SLIFF 2013: Michael Kohlhaas

2013 // France / Germany // Arnaud des Pallières // November 21, 2013 // Digital Theatrical Projection (Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema)

Director Arnaud des Pallières’ bold, spellbinding new feature, Michael Kohlhaas, announces its strange sensibility in its first scene. In a long shot, a small team of horses trots along a rocky, windswept ridge beneath a strip of gloomy, overcast sky. The light is dim and gray-brown, and the animals are observed from a low angle, as though the viewer were at the foot of a steep hill. The men guiding the beasts press on against the whistling gale, laboring to keep their team moving forward. The forbidding and enormously potent mood conjured by this early scene persists throughout Pallières’ film. It is a bleak but complex aura, encompassing strands of cruelty, futility, exposure, and remoteness. It seems as though one is watching the film’s events from a distance, through the eyes of a primeval, cold-hearted deity. The effect is astonishingly powerful and unsettling.

Adapted from Heinrich von Kleist’s 19th-century novella of the same name—which was in turn inspired by historical events—Pallières’ film relates the tragic account of Michael Kohlhass (Mads Mikkelsen), an upright but strong-willed horse dealer in 16th-century France. (The book was previously adapted in 1969 by Volker Schlöndorff, who retained the source material’s German setting.) Kolhaas is taking his stock to market one day when he is stopped by agents of the local Baron (Swann Arlaud). Using a paperwork discrepancy as a pretext, the Baron’s men seize two of Kohlhaas’ finest animals as collateral. When the horses are later returned to Kohlhaas, they have been worked and abused almost to the point of death—and his protesting servant has been mangled by the Baron’s dogs for good measure.

The arbitrary viciousness of the Baron’s actions provokes Kohlhaas’ distinctly middle class sense of outrage. Unfortunately, the Baron’s political connections stymie Kohlhaas’ efforts to obtain a legal remedy for his grievances, which prompts his wife Judith (Delphine Chuillot) to travel to the court of the Princess (Roxane Duran) and plead her husband’s case. The Baron’s response to this move is dire and bloody, but rather than terrorizing Kohlhaas into silence, it only ignites the man’s righteous fury. Gathering together a small band of lowborn allies, he launches a pitiless guerrilla assault on the Baron’s keep. From there, Kohlhaas’ vengeance evolves into an uprising against the landed nobility, threatening the stability of the whole region.

The bare bones of Michael Kohlhaas' story—violent personal revenge mutates into a full-blown military campaign—have been featured in other films, but rarely, if ever, in such an unconventional manner. Pallières’ style is grim and unhurried, full of carefully chosen words and long pauses. The film watches as characters think, ruminating on their choices and their fates. It eschews music and fills the air with oppressive, unremitting sounds: shrieking winds, tolling bells, buzzing flies. It gazes out on the harsh Massif landscape of crags, valleys, and forests with a kind of Old Testament callousness. A glib description of the film might be “Braveheart as directed by Béla Tarr,” but Pallières has no taste for either Gibson’s testosterone-fueled action or Tarr’s figurative surrealism. Michael Kohlhaas is a remorselessly realistic and unromantic vision of the past: chilly, filthy, and brutal.

Pallières’ treatment of violence is emblematic of the film’s attitude. There are two major “action” scenes in Michael Kohlhaas, and neither is approached in an orthodox manner. Kohlhaas’ attack on the Baron’s stronghold is staged as a stealth thriller sequence, with crossbow-wielding partisans inching silently from one shadowy chamber and stairwell to the next, slaying anyone who resists their advance. In a later battle scene that pits Kohlhaas’ small mounted forces against those of a nobleman, the film regards the bloodshed from atop a nearby hill. In the distance, the combatants clash in near silence, with Kohlhaas’ fighters routing the enemy after a minute or two. These atypical depictions of warfare don’t exactly deglorify the violence on display—the first sequence in particular is still tense and gripping—but they do reveal that Michael Kohlhaas cannot properly be described as a War Movie, at least in the sense in which the label is traditionally used.

The film’s most pivotal moments occur not on the battlefield, but in urgent one-to-one conversations, usually where a character attempts to dissuade another from a particular course of action. It’s no accident that most of the film’s characters are identified only by generic, one word descriptors. A sympathetic Preacher (David Kross) serves as Kohlhaas’s conscience, the Governor (Bruno Ganz) as the voice of conservatism, and the Theologist (Denis Lavant) as an advocate for pacifism. Kohlhaas’ discussions with these characters tackle weighty matters, such as the morality of vengeance and the legitimacy of violent resistance. The talent of the performers and the strength of the screenplay by the director and Christelle Berthevas are such that these exchanges never feel stilted or didactic. The viewer is invited, through Kohlhaas’ experiences, to regard such issues with the soberness they deserve.

