Included in this post is a review of Nomadland, my top choice from the recent Toronto film festival which was mostly online. More on that festival at these links:
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/09/2020-toronto-film-festival-highlights
https://variety.com/2020/film/awards/awards-circuit-nomadland-oscars-1234772307/
First broadcast
September 14 on the PBS as part of its 33rd “POV” season is the 2019
TIFF selection Love Child, an excellent documentary about a family of Iranian asylum seekers who find themselves stuck
in bureaucratic limbo in Turkey. [*More comment at: http://povmagazine.com/articles/view/tiff-review-love-child. And for a discussion guide see: https://www.pbs.org/pov/engage/resources/love-child-discussion-guide/film-summary/.]
At an actual
theatre I was able to see a special documentary A Night at the Louvre: Leonardo
Da Vinci which is a cinematic guide to the museum’s
decade-in-the-making special 500th year anniversary exhibition of
the work of the Renaissance Italian genius. (See:
https://www.anightatthelouvre.film/.)
If you enjoyed Bong Joon-Ho’s Oscar best picture winner Parasite, check out an earlier darkly
humorous feature Barking Dogs Never Bite from
the year 2000 (free to watch on Tubi TV with a few short ads). And on the free public library-linked Kanopy
platform I highly recommend the intensely naturalistic 2016 drama Being 17 from French master André Téchiné,
with a screenplay co-written by Céline Sciamma, whose Portrait of a Lady on Fire was among the best of 2019.
In mid-September Terrence Malick’s latest
feature A Hidden Life also
began streaming on the “Crave” TV service which is usually bundled with
HBO. (Listen to a CBC rave review at:
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-92-all-in-a-day/clip/15799842-weekly-film-column-a-hidden-life.)
My first recommendation below is of a timely new HBO documentary. Another revealing
multi-episode HBO documentary is The Vow. Also worth checking out is
a new HBO series We Are Who We Are, a racially and sexually charged drama about
teenagers growing up on an American military base in Italy, helmed by Luca
Guadagnino (Call Me By Your Name).
Finally, let me
also mention an “Impact” series of screenings and speakers that began September
26 at several dozen cinema locations across Canada. The lead-off film about youth climate justice
activism is titled Now and will have another screening on October 1. More
information at: https://theimpactseries.net/.
Agents of Chaos
(U.S. 2020, HBO, first broadcast September 23-24) A
(More comment at: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/agents-of-chaos-movie-review-2020.)
This excellent two-part, four-hour
investigative series, from veteran documentarian Alex Gibney and his Jigsaw
production house, is a deep dive into the cyber operations of Russian
intelligence services which used internet troll “farms” to weaponize social
media, targeting Ukraine, and then the United States, most controversially
during the 2016 presidential election campaign.
There’s no question that these operations aimed to exploit and inflame
already existing divisions within the American body politic; though what’s
harder to discern is any actual effect on voting intentions. There’s also no question that the Putin
regime badly wanted Hillary Clinton to lose, and Donald Trump, an unabashed
admirer, to win. As well, some Trump cronies (most notoriously one-time
campaign manager Paul Manafort) had close ties to powerful people in Russia and
Ukraine. That said, some of the alleged
ties (e.g. of advisor Carter Page) may not have been significant or
consequential. The makers of the
documentary have done their homework, interviewing a number of Russians on
background. On the American side, a key
source is Andrew McCabe, the former FBI deputy director fired by Trump in March
2018 just hours before his scheduled retirement. (Not interviewed is former FBI director James
Comey, or Robert Mueller for that matter.) Of course the U.S. has its own long
history, notably through the CIA, of meddling in other country’s affairs and
even overthrowing democratically-elected governments. Acknowledging that, and the manifest
weaknesses of America’s own democracy, doesn’t erase or excuse the potential
harm from Russian disinformation. For an
incisive and balanced perspective see the careful analysis by Joshua Yafta, the
Moscow correspondent for The New Yorker:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/09/14/is-russian-meddling-as-dangerous-as-we-think?utm_source=onsite-share&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker.
