E1 0 FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 2019 LATIMES.COM/CALENDAR
AT THE MOVIES
What is life like on the
ground for ordinary people
in another culture, another
world? That’s been the
bread and butter of observa-
tional documentaries for
forever, but almost never is it
done with the kind of beauty
and grace that filmmaker
James Longley brings to his
Afghanistan-set “Angels Are
Made of Light.”
As his 2006 Oscar-nomi-
nated “Iraq in Fragments”
demonstrated, MacArthur
fellow Longley, who serves as
his own cinematographer as
well as directs, has an almost
magical ability to envelope
us in other realities.
He does it via the poetry
of his imagery as well as a gift
for focused illumination
that creates empathetic
portraits of people who are
both ordinary and intensely
involving.
Even with Longley’s abil-
ities, getting something like
“Angels” made takes a formi-
dable amount of purpose,
preparation and patience.
Determined to do a film
about a school as a window
into ordinary life, Longley
tried for years to get a proj-
ect set up in various coun-
tries. Then he spent months
scouting places in Af-
ghanistan before settling on
Daqiqi Balkhi, a neighbor-
hood elementary school in
Kabul, and filming there for
200 days over three years.
That amount of time en-
abled the entire school
population to get comfort-
able with the filmmaker’s
presence and allowed for the
forming of a bond with the
three young brothers whose
mother Fazula is one of the
school’s teachers and whose
lives we follow intimately.
As mentioned, Longley’s
visuals, whether they show
snowball fights, the play of
light inside the ruined
mosque that houses the
school or tarps fluttering on
an especially windy day, re-
flect the filmmaker’s never
less than impeccable eye.
But, even more so than
with “Iraq in Fragments,”
the specific nature of the
film’s narration is equally
potent. Longley used
Afghanspeakers to record
long conversations with the
people in the film, talks so
extensive that the English
transcription was over 8,000
pages.
Carefully chosen ex-
cerpts from these are played
as voice-over with the visu-
als, creating a word-and-pic-ture portrait that makes
these people seem as real
and human as the folks who
live next door, which is of
course the point.
This is especially true of
the three brothers who arethe film’s focus, each of
whom has a definite person-
ality and place in the family
dynamic.
Sohrab, the middle
brother, is met first. He’s a
real live wire, proud of his
status as one of the top stu-
dents in his class and burst-
ing with the desire to dem-
onstrate (to the delight of
his friends) his skills as a
reader and speaker.
Rostam, the oldest
brother, has a different path.
He is out of school and work-
ing in one of Kabul’s numer-
ous auto repair shops, the
money he earns becoming
increasingly necessary tothe family’s survival.
The youngest, Yaldash, is
in effect trying to navigate
between his two siblings.
Though he is apprenticed to
atinsmith, he misses his
time at school and worries a
lot about whether to “follow
either the road of metal or
the road of books.”
Because this is a Muslim
school where Quran study is
a key element of the curricu-
lum (“Angels are made of
light, we can’t see them but
they can see us” is one of the
lessons on the curriculum),
all but the youngest girls are
not seen on camera or heard
from very much.
While the three brothers
are the film’s main focus, we
meet other people and fol-
low various educational de-
velopments, including the
school’s progress from its ru-
ined mosque site to a brand-
new building under the aegis
of its passionate principal
Faiz Mohammed.
Inspiring the entire com-
munity to a commitment to
education — “Education is
our occupation, knowledge
is our watchword and our
pride,” the students enthusi-
astically chant — the princi-
pal is not without a sense of
humor, cracking to a teacher
who blames his lateness on
traffic, “May God havemercy on your fibbing.”
Also heard from is Nik
Mohammed, a teacher with
a particular interest in his-
tory. As he talks about Af-
ghanistan’s past, filling us in
on coups and regime
changes, wars and inva-
sions, his words play over
faded color newsreels which
Longley found in the Afghan
National Film Archives.
“They squeezed us like
pomegranates and nobody
cared,” he says of his coun-
try’s various rulers. “Until
when will we have a war in
our country? Until when will
we live in poverty and de-
spair?”
