GABRIEL: Tribeca Film Festival Review 2014

Rory Culkin in Gabriel: Courtesy Gabriel

GABRIEL

2014, 88 minutes

Not Rated

Review by Joshua Handler

Lou Howe's Gabriel is a moving film that's so well-acted it was hard to believe I was watching actors.  The film centers around Gabriel (he prefers to be called Gabe), a mentally ill young man who wants to propose to his former girlfriend because he believes that that will create stability in his life.  Rory Culkin is mesmerizing as Gabe and the supporting cast is universally excellent, but Deirdre O'Connell stands out at Gabriel's mom, Meredith.

Howe's screenplay is honest, emotional, and not sentimental, though very moving.  Every tear is earned.  Howe doesn't define Gabe by his illness.  Through good and bad, Howe makes sure that we understand why Gabe is acting the way he is.  Because of Gabe's illness, his behavior is unpredictable, and this unpredictability drives each scene.

While Gabriel is very much a character study of its eponymous character, it is also an exploration of how mental illness can affect an entire family.  Howe made every character interesting and lovingly developed each and every one of them.

As mentioned, the entire cast is fantastic, but Culkin and O'Connell stand out.  Culkin's portrayal of Gabe is sensitive, human, and heartbreaking.  Culkin's work with Gabe is unique because of the many habits and idiosyncrasies that he created. While many of Gabe's actions are questionable at best, I was invested in him and cared about him throughout because of Culkin's superb work.  He earned my sympathy.

Deirdre O'Connell's portrayal of Gabe's mother, Meredith, is beautiful.  A character like Meredith would usually be underdeveloped, but Howe and O'Connell do everything they can to make her as real as possible.  By watching O'Connell, we learn volumes about Meredith.  Meredith hasn't had the easiest life, yet she is a kind, loving mother with a huge heart.  In Meredith, I saw so much of my mother and I expect many others to see their mothers in her too.

Overall, Gabriel is a multi-layered film with a stand-out lead performance, a smart screenplay, and a director who likely has a great career ahead.  This is a stand-out film in this year's World Narrative Competition at the Tribeca Film Festival and should play well with most everyone who sees it.

4/4

THE CANAL: Tribeca Film Festival Review 2014

Photo by Piers McGrail

THE CANAL

2014, 92 minutes

Not Rated

Review by Joshua Handler

Ivan Cavanaugh's The Canal is a disturbing, surreal, and well-acted film about an Irish man who begins to believe that his house might be haunted after the death of his wife.  Writing that last sentence sent shivers down my spine because of the memories that it's conjuring up.  The above is the most basic description of The Canal, but it is an apt one.  There's not much more to the story than that, but what makes this seemingly generic film stand out is the skill with which it was made.

Kavanaugh was obviously influenced by '70s horror, particularly Don't Look Now (referenced in the press notes) and Suspiria.  His use of candy-colored visuals, particularly in the film's last third, and wide slow-zoom shots are explicit references to the aforementioned films and harken back to a day when horror films were more suspense-driven.  While The Canal has a gory scene or two, most of its scares are jump scares and much of its suspense is generated from long periods of silence.

The Canal causes unease and unnerves because it teases us with surreal sequences of disturbing imagery without any explanation combined with sharp editing.  Present-day horror filmmakers feel the need to shock us with gore to make up for a lack of real thrills.  I have nothing against gore, but gore is nasty, not scary.  Filmmakers like Nicolas Roeg (Don't Look Now) and Roman Polanski (Rosemary's Baby) realized that milking suspense from their film's locations created suspense.  They saw that gore wasn't going to make their films terrifying.  Look at either film and there is little gore (save for a scene or two).  Roeg and Argento tease us with odd sound effects and surreal images, but don't reveal what they mean until the last minute.  Venice and a Manhattan apartment building became labyrinths of deception and violence in the aforementioned directors' films.  Cavanaugh uses his eerie Irish location to similar effect with similar techniques to elicit suspense.

Overall, The Canal is an unnerving horror movie that provides an excellent showcase for lead Rupert Evans and Robin Hill's editing.  The aforementioned artists' talents cannot go unmentioned, particularly Hill's, because so much of what makes this film effective is their work.  If Evans' lead performance wasn't so convincing, the movie would not have worked.  To "buy" a horror movie, so to speak, we must believe that what is happening onscreen is actually happening in that world.  If a performance is weak, we begin to laugh at the movie, and thus the realism of the film's world is broken.  The Canal is as good, if not far better, than any horror film around and should please both fans of classic horror and David Lynch.

