comfortable living in, let alone trying to find love in. It’s worth risking life and death to escape, as many characters do. But, in the end, everybody has their place. The point is for the characters to feel as though they belong, regardless of how strange the world may be.
In each of these films, fleeing is not the answer and neither is surrendering to the will of inner demons – or, in the case of “Southbound,” real demons. Instead, finding a place to belong is how to achieve true peace. So far, this year’s AFI filmmakers seem to be advancing this grounded philosophy.
Compiled by Sebastian Torrelio, A&E senior staff.