MovieMartyr.com - Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet

The portmanteau film is one of the less impressive genres in cinema, but Ten Minutes Older: The Trumpet, unlike its companion film The Cello (really only noteworthy for Godard’s entry), is a respectable collection of shorts. With an impressive list of participating directors involved, the films all are use time as a theme and run ten minutes long each. Obviously, some of them are better than others, but none of them are excruciating, which makes the prospect of digging for the riches within The Trumpet less daunting than usual. A film-by-film breakdown follows:

Aki Kaurismäki’s entry, Dogs Have No Hell [36], which features the two leads from his most recent film, seems on the surface on par with his usual output, but it doesn't work precisely because of its abbreviated duration. In this pulpy comic drama, Markku Peltola plays a man who gets out of prison and has ten minutes to get money, get his girl, get married and catch a train to Moscow. Because the ten minute time limit forces him to speed up his pace, Kaurismäki has to abandon his usual plodding drollery. The retro rock and roll number is now pressed up more tightly against the symphonic overtures, and the character quirks that usually inspire laughter don't have time to register because the clock is always ticking.

Victor Erice’s Lifeline [57] is a refined, subdued and gorgeous black and white study in cinematography. Though it's from the outset, the story of an injured baby (and the loss of innocence), it spends several minutes establishing mood before becoming too overtly symbolic. It captures the feel for life in a Spanish small town, or at least an idealized black-and-white dream of that feel, and then punctures that feeling with a slowly building rhythm of portentous symbols (e.g. a snake crawling amongst apples, a black cat). It's a beautiful experience, but a simplistic one that only gains any emotional power with the associations that its final shot inspire. At least one can say that it works better as a short than it would as a feature.

The third short, Werner Herzog’s Ten Thousand Years Older [69], is a fascinating mini-documentary which examines the discovery of what might perhaps be the last lost tribe. Set in the Amazon, the film epitomizes Herzog’s willingness to go to the ends of the earth to demonstrate his attitudes about civilization’s debilitating effects on nature. Genuine tension arises in scenes such as the one showing the tribe’s first contact with modern man, in which a native threatens to spy the hidden camera recording the event. When Herzog tells us that these few minutes of contact with the modern world led to the tribe’s demise, the film suddenly shifts into a sadder, but no less interesting mode. Time jumps forward twenty years, and the effects of the modern world are made apparent. Even if it's not one Herzog’s best works, it's undeniably an excellent piece of moviemaking.

Jim Jarmusch’s Int.Trailer.Night [76], however, just might be one of its maker’s finest achievements. Taking place in real time, and starring Chloe Sevingy, the short goes a long way toward deglamorizing the myth of the celebrity trailer. Very little of import happens, beyond the visits a series of technicians make and a cell phone call that the actress places, but it manages to create a credible portrait of the actress’ role in a production. At once a tool of the film and a personality who must be catered to above the needs of the film, she exists in a rarefied, but lonely, zone. The use of real time drives home the tedium inherent in a film’s shooting schedule. The respect and personal space that she’s given lead to loneliness, even as she’s being physically violated by a hair stylist and a sound man. It’s not a deep movie, by any means, but it’s perfectly pitched and surprisingly succinct in the way it goes about making its observations.

Twelve Miles to Trona [40], by Wim Wenders, is probably the least ambitious of the shorts. In it, a desperate man (Charles Esten) speeds to a clinic to seek treatment for an overdose of drugs. Trick lenses distort the American landscape as the man drives, resulting in a spectacular and surreal display of pyrotechnics, underscored by music from the Eels. It’s technically adept and capable of holding one’s attention, but awfully vapid. One can’t help but feel that its attempts to make a larger statement about the American experience are in vain.

Spike Lee’s politically charged We Wuz Robbed [43] rapidly examines the Democratic reaction to the controversial 2000 Presidential election. Edited with amazing precision, it’s a piece of propaganda that inspires admiration regardless of your political stance. Lee’s examination of those who interceded with Gore’s concession to Bush makes the action seem unabashedly heroic, and, as the title suggests, there’s no gray area in this movie about what should have been the election’s proper outcome. It results in a movie that’s an electrifying experience while viewing it, but also one that’s in no way convincing.

Finally, Chen Kaige’s limply conceived 100 Flowers Hidden Deep [30], is an insubstantial piece of whimsy that seems odder by its inclusion alongside more serious fare. In it, a delusional old man hires movers and leads them into a dilapidated old section of Beijing. When they arrive, they find that there is no home to be moved, but they humor him in an effort to receive payment. Ostensibly a piece about the loss of things past, it comes off as mawkish.

Jeremy Heilman

05-25-04