Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Support independent student journalism. Support independent student journalism. Support independent student journalism.
The Dartmouth
July 8, 2025 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

Telluride delves into memory, repression

The six films chosen by the Dartmouth Film Society from the Telluride Film Festival were picked not necessarily because they were the festival's best films, but rather because they were considered the most representative of Telluride's entire collection. Memory and repression all play crucial roles in the three films that I watched -- the Parisian mystery "Cach (Hidden)," Middle Eastern masterpiece "Paradise Now" and the uniquely American film noir "Edmond."

"Cach (Hidden)"

The premise of Michael Haneke's "Cach (Hidden)" -- in which a middle aged television host and his wife receive mysterious surveillance tapes of their house wrapped in drawings of a stick figure bleeding from the mouth -- is compelling enough to keep the viewer in suspense for the first hour of the film. However, a tangible plot never fully develops and the movie crawls to a disappointing finale.

After surveillance tapes of his home are repeatedly discovered, Georges (Daniel Auteuil) tracks the anonymous sender to the outskirts of Paris, and his pursuit ultimately becomes a journey into his own memory.

Auteuil is superb as Georges, playing the role with a contagious sense of urgency and sheer paranoia, and Juliette Binoche counters him blow-for-blow as his fiery wife, who is frustrated with her husband's secrecy.

Unfortunately, even these performances seem to run out of gas as the movie drags on. The film boasts several scenes and images that are tragic and haunting, but they lose their full effect because of the prolonged gaps of plot inactivity that accompany them. Haneke presents the audience with several themes -- racism, revenge, guilt -- but fails to offer any commentary on them. The result is a work that never quite lives up to its potential.

"Paradise Now"

All three showings of Hany Abu-Assad's "Paradise Now" were sold out, and for good reason. This was my favorite of the four Telluride films that I watched -- "Capote," "Cach" and "Edmond" being the other three.

Paradise Now follows best friends Said (Kais Nashef) and Khaled (Ali Suliman) during the days preceding their suicide-bombing mission in the Gaza strip. As the two men prepare to make the ultimate sacrifice, they wrestle with difficult questions about the nature of the occupation, their ascension to martyrdom and the nebulous roles of the victim and the oppressor.

Nashef dominates the majority of the film with his detached and troubled interpretation of Said, but it is Suliman who steals the show in the end, transforming Khaled from an impulsive and zealous militant into a compassionate and tragic figure. The earnest conversations between the two, as well as their exchanges with Said's love interest Suha (Lubna Azabal), capture the complexity of the political climate in the Middle East. Yet Abu-Assad manages to straddle the threshold separating cinema and politics by exposing the sins of all parties involved.

Though "Paradise Now" is far from uplifting, it is not quite nihilistic either. It shows that peace will continue to be elusive but does not extinguish the flicker of hope that remains. This will undoubtedly be one of the best and most important films of the year.

"9"

The Wednesday night showing of "Edmond" was preceded by "9," a heartfelt animated short by Shane Acker. This ten-minute feature shows a junkyard rag doll trying to outsmart the vicious monster that has killed his friends in a post-apocalyptic world. Though the characters are silent, the animation speaks loudly enough, creating a set that is at once nightmarish and triumphant. This short was received so favorably that Acker has already agreed to work with Focus Features to expand it into a feature-length film.

"Edmond"

Stuart Gordon's adaptation of David Mamet's play, "Edmond," is a seventy-five-minute dark comedy single-handedly driven by the always terrific William H. Macy, who inhabits the role of the title character. The film steadily crescendos to a brutal climax before finishing with a disturbing denouement.

Unhappy with the urban ennui of his white collar existence, Edmond walks out on his wife and into the seedy underworld of gypsies and prostitutes. Looking only to get laid, he instead ends up getting mugged, buying a knife and uncorking decades of repressed racism, sexism and homophobia during a deadly power trip.

Mamet's dialogic wizardry takes this gruesome plot and somehow makes it comical. Seeing Edmond plead for change through the glass wall at a peep show is worth the price of admission alone. Also, watch for brief but memorable appearances by Denise Richards, Bai Ling, Mena Suvari and Julia Stiles as the women who are unlucky enough to encounter him.

"Edmond" is a troubling work that takes the familiar figure of the affluent white male and dissects him from the inside-out. The film raises interesting moral and epistemological questions regarding fate and causality and even offers a few hilarious tongue-in-cheek answers. Gordon turns New York City into an ominous dystopia where nothing is as it seems and no one is who they say they are. Like his protagonist, Gordon is not interested in adhering to standards of political correctness, and the result is that "Edmond" is difficult to watch, employing very offensive language, explicit sexuality and gratuitous violence. However, it remains at all times a suspenseful, witty and powerful moviegoing experience.