THE 34th PORTLAND INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, DAY 13

"crab trap," columbia, dir. oscar ruiz navia

for all its lumbering preachiness about white capitalism spoiling colombia, "crab trap" still manages to effect a beautifully analgesic mood of resignation to basic living. david, a foreign tourist, arrives in la barra, a (very probably fictional) town on the pacific coast of colombia looking for a boat to leave the country. where is he trying to go, and how does he plan to get there in a boat with just an outboard motor? there's not much off the colombian pacific coast. daniel perks up when he's told by a group of local boys that they'll be boating over to san juan for a soccer match. unless that san juan is just another remote coastal village then it doesn't have a real world counterpart. but it's the very impossibility of daniel's proposition and its attendant sense of being completely out of real place or time that give the "crab trap" its ruminant theatrical quality. daniel trades cerebro work for a place to stay while he waits for the village fishermen to return with the boats. jazmin, the village sexpot, floats between cerebro, daniel and paisa, cerebro's civic rival and the only other foreigner in la barra (though everyone else is black and not indigenous). a young girl befriends daniel from his arrival in la barra and teaches him her game of trapping crabs on the beach. "you don't understand adults' problems," daniel tells her at one point. does she, maybe? or maybe daniel, with the little girl as his helpful foil, needs to learn to let go of the problems he lets preoccupy him. although "crab trap" is moody in general, its water scenes are especially contemplative, whether the camera is bobbing along with daniel as he takes a swim in the ocean or slowly following cerebro and daniel as they boat into the jungle for wood. the allegory of why all the fish are gone from the local waters while paisa has so many on ice may hit too squarely, but the blow definitely doesn't knock "crab trap" off its feet. good thing, too. it'd be a shame if it messed up that pretty face.

"cameraman: the life and work of jack cardiff," united states, dir. craig mccall

jack cardiff was the guy that photographed "black narcissus" and "the red shoes." he also did "conan the destroyer" and "rambo: first blood part ii," but apparently his best days were in technicolor. "cameraman" is a delightful biography on a cinematic figure of huge import as well as an eye onto the development of cinematic photography in the twentieth century. i felt that i shouldn't have had to suffer so much scorsese, but he was apparently a big fan and follower of cardiff's, and he had some interesting things to say about cardiff's experience as a painter and his application of his painterly knowledge to film lighting. "cameraman" was funny and inspirational, but in ways that wilhelm reich would have hated, principally because they served mostly to inspire envy (the appeal of hollywood really is just the mass psychology of facism). i was in fine spirits when i left the theater, striding happily under the vicarious delusion that it was i who had gotten that oscar and had taken "amateur" photos of audrey hepburn, sophia loren and marilyn monroe. that's the power of motion pictures. jack cardiff knew it well.