Notes from TIFF 2018
Ides
of October
I arrived for
the 43rd Toronto International Film Festival mid-way, much later
than usual due to heavy demands organizing the 29th One World Film
Festival. It was a Tuesday, the 17th
anniversary of 9/11, another Tuesday.
Nearing the TIFF headquarters Bell Lightbox, a group of activists were
handing out pamphlets advocating Catalonia’s struggle for independence from
Spain because September 11 is also “La Diada”, Catalonia’s National Day. Not the best coincidence perhaps.
I finally started
writing these notes on October 8 (Canadian Thanksgiving Day), a week to the day
after the anniversary of Catalonia’s controversial “illegal” independence
referendum in which 90% of Catalans voted “yes” but based on a turnout well
below 50%. As populists everywhere claim
to speak for “the people” fed up with the status quo, who are “the
people”? It seems what “the people” want
is often far from clear.
Back to the TIFF
selections, what follows are notes on the 27 features I managed to squeeze into
five-plus days as well as several other high-profile TIFF films, starting with
the most controversial that I was only able to see later in Ottawa. I have given each a letter grade.
Fahrenheit
11/9 (U.S. https://michaelmoore.com/)
Filmmaker provocateur Michael Moore
loves Canada and again chose TIFF for the world premiere of his latest
incendiary documentary. The title is a
clever play on his 1994 film Fahrenheit 9/11, a blast at the “fictive” Bush
presidency that remains both the only documentary to win the top prize ‘palme
d’or’ at Cannes and the highest grossing documentary ever at the box
office. The “11/9” reference is to
November 9, 2016 when Donald Trump’s presidential triumph in the Electoral
College (though not popular vote) was confirmed.
Although
Fahrenheit 11/9 has not enjoyed a similar box-office success, to my mind it is
Moore’s best, most important and powerful film in years. It is much more than a rant against Trump and
his ilk because it digs into the systemic institutional rot and corruption that
has put private interests ahead of the public interest in a deeply divided and
disaffected America. Moore examines this through the lens of the capture of the
Michigan state government and the poisoned water crisis in his native
Flint. He excoriates the Republican
governor but also doesn’t spare Obama.
The disaffection with the established elites of both main parties is palpable.
In 2016 Moore
was one of the few to predict that Trump would carry Michigan. The anger and disillusion with elite politics
as usual was there to be exploited by a demagogue. At the same time, Moore warns, not too
subtly, against the proto-fascist tendencies latent in Trumpism. In a time of dangerous disruption for
American democracy, with the right wing wielding power, Moore finds hope in a
counter-mobilization taking place (especially among women, youth, people of
colour) who are unafraid to challenge the powers that be. And thank God for
that! A
Birds
of Passage (Colombia/Denmark/Mexico/France)
I just made it to this gripping drama
directed by Cristina Gallego and Ciro Guerra who took part in a post-screening
discussion as part of TIFF’s speakers series organized with the University of
Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy.
The
film delves into the genesis of the involvement of Colombian Indigenous
peoples, specifically the Wayuu clans in the country’s north, in international
drug trafficking, and the violent internecine conflicts that resulted.
