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…
No comments:
Post a Comment