This is not to say that Michael Kohlhass is merely an arid thesis paper wrapped in 16th-century vermin and offal (although it is that to an extent). The ponderous but ruthless advancement of the story is essential to the film’s palpable air of doom. Much of that story is conveyed through protracted, exacting observation of characters: the small intimacies between a husband and wife, the restrained ritual of political negotiations, or the dread-choked formalities of a state execution. Elsewhere, Pallières illustrates events through moody, often wordless montage sequences. Kohlhaas’ merciless attack on a convent takes this form: nuns hasten through austere hallways, arrows are set aflame, an abbess prostrates herself, and the convent burns in the twilight. Through such means, the director evokes a sense of implacable cosmic retribution. God does not care whether a person is charitable, honorable, or humble: eventually, they will pay for their sins. The sole mote of light in Pallières’ film is Kohlhaas’ kind-hearted adolescent daughter Lisbeth (Mélusine Mayance), who the rebel rather amazingly succeeds in protecting from his enemies. In all likelihood, the malevolence of the world will someday stain even her virtue. However, the viewer—like Kohlhaas—does not know her fate after the curtain falls, and in uncertainty there is always a shimmer of hope.

SLIFF 2013: The Kill Team

2013 // USA // Dan Krauss // November 20, 2013 // Digital Theatrical Projection (Landmark Tivoli Theater)

It’s been a strong year for advocacy documentaries, with Blackfish, Dirty Wars, The House I Live In, and Inequality for All making deft, passionate cases for political and social change.  Director Dan Krauss’ heart-rending new feature, The Kill Team, is another impressive entry in this subgenre, but it cuts to the quick in a way that surpasses its contemporaries. As with Blackfish, Gabriela Cowperthwaite’s galvanic exposé of Sea World’s cruelties, The Kill Team functions according to a “watch and promote” model. Although a second viewing would have little value, The Kill Team is the sort of eye-opening film that compels one to command friends, relatives, co-workers, acquaintances, and strangers on the street to “See. This. Film.” At risk of sounding speciesist, The Kill Team ultimately edges Blackfish due to its human subject matter. While keeping orcas in captivity is a barbarity, the perverse effects of war on the warrior’s psyche are a far more immediate and pervasive issue.

Proximally, The Kill Team concerns the Maywand District killings: the cold-blooded murder of Afghan civilians by a group of U.S. Army infantrymen in 2010. The only motive for these homicides appears to have been a bloodthirsty longing for the prestige associated with slain insurgents. When the soldiers became frustrated with the lack of opportunities for “legitimate” killings, they decided to start firing their rifles and tossing grenades at random farmers and clerics. Like corrupt cops closing ranks after a dirty shoot, the self-described Kill Team planted weapons and coordinated their stories to deflect suspicion. Not content with premeditated murder, some of the soldiers went so far as to collect grisly trophies of fingers, teeth, and other body parts from their victims.

Several soldiers were implicated in the slayings, but Krauss’ film focuses on Specialist Adam Winfield, a then 21-year-old kid from a Florida military family. While he was involved in the Kill Team’s appalling crimes, Winfield was the only soldier to react with substantial shock and disgust at the actions of fellow platoon members. After the first murder, Winfield quietly alerted his father Christopher to the situation via Facebook chat, expressing his disillusionment and horror, as well as his fear for his own life should his whistleblowing be exposed to the platoon. Winfield asked his father to report the incident to the Army and seek protection on his behalf. Where events went from there is best left for the viewer to discover, but suffice it to say that Winfield was thrown into a waking nightmare with his vicious Army “brothers” on one side and the service’s monolithic criminal justice bureaucracy on the other.