Though there is footage
of boys being boys, doing
things like flying the kites
Kabul is celebrated for, the
somber reality of living in a
combat zone is never far
from the surface. “There is a
war in my country,” says
Nabiullah, a friend of
Sohrab’s, “and we cannot
study.”
As it is for the boys, so it is
for everyone in this remarka-
ble film. “People have
learned how to fight,” one
adult says, “but not how to
live a normal life,” while an-
other adds simply:“This war
is destroying our country.”
Words straight from their
hearts to ours.REVIEW
Vivid lessons taught at an Afghan school
KENNETH TURAN
FILM CRITIC
THE YOUNGESTin the family at the documentary’s
center, Yaldash Mir-Habibullah, ponders his future.Grasshopper FilmsWe can only hope that in a
few years, a film studies
graduate student will write
about the curious late-2010s
trend of movies exploring
the notion of the canine soul
and possibly turn up some
answers about the appeal of
these films, beyond simple
affection for man’s best
friend.
Perhaps, during such
troubled times, we need to
believe in a higher power
that is as steady and acces-
sible as a dog, with their un-
yielding devotion and
searching eyes. As animal
lovers, we want to believe
there’s something more to
the dog-human connection
than just food and shelter,
and movies from a dog’s
point of view assert their
emotional intelligence and
humanity while celebrating
their inherent doggishness.
While this has been explored
with cutesy morbidity in the
pup reincarnation series “A
Dog’s Purpose” and “A Dog’s
Way Home,” “The Art of
Racing in the Rain,” directed
by Simon Curtis, written by
Mark Bomback and ad-
apted from the 2008 novel by
Garth Stein, takes an ap-
proach that’s far more eru-
dite.
Our furry narrator is
Enzo (voiced by Kevin Cost-
ner), a golden retriever
who’s not like other dogs. In
his opening monologue, he
intones with gravelly gravi-
tas that “gestures are all I
have.” He laments the engi-
neering of his flat tongue,
which prevents him from ex-
pressing anything more
complicated than monosyl-
labic sounds, and an-
nounces he’s lying in “a pud-
dle of my own making.” A be-
liever in Mongolian dog mys-
ticism, Enzo announces that
when he comes back as a hu-
man, he’s going to remember
everything he’s learned as adog while living with his
owner, Denny (Milo Ven-
timiglia).
“The Art of Racing in the
Rain,” while a tearjerker, is a
strange movie, starting with
its mouthful of a title. The
film makes frequent refer-
ence to said art of racing in
the rain, a skill Denny has
mastered as a race car driver
in Seattle. It seems to be the
idea of anticipating the skid
so you can create and there-
fore control the skid, to
eliminate unpredictable
variables. The metaphor
doesn’t neatly track onto the
life lessons presented, but it
offers the characters a
chance to speak often about
manifesting their own reali-
ty.
Even though Denny
claims there’s an art to rac-
ing in the rain, if his life story
is any case study, the only se-
cret to getting through the
struggles life throws at you is
sheer perseverance. Denny
is fooling himself if he thinks
there’s any art to it beyond
holding on for dear life. But
the racing metaphors sure
do make for neat motiva-
tional speeches.
“The Art of Racing in the
Rain” is ostensibly a story
about what Enzo the dog
learns about life as a com-
panion to Denny, Eve and
Zoe, a wordless omnipres-
ence who takes it all in, the
good, the bad and the ugly.
One would hope that per-
haps a film filled with such
melodrama and pathos
would unearth an observa-
tion about the existential
nature of life and death be-
yond “racing cars is fun.” But
after all that philosophizing,
that’s all Enzo leaves us with.
What else could we expect
from such pup psychology?If anyone needs convinc-
ing at this late date that gen-
der inequality both in front
of and behind the camera is
the norm in Hollywood,
“This Changes Everything”
will get the job done.
Directed by Tom Don-
ahue, whose previous docu-
mentary was “Casting By,”
this earnest and passionate
film talks to lots of boldface
names, including perform-
ers Geena Davis, Meryl
Streep, Natalie Portman
and Taraji P. Henson and
producers Shonda Rhimes
and Jill Soloway.
