I post my TIFF reviews here each year (copyright Karen Allison, 2006)
The Toronto Film Festival for 2006 was outstanding. I felt that the
quality of the films was more uniformly good, both the big, Hollywood
ones and the independent films as well. The documentaries were
outstanding.
THE MAGIC FLUTE
The first film I saw was Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Mozart's "The
Magic Flute." He was shown live from Venice, where there was a joint
World Premiere along with the TIFF one here. He gave a jolly
introduction and was off to the Venice premiere.
This is a strange screenplay, though the music is, as expected,
wonderful and the singing is spectacular. These are young opera
singers who will no doubt be stars and very soon. Beautiful faces,
beautiful voices. However, it is a film that cannot decide what
direction it wants to take (a bit like the story). The setting is
Europe in WWI and the mood goes from the very serious, even
frightening aspects of war, soldiers in the trenches, to the
ridiculous of characters floating, no, spinning around in the air, a
camera that practically goes down the throat of a singer while she is
issuing coloratura notes, without much explanation or motivation for
these huge segues. It is in places hard to follow the story (yes,
there is a story, which hinges on the Mozart story) but all the while,
there is that sublime music and that fabulous singing. Be prepared for
a bumpy ride
THE JOURNALS OF KNUD RASMUSSEN
This film, by Zacharias Kunuk and Norman Cohn, is a docudrama whose
source are those Journals, written in the eary Twentieth Century.
They describe the first contact between European explorers and the
Inuit in the Arctic Circle in 1922.
The film traces both the arrival and the long visit with the Inuit of
these explorers as well as the history and drama in this extended
Inuit family. We are brought completely into the family circle,
sitting in the igloos and traveling with them on dogsleds. We hear
about the birth of a Shaman and how the taboos of the religion affect
his relationship with his gods as well as that of his daughter, also a
mystic. We learn about the myths of the Inuit and we see the
introduction of Christianity into their culture as well. The impact
of that change in religious leaning is also fodder for the story and
leads to the powerful ending of the film.All of this is done with
great accuracy and sensitivity. It is an amazing look at life in the
extreme north of our globe.
NOUVELLE CHANCE
This French film, directed by Anne Fontaine, provides an opportunity
for one of France's oldest, most iconic actresses, Danielle Darrieux,
to show some of her best acting in a charming setting. Darrieux plays
an aging actress (imagine!) who is talked into taking a role in a play
with a younger actress and a leading man, both out of work at the time
they are hired for the job.
It is something of a romantic comedy, with the younger actress
deciding her leading man is unsuitable and collecting a young man with
no acting experience (but other charms) to replace him. The director
loses control of his play and eventually has to replace all but
Darrieux, who gives a star turn as a chanteuse at the end. It is all
in good fun and a chance to see some excellent acting and the
remarkable Danielle Darrieux one more time.
LA TOURNEUSE DES PAGES (The Page Turner)
This is a French film on the theme of "Revenge is a dish best eaten
cold." It begins with a young girl whose piano recital/examination is
interrupted by one of the judges whispering to and signing an
autograph for an admirer. As a consequence, the little girl becomes
flustered and messes up her perrormance. She then gives up the piano.
To tell more would be to divulge too much information. This is an
especially well-crafted and well-acted story and I very
much recommend it.
THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY
This is yet another film (there have been many over the years) on the
Irish problems, starting in 1920. A young man is about to leave
Ireland when he encounters first-hand the brutality of the British
occupying military. He decides to join the IRA and stays with it
until his death, after the notorious and short-lived truce that led to
the formation of the Provisional IRA.
It is a film full of violence and seems to support the notion that
violence is the way to achieve political ends. If you have not yet
seen any films on this subject it tells the story very well but for me
it was an excess of exuberance in the interest of showing the way that
violence begets violence.
Another flaw in the film (and this is perhaps nit-picking) was the
frequency of scenes in which actors went up on their lines, forgetting
or correcting them as they went. I do not know if this was a
low-budget independent film (my guess is no) but these flaky takes
were distracting to me.
