Wednesday (TIFF Day 6)

Wednesday is hump day. And it's no exception at the Festival.

To makes things as difficult as possible for myself, I crawled into bed at a little after 3:00 am last night, following the midnight show of The Burrowers. It took at least a half hour to get to sleep (Festing causes this problem) and the alarm went off at 6:30 this morning to roll back into the Big Smoke.

3 hours of sleep. 5 movies lined up. Let the good times roll.

Luckily, most of the films delivered enough to keep me awake and engaged (I'll get to the exceptions) but what a mill-stone to drag throughout the day (the worst sag came at about 3:00 pm. The Midnight movie wasn't a problem.)

To make things even more interesting, I parked by Ryerson at 8:30 am (since that's the theatre where I would finish after midnight) and walked over to the Scotiabank (about 20 minute walk). Except when I got there I realized that my 9 am film was actually at...the Ryerson. And this was supposed to be the day that I *didn’t* have to sprint between theatres. Oh well.

An explosive start to the day...

Hurt Locker ~ Recommended for starting a morning on 3 hours of sleep: Kathryn Bigelow's Hurt Locker. It’s better than a shot of adrenalin through the chest plate and doesn’t leave a bruise.

Apart from The Wrestler, it would seem that Hurt Locker is turning out to be the belle of the ball. With good reason. Comparisons to Full Metal Jacket are appropriate, after all here is a ground-level war movie that gets deep into process and mind-frame of soldiers in Iraq.

There are a lot of reasons that Hurt Locker works but chief among them is the opportunity to tell a war story from an angle I'm not sure we've seen before: bomb squads detonating and defusing road-side bombs in Iraq. It's a fascinating job that requires an complex type of soldier, and of course it makes for a very tense thriller. Bombs, as Hitchcock has taught us, are the ultimate movie device for ratcheting stress and anxiety. Bigelow understands this and constructs a film that raises the dramatic stakes with each remarkable set-piece. Damage could erupt in any instant.

Praise for Jeremy Renner who plays the lead role in the film and gets under the skin of the adrenalin fueled leader of the task force. (A title card at the start of the film tells us war is a drug. In that respect, Hurt Locker is the story of a junkie trying to get his next fix. ) The rest of the cast- all relative unknowns - deliver equaling strong performances: Anthony Mackie as Renner's second in command and Brian Geraghty as the softest of the three soldiers.

This is also a Kathryn Bigelow film so male bonding and male relationships play a big part in the drama. Once again, Bigelow demonstrates an uncanny ability to get inside the inner-circle of a testosterone driven team (following one exciting day, the team celebrates by getting drunk and punching each other hard in the stomach).

***

One Week ~ Boy, I didn't see this one coming.

Much like O'Horten, One Week is a film that plays to some very particular interests of mine. If O'Horten was about my love of trains, pipes and snow landscapes, One Week is about a fantasy much more primal: the westward road adventure. Only with two particular additions that make the formula even more potent - the Canadian westward motorcycle road adventure. On paper, I was certain to love the film. But like the precise mixture of O'Horten there are miles between what sounds good on paper and what works on film: music, story, character and most importantly tone.

So even expecting to like this a lot and even having build my whole Wednesday line-up around and even having blown off Slumdog Millionaire, a film desperately want to see - I didn't see this one coming down the track. I'm talking now about a complete movie-movie meltdown. I'm talking about seeing a movie that opened me up like patient on an operating table. I'm talking about a movie that had me trembling, my Canadian heart ready to burst.

That sounds pretty lame so I should back up. One Week is the story of a guy, learning he has terminal cancer (1 in 10 survival rate) lives the dream and takes a motor bike from Toronto to the Pacific Ocean. This is something I want on a genetic level ( the road trip, not the cancer). And with each province he passes through, the movie climbs further and further into my own brain-pan. By the time he reaches the Rockies, I'm a disaster. I have no doubt that this film will be popular with a wide audience but for me in particularly, it's cinematic kryptonite.

Here's what I didn't expect. I did not expect a film so particularly Canadian. Not just in terms of physical geography, but with respect to cultural geography. Touchstones like Tim Horton’s, the Tragically Hip, and Canadian Tire are dropped throughout the story in a manner that is organic rather than simply self-deprecating. It never feels like it's trying to be Canadian - it just happens to be. And that natural Northern orientation is what makes this one of the easiest and most familiar Canadian films I've ever seen. By the time Ben (Joshua Jackson) has the brief (and altogether random) opportunity to kiss the Stanley Cup (which prompts a flood of famous cup kisses), your Canadian pride must be moved. Or shriveled up.

Something else. I never expected this film to be so funny. Whimsical even. Which I suppose is another personal trap-door. Based on the log-line, you can forgive me for expecting something closer to Into the Wild. In actuality, One Week is closer to Amelie with a straight narrator providing ironic counterpoint to what's happening on-screen including random tangents into the lives and outcomes of strangers who pass through the edge of the story. And much of this is genuinely funny. In a Canadian sort of way.