The Kill Team is plainly sympathetic to both Winfield’s plight and that of his anguished parents, who devote every ounce of energy and minute of time to the coordination of their son’s legal defense.  In one of the film’s most overwhelming scenes, his mother Emma begins explaining her views on her son’s case with a lawyer, and is soon pouring forth her maternal rage and woe. Meanwhile, Winfield sits nearby, focused on a laptop screen, rigorously keeping his eyes averted from his mother. (Whether this is from embarrassment or another reason is never entirely clear.) These kind of poignant moments abound in Krauss’ film, which uses talking head interviews, fly-on-the-wall observation, and footage from Afghanistan to construct a tale with deeper emotional, sociological, and philosophical ambitions than those of punchy news reports. While it necessarily recites the established facts of the Kill Team’s crimes, the film is particularly interested in how the soldiers’ savagery and the Army’s indifference exemplify larger institutional evils.

Krauss permits many of the Kill Team members to tell their stories in their own words, although the monstrous ringleader, Staff Sergeant Calvin Gibbs, is pointedly absent. These soldiers rarely evince the sort of remorse that their crimes would seem to warrant, but they all concede that their deeds are consistent with the mindset of the U.S. military rank-and-file, particularly the infantry. The bloodlust that Army training promotes in men in their late teens and early twenties—when such overgrown boys are at the peak of their aggressive tendencies—is a feature, not a bug. While the members of the Kill Team have an interest in shifting blame to organizational failures, their criticisms of Army culture sound less like attempts to minimize their responsibility, and more like the bitter wisdom of men whose unthinkable experiences have rendered them prematurely old. As The Kill Team makes clear, the actions of the platoon and the injustices done to Adam Winfield are likely to inspire outrage, but there are more urgent matters at play than those surrounding the specific events detailed in the film. As long as American troops are honored and socially rewarded for killing above all else, there will be an twisted incentive to murder, which means more dead civilians and more imprisoned soldiers.

SLIFF 2013: Children of the Night

2013 // USA // Angela Christian // November 19, 2013 // Digital Theatrical Projection (Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema)

If one were to judge documentary films strictly on the extent to which they fulfill their primary ambition, director Angela Christian’s Children of the Night would be a rousing success. The film profiles the small circle of passionate professionals who mold the raw imagery from the Hubble Space Telescope into gloriously vivid, high-resolution pictures for public consumption. It is a curious endeavor, demanding the skillsets of the astronomer, digital artist, educator, and public relations professional. Children does a fine job of exposing filmgoers to this thinly documented part of NASA's mission, stoking admiration for the uncommon blend of rigor and intuition that molds the public face of the Hubble program. The film also takes several intriguing detours into other aspects of astronomy education, most prominently into the creation of a textured Hubble picture book for the blind.

The tone of Children is shamelessly swooning, even ecstatic. Christian clearly regards the efforts of this unusual, highly specialized group of scientists as worthy of wider appreciation and understanding. The film flits restlessly between the depicted individuals, providing glimpses of not only their astronomical work, but also their lives beyond the Hubble program. Christian is continually striving to humanize and deepen the portraits it presents: the scientists in question are not just scientists, but ballroom dancers, nature photographers, and soccer coaches. The common worldview of the men and women profiled is one that values knowledge, aesthetics, and pure wonder. Children capably illustrates how this outlook is a perfect fit for the creation and dissemination of striking deep space images.

The film’s indifferent, amateurish cinematography and bargain basement production levels are not especially bothersome; a documentary feature can skate for an impressive distance on the compelling nature of its subject. The glaring flaw in Children—although not a fatal one—is that the film’s enthusiasm for that subject leads to wearying indulgence. At a running time of 109 minutes, it rolls on for an hour longer than is necessary, and as a result often slips into a repetitive, meandering mode. Often, the film revisits previous scenes for no particular reason, offering no new insight or information beyond the revelation that a bloody-minded editor is needed. The film’s use of music embodies the difficulty that Christian has in reigning in her instincts. Even for a post-rock aficionado like yours truly, Children is packed so densely with soaring singles by the likes of Sigur Rós, Mogwai, and Explosions in the Sky that the soundtrack borders on self-parody. That Children of the Night nonetheless manages to be an edifying experience has less to do with its characteristics as cinema than with the bottomless awe found in the astonishing images of galaxies, clusters, and nebulae.

SLIFF 2013: The House That Jack Built

2013 // USA // Henry Barrial // November 18, 2013 // Digital Theatrical Projection (Landmark Plaza Frontenac Cinema)

[Full Disclosure: I spoke briefly with director Henry Barrial both before and after the November 18, 2013 screening of The House That Jack Built at the St. Louis International Film Festival. The conversation was friendly, and generally positive about the film and his prior feature, Pig.]

