Remembering Skokie

Remembering Skokie

A Commentary & Review of SURVIVING SKOKIE
By John Bennison, Mountain Shadow Volunteer Director

A Film by Eli Adler and Blair
Documentary  - Non-Rated - 66 min. 
This film was Mountain Shadow’s selection for November, 2015

Surviving Skokie is the best kind of documentary. It’s historical and informative, to be sure. In addition, it tells a story that is inspirational; and, to my way of thinking, even redemptive. But it’s also personal, even autobiographical. And therein lies the kind of archetypal father-child journey that is authentically poignant and persuasive.

Everyone knows something of the Holocaust. It is the emblematic story of the kind of devastation, death and destruction which human beings seem all too capable of inflicting upon one another in every age and generation.  Whenever and wherever the spark is ignited once again, it requires the best in us to confront and denounce the worst in us. 

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When You Can’t Have It All - A Film Review of "The Second Mother"

When You Can’t Have It All - A Film Review of "The Second Mother"

Writer/director Anna Muylaert gets personal with a simple story exposing the human costs with the last remaining vestiges of a class system that is all but gone. Where one film critic dubbed THE SECOND MOTHER “ is a soap opera with a social conscience,” I call it Downton Abbey in Portugese. 

Val is the loving and lovable maternal surrogate and domestic backbone of an affluent Sao Paulo household that maintains a vestige of Brazil’s colonial past through a combination of pretension and dysfunction. 

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Trust, but Verify

Trust, but Verify

A Commentary & Review of ABOUT ELLY
By John Bennison, Mountain Shadow Volunteer Director
A Film by Asghar Farhadi
Drama-Mystery - Non-rated - 118 min. Iranian (Persian, with English subtitles). 
This was the Society's film for August, 2015.  

It’s August, so what better time for a movie about a fun-filled seaside weekend vacation amongst family and friends? At least that’s the way the film, ABOUT ELLY begins … The men will dance together, the women will laugh and clap their hands, the children will, well, be children.  It’ll be a great time for this group of educated, up and coming, middle class types with their Beemer, their SUV, their spouses, girlfriends and kids.
 It could be the ordinary beginning to a summer vacation story. Except this beach house just happens to be located on the Caspian Sea, about 200 kilometers from Tehran.  And presumably, it's a story all about Elly.

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Getting Even

Getting Even

A Commentary & Review of “WILD TALES”
By John Bennison, Mountain Shadow Volunteer Director

A Film by Damián Szifrón
Comedy-Drama-Thriller - R, 122 min. Argentine
This film was the Society's selection for July 2015

It has been said one can marvel at the depths to which we are sometimes willing to sink in order to seek revenge. It can be sweet, but the pleasure short-lived. If one survives long enough, a bitter aftertaste is often the result. 

But what if one has been unjustly wronged? In such a case, retribution would appear justified. With retributive justice, the offender is said to pay a price for their misdeeds. The punishment should fit the crime, we say. Lex talionis (‘an eye for an eye’) is an ancient legal concept that is still fully operative today. But when is enough enough? And when is that thin line crossed between justifiable retribution and unbridled vengeance?

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Lie ‘n Wait

Lie ‘n Wait

A Commentary & Review of AN HONEST LIAR
By John Bennison, Mountain Shadow Volunteer Director

A Film by Tyler Measom and Justin Weinstein
Documentary - Biography - Comedy – NR – 90 min.
This was the Society's selection for June 2015

“Magicians are the most honest people in the world. They tell you they’re going to fool you, and then they do it.  No matter how smart or well educated you are, you can be deceived.  It’s OK to fool people as long as you’re doing that to teach them a lesson, which will better their knowledge of how the real world works.”      -  James Randi

Such is the premise that begins this bio-documentary about the life of the honest liar, James “the Amazing” Randi.  It’s not only a true life tale of a masterful deceiver’s crusade to expose the fakery of charlatans who claim to possess amazing powers, but a very human story about a man caught up in his own self-deceptions, as well.

