"I’m not even sure it’s a film. I’m calling it a visual history," Paul Cronin said, shortly before admitting that even he hadn’t yet watched A Time to Stir, his mammoth work-in-progress documentary on the protests at Columbia in 1968. With a preface like that, you usually get a movie that’s pretty rough—but A Time to Stir, unfinished or not, was one of the more compelling documentaries shown in Toronto. (I certainly enjoyed it more than the stodgy Harvard Beats Yale 29-29, which, summary notwithstanding, really does focus less on the ’60s than on the legendary football game—and I’m not just saying that because my affinities run to Columbia.) More on it in my Toronto Film Festival wrap-up piece.
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You know the festival is coming to a close when the press office is no longer serving free Starbucks. That’s just mean—not to mention unfair to Christian Petzold, whose Jerichow, a pastiche of The Postman Always Rings Twice, had me struggling to stay conscious. (Most definitely my fault, not the film’s.)
It’s difficult to believe, but it’s almost time to wrap this series up—no entry tomorrow, as I’ll be trying to catch three hours of a four-hour Columbia ’68 documentary on my way to the airport. Perhaps the festival staff will let me bring my luggage to the theater. (My Starbucks gripe notwithstanding, they’re actually quite friendly.) Look for a wrap-up piece in next week’s issue, and I’ll post a more informal assessment on Monday.
For now, I’ll say just a brief word about last night’s Gala screening of part one of Public Enemy Number One (a.k.a. L’Instinct de Mort, an inarguably better title), the first part of the true-life story of French gangster Jacques Mesrine. The movie stars Vincent Cassel in a role that, as written, really cries out for a Peter Sellers. It’s monotonous, conventional and a real disappointment from Jean-Francois Richet (who did 2005’s promising Assault on Precinct 13 remake), though it gets a good laugh by casting Gérard Depardieu in the equivalent of the Robert De Niro role. And to be fair, I’ve never seen a movie that features a Quebecois prison break before. Part two hasn’t been finished yet; I can’t say I’m quivering with anticipation.
Farewell until next year, Toronto—my early September home.
I use that title every year, don’t I? End-of-festival surreality is beginning to set in; it’s the point where the French director you interviewed the day before can come up up to you on the street and chummily inquire if you’ve seen his documentarian friend. (Weird.) The remainder of my day will be spent at the video library playing catch-up—and of course, beginning to write a wrap-up piece before things have quite wrapped up. By tomorrow night, Torontonians will have mostly reclaimed their city, while a few holdouts will stay on to check out buzz-gatherers that haven’t been properly vetted. No, I haven’t heard anything about Ebert and the alleged Bindergate, which certainly sounds like an anecdote that’s been blown out of proportion. (I was at that screening, and the first word I got of the incident was actually reading that story. Admittedly, the theater is enormous, so it’s possible I just didn’t notice.) (Editor’s note: Ebert weighs in, saying the "incident" was overblown and pointedly doesn’t mention Lou Lumenick, the New York Post film critic reported to be the thwacker in other reports.)
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Every couple of years, there’s a film that arrives at Toronto on a wave of trumped-up controversy, like Death of a President from 2006. This year, it was Paris, Not France, which had all but one of its screenings canceled; it was reported that Paris Hilton, the subject of the film, didn’t want the festival to show it. Now, if there were a legitimate legal issue, as some surmised, wouldn’t every screening have been blocked? And why in hell would Paris appear at the screening, as she did last night, albeit without doing a Q&A? It sure sounds like garden-variety hype-mongering; the publicist sent me the official statement after the movie, so here it is:
"We are pleased to have this opportunity to screen the film. For a variety of reasons - which we are unable to discuss - the film will only be screened once. We are optomistic [sic] that the film will ultimately be released commercially, but we are not able to comment further."
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Not much to report today as far as super-anticipated films are concerned—I haven’t yet caught up with Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker—and I’m not sure how much you all care to hear about Adventures in Benworld. I could tell you about how I nearly stole Claire Denis’s espresso at yesterday’s Unifrance luncheon. (The waiter put the tray down for a moment and I thought it was for communal use.) Or about how last night when I nearly came to blows with a colleague who believes that Che, for deliberately portraying Che Guevara at a remove, is a deeply irresponsible film. (I say we take it to the mat, Mickey Rourke-style. What this critic has in height advantage I will make up for in speed.)
Fortunately, we were both quickly pacified by Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s lovely Tokyo Sonata, a Japanese family comedy that in many ways feels like silent-era Ozu—I’m thinking specifically of Tokyo Chorus—in its portrait of a father who endeavors to hide his job loss from his family. The movie’s use of light and framing is sublime, and the overt political jabs and left-field final act elevate it beyond simple homage.
