Field Reports: Toronto Film Festival #3 (Filipi)

The road to hell is paved with good intentions and I intended to write extended capsules about all of the films I've seen in Toronto but scheduling and lack of sleep are conspiring to prevent that. Hopefully I'm not headed to hell and I will be able to provide a more thorough summary at the end of the fest.

Ari Forman's Waltz with Bashir is a deeply personal animated film about the filmmaker's attempts to come to grips with his memories of his role in the massacre of innocents in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon in 1982. The animation is limited (Doug Wildey's highly graphic style for the old Jonny Quest cartoons – but with more depth of field – is a crude point of comparison) but it fits perfectly with the gripping content. The film was created in a similar manner to Richard Linkater's Waking Life and Scanner Darkly – animation over live action footage.



Some may remember Arnaud Desplechin's visit to the Wexner a few years ago to introduce Kings and Queen, perhaps my favorite film of the past 10 years. His latest, A Christmas Tale, isn't up to Kings but it's still pretty amazing. The story is of a family coping with normal family intrigue – but most not so normal – culminating in the collective concern and planning for their mother's bone marrow transplant just after Christmas. The film stars many of the same actors as Kings (Mathieu Amalric, Catherine Deneuve, Emmanuele Devos, etc.) but instead of focusing on two characters, Desplechin gives each character equal weight (there are as many as 8 main characters). And like Kings, the tone of the film is ever-shifting, often in the same scene. It is a wonderful bit of plate juggling by Desplechin.

A Woman in Berlin is the latest from the director of Aimee and Jaquar, Max Farberbock. The film is based on a well-known anonymous diary by a Berlin woman at the end of World War II and chronicles her circle of friends' ways of coping with the occupying Russian army. The film centers on one apartment building, filled primarily by women, children, and older men. The women are frequently raped by the Russians but gradually people learn to figure out ways to make their lives just a bit more stable and safe. The period detail is terrific and the story is often harrowing but, for me, the fatal flaw in the film is that I never really cared much for the main character.

Gallery artist Steve McQueen's first feature film Hunger will certainly be one of my favorite films of the festival. The film is based on the story of IRA hunger striker Bobby Sands in the early 1980s during “the troubles” in Ireland and due to the Thatcher government's response. The film is harsh and poetic and much of the film is virtually wordless (save for a long, brilliant scene between Sands and his priest at the film's center) as we see the prisoners dehumanized and beaten by their jailors. McQueen also depicts the tension on the other side as the guards cope with either outside threats to their own safety or their personal misgivings about the violence dished out to the prisoners on a regular basis.

I have to flip a coin Saturday morning to decide between Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy and the new film by the Dardenne brothers. We'll see what happens.

Believe it or not, the Toronto press has no news about Beanie Wells' foot injury. -- Dave Filipi, Curator, Film/Video