Review by Charles Cassady, Jr.
The accusation is made quite often about the Cleveland Cinematheque, the town's (perhaps the state's) most eminent rep-revival movie house, that it shows nothing but depressing and distressing fare. Never mind about the Marx Brothers retrospectives, the Chaplin restorations, the Jacques Tati rarities, the neglected martial-arts masterworks rescued from grindhouses, even the campy, vintage softcore porn presented as some accidental kind of "art" (got to pay those bills luring in the college guys). All Cinematheque stuff is dark, depressing and dreary, go the detractors.In fact director John Ewing programs a wide diversity of material. But when a slash-your-wrists narrative comes along like OSLO, AUGUST 31ST, it tends to erase all memory of laughs and good times. The 2011 Norwegian feature is indeed showing at the Cinematheque on August 31, which has got to be, I dunno, the art-house equivalent of Real3D, no? Anti-hero of the piece is Anders, played by Anders Danielsen Lie. So you're watching a guy named Anders play a guy named Anders in a movie called "August 31st" on an August 31. What's not to enjoy? You'll be sorry you asked.
