Culture recs: Mr. Scorsese and a surreal tale of maternal anxiety
Plus: What I'm seeing at the Woodstock Film Festival
This week I’ll be checking out lots of movies at the Woodstock Film Festival, a cozy but well-curated event where you can soak up the Catskills foliage and stock up on edibles between screenings of world-class cinema.
As awards season ramps up, I’m excited to see a few movies that have already entered the Oscar conversation, like Hamnet, Chloe Zhao’s tearjerker about William Shakespeare and his wife Agnes (played by Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley), as well as Sentimental Value, the latest from Danish-Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Trier (The Worst Person in the World). Also of interest is the Cannes Grand Prix-winner, starring Stellan Skarsgård as a once-acclaimed but out of work director who attempts to mend his relationship with his grown daughters, Agnes and Nora (played by Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas and Renate Reinsve, respectively).
Woodstock also has some excellent non-fiction offerings this year, including Ask E. Jean , a documentary about author, advice columnist, and friend of The Contrarian E. Jean Carroll and Teenage Wasteland, which follows a group of ‘90s high school students whose A/V class assignment exposed a toxic conspiracy in their community.
I kicked off the festival Wednesday at a screening of A Life Illuminated, an awe-inducing portrait of Edie Widder, a pioneering marine biologist and expert in bioluminescence who gained some notoriety in 2012 when a TV crew captured footage of the elusive giant squid using a technique she developed. Directed by Tasha Van Zandt, the film chronicles Widder’s lifelong fascination with the ocean and her groundbreaking research into the bioluminescent marine life who live in the darkest depths of the sea—a phenomenon barely understood when she started out in the 1980s in a field dominated by men.
Using stunning underwater footage that looks like it came straight out of a James Cameron blockbuster, the documentary makes a powerful case for the importance of deep sea exploration, particularly given the specter of climate change. As Widder says, “We’ve barely begun to explore our own planet and we are destroying it before we know what’s there.” A Life Illuminated does not have theatrical distribution yet, but it will be screening at the Montclair Film Festival and GlobeDocs in Boston later this month, then at the Doc Stories Festival in San Francisco in November, so check it out if you have the opportunity.
Also worth your time:
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (in select theaters)
In this surreal, darkly funny, deeply unsettling film about the horrors of modern-day motherhood, Rose Byrne delivers a fearlessly untethered performance as Linda, a Montauk therapist and increasingly worn-out mother attempting to manage multiple overlapping crises. With her husband away for months, she is left on her own to care for their sick daughter, who suffers from an unspecified malady that has made her dependent on a feeding tube that beeps and whirs menacingly. Then a giant hole opens up in her ceiling, flooding her apartment and forcing Linda and her daughter to live in a seedy beachside motel, where she unwinds with late-night joints and cheap wine. In a bold choice that adds to the claustrophobic horror of the film, writer-director Mary Bronstein leaves the unnamed child appears offscreen for most of the film—like the shark in Jaws, only somehow more terrifying. Byrne, who appears in virtually every scene, is astonishingly good, but also well-matched by a cast that includes Conan O’Brien as her annoyed therapist and A$AP Rocky as a motel employee. Last year’s Nightbitch—featuring Amy Adams as a frazzled mom who turns into a dog at night—was similar in style and subject matter, but If I Had Legs I’d Kick You takes some much darker turns along the way.
Mr. Scorsese (premieres Friday on Apple TV)
This five-part documentary traces the life and career of the auteur behind Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Departed, Killers of the Flower Moon and dozens of other narrative films, documentaries, and TV shows. Director Rebecca Miller speaks to friends, family, and collaborators including Leonardo DiCaprio, Mick Jagger, Thelma Schoonmaker, Spike Lee, and Isabella Rossellini to create a rich, intimate portrait of an artist whose passion for filmmaking has yet to wane. (She also draws extensively from his personal archive, including the extremely delightful photo above of Scorsese with Robert De Niro.) The series explores the role of faith in Scorsese’s work, and also details the addiction that nearly killed Scorsese in the 1970s—about which he speaks with candor. “The problem is,” he says. “you enjoy the sin.”
Last but not least, if thoughtful memoirs by ‘70s icons (who know something about enjoying sin) are your thing, consider picking up Vagabond by Tim Curry and Cat on the Road to Findout by Yusuf/Cat Stevens (available at your closest independent bookstore).
Meredith Blake is the culture columnist for The Contrarian.
A Life Illuminated sounds wonderful to me. I like the quote about needing to go into the deep.