Author: Louise McLeod Tabouis

Forrest Fenn, an enigmatic man from Santa Fe New Mexico, apparently made a lot of money through selling Indian artifacts and art. He was a former fighter pilot who hustled his way into a lucrative business selling this art to the stars from his luxurious gallery. At times criticised for this, he was surrounded by long-held suspicions of his unethically gained wealth. Now in his 80s and having survived cancer, he announced in 2010 via a self-composed cryptic poem, that he had buried $3 million worth of treasure somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. The Rocky Mountains span 3,000 miles of western North America, including quite a few states.  The poem began like this: “I have gone alone in there and with my treasures bold”…

According to Fenn, 65,000 people have participated in the treasure hunt. He knows this because of his website where searchers can send him questions. He has also stated that people have been within 50ft of the treasure. Has he planted sensors, cameras or is he making the whole thing up? Who knows. His clues stop there and there is a lot of land to cover.

Director and cinematographer Tomas Leach has made an impressive documentary. Despite a continuing stream of accompanying music, it is the silence of the mountains and the soft sound of tramping feet on rocks as the adults play, that has the most effect. Leach is not afraid of pauses and silence. The people he included – Mike, David, Katya, Billy – share the effect of the pursuit on their lives and their stories – cancer, solitude, deception, and the pleasure of camping under a star-filled sky. The film slowly reveals the transformation experienced by every one of the people in this film. Some have discovered a simpler life and others a taste of adventure and a forgotten craziness, far away from an ordered home-life. Two months ago NBC reported that three people have now died due to the treasure-hunt, with the latest being a 31 year old who fell into a river in July 2017. “Linda Bilyeu, whose ex-husband Randy, 54, died on the same treasure hunt in January 2016, shared the police’s concerns. She called the hunt “ludicrous, out of control, dangerous” and said it “should be stopped.” More than a pursuit for money, very cleverly Fenn has led thousands of people to nature and fun. And that is the beauty of this film.

Go and have a look at www.tomasleach.com to see his other work. From the hilarious and insightful DELAY to a beautiful presentation of Nick Cave’s ‘The Lonely Giant’.

And a lovely piece on the Forrest Fenn.

Last Monday at the opening of the Cannes press conference for The Killing of a Sacred Deer, the presenter, before introducing the key actors said, “This is very much a family movie” which created a moment of silence in the room as people briefly wondered if they had seen the same film. He then amended his phrase to “Sorry, this is a movie about a family”, which made many burst into laughter. There can be a big difference between the two.

In competition for the Palme d’Or, screenwriter and director Yorgos Lanthimos’ fifth feature film features a family in America. Steven Murphy (Colin Farrell) is a heart surgeon. He has attained the trappings of a successful life – well-adjusted children – a son Bob (Sunny Suljic) and daughter Kim (Raffey Cassidy) – an ophthalmologist wife Anna (Nicole Kidman), a dog, and a large and lovely suburban house. He appears to be a man with a past, whom friends and family treat gently.   Crucial to the story is Martin (Barry Keough), a 16-year old boy whose ambiguous relationship with Stephen reveals a struggle between manipulation and affection.

An unusual characteristic of Lanthimos’ films is the way the actors deliver their lines in a direct and detached way. Lanthimos describes the style as “replicating a certain kind of naivety, awkwardness and insecurity familiar to all of us in our everyday lives, since we don’t really know most of the time what we are going to say or do, and how other people are going to react to that.” It is an illustration of the fear of vulnerability. Lanthimos was interested in exploring the subject of sacrifice when he wrote the script with long-term collaborator, Efthymis Filippou. It’s a study of revenge, justice, choice, human nature and behavior when faced with a huge dilemma, and raises questions about all those things without hinting how the audience ought to respond. The result is intriguing, tender and distressing.

Shot on film, the curious tracking shots created by cinematographer Thimios Bakatakis,

produce a feeling of creeping around and secretly observing the scenes, while the sound design by Johnnie Burn makes even the most ordinary scene alarming. It’s a slow burner, leaving the viewer to ponder guilt and responsibility.  As for whether it’s a family film, Nicole Kidman said that this is one her children will not be seeing…

Yorgos Lanthimos’ second feature Dogtooth, won the Un Certain Regard Prize at the 2009 Cannes film festival, followed by numerous awards at festivals worldwide. It was nominated for a Best Foreign Language Film Academy Award (Oscar) in 2011. Alps won the Osella for Best Screenplay at the 2011 Venice film festival and Best Film at the Sydney Film Festival in 2012. His first English language feature film The Lobster was presented In Competition at the 68th Cannes Film Festival and won the Jury Prize. It also won Best Screenplay and Best Costume Design at the 2015 European Film Awards. In 2017 it was nominated for a Best Original Screenplay Academy Award (Oscar).

