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.

American Hustle

2013 // USA // David O. Russell // December 16, 2013 // Digital Theatrical Projection (Wehrenberg Des Peres 14 Cine)

With the possible exception of his first feature, the indie incest comedy Spanking the Monkey, director David O. Russell’s films tend to prioritize vivid, quickly sketched characters and an arch attitude over naturalism and emotional depth. On the positive side, this often lends the director’s works a rough-edged, even profane ebullience that leaves an indelible impression, as in Three Kings’ laparoscopic insert shots of oozing bile and collapsing lungs, or The Fighter’s Greek chorus of pug ugly, foul-mouthed sisters. Unfortunately, this preference for cheeky crackle over authenticity can also create an atmosphere of cynical ephemerality in Russell’s films. The director’s characters look and talk like real people, but one can’t quite shake the sensation that one is watching actors playing roles. A cinema of heightened artificiality can be an end to itself—see the works of Baz Luhrman, Tarsem, and the Wachowski siblings—but in Russell’s hands it often feels like a means to a poignancy or profundity that the director never quite gets around to conveying.

Russell’s latest feature, American Hustle, finds modest success where the director’s films have often stumbled. On the one hand, the film functions primarily as tall drink of period razzle-dazzle, fueled by a cluster of memorably lurid performances and gaudy 1970s-80s design. At the same time, the film harbors an unexpectedly delicate sadness, evincing a sensitivity that has not been found in Russell’s work since Monkey. Hustle achieves this in part by not leaning too earnestly on its themes. The director and his performers are focused principally on delivering a character-driven, blackly comical tragedy decked out in disco era glitter and gold. That Hustle also manages to be a sorrowful little tale of American ambition, ineptitude, and shattered idealism at the dawn of the Reagan years... well, that’s just a gratifying bonus.

Hustle is based very loosely on the story of Abscam, the real-world FBI anti-corruption operation which utilized a convicted con man and a phony Arab sheikh to entrap and indict over thirty government officials, including six congressmen and a U.S. senator. However, the film’s screenplay by Russell and Eric Singer is concerned less with the minutiae of public bribery than with a cluster of compelling if broadly loathsome characters. At the center of the film are New York con artists and lovers Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale) and Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams), two souls who share a passion for quick-and-dirty financial scams and 1940s-50s jazz. Irving has a window glass business and a chain of dry cleaning shops that serve as a legitimate front for his cons, as well as an acid-tongued wife (Jennifer Lawrence) and stepson in the suburbs to whom he is hopelessly committed. (Exhibiting the sort of dejected self-awareness that characterizes his outlook, Irving admits in voiceover that his wife Rosalyn has snookered him into financial and emotional fidelity, if not sexual faithfulness, and has therefore conned the conman.) Sydney is a bit more of a chameleon: a perpetual identity-swapper who adopts an English accent and flashes flirty looks at her marks, luring them into the snares that her man has devised. “She was so smart!,” Irving enthuses, and while this is the gushing of a besotted man, it’s obvious that Sydney is a woman of large appetites, larger ambitions, and an almost compulsive need to keep moving up and away. In this, she recalls another Bale film, Public Enemies, where John Dillinger confessed that what he desired was “everything, right now.”

The FBI eventually catches wind of Irving and Sydney’s cons, and in short order the pair find themselves in adjoining interrogation rooms being sweated by splendidly permed agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). Richie essentially blackmails the couple, offering immunity in exchange for their help in stinging public officials for corruption. Irving reluctantly accepts the deal, but his acquiescence creates a rift with Sydney, into which Richie rather effortlessly slides. In this way, the film sets up its dramatic nexus: the love triangle between Irving, Sydney, and Richie, and the ways in which their dysfunctional relationships threaten to devour the FBI operation. The wild card on the outside of this triad is Rosalyn, whose motormouth tendencies and tight grasp on Irving create a glaring potential for disaster in such a high-stakes scheme. (This is foreshadowed by not one but two kitchen fires that the culinarily inept and slightly wobbly Rosalyn triggers.)

