Rewind, courtesy of Tribeca Film Festival
Rewind
I hit the festival on Tuesday taking the advice of friends who’d recommended Sasha Joseph Neulinger’s home-video-based documentary about generational child sexual abuse. In the Q&A after the film, Neulinger said, “I believe it takes a village to raise a child. It takes a village to rape one, too.” Rewind is a movie about a subject that people find repulsive, and it speaks to Neulinger’s ability as a filmmaker that his family’s survival story is as clear-eyed and bold as it is terrifying.
Of course, that’s the point: Rewind is the conversation that nobody wants to have. But statistics cited in the film’s closing credits remind viewers that 1 in 4 American girls and 1 in 6 American boys will be sexually abused before they are 18. Nearly all of the victims will know their attackers. Child sexual assault is the violence that’s happening in front of our eyes in our own homes, and Neulinger sifted through 700 hours of film to recreate his childhood through the lens of his father’s home videos. We see the director as a curly haired, gifted student before he puts on weight, stops smiling, fails his classes and develops uncontrollable patterns of unpredictable behavior. He tries to kill himself more than once.
We’re introduced to the monsters that lurk near the kids, but we don’t recognize that they’re monsters. The video footage immerses us in Neulinger’s home life as a child, but this is a film about what happened when the cameras weren’t around, and by the time the truth emerges, viewers empathize with Neulinger’s mother, who’s blindsided by the revelations.
Neulinger and his sister were both sexually attacked by people who were welcome in their home. Neulinger’s family fractured, and he and his sister had to endure a decade of police visits, social workers, detective interviews, counseling, lawyers, character attacks and a media circus. But this is no ordinary family, and Neulinger is no ordinary artist. One of the most memorable scenes in the film pictures Neulinger at his bar mitzvah party. He raises a toast, welcomes his guests, and proceeds to break into a ridiculous dance in his too-big black suit. But these steps aren’t the angry, manic movements seen in most of the film. By the time Neulinger turned 13 and became a man in his Jewish community, he and his sister had already faced scarier monsters than most of us ever will. Rewind is an important movie because of its crucial social message. But it’s a great film because it’s a hero’s tale about an incredibly brave little kid from an exceptional family. Keep dancing, Sasha. JOE NOLAN
Bluebird
There’s nothing but love in Bluebird, a documentary about the iconic Nashville music venue that helped launch, among others, Garth Brooks, Faith Hill and Taylor Swift. They join several dozen experienced and aspiring musicians to gush about magical nights spent playing, or listening, at the Bluebird Cafe.
The film alternates talking heads with singing heads, and could be faulted for its repetitive structure. Or for not including any critical voices. The only salty moment is a dis against bachelorette parties, which got a lot of applause at its NaFF world premiere.
But Bluebird is unabashedly a hymn, set to vocals and guitar, about the restaurant-turned-club that eventually became what country star Sam Hunt calls “half living room, half church sanctuary” — where the people who actually wrote country and Americana’s biggest hits get to play them, in a setting so intimate the Bluebird’s motto is “Shhh.” Stadium musicians say they still get butterflies there. And the film’s strongest moment is a recent performance, when Brooks tears up listening to “The Dance,” one of his “signature” songs, sung by its writer, Tony Arata.
The Bluebird itself shot to superstardom thanks to TV’s Nashville, all the while nestled in a strip mall, the once-ultimate sign of consumer-driven development. Yet today it too risks being swallowed up, like so much of the city, to make room for more condominiums and chains.
Which would be a shame. In the words of singer-songwriter Eric Paslay: “No one goes to Europe to see condos. History is everything.” Playing again at noon, Saturday, Oct. 12 NATASHA SENJANOVIC
Working Man
Monday I caught the last screening of Working Man at the Nashville Film Festival — the movie made its Southeastern debut at the fest on Sunday night. Director Robert Jury’s blue collar drama takes place in an anonymous Rust Belt town that’s been gutted by the offshoring of the American manufacturing base in the last decades of the 20th century. The film begins on the last day of work at the last factory in town, a plastics plant called Liberty.
Jury also wrote Working Man, and his script is brave enough not to immediately reveal everything about why a retirement-age factory worker like Allery Parkes (Peter Gerety) feels compelled to return to his station at the plant even after the gates are locked. Jury also lets us wonder at the silence between Allery and his loving wife, Iola (Talia Shire). This is how scripts work when the writer respects the audience, and patience is rewarded when this story about a labor dispute unfolds into a tale of familial grief told through a collection of fantastic ensemble performances.
The setting of Working Man reminded me of the communities I grew up in, in Detroit and Southeastern Michigan, and Jury shoots his factory interiors in a jaundiced light while Allery’s nighttime walks are as spotlit and sorrowful as Edward Hopper paintings. Working Man is a bleak beauty of a film that blossoms into something unexpected. Jury gives us the familiar trappings of a working class drama, but he steers clear of clichés. This is a movie about the dignity of work. It’s never pedantic or preachy, and it doesn’t glorify manual labor while ignoring the grit. Working Man is a big little movie about complicated people in tough circumstances, and it’s thoroughly remarkable cinema. JOE NOLAN
