Pi (1998)

And just like that I'm left scratching my head for the second time.

My first viewing of π was during a 24-hour Fest, sometime well past the midnight mark. The group knew next to nothing about the movie when we threw it in our line-up (messed up movies tend to go in the early-morning hours so we knew at least that much); in hindsight, it was sort of a silly place to drop the movie. I was in and out of sleep I'm certain, but saw enough of the film to know that I could never hope to catch up to what was going on. There was a lot of talk about power-drills and brains, but beyond that the movie seemed incomprehensible.

As an aside, I'd like to mention at this point that I'm a registered super-fan of Requiem for a Dream and a considered admirer of The Fountain (which I intend to see a couple of more times before declaring it a failed experiment or masterpiece; a movie like The Fountain doesn't allow much middle ground). I like Darren Aronofsky a lot as a filmmaker and think he has mad skills. He will continue to be a Director-to-Watch for me for a good, long time.

Regardless of this, my second viewing of π was another misfire. Wide awake, focused and prepared for the low-fi style of the film, I still came back with a handful of sand. The premise of the film is solid: a math genius believes that all mysteries can be solved with numbers and finds himself at the centre of an obsessive quest for a 216-digit number which may or may not have a higher purpose. This is the sort of log-line that fires up someone like me; I have a math degree, enthusiasm for puzzles and a tremendous appreciation for math in movies, done right. However, the movie circles the premise, offers a few teasing nuggets (the connections between the Hebrew alphabet and their mathematical counterparts is fun) and ultimately delivers a stack of gobbledy-gook. Even the climax, with blood and power tools galore, didn't really satisfy me as it wasn't clear what I was supposed to be taking away from this radical conclusion: ambiguity is cool, but I didn't even feel like I had enough information to start out with theories.

[If someone wants to explain, I'd be happy to entertain some theories. I wasn't enthusiastic enough or intrigued enough to go looking for explanations on message boards...]

I wish I liked this movie more. I wished I loved it. I may even give it another go in 10 years, but for now, I have to file it away as a precious art-house film with a lot of big ideas but little in the way of solid ammunition.

Touch of Evil (1958)

Spoilers follow. If you've never seen Touch of Evil, you should be wary of the points I'm about to discuss - this may be new information to some and my enjoyment of the film came in large part from not knowing any of the following...

Now, imagine if you will watching the opening minutes of Touch of Evil unfold without any of the pre-conceptions or expectations hung on the movie by film school profs and writers; consider coming into the opening scene blind and you'll get some sense of my first contact with the Orson Welles masterpiece. Here's a movie that I knew virtually nothing about before the opening tracking shot, reputed to be one of the landmark opening shots in film history, thrilled me and sent me scrambling for the rewind button on my remote. I'm referring of course to the unbroken tracking shot which begins on a pair of hands starting the timer on a bomb, planting the bomb in the trunk of a car and then following the car as it drives through the streets of the Mexican border town, criss-crossing paths with our heroes before ultimately crossing the border and exploding. Breathtaking doesn't really describe the path this camera takes as it rises and falls over buildings and around corners to follow the action. Rather, Hitchcock's famous bomb theory comes to mind with the passing of each minute on the clock. [If you don't know, Hitchcock's bomb theory was that it was more thrilling to show an audience a bomb and then let them fret about when it would go off, rather than simply having a bomb go off.]

During this opening, my mind also wandered to Children of Men, in large part because of the revolutionary sequences Alfonso Cuarón choreographed in that film, choosing like Welles to circle and chase the action with one unbroken shot; in Cuarón's case, my understanding is that the sequences took some CG assistance and pioneered some new camera effects, but the impact is no different. I'm certain that 1950's audiences must have been as surprised as modern audiences to see just how far the camera would go to pursue the story. Nothing new under the sun, I suppose. Cuarón's technique isn't new, just the tools and sophistication available to him.

Touch of Evil is full of just such surprises, unpredictable at every turn but always wrapped in Welles' virtuoso storytelling. Not everything in the movie is as showy as the opening sequence; consider the chase that closes the film as Charlton Heston's Vargas pursues Welles' corrupt sheriff with a tape recorder, shadowing him through an industrial set and under a footbridge. As Welles hears his own voice repeating behind him, he assumes it to be an echo. The staging is simple, but creates a layer of anxiety to the pursuit that would have been missing from a more traditional foot chase.

