Millennial tension

"2000 Seen By . . . " seven young filmmakers at the Brattle

By Scott Heller

I'm one of those people who still believes in having a blast on New Year's Eve. No quiet evening at home with a video, at least not if I can help it. But so far I have no plans for this December. And from what I hear, it's gonna be a big one.

I could watch something appropriate, like Strange Days or The Rapture. Better yet, I can hold on to my copies of the films that make up "2000 Seen By . . . ," a terrific program of seven hour-long features by young international directors.

Asked by a European production company to predict what the world will be like when all those nines turn into zeroes, the directors deliver a bleak group portrait spiked with glimmers of comedy. If you're looking to party like it's 1999, look elsewhere. But if you want to be reminded why movies matter -- and culturally, the 20th was the century of cinema -- then look right here. You may already have plans for December 31 -- a Concorde flight across the international date line, a suite at the Ritz. But thanks to the Brattle Theatre, you can take in the series now, on four Tuesdays beginning this week.

Anthologies are always hit or miss, but of this group, only Miguel Albaladejo's The First Night of My Life, a farce from Spain, is a real fizzle. These directors remain largely unrecognized outside their home countries, except for Hal Hartley, who playfully imagines Jesus Christ's return engagement on earth in The Book of Life. Two others -- Hungary's Ildiko Enyedi and Belgium's Alain Berliner -- have made it to American art houses with their early works but have yet to break through again.

Enyedi's first film was called My Twentieth Century. Her vision of the 21st is among the most conventional yet affecting movies in the set. Tamás and Juli is a gossamer-thin love story between a brash young coal miner and a sweet kindergarten teacher. From certain angles, Juli resembles Paulina Porizkova; from others she's utterly unremarkable. So too is the film -- beautiful and ordinary, effortless and intricately told. Deft intercutting depicts Tamás and Juli as worlds apart, seemingly incompatible. He roughhouses with fellow miners down in the darkness. Bathed in light that pours through lace curtains, she gently teaches calisthenics to the schoolkids. When they come together it's magical, as in one scene when the couple share a quiet moment, elbow-to-elbow, in a bar. Then the techno music starts to roar, drowning out any chance they have at closeness. From such incidental moments Enyedi builds to a heart-rending conclusion.

Berliner got enough attention with Ma Vie en Rose to go big-budget, directing Demi Moore in his next film. So his "2000" contribution, The Wall (think language barrier, not Pink Floyd), may be your last chance to see the director's singular vision untouched by Hollywood fingerprints.

Singular the film is, mostly because it refers to political infighting in a part of the world that gets very little attention. Disputes between Francophones and English speakers in Quebec we hear about. But the simmering battle between French and Flemish speakers in Belgium has yet to make the six o'clock news. On December 30, 1999, Berliner's hero, Albert (Daniel Hanssens), finds himself at ground zero. His simple Brussels chip stall sits right on the borderline between the north and the south. When he boils his potatoes, he's in French-speaking territory; when he hands a bag of fries to a customer, he's obliged to switch to Flemish.

The next day, Albert returns to discover that a gigantic wall built between the warring regions bisects his business. He spends New Year's Eve trying to get back home, trying as well to romance the French-speaking beauty who keeps crossing his path.

Berliner has said he intends The Wall as a cautionary tale about incipient tensions that could flare up. As a stylist, he's wedded to a brand of magic realism that remains a little too earthbound. The cherubic Albert is a delightful hero. When he turns a nightly sweep-up into a dance with his broom, you've got Fred Astaire all over again. But the conceit of the wall, with its Eastern Bloc associations, is a gimmick that goes nowhere. At 67 minutes, The Wall isn't too long, but it's certainly long enough.

Like Berliner, Taiwan's Tsai Ming-Liang shows an unexpected taste for old musicals in The Hole, his otherwise dystopic vision of a nation suffering from an unnamed plague. Tsai is fond of long takes, wordless sequences, and a lead actor (Lee Kang-Sheng) who inevitably appears in pristine white undies. In The Hole, Lee is one of the few residents unwilling to follow government orders and abandon their contaminated city. Rain beats down incessantly, radio broadcasts describe the horrible effects of staying too long, but Lee sticks to his dreary, anonymous routine. He finds a counterpart in Yang Kuei-Mei, the downstairs neighbor he gets to know when the hole in his floor -- her ceiling -- grows bigger and bigger.

