Notes on the Toronto Film Festival.

Wood, Robert Paul

The organizing principle of the Toronto Film Festival is the opposite of that of its New York counterpart. The New York festival is so selective that a number of important films are eliminated (and one might well question some of the inclusions and exclusions); the Toronto organizers work on the principle that every film that anyone might consider worthy must be screened. Both systems have their merits and their drawbacks. Here in Toronto, confronted with the dubious guidance of a programme guide committed to championing, and justifying the inclusion of, every film as a work that deserves to be seen, how does the poor bewildered critic cope? Choices have to be made, but on what basis, given that many of the films and their directors are unknown quantities? I know people who go to four, even five, films a day; I lack both their stamina and their apparent capacity to absorb, and limit myself to two, if possible with a lengthy break in between. But on what grounds am I to make my choices? I begin, obviously, by eliminating as far as possible films by established artists which I am confident will open locally or at least receive a release on DVD. But even this is hazardous: those, for example, who missed Claire Denis' Trouble Every Day a couple of years ago will still not have been able to see it unless they have the means to import a DVD copy from Europe which will only play on multi-region machines. I am not of course complaining about this situation: I love the generosity of impulse that wishes to include everything. I am simply indicating the problems involved for the viewer.

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The notion of a festival report poses further problems for me. I seldom write about a film before I have seen it at least three times and there has been sufficient time lapse for my sense of its value and significance to have formed. In short, I am a critic, not a reviewer, a distinction that, within our 'fast food' culture of the instantly disposable, seems to be becoming increasingly blurred to the point where the terms are used interchangeably, a disaster for which academic film study over the last three decades must be held largely responsible. Its insistence upon theory, theory and more theory has been consistently at the expense of questions of value and 'the common pursuit of true judgement'--the ultimate human questions of 'What do we live for? What should we live for? What might we live for?', and, with these ultimate questions always in mind, the urgent question of our relation to the cultural situation within we exist--the questions that criticism (as opposed to 'reviewing') is ultimately (though often implicitly) about. All I can offer here, therefore, is a somewhat perfunctory and provisional overview of some of the films I saw. Despite my basic principle of choice I couldn't resist attending the screenings of the new films by Tsai and Haneke, though I prefer to wait and write about them at length when I have been able o resee them. And I am copping out for the time being on Bruno Dumont's new film, 29 Palms. I disliked it for its apparent reduction of the complexities of human sexuality to a mindless, loveless animalism, but perhaps that is its point and perhaps its final minutes relate significantly to this. I just don't know, and am reluctant to discuss it until I can familiarize myself with it, the maker of L'Humanite having surely earned the benefit of any doubt.

Of the twenty or so films I saw, my favourite is Mille Mois, by the young Moroccan writer/director Faouzi Bensaidi, surely among the most remarkable feature film debuts in film history. Almost no one I spoke to saw it, and it has apparently not been picked up by a distributor, so, unless it appears on DVD, we shall have to wait until Bensaidi's subsequent films build his reputation and induce someone to 'discover' it. What first struck me about the film (a French/Moroccan/Belgian coproduction--the filmmaker studied in France) is its extraordinary technical/aesthetic assurance: Bensaidi has an already fully developed and mature command of the possibilities of the CinemaScope image, and the film is full of breathtakingly complex and beautiful compositions. But this is as far removed as possible from 'Art for Art's sake', the film being as thematically dense as it is fascinating to watch. Its complex thematic/narrative structure will doubtless reveal more aspects on repeated viewings, but its central unifying concern appears to be the analysis and critique of power structures, developed around the central metaphor of the schoolmaster's heavy chair which a young boy (the pivotal character) is designated to carry wherever he goes. The narrative, involving several interconnected plot-lines and numerous characters, is masterfully controlled and developed. I felt in the presence of a mature artist who thinks cinematically.

