Craig at the Toronto International Film Festival

TIFF 2006 Day 6

A friend called me this morning who expected to find me downtown at the festival. I was still at home when I picked up the phone however, and it took some convincing to get him to believe he hadn’t woken me up, something about the sound of my voice I guess. I was having a slow wake-up. I reported I was also skipping my first film of the day, which prompted the question “Is it still fun?” Yeah it’s still fun, it’s just that it’s sooo much fun.

Anyway, I feel badly about having skipped the flick THE LAST KING OF SCOTLAND, starring Forrest Whitaker and Mr. Tumnus - it was the only film I had scheduled this year that delved into Africa - but a slow wake-up was the only way to go today. Idi-Amin and his cohorts will have to wait until this film is unleashed in regular theatres. (I heard later when talking to other festival goers that it is a terrific film. Fooey! I’ll see it later.)

Monkey Warfare

MONKEY WARFARE, similarly, is my only English Canadian fiction feature this year. While I don’t tend to plan my schedule to get one dollop of everything, it does end up that way sometimes. Anyway, MONKEY tells the story of pothead Parkdalers and shrewd garage-salers Dan and Linda, played by Don McKellar and Tracy Wright, who buy cheap and make their living reselling on the internet. I have never enjoyed Don McKellar’s performance more, and have always had a thing for Ms. Wright, and she’s spot-on again here: the two of them are terrific as this pair of age-mellowed counter-culture rebels. Into their lives strides Susan, an idealistic young pot dealer who wants more and more to fight ‘the Man’, and is moving to bring back the homegrown civil disobedience of the 70s. Dan and Linda just want a reliable supply of pot, and to remain under-the-radar.

Director/writer Reg Harkema captures a slice of Parkdale and weaves an amusing tale of post-hippie existance that’s disappearing in the wake of the area’s gentrification.

The Fountain

THE FOUNTAIN arrived at the Elgin with 1) pedigree, 2) a major marketing push behind it, and 3) the dubious distinction of having been booed when it debuted in Venice last week. (We never boo anything here, we just walk out. Would people walk out tonight?)

The pedigree was Hugh Jackman, Rachel Weisz, and Ellen Burstyn on-screen, and Darren Aronofsky of REQUIEM FOR A DREAM fame behind it; that added up to some big expectations. The marketing push was evidenced by huge ad-trucks driving around town with the rather stylish and mysterious FOUNTAIN billboard plastered on them. And the Italian response? Well…

Six years in the making, six years in the watching, THE FOUNTAIN takes place in three time frames: the past, the present, and, uh, forever and ever and ever. Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz play similar characters in each era. In the present, where we spend the most time, Jackman is Tommy, a brain tumour researcher who is racing for a cure that might also save his wife Izzy from a cancer death. Rachel Weisz’s Izzy has been writing a book that puts her hubby in the role of a 17th century Spanish conquistador Tomas who is racing on Queen Isabella’s behalf to find the fountain of youth at a Mayan temple. Things don’t go so well in the past though, so future Tom rides a bubble-protected tree-of-life spaceship to a nebula that promises to put all things right…

The film is extremely stylish, overarchingly stylish. The nebula is gorgeous - I would love to visit - and the Mayan temple is Indiana Jonerseriffic, and every other set is so freakishly darkly sumptuous, including Dr. Tommy’s medical lab and hospital, that any notions of grounding even one of the storylines here in some kind of reality relatable to us is tossed out the window. Not one damn fluorescent light in the medical lab: it’s all dark with dim pools of light that make each workstation look more like tables at a chic little resto where one might want to propose marriage and an increase of 50 more ccs of anesthetic that the lab-monkey needs to get through his day. And then there’s Tommy and Izzy’s suffocatingly dark and dreary house, and Isabella’s candle-happy castle that continues into the surrounding blackness, and on and on. So, if on sets alone I am forced to dismiss any relation to reality, I have to consider THE FOUNTAIN on its fantastical elements: does it stand up as sci-fi fantasy? Does it have an internal logic? Do the pieces fit?

I say only with a sledgehammer, and here’s what THE FOUNTAIN’s sledgehammer is made up of:

1. Hugh Jackman screaming in anguish for 80% of the film over his wife’s impending death, then upon her death, and then still long, long after her death, (enough anguish already, we get it!)
2. the entirely obvious lesson, redrawn ad nauseum throughout the film, and identifiable to the audience early on, that living forever and not letting go will make one insane, (the whole quest for eternal youth is making you go nuts Tommy, we get it!)
3. so much visual symbolism piled up on symbolism that you have a pile of stinking, rotting symbolism that’s constantly threatening to fall and smoother anything non-symbolic, (it’s always dark, either raining or snowing, it’s the winter of Tommy’s discontent, we get it!)
4. and a time structure that’s so discontinuous that you’re willing to accept any incoherent plot device because you’re not sure how it all fits together anyway, (Tommy loses his ring in the lab - oh, what could that mean? - and Tom finds it six centuries later in the nebula in space because it’s a dramatic moment. Gaggez-moi.)

I like films with a lighter touch, understated, where the moral of the tale is hinted at, not tattooed across my face. Now I have to get this pretentious new age twaddle lasered off…

Izzy has a last gift for Tommy: he must finish her search-for-eternal-youth book after she has died. I would have finished that book in the fireplace, but all I could do was clap in relief when the film was finally over. The Italians were right. Boooo!

I finished my night off with a talk instead of a movie. John Waters, of PINK FLAMINGOES infamy and HAIRSPRAY fame and John Cameron Mitchell of HEDWIG AND THE ANGRY INCH and SHORTBUS notoriety were in conversation tonight discussing what it’s like to push the limits of what is acceptable in films. To get to that spot host Sook-Yin Lee interrogated them about their childhoods first, and what influenced them as each grew up: pretty standard interview form, all very genially performed. Waters is definitely the comedian of the two, always ready with quips and anecdotes; he’s a real crowd pleaser. Mitchell, while maybe not exactly shy, is the quieter of the two, and someone who goes for the full story over the punch-line. Did I learn anything startling? They both indicated that we pretty much have the Catholic church to thank for the way both turned out: it was definitely the common thread in their rebellion histories, so nothing too surprising. Insights into the filmmaking process were bandied about, and in the end, a fun time was had by all.

Posted by admin under reviews |