SFFILM 62 Day 3: The Sisters Brothers

The 62st San Francisco International Film Festival began Wednesday night and runs through April 23rd. Each day during the festival I'll be posting about a festival selection I've seen or am anticipating.

John C. Reilly and Joaquin Phoenix star in the Western The Sisters Brothers, playing at the 2019 San Francisco International Film Festival, April 10-23, 2019. Courtesy of SFFILM.

The Sisters Brothers (FRANCE/SPAIN/USA/ROMANIA/BELGIUM: Jacques Audiard, 2018)
playing: 7:00 tonight only at the Castro

A year and a half ago, attending a SF Opera production inspired me to wonder on twitter why there have been so many great movies made about the Klondike Gold Rush, from Chaplin's canonical classic to my personal favorite, The Far Country, to more recent entries like Dawson City: Frozen Time, but none (that I've seen) devoted to the famous California Gold Rush of 1848-1855 that played such an important role in the growth of Northern California cities and towns, including of course San Francisco. I noted that I hadn't seen Michael Winterbottom's The Claim (a former San Francisco International Film Festival closing film) but that I understand it's set later than the real height of the era, that Antonia Bird's Sierra horror movie Ravenous is set before the era, and that I'm not a particular fan of Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider (being filmed with Idaho standing in for the Sierra foothills being the least of the problems I had with it on a single viewing, though I'd be open to revisiting it, especially if a 35mm prints came around sometime.) Others suggested Robert Altman's McCabe & Mrs. Miller, which is great but set in Washington State, and Thomas Carr's The Forty-Niners, which I haven't seen for myself. I'll certainly allow that there may be a forty-niner movie as good as The Gold Rush or The Far Country, but that I simply have yet to run across it.

But assuming I haven't just failed to strike the right mother lode, I'd guess the main reason for a comparative lack of great gold fever movies set in the Golden State than in The Land of the Midnight Sun is because the later can be easily visualized by filmmakers because of the contemporaneous actualities that were made during the period; the California Gold Rush of course predates the invention of the motion picture by several decades. But though 1840s & 50s California may have lacked movie cameras, there was certainly no lack of dramatic situations. So it's rather ironic that the first relevant movie I saw since composing that twitter thread was based on a book praised by some reviewers for eschewing deep historical research. I would call The Sisters Brothers a pretty good California Gold Rush movie, not a great one disproving my original position. Again, it's not really such a problem that it includes severe historical inaccuracies like including a scene at Folsom Lake, which didn't exist before Folsom Dam was erected in 1955 (just a hundred years or so too late). But its various plot threads don't ever really feel like they add up to that much.

That doesn't mean it's not a gorgeous film, or that it doesn't contain wonderful performances, including a terrific dramatic turn from John C. Reilly, an actor I first took note of in Paul Thomas Anderson's early drama Hard Eight, but who is much better known these days for his ability to carry comedies like Walk Hard: the Dewey Cox Story and Cyrus. In fact I saw The Sisters Brothers on one of the Castro Theatre's semi-perverse double-features, in this case with Step Brothers, also starring Reilly. And I'm not surprised to see that, of these two fraternal features, SFFILM was always more likely to pick the more (though not entirely) serious-minded one to accompany its award presentation to an underappreciated actor. I always applaud efforts to bring more Westerns to the big screen, and The Sisters Brothers is certainly at least as good as any new ones I've seen in the wake of The Lone Ranger. And how can an organization that calls its annual prizes the Golden Gate Awards pass up a chance to show a movie like this at this moment, which Rebecca Solnit identified as a modern-day San Francisco Gold Rush six years ago, and which hasn't felt any less like a boom town since?

SFFILM62 Day 3
Other festival options: For those of us dying to hear more Stuart Staples music after last night's screening of High Life, today's biggest must-see may be the first of two festival showings of Minute Bodies: The Intimate Lives of F. Percy Smith, an investigation of the early-cinema non-fiction pioneer probably best known for his 1908 film The Acrobatic Fly. Not only is Staples (a.k.a. the lead Tinderstick) the musical guide for this "Vanguard" section selection, he's credited as its director. It shows at YBCA tonight, followed by the first festival showing of A Useful Life director Federico Veiroj's latest Belmonte.

Non-SFFILM option: On the subject of great mining movies, one of my very favorite things seen at last year's SFFILM edition is making a return appearance tonight only: Robert Greene's brilliantly re-enactment-heavy (and I normally loathe re-enactments) documentary about labor history in an Arizona mining town, Bisbee '17. This FREE outdoor showing launches the Spring series of Friday night screenings at ProxySF in Hayes Valley; other SFFILM alumni in this set include The Miseducation of Cameron Post  April 26th and Matangi/Maya/M.I.A. May 10.