(originally published in The Outreach Connection in September 2002)
This is
the first of Jack Hughes’ reports from the 2002 Toronto Film Festival.
Ararat (Atom Egoyan)
Egoyan’s
opening gala presentation certainly doesn’t seem like the work of a great
filmmaker; it evokes instead a disgruntled academic translating his theories
onto celluloid. Set in present-day Toronto, it examines the continuing
spiritual and emotional impact of Turkey’s massacre of Armenians in 1915.
Characters include a director (Charles Aznavour) who’s making a film on the
subject, an art history professor (Arsinee Khanjian) who’s a consultant on the
picture, and her troubled son. Ararat
doesn’t purport to present the objective truth of what happened in 1915, and
acknowledges that there are problems in the historical record; it dwells on the
difficulties of sustaining memory and remembrance. That aspect of Egoyan’s film
is fairly interesting, but it’s filtered through some very cumbersome emotional
set-ups and bizarre artistic decisions (for example, much of the film consists
of a labored dialogue between the son and an overbearing customs officer played
by Christopher Plummer). The messiness isn’t without consolations, but it makes
for a distinctly dutiful, visually undistinguished viewing experience. The use
of the film within the film, including a gala premiere at the Elgin, seems like
mere navel-gazing, but then Egoyan doesn’t exhibit much sense of the real world
– you’d think from Ararat that 1915
was the number one conversation topic in our city.
Talk to Her (Pedro Almodovar)
Almodovar
has mastered the art of making outlandish narratives seem as natural and
graceful as a dance. His new film, in which dance is actually woven prominently
into the design, revolves around two men, both in love with (wait for it) women
in comas. One (who, in typical Almodovar fashion, thinks of himself as being
more gay than straight) sees this state as an enhancement rather than an
impediment; the other is understandably more ambivalent. Events build to a
shocking violation that Almodovar somehow manages to render smooth and
understandable. He has the old-fashioned virtue of liking his characters – his
benevolence is almost boundless, sometimes to the point of foolhardiness. But
this is as beguiling a movie as he’s made (even after the clear artistic
advances of Live Flesh and All About my Mother). It shifts gears
and perspectives with imperceptible ease, sliding forwards and backwards in
time in a way that makes most narratives of that type seem highly
self-conscious. It’s poised and consistently beautiful, even if the broader
insights (the title sets out the main message – the importance of
communication) don’t amount to much.
10 (Abbas Kiarostami)
It’s
always in question whether Western viewers appreciate the work of an Iranian
director like Kiarostami too much through our own prism (reflecting our own
morals, ethics, aesthetic tradition, sexual politics, received notions about
Iran). This may be especially tempting with his new film 10 (not a remake, obviously, of the Blake Edwards semi-classic),
which consists solely of ten one-take scenes of a divorced woman, driving in
her car with various passengers. In the first scene, her young son lambasts her
as a bad, stupid mother; shortly afterwards she picks up a whore who scoffs at
her moralistic questions. Later on in the film, the son again criticizes her
for various things, but by then she takes it much more in stride. In the later
scenes she counsels a distraught woman not to depend so much on just one
person, and advises another to loosen her veil (which in such a physically
controlled film generates considerable visual excitement). As the film
progresses, the increasing use of cross-cutting between characters seems to
reflect a growing sense of security and engagement on her part. The film thus
appears to be primarily an illustration of a woman’s growing sense of
self-determination as she adjusts to life on her own, but I suspect it may be
subtler than a single viewing can appreciate. Intriguing as 10 is, I think many Kiarostami fans may
miss the broader canvases of his earlier work.
Lost in La Mancha (Keith Fulton and Luis Pepe)
In 2000,
director Terry Gilliam finally rolled film on his long-cherished adaptation of Don Quixote. The project came with an
unrealistic budget, inadequate rehearsal and preparation time, looming chaos,
and memories of his 1989 over-budget fiasco The
Adventures of Baron Munchhausen (which earned him a reputation as an
undisciplined enfant terrible, not overcome by subsequent relatively saner
projects such as The Fisher King and Twelve Monkeys). The first day saw a
freak storm that instantly threw the schedule into disarray. By the end of the
first week, lead actor Jean Rochefort was in the hands of his doctors with a
herniated disk. The film struggled on through a sixth day before collapsing
completely, sending millions of dollars and Gilliam’s dreams down the tubes.
Miraculously, Fulton and Pepe had cameras rolling on the whole thing, resulting
in one of the most vivid portrayals of filmmaking ever made. Gilliam starts off
somewhat enamoured of his own legend (“Without a battle, maybe I don’t know
exactly how to approach it”); when on the first day he asks how they’re doing
for time and the response is “Bad,” Gilliam reflexively snaps back “Good.” His
childish giggle when something goes well is infectious. But as disaster engulfs
the project he seems overwhelmed, almost paralyzed. His Don Quixote film, from what we see of it, would probably have ended
up much like Munchhausen – a treat
for Gilliam fans, mainly a curio for anyone else; the fact that we’ve been
denied that film, but given Lost in La
Mancha instead, probably isn’t a bad trade-off.
Sweet Sixteen (Ken Loach)
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