Day 2 of SIFF continues our good luck

And so this weekend’s viewing at the 33rd Seattle International Film Festival is over. Saw four films today, and all lived up, more or less, to the level of excellence that we’ve enjoyed so far.

We started off with the documentary “Murch,” a look at the film editor/sound designer Water Murch whose work can be seen in such films as “Apocalypse Now” (both versions), “The Godfather” (all three films) and “The English Patient.” Don’t look for this film in a mainstream theater; it’s much more likely to play on IFC or PBS. But if you want to know about the technical aspects of film, this is as good as a textbook. Better, in fact.

Then we saw the Dogma production “Red Road,” which was directed by the British director Andrea Arnold and is part of a film series called The Advance Party that seeks to use the same characters in a variety of films made by different directors (all using Dogma techniques). This one focuses on Jackie, a widow working in a public security job, and Clyde, who has just gotten out of prison. While some people will hate it, as they will most Dogma productions, “Red Road” is just exactly the kind of film that makes watching movies worthwhile: It’s inventive, well acted, intelligent and, best of all, different.

We blew off seeing a film in the middle of the day because we couldn’t make the time work out. So we walked through the ghost town that the U District has become, not just because of students having gone home but because of so many stores being boarded up. We got into one of the so-called gala showings at The Neptune, which turned out to be a historical Chinese epic titled “Battle of Wits.” Tackling the era 370 B.C., and based on a Japanese comic, the story is about the Chinese feudal wars and, in this case, a lone man (Andy Lau) who tries to stop wars before they begin. I think I would rather have read the comic.

We ended, finally, with “Rescue Dawn,” Werner Herzog’s adaptation of the true-life experiences of Dieter Dengler , a German native who flew fighter pilots during the Vietnam War for the U.S. Navy. Shot down during his first mission, over Laos, no less, Dengler (played by Christian Bale) gets captured, held for months and then escapes – but not before having endured privations and tortures that would have made St. Francis down a Corona or two. Other than an ultra-strange red-white-and-blue ending, the film was good: suspenseful and well acted, especially by Steve Zahn.

And with that, we had home tomorrow. Rachel back to New York, I back to Spokane. Maybe we’ll do it all over again, same time next year.