Indigenous non-professional actors give it a documentary-like
authenticity. The destructive toll of
the drug trade leads to tragic consequences, another source of conflict in a
country long wracked by internal divisions. B+
Through Black Spruce (Canada)
Don McKellar directs this screen
adaptation of the eponymous Joseph Boyden novel about a young Cree woman Annie
who travels from James Bay to Toronto in search of her sister Suzanne who has
been missing for over a year. Suzanne
was working as a high-fashion model when she disappeared. Coming from communities afflicted by violence
and abuse, Annie and her uncle Will exemplify the family’s trauma of pain and
loss. Annie’s own troubled journey opens her eyes to the dangers of being drawn
into a world of addictions and exploitation. B+
Non-Fiction
(Doubles
Vies, France)
Master filmmaker Olivier Assayas directs
this fast-paced talky ensemble piece on the comedies of modern life in the fast
lane. Guillaume Canet and Juliette
Binoche are brilliant in the lead roles of a high-powered publisher and his
accomplished wife who are cheating on each other. The witty conversations over food and drinks
are a delight. I loved this movie! A
Anthropocene:
The Human Epoch (Canada)
The third collaboration among filmmakers
Jennifer Baichwal, Nicholas de Pencier, and photographer Edward Burtynsky is a
visually stunning and intellectually challenging exploration of a burgeoning
humanity’s increasing impacts on the planet, leading to a new epoch in
geological time. Awesome images capture
the many effects that include destruction of nature, pollution, extinctions,
climate change and more. The film’s
release coincided with the opening of exhibitions of Burtynsky’s stunning
photographs at the National Gallery and Art Gallery of Ontario. More information at: https://theanthropocene.org/
(See also the 2015 documentary of the
same name: http://www.anthropocenethemovie.com/. And on the scientific Anthropocene Working
Group: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene.)
A
Donbass
(Germany/Ukraine/France/Netherlands.Romania)
Belarus-born filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa
helms a searing portrait of what is happening in “Novorossiya”, the heavily
Russian-influenced breakaway eastern part of Ukraine since the Putin regime’s
boldly illegal 2014 annexation of Crimea. The occupation has an Orwellian
character. It harks back to a Stalinist recreation of the Soviet system. It libels Ukrainian patriots and the
“Euromaidan” revolution as “fascist” (when in fact it is Putin’s game to
support the far right across Europe). It
shows the daily horrors being inflicted by this reactionary revanchist civil
war. Loznitsa, awarded best director in
the Un Certain Regard sidebar of Cannes for this masterwork, took part in an
extended post-screening discussion with a scholar from the Munk School of
Global Affairs on Russia’s colonial designs on Ukraine, evidence of Putin’s cunning ruthlessness in seeking to
restore a great-power sphere of influence. A
The
River (Kazakhstan/Poland/Norway)
This was part of the juried “Platform”
section. It’s part of a trilogy by
writer-director/produce/cinematographer/editor Emir Baigazin. Five young boys dressed in dun-coloured rags
in a desolate dun-coloured landscape are dominated by their father, their one
escape being swimming in a nearby river, until the disruptive arrival of a
city-dwelling boy. Confessions, beatings, and disappearances follow. It’s enigmatic and often perplexing slow
cinema, rigorously composed, resisting any answers. B
Transit
(Germany)
I loved director Christian Petzold’s
previous wartime drama Phoenix
(2014). He’s back with this absorbing story of a German refugee who escapes to
Marseille, assumes the identity of a writer who committed suicide, and seeks
asylum in Mexico. That journey transitions into a story of love and exile, playing
with time between past and present, and evoking as the TIFF program book puts
it: “ghosts, memory, and historical trauma”. B+
The
Land of Steady Habits (U.S.)
I probably should have skipped this
Connecticut-set melodrama directed by Nicole Holofcener given that it was on
Netflix before TIFF ended. But it has
some modest pleasures and witty ironic moments depicting an American consumer
society at loose ends. As Christmastime
approaches family tensions play out in an atmosphere of spiritual and cultural
drift. The dramedy benefits from good
performances by Ben Mendelsohn as the hapless divorced father, Edie Falco as
his steadier remarried ex-wife, and Thomas Mann as their sensible son. B
Maya
(France)
In this gripping cross-cultural story from
director Mia Hansen-Løve, Gabriel is a war correspondent who has been taken
hostage and rescued. Later he learns that a fellow hostage and journalist
colleague has been killed. Suffering from post-traumatic effects he travels to
Goa, India to see his godfather. There
he meets Maya, the beautiful daughter who has been studying in London. He is taken with her but unable to leave his
old life behind. After meeting his
estranged mother in Mumbai, Gabriel parts ways with Maya and returns to the
frontlines, lacking faith but still searching. B+
What
is Democracy? (Canada)
This National Film Board production
directed by activist filmmaker Astra Taylor asks a lot of important questions
though it omits any Canadian content.
