It usually happens at a dinner party or art opening: I meet someone new, and conversation eventually winds its way to the inevitable question. “So, what do you do?” my new friend asks. Whenever this happens, I pause, and relish the moment. Because as someone who writes about film for a living, let me tell you: there are perks.
Free popcorn aside—I never accept it anyway, free concessions being to film critics what a briefcase full of Benjamins is to public officials—the benefits are almost embarrassing if you’re a film lover. There are press screenings, or, more common still, “screeners”: advance copies sent to critics before a film is released in theaters, to ensure we can meet print deadlines before a film has come and gone. For special films, some distributors still send out a paper press kit with behind-the-scenes stills, interviews and more. While the physical press kit is going the way of the dodo—nearly every film released today has a dedicated online press area—a really well-designed kit can still make it seem as if Cary Grant just stopped by to shoot the breeze about North by Northwest.
But for a film geek, what makes the job always boils down to one thing: free movies. I can honestly say that in all my years of doing this, I have never once regretted going to the movies. Even the stinkers were fun. And this week, a great many Valley moviegoers will get to experience the peculiar high of free admission when The Contestado—Mortal Remains (certainly not, for the record, a stinker) screens at Amherst Cinema on March 31; Five College students can get in for free by bringing ID to Amherst Cinema or Pleasant Street Theater by March 30.
The film—a docudrama about the Contestado War that took place in early 20th century Brazil—is director Sylvio Back’s attempt to reintroduce the Contestado into modern Brazil’s political memory. Now largely forgotten, the dispute over borders and land rights grew to involve thousands of civilians and half of Brazil’s active military force, who largely supported the landowners over protesting settlers.
Back, the son of Hungarian and German immigrants who went to Brazil in 1935, will be in Amherst for the screening; he and his film will be introduced by UMass Deputy Chancellor Todd Diacon, an historian of Brazil and the Contestado.
*
Also this week: Amherst and Pleasant Street have a lot going on for paying customers as well, with a clutch of critically acclaimed releases having opened recently. Pleasant Street offers up Golden Globe winner Paul Giamatti in Barney’s Version, based on Mordecai Richler’s award-winning comic novel. As Barney Panofsky, Giamatti tells a story that spans several decades, two continents, and three wives, the last of whom he begins pursuing at his wedding to the second. With Dustin Hoffman as Barney’s father Izzy, the film is like a grand novel in the Saul Bellow vein, filled with the generous and the embarrassing acts that make up a life richly lived.
Also at Pleasant Street is Nigel Cole’s film Made In Dagenham, which, though described as a “feminist fairy tale,” is based on a true story. Set in the late 1960s, it stars the indomitable Sally Hawkins (Happy-Go-Lucky) as Rita O’Grady, a worker at the Ford Motor Company’s plant in the London suburb of the title.
While there was no single Rita O’Grady—Hawkins’ character is a composite of several real-life women—the activism on display was real enough to force the passage of equal pay legislation for women workers.
Back at Amherst, another uprising is taking place in Even The Rain, Iciar Bollain’s film-about-a-film that turns its lens on the loss of human rights in Bolivia. When a director (Gael Garcia Bernal) and his crew travel to the country to make a film about Christopher Columbus—using the locals as cheap talent—they find themselves caught up in a battle over the privatization of the local water supply, where their crew is prevented even from collecting the rain. With the Columbus story mirrored in our modern times, we’re forced to wonder just how much things have changed.
Jack Brown can be reached at cinemadope@gmail.com.
