Costa-Gravras’s Z (1969)

What is “Z”?

“Z” is a massive cross-breed. It’s in French, takes place in Algeria, and its director is Greek. More importantly, it combines two rarely crossed genres: politics and thrillers. Political films are often deeply grounded in the reality of a situation, looking at things in the simplest format. Thrillers often move far beyond logical motivation, showing only what will send the most adrenaline into our bloodstream. “Z” not only combines these genres, it makes them brilliant.

“Z” was shockingly relevant at the time of its release. It was not the average politically connected film that immortalized political situations fifty or five hundred years ago. “Z” looked at the death of the politician Grigoris Lambrakis under circumstances still being debated at the time. Its worldwide recognition, complete with a Cannes Palme D’Or, spread the word about Lambrakis.

“Z” is entertaining. Jean Louis Trintignant won awards for his performance as The Examinating Magistrate. Mikis Theodorakis’ score made him a household name (Mr. McVeety brought his vinyl copy of the soundtrack to school, referring to it as “a relic”), along with “Zorba the Greek.” It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture, extremely rare for both foreign and experimental films.

“Z” is a landmark. Ty Burr, Boston-based film writer, notes its “slick cinematic urgency” and its “ease with genre filmmaking.” Most films that deal so poignantly with political themes do so with dull period piece work and Hollywood gloss. “Z” stands apart from all these films.

The title comes from a Greek word meaning “He is alive,” a protest phrase relating to Lambrakis’ death. Despite the fact that this film, too, is out of political relevance, as a work, it is still very much alive.

Noah Shavit-Lonstein
Film Club

Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar’s A Town Called Panic (2009)

As you walked in to the film tonight, you got a little plastic army man, common plaything of 1960s and ‘70s children, or as we here at Film Club Central are calling it: Your Stop-Action Animation Starter Kit^©. Because, really, this is all it takes. You find some small objects or clay, grab your camera and take a picture, move the object a little bit, take another picture, and repeat until you’re famous. Like Ray Harryhausen or Nick Park. You can do this with your Barbies (as Todd Haynes did with his famous bio-pic of Karen Carpenter, “Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story”) or GI Joes (if you go to www.gijoefest.com, you’ll find a whole film festival devoted to stop-action films starring the macho dolls) or simply random objects (post-its, rubber bands, Pixie Sticks, dice, a dollar bill, candy corn, Rubik’s Cubes as in “Western Spaghetti by PES” on YouTube).

Now the trick is obviously to get enough stuff moving that you can approximate life, humor, character, story, and all the other stuff that makes a good film. Stépahne Aubier and Vincent Patar have done that with Panic au Village or, as it is called in English, A Town Called Panic. Using a wide variety of small plastic toys, they’ve created an entire rural community where one’s shape, be it pig or horse or indian or cowboy or Atlantean, is not an impediment to one’s role in life or ability to behave in hilariously human ways. In fact, one might argue that it is not in spite of the actors being small plastic toys but because of their being small plastic toys that we’re able to explore more fully the comedy of human nature.

When the film opens, Cowboy and Indian are coming to realization that they’re unprepared for their roommate Horse’s birthday. What ensues, which involves an over-abundance of bricks, a robot penguin, a crushed house, piano lessons, stolen walls, tractors, kleptomaniac sea people, mad scientists with a snow-ball catapult, and more that we aren’t going to list here, is less panic than manic. The insanity of the plot stands in stark contrast to the warmer domestic comedies of Nick Park’s claymation Wallace and Gromit films or the alien jerkiness of Ray Harryhausen monsters in 1950s and ‘60s sci-fi films like Jason and the Argonauts. Aubier and Patar’s world has the same innocence, charm, and crazy non-sequitor rambling that one would expect if children really were just playing with these toys.

And that’s what there is to love about stop-action work. It has a D.I.Y. quality that means it never moves very far from your imagination. Yes, there’s a tremendous amount of craft, cleverness, and pain-staking work in Aubier and Patar’s film. But it looks like they simply made it in their bedroom one weekend.

Now, not everyone who watches a movie secretly wants to be a film-maker, but as movies become increasingly technical and expensive (Avatar, anyone?), they feel in some ways more alien, more distanced from our own imaginations. Certainly James Cameron or George Lucas would argue that computers are allowing us to expand our imaginations in ways we never could before, to create fantasies that look like reality. But you don’t sit in the theater saying, “I could do that.”

So right now pick up your army man. Walk him across your leg. Maybe you make him say “Hi there. Does this gun go with my outfit?” And maybe, if your friend is taking pictures, you could make it into a short film. And just like that, you’re a star.

R. Findlay
Film Club Adviser