Finally something has to be said about that soundtrack. Or not said maybe, since I could scarcely do it any justice. With Canadian artists like Emm Gryner (who's also in the movie) and the Great Lakes Swimmers, the songs lend the film one more reason to feel like an authentic Canadian product. Every song is a perfect fit. This soundtrack can't come fast enough.

Which brings me to the BIG problem: this film won't see wide distribution until March 2009. I would eagerly blow off any screening in the next few days to see this again, but I've etched the last of two shows. So now I wait. And I’ll probably forget. And in March 2009, the movie will probably throttle me again.

***

Short Cuts – Programme 4 ~ This being the year of the festival, it seemed like a good opportunity to wander into the Short Cuts program. There's a first time for everything and while I'd certainly chalk the experience up to being "interesting", I'm not sure it's something I'd quickly do again. Still, shorts are by definition...short, so it's a relatively painless experiment.

Here's what I saw:

A Small Thing - probably the most interesting short though it didn't feel like it at the time. Well photographed with some rich autumn-in-Toronto colours, the story centers on a girl trying to solve the mystery of her tenth birthday party which she deems to be the source of her "emptiness" in adulthood. The mystery takes a few minutes to get rolling but ultimately satisfies with a well-performed revelation on an outdoor track.

106 - the "comedy" short and certainly the most accessible. Its also the most film-school-seeming of the line-up by nature of its sharp angles and seemingly obvious direction. The short deals with a 106-year-old woman forced to deal with always being second fiddle to the woman born just minutes earlier.

Machine with Wishbone - very artful and very clever. No story to speak of but the short shows off some imaginative design work as a machine built from springs and a chicken bone leaps into motion. A great soundtrack amplifies the experience and makes for an easy and enjoyable experiment. Looks like it was really really hard to do.

Pierce, Crush, Escape - now we're getting into The Beyond. This abstract short is really Fine Art, tracking some crude pen and ink sketches against a hard, industrial soundtrack. Hypnotic and challenging, but a tough sit for someone on little sleep. This is getting pretty far from movies and into the artful world of Film. Which is OK if you're into that.

Uniform Material - not to be too blunt but this was the biggest waste of time of the program. Inexplicably, a man starting a new job as a security guard creates a uniform from scratch, blacking out his hiking boots with a black marker and dying his pants in the bathtub. All set up. No pay off.

Victor Gazon - cute. A child in elementary school constructs a project on suicide, balancing the pros and cons by listing the things he likes and doesn't like. Touches a few bases that may should be universal childhood memories.

In a rush for Blind Loves, I didn't stick around for Whitmore Park or La Battue (which is a shame, as I really wanted to see that last one.)

Still, a worthy experiment.

***

Blind Loves ~ Just what the hell was that? Talk about walking into the wrong movie.

By its description in the TIFF catalogue, Blind Loves is a Slovakian doc that looks at the relationship of a variety of blind couples. Sounds like a ripe and almost certainly sweet subject matter to me.

The actual product is virtually impenetrable. The camera acts like a fly-on-the-wall giving us a slice of life in the days and weeks of its subjects. And frankly, there's not a lot of romance to be found here. The first couple, clearly married a long time, sit, listen to the TV, smoke and knit. Until things get bug-crazy and the stop motion sea creatures take over their ennui. The second couple are motivated a bit more by straight up booty call (she seems sweet, he seems grateful for someone to sleep with). The third are having a baby and are worried about what it will take to look after it (OK, this one is rather touching). And the last one is a teenage girl trying to find a boyfriend on-line.

The big disappointment here is that the doc didn't work for me on any level; not as an instructional piece, not as a character study, and not as a "welcome-to-this-alternate-world" tour. I like my entertainment to be pretty messed up, but there was nothing to hang onto and float in this.

(And just to dip my toe into a bigger issue and then refuse to elaborate, I wasn't convinced that the filmmakers weren't simply exploiting their subjects here.)

***

Martyrs ~ I won't be able to un-see Martyrs.

During the intro, the director wouldn't promise enjoyment of his film but hoped that the audience would share an intense cinema experience. I braced myself for a rocky ride. Very very rocky. This, after all, was the French horror film which received the equivalent of X rating in France; stranger still because the rating was provoked by the violence in the film (there is no sex in the movie). This, after all, was film reputed to be one of the hardest, most upsetting and challenging films to be added to the Midnight Madness program. Not usually my cup of tea but I still felt I should see it. Call it a dare.

What's remarkable about Martyrs is that it's really two films in one. The first half is rip-snorting horror movie that moves at about 100 mph, complete with vengeful spirits, domestic slaughter and lots and lots of knives. Great gore, good frights and a compelling revenge drama.

Then the tone shifts. And there's that second half. Lordy...

I won't spoil anymore except to agree with the suggestion that Martyrs is about a whole lot more than gore and controversy. This is not Hostel and it's not about empty violence. There's a lot going on in that second half and while I night wish I could un-see it when I climb into bed tonight, it's a movie ride worth taking.

Well, worth taking for the 2% of the population that can handle it.