The Jameson Dublin International Film Festival is in its 11th year in 2013, with a programme boasting 130 feature films, plus shorts. Totally Dublin selects five potential highlights from its bulging schedule for you to consider in between looking for what hotel Danny De Vito is staying at.
Cloud Atlas // Saturday 16th // 19:30 // Savoy //
This film adaptation of David Mitchell’s beloved time travel novel has three directors: Tom Tykwer (of Run Lola Run) and Lana and Andy Wachowski (of The Matrix trilogy). Can the Savoy handle that much steampunk? You’re going to have to be there to find out when this ambitious project screens in Ireland for the first time. Opening to mixed reviews on the festival circuit (some glowing, some sympathetic but appalled), Cloud Atlas is already garnering a reputation as an extremely divisive film. Kane or Waterworld? You decide. Make sure to watch out for Tom Hanks’ many amusing haircuts, proof that class transcends time itself.
See our feature interview with the Wachowskis, Tom Tykwer and novelist David Mitchell here.
The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology // Sunday 17th // 14:25 // Light House //
Everyone’s favourite Slovenian Lacanian reprises his collaboration with director Sophia Fiennes with this (free-standing) sequel to 2006’s The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema. Žižek’s focus is more explicitly of ideology this time around, but there are overlaps in his cinematic source material, from Titanic to Taxi Driver to The Sound of Music (fans of …Cinema will recall his observation that the Nazis in the latter film are, to all intents and purposes, anti-Semitic caricatures), as well as Žižek’s own published work, in which ideology has been a central object of his analysis. Žižek’s inexorable rise to prominence as the thinker du jour is not without reason, his interventions being unflinchingly provocative and entertaining, his manner endearing. Cinema’s oneiric ideological function is here examined in his distinctly colourful style of film essay, in what will be a festival highlight for those interested in criticism of the medium and of society at large.
Pietà // Monday 18th // 18:10 // Light House //
Kim Ki-duk’s 18th feature won the Golden Lion at last year’s Venice Film Festival, amidst a brouhaha that saw Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master fail to sweep the boards due to a technicality in the voting system. However, it’s fair to say that Michael Mann’s jury thought Pietà was at least the second best film on the programme — no mean plebiscitary feat, considering it depicts rape, incest, extreme violence and the slaughter of animals in the course of its 104 minutes, while PTA only had Joaquín Phoenix have sex with a sandcastle and its Monday slot on the JDIFF bill may well be its only appearance in Dublin screens, given that even a limited release seems unlikely. Fans of Ki-duk’s exacting 2000 cult hit The Isle can expect a similarly visceral experience, though Pietà is reportedly his most mainstream feature yet.
