Dropping in on the Hamburg film festival on the way back from San Sebastian is something like stopping off at a neighbourhood bar for a nightcap after a gala bash at the Waldorf. Which is not to say that Hamburg is not interesting or lacking in films of merit -- just that it's on a much smaller scale (although Hamburg, as a city, is far bigger than San Sebastian) and is geared to the tastes of the local film-buff public, rather than to industry professionals. Films are shown in five venues, mostly centred on the University area. The only outlier, still not far away, is the marvellous Kino "Metropolis"' named after Fritz Lang's ground breaking Sci-fi classic of the early silent era. The "Metropolis» is almost next door to the modernistic opera house, but is itself an art nouveau monument of early cinema architecture which is a pleasure simply to sit in and be transported back in time to a period of movie house grace. There are only a handful of such old cinemas still standing on the continent, and still being used for the purpose for which they were originally intended, and Metropolis is one of the most magical and authentic of all.

The first film I caught was actually at the Metropolis, a nice way to start work -- (if you can call this "work" -- ha-ha) -- The flick in question was a 55' documentary by Hamburg helmer, Kai Wiesenger, bearing the strange (Hebrew) title, "ERUV - The Wire". This is a study of a prosperous Jewish community in Teaneck, New Jersey, where the ultra religious inhabitants -- orthodox, but not Hassidic -- have sealed themselves off from the rest of the town with a long wire ("Eruv") stretched from telephone pole to telephone pole, all around their glott-kosher enclave. The purpose of the wire is, presumably, to enable them better to fulfil Sabbath duties, such as carrying little children to "Shool" on Shabbes -- (a new one on me) -- and other esoteric Mitzvahs I personally have never heard of, although I grew up in a similar neighbourhood in a large American city. Interviews with people, many of them young married, reveal a steadfast desire not to let themselves be contaminated by Goyish inputs beyond their self-imposed Pale. "Bizarre-bizarre", as Louis Jouvet might put it -- and to this reviewer of urban American Jewish background, totally incomprehensible. A member of the city council interviewed expressed the opinion that closed off religious compounds of this type could set a dangerous precedent, where you might eventually have Moslems, Hindoos and other religious groups all clamouring for the right to establish their own officially sanctioned ghettos, all over the country. Apparently "Esuvs" of this kind have already sprung up in many places, something like obtrusive Jewish settlements in Ghaza -- except that they are in unthreatened cities of the west. The exact logic behind the stretching of these wires did not emerge too clearly from the film itself, but left me with a lingering question, "Why don't they use Barbed Wire?!"

The second and final film of the evening, replete with a lively champagne and tasty knick-knacks party in the foyer of the vast Cine-MAXX Multiplex -- the biggest such in Hamburg -- was a most unusual fictional bio-pic of the cult American writer, Charles Bukowski, (1920 - 1994) starring, of all people, a fully bearded Matt Dillon in the title role. The name of the film is "Factotum" -- a reference to the fact that Bukowski did every conceivable kind of grimy odd job to support his unpublished writing and heavy alcoholic habit. The director is Norwegian, Bent Hamer, working with American actors but a mostly Scandy crew. Since this is, after all, a fictional account of the writer's hard life,(although made with the full approval of his widow, and co-scripted by Jim Stark) names have been changed (slightly) and C. Bukowski comes out as "Hank Chinaski". Although Bukowski lived and worked in Los Angeles, the pic was filmed in and around the twin cities of Minneapolis-Saint Paul, a landscape that could stand in for any major American city. Chinaski's women in the film are a gritty Lili Taylor and a deglamorized, but still fetching, Marisa Tomei. This is a very dark film, as was the life of Bukowski himself, who spent most of his days hanging by his thumbs on the seamy under belly of American Society.
Actor Matt Dillon, now 41, is ageing gracefully like good wine, and looks better here than ever before, even in full beard. His laconic, alcoholic "Bukowski" is a piece of off-beat acting that could well come in for Oscar consideration, particularly if the pic itself is able to attract an audience -- an open question considering the heavy going of the tale and griminess of the setting. This is not a film to enjoy, but rather to reflect upon. The violent down-beat sequences are punctuated throughout with Dillon's own voice over enunciations as to the meaning of life and the mission of the writer. Bukowski is a writer who has a much larger following in Europe than back home, which probably accounts for the fact that it took a European director to attack the bitter story of his life.Bukowski's cynically honest outlook on life is summed up in the final statement at the end of the film, "The intellectual describes simple things in complicated words -- the artist describes the complexity of life with simple words".

Alex Deleon.