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Apologies in advance for the headline—I’m a bit rushed. The talk of the festival is Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, which had its North American premiere last night, the day after it won the Golden Lion at Venice. (Word on the street is that Aronofsky and Rourke barely made it to Toronto in time for their own premiere.) "Masterpiece," a colleague who saw it early raved in a one-word e-mail, and while I wouldn’t go that far, The Wrestler is easily Aronofsky’s best film—he keeps his aggressive stylization in check and simply concentrates on telling a story as well as he can. (As Variety noted, it actually begins like a Dardenne brothers film.)
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Two years after appearing at Toronto for the infamous world premiere of Borat, director Larry Charles returned to the Ryerson last night with Religulous, a willfully controversial documentary in which Bill Maher travels the world to figure out why people believe in things they can’t prove.
The screening was greeted by what the filmmakers insisted were real protests (pictured); it "wouldn’t have been so lame if I’d hired them," Maher quipped. Ironically, Maher’s interview technique isn’t all that different from Borat’s, and your enjoyment of the movie probably depends on your preference of emcee. There are some illuminating interviews (with a Vatican astronomer, for instance, who’s found a way to reconcile science and faith), but Maher, true to form, often won’t let those clueless believers finish a thought. His bulldozing interrogations can be amusing, even insightful, but they won’t necessarily do any favors for his cause. According to Maher in the Q&A, the group that most hates him is not a religion but Australians, thanks to a tasteless Steve Irwin costume he wore last Halloween. ("I love you, though, mate!" shouted an Australian from what sounded like the balcony.)
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The big-ticket item last night was the world premiere screening of Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles, a film that—in what sometimes turns out to be an ominous sign (I’m thinking specifically of Terry Gilliam’s Tideland)—won’t be appearing in any of the other fall festivals. But that’s unaccountable: The movie is a delight, a thoroughly entertaining slice of historical fiction about a 17-year-old (Zac Efron) selected to play Lucius in Welles’s Mercury Theater production of Julius Casear. The movie is aided immeasurably by unknown Christian McKay, who not only sounds like Welles (in real life, too, judging from the onstage Q&A), but captures his mannerisms and his ability to make everyone around him feel like a world-class talent. The backstage intrigue finds a balance between celebrating the triumphs of ensemble work and depicting what it’s like to take a back seat to a genius; the film has the idealism of most coming-of-age films, but cut with a bracing dose of cynicism, particularly when it comes the life lessons the main character learns from the Mercury’s resident object-of-desire (Claire Danes, pictured above with Efron).
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What’s this? An egg salad sandwich from the Bloor Street Diner? Spirited debates about the merits of the new Jan Troell film? Long lines snaking around the Ryerson? I must be in Toronto.
The festival officially opened last night with the Canadian WWI epic Passchendaele, but for many, the festival’s real opening night is always the kickoff of the Midnight Madness sidebar. (That spot occasioned the most memorable premiere of 2006, a screening of Borat during which the projector broke and Michael Moore took the stage.) This year, the honor fell to Jean-Claude Van Damme, who plays a version of himself in the new meta comedy JCVD. But apparently, opening Midnight Madness isn’t a priority on the Bloodsport star’s schedule. The Muscles from Brussels was off directing a film in Thailand; he did have the good grace to send a video introduction, in which he apologized effusively for not being there and offered the audience a “big hug.”
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Next week, the Toronto International Film Festival will be giving hard-hat tours of the Bell Lightbox, a new, still-in-construction repertory facility that promises to be the city’s foremost venue for cinephiles. (It was advertised at last year’s festival before every film, to the tune of Feist’s "I Feel It All.")
My only request: Can I keep the hard hat? Operating on 40 films a week, zero sleep and a diet consisting mainly of croissants from Tim Horton’s, critics become a cranky bunch, and a helmet seems like an important safety measure. Who knows what manner of violence will break out on the lines to see Richard Linklater’s Me and Orson Welles? By a strange coincidence, many of this year’s most promising films have titles that connote physical pain: Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler, Jean-Claude Van Damme’s JCVD. (Okay, he didn’t direct that film, but we all know he’s the auteur.) And of course, it’s only a matter of time before someone proposes the obvious drinking game to accompany Claire Denis’s new film, 35 Rhums. Don’t try this at home, readers. Seriously.
And, as always at Toronto, we take the pain because we love. Join me for daily updates—and suggest your own drinking games—beginning Friday.
