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Film

Indie Flicks: For the eyes only

By STEVE PERSALL and PHILIP BOOTH
Published June 23, 2005

Rize (PG-13) (84 min.) - Krumping is a dance style born on the inner city streets of Los Angeles, where participants seemingly discover new joints in their bodies; twisting, flailing and flopping with such vigor that director David LaChapelle finds it necessary to inform viewers from the outset that the film speed hasn't been revved up. Some krumpers are also klowners, grease painting their faces with bright smiles that sharply contrast with their gritty surroundings.

LaChapelle is understandably fascinated with krump and klown culture, yet his documentary seldom sees beyond its dazzling physical technique. Unlike Mad Hot Ballroom, which shows children learning about life through ballroom dancing, Rize is content merely to display an art form as personal expression. The personalities don't grow, or grow on viewers. It's an interesting film, but also an incomplete one.

Rize pays the most attention to Tommy the Clown, who performs at birthday parties in full regalia, twisting balloons and encouraging young krumpers to dance. His devotion to community is obvious, and he's not in the business just for the money. Maybe he truly makes a difference, but LaChapelle isn't journalist enough to find out. I wondered what the hardcore gangstas in Tommy's Watts neighborhood think about his act. We never know.

We're shown krumpers banding together in dance troupes for mostly good-natured street challenges. Most of the participants are African-American, and LaChapelle misses another chance to dig deeper by only briefly mentioning the white and Asian groups that embraced an activity created by blacks. Is there any resentment between the races, or does krumping bring them closer together? Again, no answer.

LaChapelle's lack of insight makes one of his bolder moves tough to interpret. He intersperses footage of African tribes doing similar moves, and we're not sure if he's playing historian or satirist. Most of the time, he plays it too straightforward; a krumping contest shown without developing much tension, and neighborhood tragedies that have little to do with dancing depicted with the passing sympathy offered on the evening news.

Although we learn little about them, the krumpers and klowners in Rize are irresistible when they're on the move. Nothing appears to be choreographed, and these improvisational acrobatics seem to have an anger that might be confirmed if LaChapelle asked the right questions. It isn't enough to make viewers understand all this as cathartic; the frustrations being worked out are where the drama lies, and where outsiders could be educated. B-

- STEVE PERSALL, Times film critic

Brothers (R) (110 min.) The designated bad son stays on the homefront while the appointed good son leaves his wife and children behind to serve a military stint in Afghanistan, in Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier's uneven film Brothers. The siblings, of course, are bound to trade positions, with alcoholic slacker ex-con Jannik (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), the black sheep, evolving into something like a solid citizen, and his smarter, tougher older brother Michael (Ulrich Thomsen, Kingdom of Heaven) making another kind of transformation.

Michael's wartime experiences, revealed during passages set in the Middle East that alternate with scenes taking place in Denmark, are traumatic, to say the least. Meanwhile, Jannik befriends his beautiful sister-in-law Sarah (Connie Nielsen, Gladiator) and her two young daughters, one resentful (Sarah Juel Werner) and one openly needy (Rebecca Logstrup Soltau). He helps renovate her kitchen, then accepts her ride home after a troubling night at the local pub, and the two share several warm embraces.

There's something decidedly soapy and over the top about the concluding crisis in the most recent film from Bier, who gained critical acclaim for the 2002 tearjerker Open Hearts. Unintended references to The Stepfather and The Shining don't help much.

Brothers nevertheless benefits from uniformly excellent performances, a particularly intimate style of cinematic storytelling - extreme close-ups, hand-held cameras, warm lighting - and a story, written by Bier in collaboration with Open Hearts screenwriter Anders Thomas Jensen, that's marked by sharp characterizations and unexpected contours. B+

- PHILIP BOOTH, Times correspondent

[Last modified June 22, 2005, 10:45:07]