HOW TO MAKE A BOOK WITH STEIDL

How to Make a Book with Steidl. 2010. 88 minutes.

How to Make a Book with Steidl begins with legendary German publisher and printer Gerhard Steidl explaining to British photographer Martin Parr his work style, qualifying "Just so you know, so you don't get mad about me." They both laugh. But he is serious too; there is real caution in his warning. Steidl hands Parr a copy of his book "How to Make a Book with Steidl"- given to each of his collaborators - which Parr covetously accepts, insisting Steidl sign it. Making a book with Gerhard Steidl is a sign that a photographer has arrived. But the booklet presented to Parr is a reminder that this is a collaboration. It is a primer for those photographers lucky enough to collaborate on a publication of their work and necessary, presumably, because Steidl's style is so unusual.

Wetzel and Adolph's documentary is an engrossing portrait of Steidl vis-à-vis his unorthodox style. At once humorous, obsessive, volatile, and awesomely intelligent, Steidl is not just a match for the artists with whom he chooses to work. He is himself an artist, and the documentary can be seen as a portrait-of-the-artist. He was born in Göttingen fifty metres from his printing house because, he claims, he was too busy to move. We see Steidl seated at his desk, surrounded by mountains of paper and books, as he types notes on a manual typewriter and files the paper on a vast wall of organized information. The printing house is both spotless and cluttered, seemingly an extension of Steidl's own relentless mind.

This movie isn't just a portrait of an important publisher-printer. It captures the beauty of analogue production. Steidl publishes in a decidedly digital world. His staff works on computers. He and Joel Sternfeld create a book of iPhone photos. And Steidl's multiple iPods seem to be his constant travel companions (we never do find out what he's stored on them!). But he also takes notes with pen and paper. He chooses paper for how it feels. And several times he extolls the virtues of specific printing inks for their smell. "This is a lost knowledge: that books should smell good," he only partly jokes. 

And Steidl physically spans the globe to meet with his photographer-collaborators. This is something that makes the documentary a joy to watch. We travel wide and far to be flies on the wall as Steidl meets with the greatest living photographers in their studios. Robert Frank, Joel Sternfeld, Robert Adams, Ed Ruscha, Jeff Wall. For photography fans, the voyeurism value of these sequences is impossible to overrate. 

But perhaps the most unusual trip is Steidl's journey to Qatar where he meets with Khalid Bin Hamad Bin Ahmad Al-Thani. He is soft-spoken and almost meek, despite (or due to) being a member of the autocratic Qatari royal family, and, at first, Steidl's collaboration with him smacks of a vanity project. But then we camp overnight under the desert stars. And watch Al Thani and Steidl select stones and plants for their soft colours. When Steidl and Al Thani finally present their project to Al Thani's father inside a trailer in the middle of the desert - elaborately furnished and powered by humming generators, the blanketed camels resting outside - we see Al Thani's photographs. In austere black and white, the first star shines in the fading desert sky; a sand dune is sculpted by the wind. They are jewels of pure photography. This is no vanity project. 

For almost a generation we have been slowly lulled into the belief that photographs are to be consumed as digital images capable of endless reproduction. But How to Make a Book with Steidl reminds us that photographs are physical, that the consumption of information is not only visual; it is visceral. Perhaps this is Steidl's most important contribution to contemporary photography: he produces beautiful books, beautiful objects. We no longer look through the image. Steidl demands that we remember the other senses when we see. He reminds us to stop and smell the photos.  

FISH TANK

Fish Tank. 2009. 122 minutes.

Katie Jarvis plays teenage Mia so believably it's as if writer-director Andrea Arnold pulled her right out of the brutal world of UK council estates where Fish Tank is set. Mia's accent, her hair, wardrobe, walk, and expletive-laced dialogue: all of it taken together gives us the impression of a character so complete, so real that Katie and Mia become one. We are no longer watching a character. We are watching a real person.

Jarvis' non-performance, her on-camera naturalness, makes watching Fish Tank unsettling. It's as though we are are spying on a real person. And we feel guilty because we're able to experience her world without taking any of the risks that she herself must. The reality that Arnold presents is harsh. Mia and her mother and younger sister are poor, and while not completely miserable, they definitely treat each other miserably. There is no mention of Mia's father. And judging from how casually her mother has boyfriends stay over, we assume there's been a steady procession of men through their life.

