12 THENEWYORKER,AUGUST 5 &12, 2019
AVCO EMBASSY/KOBAL/SHUTTERSTOCK
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MOVIES
The Cremator
The filming of the late Slovak-born director
Juraj Herz’s raven-black comedy, from 1969, was
interrupted by the Soviet invasion of Czecho-
slovakia—just the kind of world-disfiguring
fracture of which the tale warns. It is set during
another period of trauma, shortly before the
Nazi invasion of the country; the main char-
acter, a family man named Kopfrkingl (Rudolf
Hrušínský), waits serenely, as befits the owner of
a crematorium, to see where the wind blows. He
is proud of his vocation, helping people “to turn
quietly into dust after the tribulations of life,”
and we are meant to think, with rising horror,
of all the ashes to come. (Herz, a survivor of the
Ravensbrück concentration camp, set his 1986
film “Caught by Night” there.) As a contempo-
rary of the great animator Jan Švankmajer, Herz
practiced a surrealism that is bare of whimsy and
armed with aggression; one image splinters into
the next, and, in the opening scene, full of caged
beasts, you feel the prowling presence of Kafka.
In Czech.—Anthony Lane (Metrograph, Aug. 9-15.)Honeyland
A fine and patient documentary, directed by
Ljubomir Stefanov and Tamara Kotevska, about
a woman named Hatidze. Until she reveals that
she was born in 1964, it’s hard to guess her age,
and, likewise, the remote corner of Macedonia
where she lives, with her elderly mother for
company, seems almost to exist outside time—as
does Hatidze’s venerable trade, the gathering of
honey from wild bees. Yet the modern world does
intrude: when she travels to the city to sell her
wares, or when a family arrives and sets up house
beside her. The father, with no previous experi-
ence, tries his hand at beekeeping, and the results
are calamitous for all concerned. Yet this aspect
of the movie—the plot, as it were—is of less im-
port, in the end, than Hatidze’s kindly demeanor
and the dauntless calm with which, even at peril-
ous heights, she goes about her quest.—A.L. (Re-
viewed in our issue of 7/29/19.) (In limited release.)The Lion King
Jon Favreau’s film is a remake—or, in many re-
spects, a repeat—of Disney’s hit from 1994. The
story is the same, with Simba the princely cub
fleeing the foul Scar and returning, as an adult,
to reclaim his throne; the songs, by Elton John
and Tim Rice, are intact; and all of the well-
known characters return, though their voices
are supplied by a new generation of actors,
including Donald Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor,
Seth Rogen, and Beyoncé Knowles-Carter,
who is suitably purring and imperious. (The
exception is James Earl Jones, whose rich
tones are lent once again to Simba’s father.)
What distinguishes the new movie from its
predecessor is that the animation of old, which
bore a certain simplicity and charm, has been
replaced by computer-generated images so
precise, and so insanely detailed, that the illu-
sion of live action is almost enough to convince
us. Almost.—A.L. (7/29/19) (In wide release.)The Nightingale
Jennifer Kent’s new film is set in 1825. Like her
previous one, “The Babadook” (2014), it boasts
a strong and threatened woman at its heart. But
the ghostly, housebound atmosphere of the ear-
lier movie has made way for a journey—almost a
calvary—through inhospitable terrain. Aisling
Franciosi plays Clare, a young Irish convict who
is completing a seven-year sentence in Tasmania
(or, as it was called then, Van Diemen’s Land).
Her overseer, however, a British officer named
Hawkins (Sam Claflin), refuses to release her
and subjects her to a savage assault; when he
departs, she pursues him across the island’s wild
terrain with the aid of an indigenous tracker
named Billy (Baykali Ganambarr). The movie
simmers with a longing for revenge, frequently
boiling over, and the foe is not just Hawkins
but the colonialist order for which he stands:
barbarism, thinly disguised as civilization. Many
scenes feel punishingly hard to watch.—A.L.
(In wide release.)One Child Nation
This boldly confrontational and journalistically
probing documentary, by the director Nanfu
Wang, goes beyond the slogan of China’s long-
time “one-child policy” to reveal the system of
violence, corruption, propaganda, and silence
on which it depended. Wang, who was born and
raised in China and lives in the United States,
returns to her home town in Jiangxi Province,
where family members describe their experi-
ences of the government’s tight control over
natality and private life over all. She interviews
former “family planning” officers and a former
midwife, who estimates that she performed
fifty or sixty thousand forced abortions and
sterilizations (and who now does what she calls
penance, as an infertility specialist). Speaking
with witnesses to infanticide and abandonment
(especially of female babies), Wang connects
China’s policy to its international market for
the adoption of so-called orphans. Above all,
Wang reveals that the law depended on the im-
punity of China’s one-party rule and on the
censorship that it still enforces—and on a con-
tempt for women that goes beyond the coun-
try’s borders.—Richard Brody (In limited release.)Acclaimed as the screenwriter of “Nashville,” Joan Tewkesbury directed a
feature film, “Old Boyfriends” (1979), which links a tense, tough road trip
to the perilous mental landscape of a woman in her thirties. (A new 35-mm.
print screens at Metrograph, Aug. 2-8.) Talia Shire stars as Dianne Cruise, a
Los Angeles psychologist who drives cross-country to track down men from
her past—including an idealistic filmmaker (Richard Jordan) from college
and a coarse rocker ( John Belushi) from high school. Dianne’s reckless yet
finely calculated mission, haunted by her memories of frustration and abuse,
combines exorcism and revenge. Working with a script by the brothers Paul
and Leonard Schrader, Tewkesbury deftly balances a discordant range of
tones: realistic and symbolic, comedic and tragic, lucid and unhinged. By
way of Shire’s masklike performance and a chilling range of point-of-view
shots, mirrors, and frames within frames, Tewkesbury evokes a Hitchcockian
depth of subjectivity in what is essentially a first-person survey of women’s
hidden terrors. It’s her only feature to date; because other planned films
went unproduced, she has worked in television instead.—Richard BrodyINREVIVAL
fight kicks up a storm of blood-red feath-
ers. What happens between can be languor-
ous and hard to follow.—B.S. (Aug. 8-10.)