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TORONTO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Diary 4: Sept. 10,
2000
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JEFF DANIELS TAKES A BOW IN THE NEAR DARK |
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Took
some time this morning - just had to get some rest. Film festivals, like most
endurance events, are all about pacing yourself. I'm already starting to
partially feel the effects of watching too many bloody films in a short amount
of time.
Subtitled films are the killer - not that I'd ever advocate
dubbing a film, it's just if you are watching 6 in a row it's hard enough,
reading even two or three in a row is just brutal. Your eyes glaze, your
head spins, it gets pretty ugly.
Worst thing that can happen - you start
thinking that something that happened last film is somehow connected to
the part of the one you are watching. Not good in the period piece when you are
wondering when the space aliens are coming back.
Went to a public
screening of Chasing Sleep. Jeff Daniels managed to show up and say hi
to the packed crowd at the Uptown. Here's a suggestion to filmmakers - avoid
titles that can easily be turned against the film. As in "I was chasing sleep
while watching Chasing Sleep." Only thing worse, perhaps, is when the
porn-name version needs no clever rearrangement (Black Hole vs.
Hannah Does Her Sisters - a subtle difference, but key.)
Man, I'm
going movie crazy.
SOLDIERS IN
THE ARMY OF GOD
Directed by: Marc Levin and Daphne
Pinkerson
Soldiers in the Army of God is a surprisingly,
sometimes shockingly intimate look at a group that reverentially considers
itself the most militant anti-abortion group in America. Free from overt
prodding, the film deals with all the hot button issues, from the Internet's
role in facilitating recruitment and communication amongst so-called pro-life
groups, to the debate on the (apparent to some) hypocrisy of murdering abortion
doctors for their role in terminating foeti / killing babies.
The film
also deals with more obscure elements of these characters, such as
autocircumcision by one of the militants, or the illumination of the obvious
hostility towards a woman's right to choose on a far wider range of issues.
Furthermore, the "voice of God" gets mentioned a lot by members of this army,
in phrases such as "If the voice of God tells me to kill someone, I would", or,
"God told me to move my truck."
The filmmakers try to inject some
balance, and it is perhaps this showing of the "other side" that lessens the
impact of the documentary as a film. The other side, the women's clinic
workers, speak of emotion and remembrance for those lost. The army, on the
other hand, spends much of its time articulating its prevailing ideology,
constructing (loose) arguments to justify their actions. No justification is
provided by the "other side", and even a brief, articulate expression of what
drives those who run women's clinics might have made for more compelling
film.
The film is very hard to sit through without wanting to slap the
participants, but you never feel like they aren't party to the things that
they're saying, or that if they had the chance they would present their views
in a different way. In short, none of the film seems overtly manipulated - it
is extremely effective in providing an insiders look into some key participants
in this radical movement.
In a sick way, from their own militant
perspective, the film also turns the tables - by knowing more about them, it
makes them easier to hunt. Mind you, freedom of choice seldom needs a murder to
make its case understood.
Grade: A-
SIGNS AND
WONDERS
Directed by: Jonathan Nossiter
Yet another
in a growing number of films shot digitally and blown up to 35 mm. This film
had tremendous promise, with a really strong cast and a fairly interesting
premise - a mix of adultery, semiotics, Athens, revolutionary prisoners-of
conscience, and Greek pastries. The result, however, is Baklava gone bad -
layer after layer doesn't add up to a good tasting treat, and in the end the
cast is wasted in what amounts to a poor who-dunnit.
I've been a huge
fan of Stellan Starsgard's since Breaking the Waves, and he's simply
wasted in this film. Deborah Kara Unger, known to many as the ice-blonde in
Cronenberg's Crash, is a more tepid version of that character here. In
short, the film never generates enough interest in the characters to elicit the
type of obvious involvement in the narrative required to enjoy this
film.
Danger: when your suspense film ends and you don't care who really
did "it", whatever "it" is, you might want to rethink the plot.
Grade: C
Chasing Sleep
Directed by:
Michael Walker
I hate dissing first-time filmmakers. They've
managed to be given the reigns on what is often a big pile of cash to make
their flick. Still, this is far from a good film, though it did have some
interesting elements.
Jeff Daniels is a Professor of English who can't
sleep. He also has a wife who hasn't come home by 5am. He starts to worry,
calls the cops, and then weird stuff starts happening, all, it seems, because
of the shifting perspective of the lead - in short, the film questions
characterizing the insomniac as instead simply a maniac.
Aside from the
obvious Lolita-meets-Oleanna gratuitous sex scene (seems that
young breasts plopped atop older men are en vogue again after American
Beauty's success), the film feels like a tired retread of a
Polanski-inspired plot. The story of a guy who's never asleep but never really
awake either was done to much greater success in the likes of Fight
Club. Chasing Sleep is a forgettable film, but perhaps one that will
lead to the director filmmaking one that hits the mark. Long, introspective,
indulgent cinema is certainly here to stay - let's try for something a little,
well, better.
