12 THENEWYORKER,DECEMBER2, 2019
COURTESY CHO HEE-MOON/KOREAN FILM ARCHIVE
The South Korean director Hong Sang-soo launched a career of deft narra-
tive manipulations with his first feature, “The Day a Pig Fell Into the Well,”
from 1996, which screens in Lincoln Center’s series “Relentless Invention:
New Korean Cinema, 1996–2003,” on Nov. 27. His tale of four characters
whose lives intricately intertwine was written by four different screenwriters
and then largely improvised by the actors; the effect is a cinematic game of
exquisite corpse. A young man, a failing novelist, takes advantage of a young
woman who loves him—an aspiring actress who edits his work—and has
an affair with a married woman whose jealous husband, a businessman, is
also unfaithful. Hong’s view of desperate middle-class strivers and their
deceptions, betrayals, and humiliations is laced with domineering cruelty
and casual violence. The action spans two cities (Seoul and Jeonju), and
Hong films it with probingly acute angles that split the difference between
documentary-like observation and theatrical tableaux. Few filmmakers so
frankly confront the ruthless trio of art, lust, and money.—Richard BrodyINREVIVAL
named Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith), a lawyer,
and Slim (Daniel Kaluuya), a retail employee,
are ending an uneventful first date when a
white police officer (Sturgill Simpson) pulls
them over with brazenly hostile intent, lead-
ing to a tussle in which the cop starts shooting.
Slim gets the officer’s gun and kills him in
self-defense. The pair, not yet a couple, take to
the road in search of safe haven; the incident
is big news, and, during stopovers in several
Southern towns, they discover that they’ve be-
come instant folk heroes to many in the black
community. Some episodes in their flight are
formulaic; other scenes, such as ones involving
other officers, prove more surprising; and
some sequences merely generate imagery.
Nonetheless, the pain, the passion, and the
urgency at the movie’s core emerge forcefully
and movingly. With Bokeem Woodbine as
Queen’s tough, wounded, and devoted uncle
and Karen Kaia Livers as a bartender in the
know.—R.B. (In wide release.)The Report
Adam Driver, looking paler and more intense
than ever, plays Dan Jones, an investigator
who is asked by Dianne Feinstein (AnnetteBening), of the Senate Intelligence Com-
mittee, to work on a study of the C.I.A.’s
Detention and Interrogation Program. The
project consumes years, eats away at private
lives, and, upon completion, is met with stub-
born resistance from officials who disagree
with its findings and demand that it be cen-
sored accordingly. (The full document has
never been released.) The film, written and
directed by Scott Z. Burns, takes its cue from
the stern dedication of its hero; the result
feels pressurized, disheartening, and fraught.
Flashbacks to the torture described in the
report are at once grisly to behold and, unlike
the ill-lit bleakness of the office scenes, oddly
superfluous to the movie’s cause. The cast
includes Tim Blake Nelson as a frightened
whistle-blower and a formidable Ted Levine
as John Brennan.—A.L. (11/25/19) (In wide
release and on Amazon Prime.)Shooting the Mafia
At the age of forty, Letizia Battaglia, who’s now
eighty-four, became the first female photog-
rapher in the Italian daily press; this candid
and passionate documentary portrait, directed
by Kim Longinotto, shows that Battaglia has
always lived at the turbulent crossroads of
history. Born and raised in Palermo, Sicily,
Battaglia escaped her domineering father by
marrying at sixteen, and then escaped her
oppressive husband by taking lovers, with
melodramatic consequences. Finally on her
own, she became a journalist before turning
to photography at a time of unprecedented
Mafia violence, which became her subject and
her obsession—and resulted in death threats.
Her coverage of the murder of judges led to
a new career in politics. Longinotto cannily
juxtaposes Battaglia’s photographs with both
news footage and clips from fictional films and
shows the photographer in conversation with
men in her life—asserting the unity of sexual,
political, and creative freedom, and observing
the patriarchal violence of traditional families
and Mob families alike. In Italian.—R.B. (In
limited release.)The Song of Life
This daring and rhapsodic silent melodrama
from 1922, directed by John M. Stahl, fuses
mighty currents of passion and detailed so-
cial visions in its intricate and extravagant plot
(from a story by Frances Irene Reels). Decades
after leaving a desolate Western outpost—and
her husband and child—to seek glamour in New
York, the elderly and destitute Mary (Georgia
Woodthorpe), facing eviction from a Lower
East Side tenement, is taken in by a young cou-
ple living downstairs, David (Gaston Glass), a
struggling writer, and Aline (Grace Darmond),
whose work in a music shop keeps them afloat.
But, like Mary, Aline pines for excitement and
luxury, and her chance encounter with an urbane
executive sparks scandal. Working with a script
by Bess Meredyth, Stahl conjures stark anguish
and bitter conflict with an avid, quasi-docu-
mentary view of the teeming and boisterous
New York neighborhood, which endows the
drama’s astounding coincidences with an air of
authenticity and destiny.—R.B. (Anthology Film
Archives, Dec. 3.)
1
For more reviews, visit
newyorker.com/goings-on-about-townwanting more of that singular figure, with his
cozy knitwear and matching homilies, Tom
Hanks is here to help. Starring as Mr. Rog-
ers in Marielle Heller’s new film, Hanks not
only re-creates every quirk of the character’s
gestures and speech but prevents what could
have been the mushiest of fables from sliding
over the edge into sentimentality. The story
turns on the plight of Lloyd Vogel (Matthew
Rhys), a journalist who is sent to interview
Mr. Rogers and finds himself revealing the
cause of his scars, both physical and emotional.
This redemptive encounter is played out in
a low and subtle key; Heller, as she proved
in “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” (2018), has
become something of a specialist in damaged
souls. With strong support from Susan Kelechi
Watson, as Vogel’s wife, and Chris Cooper, as
his sad and loutish father.—Anthony Lane (Re-
viewed in our issue of 11/25/19.) (In wide release.)
Queen & Slim
Though the dramatic connections of this
political romance, written by Lena Waithe
and directed by Melina Matsoukas, are often
thin, the movie offers ample symbolic power.
In Cleveland, two young black people, nick-