3.5/4

MANAKAMANA Review

Courtesy of The Cinema Guild

MANAKAMANA

2014, 118 minutes

Not Rated

Review by Joshua Handler

Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez's Manakamana takes its name from a Nepali temple.  The film is the latest produced by Harvard's Sensory Ethnography Lab, which is best-known for producing the acclaimed documentaries Sweetgrass and Leviathan.  The temple of Manakamana is located on a mountain and to get there, one must take a cable car.  Spray and Velez discovered that a roll of Super 16 film lasts as long as a cable car ride to or from Manakamana, so they went out and filmed people's trips up and down the mountain.

Manakamana is extraordinary because of the way that it puts people under a microscope to allow us to appreciate the smallest of actions or the shortest of sentences.  During one trip up the mountain, a woman, Mithu, is sitting in the cable car and holding a miniature Manakamana souvenir.  Her sullen look and shyness (I was told by co-director Stephanie Spray that this woman was really very talkative) means that she says very little throughout the cable car ride.  The one or two times she speaks, she talks about how much she likes her souvenir.  The fact that the only words that this woman says throughout the entire ride are about a simple souvenir is hauntingly beautiful.

Souvenirs are simple objects that remind us of whatever place we visited.  As interesting as they are, most people think of them as simple knick knacks.  However, Mithu saw her Manakamana souvenir as something meaningful - a little piece of happiness that she felt was good enough to talk about and share with the world.

Manakamana is a film about the small moments.  While one or two of the film's eleven sequences are fascinating throughout, most sequences are made emotionally resonant and intriguing because of the small moments like the one described above.  This is not a film for the easily bored, as minutes go by without anything of significance happening.  By showing life unfiltered and in real time, we begin to look for the moments of beauty and realize just how wonderful they are because we are forced to pay attention and to look for those moments to keep us interested.

Overall, Manakamana is a film about the beauty of human life and the small moments that we may neglect to notice in the hustle and bustle of our everyday lives.  While the film is a bit too long, it is an entrancing experience unlike any other.  For the adventurous filmgoers out there, this is a must.

3.5/4

An Interview with Gareth Evans of THE RAID 2

Director Gareth Evans

Photo by Akhirwan Nurhaidir and Gumilar Triyoga, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

An Interview with Gareth Evans, Writer/Director/Editor of 

THE RAID 2

By Joshua Handler

Gareth Evans is a one-of-a-kind auteur.  Welsh-born, but Indonesian-based, Evans has found major success with his last two films: The Raid: Redemption and The Raid 2, two hyper-violent action films that combine gun violence with Silat, a form of Indonesian martial arts.  This past Friday, The Raid 2 opened wide in the United States, and I was fortunate to talk with Evans about the film.  I loved the film and reviewed it here.

The Raid 2 takes place two hours after the first film ended.  After remaining alive through the hellish debacle that was the raid on the apartment building, Rama (Iko Uwais) must now go undercover to bring down all of the corrupt officials in the government.  He must start by befriending a crime boss' son in prison.  Evans sees The Raid: Redemption as a "survival horror film" and The Raid 2 as a "gangster film."

While The Raid 2 has a well-structured and intriguing dramatic story, the reason the film is great is its action.  Says Evans on creating the action sequences, "I'll come to [the choreographers] with...a scenario...'Well this is the fighter, these are the bad guys, this is their weapon...this is what they have, and this is what you have. This is the environment, the location, the props...the skill set of everyone involved,' and I say, 'Okay I'll be back in about 20 or 30 minutes.  You come up with six different ways to beat up six different guys...using these props, using this environment...then they'll present to me,' and then usually what'll happen is I'll start to add some of the character to it...

"There should be punchline moments in each of the fight sequences, and usually they consist of about 2 minutes, 3 minutes long, and we should have about four to five punchlines in that space and time, and the punchline is kind of like the big killshot, the big...stunt moments where people have to take a breath when they see them.  We put one in and then we slow down again then build up again...until we reach our next punchline.  The last step...is that we film everything but we film it all using a handy cam in an office space with crash mats everywhere, and we film it exactly the same as we would do it for the final film.  So I'm basically designing my shot list, I'm figuring out every angle and every edit for the fight scene so when we get to the...production stage, we have this video to use as a reference."