But Mia has an escape. Every day she hides herself away in an empty apartment, along with a portable stereo and a two-litre of some kind of alcohol, where she practices her own dance moves choreographed to hip hop music. She emulates the music videos she sees on TV, videos with shaking asses and exploding sexuality. But strangely, almost innocently, Mia's dancing is not to entice. Instead it's done for herself, for her own pleasure. And while her moves are often generic and even banal, Arnold shows Mia dance with such sincere intent, that we can't help but take her seriously. Perhaps her belief in her own talent will take her somewhere better.

It's this contrast between Mia's world of violent bitterness - adolescent disdain on steroids - with her world of escape that gives us a sense that Mia has a plan. It makes everything about her life a little less dismal when we see her try so hard, when we see her want to get the hell out of there. We hope along with her.

It's Mia's capacity to desire and build something good for herself that makes us see the entry of her mother's latest boyfriend - played by Michael Fassbender - as something significant. Connor is different. He is beautiful, funny, and sincere; a breath of fresh air. And despite the way Mia sneers at him, we understand this is the only way she knows how, that she in fact feels differently, and her challenge is to learn how to overcome the fear to express it. And it doesn't hurt to have Fassbender at his charming best as your motivation. The sexual tension between them is both shocking and understandable. Who wouldn't be tempted? After being surrounded by bleakness your whole life, to give-in to such a positive force would be a rational choice. Connor's capacity to build happiness is seductive.

Considering the world she comes from, Mia's naïveté is, on the one hand, unexpected, but it's also another reminder that she can hope. To hope despite, also, the world she comes from. Arnold presents us with a paradox. It's Mia's innocence that let's her dare to leap frog out of this life to another, to a place of experience. Of experience that is chosen, not determined.

RUST AND BONE

Rust and Bone. 2012. 120 minutes.

Expectations are understandably high when your last film earns critical raves and a Best Foreign Film Oscar nomination. If writer-director Jacques Audiard's A Prophet (2009) is an undeniable masterwork, then, rest assured, Rust and Bone is a worthy successor. Marion Cotillard is Stephanie, a killer whale trainer in the south of France who's hospitalized after an accident, and Ali (Mattias Schoenaerts) is the boxer who helps her recover. But ultimately, in true movie fashion, they help each other, and fall in love along the way. In that sense, there is nothing new here. It's the execution that is fresh and bold.

So much of Audiard's latest work - of all his work - is worth mention that it becomes difficult to say specifically what makes it so good. With Cotillard heading your cast you know the acting is going to be unbeatable, and Schoenaerts proves every bit her equal with his quiet layered performance. Stephane Fontaine's cinematography infuses the film with warm Mediterranean light, the occasional exposure overflowing with flares of sun. Much of the shots are handheld but just subtly enough to let the frame breathe. The visual effects, crucial to telling part of this story, never overpower: they appropriately deceive and remain in the background. The picture editing and sound editing (yes, I'm mentioning sound editing) build elegant, strategically-placed sequences that serve both narrative pacing and, often more importantly, emotional punctuation.

I could go on. And on. But I think it's with this specific kind of carefully constructed sequence that Audiard has made his mark and where he succeeds best. Often he'll pull everything into extreme slow motion. The camera, no longer loose, now moves in smooth controlled shots. Sound ebbs or fades into silence to be replaced by Alexandre Desplat's elegant score, or a mix of score, source music and ambient sound. Audiard shifts from a hard, verité style into poetic abstraction. Things are no longer themselves; they symbolize. Animals become totems; characters become types. The everyday begins to resonate. And that's what we want from a film. We want to believe that stuff matters. That life matters. It can exist on another plane.

Testament to his talent, Audiard always reconciles this duality elegantly. Who else could one moment use a Katy Perry song for both real and ironic detail, and then shortly thereafter use it again, but this time with full-throttle sincerity? He can pull it off, and his accomplishment - his career - demands and deserves our attention. Rust and Bone is a rich experience that invites multiple viewings. It gets under your skin.