The New York Film Festival: Upcoming Films You Cannot Miss

| Photo by Caedmon Fair

(REVIEW) After three magical, borderline surreal weeks, the New York Film Festival has come to an end. Opening its doors to Joel Coen’s Shakespeare adaptation on Sept. 24 and screening films every day up until this past Sunday, the Festival has more than upheld its reputation of boasting a curation of films that are the most daring, nonconforming, thought-provoking, transgressive if not the absolute best films the year has to offer. 

The sentiment expressed in every facet of the festival can be summed up in Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s words when introducing his new film, Memoria, “It’s good to be back.” 

A year ago, the 58th Film Festival was held virtually, and the exhilaration as well as gratefulness to be back in person radiated throughout each and every crowd lining up to see the night’s newest premiere. After a year in which the future of cinema and the cinema itself seemed so distressingly uncertain, the ability to commune together in celebration of the art form — in front of the big screen — the collective, unspoken understanding that we once took this ability for granted characterized these past three weeks. 

A passion for cinema as an art and the cinema as a place to experience it seeped from every facet of the Festival: the audience, the programmers, the filmmakers and their films. A notable number of films featured were about filmmakers. A lot were about death. And a lot, both about filmmaking and death. So make of that what you will. 

Nonetheless, things felt normal. Aside from a quick vaccine check when entering the building and an advisory to keep your mask over your nose throughout the duration of the film reminding us all that the pandemic is not quite behind us, there was a sensation of normalcy, which has now become an exotic, desired feeling. Extremely long lines form with anxious attempts to get a standby ticket, the excited buzzing of the herds leaving the theater, smoking cigarettes outside as they fervently discuss what they’ve just seen and a proactive Paul Verhoeven film that garnered protest. The effects of the pandemic may still linger, but this festival has reinforced an optimistic notion that everything will be OK.

The Centennial of Amos Vogel, cineaste, founder of Cinema 16 and co-founder of the New York Film Festival, was celebrated this year. He wrote in his book, Film as a Subversive Art, “Subversion in cinema starts when the theater darkens and the screen lights up… The power of the image, our fear of it, the thrill that pulls us toward it, is real. Short of closing one’s eyes — in cinema, a difficult and unprecedented act — there is no defense against it.” 

Given this year’s extraordinary lineup, choosing just six films from the festival is excruciating, yet here are the six that left me most defenseless to their magic: 

Ahed’s Knee

Nadav Lapid’s newest film is about an Israeli filmmaker traveling to a town in the middle of the desert to present his newest film. This simple, unmistakably meta premise quickly becomes deeply personal and explosive as we watch this filmmaker (Avshallom Pollak) inwardly and outwardly battle with the stacking hypocrisies of his nation as well as his mother’s fight with cancer. Described by many including Lapid himself as a film characterized by its urgency, the film functions as a protest. Thus, it is only fitting that the manner in which the story is presented itself be a protest. 

Taking inspiration for his film from Jackson Pollok, Lapid said in a Q&A after the film, “It’s a form of rebellion against this prison of fiction.” 

Much like the works of the great expressionist painter, the film can come across as slapdash, chaotic or nonsensical, but with a step back, it becomes obvious that every stroke of madness is intentionally and carefully crafted with the entirety of the picture in mind. It’s a long, angry shout into the wind that displays the damage of entangling and misdirecting the things we’re angry about despite the horrid injustice of these things. Lapid strips this character down as far as he’ll go until the point it appears he may crumble into a million pieces right before our eyes. 

“I don’t think I want to shout like this again… I don’t want to get more naked than this,” Lapid said. 

This film is a  triumphant cry out against the injustices that overwhelm a man and a vulnerable excursion into this man's psyche if it isn’t Lapid’s own mind and heart splattered on the screen.

(Kino Lorber has acquired Ahed’s Knee and plans to release it early 2022.)

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Though for many it is a disappointment to watch the Coen brothers depart from making films together, Joel Coen’s first film all by his lonesome is certainly no disappointment. Starring Denzel Washington as Macbeth and Frances McDormand as Lady Macbeth — if “Shakespeare adaptation,” “a film by Joel Coen,” or either Denzel or Frances alone hasn’t sold you on this film, it may not be your cup of tea, but I’ll give it a shot. 

Having not read or necessarily thought about Shakespeare’s Macbeth since junior year of high school, I can’t speak in a justifiable manner to what this film is doing well as an adaptation of the play to the medium of film. However, my ignorance in the field of Shakespeare would assumedly also come with an alienation to the film, and yet this was far from the case. Even if the dialogue can occasionally create what feels like a language barrier, the filmmaking is such a marvelous feat to behold that this isolating issue becomes next to irrelevant. 

On all technical fronts, Coen’s film is masterful. From Bruno Delbonnel’s gorgeous black and white cinematography to Stefan Dechant’s minimalist production design — all indicative of Dreyer, Welles and Bergman— this film feels like something that can’t exist today, like it is pulled directly from their time, all the while being inextricably modern. It is horrifying in the ways that this tale from Shakespeare should be yet only in the ways made possible by the medium of film, and it’s overflowing with remarkable performances as any material from Shakespeare is bound to be. The Fassbinder Macbeth from a few years ago is solid, but this will be the definitive adaptation until the unlikely scenario in which someone is able to offer more with this cursed story than Coen already has.

(The Tragedy of Macbeth releases in select theaters on Dec. 25 before streaming on Apple TV+ on Jan.  14, 2022.)

The French Dispatch

The newest film from Wes Anderson is more Wes Anderson than anything he’s ever made. He has fully surrendered himself to maximalism. All of the aesthetics and stylistic choices he has trademarked over the years are used and the dial is bumped up to ten and then some. 