Friendship is too strong a word to describe their tie. But a connection it is, and, the director seems to say, in today's Taiwan that's as much as you can hope for. His most audacious move is to punctuate the story with colorful song-and-dance numbers lip-synched by Yang to Hong Kong pop songs of the 1950s and '60s. Set against the bleak backdrop, in which infected citizens scuttle around like cockroaches, these blasts of kitsch are a reminder that pop culture provides escape even for the most benighted. A difficult tour de force, The Hole is unforgettable.

In Life on Earth, the Mauritanian filmmaker Abderrahmane Sissako confirms his reputation as one of Africa's most important directors. Stunningly shot and composed like a memory poem, the largely unscripted film takes Sissako back to the small village in Mali where his father still lives. Little has changed for the townspeople, who take in news of glamorous millennial celebrations from around the world on their own decrepit transistor radios. Sissako despairs over Africa's legacy at the end of the century. The anti-colonial writings of Aimé Césaire are read throughout Life on Earth as a pointed reminder of the black peoples who have suffered while their white neighbors got rich. Yet the director's heart -- and his luscious camera eye -- betrays his head. Set to the rapturous music of Salif Keita and Anouar Brahem, Life on Earth is very beautiful indeed.

Not so in France, to judge by Laurent Cantet's The Sanguinaires, a melancholic portrait of middle-aged friends who try to escape the millennial madness by retreating to an island for the last week of the century. They're led by Frédéric Pierrot as François, a travel agent who insists that his dowdy, down-to-earth companions leave behind the accouterments of 1990s life. No TV, no cell phones, no portable tape players -- except for a teenager who won't give up his Walkman. François even insists that his pals take off their watches, so they never know when the big clock will strike.

There's hubris in his effort to stage-manage a week he insists is meaningless, and François begins the end of the century on unsure footing. "Your utopia is lovely," a friend cracks after stepping onto the desolate island. The cathedral where the vacationers will sleep only looks picturesque; inside it's as cold and charmless as an abandoned schoolhouse. Worst of all, François's authority is immediately challenged by Stéphane, the virile young caretaker who would rather go fishing than hear out another yuppie worried about the future.

With deceptive control, Cantet cranks up the tension. Although the vacationers are in effect trapped together, The Sanguinaires doesn't erupt, Lord of the Flies-style, nor should it. The film dissects a major case of 20th-century blues out of small, poignant details. In one of the most affecting scenes, François insists that his friends take turns recollecting what they thought, as children, the new century would be like. Their answers are banal: astronauts and robots and the like. The only thing sadder is the reality to which they're most likely to return.

The Devil gets all the good jokes and P.J. Harvey gets the best close-ups in Hartley's The Book of Life. The director is a little too enamored with his clever idea. What if Jesus (Hartley regular Martin Donovan) were back among us, deciding once and for all whether to bring on the apocalypse? What if Mary Magdalene (P.J. herself) slithered close behind, cell phone glued to her ear? Satan (Thomas Jay Ryan of Henry Fool) is a barfly in a shiny crimson shirt. And the Book of Revelation, which will unleash the reckoning, is a PowerBook, of course, stored in a locker in a New York City bowling alley.

Playing Jesus with his customary rectitude, Donovan takes swipes at the religious fundamentalists who dare to speak in his name. "He has a weakness for sacrifice," Satan says, "and I know I can work that angle." But in Hartley's account, the Devil guesses wrong. Jesus saves damnation for later, choosing to accept rather than punish the sinners.

Religious questions aside, The Book of Life will be remembered for its fabulous look (Hartley shot on digital video, and the blurry blow-up is worthy of Wong Kar-Wai) and its soundtrack -- Gastr del Sol, David Byrne, Yo La Tengo, and P.J. Harvey, of course. At one point, she struts into a music superstore, straps on the headphones at a listening booth, and bangs out "To Sir with Love."

Heaven on earth. If this is the new millennium, bring it on.