One of the main framing devices is a Renaissance painting in Siena
depicting class-cultural hierarchies of oligarchic virtue while demonizing the
dangers of succumbing to the lower orders.
Another goes back to the ancient Greeks and the warnings against
democracy as mob rule degenerating into the tyranny of strongman rule. One can
see a contemporary parallel in the proto-fascist potential of reactionary authoritarian
forms of “populism” such as Trumpism. As
radical philosopher Cornell West puts it: “Plato’s challenge will never go
away.” There is also Dostoevskyès
challenge about how many people really want to be free. Delving into the trials
of current democracies, the film explores the challenges to realizing a
fundamental equality of citizens under conditions of globalized capitalism,
technocracy, racism, sexism, etc. Questions
arise as to who is included in government for and by the ‘demos’. Who really counts in “we the people”? What does people power mean in practice? What about individual and minority rights? Skepticism
about the current state of democracies is rife.
What keeps the aspiration to democracy vital is its constant struggle
from below to achieve the revolutionary ideals of equal citizens and self-government.
Forthcoming will be a companion book and
an associated campaign to counter widespread “political illiteracy”. More at: https://zeitgeistfilms.com/film/whatisdemocracy
and https://www.nfb.ca/film/what-is-democracy-2018/
B+
22
July (Norway/Iceland)
The latest chilling docudrama from
director Paul Greengrass, now on Netflix, has provoked some very divided
reactions. The date refers to the
infamous day in 2011 when the self-described White nationalist “Knights Templar”
defender of Western Christian Civilization Anders Breivik, dressed as a
policeman, killed 77 people, mostly Norwegian youth at a summer camp, because
they deserved to die as “Marxists, liberals, members of the elite”. The explosion in Oslo aimed at decapitating
the government and subsequent massacre on nearby Utoya island are recreated in
shocking detail. So is the fate of
wounded survivors and the traumatic aftershocks including the prosecution of an
unrepentant Breivik who revels in notoriety and rejects a defence of insanity. I would have liked more on Breivik’s terrorist
rationale: his lengthy manifesto of Islamophobic, anti-immigration,
anti-multiculturalism venom that is too close for comfort to current far-right
and neofascist agitation in many European countries, Scandinavia included. It’s why 22 July could happen again. Greengrass has alluded to these parallels in
interviews, observing how at the time Breivik’s rantings were “considered outré
and outrageous. That’s mainstream now
across the populist right. Not that they approve of Breivik’s methods, but the
rhetoric, the world view, the words, they’re all the same.” B+
Kursk (Belgium/Luxembourg)
This is another docudrama based on
actual events—the August 2000 sinking of a Russian nuclear submarine (spoiler
alert: there are no survivors). It’s
directed by Danish “Dogme” auteur Thomas Vinterbeg but it left me cold. The disaster, fight-for-survival, heroic-tragedy
genre is sometimes effective if unoriginal, while lead roles go to non-Russians
(Matthias Schoenaerts, Léa Seydoux, even the venerable Max Von Sydow) affecting
Russian accents. 22 July is also an
English-language production yet manages a more compelling verisimilitude. C
I
Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians (Romania/CzechRepublic/France/Bulgaria/Germany)
This searing feature by Romanian
director Radu Jude (it’s Romania’s Oscar submission) was also part of the TIFF
speakers series with the Munk School of Global Affairs. The protagonist is a
young female theatre director commissioned to stage a reenactment of a Second
World War massacre of tens of thousands of Ukrainian Jews. She is determined to
confront a whitewashed history in which Romanians are the victims, of the Nazis
then the Soviets, when in fact Romanians were long complicit in a murderous
anti-Semitism. As the authorities try to
tone down the pageant with a threat of shutting it down, she faces both personal
challenges and a fight against the historical amnesia of populist nationalism. B+
Red
Joan (UK)
Dame Judi Dench is terrific in this
biopic, directed by renowned theatre director Trevor Nunn, based on the life of
Melita Norwood who in the late 1930s, while attending Cambridge University, was
drawn into spying for the KGB. During
the Second World War, when the Soviet Union was an ally, she passed on
high-value intelligence secrets. The
Norwood character, here named Joan Stanley, is an elderly retired scientist living
quietly alone when finally exposed in the year 2000, arrested and charged with
espionage to the astonishment of her lawyer son. B+
The
Weekend (U.S.)
