Save this story for later.
The role of fiction is to represent that which canât be observed, whether aspects of inner life or inaccessible reaches of the outside world. Thatâs why fictional films at their best are a kind of documentaryâas is true of the Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulofâs haunting new drama, âThere Is No Evilâ (opening on Friday at Film Forum, in person and online). The film reveals horrific truths about capital punishment in Iran, and its revelations are all the more trenchant given that the Iranian government carries out executions in secret, without public observers. Rasoulofâs featureâwhich he filmed clandestinely, while banned from filmmaking on political groundsâtakes the place of impossible documentary reporting on the subject.
Save this story for later.
The first word of the Iliad is ârage,â and rage is also the starting point of âPebbles,â the Indian director P. S. Vinothrajâs first feature. Itâs a gendered vision of rage, in which a woman calmly carries water in a large pot as a man stomps past her and down an alley in a glowering fury. The enraged man then bursts into the village schoolhouse, defiantly orders a pupilâhis young sonâout, and drags him onto a bus. They get off at a lonely outpost and walk through a desolate plain to another village, where the fatherâcrude, bitter, violent, alcoholicâwants to force his estranged wife to return home with him. Thatâs the story of âPebbles,â which is the best dramatic feature Iâve seen in this yearâs New Directors/New Films series (which runs from April 28th to May 8th, both online and in person). With the stark clarity of its story and the audacity of its style, it presents a compl
Save this story for later.
The best thing about this year’s batch of Oscar nominees is that there’s no worst thing about it. Since April Reign launched the #OscarsSoWhite campaign, in 2015, the Academy has been making efforts to open membership to more people of color and to more women. After a particularly vigorous push for new members in 2020, the effect of those changes is apparent. It isn’t so much that this year’s nominated films are better than those of the past but, rather, that there aren’t any monstrosities among their ranks no “Green Book,” “Joker,” or “Jojo Rabbit” to suggest that the Academy is not merely out of touch but cavalierly regressive. Instead, there are eight respectable movies nominated for Best Picture, none exciting or boldly original though that’s less a reflection on the taste of voters than on the circumstances of the past year, when many notable movies were withheld from release because of the coronavirus pandemic and others fell