THE U.S. VS JOHN LENNON
This documentary traces the Lennon years in the U.S. and covers the
attempts by the State Department to deport Lennon, primarily because
of his strong identity with the peace movement and anti-Vietnam War
sentiment of the sixties and seventies. John and Yoko Lennon were
totally involved in that movement starting with their 'bed-ins' and
continuing with their participation in rallies and marches and their
songwriting and press conferences as well.
The film is strong in its wonderful collection of footage of John and
Yoko Lennon and weak in its ancillary reporting, with a large
collection of talking heads, some of whose presence (like G. Gordon
Liddy discussing grabbing the candle of a peace marcher and lighting
his cigar from it) is irritating and some, like the aging Bobby Seale
are so dilute a version of their old selves one can hardly recognize
them.
But the story is timeless and the reminders are both heartwarming and
tragic. Yoko Ono provides continuity and has a very sweet presence in
the film. When she talked about the World-Wide Vigil for John Lennon
after his murder, it brought back some intense personal memories of
those terrible days.
CHRONICLE OF AN ESCAPE
Israel Adrian Caetano has made a film that needed to be made; it tells
the story about those who were kidnapped and held captive in Argentina
during the Junta from 1976 to 1983. It shows, (but not in graphic
detail), the horrific physical and mental torture that the military
inflicted on ordinary citizens in their ruthless attempts to destroy
any opposition.
Some of those who ended up in the mansion where these tortures took
place were indeed in opposition to the Junta but some were innocent,
drawn in by denouncements from others who were trying to stay alive.
In all, some 30,000 people were 'disappeared' in Argentina.
This story derives from an actual escape and was detailed in the
eventual 1985 trial. Four young men, barely surviving their handling
by the military, take advantage of a lapse in security and escape. I
will leave the details to the film but I will say that it is very
real, very gripping and definitely worth seeing. We were told that it
had been bought just the day I saw it so we can expect distribution,
but not necessarily in the U.S..
PARIS, JE T'AIME
Twenty-one filmmakers were invited to make five-minute vignettes of
love in the City of Love. They were given (and two of them were at
the screening to attest to that) complete artistic freedom to do as
they wished. The result is a marvelous flow of stories, neighborhood
by neighborhood and ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous in
content. There is a vampire story set in quite an elegant area, a
story about a maid who leaves her baby in day care while she goes to
take care of the baby of a family far away from where she lives, a
subway mugging for love, a man torn between his wife and his
mistress.. and on and on it goes, each story holding your attention
and complete in its time slot. The editing for sequence apparently
took a lot of thought and many trials - it works superbly and this is
a marvelous film that I definitely recommend for a good look 'between
the lines' of perhaps the best-known cinematic city of the world.
ALL THE KING'S MEN
Starring Sean Penn as the Huey Long character and Jude Law as his
former newsman sidekick, this is a riveting tour de force for both
actors. Penn is simply magnificent as the small-town politician who
takes hold of the Governor's mansion and moves from righteous, honest
behavior to benevolent dictator status. His performance is simply
outstanding, gripping. Law, on the other hand, plays his character in
a very understated fashion, bringing a wonderful counterpoint
to the 1000 watt performance by Penn. The story plays out with some
interesting co-stars, including James Gandolfini in a role that is a
natural for the "Sopranos" godfather and Anthony Hopkins eschewing a
southern accent, and miscast as the judge with a dark secret.
From start to finish, this film kept me engaged.. in short, I loved it.
DIGGERS
This is a buddy film where the buddies are clam diggers who have (the
year is 1976) been suffering from commercial competition and new laws
barring them from productive areas they had been harvesting until
recently. They are thirty-something, cigarette and dope-smoking,
cursing, but happy-go-lucky guys. There are women in the story as
well, a wife, a sister, a woman stranger visiting New York City (this
takes place on Long Island). The cast (except for the nonstop
smoking) seem like people you'd really enjoy passing the time of day
with.