In addition to the stunning choreography, Evans also had to take into consideration how the action sequences built character and fit into the story as a whole.  "Whenever it came to a fight sequence, it wasn't because we were on page 10 or page 12, it was because it organically felt right to have a fight sequence in that situation.  [T]he fight sequences [also] to feel like they had a purpose beyond just the visceral thrills...


"The prison riot, for example, was something where we started off by setting up the paranoia in the character, and then...maybe he's going to come under attack, then realizing that he's not the target...of the attack - it's the guy that he's supoosed to be getting close with that's under attack, and if he gets killed then his whole mission is ruined...and so he ends up having to become bodyguard and protector of that guy because otherwise he's going to have to rot in prison for two to three years for no reason whatsoever...

"On the surface level it's like a seven-minute prison riot and it's spectacle, but...by the end of the scene, there's a complete change in personality in character motivation and character arc for these two guys."

For the now-famous car chase sequence, Evans and crew used CGI only for "touch-ups."  Everything else is real.  In The Raid: Redemption, there is a sequence in which the camera passes through a hole in the floor from one floor to another in a single take.  Evans said he wanted to do the same thing again,  but this time between two cars.  "Let's just try it and if we do it and the behind-the-scenes footage is good, you look like a fucking hero," said Evans to co-director of photography Matt Flannery.  The only CGI used in that sequence is during the shot in which the camera passes between the two cars - the door was added in digitally.


With The Raid 2, Evans wanted to question how far are we willing to follow the hero through sadistic acts.  "When I was a kid growing up, whenever I'd watch action films with my dad," recalled Evans,  "my dad [would] always be the...guide in terms of...what was acceptable...and what was unacceptable."  If Evans' dad deemed something unacceptable, he would send the kids out of the room.  "Violence can be visceral and be aggressive.  It can be...an entertainment thing...but the part where [Evans' dad]...drew the line was cruel violence...and I think what we do is kind of obscure the line a bit...If somebody's...impacted in some way, it's not about...holding on that shot to see all of the pain and suffering that that person's going through...it's usually about a real quick, sharp, shocking moment of...violence that kind of takes your breath away for a second before we cut away then to show something else...By focusing on...those breathtaking moments as opposed to those scenes that make you feel like you want to wretch...by keeping on having those breathtaking moments, it creates this sort of communal atmosphere of...shock without people hopefully being repulsed by the film."

Many will be repulsed by The Raid 2, but even more will be thrilled by the beautifully-shot and choreographed action sequences, the well-developed characters, and the overall craft of the film.  The Raid 2 is now open across the United States.

What to See at the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival

Courtesy TFF

WHAT TO SEE AT THE 

2014 TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL

By Joshua Handler

This year's Tribeca Film Festival begins this Thursday, April 17 and ends April 27.  As with just about any film festival, the selection is a mixed bag.  I have seen 19 films, roughly about half of which have been good to great.  So, to save you from the horrible movies, I will tell you what I consider to be worth the ticket price.  I will say that I haven't seen Love is Strange, Gabriel, Land Ho!, Art and Craft, and a few others that I have heard are excellent.

The Best:

VENUS IN FUR (Dir. Roman Polanski) - Venus in Fur is Roman Polanski's film adaptation of David Ives' twisted play about an actress who does everything she can to convince a director that she's right for the lead role in his new play.  Emmanuelle Seigner and Mathieu Amalric star and they and Polanski are all in top form.  Venus in Fur is a funny, racy, dark drama that I believe to be the best of the fest.  The film hits theaters on June 20.

STARRED UP (Dir. David Mackenzie) - David Mackenzie's prison drama Starred Up has already garnered an enormous amount of critical acclaim and deserves all of it.  The film stars Jack O'Connell and Ben Mendelsohn and tells the story of a young man who's put in the same maximum security prison as his father.  Gritty, intense, violent, profane, and moving, Starred Up is a great piece of work and, like Venus in Fur, features two outstanding lead performances.  The film will be released theatrically in August.

FISHTAIL (Dir. Andrew Renzi) - This film is embargoed, but let me say that this is a work of jaw-dropping beauty and poetry.  Fishtail is a documentary that shows life on a Montana cattle ranch during calving season.  At 60 minutes, it's the perfect length and Harry Dean Stanton's poetry readings are beautiful.  Full review to be published soon.

