Two
More Toronto film festival selections reach theatres:
Beautiful Boy (U.S.)
Timothée Chalamet turned heads and
earned an Oscar nomination in last year’s Call
Me By Your Name. With his classical
features and mass of wavy curls, the screen loves Chalamet, who excels again,
this time in a real-life role, as Nic Sheff, a talented young man in the throes
of drug addictions. Also excellent is Steve Carell as the father,
journalist David Sheff, who stands by Nic through a series of rehabs and
relapses culminating in a near-fatal overdose.
Nic has younger siblings from his father’s second marriage. He spends
some time with his concerned mother Vicki (Amy Ryan) in another city. Nothing
seems to work and the increasing strains on all concerned are palpable. Helmed by Belgian Felix van Groeningen (best
known for The Broken Circle Breakdown),
the screenplay draws on the revealing memoirs published by both father and son in
2008: David’s Beautiful Boy: A Father’s
Journey through His Son’s Addiction and Nic’s Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines. The good news is that Nic not only survived
but has thrived as a successful scriptwriter. This story of his struggle with addiction
is raw and compelling. B+
Free Solo (U.S.)
Filmmaker/professional mountain climber
Jimmy Chin and partner Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi were the directing team behind
the 2015 Sundance prize winner Meru about
a death-defying Himalayan ascent. Here their
focus is on a solitary and even more extreme pursuit—that of legendary free
climber Alex Honnold to conquer Yosemite’s “El Capitan”, the sheerest and highest
3,200 foot granite rockface on the planet, alone and without the aid of ropes
or any other devices. The filmmakers
delve into the back story of Honnold’s childhood and climbing obsessions. He is an odd bird indeed, living alone in his
van for many years. But he does have a devoted girlfriend Sanni McCandless and
has established a nonprofit foundation that currently promotes solar energy in
the developing world. We see a complex, driven young man who is more
interesting than the image of the loner misfit.
The film captures all of these human sides, including setbacks from injuries
and an abortive attempt begun in pitch darkness. The drama of several years of
preparations builds to the astonishing successful free-solo ascent of El
Capitan on June 3, 2017 in just under four hours—the dizzying heights and breathtaking
angles captured through multiple camera positions from drone shots to intense
close-ups by an expert film crew. The
realization that the smallest mistake means recording a death is always on
their minds. One of the camera operators has to repeatedly look away before
Honnold reaches the summit and expresses “delight” with his
accomplishment. Both as ultimate climb
and absorbing character study, Free Solo,
winner of TIFF’s documentary People’s Choice Award, never loses its grip. A+ [I might add that the film also features scenes
with a main climbing partner of Honnold’s, Tommy Caldwell, whose own exploits
on El Capitan—a seemingly impossible 2015 wintertime ascent with companion
Kevin Jorgeson—is the subject of another heart-stopping documentary The Dawn Wall (http://www.dawnwall-film.com/), a 2017
Austrian production that took the documentary spotlight audience award at the
2018 South By Southwest Film Festival.]
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