Reviews

By Linda Winsh-Bolard

Israeli director Ari Folman is best known for " Waltz with Bashir , " an animated film with moral questions.

Don't expect anything similar.

Congress is a loose adaption of a novel by Stanislaw Lem. Lem envisioned a society under a dictatorship, whether local or global is unclear in the film, where the ruling class lives in real world and subjects majority of citizens to poverty and fear. Remaining citizens spend their lives under chemically induced dream. In their dream they can decide who and where they are, while their sub consciousness is reacting to a chemical that transports them into colorful, unreal world of combined dreams.

Ari Fulman frames his film around the story of aging actress Robin Wright (she plays herself) who, after extremely lucky break, made number of irresponsible and bad choices and ended up with few options. Robin, who has two children, an ambitious daughter and a disabled son, decides to let the studio to scan her image to be used in all kinds of computer generated films.

Some twenty years later Robin drives her Porsche Cayman into a desert to enter Abrahama City, a city where everyone, with the help of an ampule of chemicals, becomes an animated character; some of themselves, some of others. Their chemically induced reality is actually just their perception of the world.

The adventure ends badly and Robin is frozen to be revived when the technology needed help her becomes available. That takes decades and when she does wake up, the world is a colorful comics.

The film follows Lem' s idea loosely, but there is a dark, real side on the other side of this painting.

The film is wordy. Particularly when the characters are in real world, the monologues and dialogs are lengthy, over explanatory and often should have been cut down.

Stripped of color and Lem's vision of the future, the story becomes a journey of devoted mother to her disabled son. Robin seems to expect that everyone must bend to her need to be with her children and stand by her son. I found that unrealistic. In Robin's expectations and also in the written self obsession with sacrifices of a Mother, capital letter intended.

It irritated me that Robin was so clearly thought to be so special by so many, when I could not find anything special about her. I am so tired of stories of the poor, lucky ones who had troubles to handle their luck. Would they rather be unknown and poor?

Lem's philosophy of dictatorship that keeps people in the line by feeding them drug induced dreams is somewhat complicated: the film states that once the chemical is inhaled, the person ceases to exist in real world- in that case, do the bodies evaporate? It is not straight up killing, Robin came back using another chemical, so what is it? Is there no shortage of labor in the real world, if so many "cease to exist"? Who decides to stay and endure poverty, helplessness and hard work? Why?

And why would the dictators use such chemical? It might reduce the enemy, but it will make it hard to run a society with able few people in it.

About half of the film is acted, half animated. The acting, the film is star studded, is generally good even though, as I said, unwieldy lines, heavy handed and unnecessary, crowd the sound, ut the actors handle them better than most would.. Robin is standoffish and distant Al, her agent (Harvey Keitel) an old manipulator, Paul Giamatti the doctor in the know and so on.

I have heard that the absent Tom Cruise played by Evant Ferrante missed on his best film part.

The animation is colorful, lush, sprouting and adds to confusion in the vein of Avatar. Number of characters parade around the screen apparently just playing the background to Robin and her followers.

Exploring the power of mind and politics gets largely lost in all that. Still, if you enjoy combination of animation and action, sci-fi and conspiracy, it might just work for you.

Directed by: Ari Folman Written:Stanislaw Lem (novel), Ari Folman (adaptation) , Camera: Michal Englert Stars: Robin Wright, Harvey Keitel, Jon Hamm, Paul Giamatti, Danny Huston and others

By Linda Winsh-Bolard I don't know why I do this to myself. It is not as if my expectations were high, or hardly any. I was not paid to see it. But I did. It was a dismal experience.

A young, ambitious, starved in all meanings of the word dancer gets chosen for the part of Odette/Odille, here called the Queen Swan and the demands of the performance further the unraveling of her psyche.

Natalie Portman is Nina, the insecure dancer with controlling mother (Barbara Hershey) and desire for limelight. Mila Kunis is Lily, the equally starved, fun, drug, sex and alcohol loving newcomer. Nina feels threatened by the incomprehensible Lily having just witnessed how brutally the artistic director (Vincent Cassel)dealt with the former company's star, Beth.

Nina begins to have odd experience and visions, everything seems suspicious to her. She is getting paranoid. All that while she trains to dance the double part that is, in this film, presented as virginal innocence versus evil seducer.

From the beginning the premise is off kilter. Ballet companies contract number of prima ballerinas and premier danseurs. These are the dancers who will perform the title roles. They do not audition for each part; nor would anyone dare to call a prima ballerina "girl".

Each significant role in any ballet has at least three dancers performing it. This is necessary because there could be more than one performance a day which would pose a real strain on dancer's body. Hence there is never just one "name" posted or adulated. Premier dances in USA usually perform and train together- think of Gelsey Kirkland and Misha Baryshnikov. And the Odette/Odille part is traditionally danced by two different dancers. In one staging, the Black swan was danced by black prima ballerina while the White Swan by a white one.

I have never even heard of am artistic director who would pick a dancer form the corps de ballet and elevated her to primadona. I assume such action would cost dearly in law suits.

As per the constant sexual innuendo, the film is about 30 year late for that.

Ditto for those starved, little girl bodies that Balanchine so adored and abused. That has been over for a bit now as well as most of the sexual harassment. Not all, but most.

Nina would not be the first woman who, while perpetually undernourished, under extreme stress of unnatural expectations (no dancer is as good as the computer image), exposed to alcohol, drugs and power manipulation would crack.

But to present this as succumbing to the role is ridiculous.

Dancers train to dance. The ballet mistress/mister is rarely concerned with the story beyond its barest gist. Their effort is for exact movement, timing, high jumps and effortless look. Anyone in dance company will hear the word "heels" (as to land on your heels and jump from your knees) far more often than "seduction".

The presented milieu is a throw into the past, those stories read and heard on the fringes.

Only when I realized that the entire production was run by men, it began to make sense.

This is one of those stories where males present feeble female mind. Females are only capable of submission to male will, they desire to do so and sexually starved virgins go mad. Females cannot live without males; it is unnatural. Ambitions is unseemly in a female whose psyche is best suited to nurturing of a child and making home for her man. Nina goes mad because she is a warped female, as is the former star ballet, Beth (Winona RyderWinona Ryder).

As a statement of Christian teaching cliché, the film does a good job. As a presentation of male ego and the nearly absolute lack of understanding of women by those men of certain age and education, it does an excellent job.

As dancer and dancer's world picture is worthless.

As a portrait of a prima ballerina it is a bad joke.

As for dancing, there is very little of it. The memorable moment comes as Odette, i remarkable costume and mask, finishes her solo; Nina's arms grow black make-up and change into beautiful black wings. It is a very compelling image possible only in film.

So, I went to take a class. Adult ballet dancer have to this every day. I did not dream about becoming Odette. I always hated those 16 turns on each leg- the film does not show them either.

Fox Searchlight, directed by Darren Aronofsky, written by Mark Heyman, Andrew Heinz and John McLaughlinJohn McLaughlin.