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player ready...‘Beaches of Agnes’ ****
There is a street in the Pointe Courte neighborhood of Sete, a seaside village in Southern France, that is named for Agnes Varda, the French filmmaker who lived there in the ’40s with her mother, brothers and sisters in a sailboat anchored to the quay while her father was off at war.
In her first film, 1954’s “La Pointe-Courte,” it was a path for a pair of lovers as well as the fishermen, bakers, tailors and the rest who make up a working village. Parallel stories bumping shoulders on the street. That is the gift of seeing life through Varda’s lens, the rhythms of every day turn extraordinary.
Two years ago, when she was not quite 80, Varda decided to take a second look at that life, and the result is “The Beaches of Agnes,” a lovely bit of memory and mischief. One of the seminal filmmakers of the French New Wave, she waded into those experimental waters long ago with those she calls her cinematic brothers — Jean-Luc Godard, Eric Rohmer and Alain Resnais among them. It was a man’s world, and she loved it.
That sense of liberation infuses “Beaches.” When others might choose to spend their eighth decade spoiling grandchildren and drinking tea (and make no mistake, she is doing a bit of that), Varda is clearly still searching for new cinematic shores and finding them. Packed as the new film is with so many interlocking love stories, of people and places, of ideas and experimentation, it’s difficult not to leave the theater giddy at being swept up in her embrace.
Varda says that when she looks inside people, she sees landscapes. Beaches, she explains, would describe her best, starting with the one she is standing on that faces the North Sea near Brussels, where she was born and the family lived until the advancing Germans frightened them into escape.
In “Beaches,” Varda does not so much tell us about her world as let us see how she constructs it, visually and intellectually, and it is breathtaking at times to watch. Though it is never exactly a straight line, the documentary takes us through the progression of her work, films such as “Cleo From 5 to 7,” the one that would introduce her to the world in 1961; her children, her life with the late filmmaker Jacques Demy, her friends, all the things she holds precious.
“Beaches” also takes us into the other rooms of her artistic life, which got its start in still photography. The thousands of photos she shot of China in 1957, of Cuba and Castro in 1962, of the Black Panthers and protest in Los Angeles in 1968, of widows after Demy’s death in 1990. Often they become pieces of performance art, as did the widows project.
There is also much laughter and whimsy dancing around this life. Midway through the documentary, Varda constructs a huge whale on one of her beaches out of tarps and then sits in the belly, like Jonah, telling us part of her story. Philosophical questions are posed by an orange cardboard cat with the synthesized voice of filmmaker Chris Marker. She creates a sandy beach in her Paris courtyard and moves her staff outside to conduct the day’s business in bathing suits.
— Betsy Sharkey, Tribune Newspapers
‘Throw Down Your Heart’ ****
As stirring as its evocative title, “Throw Down Your Heart” follows banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck on a musical journey across Africa that proves a joyous celebration of cross-cultural unity. If that sounds too “Kumbaya,” get over it and settle in for an exhilarating feast of sight and sound, courtesy of the talented Fleck and the documentary’s director, Sascha Paladino.
Though most may summon up the American South when they think of the banjo, it actually has its roots in Africa, an obscure fact that inspired 11-time Grammy winner Fleck to explore the origins of his beloved instrument. Amid stops in Uganda, Tanzania, the Gambia and Mali, Fleck meets a vivid array of townspeople who generously bring him into their earthy, relatively cheerful worlds. Fleck (whose personal and professional background is oddly kept to a minimum here) doesn’t act the fish out of water, respectfully and comfortably fitting into the local ways, while jamming with a host of vibrant musicians.
The sounds they make together are exciting and infectious; the various traditional instruments used — many banjo-related — are intriguing to behold. A striking recording session, which most notably features charismatic Malian diva Oumou Sangare, caps Fleck’s amazing African adventure.
— Gary Goldstein, Tribune Newspapers
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Both films play various times Fri.-Thu. at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave., Chicago; 773-871-6604; musicboxtheatre .com. Bela Fleck will attend the 8 p.m. Sat. screening for a Q&A. Visit the Music Box site for more details.