The operation’s first target is the glad-handing, working man’s mayor of Camden, New Jersey, Carmine Polito (Jeremy Renner). Once Carmine is hooked, he in turn begins to reel in various other members of the local, state, and federal government via a proposed economic redevelopment of Atlantic City. This is not sufficient for Richie, however, who yearns to be a rock star in the halls of the Bureau. That means that the scam escalates to luring in high-profile mafia targets, up to and including Victor Tellegio (Robert De Niro), lieutenant to notorious Jewish mobster Meyer Lansky. This proves to be all too much for Irving, who begins to panic at the possibility of losing his wife, son, and head if the mob unmasks their millionaire investor “sheikh” as a Puerto Rican FBI agent.

Russell keeps all of this fizzing along quite nicely, while adeptly balancing a plethora of tones and moods. Although the film sometimes seems to be snickering at its characters—That hair! Those outfits! That unawareness of the incipient 1980s!—it discovers a measure of pathos in their stymied dreams. Every significant characters is allowed to plead for the viewer’s sympathies at some point, just as everyone is ultimately revealed to be a short-sighted fool in one respect or another. Richie in particular evolves quite a bit over the course of the film, from a smooth-talking foil to an awkward romantic rival to a coked-up rogue agent to a pitiable but richly deserving fall guy. What is probably the saddest moment in whole film flicks by almost unnoticed: After fielding a phone call from Sydney regarding a late-night assignation, Richie insists to his mother that “I’m running the show, I’m the quarterback, and I’m not going to settle for no one.” On this beat, he casts a furtive glance at his poor fiancé, seated across the kitchen table. Ouch.

It is Renner’s pompadoured, gregarious mayor who receives the rawest deal when the FBI’s noose tightens. Carmine is an impassioned and idealistic public servant, beloved by his constituents and genuinely focused on the economic rebirth of his town. His only flaw seems to be his willingness to deal with casino mobsters to get what he wants for Camden. In short, he is a potential political balm for America’s post-Watergate malaise: a stand-up, take-charge guy who loves his town and his people. Unfortunately, Richie thinks nothing of throwing Carmine to the wolves in his pursuit of bigger fish, which leaves Irving feeling sick with guilt. Unlike Sydney, who has a jittery need to reinvent herself, Irving secretly longs to be a local Big Man, a respected member of the community just like Carmine. During a boozy, bittersweet night out on the town with their wives, Irving even seems to lose track of the fact that he is conning Carmine at all. For a moment, he forgets that he is a fraud.

Hustle draws heavily from Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas and Casino for its themes and style, as well as Paul Thomas Anderson’s Scorsese homage, Boogie Nights. Russell is not at the level of either of those filmmakers, however, and Hustle’s worst traits exemplify the director’s irksome tendencies. These include a preference for cartoonish archetypes over characters, the loud declaration of ideas in place of simmering subtext, and a taste for pointless islands of weirdness. (A tossed-off moment where Rosalyn housecleans furiously while belting out “Live and Let Die” falls into the latter category.) Still, Hustle manages to be a genuinely sad film in spots, usually (and paradoxically) when the filmmaker and actors aren’t making a big hullabaloo about how sad everything is. Irving in particular evokes twinges of sorrowful sympathy. Despite his vanity and deceptions, he seems painfully aware that his life has been commandeered by the ego and greed of others.

While such psychological wrinkles provide the odd cerebral diversion, Hustle’s more visceral pleasures—the over-the-top performances, the design, the music, the queasy thrill of a con that is constantly threatening to unravel—are generally enough to keep the film afloat. One could pen an entire essay about Amy Adams’ morphing hairstyles and low-cut dresses, not to mention the curious magnetism of her translucent, blotchy skin. (As a fellow Person of Pale Persuasion, this writer is consistently taken by Adams’ willingness to appear naturally spotty on film rather than porcelain-perfect. More power to her.) None of this adds up to a great work of cinema, or even a particularly durable one, but American Hustle is still a pleasurable work of retro-themed pop entertainment. Moreover, there is something strangely gratifying about seeing Russell’s middlebrow and often frustrating auteurism finally discover a fitting vessel.

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.