[*According to former FBI senior
executive Peter Strzok, Russian election interference continues in 2020. He is
interviewed on his book Compromised:
Counterintelligence and the Threat of Donald J. Trump: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-sept-29-2020-1.5742880/trump-debts-make-u-s-vulnerable-to-russian-influence-ahead-of-election-says-former-fbi-deputy-1.5743289]
The Comey Rule (U.S.
2020, on Crave) B+
This Showtime four-hour
TV series was first broadcast on September 28, the day after the New York Times published a bombshell
investigation into Donald Trump’s years of serial tax avoidance and dubious finances.
Directed by Billy Ray, it draws heavily on former FBI director James Comey’s
somewhat self-serving memoir A Higher
Loyalty. Although described from the outset as a “showboater”, Comey
(played by Jeff Daniels) is depicted as always trying to do the right
thing. Comey’s decision to reopen an
investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails just days before the 2016 election
probably helped to elect Trump (a creepy caricature by Brendan Gleeson). But Comey was later famously fired for
investigating the Russia connection and failing to swear total “loyalty” to
Trump. For several reviews see:
https://variety.com/2020/tv/reviews/the-comey-rule-showtime-1234754580/
[*Let me also mention a somewhat overwrought
UK documentary People You May Know released the same day on Sundance Now. It looks at the right-wing weaponization of
social media platforms like Facebook and metadata drawing on a UK parliamentary
committee’s investigation of Cambridge Analytica. In the U.S., the focus is on
the Christian right and ultra-conservative forces including the shadowy
pro-Trump Council for National Policy. The chief source is a book Shadow Network: Media, Money and the Secret
Hub of the Radical Right by Anne Nelson, a Columbia University scholar.]
Nomadland (U.S. 2020) A+
This is the main TIFF selection I was
really focused on and watched the same day it was awarded the “golden lion” top
prize of the Venice Film Festival. (*I
did so on the strength of having seen director Chloe Zhao’s outstanding
previous feature The Rider at the
South By Southwest festival several years ago.) At TIFF, the year’s best
reviewed drama to date (a 99% rating on rottentomatoes.com) also won both a
directing prize for Zhao and the “People’s Choice” award, which is the past has
been an early predictor of Oscar success. (Do watch the Sept. 12 TIFF q&a
with Chloé Zhao and Frances McDormand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jc8X-6HI9d4.)
Inspired by Jessica Bruder’s book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First
Century, Zhao’s film plays as an elegy for an abandoned working-class
America that has borne the brunt of economic disruption and recession. Living
on the margins, these are the forgotten people who Trump claims to represent
but manifestly (with his tax cuts for the wealthy) does not. The protagonist is
Fern (Frances McDormand, never better), a 60-something widow who is out of
work, and house, in 2011 when her factory in Empire, Nevada closes. The place
is left so bereft even the postal code disappears. No moper, Fern pulls up
stakes and takes to living in her van, becoming part of a displaced human flow scattered
among itinerant encampments. She gets temporary
odd jobs, several at huge Amazon distribution warehouses. (*The Covid-19
pandemic has been a boon for online shopping businesses, if not employees. Indeed Amazon boss Jeff Bezos has increased his personal fortune by over
US$50 billion this year.) Another job is
at the National Grasslands Visitor Centre in the South Dakota badlands.
It’s
a precarious existence and economy. Yet
this raw and poignant portrait of an ailing and alienated American underclass
also includes moments of sublime human connection. Fern strikes up a friendship with an older
man “Dave” (David Strathairn). However most scenes involve a shifting population
of non-actors, drifters among whom Zhao (screenwriter and editor as well as
director) spent months. Fern goes to a
sister’s place but doesn’t stay. Later she takes up an invitation to visit Dave
at the home of his son’s family which has welcomed a baby grandson. But again Fern doesn’t stay, leaving without
notice. Her reality has become transient, set against the spare, open
landscapes of the midwest, for which the Beijing-born Zhao has a remarkable sensibility.
