SBIFF’s Pop-Up Art House

Since fall, the art of esoteric moviegoing has improved vastly around these parts. You know what kinda movies I mean — films, the kind that cineastes seek. They’re the art house celluloid enigmatic wonders that stretch in an unbroken line from Jean Luc Godard’s Alphaville to Lars Von Triers’ Nymphomaniac: the kind that for generations Santa Barbarans have complained that Metropolitan Theatres (the company with a de facto movie monopoly in S.B.) just won’t book with any regularity.

“I have to drive to L.A. to see the movies I want to see,” whines the perennial bleary-eyed bohemian with a copy of Cahiers du Cinema tucked firmly under his arm. Well, not really, or at least not any more, thanks to a happy coalition between the Santa Barbara International Film Festival and, here’s a surprise, the overlords of the Metropolitan Theatre Corporation.

So far the historical concord has been sterling, serving up films that otherwise no one might have known about, from the dark Israeli comedy Big Bad Wolves to the brilliantly unforgettable documentary about Indonesian political murders in the 1960s, The Act of Killing (my personal pick for best film of 2013, no matter what Oscar declares). This week is no exception in the unexpected but indispensable viewing department, as the series known humbly as Showcase screens Generation War, a two-part big-screen presentation of a German film of historical import. Not unlike a cross between Downton Abbey and Band of Brothers, this incredibly engaging melodrama tracks the lives of five young people in Berlin — two Nazi soldiers, a nurse, an entertainer, and a young Jew — about to participate in the horrors of World War II. David Denby of The New Yorker calls it “confounding — silly and tragic, physically alive and morally obtuse.” I think it’s akin to all of the great new television series, enriched mainly by its ironic narrative vantage point. In this case it’s the most dramatic antiheroes imaginable: Hitler youth. But the best part is that, thanks to the Showcase series, you can judge for yourself at the Plaza de Oro Theatre on Wednesday nights.