March 2, 2006

By LESTER GRAY
Arts Editor

Edvard Munch
Directed by Peter Watkins
Now available on DVD

Edvard Munch’s nightmarish painting The Scream — depicting a Martian-like being, hands to ears, eyes afright, and mouth in full bellow— is a staple of pop imagery. While often appearing in parody, there is nothing humorous about the terror underlying the creation of this late 19th-century work.

Edvard Munch, the film, first released in 1972, draws the eponymous artist as a man delivered into a life of agony. Born to a devout Protestant family in Christiana, Norway, a town faithful to its namesake, he found himself physically and emotionally suffocated.

Director Peter Watkins’ conveyance of a claustrophobic Northern community under low gray skies shows a population turned inward against inclement weather and severe moral strictures. Against this cheerful tableau he sets the Munch family, a large brood cursed by tuberculosis and clinical depression.

In a cramped, under-heated flat, huddled among his terminally ill mother and ailing siblings — a scene further dampened by his father’s incantations of admonitory scripture — the artist wrestles with his own pulmonary and psychic afflictions. Growing in incubation are troubled images he will share with the world.

That Edvard Munch is a work of love and dedication for Watkins is never in doubt. Doubling as editor, he maintains frame-by-frame control of the images and soundtracks he so assiduously manipulates to produce a luxuriously paced, rich offering. This DVD release purposely coincides with the first major showing in the U.S. of Munch’s work in three decades. It is a timeless window both into the life of one of the world’s most respected artists, and the roots of the expressionist movement that he helped to usher in.

The Overture

Directed by Ittisoontorn Vichailak

Now available on DVD

For age-old cultures, modernity poses a unique challenge. Even the most faithful defenders of time-honored ways can find themselves torn defending indigenous traditions against the new rewards of industry. It is such a dilemma that confronts the population where Overture takes place.

In rural Thailand, where rivers are thoroughfares and the simple vessels that travel them do not hurry, young Sorn follows a butterfly, which lures him to his brother’s wooden xylophone, known as a ranad. Picking up two nearby mallets, the toddler instinctively strikes out a tune, revealing himself as a prodigy.

Several years later, the very same sibling on whose instrument Sorn’s played his first note is found beaten to death in a nearby field, the victim of rival ranad players whom he bested at a competition. In fear of losing his only remaining son, Sorn’s father forbids him to follow in his brother’s footsteps.

But this is a tale about a calling that transcends human rationale and our willingness to hear and honor it.

Overture is inspired by the life of Luang Pradith Phairao, a venerated ranad player born in the late nineteenth century. The story is uplifting, but by itself is not exceptional. However, when married with the musical competitions, the performances are sensually invigorating, which make for a compelling package. n