THE ONE I LOVE (Dir. Charlie McDowell) - This film is also embargoed so my thoughts will be brief.  The One I Love premiered to great acclaim at Sundance and requires you to know next to nothing about it when going in.  The most basic synopsis won't do the film justice, but I'll give one anyway.  The One I Love stars Mark Duplass and Elizabeth Moss and tells the story of a couple whose marriage is on the rocks.  Their therapist tells them to go out to a vacation spot, and when they get there something very interesting happens.  This sounds like every other marriage comedy, but trust me, after viewing for 20 minutes, you'll see that its not.  It's smart, funny, honest, and very clever.

Worth the ticket price:
BRIDES
HUMAN CAPITAL

AFFLICTED Review

Derek Lee in AFFLICTED
Photo courtesy of CBS Films

AFFLICTED

2014, 85 minutes

Rated R for disturbing bloody violence, and language

Review by Joshua Handler

Afflicted marks the feature directorial debut of Clif Prowse and Derek Lee, and while not the most inventive or terrifying horror film ever, it is very fun with a healthy sense of humor and just enough originality to make it worth a watch.

Derek and Clif (the directors of the movie are are the leads) are best friends and decide to take a trip around the world, filming the entire thing for their blog.  One night in France, Derek meets a girl at a bar and takes her back to his hotel room.  Derek and a few friends come back to the hotel room later to find that Derek has open wounds on his body.  Derek and Clif discover that Derek has contracted some form of horrifying disease that keeps getting worse as the time wears on.

What makes Afflicted so entertaining is the fact that it rarely ever takes itself seriously and creates a monster that's original and very human.  Prowse and Lee have obviously had a ball making this film.  Their chemistry onscreen gives the film's first horror-free half a laid-back mood that makes it extremely enjoyable to watch.  The two seem like typical guys that you'd see everyday on the street, making them instantly relatable.

The second part of the movie is not quite as funny as the first part and focuses more on horror than comedy, though it isn't scary.  However, it is still fun and features some nice scenes of gore.  The acting continues to be strong and the film arrives at a clever conclusion.

Overall, Afflicted is a solid horror film from two directors who have bright careers ahead of them.  After a slew of horrible horror films, it's very refreshing to see one that is as well-directed, acted, and scripted as this one.  Horror and non-horror fans should enjoy this.

3/4

BULLETS OVER BROADWAY to Screen at FSLC with Stroman, Aronson, Schlossberg Q&A

FROM SCREEN TO STAGE: 

BULLETS OVER BROADWAY 

Susan Stroman, Letty Aronson, 

and Julian Schlossberg in Conversation

By Joshua Handler

The stage adaptation of Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway recently opened in NYC, so to celebrate the opening, the Film Society of Lincoln Center is presenting a screening of a 35MM archival print of the film followed by a conversation with acclaimed stage director Susan Stroman (The Producers, Bullets Over Broadway) and producers Letty Aronson (Allen's sister and longtime producer) and Julian Schlossberg on May 5.  

The film Bullets Over Broadway was nominated for 7 Oscars including Best Director for Woody 

Allen, won one for Best Supporting Actress (Dianne Wiest), and stars (alongside Wiest) John Cusack, Jim Broadbent, Harvey Fierstein, Chazz Palminteri, Mary-Louise Parker, Rob Reiner, Jennifer Tilly, and Tracey Ullman. I love the movie and am looking forward to viewing it again.  The Film Society of Lincoln Center's press release is below.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
 

THE FILM SOCIETY OF LINCOLN CENTER TO PRESENT 
FROM SCREEN TO STAGE: BULLETS OVER BROADWAY
ON MAY 5

INCLUDES A SCREENING OF AN ARCHIVAL PRINT OF WOODY ALLEN’S ACADEMY AWARD®–WINNING BULLETS OVER BROADWAY

FOLLOWED BY A CONVERSATION WITH TONY-WINNING DIRECTOR/CHOREOGRAPHER SUSAN STROMAN AND PRODUCERS LETTY ARONSON AND JULIAN SCHLOSSBERG
 

New York, New York (April 11, 2014) – The Film Society of Lincoln Center has announced today a one-night-only event, From Screen to Stage: Bullets Over Broadway, on Monday, May 5 at 6:30PM. The evening will include a screening of an archival print of Woody Allen’s rollicking Oscar®-winning jazz-age ensemble comedy Bullets Over Broadway, followed by a conversation with five-time Tony-winning director/choreographer Susan Stroman and lead producers Letty Aronson and Julian Schlossberg. The event celebrates the April opening of Bullets over Broadway: The Musical, starring Zach Braff and Marin Mazzie, at the St. James Theatre.

