‘Makala’ depicts back-breaking labor

‘Hero’ sums up Elliott’s life

SBy Maggie Lee

implicity is the key to the somber beauty of “Makala,” a documentary depicting a Congolese charcoal-maker doing his utmost to raise his family under penurious conditions. French helmer-lenser Emmanuel Gras’ camera embraces the subject’s every move with such rapt intimacy and cinematic poetry it’s easy to forget this is not a fictional drama. Reportedly the first documentary selected by Cannes’ Critics Week sidebar, the film snatched the Grand Prize, which should open doors to a few select theaters, on top of its long fest legs.

The title of the documentary filmmaker’s third feature means “charcoal” in Swahili, one of four major local languages in Democratic Republic of the Congo. Over the course of the film, one will get to see where that charcoal comes from, how it’s made and eventually sold. But the process is not presented in an informative manner as a National Geographic program would. Instead, it’s evoked as a Herculean struggle, as in the stark cinematic opening when Kabwita Kasongo is seen felling a colossal tree. Gras makes it look like a task as heroic as battling a hydra. This is followed by a moment of downcast musing, as if primordial Nature is mourning the rape of a wood nymph.

Kasongo is a 28-year-old who lives in the town of Kolwezi in the southern province of Katanga. His ambitions are as basic as they are universal — to build a house for his wife Lydie and three daughters, surrounded by enough land to raise livestock and do some subsistence farming. The only livelihood he knows is making charcoal from chopped and slowly flamed firewood, a back-breaking task that Gras observes with hallowed silence, devoid of any superfluous effects or exposition.

By the time Kasongo stuffs the charcoal into giant sacks and loads them onto his bicycle to take to town, Gras’ cinematography enters the realm of the symbolic. Through a gray and ochre cloud of dust and smog, Kasongo pushes the bicycle uphill, a veritable embodiment of Sisyphus. The vehicle, keeling over under the weight, looks

Victor died Wednesday in London of a heart attack, according to Charlie Brotherstone, an agent at Ed Victor Ltd. Victor was 77 and had been battling leukemia.

A self-described “shark in the water,” Victor negotiated multimillion dollar deals like the titular beast of burden in “The Turin Horse.”

Incidentally, Gras’ use of steadicam and even the plangent cello solos composed by Gasper Claus are akin to Bela’s Tarr’s style in his last film. On this almost wordless 30-mile walk, the camera gets so close it magnifies the pearls of sweat that glisten and dangle from the handsome man’s eyelashes. Only once do we get a wider perspective, when the lens is pulled back to reveal he is not alone but among a line of others pushing their charcoal-stacked bicycles.

Abstract

The abstract quality of these images is partly redressed by a humane scene when Kasongo makes a stopover at his sister-in-law’s house to bring a pair of new sandals for his daughter, Divine, who’s lodging there. He displays strenuous self-control in choosing to call on them after his little girl has gone to sleep, and refusing to spend the night — because he couldn’t bear to see her cry when he takes leave in the morning. That emotional strength contrasts warmly with an earlier scene, when he whines like a baby while Lydie extracts a splinter from his foot.

Although DRC is rich in natural resources like diamonds and coal, decades of war have led the populous central African country’s level of human development to be ranked 176 out of 187 nations. “Makala” consciously eschews hard facts or figures and avoids making any social commentary, but the barbecued rats that make it onto the family’s dinner plate speak volumes about the depleted food chain. Yet, even as Kasongois is confronted by hard-nosed people throughout the film, and his determination seems to waver toward the end of his trip, audiences will come away believing that he and his lot are not bereft of hope. Ultimately, the film proves its worth by betraying a minimum of condescension or intrusiveness.

In spite of a lean budget, craft contributions boast a distinct style that benefits from well-planned shoots and clean, chronological editing by Karen Benainous. Of particular note are night scenes lit with a soft flicker that transports the viewer to an evocative preelectric

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milieu.

Sam Elliott is thinking about the old days. About when he was just starting out in Hollywood in the late 60s as a contract player for 20th Century Fox, getting paid $85 a week and paying $85 a month for a little bachelor apartment near the studio gate. About how William Holden once took him to get a French Dip sandwich to calm his nerves after he froze up in a scene. About working with Jimmy Stewart and Slim Pickens and Ben Johnson.

They’re stories he’s told before, and will tell again, but there’s something else going on behind that all-too-familiar baritone.

As Elliott goes down the list of the people who helped the Saturday matinee obsessed kid get his start in Hollywood there comes a pause after every name and a sentence that will be repeated often. “Who is now deceased,” the 72-year-old says matter-of-factly.

It’s not that it’s a surprise for a man whose career has spanned 50 years. But this moment is different. Blame it on “The Hero.” “All of these people in my past at that period of time are gone. And I really wish they were here — particularly right now,” Elliott says on a recent afternoon in a sunny booth at the art deco Hotel Shangri-La in Santa Monica. “There’s something about ‘The Hero’ that sums it all up for me. If I never worked again after this movie, I’d be good with it.”

“The Hero,” out in limited release Friday, is a film that was made, literally, for Elliott. He plays Lee Hayden, a past-his-prime Western icon, who’s not getting roles anymore (only voiceover work), is estranged from his adult daughter (Krysten Ritter) and spends his days smoking weed with a friend (Nick Offerman). Then he gets the call — he has cancer.

It’s the first time anyone has written an entire script for Elliott, who has attained icon status in his half century of work playing strong and silent Western types, and send-ups of those men, from Virgil Earp in “Tombstone” to “The Stranger” in “The Big Lebowski.” And he doesn’t expect that it’ll ever happen again. (Agencies)

Candice Bergen.

NEW ORLEANS:

Violinist and restaurant owner Henry Helyong Lee, whose now shuttered Korean restaurant in New Orleans was known for operatic waiters and performances by Lee and other musicians, is dead at age 76.

Lee died Wednesday of heart failure. A memorial service is planned at 5 p.m. Saturday at Jacob Schoen and Son , funeral director Kevin Hasson said Thursday.

For 28 years, Lee ran New Orleans’ first Korean restaurant, called Genghis Khan, which closed in 2004. (AP)

LOS ANGELES:

(AP)

Moschino’s modern showgirl can’t leave home without her sequined denim, studded platforms or feather headdress.

Designer Jeremy Scott looked to the iconic performer for his splashy Las Vegas-themed collection presented Thursday in Los Angeles.

It’s “the idea of a showgirl off-duty kind of going home from the casino,” Scott said in an interview before his men’s spring and women’s resort show. “She may be just in her jeans, but still has part of her costume on and she’s running, maybe to go get something to eat between shows. I kind of wanted to play with this idea and it’s all with a little bit of glamour and love.” (AP)