Another French/Moroccan co-production (and again a first feature), Les Yeux Secs, is also very striking, both in its subject-matter and its realization. It also, ominously, seems not to have a North American distributor. These two films certainly deserve to be seen just as much as the widely accessible Iranian films of Kiarostami, Panahi and the Makhmalbaf family. The film's premise (I'm not clear whether it is fact or fiction) is extreme, but no more so than the much-publicized horrors of women's lives in Afghanistan under the Taliban: the setting is a remote mountain village populated solely by women, visited once a year by herdsmen, for sexual satisfaction and the procreation of more females for the next generation. One woman, Hala, attempts to start a revolution by urging the women to abandon all female offspring, ending the oppression at horrific expense. The use of spectacular natural settings is countered by the film's strikingly stylized use of colour and pattern. Kay Armitage describes this so vividly in the programme guide that I cannot do better than quote her:

"... Women dressed in vibrant colours stand in formal tableaux against the golden summer light and the children roam through fields of poppies in radiant scarlet. The striking symbol of the girls' destiny is a garden of poles fluttering with the red cloths of deflowered virgins. Only the central character, the fiery Hala, is dressed head-to toe in black as an ironic marker of movement and emotion."

Another major revelation was the mini-retrospect of Turkish films by Zeki Demirkubuz and Nuri Bilge Ceylan. I was already partly familiar with the former's work because I am allegedly 'supervising' the thesis on it of a Turkish graduate student who supplies me with the relevant videos--'allegedly', because she has no need of supervision and is far more familiar with the films than I am (besides having direct access to the culture). Consequently I did not watch the Demirkubus films in the festival (they are of great interest). Of the two Ceylan films I saw I marginally preferred the earlier, Clouds of May, perhaps because of its evident debt to what we now think of as early Kiarostami, the 'Koker' trilogy: it relates to Where is the Friend's Home? (the sensitive and complex treatment of childhood), and to ..And Life Goes On, and Through the Olive Trees (the self-reflexive foregrounding of filmmaking, the filmmaker returning to make a film about the film he made), though it never becomes parasitic upon either, having very much its own tone, delicacy and sensibility. Most viewers seem to have preferred Distant (about to receive a short run in Toronto's Cinematheque), a far darker and very different film which evoked for me Antonioni and Fassbinder in its study of alienation at once distinctively modern urban and intricately personalized within a detailed relationship. Juxtaposed with the films of Demirkubus, Ceylan's films suggest a thriving and complex Turkish film industry.

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The notorious Cannes premiere of The Brown Bunny is proving hard for the film to live down, and proving also the dangers of screening a film before its editing is completed. The definitive version screened in Toronto (re-edited, half-an-hour shorter) seems to me less than a masterpiece but certainly deserving of respectful attention. As an actor Vincent Gallo has revealed a potent and distinctive screen presence (in his own Buffalo 66, and in Claire Denis' Nenette et Boni and, especially, her remarkable and disturbing Trouble Every Day, of which we still await a DVD release in North America). Here, he impressively carries the whole film, present in virtually every shot except those from his POV: one might say that his troubled and alienated character represents both the film's strength and its limitations. (See Dion Tubrett's contribution for a more thorough analysis).

Three Canadian films. Vincenzo Natali's Cube attracted a lot of attention a few years ago, less in Canada than in Europe, especially France. It seemed to me accomplished and interesting, but more on the conceptual level than on that of realization. Natali had two films in the 2003 festival, of which I watched the first half hour of the one with what proved the perfectly appropriate title: Nothing. I would suggest to Natali that he return to college and enrol in Comedy 101, when he will be instructed in the first session that the worst thing you can do in a comedy is keep telling the audience how much they should be laughing. I joined the general exodus, and wonder now whether anyone was still there at the end. I understand that much the same thing occurred at the screening of Natali's other movie. This may sound very much like 'hitting a man when he's down', which is not something I like to be associated with. I think Natali would benefit from watching many other films, not in order to imitate them, but simply in order to experience what viewing a good film can be, the mental give-and-take that goes on between author and spectator as image follows image. Most university film departments today seem to be divided between 'theory' and 'film making', with little intercourse between the two and a minimum of actual film viewing. This seems to me worse than ridiculous. Every potential filmmaker should be steeped in the cinema of the past and the present, as the primary educational experience (think Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol, Rivette, Rohmer ...), with intensive analysis and in-depth criticism to back it up. That background might have produced, in someone like Natali, an important filmmaker. At present he is making films that look like the work of someone who has never seen a film before (and I am not talking about technical knowhow, which, as Chabrol was fond of telling everyone, an intelligent person can master within 24 hours).