The story is relatively unimportant to the film, which is a
celebration of male friendship. It is a good hour and a half worth of
a look into some other lives and people.
BLINDSIGHT
This is a documentary on an amazing subject. There is a blind
mountain climber who has made an ascent to the summit of Mt. Everest.
He received an email from a blind woman who started a school for the
blind in Tibet, where the blind are considered tainted, dangerous and
stupid just for that characteristic. He offered to lead a climbing
expedition with six children, an offer that she took him up on.
The film traces the story of this expedition which actually took place
in 2004, with a guide for each child as well as for the mountain
climber and the teacher. It is a story of incredible courage and
determination and it will inspire and awe you if you are lucky enough
to see it.
AWAY FROM HER
This is a story that resonates personally for me. The protagonist is
a woman, a wife, who discovers that she is entering Alzheimer's (or a
similar dementing disease). She has been in a wonderful marriage for
some forty years and she makes the personal decision that she will
enter a facility for care and not remain at home with her husband, who
is distraught at this decision. She holds firm and the story
continues from that point.
For me the first moment that struck hard was when she begins reading
books on the subject, including The 36 Hour Day, which was my Bible
dealing with my mother in her dementia. The incident that is the
first and most telling is when the couple are doing the dishes after
dinner and she carefully wipes the frying pan and puts it into the
freezer.
There is a dinner party with old friends and her intellect is so
strong that one could not tell something is seriously amiss. However,
she and her husband know it and soon it is time to make the trip from
which she will not return.
The rules of the place are that the husband must not visit there for
thirty days after the wife enters, time which will be used to
habituate her to her new surroundings and new people. As you can
imagine, there are changes in her over that time (but the progression
is artificially speeded) and when he comes to see her, she is much
changed.
This film is done with exceptional sensitivity. Judging from last
year's documentary on such an institution, much was done to assure
accuracy in depiction of people, relationships, and the progression of
dementia.
Bring two boxes of tissues but do go and see this outstanding film.
BONNEVILLE
This is a film about a trip (naturally in a very old Pontiac
Bonneville) and the bonding of the women who take it together. One
has lost her husband (a second marriage for him) who apparently left
no will to protect her. His daughter uses the leverage of a threat to
remove the widow from the house (left to the daughter) in order to
compel the widow to bring the ashes of the husband to the family
funeral. There is no love lost between the daughter and the widow and
this blackmail upsets two friends of the widow's who determine that
they will go along with her to the funeral as a support system.
Along the way, the trip becomes a voyage of introspection and personal
growth for each of the women. There are adventures along the way, men
come and go, there is an attempted robbery, but throughout, the group
maintains good humor and the trip moves forward, as Arvilla visits
places Joe loved and scatters a bit of his ashes each time.
The weakest part of the film was the ending - I thought on three
separate occasions that it was about to end but each time there was
more story to tell. In the end, though, the story was brought to a
very satisfactory close.
COPYING BEETHOVEN
It is the last year of Beethoven's life and his copyist has left him.
Desperate to get his Ninth Symphony transcribed from his notes, he
reaches out to the university and a very young (23) woman, Anna Holtz,
is sent to him to do the job. Beethoven objects to working with a
woman and she firmly states that as she is the top in her class and
this is what he has requested, he is stuck with her.
Naturally, she proves invaluable to him and the relationship between
them (and his music) is explored in this interesting film. (The truth
is that there were two young men who did this job but filmmakers take
liberties and this story is naturally much more appealing). The
backdrop of the magnificent music of Beethoven adds to a script that
makes him a mercurial and interesting man and brings Anna to fruition
as a combination of worker and colleague when she knows his music well
enough to point out errors to him.
For those who enjoy this music and the opportunity to take a peek into
a supposed life of a larger-than-life personality, this is a good
choice.