There’s more than a little bit of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II in director Henry Barrial’s latest feature The House That Jack Built, and not merely because it concerns the intersection of family and crime in New York City. The House’s blend of slightly madcap family melodrama and gritty, street-level violence is virtually a tradition in American indie cinema, and certainly miles from the operatic tone of Francis Ford Coppola’s celebrated series. Yet The House is, in some ways, a complementary tale to The Godfather. Michael Corleone strives (and ultimately fails) to isolate his family from the violent malefactions of his Mafia empire, even as that business swells into a bloodstained, all-devouring behemoth. The protagonist of Barrial’s feature is similarly concerned with maintaining a sharp delineation between this illicit pursuits and his extended clan, but both Jack (Guiding Light star E. J. Bonilla) and the film around him are overwhelmingly focused on the family side of the equation.

For Caribbean-Latino Bronx native Jack, his modest business—commanding a cadre of streetcorner dope slingers, with a weary little bodega serving as his legitimate front—is but a means to an end. That goal is an unexpectedly warm-hearted one: to be the man who keeps his sprawling, chaotic family together and cared for in an apartment complex he owns. It’s a remarkably domestic, even conservative aim for a drug pusher. However, The House makes clear in its prelude and epilogue that Jack’s ideals have been informed by nostalgia for his childhood. In that gauzy era, motion and laughter were packed into his family’s flat as densely as the relatives. The House is therefore a film about a man with a sentimental vision for his life and the lives of his family members, and about how reality fails to conform to his burnished expectations. Although Jack’s territorial clashes with another, more powerful drug lord (Fidel Vicioso) are a pivotal component of the film’s story, The House is much more concerned with the unraveling of Jack’s soft-focus dream of familial bliss.

Given the temperament of Jack’s relatives, that dream was perhaps a delusional venture from the start. His father Carlos (Jack Herrera) is a belligerent drunk, and perpetually at war with his exasperated mother Martha (Saundra Santiago), who frets about the family’s standing in the neighborhood. Jack’s brother Richie (Leo Minaya) is a natural doormat, struggling in vain to keep his restless wife Rosa (Flor De Liz Perez) home with their newborn child. Brother Manny (Desmin Borges) is inexplicably perusing and stealing from brother Hector’s (Javier Muñoz) designer wardrobe. Much to Jack’s consternation, his semi-out sister Nadia (Rosal Colon) regularly has her girlfriend over for the night. Meanwhile, Jack’s own sweetheart Lily (Melissa Fumero) is talking marriage, which raises his hackles. Despite his devotion to family, Jack seems to have a kneejerk distaste for commitment. In short, every aspect of Jack’s fantasy is falling short in some respect, and The House is essentially a tragedy—albeit a humorous one—about his efforts to keep everything from falling apart. In addition to Coppola, there’s a bit of Shakespeare in there, not to mention Elia Kazan’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums, and Jonathan Demme’s Rachel Getting Married. 

For viewers familiar with director Barrial’s previous feature, the mind-bending science-fiction thriller Pig, The House will doubtlessly feel like an emphatic swing in a quite different direction. Barrial’s latest is as sincere, soapy, and character-driven as Pig was moody, enigmatic, and removed. The director has acknowledged that The House is shaped in part by his own early life as a Cuban-American in Miami, which can be observed in the film’s specific character details and in its broad portraiture of a close-knit but combative Latino clan. Doubtlessly, The House also owes a debt to the life experiences of the late indie filmmaker Joseph Vasquez, who originally penned the film’s screenplay some twenty years ago. The Puerto Rican Vasquez worked autobiographical details from his hard-bitten South Bronx childhood into many of his works, most famously in his 1991 "long night of the soul" comedy-drama, Hangin’ With the Homeboys. The House certainly feels indebted to Vasquez’s life story, although Barrial’s on location shooting in the Bronx and his use of local Caribbean-Latino actors are just as vital to the film’s vivid sense of place. (As in Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s Delicatessen, the apartment complex is not merely backdrop, but a motif and even a character in its own right.)