Salta (Salta Bekturova) and Iva (Iva Litova), two Albanian young women cycle from Albania to England hoping to make people aware that Jesus is coming back.  After a long bike ride through hills and tunnels helped by expletive-filled prayers and determination, they find a target. Green-haired Azzees (Azzees Minot) assures the two girls that they are not seeing Jesus’ face on last week’s burnt toast, the soles of well-worn ballet flats, stains on the floor and a dirty bath rim. Despite this, she agrees to let them go ahead with the exorcism of her favourite promiscuous turtle, not realising that the devil is actually closer to home. Meanwhile religion-seeker Sarah’s (Sarah Gulbransen) Looking Good for Jesus kit has apparently added to her healthy glow, but she might think about taking a mower to the back garden.

This film is like one of those games where you pull out random words to create a story. A jumble of curious ideas –  Hackney, Jesus, Albania, green wig, turtle. Try it yourself and see what you come up with…

With an interest in multi-cultural teen subcultures/tribes and a mix of fiction and documentary, writer-director-composer Alex Z Taylor’s debut feature film ‘Spaceship’, the story of a teenager who fakes her own alien abduction, is currently screening around the country. Named a UK Star of Tomorrow by Screen International in 2013, Taylor “wants to make films which give people the courage to love themselves in all their weirdness”. Winning a Special Jury Prize at SXSW 2010 and five other international awards with his first short film Kids Might Fly, all of Alex Taylor’s work has premiered at the BFI London Film Festival and been nominated and won various awards. He also performs as Nawixela: an improvised duo playing guitar, saxophone, a toy record player, and cheap Casios.

Films come in all forms and this one, a monologue, is totally unique. Directed by brothers Paul & Ludwig Shammasian, The Pyramid Texts is based on Geoff Thompson’s personal and raw screenplay. The story was initially inspired by a meeting between Thompson and veteran Scottish actor James Cosmo when they discovered their mutual interest in boxing.

Aging boxer Ray (James Cosmo), is wanting to make amends for his failures, particularly towards his son (Ethan Cosmo). “I’ve got so much to say to you kid. So much unsaid. What I didn’t teach you, what I was afraid to teach you was that everyone is full of fear, some people just hide it better than others. We are all afraid.”

There is a question at the heart of the film: ‘if we have been remiss in our life and hurt the people we most love, is it ever too late to redress the balance?’.  While maintaining the feeling and intimacy of a theatre performance, keeping the spectators outside the ring, Ray performs to a single camera in the middle. He is completing the one last thing he feels compelled to do – filming himself reminiscing over a lifetime of fights, aligned with boxing metaphors, until he gradually lets his guard down.

His confessions lead to an emotional conclusion. The title alludes to the original Pyramid Texts, a collection of ancient Egyptian religious texts primarily concerned with protecting the pharaoh’s remains, reanimating his body after death, and helping him ascend to the heavens. The relevance to Ray’s attempt at atonement becomes obvious as the film progresses.

Made with a £20,000 budget and an extremely tight schedule (only five half-days of shooting) due to filming in a busy gym, the result is slick, aesthetically beautiful and a great example of a man confronting his demons as well as regrets, a role that James Cosmos has declared his toughest one yet.

“The house I live in is an island. My dad says we’re trapped…He says a man who can read, write and kill has got it all”. So begins the story of a teenage-boy (Barry Keoghan) and his zombie-like hallucinating father (Dénis Ménochet), whose lifeless eyes we first encounter as he appears to watch six televisions at once. He eventually becomes coherent when recounting a complex dream. His wary son remains dubious.

A pink beach ball unites the lonely and thoughtful boy with a girl (Goda Letkauskaitė), a fellow field worker referred to by his father as ‘a stray cat’. As they drift in a boat, the boy comes out with a declaration of his gentle desire for her, not realising that two pairs of eyes in the bushes, Bill (Sean Buckley) and his wife (Eileen Davies) are gazing at him with the same longing. From that point on, I was hooked. Clues provided suggested that their life was not always as bleak – a tattooed wedding ring, a framed photo, an articulate boy.

Nominated at the 2015 Edinburgh Film Festival for the Michael Powell Award for Best British Feature, writer and director Martin Radich has created a beautifully tragic and thoughtfully worded story in a bleak but scenic Norfolk. This is his third feature film after Crack Willow (2008) and The Conundrum (2011) and inspired by an image of a soldier Radich found in a book and hung onto: “…I want to listen to a story that might say something to me, that might educate me, that might offer up an alternative approach to a conundrum. That’s what cinema should do.” The boy’s simple and sincere speech, beginning with “I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to say to a girl…”, is worth learning by heart.

Cinematographer Tim Sidell’s images  – video mixed with the Alexa film-style digital camera –  are really striking. Have a look at his website (timsidell.com) for an unnerving and well-crafted image not included in the film. Barry Keoghan delivers and receives with delicate vulnerability. Watch out for him in Yorgos Lanthimos’ film The Killing of a Sacred Deer, screening at Cannes in May, as well as Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film Dunkirk. Dénis Ménochet, seen in Inglorious Basterds and Assassin’s Creed, amongst many other films, is chillingly tender: ”On the surface I am clinical, underneath I am rotten”. Special mention to the casting director Layla Merrick-Wolff, who appears to be a genius for creating an eclectic group. Did I mention the soundtrack? Someone had a good time creating it.

To find out more, have a look at the BFI website’s interview with Martin Radich.