Season Five, Kinksi performs Berlin: Symphony of a City

Season Five is the first of two Iranian films at SIFF this year, a somewhat sorry number but still much appreciated and way better than zero. It's sort of a Romeo and Juliet type of story in that there are two families living in rural Iran who absolutely despise one another, and a marriage between two members of those families turns very sour and serves to chisel the divide between the families even further. It's a beautifully simple story as a lot of Iranian cinema tends to be on the surface, but digs very deep into its cultural quirks and behavioral nuances. Director Rafi Pitts made this movie after a 15 year departure from his home country, returning to craft something that he felt fellow Iranians would enjoy. During his Q&A, he stated the importance of being able to make his home country laugh because in a way that is really the truest gauge of whether you still share that blood.

The cinematography in this movie is excellent and Pitts truly extended the screenplay into his own, as he stressed during the Q&A, by adding elements into the picture to bring out what he felt were important to him and his life and his world having been apart from his homeland for so long. There is the running motif of women wearing red, which he said was to draw them out from the crowds and bring them to the forefront as a tribute to his mother. There is the motif of the children spinning tires with sticks which permeates the entire movie subtly by giving it a simple but effective thread. The camera follows this imagery in a way that creates a beauty both through its meaning of simple harmony, and visually as a flowing device of movement.

It's a very well rounded piece of work and I truly believe it is the kind of movie that is a labor of love for the director and it really shows. In addition to being well versed in cinema history, Pitts has the ability to do what he preaches is the only way to direct, which is to do it in the only way you as an individual would without trying to emulate anyone else. It's a very stubborn, and very Iranian, view of directing and art in general, but it's also a very accurate description of one primary quality a good artist needs to possess -- the ability to know themselves well and to be able to communicate that into their chosen medium.

The silent German black and white film Berlin: Symphony of a City celebrates its 80th anniversary this year and to commemorate the occasion, local experimental-grunge band Kinski performed a live score to it at The Triple Door. I've seen Kinski before a couple of times and have always been on the fence about them with their alternating moments of pure brilliance mixed with bouts of bored fiddling and feedback. Their potential in a soundtrack to an old black and white classic seemed compelling and I was curious to see yet another modern band pull such a feat (last year, a soundtrack to The Unknown was performed by the band Portastatic).

It should be mentioned that The Triple Door is an upscale club that typically caters to jazz musicians. Their seating is arranged very similarly to a Cinema Grill -- that is, it's a bunch of tables facing forward with food served while a performance is observed. It's an entirely different experience eating and watching something, especially a movie. For one thing, servers are always walking by and the clank of dishware can be heard permeating the venue. For another, this particular venue seats people to fill, so sitting with random strangers at the same table is not uncommon at all. In general it's a nice venue with somewhat overpriced food.

Kinski performed a small soundtrack to a short silent black and white film preceding Berlin that was effective and meshed well with the experimental animated nature of the short. It was a nice intro and really suggested the rest of the evening would be just as good. Unfortunately the rest wasn't really as good as anticipated and I walked away feeling fairly disastisfied with Kinski's overall soundtrack performance.

The first very noticeable thing early on was the very American movie sounding tone to the music. It felt a little ethnocentric and somewhat silly since the screen was displaying images of a foreign city that begged for more globally oriented melodies or sounds. I was surprised that Kinski stuck very closely to their current style which even uses alternate tunings without branching out into a more German influenced musical style which could still have retained a lot of the experimental qualities that the band exemplifies so well. It really detracted a lot from the experience to be hearing these very simple melodies, and in general I would have expected far more experimental feedback from them in keeping with the somewhat cold, industrial nature of the city. Some of the melodies were very upbeat and almost had a very naive air that didn't fit the mood of the film at all. In other cases, some hard driving guitar riffs served to drown out the feel of some of the scenes giving them far more weight than perhaps originally intended.

The other, perhaps more primary issue was that the soundtrack really didn't feel like a soundtrack. There was no overriding theme or anything tying any of the segments together, as Portastatic did so well with The Unknown. So rather than pulling a thread through the film with the score, it was primarily random little songs as if Kinski was just playing a regular show. The mood of these songs barely matched the mood on screen, and when at times the pacing fell right in line, most of the time there was nothing to denote transitions in the movie or clear areas where the style should shift. In fact, most of the time these transitions seemed about 5 seconds off, but who knows if that was just chance again or poor timing.

Kinski's score to Berlin was extremely incongruous with the entire movie, again as if they were simply playing one of their live shows, and the experience was fairly dissatisfying overall. It's nice to actually get an idea of what a bad score is like however, because it helps to appreciate what makes a good soundtrack great.

Audience Watch: There were a few Iranians in attendance for Season Five and were very vocal during the Q&A. One person managed to hog the Q&A with about 5 questions as if it was a personal conversation between them and the director. The Berlin show was pretty fully attended.