DIXIE CHICKS - SHUT UP AND SING
The Dixie Chicks are the best-selling female group of all time. They
remain in that position despite the best efforts of the country music
industry and the Right WIng of U.S. politics to depose them. This
began when Natalie Mains, in an unrehearsed statement made in London,
onstage, at the beginning of the war against Iraq in March of 2003,
said she was ashamed that George Bush was from Texas. The howls of
outrage began in the U.S. almost at once, with record burnings,
banning from radio play (the most important outlet for such
recordings) and vitriolic attack on talk radio.
This excellent documentary follows the course of events from that
fateful moment in London through the summer of 2006 when they had
important decisions to make about the direction and future of the
group.
Interspersed with concert scenes which fans will love, we follow the
lives of the members of the group, their marriages, pregnancies,
fears, joys, successes and struggles against the radio boycott of
their music. In the process, they become what they were not at the
beginning, a political entity, writing songs of real impact, taking
their place in an antiwar movement, standing up to those, including
President Bush, who tell them they should just 'shut up and sing.'
This film well may have an impact on the elections of 2006 as fans,
new and old, take a good look at these courageous women and listen to
their words.
MON MEILLIEUR AMI (My Best Friend)
This is a wonderful French romantic comedy except for 'romance,'
substitute 'friendship.' It is all about a bet between a cynical
antiques dealer and his female business partner and the issue is a
best friend. At a dinner party, the other guests concur that he has
no friends and he adamently insists that he has. Now the bet is made
and he must produce a best friend within a period of time.. the stakes
- an incredibly expensive Greek vase that he has just acquired at
auction for the partnership - it will be hers or his at the end of the
bet.
Of course, he really hasn't got a friend in the world and this film is
about his quest to find one. His partner in crime becomes a charming
taxi driver he keeps on hand for various sorties as he looks for a
friend. The story comes to a completely satisfactory end with a
series of adventures, not the least is an appearance on the French
version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"
THE NAMESAKE
This is a film about culture and assimilation. An Indian man returns
home to find a bride, in an old fashioned arranged marriage. The
couple move to New York and we watch as they and their children make a
life in America that is both Indian and American in nature.
The conflicts come when the children grow up and the son, in
particular, wants to be more American than Indian. He takes a
girlfriend who is insensitive to his family but his desire to
assimilate is stronger than his loyalty to his family until something
happens in the family that forces him to examine his motivations in
being with her.
The film gives excellent insight into the issues that face old world
families as they make their places in new worlds.
Primo Levi's Journey
Primo Levi was an Italian Jew who got caught in the Holocaust and
landed in Auschwitz. His book on the subject is a classic and spoke
for his generation. When Auschwitz was liberated, the war was still
going on so Levi had to take what transport he could find. Getting
back to Italy was an eight month peripatetic journey, starting east
and north even though Italy was south and west of where he was at the
time.
The film makers followed this journey, annotated by Levi's words, but
examining the towns and cities in the context of the current world,
not the world of the 1940's. The parallels are clear - we are at war
just as the world was at war then.
It is interesting to see how globalization has started to affect life
in small towns in Europe. A factory has been bought by a foreigner
and now there are fewer jobs because the work is being done more
efficiently. Is this a good thing? People who always had work no
longer can rely on the factory.
Eastern Europe has changed and yet is very much the same as it was
before. Collective farms are visited, even Chernobyl is on the route
and we see a worker whose son is living elsewhere, was removed from
him and the city, and he will likely never see his son again. The
film brings many issues to us for consideration, not offering
solutions, just expanding our knowledge of a part of the world that
has changed.. but not changed.. since those terrible days.
THE SESSION IS OPEN
This is a curious Italian documentary about the court system in
Sicily. The players are the judge (who considers himself to be
middle-of-the-road despite some shocking opinions about women (they
belong at home in the kitchen), usurers (60 % are Jews <in Italy!!>),
rapists (60 percent are Muslim) and so on. This must be a fairly
normal set of values since there was no apparent problem about
including his comments in the film, the Prosecutor (a woman who is
forever losing the key to her office and who loses a major criminal
case because she has misplaced or lost the documentation showing the
permissions to wiretap the villains), and the Defense Lawyer, a
brilliant man who can raise an objection at the drop of a hat. There
are scenes that are simply not to be believed, such as one where the
accused are complaining bitterly because they were actually detained
for hours at the jail until a Lawyer could be found. It is an
interesting and darkly amusing film.