Orson Welles is equally spectacular in front of the camera. Playing the nefarious Police Captain Quinlan, Welles is a monster on-screen, physically as much as morally. Photographed from low angles, he dominates the frame whenever he appears, lumbering and slurring his speech like a man who has just finished a big meal. Knowing Orson Welles on-screen mostly from Citizen Kane and The Third Man, he is almost unrecognizable under the extra weight. The voice, however, remains unmistakable. And the performance is superior at every turn, finding an unusual balance between crookedness and most surprisingly of all, sympathy. It's one of those rare movie performances where you can't take your eyes off the screen.


Still, despite all of that, I guess this is really supposed to be Charlton Heston's movie and he does a fine job as the Mexican (hello?) detective who finds himself at odds with Captain Quinlan. Funny enough that Heston never seems Mexican in the film despite his name (Ramon Vargas) and moustache, however the performance still works. In fact, under Welles' enormous shadow, Heston seems practically subdued, not as flashy and theatrical as other performances. Janet Leigh is great as Vargas' wife, a victim of Quinlan's manipulative plans.

If any aspect of Touch of Evil has aged poorly, it is the wife-in-jeopardy elements of the film: Quinlan's masterstroke is to "frame" Vargas' wife by having some gang-members dope her with truth-serum and surround her with "marijuana roaches" to give the wrongful impression that she is a junkie. In 1958, I suppose marijuana had enough reputation to play this role, but in modern times, it seems a little silly. Heroin maybe could work, but marijuana joints seems like a stretch. Still, on-screen drug use in 1958 must've been pretty edgy.

The rest of the film's plot is remarkably canny given the modern climate. The challenge of solving a car bombing at a border crossing is probably more relevant in 2007 than it was 50 years ago, regardless of the outcome of the crime (it's certainly not terrorism in this story). And of course, the spine of the film has less to do with the crime on which the story is hung, than the damaging cat-and-mouse game between Vargas and Quinlan, the righteous and the corrupt sides of the law.

I have no problem calling this film a masterpiece and will look forward to watching it again.

Don't call it a comeback...

...I been here for years...

Or something like that. This blog has been dusty, neglected and sort of embarrassing for almost 30 months now, and it's not because I haven't been viciously and voraciously consuming new movies. In fact, by my estimates, I've watched a little over 400 new movies since my last posting below. Unfortunately, between family and work, moving to a new house and having another baby, there simply wasn't time to write about movies. Damn shame. I'm sure it would have made a rich and interesting document to have.

Nevertheless, I'm shaking out the joints and cracking the knuckles now, eager to get back to writing something - anything - in regard to the movies I'm watching. Story goes that I'm on track for a personal best this year watching 400 movies. [Don't ask me what my personal best was prior to this achievement because I haven't always kept track; I'm certain that I've never watched 400 movies in one year.]

As of this posting, at the virtual halfway point of 2007, I've watched 192 movies (24 in theatres and 168 on DVD). A little shy of 200, but I should be able to make up the shortfall by Dec. 31 (second half of the year is usually busier for me as better movies start to pop up in theatres and the Toronto Film Festival rolls in). But more importantly, I'm diving through deep, deep lists of legendary movies that are time-proven to be great and discovering (for the first time) some blistering, extraordinary, breathtaking, intoxicating stuff. Quantity is wonderful...but it's the quality that's been knocking me out.

It's a bit of a Golden Age, to be honest.

Just a sample of the remarkable movies watched and adored in the last 6 months are as follows: The Searchers, Mean Streets, Midnight Cowboy, The General, 3:10 To Yuma, Badlands, Spellbound, The Great Silence, Vanishing Point, The Sting, Porco Rosso, Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid, Delicatessen, Dr. No, Prairie Home Companion, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas; any and all of these could stand up with some of my favorite movies of all time. I'm not sure I've watched this many top-level movies in such a short period before in my life.

I've been tracking most of the new movies daily on Facebook, adding an entry (usually) and dropping 20-30 words on each. But the limitations of this are starting to catch up with me and I'm discovering that I often have more to say on each. I might not write 1,000 on every new movie I find, but this blog is a good way for me to keep track of my initial reactions.

More importantly, I figure that if I can spend 20 minutes a day on Facebook, I can certainly spend at least 10 minutes a day on this blog. Here's hoping.

Godspeed.

A complete slobberknocker.

It goes without saying that Christmas finally put the smack on me. The Baby Jesus caught me trying to slip under the ropes and pulled me into a devastating cross-face chicken wing.

The good news: the Monday movies have still been rolling, though I'm sad to confess that I missed a week. In the meantime, I have to get back to it. Here's hoping I'll have something to say about The Last Picture Show or Manhunter in the coming week.