Nothing is clearly unreleasable; another modest new Canadian film, Twist, by Jacob Tierney, clearly deserves far more attention than it has received and should be released both theatrically and on DVD. An updating of Dickens set in present-day Toronto, centred on the Artful Dodger (now a teenage male prostitute) who rescues and falls in love with Oliver, the film has certain weaknesses (Fagin's suicide seems insufficiently motivated and prepared, the ending needs rethinking), but it remains continuously interesting, frequently moving, very well acted and directed: a creditable first feature, revealing a talent that deserves the nurturing and support it probably won't get from the Canadian funding agencies, which seem in general to fund projects rather than talent. Twist deserves a place among the select group of Canadian films (Kitchen Party, rollercoaster) about the problems of growing up and maintaining some kind of integrity in the contemporary world--a group that stands in impressive opposition to the current Hollywood 'youth' movies.

I approached Falling Angels with great interest, because it is the second feature of Scott Smith, whose feature debut rollercoaster I would certainly place among the half-dozen best Canadian films I have seen. At its festival screening I was (inevitably, I supppose) somewhat disappointed. Fortunately the film received a swift (though very brief) release and a special screening at Toronto's Cinematheque, and I was able to resee it (alone of the films I am writing on) and do it more justice, rollercoaster had its premiere in the 1999 Toronto festival. Anyone with open eyes and a serious interest in cinema could have seen evidence of a potentially major talent, yet we have had to wait four years for Smith's next film. In a healthy film culture he would have had no difficulty in securing finance for at least two films in between--it being of first importance for a fledgling director to keep working. rollercoaster is 'a Scott Smith film' in the fullest sense of the word: he wrote the screenplay from his own idea, produced and cast the film, directed it. It comes across as an intensely personal work, and a film of considerable complexity and subtlety, depth and intelligence. Falling Angels is adapted from a Barbara Gowdy novel, with a screenplay by Esta Spalding. The film is splendidly realized: Smith shows himself again a born filmmaker and a sensitive and resourceful director of actors, the performances being consistently detailed and alive. It should certainly convince any funding agency of Smith's potential. As far as I am aware only one other Gowdy work, a short story, has so far been filmed: Kissed, of dire memory. What I find most interesting (and most promising) about Falling Angels are the film's deviations from its source. By the end of Gowdy's novel, all potential seems to have been closed off: every relationship, lesbian or straight, has failed, the father has thrown himself off Niagara Falls, we are left with a debilitating sense of futility, supported by a somewhat condescending and superior attitude to the film's characters. In Smith's film, although no promises are offered us, every relationship is allowed to remain open and the father returns (chastened and improved, perhaps?) to the family circle. I have no information as to whether these changes (which are consistent over the film's entire spectrum of relationships) were Smith's or the screenwriter's, but they are consistent with the spirit that allowed a faint note of hope and renewal to qualify the bleak end of rollercoaster. Smith is currently preparing a film about the effects of a gay marriage on a family. I hope we shall not have to wait another four years before we are allowed to see it.