GOLDEN DOOR
This is an Italian film which traces the immigration of a family into
the United States in 1913. From the postcards they receive from
family already in America, showing chickens the size of pigs and huge
produce, the family is eager to go to the new world with the streets
paved in gold.
The reality of the trip, in steerage, is harsher and we see how those
people suffered for their opportunity to get to the U.S.. The film
covers many poignant issues; the requirement that a woman have a man
prepared to marry her (and some arrangements were made on board the
ship), that each immigrant can pass an intelligence test (someone is
sent home when she can't or won't pass), that an immigrant may not be
a mute and so on. Getting through the Golden Door was not such a
walk in the park and the film gives a very real and believable vision
of how our families arrived into America.
... So Goes The Nation
Ohio, 2004, the center of an agonizingly close Presidential election.
The common wisdom was "As Ohio goes... so goes the nation," and there
was truly a battlefield in Ohio. Why did the Democrats lose this
state? That is what the film makers investigated and they found that
it had more to do with the excellent organization of the Republican
election workers and their ability to focus on their base and get them
activated and get them voting than on any attempt to convince the
undecided which way to go. The Democrats used hired and very
unskilled workers to go door to door. You can feel their
embarrassment as they attempt to approach the closed faces of
Republican voters. If you want to learn how not to win an election,
this is a classic oeuvre for you to study.
10 ITEMS OR LESS
This film is about a movie star, played by Morgan Freeman, who
amazingly resembles Morgan Freeman (need I say more?). He is playing
in a low-budget Independent film and the subject of it is a Mexican
food market. So he is dropped off to study the market in question and
after a while it becomes apparent to him that nobody is going to pick
him up.
He resolves his problem by enlisting the help of the '10 Items or Less
cashier, played by Paz Vega. Scarlet is on the outside, a ballsy,
smart woman but inside she is full of self-doubt and while she wants
to get a better job, she is afraid to go ahead and try for it.
Freeman is rescued by Vega, who helps him figure out things like his
phone number (stars don't have to know their number, carry cash, drive
themselves around .. is the premise) and he, in this one-day and
quirky friendship, helps her to put herself together to take a job
interview and get her life on a better track.
All this is done in a buddy movie style and is a charming comedy that
I recommend heartily.
THE VIOLIN
This film was particularly timely since there was recent legislation
in Mexico that gave the peasants the rights to their ancestral land
that the military had been stealing from them for decades. The film
is placed in the seventies and the battle was ongoing at the time,
with Military executing civilians to get them off their land and the
rebels fighting for their rights.
The Violinist is an old man who, with his son is a street musican, but
one who gathers money and arms for the guerillas. He carries arms in
his violin case and goes back and forth under the eyes of the military
fat cats who love to listen to his music. Eventually, the son and his
wife get into the hands of the military and it is for the old man to
try to help them.
I'll leave the story to the film maker but it is lyrical and true to
life and definitely worth seeing. The violinist was a musician about
whom the film maker made a documentary. He then used the musician in
this film, his first role as an actor at 80.
WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE; A REQUIEM IN FOUR ACTS
This is Spike Lee's magnificent documentary about Katrina and New
Orleans. If you want to know how it was to be in New Orleans during
and after that hurricane, this film is a must-see. Four hours of
gripping interviews and heartbreaking video tells the story, the whole
story, with passion and tenderness.
Spike Lee comes to his full potential with this documentary that
traces the root causes of the disaster and the terrible outcome of it,
person by person. He misses no one and nothing in his quest for the
whole truth of the event. Do not miss this film, which was made for
HBO but seen by us as one four-hour film.
Karen
It's 99 percent of the lawyers who give the rest a bad reputation!!!
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