Was it 1989?

It’s an anniversary of sorts today. T. and I started dating 15-years ago tonight, little knowing that marriage and babies were to come in the decades that followed.

Our first (of many many many) movie dates was Back to the Future Part II.

Part II, mind you! I can’t speak much for the movie because I don’t remember thinking much about it at the time. I was completely distracted by the company and that intense high-school-era, first-date pressure. It was years later before I got around to seeing Part III.

But it sure helps to put 15-years in perspective, don't it?

Lunchtime in Hadleyville

High Noon (1952), which I hadn’t seen before last week, has the distinction of being my first Classic Hollywood Western. To be clear, I’ve seen plenty of westerns. Most were even made in the Hollywood studio system. But it seems that all of the westerns I’ve seen (and loved) have been left of centre: ironic, jaded (Unforgiven), sentimental (Once Upon a Time in the West) or simply ground breaking (Stagecoach). After sitting through dozens of revisionist westerns, I can safely say that I’ve never seen a true, honest-to-goodness, middle-of-the-road, baggage-free western: the kind with the untarnished hero and the simple white-hat and black-hat conflict. A bona-fide Classic Hollywood Western.

Now having seen High Noon, I understand completely why an entire generation of kids grew up playing sheriff. I recognize the appeal of the staunch, besieged lawman. I see all of the reasons why directors like Leone and his Italian peers paid so much attention to reworking and saluting the Old West. High Noon is the sort of confection that inspires daydreams and puts people on the road to making movies.

The film starts on exactly the right foot by introducing a supporting thug played by Lee Van Cleef, entirely dialogue-free and looking astonishingly young. Here’s the thing: I love Lee Van Cleef. With a dash of Van Cleef in the recipe, I’m immediately having a good time no matter what I’m watching. I’m certain that he is the best thing to come out of the Leone spaghetti westerns, save for the Morricone scores and the Leone close-ups. But seeing him this young and in this role, throws a whole wagonload of new baggage on his roles in the Leone films. It’s easier than ever to imagine him as a young Sentenza (the second part of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly equation.) [I have to confess that it bothered me for a few minutes, trying to pinpoint who the young Lee Van Cleef was reminding me of – but My God, when it came, what a revelation! It’s true that Van Cleef in High Noon is the spitting image of a young Snoop Dogg.] Apart from Van Cleef, the film is stuffed with a ton of delicious and familiar character actors: Lloyd Bridges, Harry Morgan, Lon Chaney Jr. and even Jack Elam, who shows up as one of the three killers at the start of Once Upon a Time in the West.

Force me to put my finger on the thing I enjoyed most about this movie, and it would be spotting the legion of connections to the later westerns that I’ve grown to adore. The action is set up quickly (it has to be – the movie unfolds in real time) and within minutes the bad guys of the film are waiting on the platform of a train station for the their brother, the arch-villain of the movie, to arrive. The angles on the train station and the layout of the buildings are practically identical to the opening frames of Once Upon a Time in the West. One of the waiting goons even has the good sense to pull out a harmonica. While none of this really surprises me, it’s a good thing when a fine movie forces your appreciation of not just one, but several other films. There’s a domino effect here that is really exciting.

Still there is one flaw that I need to pick at. The name of the flaw in this instance comes above the marquee, and it’s Gary Cooper. I’m sure Cooper is an excellent actor and a worthwhile addition to most movies he’s in. He emotes well and his eyes carry a sadness that lends a lot of gravity to whatever’s happening around him. Crap, he won an Oscar for his part in this movie. Even so, he’s clearly the wrong man to carry this movie. To start with, he seems much too old to play the sheriff, even if the sheriff is soon to retire (forget that he’s a newlywed!) We’re told that he captured and arrested Frank Miller (our villain) 5 years before the start of the movie, but this seems unlikely. If it’s true, then his energy and spirit have drained tremendously in the years that followed because Cooper has the passion of a piece of plywood. Worse still, he seems more like an office manager than a lawman, with the sort of face you’d find in a bank not in a dusty frontier town. This dissonance is most evident in a fistfight that happens at the mid-point of the movie. In action, Cooper seems stiff and decrepit, making the fight feel as stiffed and choreographed as most late-career Hulk Hogan matches. Only without the sense that Cooper could’ve won the scrap a decade earlier.