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A Touching Film

A Touching Film

MARIE’S STORY - Biography • Drama, Non-rated, 95 min. French (English subtitles)
A Film by Jean-Pierre Améris, screened by Mountain Shadow in May, 2015

Review by John Bennison, Mountain Shadow Volunteer Director

It is an intriguing task to tell such a “true” and “biographical” fable like MARIE’S STORY with sumptuous cinematography, a minimal script and a stirring musical score where the main character is blind, deaf and dumb. It leaves the only two remaining sensory experiences unavailable to such a medium as film (touch and scent) to the visceral world of filmmakers and critics alike.  As the filmmaker comments on his work: “This project began with my fascination for the story of Helen Keller..." 

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A World Away That’s Closer Than You Think

A World Away That’s Closer Than You Think

A Commentary Review of the Film, TIMBUKTU
A Film by Abderrahmane Sissako • 97 min. • Rated PG-13
Review by John Bennison, Mountain Shadow Volunteer Director
This film was Mountain Shadow’s feature film in April, 2015

Located 20 miles north of the Niger River, on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert in the West African country of Mali, Timbuktu dates back to the 12th century. Timbuktu today is impoverished, suffering from “desertification.” But seven centuries earlier, the city had been a flourishing trading route, and a center for Islamic scholarship; before a succession of invading forces vied for its control to this very day.  

For a brief time in 2012, the Timbuktu region was overtaken by outside extreme Islamic Jihadists, who strove to impose a strict and distorted form of Shariah law.  In January, 2013, French and Malian government troops began retaking Timbuktu from the radical extremists; but not before scores of ancient documents were destroyed, and rebel suicide attacks wrought further havoc for another six months. 

In the midst of this widespread chaos, one incident went largely unreported; namely, an unmarried couple who were stoned to death by religious extremists, leaving their children orphans. It is against this backdrop that Abderrahmane Sissako wrote the screenplay, and then directed  (and co-produced) his film, TIMBUKTU.

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Whistling in the Dark

Whistling in the Dark

A COMMENTARY ON THE FILM, “CITIZENFOUR”
This documentary was the selection in March 2015 for the Society.  
Review by John Bennison, Mountain Shadow Volunteer Director

What makes CITIZENFOUR simultaneously both compelling and seemingly un-dramatic in a theatrical sense is that it isn’t based on a true story, after the fact. Instead, it’s a real story that unfolds in real time.  Regardless of whatever personal predisposed opinions each viewer may have at this point nearly two years later about the famous (or infamous) main character, the filmmaker takes us to the front lines of a battle that has yet to begin; with raw footage of Edward Snowden’s deliberations and declared intentions, before he even puts the whistle to his lips.  

It is the kind of exclusive scoop with unfettered access of which most investigative reporters and documentarians can only dream. It is this front row seat every viewer is given of an unscripted non-actor and real-life character playing a role only he can play that makes CITIZENFOUR fascinating to watch.

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PLACES OF THE HEART

PLACES OF THE HEART

Brief Reviews of Six Oscar Short Film Nominees for 2015
By John Bennison, Mountain Shadow Volunteer Director

Like the literary genre of the short story, an effective short film can tell an entire tale and convey everything that needs to be seen and said in a matter of minutes.  At the same time, these vignettes can leave enough spaces between the lines to engage the viewer’s imagination.

The Oscar nominations for Best Short Film has three categories, documentary, live action and animated. Over Valentine’s Day weekend in February, Mountain Shadow’s audiences enjoyed all five of the live action shorts, along with one of the animated titles.  

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Run for Your Life... or, How to Control an Avalanche

Run for Your Life... or, How to Control an Avalanche

A REVIEW & COMMENTARY ON “FORCE MAJEURE”
A Film written, directed and edited by Ruben Östlund
Rated R – 118 min – Drama / Comedy - Swedish, English subtitles
This film was the Society's selection for January, 2015

By John Bennison, Mountain Shadow Volunteer Director

FORCE MAJEURE is a slow-motion psychological thriller; with breath-taking scenes of towering mountains that loom so large they make human beings and their hamlets that cling to their steep cliffs seem insignificant, and almost downright petty. Beneath the happy family veneer are all the kinds of doubts and disappointments faced by many adult relationships. They lie so close to the surface that they are perceptively obvious to a child’s eye. 

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Like it or not, C’est la vie

Like it or not, C’est la vie

A COMMENTARY ON THE FILM, “Aimer, Boire et Chanter” [ AKA, “Life of Riley”]
by John Bennison, Mountain Shadow Volunteer Director
Note: This was the feature film for Mountain Shadow’s December, 2014 shows.

