Utne Reader Film Reviews: July-August 2009

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A Secret Search for Mercy
A Jihad for Love
(First Run Features, on DVD)

In many countries ruled by Islamic law, the term homosexuality is often used in close proximity to the words “punishable by death.” The handful of gay and lesbian Muslims profiled in the documentary A Jihad for Love skirt legal, social, and bodily peril by living in secrecy and often by leaving their homelands for the West. Rather than rejecting their religion, which colors every aspect of their lives, most of them struggle to reconcile it with their sexuality. “If God planted this love in my heart then it must be legitimate,” says a lesbian living in Turkey. Though they find measures of acceptance, the blurred-out faces of some subjects remind the rest of us just how dangerous it is to walk their road. —Keith Goetzman

Utne Reader Approved:

Ashes of time Redux (Sony Pictures Classics; on DVD) is poetry in motion, among the most beautiful action films ever made. First released 15 years ago, this is a new cut of the swordplay headscratcher by legendary director Wong Kar-wai.

Community-based conservation ostensibly gives local people a stake in green tourism to help preserve wilderness and wildlife. The hopeful documentary Milking the Rhino (Bullfrog; on DVD) finds two traditional African communities sorting out the somewhat stickier realities.

Much better late than never, the DVD releases of Jean-Luc Godard’s 40-year-old, thoroughly modern Made in U.S.A. and Two or Three Things I Know About Her (Criterion) represent the brainy auteur in his ornery anticapitalist phase.

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