Despite Cooper’s wooden performance, the movie still manages to build an aggressive amount of momentum. Like the training arriving at noon, the plot of the film picks up speed the longer it plays, accelerating to a dizzying pace in the final reel. In many ways, the film is like a bomb waiting to go off, only the audience has been told exactly when to cover their ears. The clock ticks and the editor gets busier. The countdown builds and, well, look who I'm talking to. You remember what it was like in 3 O’Clock High, don’t you?

It’s pretty great stuff.

Was it 1982? (ii)

Tied with my memories of E.T. are, of all things, my memories of Conan the Barbarian. In grade 4, they were my yin and yang.

Now remember, this predates the mainstream awareness of movie pirating by a good spell, but I had a friend who had E.T. on VHS (or perhaps Beta?) within weeks of it appearing in theatres. I thought it was a miracle of sorts. The tape was crappy, much too dark (a sin for a movie as underlit as E.T.) and likely shot by a hand-held camera (the big boxy early-80’s kind.) On the same tape was a pirated copy of Conan the Barbarian, also still in theatres.

Here’s the rub. To visit this friend and maybe, just maybe, catch some of that E.T. action (which was seldom) I sat through at least a dozen basement screenings of Conan. I’m not sure I ever really saw the beginning. The movie was always in progress when I arrived, and I remember it mostly out of sequence; it was years later before I could put the scenes in any kind of order. Most importantly, I hated it. I hated everything about it. I was a relatively sheltered 9-year old and had been exposed to very little violence in the movie theatre, much less sword play and giant spikes skewering folks. Nudity was not a familiar concept for me. Gore was something that I would grow into years later. Conan had all of these things and most of them in abundance. It turned my stomach. I remember walking home in the afternoons, shell-shocked by the carnage.

Perhaps it was like throwing a child on a roller coaster too early in life (another experience I can share, I’m afraid) but it was at that time that I recoiled against Conan and violent movies in general. It would be years before I could get the nuts to sit through any movie with unnecessary violence or gore. [Note: the distaste translated into a backlash later in life, where I chewed up as much violence and gore as I could get my hands on, channeling obscene amounts of Nightmare on Elm Street and Schwarzenneger movies in my parents’ basement. Making up for lost time.] Much, much later I would grow to love Conan and respect it as a piece of balls-out, fantasy storytelling. Even later still, I would watch it (sound off, of course) while I was putting my newborn daughter to sleep. Blood, guts and baby bottles, if you can imagine it. Full circle, sort of. Or not.

But no matter where I am, I can still smell the basement when I watch it.

Was it 1982? (i)

Forgive the hyperbole to follow.

The short version first. There has never been another movie experience quite like E.T. The Extra Terrestrial (1982) for me. No other movie has impacted me so much and so deeply and so sincerely. In the pantheon of movies I’ve seen throughout my life, E.T. is the Big Cheese, the King of All Shit and the One That Hooked Me. It’s the Red Pill.

Funny then that I don’t really remember seeing E.T. for the first time. Like so many movies, I know where I watched it. I certainly remember seeing it at least two more times in the weeks that followed (one instance – my favourite instance – was at the 5 Drive-in with the unlikely partner of Night of the Comet.) However I can’t say that I have any memories of the actual theatre experience. It’s the days and weeks afterwards that stay with me instead, because the damn movie buried itself so deep in my waking mind that it was all I could think about. I was a kid possessed: E.T. sketches on my notebooks, E.T. posters in my room, E.T. toys, E.T. books, E.T. everything. I must’ve made quite a site in my grade 4 classroom, turning a potato art
project into a tribute to E.T. Though I couldn’t have told made the connection at the time, the final product probably looked a little like Andy Warhol’s famous portrait of Marilyn Monroe, but for E.T. heads in different colours spread across the paper. The obsession may have only lasted for months, but in my mind it went on for years. Later in school, people still remembered me as the "guy who really like used to like E.T." Not too freaky that label.

I recognize that E.T. is a strange movie to provoke this kind of roof-blasting reaction, but I must've been sitting bullseye for the target audience for the film. I was 9-years old. Most of my days were spent on my bike cruising the suburbs or exploring the woods behind my house. Nighttime was a scary place. There was no one in a better position to relate to the movie. But don’t misunderstand – I wasn’t projecting myself into the movie or even developing any "alien friend" fantasies like you might expect. I didn’t see the movie as any sort of daydream. Rather, I was delirious with what the movie did and where it took me. More than any other movie I had seen, it was the movie itself that ensnared the 9-year old. The overall experience of sitting in the dark theatre, with the smell of popcorn and the sticky floor and waiting for the lights to go all the way down: it was, if you don’t mind me rolling out the dusty cliché, pure magic. Bicycles over the moon kind of magic. The movie swept me away.

