Beyond the Multiplex

March 9, 2006 | Here's one way of thinking about the surprise victory of "Crash" at the Oscars: Academy voters thought they were voting for a plucky outsider picture, in which big stars worked cheap, a director did it his own way and Momentous Issues Were Confronted. So that's a good sign, right? And my opinion, along with that of many other oh-so-jaded critics -- roughly, that despite good acting and fine intentions, "Crash" was a head-splittingly obvious exercise in Angeleno self-regard -- did not matter (and should not have mattered) to those genuinely moved by the film.

Frankly, if "Crash" started conversations in real American households about race and racism, I suppose it fulfilled its community-service function whether or not it was anything more than a crude remake of "Grand Canyon" (the line comes from reader Vicki Broach -- thanks, Vicki!). And yes, I too was touched when writer-producer-director Paul Haggis, instead of reciting the usual laundry list of lawyers, accountants, string-pullers and personal assistants, thanked "the people out there who stand up for peace and justice."

Now, I'm hopelessly conflicted on this issue, since I'm married to someone who works for an organization with those words in its name. But Paul, baby -- or should I call you Mr. "Diff'rent Strokes," Mr. "Walker, Texas Ranger" or Mr. "EZ Streets"? -- one could argue that words like that come cheap on the stage of the Kodak Theatre. You've got a platform now, Mr. "Family Law," not to mention deep pockets and a lot of leverage. It's what you do from here on out that counts.

"Tsotsi" was a splendid choice for the foreign-language Oscar -- catch it, if you haven't -- and "March of the Penguins" was, I guess, as inexorable as the icy trek it documents. Onward, through time and space! I'm off to the capital of the Lone Star State as you read this, and Beyond the Multiplex will break free of its weekly straitjacket to report from the South by Southwest Film Festival over the next few days.

Stay tuned: I'll be checking in from several world premieres, including Robert Altman and Garrison Keillor's "Prairie Home Companion" (a tongue-in-cheek, behind-the-scenes fictional film about the venerable radio show); the new documentary "Al Franken: God Spoke"; "loudQUIETloud," a rockumentary on last year's Pixies reunion tour, and countless other delights. As at any festival, the greatest stuff is always unexpected; I don't know if that's going to mean the movie about full-contact medieval-warfare re-enactors or the one entirely about a guy who runs the register at the Wendy's franchise on the University of Texas campus.

Speaking of unexpected delights, let's move on to an unassuming Mexican movie in black-and-white that might be the new year's sleeper foreign-language hit. And I haven't forgotten your nominations for greatest art-house theater in an unlikely spot. This week's clear winner: the Little Art Theater, a struggling, 200-seat house in pretty much the middle of nowhere (in other words, Yellow Springs, Ohio, now known to those who've seen "Dave Chappelle's Block Party"). Essay question, Ohioans and others: What can be done to save the Little Art from the deadly scourge of high-quality home theater systems?

"Duck Season": Jim Jarmusch and John Hughes, stuck in a Mexico City blackout
Fernando Eimbcke, the boyish 35-year-old director of the charming, startling new movie "Duck Season," insists that there is no new wave of Mexican film -- it's just that the rest of the world is finally paying attention. "There are always a lot of filmmakers coming out of Mexico," he tells me, at the end of an exhausting day of interviews in his hotel during a recent visit to New York. "But things are changing as the world is globalizing, and there are at least a few good things about that. There's not a new generation in Mexico, but there may be a new way of seeing films."

From my gringo perspective, this is both true and not true. On one level, Eimbcke is just being politic. The generation that has produced him, along with his friend and producer Alfonso Cuarón, Alejandro González Iñárritu and Carlos Reygadas, owes a huge debt to the pioneers of Mexican independent cinema, directors like Alfonso Arau and Arturo Ripstein who remain little known north of the border. (Not to mention Luis Buñuel, who, although not Mexican, transformed the nation's film community in his years there.)

But in the wake of international hits like González Iñárritu's "Amores Perros" and Cuarón's "Y Tu Mamá También," the global film market's eye has clearly settled on Mexico. Reygadas, director of "Japón" and the deliberately challenging new film "Battle in Heaven," is destined to be the object of a tiny but devoted cult. Eimbcke's formally severe but emotionally rich "Duck Season" is something quite different, capable of gratifying film snobs and regular viewers alike. It's a teen comedy of sexual awakening, but one shot in black-and-white, sharply constricted in time and space, and with minimal plot. I think it's the richest film I've seen so far in 2006.

Next page: A "specific kind of emptiness" in teenage lives