Gateway Cinephiles

StLIFF: Day Four

That All May Be One
2008 (USA)
Director: Karen Kearns

Karen Kearns’ That All May Be One is less a documentary than a feature-length bit of boosterism for the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondelet, whose American arm is based here in St. Louis. Kearns boasts a background in television and radio, and it shows. Out of native pride and an acknowledgment of Kaerns’ constraints, I hesitate to label That All Be One amateurish, but it does present itself with the earnest competence and nary a whiff of aesthetics that characterize just about every human interest segment in local newscasts. That said, as a nonbeliever, I’m perhaps an appropriate test for Kaerns’ bare bones aim: Does she render the subject compelling? I think so, but not because the glowing treatment of the Sisters’ work–at St. Joseph Academy, the Institute for the Deaf, Nazareth Living Center, and so on–is intrinsically engaging. Rather, it’s the simmering social problems beneath the surface that snag one’s attention, which Kearns intuitively backgrounds while allowing the sisters themselves to speak with veiled sharpness. If the Catholic hierarchy of the next century desires a record of where this century’s Great Schism began, they might glimpse it in the words of the sisters and laity Kaerns profiles.

The Grocer’s Son (Le Fils de l’Épicier)
2007 (France)
Director: Eric Guirado

On paper, there’s nothing remarkable about Eric Guirado’s gently empathetic The Grocer’s Son that might recommend it above any other slightly implausible tale of personal transformation in a humble setting. The vaguely misanthropic Antoine (Nicolas Cazalé) returns from the city to his family’s provincial general store after his father (the delightfully craggy Daniel Duval) suffers a heart attack. He reluctantly agrees to take over the grocery van route through the area’s remote hamlets, dragging along his spunky neighbor, Claire (Clotilde Hesme), in the hopes that his not-so-secret crush might bear fruit in the country air. It sounds trite, so why does The Grocer’s Son feel like such a fresh breeze, a holiday snapshot of the perils of family, love, human decency, and the inexorable shifts in the French culture and landscape? Guirado triumphantly wrestles against every lousy cinematic instinct and presents a subdued, finely structured work whose uncluttered and poignant realism emerges as its finest asset. The performances are commendable—particularly Cazalé, who fills out a role that tempts cheap distaste and a hasty redemption—but the film’s success rests on its simplicity. Guirado’s eye for the patterns of rural life and the novel strains they exert shine through with clarity.

The Objective
2008 (USA / Morocco)
Director: Daniel Myrick

The Objective is director Daniel Myrick’s first feature film since his auspicious debut, The Blair Witch Project, a clockwork vice of old school terror. Unfortunately, this sophomore effort is just an uninspired genre two-step, an unmemorable The X-Files episode drawn out to feature length, with all the bland beats that implies. In the mountains and deserts of Afghanistan, a squad of soldiers and a local translator follow the lead of a shifty CIA agent (Jonas Ball), who fiddles with gizmos and remains stingy with the mission details. Ostensibly, they’re seeking out a holy man for propaganda purposes, but you don’t need me to tell you there’s something else going on. Ball narrates in a grave monotone, tossing around Conrad-style mutterings plucked from the middle of creative writing class grading curve. Otherwise, The Objective isn’t really an awful film, just so thoroughly recycled in its details and limp in its execution that one wonders how Myrick managed to spin it out to 90 minutes. Admittedly, the film coaxes some arresting and terrifying sights here and there, lunging at Western fears of Islam and American illusions of omnipotence. Given that the portentous conclusion explains nothing, however, I wonder why I bothered.