As with any film about a garrulous, dysfunctional family, The House flirts with cartoonishness in its depiction of Jack’s quirky, problem-ridden relatives. Moreover, in its determination to present the ugly consequences of Jack’s criminal activities, the film at times strays into histrionics and downright unbelievable plot swerves. Yet Barrial’s film rises above these flaws, in part due to the director’s capable juggling of the film’s myriad tones, but also thanks to the engaging presence of Bonilla. The actor's knee-weakening looks and swagger (the latter slightly tinged with diffidence) captivate whenever he is on screen. Bonilla’s performance and the film’s general preference for Jack’s point of view create a sharp portrait of a compromised but essentially benevolent man who is unable to accept that some things are beyond his control—and rather narcissistically denies the agency of his loved ones as a result. This tends to balance out the film’s comparatively thin characterization of the rest of Jack’s family, who are often distilled down to one or two traits. While there is nothing particularly revelatory in Barrial’s approach to storytelling or in Luca Del Puppo’s camera work, The House That Jack Built is still a rich slice of droll family drama, one that offers a compelling depiction of the breakdown and adjustment of a man’s sanguine expectations.

SLIFF 2013: 7 Boxes

2012 // Paraguay // Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schembori // November 17, 2013 // Digital Theatrical Projection (Landmark Tivoli Theatre)

Momentum is essential to the success of 7 Boxes, a gritty, borderline farcical chase picture that unfolds over the course of a single day in Asunción, Paraguay. Directors Juan Carlos Maneglia and Tana Schembori set up the story’s premise with a minimum of delay: callow 17-year-old Victor (Celso Franco) makes a few guaraní hauling loads on his rickety wheelbarrow in the sprawling market-slum known as Mercado 4. One sweltering morning, following a run-in with rival barrow jockey Nelson (Víctor Sosa), Victor is offered an unusual delivery job by Gus (Roberto Cardozo), a butcher who has become exasperated with Nelson’s tardiness. Truthfully, it’s sort of an anti-delivery job. Victor’s wheelbarrow is hastily loaded with seven wooden crates, and the boy is instructed to steer the boxes around the market for the rest of the day, avoiding patrols by the slow-witted but thoroughly corrupt police. If Victor returns with the untampered containers at the end of day, Gus promises him one hundred American dollars, which will more than cover the cost of the new cell phone which the boy has been coveting.

As protagonists go, Victor doesn’t do much to invite the viewer’s sympathy. He embodies everything interminable about the contemporary adolescent male: a self-absorbed and somewhat oblivious twerp whose horizons don’t extend much further than kung fu films and a generalized longing for wealth and celebrity. (Women don’t yet seem to be a part of the equation.) Still, as embodied by Franco, Victor has heartthrob charm and child’s soft-heartedness. He also possesses a prey animal’s quick-witted instinct for survival, which has enabled him to eke out half a living in a market crowded with older, tougher competitors. However, he still relies on the kindness of older sister Tamara (Nelly Davalos), a doting yet reproachful women who works in the kitchen of a local Chinese restaurant. She crosses paths with her brother several times over the course of the day, but she has her own preoccupations in the form of a very pregnant co-worker, a perpetually annoyed boss, and the latter’s lovelorn son. The one individual who sticks close to Victor during his odyssey is Liz (Lali Gonzalez), a grubby adolescent girl from the market who incessantly pesters him and has zero tolerance for his exasperated attempts to boss her around.

Victor’s antiheroic qualities are consistent with the 7 Boxes’ broader approach, which begins with an elementary thriller scenario and then gives it all sorts of unusual little twists. For example, while the violent, spiteful Nelson is the closest thing the film has to a pure villain, Maneglia, Schembori, and co-writer Tito Chamorro paint his circumstances as pitiable. Penniless and unable to procure medicine for his newborn child, Nelson slides into a dead-eyed desperation, where he is ready and willing to do anything for cash. Cutting his own deal with Gus’ superiors, the antsy Don Dario (Paletita) and irritated Luis (Nico García), Nelson calls in favors and gathers together an entire band of aggrieved barrow-pushers for one purpose: killing Victor and seizing his precious cargo. If a pack of tenpenny assassins steering wheelbarrows menacingly through a nocturnal marketplace seems a tad absurd, that’s because it is absurd. Consistent with the Coen Brothers’ thrillers and Djo Munga’s recent Congolese crime picture Viva Riva!, the occasional weirdness of 7 Boxes tends to enhance rather than detract from the film’s aura of uncanny menace.

Such forays into comedic territory don’t always pay dividends; 7 Boxes’ humor is at times too broad, simplistic, and predictable. When the film does take genuinely amusing swerves, they tend to be of the drier sort, such as when muggers snatch Don Dario and Luis’ cell phones, but overlook the duffel bag full of cash that the pair are carrying. The conflation of the cutting edge smartphone with status and power is a recurring motif in the film, as is the ever-fluctuating guaraní-dollar exchange rate. Such fixations suggest deeper ambitions on the part of Maneglia and Schembori, but they never amount to much. 7 Boxes certainly seems to have lots to say about wealth, fame, violence, capitalism, post-colonialism, and the like, but it never quite gets around to exploring such themes in any meaningful way.

