MEPHISTO — CLASSIC FILM PICK

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Klaus Maria Brandauer gives the performance of a lifetime as Heinz Hofgen, a passionately leftist stage actor, Bolshevik theatre director, and communist activist living in Germany during the country’s cataclysmic shift to Nazism from the ‘20s to the ‘30s.

Antiheroes don’t come more flawed or charismatic than Brandauer’s puppet-like character, as based on Klaus Mann’s novel of the same title.

This legendary film, directed and co-written by Hungarian director Istvan Szabo, is a Nazi cousin to Bernardo Bertolucci’s Fascist-themed “The Conformist.” There are notable corollaries between Jean-Louis Trintignant’s fascist assassin under Mussolini, and Brandauer’s survivalist / opportunist actor attempting to live a double life under increasingly hostile conditions.

Heinz’s dedication to his craft is certain. He lives to perform. Heinz studies dance with Juliette (Karin Boyd), a black mistress he keeps on the side. This shallow man may be a “provincial” actor but his winning portrayal of Mephisto in a large-scale production of “Faust,” captures the imagination of Nazi dignitaries.

In combining the myth of Mephistopheles with the legend of Faust, Istvan Szabo takes us through every step of Heinz’s gradual suspension of personal beliefs. It is, after all, the Nazi prime minister who is playing Mephisto to Heinz’s Faust. When the two men shake hands for the first time, His Excellency comments on Heinz’s weak handshake. “It seems the secret of acting is to portray strength, yet one is weak. Tabornagy studies the difference between Heinz’s personality and the one he creates on-stage as Mephisto. Like Hitler, Tabornagy (patterned after Hermann Göring) borrows from the theatre to create his own public and private image.  

Although Heinz does his best to insure the safe exit of his non-Nazi friends, he refuses to let go of his personal fame and occupation under his Nazi masters. Heinz loves admiring himself in mirrors. Once installed as the manager of the Nazi State Theatre by the German Prime Minister Tabornagy (Rolf Hoppe), Heinz gets a peak at his limited sphere of influence.

“What do they want from me now? After all, I am just an actor.” Heinz maintains a deception of self that goes deeper than even he can comprehend. While far from innocent, Heinz has a childish quality that allows us to empathize with his predicament if not with his choices.   

Eventually, when the opportunity presents itself, Heinz is able to repurpose the noble rhetorical ideas he once used to advance leftist ideals, this time in the service of Nazi ideology. The scene speaks to the liquid nature of political and ideological rhetoric.

Cinematographer Lajos Koltai captures the thick atmosphere of wartime Berlin and Hamburg with a naturalistic approach that compresses the drama into a pressure cooker of seething unrest. Disillusionment takes on a tragically melancholy appearance. What masks are “Mephisto’s” audiences wearing today?

Not Rated. 144 mins.

CLOSE ENCOUNTERS WITH VILMOS ZSIGMOND — CANNES 2016

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Cannes, France — Pierre Filmon’s “Close Encounters With Vilmos Zsigmond” is a lovely doc about one of the most gifted and talented cinematographers in the business. This film will make you want to go back and watch movies such as “Deliverance,” “The Crossing Guard,” The Witches of Eastwick” and “Heaven’s Gate” for Zsigmond’s lush camera work.

Pierre Filmon makes no secret about his status as a newbie filmmaker; he asks his revered subject for advice about setting up shots.

If anything, such moments of amateurishness only make you appreciate Zsigmond more. However formulaic you can't help but be swept up by the film as interviewees such as John Travolta recount on-set experiences, such as making Brian De Palma's "Blow Out" with Zsigmond behind the camera.

Zsigmond recounts his early career growing up in Hungary during the 1956 revolution after studying cinematography at the Academy of Drama and Film in Budapest. His immigrant journey to Los Angeles in 1962 took the budding artist through a stream of B-movie work that couldn't disguise his genius.

The rest is history. The films that Zsigmond made with such gifted directors as Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg, Michael Cimino, Richard Donner, George Miller, Mark Rydell, are the stuff of movie legend. Sadly Vilmos Zsigmond passed away not long after this wonderful was made. 

“Close Encounters With Vilmos Zsigmond” is a movie-lover’s dream; we are so fortunate to have this documentary about a true genius of cinema to celebrate his great legacy.

Not Rated. 90 mins. 

Cannes 69 Complete from Cole Smithey

THE TURIN HORSE — CLASSIC FILM PICK

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Though his films are roundly rejected by the Budapest filmmaking community, Béla Tarr is a Hungarian national treasure.

An avid outsider famous for his seven-hour-plus adaptation of “Satantango,” which Susan Sontag championed as “enthralling for every minute,” Tarr’s dedicated use of black-and-white film stock and long static shots inspires comparisons to the films of Andrei Tarkovsky.

Although filmmakers such as Gus Van Sant have attempted to replicate Béla Tarr’s minimalist approach, few have come near his level of compositional mastery.

At the relatively young age of 56, Tarr announced he would retire after the completion of his eighth feature film, “The Turin Horse.” Co-written by Tarr and László Krasznahorkai, the anti-narrative picks up after an apocryphal event on January 3, 1889 in Turin, Italy, when the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche came to the defense of a stubborn carriage horse being brutally whipped by its driver in a piazza. As folklore goes, the sobbing Nietzsche wrapped his arms around the elderly horse’s neck in order to protect it from the enraged driver before the philosopher fell to the ground. Within a few weeks Nietzsche became mentally ill and was mute for the last ten years of his life, which he spent in the care of his mother and sisters.

Over a period of six days, Tarr flips the tale's perspective, examining the apocalyptic fallout for the horse and his cruel master, Ohlsdorfer. Like Nietzsche, Ohlsdorfer’s world is breaching a cataclysm. The elderly carriage driver (János Derzsi) lives an impoverished existence in a remote cottage with his adult daughter (Erika Bók). His right arm paralyzed, Ohlsdorfer uses his left hand to smash open his daily ration of a single boiled potato, upon which he sprinkles a few grains of rock salt. A powerful windstorm consumes the region. When Ohlsdorfer attempts to pursue his daily vocation, the horse unequivocally refuses to participate. The horse also refuses to eat.

Father and daughter go about their routine: sleeping, dressing, eating, and staring hopelessly from their farmhouse window at the fierce unceasing wind. The nearby town has been destroyed. “Everything’s in ruins.” “Everything’s been degraded.” So tells Ohlsdorfer’s neighbor Bernhard (Mihály Kormos) when he visits to buy a bottle of brandy. Bernhard speaks the story’s theme of capitalist destruction when he describes man’s insatiable desire to acquire everything in a “sneaky, underhanded fight” that debases all it touches. The all-knowing informant discloses man’s contemptuous grab for immortality, which negates all existence.

Another visitation — this time by a band of gypsies looking for water — heralds the drying up of the farm’s well. When father and daughter pack up in an attempt to escape their dire fate, the perpetual storm drives them back.

“The Turin Horse” is an existential provocation to its audience, demanding that we consider the effect of man’s judgments against nature and ultimately against ourselves. The film’s repeated visual, musical, and thematic motifs make it simultaneously transparent and opaque.  

Not Rated. 153 mins.