Over the course of six months, from springtime to late fall, three middle-aged couples rehearse their parts for an amateur play; all the while struggling – each in their own way -- with the news of a terminal diagnosis for their mutual friend George Riley. Yes, it’s considered a comedy! But for the characters in this film, it’s no life of Riley.

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Three Comics Walk Into a Bar: Did You Hear the One About ... ?

Three Comics Walk Into a Bar: Did You Hear the One About ... ?

A COMMENTARY ON THE FILM, “3 STILL STANDING”
By John Bennison, Director, Mountain Shadow Film Society
This film was featured by the Society in November 2014

The funny bone is probably the most elusive part of the human anatomy. For the comedian who considers their self a professional, finding the right way to tickle it is a quest not for the faint of heart. And for those aging comics who’ve been at it for 3-4 decades, their career paths are not unlike any of us who’ve found and followed a passion that can be “intoxicating.”  

That’s the way Will Durst describes the connection he’s sometimes able to find with his audience. “When it works, it’s better than anything,” he says. And like everything else, it seems, it has a life of its own. This film tells such a story; how the stars once aligned over the San Francisco skyline in the eighties. And that nothing lasts forever.

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A Place Called Neverland

A Place Called Neverland

A Film Commentary on SIDDHARTH
By Mountain Shadow Director, John Bennison

Siddharth, the boy, only appears in the first few fleeting frames of a sweeping saga that takes his father, Mehendra, on a journey that could hardly be described as a spiritual quest. He merely wants to find his son who has disappeared, and feared abducted; after violating India’s child labor laws and sending the boy off to work in a trolley factory to supplement his own inability to earn enough money to care for his family. 

This film was shown by Mountain Shadow in September, 2014.

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Backseat Driver

Backseat Driver

A COMMENTARY ON THE FILM, “LOCKE”
By Mountain Shadow Director, John Bennison

Played by the very capable actor, Tom Hardy, Ivan Locke is a construction foreman and indispensable part of an impending project, when he suddenly leaves work one night, jumps in his car and leaves everything behind; including his job, home, wife and children. While he’s in the driver’s seat on what clearly turns out to be anything but a joy ride, he himself will be driven by something far more important to him than everything else he’s willing to risk losing or giving up.

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Mali’s Mangos and the UXO

Mali’s Mangos and the UXO

A COMMENTARY ON THE FILM, “THE ROCKET”
By Mountain Shadow Director, John Bennison

A Film by Kim Mordaunt - Non-rated - 96 min. – Drama -- Summary: A boy who is believed to bring bad luck to everyone around him leads his family and two new friends through Laos to find a new home. Note: Mountain Shadow screened this film in June, 2014.

For a decade beginning in 1964, the U.S. military dropped more than two million tons of ordnance on Laos during countless bombing missions, making Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita to date in human history. The bombings were part of what came to be known as the U.S. “Secret War in Laos,” in efforts to support one side in a civil war; while disrupting the supply chain along the infamous Ho Chi Minh Trail during the more public American war in Southeast Asia (commonly referred to as the Vietnam War).

While the bombings in Laos destroyed numerous villages and displaced hundreds of thousands of Laotians, up to one third of the bombs dropped never detonated; leaving the countryside contaminated with vast quantities of unexploded ordnance, otherwise known as “UXO.” Subsequently, over 20,000 people have been killed or injured by UXO in Laos since the bombing campaign ended over 40 years ago. 

It is against this sobering backdrop that Australian filmmaker/writer/director Kim Mordaunt wrote and directed his 2013 film, The Rocket. You can read the full commentary here. 

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Ramblin’ Rose

Ramblin’ Rose

COMMENTARY ON THE MAY FILM , “ELLE S’EN VA” (On My Way)
By John Bennison, Mountain Shadow Director

Elle S’en Va is not Hollywood fare. The story begins with the the sense one could have begun watching Bettie anytime before she grabs her car keys one day and takes off. A string of events then unfold. Then the story ends rather abruptly without any real conclusion; except for a one-liner several characters shout in agreement.