Actress Tracee Ellis Ross
says at one point in the film,
“As women we are not al-
lowed to be angry,” but the
ardent testimony points in
the opposite direction. In-
terview subjects voice justi-
fiable outrage at what they
—individually and women in
general — have had to put up
with.
“Movies and TV have al-
ways driven me insane,” says
writer Callie Khouri, who
wrote the Oscar-winning
“Thelma & Louise” as a re-
action to gender inequality.
“Misogyny is so prevalent,
it’s almost unremarkable.
Women are inconsequential
except as ornamentation.”
Adds Soloway, who cre-
ated “Transparent,” “Imag-
ine as a man women really
wanting to look at your body
when they see you.”
An advantage this fury
creates is that it ensures
“This Changes Everything”
deals with the treatment of
women as a burning issue
and not an intellectual exer-
cise. On the other hand, per-
haps inevitably because it is
dealing with a big issue,
“This Changes Everything”
suffers a bit from being all
over the map, touching so
many bases that, though
each is important, they don’t
all cohere into a whole.
The patron saint of this
film is Davis, as the founder
of the Geena Davis Institute
on Gender in Media and one
of the film’s most persuasive
voices.
This organization has
done exceptional work in
gathering damning stat-
istics concerning the num-
bers of women behind and in
front of the camera — likethe fact that only 15% of the
top-grossing films of 2018
were written by women —
stats that appear periodi-
cally as text on screen.
One of the film’s
strengths is its opening sec-
tions, where women talk
about how important it is to
see yourself on screen in a
nuanced, realistic way and
how what you see as a child
influences your perception
of what you can become.
Lena Dunham, for in-
stance, talks about how she
watched “A League of Their
Own” every day for an entire
summer, and Taraji P. Hen-
son remembers how seeing
Diahann Carroll physically
battering folks in “Dynasty”
without getting arrested was
a positive jolt.
Mention is also made of
“the CSI effect,” how the suc-
cess of that show led to wom-
en going into forensic pa-
thology and how after
“Brave” and “The Hunger
Games” were released, the
numbers of women taking
archery skyrocketed.
Women also share stories
of mistreatment on the set,with Sharon Stone, for in-
stance, recalling asking a di-
rector who told her to sit on
his lap to take direction,
“Does Tom Hanks sit on
your lap?”
Finding women behind
the camera is especially diffi-
cult, with former executive
Susan Lyne relating the
challenges of getting
Shonda Rhimes’ “Grey’s
Anatomy” on the air and
Natalie Portman noting she
had worked for only two fe-
male directors in her career,
“and one of them is myself.”
The last part of “This
Changes Everything” looks
at attempts to change the
system, from the ground-
breaking work done in 1979
by a group that became
known as the Original Six to
what happened in 2015 when
FX’s John Landgraf made it
his business to change his
network’s culture.
In the final analysis,
“This Changes Everything”
aligns the words of writer-
producer Courtney Kemp
Agboh. “You just hire wom-
en,” she says. “It’s not that
hard.”‘The Art
of Racingin the Rain’
Rated:PG for thematic
material
Running time:1 hour,
49 minutes
Playing:In general release‘Angels Are
Made of Light’
Not rated
Running time:1 hour,
57 minutes
Playing:Laemmle’s
Glendale‘This Changes
Everything’
Not rated
Running time:1 hour,
36 minutes.
Playing:Laemmle’s
Monica Film Center, Santa
Monica; Arena Cinelounge,
HollywoodMILOVentimiglia and golden retriever Enzo (voiced
by Kevin Costner) in “The Art of Racing in the Rain.”Doane GregoryTwentieth Century FoxREVIEWPeering into
a canine soul
By Katie WalshThe adaptation of
‘The Art of Racing inthe Rain’ is a little
light on doggy insight.
THE ORIGINAL SIX, a group of groundbreaking women in Hollywood, from “This Changes Everything.”
Photographs from Good Deed EntertainmentREVIEWHollywood women raise
voices against inequality
KENNETH TURAN
FILM CRITIC
TARAJI P. HENSON, left, Meryl Streep and Cate Blanchett are among the stars
who speak out on the entertainment industry’s treatment of women.