FILMS WORHT WATCHING by Robert Alstead

Jude Law and Juliette Binoche in Anthony Minghella’s Breaking and Entering.

Acooling relationship and two people growing distant is the starting point for Breaking and Entering, the latest film from British director Anthony Minghella (English Patient, The Talented Mr. Ripley). Jude Law plays Will, a London architect who watches his Swedish-American wife Liv (Robin Wright Penn), and mother of his slightly-autistic step-daughter, slip away from him into a chilly depression.
Will is heading a grand scheme to redesign King’s Cross, one of the seedier parts of London. After his office is repeatedly burgled, he stakes it out and follows the culprit, an acrobatic teenager, to his council flat home where he lives with his single seamstress mother, Bosnian Muslim refugee Amira (Juliette Binoche). Instead of turning the boy in however, Will finds himself becoming romantically involved with Amira.
This unlikely turn of events is portrayed convincingly enough, provoking questions about crime and punishment. However, the problem with Minghella’s coolly shot and genteel drama is its low wattage. Law is not the fieriest of actors and here he is erudite and contemplative. His wife Viv is such a cool and distant cipher that the movie drags during her frequent appearances. To some extent, Juliette Binoche makes up for it with a performance of real emotional depth and the scenes between her and Will are the strongest.
Comical elements from Martin Freeman as Will’s business partner, Ray Winstone as the burly, sympathetic copper and Vera Farmiga as an Eastern European prostitute, also help. Ultimately, ends are too neatly resolved, but for all its flaws this movie of quiet seriousness is unusual and worth seeing.
A little more than an hour long, Michael Oved Dayan’s video documentary Glimpses of Heaven weaves together the life stories of three artists. As the title suggests, this is a story of hope. But it’s also about finding a way out of hell. Each of the men share their experience of healing themselves after grim childhoods and the lessons learned from years of inward exploration.
Auschwitz survivor and musician Peter Gary, who survived a Nazi firing squad when his mother threw herself on him to take the machine gun bullets, talks about how time, therapy, friendships and music have renewed him. Cree painter George Littlechild, whose work bursts with strikingly vivid colour, found strength through his art from the destructive upbringing under the Canadian Aboriginal foster home system. After years of feeling shame, he reconnected with his family and culture.
Wayne Ngan talks about how as a teenage immigrant living in Richmond he overcame prejudice and an alcoholic grandfather to forge a career as a sculptor and find a deep appreciation of the natural world. Glimpses of Heaven is a starkly shot film, with low production values, but considering that much of it is simply three men talking to the camera, it is surprisingly compelling. It screens at The Ridge, Sunday, March 11, 10:30 am. Tickets are $12.
To mark World Water Day 2007, the NFB and the Council of Canadians are holding a free film event at SFU Harbour Centre on March 21 simply entitled Water. Curator Hadas Levy says the aim of the screening, which also has an online component at the NFB’s CitizenShift (citizenshift.nfb.ca), is to focus on some of the pressing environmental and political issues surrounding water in Canada.
The films range from the 23-minute documentary Water Water Everywhere, in which SFU’s media analysis lab questions the availability of water, to the seven-minute Green Green Water, which features Manitoba Cree speaking of the damage to their communities caused by a series of hydroelectric installations started in the seventies. Speakers include Karen Bakker PhD from the water governance program at UBC and Gwen Barlee from Western Canada Wilderness Committee. The screening event and panel take place at SFU Harbour Centre, Lecture Hall 1900. Doors at 7 pm.
Finally, I was intrigued by The Number 23, the new Jim Carrey movie out now. The story follows a dog handler who obsesses to distraction on 23. Anyone who has seen Pi will know that a mathematical obsession can work to great effect. But not so here. While the stylish shooting makes it easy on the eyes as Carrey’s character slips from fantasy to reality, the Truman Show star’s goofy side is unintentionally too much to the fore to salvage this ill-conceived thriller.

Robert Alstead recently completed You Never Bike Alone, a documentary about Vancouver’s Critical Masses. Get the DVD from (www.youneverbikealone.com).