This slight romantic dramedy, directed
by Stella Meghie, follows the relationship entanglements of a group of young
Black men and women, single and attached, over a weekend away from it all in
shared accommodations. C
Cold
War (Poland)
Director Pawel Pawlikowski’s Ida was awarded the 2014 best
foreign-language Oscar. Awarded best
director at Cannes, this is another historical masterwork filmed in
black-and-white (and a retro squarish 4:3 aspect ratio) that uncovers deep
passions against a wrenching postwar backdrop, drawing on the story of
Pawlikowski’s own parents. The protagonists are Wiktor, a musical director and
pianist and Zula, his singer protégé in a folkloric chorus in Communist
Poland. The lovers are separated when
Wiktor defects to the West. Yet their
fates remain entwined up to a final choice—to be forever together “on the other
side where the view is better”. A
Donnybrook
(U.S.)
This “Platform” selection directed by
Tim Sutton is a raw, violent journey into a dark American underbelly of drugs
and disorder in which young men with no prospects enter no-holds-barred fight
contests—“donnybrooks”—for the chance at a large cash prize to the bruised and
bloodied victor. One of these is “Jarhead Earl”, played by Jamie Bell,
desperate for money for his family and wife who needs cancer treatments. (If your image of Bell is as the
ballet-loving kid in Billy Elliot,
think again.) His nemesis is a meth-dealing psychopath with an abused sister
played by Margaret Qualley (another total role reversal from her role as the
young nun in Novitiate). There’s a
sordid scene of her contemplating suicide that is almost unwatchable. The visceral desperation and brutality
provoked some walkouts. Be prepared for a movie that is as gut-wrenching as the
punches thrown. B
Shoplifters
(Japan)
Director Hirokazu Kore-eda took the top
prize ‘palme d’or’ at Cannes for this superb social-realist drama of life on
the margins of a Japanese society that is rarely seen. Shoplifting is just one of the ways that a
multigenerational unconventional “family” gets by. Their number grows by one, with added
complications, when an abused little girl comes under their protection. As much as an uncaring society looks down on
them, sometimes it’s the misfits who most exemplify family values. A
Meeting
Gorbachev (UK/U.S./Germany http://www.springfilms.tv/portfolio/meeting-gorbachev/)
Directed by master filmmaker Werner
Herzog and André Singer, this insightful portrait of one of history’s great
men, now aged 87, draws on a series of interviews that Herzog conducted with
Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow. From a
humble peasant background in the north Caucasus, Gorbachev excelled as a
student and rose in the ranks of the Communist Party to become the youngest
leader in Soviet history, and the one whose reforms (glasnost, perestroika)
would presage the USSR’s dissolution. While
he’s blamed for that in his homeland, becoming an isolated almost tragic figure,
the world owes him a huge debt for the Cold War ending without bloodshed. Among his laments are that “we didn’t finish
the job of democracy in Russia.” We sense Gorbachev’s genuine warmth and
humanity as well as the reflective wisdom of an elder statesman. The contrast with Putin’s strutting strongman
pose is too apparent to need mentioning. B+
Styx
(Germany/Austria)
In director Wolfgang Fischer’s tale of
solo challenge, Rike is a German emergency physician and first responder
suffering from burnout who embarks on a perilous journey, setting sail in a
yacht for Ascension island midway between Africa and South America. More than stormy seas, she will face a
life-and-death moral choice. Even alone
on the high seas, there’s no escaping the test of one’s essential humanity. B+
Everybody
Knows (France/Spain/ Italy)
This Spanish-language feature represents
somewhat of a change of pace for Iranian master Asghar Farhadi, though troubled
familial relationships remain at its dramatic centre. When Laura (Penelope Cruz) returns from
Argentina with her daughter and son to her native Spanish village for her
sister’s wedding, tensions that lie just under the surface involve a former
lover Paco (Javier Bardem). The
daughter’s disappearance during a power outage turns into a suspected
kidnapping that brings Laura’s distraught Argentine husband Alejandro (Ricardo DarÃn)
on the scene. For the daughter’s return,
family secrets and suspicions “everybody knows” must come to light. B+
American
Dharma (U.S.)