Zhao’s talent for transforming naturalistic documentary-like realism into
cinematic poetry was already apparent in her first feature—2015’s Songs My Brothers Taught Me (watch on
Kanopy), shot on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.
Nomadland
is another masterwork: “Dedicated to the ones who had to depart. See you down
the road.” I can’t wait for follow Fern’s passages again on the big screen. As
one review concludes, it’s “a spiritual journey that every lover of cinema
should experience at least once”. [*A theatrical release is scheduled for this
December. More commentary at: http://povmagazine.com/articles/view/tiff-2020-nomadland-review.]
Blood Quantum (Canada
2019, Crave) B-
Both raves and raspberries greeted this
unusual homegrown horror flick that topped the “Midnight Madness” program of
the 2019 TIFF. Writer-director Jeff
Barnaby’s zombie fantasy, with dialogue in Mi’gmaq as well as English, imagines
a post-apocalyptic world in which only those with Indigenous blood are not
infected. In a clever turn, the title
refers to the percentage of Indigenous blood used to determine status as an
instrument of colonial control; now conferring immunity to the deadly plague. The focus is on the “Red Crow” reservation in
Quebec, and specifically its sheriff Traylor (Michael Greyeyes), ex-wife Joss
(Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, a writer-director in her own right, best known for The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open).
son Joseph (Forrest Goodluck), and toublemaking brother Alan (Kiowa Gordon) who
goes by the nickname “Lysol”. It’s an
interesting enough premise but there’s also plenty of gore as befits this
sanguinary genre, so be warned.
Hope Gap (UK
2019) A-
No, this is not about the current global
moment when many are struggling to keep hope alive. It’s another 2019 TIFF
selection that deserves better than the mostly middling reactions it has
received. It’s from writer-director
William Nicholson adapting his own 1989 play “The Retreat from Moscow” and
features three strong performances. Edward (Bill Nighy), a history teacher
(hence the play’s Napoleonic reference), and Grace (Annette Bening) are in a
29-year marriage that has gone stale. An
unhappy Grace tries in vain to provoke a reaction from him. The she’s shocked when he confesses he has
fallen in love with the mother of one of his pupils and abruptly leaves. She’s not even the first to know. Edward has asked their only son Jamie (Josh
O’Connor) to return home for a weekend visit and confides this to him while
she’s away at Sunday mass. Grace reacts with denial, hurt and anger even as
Edward gives her the house and maintains a patient outward calm. She gets a puppy to command that she calls
Edward. She makes a scene in a
solicitor’s office. A worried Jamie
makes frequent return visits and becomes a reluctant go-between. He lives alone and shares some of Edward’s
unforthcoming reticence. (O’Connor’s breakout role was in the transgressive
drama God’s Own Country and he plays
Prince Charles in the most recent season of the Netflix series “The Crown”.)
The title, which
refers to a seaside cove near the white cliffs of Dover, is also a metaphor for
the missing parts of a relationship when it’s too late to pick up the pieces. Grace starts to volunteer with “friendline”,
a suicide prevention service, and Jamie offers to help put online her anthology
of favorite poems. Although a gap remains, there’s hope for some solace.
The Artist’s Wife (U.S.
2019, https://theartistswifefilm.com/)
B
Bruce Dern plays abstract expressionist
painter Richard Smythson, a cranky white-haired curmudgeon, in this rather
slight story directed and co-written by Tom Dolby. Richard is past his prime
and losing it—literally, as he is in the throes of Alzheimer’s. Younger wife
Claire (Lena Olin) is a talented artist is her own right. During a wintry New York season she manages
Richard’s darkening moods and increasingly erratic behavior—including as an
acerbic art teacher whose outbursts get him fired. More than that, Claire protects Richard’s ego
and famous legacy by creating new works that she passes off as his in a new
gallery exhibition. There are shades of
the 2017 drama The Wife (watch on
Amazon Prime Video), although Richard’s addled state perhaps makes the
deception and misdirected acclaim more forgivable.