Fortunately, 7 Boxes is still a pretty great chase film. The directors maintain an irresistible, jittery sense of forward inertia, while also keeping the viewer slightly off balance, such that the oncoming narrative turns are only glimpsed at the last minute. In these respects, the film borrows quite explicitly from Run, Lola, Run, although 7 Boxes lacks that feature’s formal daring. The film is much more sprawling than one might expect, given the centrality of Victor’s mission to the story. The film is continuously taking oddball detours, following almost every secondary character at one point or another, and cultivating an appreciation for the complexity and interconnectedness of Asunción street life. This is less about sociological observation than about creating a black comedy of errors that unfolds according to some sadistic cosmic playbook. Someone up there is having a laugh at Victor and everyone else involved in this sweaty, bloody fiasco. Only divine meddling (or pure dumb luck) can explain the collision of every narrative line in the final scenes of 7 Boxes. Some characters perish, some escape, and everything piles up into one big shambles of asinine mistakes, curdled schemes, and foolish nobility. Just another day in the market, in other words.

SLIFF 2013: Tales from the Organ Trade

2013 // USA // Ric Esther Bienstock // November 16, 2013 // Digital Theatrical Projection (Washington University Brown Hall)

Director Ric Esther Bienstock’s disquieting new documentary feature, Tales from the Organ Trade, is an uncommonly balanced and even-handed film, but this isn’t to say that it is bias-free. Bienstock conveys a broad disapproval for the status quo within the global kidney trade, and asserts that this black- and gray-market exchange is phenomenally unjust to the vast majority of participating individuals, save a handful of elite doctors and brokers. Ultimately, the film also leans towards the policy views espoused by a quasi-libertarian organ transplant activist, who advocates for the legalization of kidney sales and a government-regulated pool for these retail spare parts.

However, Tales does not possess the white-hot indignation common to many documentary features about Big, Important Issues. Rather, Beinstock’s ambition is to convey the complexity of the kidney market and the myriad pressures that push profits upward and coax people into agreements that would be unthinkable in different circumstances. Rather than provoking tongue-clucking disapproval, the filmmakers are more interested in emphasizing just how intractable the problems associated with the trade are, and in implying that anyone peddling glib “solutions” should be regarded with skepticism.

Narrated by fellow Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, Tales flits across the globe to interview individuals involved in one or more aspects of the organ trade. Accordingly, the viewer is introduced to a remarkable array of real-life stories. A thirtysomething Toronto working mom is already experiencing kidney failure and nervously eyeing her own mother’s dialysis-deformed arms and ravaged health. Meanwhile, half a world away, a rural Philippine province is dense with adult men who have “donated” (sold) a kidney, although these transactions seem not to have improved the locals’ financial outlooks one bit.

These encounters are likes snapshots, incrementally expanding a ghastly urban legend into a highly detailed and multi-dimensional policy debate. In Tales’ primary through-line, the filmmakers flex their detective skills and track one kidney from its grateful recipient in Canada, through Israel, Turkey, Kosovo, and Moldova. This particular transplant seems dodgy on paper, but proves to have proceeded mostly above-board. Not so with most illegal surgeries, which are rife with medical malpractice, financial fraud, and outright criminal theft and assault,

A lesser documentary might have lingered on the more ghoulish medical twists or the awfulness of developing world poverty, creating a kind of misery porn inciting generalized outrage. Admittedly, the most immediate emotion that Tales provokes is self-centered First World relief. After hearing a Brazilian slum-dweller (and imminent kidney “donor”) yearn for a house where his children can stand without hunching beneath the low ceilings, one’s daily inconveniences seem a tad ridiculous.

While such moments are vivid and memorable, what truly impresses is Tales’ uncommon determination to eschew easy answers and to keep the numerous, contradictory aspects of its subject matter in full view. It’s the rare sort of documentary feature that serves as a potent work of sociopolitical consciousness-raising without descending into tiresome repetition, single-solution zealotry, or cuckoolander political fantasies. In short, it’s cinematic pedagoguery at its finest, leaving the viewer more knowledgeable, perturbed, and motivated with respect to a far-reaching and formerly obscure issue.