Bribe, Inc. @ IFC, 7:00 4/15
This week I’m seeing Bribe, Inc. at the IFC, accompanied by a Q&A with the director and director of photography moderated by award-winning journalist Simon Ostrovksy. I’m going to the 7:00pm showing Tuesday at the IFC. If you’d like to join, just let me know! :)
Bribe, Inc. is a documentary journey in which a team of award-winning journalists investigate the Ahsani family, who run a company called Unaoil out of Monaco. The files discovered turn into the biggest exposé of bribery and corruption in modern history, all working behind the scenes to benefit some of the biggest companies in Europe, North America, and Australia.
I am interested in seeing some real bad guys brought to court, although from the little bit I’ve read (no spoilers!) it looks like it is still unclear whether they will face justice.
Last week I saw A Man and a Woman, with the intention of seeing something just very sweet. And it was! It really hit the spot. But I was most interested in some of the choices around pacing used in this 1966 French film, as well as what were clearly some interesting cultural gaps.
A particularly striking example of the culture gap was a scene very near the opening where the two potential lovers are driving in a car together by a twist of fate, and are somewhat awkwardly listening to the radio. The French song playing is clearly meant to be an old song even in the context of this 1966 film. For several minutes, we watch them listen to this song, unclear of how to interact with each other. At one point, one of the characters laughs a little bit, and the other says, “don’t laugh! They used to cry to this!”, which breaks the ice for the pair. I of course had NO context into what was happening, but it was clearly supposed to be easily understandable by the target audience. A really fun moment.
As for the pacing, there were a lot of scenes that were just very drawn-out. I wondered if that would’ve seemed normal at the time or if they were supposed to feel like deliberately slower moments to place emphasis on the character development that was happening. I suspect it is the latter, as at some points in the film a character is feeling adrenaline and suddenly the pacing reaches back to what I am more used to, suggesting an interesting deliberateness around the pacing.
The whole thing with the pacing got me thinking about how much camera cuts are definitive of film for me. The ability to control pace of story and attention shift in that way is I think for me a defining feature of film as a medium, and I am curious as to the extent to which modern standards for pacing and cutaways are a ‘natural’ point for the medium to arrive at, or if I’ll see meaningful change in that standard within my lifetime. Not something I’d thought about before!