It was probably the first movie that I cried in. I know for certain that it was the first movie to frighten me. I was tense, emotional, excited, delighted and terribly sad. It was the first movie that didn’t have an easy handle or a quick solution for the question, what did you like about it? There was no shortcut like giant boulders or Wookies or Muppets. The movie sort of danced around me until I was dizzy, unsure what to isolate as the reason for the odd blend of feelings, and that made it an enigma. Not that I’m going to pretend that E.T. was any kind of Lynchian masterpiece, but I remember vividly that it was mysterious. Prior to seeing it, I had no clue at all what it was about. I didn’t know what an extra terrestrial was and from the TV commercials, I only knew that the boy in the red hooded sweater cut his finger on a saw. Then someone raised a hot poker towards it (after Raiders, I believed that the glowing finger was exactly that.) These were pretty fleeting impressions and tough for a kid to nail down. But there was also E.T. himself who seemed to look different to me in every photo I saw (different sculpts probably), lending to the feeling that he was part of the dream. As an adult, the movie has lost that complexity, but as a child, I remember that it was the most sophisticated experience of my short life.

Which brings me to adulthood. I was delighted by the opportunity to take my wife to see E.T. again in the theatre in 2002, with an amped-up digital soundtrack and a remastered picture. Forget about the crumby new CG effects (thank you Spielberg for leaving the original film intact on the DVD release), the treasure of seeing E.T. again on a monstrous modern screen was invaluable. The movie made very few bones at the box office, but I am so grateful for the decision to re-release it.

Seeing the film as an adult was startling, because it was like watching an entirely different film. I could see Spielberg pulling many of the strings that were invisible to me as a child, and I could appreciate the mastery with which he did it. The movie pushes buttons, there’s no question about that. But there was also an added layer to the film that I could appreciate as an adult: a sort of sentimentality about childhood that was sweeter for the fact that the movie figures so strongly in mine. It’s a rare experience for a film to allow an adult to revisit the world from the level of a child.

I think that’s what makes it special to me now.

December. No friend of the Monday Project.

Three Mondays. That's how many have been lost to Christmas activities and scheduling conflicts in the coming month. Work and weather permitting, it will be December 20th before I am home again on a Monday night. Christmas should also put the screws to the last week.

As a result, the movie project is likely to become a little scattered. Updating this blog will get a little dicey.

I mention all of this in case there is any radio-silence in the weeks to come. I don't intend it. It's my plan to keep watching the movies, and I hope that there will continue to be at least a few updates per week. But who can say?

It's in the hands of the movie gods and the Baby Jesus now.

Bob and Doug in 16-bit

Canadian films are a funny animal, no? I’ve tried to throw as many Canuck films into my Monday list as possible, but they are tough nuts to find. Very few carry the weight or reputation of being high quality, historically important, or (sorry to say) even entertaining. Looking for trust-worthy lists on-line is like sifting for gold. As a result, I’m afraid only a handful of Canadian titles are on my 500+ list of movies. Still, if anyone reading this post has any valuable suggestions, please please let me know.

So it is that the first Canadian creature to scamper onto my Monday nights is Don Shebib’s Goin’ Down the Road (1970.) Heard of it, gentle reader? Few people have it seems, though if the DVD packaging is to be believed, the title is "a superb movie, the finest Canadian effort ever, and excellent by any standards" (Montreal Gazette) and "a legend…a landmark in Canadian filmmaking" (Peter Feniak, Globe and Mail). In an effort to put this rep to the test, I asked a few people if they were familiar with the movie before I watched it. My father, who was 23-years old when the film was released and teaching Canadian history in Calgary, tells me that it never showed up on his cultural radar at all (which I can vouch was fuelled tremendously by the CBC.) And if he doesn’t remember it, I would suspect it was not top of mind among most Canadian moviegoers. Film critics, sure. Regular joes, not so much. [Still, I should point out that Shebib’s movie was note-worthy enough to be parodied in a famous sketch by SCTV, which he talks a little about in the commentary.]