The May 5 conversation will be moderated by Kent Jones, the Director of the New York Film Festival, and will address the creative process of turning a movie into a musical, touching on the pleasures as well as the pitfalls of this particular transformation, including plenty of backstage stories. Following the discussion, the audience is invited to a reception in the Frieda and Roy Furman Gallery. Print is courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art, New York. A special thank you to Theatre Communications Group for hosting this evening and Roy Furman.

Allen’s 1994 Bullets Over Broadway marks the first-ever Centerpiece selection of the New York Film Festival and is a tale of life in the theater during the very Roaring Twenties, populated with gangsters, showgirls, and other colorful personalities. Along with Dianne Wiest (who won the Oscar® in 1995 for Best Actress in a Supporting Role), as a diva who devours all in her path, and John Cusack, as an idealistic playwright, Jim Broadbent, Harvey Fierstein, Chazz Palminteri, Mary-Louise Parker, Rob Reiner, Jennifer Tilly, and Tracey Ullman make up the outstanding ensemble cast that helped the film become a classic. The film was nominated for 7 Academy Awards® in 1995, including Best Director for Woody Allen, Best Original Screenplay for Allen and Douglas McGrath, Best Actor in a Supporting Role for Chazz Palminteri, and Best Actress in a Supporting Role for both Dianne Wiest and Jennifer Tilly.

The screening will take place on Monday, May 5 at 6:30PM at the Walter Reade Theater, 165 West 65th Street. Tickets go on sale today, Thursday, April 10. Admission is $13; $9 for students and seniors (62+); and $8 for Film Society members. Visit FilmLinc.com for more information.


Film Society of Lincoln Center
Founded in 1969 to celebrate American and international cinema, the Film Society of Lincoln Center works to recognize established and emerging filmmakers, support important new work, and to enhance the awareness, accessibility, and understanding of the moving image. The Film Society produces the renowned New York Film Festival, a curated selection of the year's most significant new film work, and presents or collaborates on other annual New York City festivals including Dance on Camera, Film Comment Selects, Human Rights Watch Film Festival, LatinBeat, New Directors/New Films, NewFest, New York African Film Festival, New York Asian Film Festival, New York Jewish Film Festival, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema and Rendez-Vous with French Cinema. In addition to publishing the award-winning Film Comment magazine, The Film Society recognizes an artist's unique achievement in film with the prestigious Chaplin Award. The Film Society's state-of-the-art Walter Reade Theater and the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center, located at Lincoln Center, provide a home for year-round programs and the New York City film community.

The Film Society receives generous, year-round support from Royal Bank of Canada, Jaeger-LeCoultre, American Airlines, The New York Times, Stella Artois, the Kobal Collection, Trump International Hotel and Tower, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York State Council on the Arts.

For more information, visit www.filmlinc.com and follow @filmlinc on Twitter.

20,000 DAYS ON EARTH: ND/NF Closing Night Review

Photo courtesy of Drafthouse Films

20,000 DAYS ON EARTH

2014, 95 minutes

Not Rated

Review by Joshua Handler

Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollards' 20,000 Days on Earth is guaranteed to be one of the most unusual and hypnotizing films that you'll have ever seen.  The film is a hybrid of documentary and narrative (more documentary though) and follows a day in the life of Renaissance Man Nick Cave who is a singer, composer, and screenwriter, among many other things.  Winner of the Directing and Editing Prizes at Sundance 2014, this film is truly something different.

Nick Cave is a fascinating person and watching his life through Forsyth and Pollard's hyper-stylized lens makes this film hypnotic.  Entire sequences played on-screen and I was completely entranced.  This happened most memorably during a sequence in which Cave is in psychoanalysis and when he is singing a beautiful song on his piano.  These sequences are so hypnotic because they are so full of life, so full of soul and introspection that it is impossible to look away.

We are now in an age where the lines between documentary and fictional narrative are being blurred.  With films like The Act of Killing, Stories We Tell, and now 20,000 Days on Earth, our conception of what documentary is is being changed, and it is a sight to behold.  These films are as inventive as they come and add some spice to a genre frequently associated with boring voiceover and talking head interviews.

