1912 ‘Richard’ a Highlight of AFI’s Final Week

A highlight of the closing week of the AFI Film Fest is the Tuesday 8 p.m. screening at LACMA of “The Life and Death of King Richard III” (1912), the oldest known American feature film extant, which was recently donated to the AFI Archive at the Library of Congress. Noted Shakespearean actor Frederick Warde stars, and the Robert Israel Ensemble will provide accompaniment.

If you missed Emir Kusturica’s “Underground” when it screened Saturday at the AFI Film Fest, you have another chance (today at the Monica 4-Plex) to see one of the great, mind-boggling movies of the decade. It’s an instance of calamitous events inspiring sublime art as the former Yugoslavia’s greatest filmmaker spins an exuberant epic allegory, savagely satirical and farcical, a slapstick tragedy.

Miki Manojlovic stars as a World War II partisan who profits so mightily from his basement munitions factory that once the war is over--which leaves him as one of Tito’s closet collaborators--he fails to break the news to his best friend (Lazar Ristovski) and all his other workers down in his cellar, keeping up the pretense of a continuing conflict for years to come. This is just the starting point for Kusturica’s inspired, impassioned musings on the death of Yugoslavia.

Through Thursday the festival will feature enough notable fare to satisfy most film fans. Among them are the following: In “My Mother’s Courage” (today at the Galaxy), an 80th-birthday celebration at the historic UFA/DEFA studios outside Berlin for playwright-director George Tabori becomes an occasion for him to look back on his mother (Pauline Collins) facing deportation along with Hungary’s some 760,000 Jews. Much is familiar in Michael Verhoeven’s film, but its style and the sheer, incredible uniqueness of Mrs. Tabori’s story and Collins’ portrayal of her will sweep you along.

In 1987, six years after Hector Babenco had made the landmark “Pixote” with 10-year-old Fernando Ramos da Silva, a boy from the Sao Paulo slums, the young man was gunned down by police in 1987. There is certainly a fine film to be made from the story of Da Silva, who struggled to make it as an actor only to fail and be reclaimed by the streets. Despite a heartbreaking portrayal by Cassiano Carneiro, “Who Killed Pixote?” (today at the Chinese) is not it. Director Jose Joffily reportedly remarked that he wanted to make the most commercial film possible and that he did, exploiting Da Silva’s fate in the most obvious manner.

Srdjan Dragojevic’s “Pretty Village, Pretty Flame” (Tuesday at the Chinese) is a bravura antiwar film--loosely based on an actual incident in which Serbs hole themselves up in a tunnel, trapped by Muslims, ultimately placing lifelong friends on opposite sides of a senseless and bloody struggle. Within this framework, Dragojevic creates a surreal, corrosive slapstick tragedy, shifting between 1980 and 1992. Trapped with the Serbs is an American TV journalist, played with passionate conviction by Lisa Moncure.

New Zealand’s ever-venturesome Peter Jackson, with “Forgotten Silver” (Thursday at the Monica 4-Plex), has come up with just about the most audacious “mockumentary” ever. It’s about the purported discovery and subsequent restoration of “Salome,” an unfinished epic by a forgotten film pioneer whom Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein proclaims as “in some ways even better than D.W. Griffith.” Jackson manages to satirize (gently) the solemnity of zealous film scholars, yet in the “found” sequences of “Salome” he captures beautifully the innocence and magic of the early silent cinema.

Billy Bob Thornton, star and co-writer of “One False Move,” makes a potent directorial debut with “Sling Blade” (Thursday at the Galaxy), a remarkable, genuinely original parable of good and evil in which Thornton stars himself as a mildly retarded man with a terrible incident in his past. After decades in a mental institution he returns to his small Southern town, where he forms a crucial friendship with a fatherless boy (Lucas Black).

The AFI Film Fest concludes this year with Lars Von Trier’s astonishing “Breaking the Waves” (Thursday at the Monica 4-Plex), a passionate love story that turns obsessive when tragedy strikes. Emma Watson, in an awesomely focused portrayal, plays a pretty, intense Scottish girl in a remote, rigid village, whose love for her rugged Danish oil rigger husband (Stellan Skarsgard, hugely likable) propels her on an odyssey that reveals the way in which religion views the spirit and the flesh as at war with each other. An altogether major work.

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TODAY AT THE AFI FESTIVAL

The festival continues, highlighted by a tribute to Louis Malle. At the GCC Galaxy Theatre, 7021 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood: At 1:50 and 6:50 p.m.: “My Mother’s Courage” (1995). At 4:15 and 9:15 p.m.: “Dying to Go Home” (1996). At Mann’s Chinese Theater, 6925 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood: At 2:10 and 7:10 p.m.: Krzysztof Zanussi’s “In Full Gallop” (1995). At 4:30 and 9:30 p.m.: “Who Killed Pixote?” (1996). At Laemmle’s Monica 4-Plex, 1332 2nd St., Santa Monica: At 1:50 and 6:50 p.m.: Jane Campion’s “The Piano” (1992). At 2 and 7 p.m.: Rolf de Heer’s “Bad Boy Bubby” (1996). At 4 p.m.: Emir Kusturica’s “Underground” (1995). At 4:15 and 9:15 p.m.: “Bienvenido-Welcome” (1994). At the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills: At 6:30 p.m.: Colbert Foundation Tribute to Louis Malle. Malle’s widow, actress Candice Bergen, and his brother Vincent Malle will accept the award, followed by a screening of Malle’s 1974 “Lacombe, Lucien.” To order a festival pass or individual tickets, call Theatix at (213) 466-1767.