Every fall, we spent two weeks in the exceedingly cushy seats of Lincoln Center's Walter Reade cinema: the New York Film Festival is upon us. With a selection of 26 U.S. premiers from 21 countries, the 41st Festival once again promises a bonanza for adventurous film lovers.
Included in this year's lineup are new films by Lars von Trier, Claude Chabrol, Gus van Sant, Errol Morris and Clint Eastwood. Subjects range from domestic strife to international politics, styles from classically composed narratives ("Mansion by the Lake" by Sri Lankan director James Peries) to comic weirdness ("Mayor of the Sunset Strip," George Hicklooper’s surreal tour of the rock and punk biz.) Among the stars expected to attend the Festival are Clint Eastwood, Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn, Marcia Gay Harden, Tim Robbins, Kevin Bacon, Laura Linney, Lauren Bacall, Ben Gazzara, Chloë Sevigny, Naomi Watts, Benicio Del Toro, Tilda Swinton, and Ewan McGregor, as well as many directors whose films have been chosen.
As in the past, we will bring you steady updates and reviews from the festival. For complete details on this year's line-up, keep reading.
Opening Night: Mystic River
The Festival’s Opening Night film is MYSTIC RIVER, a gripping crime thriller from director Clint Eastwood, adapted from Dennis Lehane's best-selling novel by screenwriter Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential). It is the tale of three childhood friends from a working–class Boston neighborhood—Sean Penn, Tim Robbins, and Kevin Bacon—thrown together again as adults. When tragedy befalls one of them, questions of guilt emerge to affect the present with devastating results. 137 min. USA, 2003.
Festival Centerpiece: The Fog Of War
The Festival’s Centerpiece is Errol Morris’s THE FOG OF WAR, a cinematic dialogue with the conscience of Robert S. McNamara—WWII military strategist, auto executive and, most famously, Secretary of Defense during the escalation of the Vietnam War. Morris asks the question: how can a mere mortal come to terms with history, particularly one who has done so much to shape it? For the all-too-human McNamara, past haunts present, hindsight is stopped dead in its tracks by the lingering reality of military and human catastrophe, and apology and self-justification keep trumping one another. Morris appears to let his subject, over 80 but as sharp as ever, lead the way, and the filmmaker uses archival footage, visual aids and a Philip Glass score, not to mention his own fiery intelligence, to offer a subtly ironic counterpoint. 95 min. USA, 2003.
Closing Night: 21 Grams
Closing Night marks the return of director Alejandro González Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga, who brought Amores Perros to NYFF 2000. The title of their new film, 21 GRAMS, refers to the amount of weight a body loses at the moment of death. In this layered work, three characters struggle emotionally and physically with that most absolute of frontiers. College professor Paul (Sean Penn) waits for a new heart while his marriage heads towards collapse. Young mother Cristina (Naomi Watts) tries to imagine a future after all she holds dear is suddenly torn away. For ex-con Jack (Benicio Del Toro), being "born again" is of little help with the daily battle to provide for his family. In an instant, these three lives will become irrevocably intertwined, but the film's dense, provocative storytelling implies that their separate stories have always been part of a larger reality. 125 min. USA, 2003.