So what kind of animal is it then? Well, close your eyes and imagine a Lars von Trier film shot in the early 1970’s on the streets of Toronto. Cinema verité to the extreme, shot guerrilla-style with no budget at all (to call $27K "shoe-strong" would be generous) and a 3-man crew: the film school definition of quick and dirty. Shebib explains in the commentary that the crew had no permission to film at any of their locations and no insurance of any kind. Case in point, from the production notes included with the DVD:

The car that features so prominently in the film was one great worry. The car was an old Chevrolet convertible, vintage 1960, which a friend of Shebib’s painted in outrageous colours. It was acquired without the remotest possibility of proving ownership; as it had passed through so many hands, its ownership history was a complete mystery. Nor was there time to get it passed as a roadworthy vehicle. While shooting it was discovered that neither of the lead actors, nor Shebib had a driver’s license. All in all, they were paralyzed by the prospect of being stopped by the police.

The result is a remarkably natural film, showcasing Toronto as it must have been in 1969. Though I’m told in the DVD packaging that the film has been remastered for DVD, it’s astonishingly flat and colourless (note: it’s not black and white), riddled with film grain and overly dark sequences. It reminded me most of those great Hinterland Who’s Who segments that appeared on the CBC throughout the 70’s and 80’s, highlighting Canadian wildlife with scratchy newsreel footage. Or better yet, the movie feels sort of like your parents’ home movies, catching the atmosphere and authenticity of the early 1970’s, without ever feeling scripted or rehearsed.

It must be this authenticity that makes the film so appealing. The acting in the film is so naturalistic that it’s hard to imagine either of the actors behaving or speaking differently in their regular lives (perhaps this is the case, since only one of the leads was a semi-professional actor.) Nothing about the movie seems composed or directed. The expression that comes up again and again in the commentaries and extra features on the DVD is the "documentary tradition," which was the whole of the Canadian film industry prior to the 1970’s. Shebib himself had his most success with documentary films and so it is that this movie, his first foray into fiction, carries a lot of documentary baggage: stolen shots around the city, close-ups of non-actors, available lighting. Each of these components lend something to the striking realism of the film. The 3-man crew carried all of their equipment in the back of a station wagon and literally improvised the shots and set-ups as they came upon locations. Toronto itself is a character, a very real character, in the film.

The movie also does a nice job of snapping a valuable photograph of the city at that time. The skyline (with only one major skyscraper) is remarkable and the visits to Toronto landmarks (including the old A&A Records building on Yonge Street, which I believe is now the HMV Superstore) are appealing. More importantly (and this is something that clearly couldn't have been appreciated at the time, but is invaluable now), the movie captures the particular look and feel of the early 70’s in a refreshingly truthful way. Between the wash-outed wallpapers, the boxy TV sets, the cars on the street and the overall vibe of the film, I swear (even though I was born a few years after the film was shot) that I can remember when the world looked exactly like this. Unlike Hollywood films of the same period which were still only as sincere as Hollywood’s imitation (look at movies released this year for evidence of this reliability), the movie doesn’t seem to be projected through any filters. What you see is what you get. And what you get is a version of Toronto that only lives in books now.

Tell me if this sounds at all Canadian. A couple of hosers move from Cape Breton to the big city of Toronto, chasing their dreams and a sense of liberty that they can’t find in the Maritimes. What they get up to in TO is a cycle of drinking beer (out of stubby bottles, no less), looking for work, chasing women and sharing cigarettes in the frosty air. Amid all this, there's an awful lot of TV watching and nights out on Yonge Street. The fact is that not a lot really happens in the film; Goin’ Down the Road is extremely light on plot on relies instead on the atmosphere of Toronto, as well as the deflating expectations of these two Eastern losers. But it’s good that way.

The movie must have been good, because even though it took me most of the week to finish it (an indication of my timetable, not my interest in the film), I made the time to sit through both of the commentaries on the disc on Saturday and Sunday afternoon. The commentaries were very worthwhile, especially Shebib’s insights into where a lot of the film was shot (location info like shooting at Yonge and Major Mac or Don Mills at Shepherd add to the distinctly Toronto flavour of the film.) Furthermore, there’s a 30-minute interview between the director and Pierre Berton which is a little ironic in light of the fact that Berton passed away this week. [As a point of interest, the Berton interview was shot in 1972 and in it, Shebib explains that one of his favourite Capra movies is It’s a Wonderful Life, which both he and Berton regard as obscure during the conversation. The interview clearly predates the proliferation of this film during the early-80s.]

Music plays a very important part in the film and I’m disappointed to hear (in Geoff Pevere’s analytical commentary) that the songs used in the movie will probably be hard to track down. The soundtrack was written (and largely improvised) by Bruce Cockburn and they soak the film with a certain sad and doomed optimism that is really touching. I’m anxious to include them on my Monday Project compilation. And so it is that I’m going on the hunt…