Grade: C- (will sleep with actress for a reconsidered
grade, like in this movie!)
Ginger
Snaps
Directed by: John Fawcett
I never grew up
watching horror films - Jaws was so scary when I was 9 that I feared
shower heads, feeling the fish was gonna come out and nibble. Friday the
13th et. al. just never held an interest. Now that I'm older, I find most
of them boring and silly - I find suspense far more satisfying (and, well,
scary) than most horror movies
That said, I didn't find Ginger
Snaps very scary at all. However, I did find it to be quite wry and witty,
at least until the last 20 minutes when the film went to shit.
I have
never seen moody Goth-ish teenagers portrayed so well on screen. Emilly Perkins
and Katharine Isabelle play sisters a year apart but in the same grade.
Outcasts from the school, they find solace in their extremely tight friendship.
.Mixing misguided nihilism with an aesthetic (if not religious) fascination
with death, their bonds are tested when the town's monster manages to infect
one of the siblings with lycanthropy.
Oh, yeah. This is a werewolf
movie. Shot in Markham, Ontario. I grew up in suburbia like Markham. Not
pretty. An area, I must admit, made far more aesthetically interesting when
it's got disembowelled dogs littering the parks and backyards of the 'hood. Go
figure.
The film draws the connection that becoming a werewolf and
devouring people and licking their blood and slaughtering their dogs is similar
to becoming an adolescent young woman. Now, I'm not one to judge, but, since
the script is by a fine and balanced woman, I'll let her plot speak for itself.
For most of its running time the film toys with all the standard
conventions, providing some really fun and surprising dialogue. It's when it
devolves into a "boys" movie, when the creature is fully seen and the killing
begins, the movie tanks (remember Jaws? AVOID showing the creature as
much as you can!).
The last 30 seconds slips back into ambiguity, with a
unsatisfying ending providing an absence of catharsis. Still, I really liked
the first hour and a bit of the film, so I'd have to say at the least that its
work a peek for yourself. Even goth-fav horror-pasticheRocky Horror gets
really dumb once the good songs are exhausted and the beer (et. al.) has worn
off.
Grade: B (for supreme effort)
George
Washington
Directed by: David Gordon Green
David
Gordon Green, the young director of George Washington, has done a truly
remarkable thing -- he has created a film of rare beauty and power that never
for a second lets on the fact that its an independent film made for an
extremely low budget.
The film plays like the work of a mature
filmmaker, and it is not surprising to find that the director is an enormous
fan of Terence Mallick (he keeps a photo of him in his wallet.) Green's film is
an obvious antidote to the shock MTV cut tactics and low production values that
plague many independent features. Going back to a more graceful era of
filmmaking, the movie nonetheless escapes from appearing nostalgic or
conservative. This is filmmaking with the first word underlined,
gorgeous natural light photography and magic-hour moments used to capture a
quirky and charming tale of a bunch of kids in the Southern United
States.
George Washington is all the more remarkable because it
is a political film without dogmatism, a quietly ideological film without a
negative agenda, philosophical without being didactic. Even so overtly
patriotic a device as a 4th of July parade lacks the smugness usually presented
along with such displays.
The performances are absolutely amazing given
how teens are usually portrayed on screen. Green chose a group of untrained
people (culled from church groups, bowling alleys, etc.) to create what amounts
to an ensemble cast. Colour blind and age blind, the situation is somewhat
idealized, with the kids and adults talking as peers.
The whole film
plays out in natural tones -- no sense at all that any of the actions are
merely plot devices meant to drive the narrative. The conclusions drawn are
ambiguous, all the more to emphasise the heightened reality of the film's
texture. It is as if Green sets events into motion early in he film and has the
patience and maturity to let things go where they should.
The is one of
the best first feature films I've ever seen -- nothing about this film seems
cheep or a compromise, yet the film was shot in two weeks, with two weeks of
prep. and eight weeks of editing, a remarkably short time for a film of this
clarity and power.
Green is to be congratulated for getting his vision
intact upon the screen. To his collaborators, from Director of Photography and
Art Director to the rest of the crew and cast, it is hoped that you know that
your sacrifices and long hours were well worth the final product. This is
certainly a director to watch out for in the future.
Grade:
A+
When Brendan Met
Trudy
Directed by: Kieron J. Walsh
Roddy
(Commitments, Snapper) Doyle's first script finds a film geek
falling in love with a peppy young blonde woman.
The film borrows
heavily from a variety of film references - scenes rights out of Goddard's
Breathless are replayed, complete with International Herald Tribune
white t-shirt.
The whole thing plays out a bit like an episode of
Dream On, where film references are used in lieu of original thoughts or
dialogue. The impact is, of course, directly correlated to whether or not you
get what films are being referenced.
When the two characters are being
charming to one another, it works quite well. When the film collapses into a
banal heist film, it certainly takes a negative turn. Fun but
forgettable.
Grade: B- |
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