Through one-on-one interviews and
archival footage, veteran documentarian Errol Morris tries to get at what
drives Steve Bannon, the far-right guru who attached himself to the Trump
campaign and for a time the Trump presidency.
Bannon invokes the Sanskrit term ‘dharma’ to refer to the forces of
duty, destiny and fate. He sees these in
favorite old war movies like Twelve
O’Clock High. Bannon’s checkered
background in both the movie business and high finance prior to steering the
extreme right media outlet Breitbart certainly makes him a fascinating if
malign character. While the liberal
Morris explicitly disavows Bannon’s incendiary politics, one senses Bannon, a
master manipulator of narrative, having the upper hand in this encounter. (For a deeper critique of Bannonism’s baleful
influence see the Joshua Green book Devil’s
Bargain.) B
Putin’s
Witnesses (Latvia/Switzerland/Czech Republic)
Ukrainian-born director Vitaly Mansky
lived in Russia during the momentous events of the demise of the USSR and its
aftermath, years during which he had extraordinary access to the inner circles
around the erratic Boris Yeltsin and ambitious Vladimir Putin, the former KGB
operative and rising star who replaced him on New Year’s Eve 1999. In the
production of a television documentary, Mansky was hired to follow Putin as he
took over the top job. Almost two
decades later Putin dominates Russia as no one has since Stalin. Mansky’s film revisits this intimate footage
he shot from the early years, shedding light on Putin’s calculating character
and the opportunistic making of an autocrat.
Not surprisingly Mansky has had to leave Russia for Latvia to escape the
Putin regime’s control over media. B+
Monrovia,
Indiana (U.S.)
Director Frederick Wiseman, now 88, is
the acknowledged master of observational “direct cinema”. Here he turns the candid camera on life in
small-town rural Indiana, an area where white Christians predominate that would
have voted heavily for Trump in 2016. While Wiseman listens in on some
community debates over the direction of local development, there’s no mention
of national politics or Trump’s name. There’s a Republican party booth at a
local fair but no one is shown wearing a “Make America Great Again” cap. The
steady flow suggests an appreciation for the modest virtues to be found in the
rhythms of everyday life (church services, weddings, funerals, council
meetings). I found it too passive to make any point, or maybe that very middle
American steadiness is the point? There’s
more parochial common-sense contentment than Trumpian “American carnage” to be
found here. B
Jirga
(Australia)
Writer-director Benjamin Gilmour
achieves something remarkable in this story of an Australian ex-soldier Mike
(Sam Smith) who is haunted by a deadly war crime that he witnessed while
deployed to a small village in Afghanistan.
He is driven to undertake a dangerous journey back to the village in an
area now controlled by the Taliban, seeking forgiveness and putting his life in
the hands of the village ‘jirga’ (council of elders). Actually shot in Afghanistan (not Jordan,
Morocco or New Mexico) with Afghans, including former Taliban members, as the
supporting cast, this is bravura filmmaking that respects the Afghan reality. A
First
Man (U.S.)