Petit Pays (France/Belgium
2019, English title “Small Country: An African Childhood”) A
Writer-director Eric Barbier brings to vivid
life the semi-autobiographical 2016 novel by Burundi author Gaël Faye. In
Francophone Africa the “small country” is Burundi bordering Rwanda and riven by
similar ethnic Tutsi-Hutu hostilities. The
story begins in 1992 in the capital of Bujumbura where gangs of kids roam the
streets. Gabriel, “Gaby” (Dijibril Vancoppenolle) is among a group of boys that
brazenly steal mangoes to sell to drivers on a busy street. Gaby and little
sister Ana (Dayla De Medina) belong to a mixed-race family of four—French
father Michel Chappaz (Jean-Paul Rouve) and mother Yvonne (Isabelle Kabano),
who is a Tutsi originally from Rwanda and calls herself a “refugee”. Matters
soon turn more serious. A June 1993 election that brings a Hutu party to power is
followed months later by a deadly coup d’état.
Yvonne takes her children to Rwanda for the wedding of her brother
Pacifique who warns of an impending genocide.
When it is unleashed in April 1994 Yvonne tries in vain to get family
members out of the country. We see the
horrors of ethnic cleansing and its aftermath through the prism of this family
and several servants. Yvonne goes missing and will become a traumatized
survivor. Another consequence in Burundi
is of Tutsi mob violence seeking revenge (evident in an especially disturbing
scene). Michel sends the children away
to France (where Yvonne would have liked to go) but the innocence of childhood has
been taken. Fast forward to a poignant
ending as an adult Gabriel returns to Burundi and the scars of those terrible
events. Barbier’s interpretation offers
an immersive experience that benefits from strong performances by all ages.
The Nest (Canada/UK
2020, https://www.ifcfilms.com/films/the-nest)
B
Critics are also divided over this
unhappy drama that premiered at Sundance.
Writer-director Sean Durkin mostly filmed around Toronto but that’s the
only Canadian connection. Set in the
Thatcherite era of the 1980s, Jude Law plays Rory O’Hara who having made his
first million in New York takes his family of four—wife Allison (Carrie Coon),
daughter Samantha (Oona Roche) and younger son Benjamin (Charlie Shotwell)—back
to England, working for a previous employer as a hotshot market trader and
dealmaker. He buys a huge pile with estate in Surrey where Allison can continue
her equestrian-training pursuits on pricey mount “Richmond”. However living the dream turns out not to be
the charm despite the ambitious Rory’s “ruthless vision”. (A brief visit to a mum he hasn’t bothered to
connect with in many years underlines his shallow self-centred persona.) Then the horse gets sick and has to be put
down. At the same time Rory’s
spendthrift house of cards is catching up with him. In fouling his “nest”, Rory
is such a sharkish selfish character, it’s impossible to feel any sympathy. The couple’s relationship turns toxic. An estranged Allison lets loose. Meanwhile Samantha turns to drugs and
partying. False pretense falls away, and after all the commotion, we’re left
with an emotionally flat ending … the depleted terrain of another unhappy
family.
The Devil All The Time (U.S.
2020, Netflix) B-
This long (138 minutes) and disturbing
tale from director Antonio Campos is based on the eponymous 2011 novel by
Donald Ray Pollock from a screenplay co-written with Campos’ brother Paulo. An
unseen narrator outlines the thread of happenings in a gothic backwoods setting
of West Virginia and Ohio in the years after the Second World War. One of the
first of many bloody violent scenes is of a crucified Marine on a battlefield. Bill Skarsgård plays a returning veteran Willard Russell
whose wife dies of cancer. His son Arvin
(played by Tom Holland as an adult) becomes a key surviving character. Jason
Clarke and Riley Keough play the Hendersons, a married couple who are kinky
serial killers. Robert Pattinson takes
on the role of a creepy preacher Preston Teagarden. This story of murder and
mayhem wallows in tawdry ugliness, managing to be both bible-belt barmy and
shockingly amoral. There’s more to it as portrayed by good actors. But as the review in Indiewire warns, the result is “a sweaty, bloated mess of a movie
that flushes a knockout ensemble down the drain.”
