Week 3

The Best of Week Three

Ivan's Childhood

Best Film: Munyurangabo

Best Director: Andrei Tarkovsky (Ivan’s Childhood)

Best Script: Lee Isaac Chung and Samuel Gray Anderson (Munyurangabo). Easy choice — writing so good that it disappears; you could watch the movie and think that it wasn’t scripted at all.

Best Performance: The entire cast of Munyurangabo

Best Moment: The scene in Ivan’s Childhood where Ivan’s dripping hand is transposed from the war front to the bottom of a well before we go up to the top of the well where Ivan and his mother are looking down — and where Tarkovsky then pulls off a brilliant effect where the bottom of the well briefly seems close enough to touch.

Best Use of Sound: For the second straight week, no particular standout. (It may be that I’ll replace this category with something else.) I’ll go with the audio effects in Kon-Tiki, particularly the big storm scene.

Best Use of Visuals: Tarkovsky again in Ivan’s Childhood. Not only the well scene that I described above but several others. Honorable mention to the great fight choreography in Ip Man.