Director Damien Chazelle’s fourth
feature is also his most impressive.
It’s based on James R. Hansen’s eponymous 2005 biography of the late Neil
Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the moon in July 1969. Canadian Ryan Gosling is perfect in the role
of the sober-minded Armstrong who had to grieve the loss of a young child, and who
survived an arduous series of death-defying preparations for that first moon
landing to become reality. (Claire Foy is also excellent as Armstrong’s wife
Janet, as are all the supporting roles.) We really get the sense of the man,
and of how audacious the Apollo program was with the technologies of a half
century ago. Armstrong’s “small step for
man … giant leap for mankind” had world-historical significance but he resisted
any flag-waving heroic mythmaking. (Although
we get a view of the American flag on the moon’s surface, we don’t see the
actual planting of it by Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. That omission has provoked a backlash among
some American right-wingers almost as ridiculous as the never-ending conspiracy
theories about the landings having been faked.
Indeed there are still flat-earthers who deny all images of the earth
from space.) A
[A
half-century ago, the Apollo 8 mission which orbited the moon was the first to
capture the distant earth as a fragile “blue marble” in the vastness of
space. Those iconic images created a new
global consciousness as observed in the award-winning short film Earthrise (see https://www.earthrisefilm.com/;
available on Netflix). It was JFK in the
early 1960s who put America on the path of ambitious space exploration. That extraordinary effort, its tragedies as
well as triumphs, is detailed in an excellent new documentary film by his
filmmaker niece Rory Kennedy (Robert Kennedy’s youngest daughter) whose Above and Beyond: NASA and the Search for
Tomorrow was first broadcast October 13 on the Discovery channel. The film also points to the great
contribution of NASA’s programs and earth-orbiting satellites to the
understanding of earth systems, including the effects of climate change on the
planet.]
Before
the Frost (Denmark)
The last feature I saw at TIIF was a
bleak drama set in 19th century Denmark, a conflict over land as
winter approaches. Misfortune leads a
father to promise his daughter to a wealthy Swedish landowner or risk losing
the family’s means of livelihood. But
with another suitor loving the daughter, the desperation and burning jealousies
will take a terrible toll. B+
Other TIFF Selections Viewed Post-Festival
A
Star is Born (U.S.)
Is a fifth screen remake of this story
really necessary? Tempted as I was to
say “no” I was won over by the powerful performances of director-protagonist
Bradley Cooper as the husky-voiced country-rock star Jackson Maine on the skids
and Stefani Germanotta (aka Lady Gaga) as the discovered talent turned soaring
pop diva “Ally”. Sam Elliot is also
excellent as Jackson’s much older and wiser brother who’s unable to arrest his
slide into alcoholism and drug addiction. A love story that turns tragic it’s a
melodramatic fairy tale of course. But
the singing performances (on real stages), the candid backstage scenes, and
private raw emotions are all wondrously believable. Expect multiple Oscar nominations. A
The
Sisters Brothers (U.S./France/Romania/Spain)
Although set in mid-19th
century Oregon, this is a strange “western” tale made odder by the fact of
being an international coproduction helmed by France’s Jacques Audiard loosely
adapting a best-selling novel by Canadian Patrick De Witt (whose new novel is
titled French Exit). The brothers are
a pair of assassins hired by a tycoon they call the “Commodore”. Charlie (Joaquin Phoenix) is a psychopathic
drunk who killed his father. Big brother
Eli (John C. Reilly) is goofier and pudgier but no less deadly. Headed for San
Francisco during the Gold Rush, in their sights is a prospector (Riz Ahmed)
with a mysterious caustic formula for finding gold, joined by a detective on
his trail (Jake Gyllenhaal). While their luck runs out, the odd-couple brothers
get to go home mostly intact. Audiard films many scenes in a darkness matched
by the shady characters, with flashes of light that are mostly gunshots as the
bodies pile up. B
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