Ra'anan Alexandrowicz's James' Journey to Jerusalem (Israel) and Jafar Panahi's Crimson Gold (Iran) both paint extremely unflattering portraits of their respective countries. The latter attracted a great deal of attention, the former very little, partly because Panahi is already an established and admired director, but partly perhaps because in Iran you make a film like Crimson Gold at the cost of your future and at risk of possible prosecution, whereas Israel, whatever one may think of its current policies, at least appears to allow freedom of speech. Crimson Gold is also the more original, idiosyncratic and complex film; as it seems almost certain to get a release, at least on DVD, I shall postpone writing on it until I know it better. James' Journey is more predictable but nonetheless striking in its uncompromising presentation of a culture corrupt from top to bottom. The corruption, however, is the habitual and inevitable corruption of capitalism, the worst of all possible social systems short of Stalinist or Nazi totalitarianism, built upon power structures and the nurturing of greed, competition and mean-mindedness--as we all I think know but seem curiously reluctant to do anything about it, entangled in its web of false and empty promises. It's by no means clear that James' journey would have had a happier conclusion if he'd made it to the USA. James is a beautiful, innocent and idealistic young Zulu, sent from his African village on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. On his arrival in Israel he is abruptly sucked into what amounts to slave labour, gradually succumbs to the pervasive corruption as the only means of extricating himself, then ultimately--realizing what is happening to him--redeems himself by an act of rebellion, as a result of which he does, finally, get to Jerusalem--in a prison van.

I take it that the only reason The School of Rock was selected for the festival was that it had Richard Linklater's name on it--which is also the only reason I am writing briefly about it. A film of no discernible distinction (it seems barely distinguishable from today's 'standard' Hollywood 'teen audience' products) in which Jack Black begins to outstay his welcome about ten minutes in and returns in virtually every scene, it somewhat recalls the Mickey Rooney/Judy Garland movies of the late 30s/40s (Babes in Arms, etc.) about kids putting on a show, except that they were marginally more 'progressive' in that the kids (somewhat older) managed without Mr. Black's encouragement. School of Rock's only noticeable advance on its model is as a mindlessly celebratory contribution to the now probably irreversible disintegration of what we used to think of as our civilization, without offering any positive suggestion as to what might replace it. Linklater may have agreed to make it as a way of raising money for the recently completed sequel to his finest work, Before Sunrise. I don't think this excuses School of Rock (what could?) but I prefer to believe it to meditating upon the horrifying possibility that he actually wanted to make it.

I have nothing exactly against rock music, which clearly today has the function of permitting teenagers a transitory release from the pervasive brutalities of life under contemporary corporate capitalist culture. The politicized rock of the 60s and 70s had a potential value beyond this, but (as far as I can see) the function of rock music today is not to rouse the young to revolution (or even to get them to the voting polls), but to provide yet another distraction from the kind of thinking that might make revolution possible: in other words, it has become annexed to the culture's dominant trends as yet another weapon in the arsenal of our formidable enemy. I might concede that rock is capable of encompassing the entire range of human emotion, expression and creativity from A to B, generously leaving the rest of the alphabet to Monteverdi, Bach, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Berlioz, Wagner, Mahler, Schonberg, Nielsen, Sibelius, Janacek and Stravinsky (to name but a few). The film tells its youth audience (no intelligent adult would voluntarily sit through it) from the mouth of Mr. Black that rock will 'blow classical music out your ass', reducing the cumulative cultural legacy of centuries literally to a piece of shit. Nothing in the film counters or qualifies this statement, so perhaps we must accept that Linklater endorses it (and I always thought of Before Sunrise as one of the most 'Mozartian' of films ...).

The film offers some crude and obvious satire on contemporary upper-crust education as its endorsement of Mr. Black's position. The education of the young today is (necessarily) geared to preparing them for the dog-eat-dog world of corporate capitalism, with its systematic destruction of every aspect of life not relevant to the making of money. I would be all in favour of a film that suggested that education might have other, higher aims. But The School of Rock shows not the least interest in such a project. To suggest that rock music today can still be some liberating force is, quite simply, to ignore its current usefulness in the marketplace of consumerism, the stench of which we breathe in daily. Meanwhile, we are losing our past, and 'If we lose the past, we lose the future'.