The film is an empirical exercise, leaving the viewer to observe a life that -- like most -- is a mixed bag that includes some things that just never get fixed, or even addressed. So one learns to accept people and things as they are, and just learns to live with them. Comme ci, comme ça.  Read the full review here, or -

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Where Hate Has No Home

Where Hate Has No Home

Her perfect life disintegrated before her eyes as first her father, then her mother, then her husband were all deported to the concentration camps and death; following the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. She and her son would only survive when they were deported in 1943, because of the music she had to offer the authorities.  Even Terezin, the special camp filled with Jewish artists and created by the Nazis for propaganda purposes to disguise their genocidal actions, was as dark and ludicrous as anything an existentialist novel could depict. 

To this day, one of her aged friends who herself survived Terezin puts it bluntly, “We were dancing under the gallows.”  In response, Alice Hertz-Sommers counters, “But even the bad is beautiful, if you know where to look for it.” 

While she calls music the place of the soul and divinity itself, with the capacity to transport, she does not forget nor flee from the bitter stanzas of her life’s opus. It is as if she has never had to forgive those unspeakable acts that befell her, because she has never given hate a home, that would then require such a monumental task.

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Road Trip! A Commentary on the film, "Nebraska"

Road Trip!  A Commentary on the film, "Nebraska"

[Note: On March 29th, some Mountain Shadow members gathered for the first “Encore Evenings,” where we enjoyed seeing once again a great commercial film from this last year and having some in-depth discussion. This commentary, written by Mountain Shadow director, John Bennison, accompanied the event.]

Take the mythic hero’s journey and turn it upside down. Then give it a slight twist, and you have Alexander Payne’s stark portrayal of a father-son sojourn across the bleak landscape of a Midwest Americana that time forgot. 

One might react to the film in any number of ways. One might describe it as funny, grim, crude, depressing, sobering, and the characters – or caricatures – as painfully honest and real. But if you’ve ever played the part of a father or a son in an estranged or awkward relationship you might relate.  And against this backdrop shot in black and white there are myriad shades of gray that make up the three-dimensional characters of this story; including some of the shadows of their former selves.

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A Lullaby Called "Helium"

A Lullaby Called "Helium"

Note: This 2014 Oscar Best Short-Action film from Denmark was screened at Mountain Shadow's March event, along with the delighful film from Saudi Arabid, Wadjda.  Mountain Shadow director, John Bennison offered the following commentary.  Your comments are encouraged at the end to continue the conversation!

 The old moon laughed and sang a song,
   As they rocked in the wooden shoe,
   And the wind that sped them all night long
   Ruffled the waves of dew.
   The little stars were the herring fish
   That lived in that beautiful sea —
   "Now cast your nets wherever you wish —
   Never a’feared are we";
   So cried the stars to the fishermen three:
   Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.

                                           Eugene Field, 1889


Before the time we learned how to expand the known world by enlightened scientific methodologies -- including the wonders of modern medical wizardry --  certain truths were not bound by the requirements of factual verification. The Ancients instead relied on the kind of storytelling that found far less distinction between the known world and the inexplicable mysteries left only to the imagination.  

Nowadays such tales are often relegated to the realm of children’s stories; the subtleties of which are regrettably more often than not wasted on the young.  Now, for everyone, there’s Helium.

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What’s Love Got To Do With It?

What’s Love Got To Do With It?

A Commentary on the film, “Fill the Void”

     Origial title: “Lemale et ha’halal”  A Film by Rama Burshtein

 Commentary by John Bennison

As alien as the marriage customs of Hasidic Judaism may be to our own contemporary way of living and looking at the world -- it is the same question that is at the heart of the storyline and setting in Israeli director Rama Burshtein’s film, Fill the Void. 

What’s love got to do with it?

Sometimes described as a Jane Austen-like melodrama set in the ultra-Orthodox Haredi Jewish community of Tel Aviv, Fill the Void tells the story of a young woman who is pressured and/or persuaded by family entanglements into an arranged levirate marriage to an older widower with a young child.

In a day and age when popular sentiment suggests anyone ought be allowed to betroth oneself to whomever one chooses and call it marriage, the notion that social custom, religious dictums, cultural traditions and familial obligations should interfere with one’s individual rights may seem a bit rigid and arcane, at best.  

Our reviewer discusses the film and sets it in the context of modern day demellas.  

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