Enola Holmes (UK
2020, Netflix) B
Directed by Harry Bradbeer and based on
Nancy Springer’s young adult mystery series, Millie Bobby Brown play the
titular detective Enola (a palindrome of “alone) as the spunky 16-year old
sister of famous sleuth Sherlock (Henry Cavill) and brother Mycroft (Sam
Clafin). Set in the England of the
1880s, the misadventures and detecting begin after mother Eudoria (Helena
Bonham-Carter) disappears. Enola often
speaks to the camera as she and a runaway young Lord Tewkesbury (Louis
Patridge) are dogged by a murderous pursuer. His whereabouts are related to a
key upcoming vote in the House of Lords on a reform bill.
Whose Vote Counts, Explained: The
Right to Vote (U.S. 2020, Netflix) A-
This timely Netflix docuseries consists
of three 25-minute episodes narrated respectively by Leonardo DiCaprio, Selena
Gomez, and John Legend. With President
Trump ranting frantically and falsely about non-existent voter fraud (including
during the September 29 televised debate with Biden), it’s worth a look at the reality
of the national U.S. electoral system.
It’s actually run by the states with no automatic or orderly
registration process. The issues covered
highlight acts of voter suppression, partisan gerrymandering of electoral
districts, the anachronism of the Electoral College, and the abuses of vast
sums of money in campaigns. Beyond
explaining these flaws the series seems intended to boost voter turnout by directing
viewers to this website: https://www.vox.com/21410226/vote-voting-explained.
American Murder: The Family Next
Door (U.S. 2020, Netflix) A-
In 2018 in Colorado a pregnant wife Shannan
Watts and her two small daughters went missing in a case that became a national
story. The pieces of the puzzle come
together through a presentation of sometimes intimate video clips and text
messages from her and husband Chris. An initial air of unnatural calm becomes a
façade that falls away. Chris was
unfaithful and fails a polygraph. Given that, and the title, the triple murder
facts don’t really come as a big surprise, though what unfolds is still deeply
shocking, including that Shannan’s distraught family became the target of
social-media victim blaming. Equally
disconcerting is the endnote statistic that in America an average of three
women are killed by intimate partners every day.
(More comment: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/american-murder-the-family-next-door-movie-review-2020.)
Challenger: The Final Flight (U.S.
2020, Netflix) A-
This four-part docuseries of 40-50
minute segments examines the backstory to the 1986 U.S. space program disaster
when the Space Shuttle “Challenger” exploded shortly after launch. Among those
killed was the first civilian “citizen passenger”, teacher Christa
McAuliffe. Beyond their personal
stories, we learn about serious concerns with the Space Shuttle program
including warnings about a potential flaw in the main booster rocket that
could, and did, prove catastrophic. The bedeviled
January launch, delayed several times, proceeded against engineering advice and
despite freezing overnight temperatures.
The last and longest episode delves into the findings of a presidential
commission of inquiry. Though not the
last space mission tragedy, it’s the one that most burdened NASA’s legacy.
More comment at: https://readysteadycut.com/2020/09/15/review-challenger-the-final-flight-netflix-series/.
Public Trust: The Fight for
America’s Public Lands (U.S. 2020) A
This excellent documentary directed by
David Byars is now available to watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGjnIG7puzY
. It details the threats to some 640
million acres of public land held in trust by the American federal government
that have come under assault from right-wing propagandists and lobbyists for a
rogues gallery of corporate interests. Some
of this land, much of it in the American west and states such as Utah, is also
of great significance for Indigenous peoples.
When resource development occurs the public often gets stuck with
long-term costs (such as clean-up of abandoned sites). The push for privatization has accelerated
under the Trump administration, yet another reason why this November’s election
is so consequential. One of the controversies discussed is the opening up to
oil and gas exploration of a critical part of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge—the
coastal calving grounds of the Porcupine caribou herd. This is also of significance to members of
the Gwichin First Nation living on the Yukon side. Although not mentioned, it
is strongly opposed by Canada.
Comments
Post a Comment