Anderson garners arguably the greatest ensemble of actors and actresses of all time — to name them all would likely exhaust my word count though just a few standouts new to an Anderson picture include Benicio del Toro, Timothée Chalamet and Jeffery Wright while some faces familiar to the Anderson lineup include Tilda Swinton, Francis McDormand and Adrien Brody. As for the rest of the actors in this film — most of which make up today's best of the best — Anderson hilariously uses them like props. 

The film plays out as an anthology of the greatest stories written for Arthur Howitzer Jr.’s (Bill Murray) magazine to be compiled in a final issue in the event of his death. Stuffing this film so full of his mannerisms, it comes to the brim of exploding but never does. It is utterly dizzying until it brings you full stop in a moment of beautiful clarity. His aesthetics transcend simply being aesthetics as they come damn near to drowning the film. They take on a meaning of their own: their meaninglessness. 

Amongst the meaninglessness of the color, aspect ratio, animation — though they remain perfected frame after frame — there remains meaning to be found in the story. As an ode to journalism, it adapts journalistic approaches: it is overly superfluous and keeps you one hundred feet away up until the concluding moments in these short stories that it pulls you face to face. Anderson lets style run loose, but never out of his control. Intentionality remains firmly understood in the presence of seeming arbitrary. 

It is a mess, but it just might be the greatest mess I’ve ever seen.

(The French Dispatch releases in select theaters on Oct. 22.)

The Souvenir Part II

As far as I know, this is the only sequel that played at the festival, and it is the first sequel that A24 has distributed. That being said, I can’t recommend it being viewed alongside its first part enough (as if that isn’t an overly obvious piece of advice.) Joanna Hogg’s newest film can be viewed and appreciated on its own, but what really makes it a transcendent piece of art is its relationship to the first film as they flawlessly go hand in hand with one another. 

The first part is a quasi-autobiographical portrait of an artist in a complicated, unhealthy, difficult relationship that explores being an aspiring artist and being in love, while Part II adds layer upon layer to this notion of autobiography. It is a film about the blurred lines of processing your grief in real life while attempting to simultaneously process it in your art — a film about the making of the film to which it is the sequel. 

Despite the premise’s ability to easily become convoluted, it never does, but rather at the film’s core is an endlessly endearing honesty that is heartbreaking, hilarious, lovely and inspiring up until the film’s perfect final shot. 

(The Souvenir Part II releases in select theaters on Oct. 19.)

The Power of the Dog

Jane Campion’s sleek, subversive western is utterly phenomenal. It follows Rose (Kristen Dunst) and her son Peter (Kodi Smit-McPhee) into a new environment after she marries George Burbank (Jesse Plemmons), a wealthy rancher who works, officially, side by side with his brother Phil (Benedict Cumberbatch). Yet it seems he and everyone else is under Phil as he towers over everyone, striking the fear of God upon anyone who fails to muster up to his grit. 

Choosing the best ensemble of this festival, especially amongst The Tragedy of Macbeth and The French Dispatch, feels like an even more absurd task than choosing the six best films, but no performances have taken complete hold of me and refused to let go quite like the ones in this film. 

Every character has an undisclosed motive, and conflict constantly lingers in the air as Campion explores what place both sensual love and brotherly love have in a place not concerned with these matters; the western backdrop only heightens the richness of this exploration. A place where everyone is simply seeking the best path to survival in this dog-eat-dog world, violence is a necessity while the tender side of our nature is of no value. And everything mimics this tension: coarse hands running against smooth leather, blood dripping from wheat blowing in the wind, the colorfully beaded gloves made by ostracized Native Americans. 

With Campion’s seamless direction backed by Ari Wegner’s striking cinematography and Johnny Greenwood’s daunting and commanding score, the film constantly simmers, rarely coming to a boil until it all evaporates away at the very moment you feel you’ve caught up with it. 

(The Power of the Dog releases in select theaters on Nov. 17 before streaming on Netflix Dec. 1.)

Bergman Island

Mia Hansen-Løve’s film is the creme of the crop. I feel I need numerous rewatches before I can even begin to approach something substantial to say about all that it manages to do, but this is a task I happily take on! 

Though there is much to unpack in its characters and layered narrative, it never feels like you are having to actively work to understand its intentions. Rather, the film washes over you as you’re instantly sucked into these characters who feel more lived-in than the people sitting next to you. 

Tony (Tim Roth) and Chris (Vicky Krieps) are a couple taking a retreat to Fårö, the island where revered Swedish writer and director Ingmar Bergman lived and shot many of his films. Both filmmakers themselves, the two are getting away to work on their writing hoping this holy ground can serve as a vessel of inspiration. They set out to write their scripts while touring and wandering around the island alongside its numerous “Bergman heads.”

Chris begins sharing her newest story with Tony, and the film weaves between them and Chris’ story. Complexity begins to build as the character of Chris — who seems to be based upon Hansen-Løve — tells a story of a younger girl, Amy (Mia Wasikowska), clearly based on herself. The card tricks Hansen-Løve starts to perform grow in intricacy as reality and fiction slowly become blurrier, yet these tricks are not deceptive. Rather they are mystifying, drawing you in more and more the longer they go on and the more elaborate they become.

Though that sounds like a shtick straight out of Bergman’s playbook, the film never appears to be emulating his works nor is it an ode to the man despite him and his films being a constant topic of conversation. Bergman’s relation to the film is essential in its effect on the characters, yet the film itself is an exploration of Amy who is an exploration of Chris who might as well be an exploration of Hansen-Løve herself; who, through one another, are simply attempting to navigate life, love and all that comes with it.

(Bergman Island is currently playing in select theaters and is playing at IFC Center for New Yorkers.)