Last Updated on March 29, 2024, 11:23 AM | Published: March 28, 2024
Don’t believe all the screenwriting books and Hollywood producers. Not all great movies need a tight, laser-focused plot or a bold, wild climax.
Some of the greatest films cinema has to offer are simply fly-on-the-wall snapshots of life or psychological poems designed to place you inside the mind or the experience of a believable human person, often as they open up to the harsh realities and complexities of the world.
However, these deep, point-of-view character studies don’t need to always be quiet, softly mumbled affairs. As OKC theaters are proving this weekend, they can be writ sweeping and wide, war-torn and mind-shredding, or even filled with an almost overwhelming level of life and motion.
But what these films all share is a commitment to exploring the widening perspectives of their central figures as the truths of the world and its often inescapable darkness begin to sink in.
‘Tótem’ – Oklahoma City Museum of Art – March 29th through 31st
A fully fictional, dramatic film can rarely capture the feeling of a true-life documentary at seemingly every level, but Mexican writer/director Lila Aviles’ “Tótem” pulls it off.
Centering on seven-year-old Sol as she spends the day preparing for her father’s birthday with her grandfather, aunts, cousins, and pets all crammed into a single house, the drama unfolds gradually, naturally, and with an impenetrably human realism that never strays or gives way to cinematic flourish.
The camera is always right over every shoulder or peeking around corners and into rooms, just as young Sol is mostly an observer in the house, watching the increasing chaos from underneath or across the room, all as she waits to finally see her dad.
But wait she must, because he’s dying.
Sol’s young father Tona is ailing from an unnamed condition (though it’s very probably cancer) and as the day wears on into night, with more and more family members and friends showing up for the birthday celebrations, the full weight of the occasion slowly sets in.
Aviles’ approach focuses less on anything like a plot and more like a mental chronicling of the day, framing each chaotic family scene and each sublimely soft insert of insects and animals in the same way as a child’s memory.
The entire film feels like the collection of thoughts, senses, images, and snippets of conversation that Sol will inevitably remember each time she looks back later in life on what is very possibly her father’s last birthday.
“Tótem” is an exceptional work, a film of quiet power and stark, unshaking realism that might well have you in disbelief that Sol and her family aren’t real people struggling with real minds, real challenges, real lives, and real death.
For showtimes, tickets, and more, visit okcmoa.com.
‘Apocalypse Now’ Vietnam War Veterans Day Screening – Rodeo Cinema Stockyards – March 29th
Not only one of cinema’s greatest psychological character studies but surely one of its greatest films period, Francis Ford Coppola’s cerebral, unrelentingly nihilistic Vietnam War epic remains a landmark of the medium.
Ostensibly following a U.S. military captain’s mission searching the dense and dangerous jungles of Cambodia for an AWOL colonel, the true story of “Apocalypse Now” takes place not in the bushes and on the swiftboats, but inside a rapidly deteriorating mind overcome with the pointlessness and trauma of war itself.
Coppola’s most famously troubled (potentially cursed) production is as much a statement about the darkness of men’s hearts as it is a rebuke of the perpetual war machine, centered always inside the collapsing mind of Martin Sheen’s forever immortalized Captain Willard.
In honor of the recently declared annual Vietnam War Veterans Day on March 29th, Rodeo Cinema in the Stockyards is presenting this war movie masterwork in two screenings free of charge for all veterans and active military.
Plus, one of the film’s producers, Oklahoma-born Doug Clayborne, will be providing a special introductory video for the occasion.
For showtimes, tickets, and more information, visit rodeocinema.org.
‘The Goat Life (Aadujeevitham)’ – Cinemark Tinseltown – Opens March 28th
Based on a terrifying true story of desperation and survival, acclaimed Indian writer/director Blessy presents this portrait of a Malayali Indian migrant worker looking for work in Saudi Arabia, where he is kidnapped and forced into slave labor herding goats on a remote desert farm.
Like “Apocalypse Now,” Blessy’s massive production for “The Goat Life” became badly troubled, with budget constraints relegating the script to development hell for more than a decade. Once filming finally began, much of the crew became stuck in the Jordanian desert for a full 70 days in 2020 when COVID-19 shut down travel and forced quarantines.
But after years in production, the film is finally seeing its worldwide release this month, and already garnering major praise from early reviewers and insiders, heaping plaudits on Blessy’s direction, the breathtaking cinematography, and lead Prithviraj Sukumaran’s demanding performance.
Again, though the sweeping, staggeringly expansive deserts and landscapes of the Middle East feel as epic as any cinema spectacle, the story is set to be one of silent struggle, quiet contemplation, and intrinsic human growth. Though English-speaking audiences will consider this a “foreign language film,” Prithviraj points out that only around 20% of the nearly three-hour runtime contains any dialogue at all.
For showtimes, tickets, and more, visit cinemark.com.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
