TIFF08 - Day 5
I have always liked the first Monday at the festival, especially the mornings, as it heralds four more weekday mornings when things aren’t quite as crazy, and even the sillier films take on a bit more of an air of respectability, as the audience is reduced to the hard-core take-the-week-off crowd. Not that I don’t thoroughly enjoy the rest of the fest, but it is fun to have the feeling shift a bit more towards the sedate. It’s a bit less harried; there’s a bit more community, a bit more insider-clubbiness to it. Not that there’s any snooty exclusivity to that - you can all join the club - just take the week off!
The documentary EVERY LITTLE STEP tells the story of the audition and casting process for the 2006 revival of A Chorus Line on Broadway. Being that A Chorus Line itself is the story of the audition and casting process for a Broadway musical, we have the filmic equivalent of a feedback loop here, and it’s quite the engaging ride.
Now I’ve never seen A Chorus Line - neither on stage, nor in the movie theatre, nor on DVD - but before you starting cursing my parents and showering me with elaborate pity parties, or making expensive arrangements to put me up in New York’s finest hotel rooms with great seats on Broadway tout de suite, rest assured that I will soon be correcting one of the oversights of my upbringing by seeing the show when it hits the stage of the Canon Theatre later this fall. All will be well.
I got the ticket for EVERY LITTLE STEP just because of the fact that I will be seeing the musical shortly, and I am certainly anticipating the show now, having finally learned a bit about this stage phenomenon. If you’re going to see it anyway, you might as well be prepared, right? Right. There’s no word if STEP will open before A Chorus Line opens in late October, although that would be a longshot. If I were David Mirvish I’d be trying to arrange it, nevertheless. Those who know the show will love this backstage look, those who don’t will be left wanting to see the show. And you’ll be wishing for these actors to be coming with the touring production - we certainly come to root for a few of them - but they won’t be coming, I have already checked the cast list on the website.
I am still thinking about THE COUNTRY TEACHER a day after, but I’m not so sure what to say about it. I don’t want to give too much away, but then again, I have little faith that this fine film will make it to theatres here. It Czech. See many Czech films?
TEACHER is shot in the beautiful countryside a distance from Prague, in a farming village on a lake, surrounded by woods. The setting is the rural idyll, an escape from the capital from which the titular teacher had a past he has run from. He soon finds, however, that you can’t keep your secrets hidden if you continue to act the way you did in the city: a foolish act puts his very existence in the village in peril, and the film subsequently asks its characters if they can forgive and accept, or if they will be slaves forever to misery and hate.
The film makes a choice that not all audience members were willing to accept. One questioner left the Q&A when another audience member eloquently defended the director: you could see that this film had cut deeply.
Anyway, I have no idea if such sketchy details on my part will entice anyone to see this film should they have the opportunity. I remembered little about it from the festival write-up by the time it started, and in retrospect I was glad not to know much more about it than what I have laid out here. This is one of those ‘this is the way life happens’ films, and sometimes it’s better to be less prepared for them. In fact, I have told you too much already. Forget what I have said, but see THE COUNTRY TEACHER if you ever have the chance.
TULPAN sprawls over the Kazakh steppe while at the same time it finds beauty in simplicity, with an entirely uncomplicated plot, and a whole disappearing culture for the audience to drop into. Asa is a young man, recently returned to the steppe after several tours as a Russian submariner. It’s time for him to find a wife, get a herd of sheep, a yurt, and establish a family. Tulpan is the girl down the road, a long day’s tractor ride away, and the object of Asa’s affections. A meeting is arranged to offer a dowry to Tulpan’s parents, but she and her mother aren’t interested: Tulpan is destined for the city and better things. Asa’s desires for Tulpan remain undiminished however, and if he can just prove to her that he can be a good herdsman and pure of heart, well, maybe she’ll change her mind.
Asa’s extended family are so natural that you cannot imagine you are seeing anything other than a real family going about their lives. Scenes do not seem staged or written so much as they have been merely caught by the camera. Shots of the sheep herds in a dust storm, or what it takes to get a hurt camel some help, or of family life in the yurt, or of weather on the steppe, are all exactly what they seem, with no hidden meanings nor dark complications; they are simple glimpses of this anachronistic life, and it’s very, very charming.