Reviewing a film like 20,000 Days On Earth is almost pointless, as it is simply a movie that should be seen and not read about.  In many ways, there has never been a film like it.  While it is a documentary, many sequences are staged.  However, while sequences have been staged for the film, such as the scene in the psychoanalyst's office, what happens in those scenes is real.  In other words, it is a real psychotherapy session staged for the film.

Overall, this is, without exaggeration, one of the greatest documentaries of all time.  I don't want to say much more about this so as not to spoil any of the film's surprises.  This is an amazing piece of filmmaking that will move, electrify, educate, and hypnotize you as you view it.  20,000 Days On Earth was an excellent way to close New Directors/New Films.

4/4

DOM HEMINGWAY Review

Jude Law as "Dom" in Richard Shepard's DOM HEMINGWAYPhoto courtesy of Fox Searchlight

DOM HEMINGWAY

2014, 93 minutes

Rated R for sexual content, nudity, pervasive language, some violence and drug use

Review by Joshua Handler

Crass, foul, outrageous, hilarious, and oddly charming are all descriptors for the eponymous character of Dom Hemingway.  Starting with a profane, sexually-charged opening monologue that sets the tone for the rest of the film, Dom Hemingway will be a love-it-or-hate it experience because it's completely relentless and breaks a key rule of the traditional "hero's journey" (you'll see what I mean).  Jude Law gives one of his best performances as Dom Hemingway, a safe-cracker who went to jail for 12 years for "keeping his mouth shut" and is now out to reclaim what he's due.

Jude Law is in every scene of the movie and lets you know it.  His performance as a man lacking any form of morals is so unique because even though nearly everything the character does is horrible, I still liked watching him and somewhat cared for him.  Even though Dom is cocky and arrogant, Law has a magnetic presence that kept me wanting to watch - I awaited each and every outrageous irreverent outburst.  Richard E. Grant (Withnail & I) gives a dryly funny performance as Dickie, Dom's best friend, and Demian Bichir (Oscar-nominated for A Better Life) also gives a standout performance. Writer/director Richard Shepard's clever dialogue also helps.

Behind every outburst and line of delighfully dirty dialogue, I could hear Shepard high-fiving himself and snickering (in a good way).  When Dom starts to rant or spew insults, there's no stopping him.  Getting him started is like blowing up a dam and watching all of the water pour out.  Needless to say, listening to Law shout these rants is a blast.  However, the profane dialogue and rants are not the only reason that Dom Hemingway's screenplay is so strong.  Shepard's smartest decision was to not conclude the film in the sentimental way that we expect.  Instead he chooses realism, which was a very nice surprise.

Overall, Dom Hemingway is a treat.  It's full of humor, some sharp editing and cinematography, and of course, Jude Law's insane performance at its center.  Polarizing as this film may be, I was entertained start to finish.  It's rare to find a film centered around such an unlikeable (yet still likable) character, but when done as well as it is here, it's a pleasure to watch.

3.5/4

An Interview with Edgar Barens, Oscar-Nominated Director of "Prison Terminal"

Private Jack Hall
Photo courtesy of HBO

An Interview with Edgar Barens, 

Oscar-Nominated Director of 

"Prison Terminal"

By Joshua Handler

Oscar-nominee Edgar Barens' career as a documentarian has focused largely on prison hospice systems.  As his first film, Barens made a "nuts and bolts on about how to set up a prison hospice program," which started many prison hospice systems around the country.  "I always wanted to do something much more in depth...and I wanted to really dedicate more time to the subject matter, but also to the inmates, the prisoners who are volunteering, as well as the prisoner who is going through the dying process.  So, ten years later, I find this hospice program at the Iowa State Penitentiary, they had just started about a year earlier and it was a perfect opportunity to go there and not only show how a program of this type begins, but also I could spend time in this prison, and I was flabbergasted as an independent filmmaker to be given 24/7 access to this maximum security prison, and the reason I think they did this, unbeknownst to me, they were using my earlier film as a teaching tool, so they knew my work and they knew they could trust me, so they allowed me to stay in this prison for up to a year."

Barens lived there for six months.  Technically, he lived across the street where the doctors lived, but spent 12-15 hours per day in the prison.  "The first month of my stay at the Iowa State Penitentiary, I did not use the camera.  I just showed up every day and stayed in the infirmary [for]...12-15 hrs a day, getting to know the inmates who were...prison hospice volunteers, as well as all of the patients that were in there...and the correctional officers had to get used to me and the nursing staff and the doctors also.  

"The first month was basically [to] get acquainted with everybody and build the trust with them because I knew if I was going to be there for the long haul, I needed everybody to be on my side and eventually won over pretty much everybody.  Most of the prisoners...embraced the fact that I was there making a film about their hospice program because they had seen my earlier work and they knew that I was going to something of good quality and something that was beneficial to them in the long run.  As a filmmaker I had to pitch myself."

Barens didn't judge the men whom he met in prison: "As humans we have to...pull away from the reality...so we can deal with these people on a day-to-day basis...I always have that in the back of my head, never asking the guys exactly what they did."

And while Barens was in that prison, he met Private Jack Hall.  At the time, Hall had been in the infirmary for 10 years due to his inability to defend himself.  Two months into Barens' stay, it looked like Hall would be the next hospice patient.  Then, Hall seemed to bounce back, so he wasn't a candidate for hospice.

Private Jack Hall had trained as a ranger, the precursor to the Green Berets according to Barens, and was trained to kill using hand-to-hand combat.  During his days at war, he killed hundreds of enemy soldiers.  When Hall came back, "[t]hey gave him some cigarettes and a $50 bill and told [him] to forget what he did for the past three years, and he didn't, he couldn't, and he was plagued, even until the last day of his life, he was plagued with...nightmares...of his time in WWII, and he would wake up constantly in a cold sweat, and that was not because he was feverish, he was just damaged and he was 83 years old already so he was going through that for... 50 years," explained Barens.  "I don't want to necessarily say he's a criminal because of his PTSD, but it definitely played a large part in him dealing with life in general..." Hall eventually had children, one of whom became "hooked on dope" because of a local drug dealer.  Hall's son committed suicide, and Hall heard the dealer "bragging about how he made his money.  He didn't make any more," says Hall in the film.  That caused Hall to be put in a maximum security prison for life.

Because Hall was the next hospice patient, he became Barens' main subject.  "It shows that just by happenstance, Jack kind of fell into my lap...and really it's such a random thing, and I think it goes to show...everyone's kind of a gem when you're given the time to really explore their life," said Barens.  And that's exactly what Barens did - he explored Hall's life until the second that Hall drew his last breath.

Barens took a humane approach to his subject, and through experiencing life in prison, he developed an optimistic view of the men living there.  "To be in a prison that long is just soul-sucking, and I can't imagine surviving a life sentence there," he said.  "What I realized while I was at the Iowa State Penitentiary making friends with these guys, and...let's face it, some of them were in for horrible crimes...obviously they made bad decisions and they're paying for their bad decisions by their loss of freedom, but I think we have to start realizing a society that we cant further punish these guys or these women behind bars.  

"Their punishment is their loss of freedom, and after that, they deserve to live life with some type of dignity and also leave this life with some kind of dignity, and that's really not happening across the board throughout the correctional system.  I came to learn that these inmates, these prisoners, are people, and if given the chance, they can show compassion, and they can redeem themselves, and if it's going to happen behind walls, then so be it.  If they have no chance of doing that on the outside world, okay, but there's so much potential behind those walls.  So I think we as a society need to look at those prisoners and not throw away the key, but realize that they're damaged and there's still fantastically positive things that can happen behind the walls.

"Because we see Jack die and we get to know him before he dies...by humanizing him, I think people realize that death is like The Great Equalizer and this man is somebody's father, this man is somebody's grandfather, uncle, and that despite his crimes and his flaws...he can die with dignity surrounded by friends and family, then at least we kind of stop the pain.  [W]e stop more pain from going out."

After Barens was done filming, he had 300 hours of footage and had to wait years to receive the funds to finish editing the film.  Finally, HBO picked the movie up for distribution, which allowed Barens to finish the film.  With the film clocking in at just under 40 minutes, Barens was finished, and he went on to received an Oscar nomination for Best Documentary (Short Subject).  According to Barens, it "[c]osts compassion and an ability...to...open your mind a little bit" to fully appreciate "Prison Terminal".  What Barens suggests we do when watching his film is exactly what he was required to do in order to make this film in as non-judjmental a manner as possible.  "Prison Terminal" is a wrenching, humane, and raw look at a part of the population we frequently forget about and sheds light on a beautiful program being run in the darkest of corners.

"Prison Terminal" premiered on HBO this past Monday and is now on On Demand and HBO Go in addition to many more airings on HBO.