Category: TIFF

Drum (South Africa, director Zola Maseko): Drum is the story of Henry Nxumalo, a journalist for South Africa’s pioneering Drum magazine. Set in the mid-1950s, the film attempts to recreate the ambience of Sophiatown, an area of shops and nightclubs in central Johannesburg that has been compared to Harlem during its Renaissance. Henry is at first content to write sports stories for the magazine, until the gradual encroachment of apartheid laws threatens his beloved neighbourhood. Henry’s politicization leads to confrontations with the authorities and to a predictable end.

Overall, I don’t feel like I have much to complain about. It’s just that, well, I think I expected more punch. I’m a veteran of many films and plays dealing with South African history, but most of them (Cry Freedom and the underappreciated Barbara Hershey vehicle A World Apart, for instance) deal with the political awakening of white liberal South Africans, and have been directed by white, often foreign, directors. Even so, I found them powerful and inspiring. Naturally I expected that a film about a genuine black hero directed by a young black South African director would be even more powerful and affecting. And this one just wasn’t. Clearly, the casting of American Taye Diggs in the role of Henry has a little bit to do with it. His casting tells me that the director wanted to make a commercial film, and with that comes some inevitable tradeoffs. The film feels too short and hurried to make Henry’s transformation convincing. His relationships with his wife, boss, and colleagues were surely an integral part of the story, and yet they feel superficial here. At the Q&A after the film, Diggs even admits that he still feels the part should have gone to a South African actor. The director countered that “women dig Taye Diggs” and that his presence would “put bums in seats.” Enough said about that.

The music, though, stands out and almost succeeds in elevating the film. Granted, it is pretty hard to mess up the music in a South African film, and here there is a fine mix of township jazz and mournful hymns that hints at what life in Sophiatown must have been like.

Overall, the film was competently written, directed, shot and acted. But it feels a little bit like a missed opportunity. Apart from the two films I mentioned above, you really should see the one-woman play The Syringa Tree (by Pamela Gien) if you ever get the chance. That play, performed by one woman on a nearly bare stage, has left indelible images in my mind that no film can ever match.

Related Web Site: Drum Photographer Jürgen Schadeberg — check out the film on this page entitled “Have You Seen DRUM Lately?” which sounds like a nice companion piece to this film.

(7/10)

Letters to Ali (Australia, director Clara Law): No, this isn’t about Muhammad Ali. It’s the story of a 15-year old Afghan boy who’s seeking asylum in Australia, and about the Australian family who befriend him. Australia is the only “Western” country that incarcerates all refugee claimants in remote camps, forbidding them to work or go to school until their cases are decided, which often takes years. The filmmaker befriended a remarkable family who had been writing to “Ali” (a pseudonym) for more than 18 months. They had even driven 12,000 km round-trip to visit him. When they decide to visit him a second time, the filmmaker and her cameraman/husband tag along, and this film is the result.

Although she draws attention to a particularly shameful policy, the film is weakened in my opinion by a few things. Since it was filmed on digital video, some of the handheld camera work left me nauseated. There were far too many shots of the admittedly-gorgeous Australian landscape shot from the bouncing vehicle on the unpaved road. Related to this, the film was simply too long and felt too slow-paced. Another issue was that the first ten minutes promise a much more personal film than is ultimately delivered. We hear about the filmmaker’s own experience as a recent immigrant from Hong Kong, but then she kind of fades into the background for much of the rest of the film. “Ali” is described throughout the film and some of his words are used on the innovative captions the film uses instead of voiceover narration, but since filming inside the detention centre wasn’t permitted, there is precious little footage of the boy himself. When, near the end of the film, “Ali” is allowed some degree of freedom outside the camp, we do see him enjoying himself with his new adoptive family, but due to concerns about jeopardizing his refugee case, he’s entirely blurred out, which was at first odd and then just annoying. Not only can’t we see his face, but we don’t know his real name, nor have we heard his voice. We know just enough about him to sympathize, but no more. The fear that has motivated Australia’s repressive policy has also infected the filmmakers and the lawyers representing “Ali,” leaving him almost as faceless as the Australian government would like him to be. As of this screening, his case is still unresolved. He may be sent back to troubled Afghanistan at any time. Let’s hope this film can make a difference, not just for “Ali”, but for the thousands of refugee claimants still imprisoned in Australia.

Film’s Web Site: www.letterstoali.com

(7/10)

This is the tenth year that Brooke and I have attended the Toronto International Film Festival, though only the seventh together. We had a much easier time of it this year. Since we’re going to BC and Washington on the 18th (the last day of this year’s festival), we decided only to see ten films each, so we split a 30-coupon book with Brent. We got lucky in that the first box drawn last Friday was box 10, and our order form was in box 19 (out of a total of 40-odd boxes), so we were pretty confident we’d get most of our picks. We never dreamed we’d get all of them, but we did, so we were only in line for a little over an hour. We met up with our friends Philip and Ian and were able to go for breakfast before 11:00.

So, here are my ten films for this year. Reviews will follow:

• Thursday September 9 — 9:00pm — Letters to Ali (Australia, Director: Clara Law)
• Friday September 10 — 6:00pm — Drum (South Africa, Director: Zola Maseko)
• Saturday September 11 — 12:30pm — Ferpect Crime (Spain, Director: Álex de la Iglesia)
• Saturday September 11 — 3:30pm — Salvador Allende (Chile/France/Belgium/Germany/Spain/Mexico, Director: Patricio Guzman)
• Saturday September 11 — 7:15pm — The Alzheimer Case (Belgium, Director: Erik Van Looy)
• Sunday September 12 — 12:30pm — Les Choristes (France/Switzerland, Director: Christophe Barratier)
• Sunday September 12 — 6:00pm — Mondovino (USA/France, Director: Jonathan Nossiter)
• Tuesday September 14 — 9:30pm — Bad Education (Spain, Director: Pedro Almodóvar)
• Thursday September 16 — 5:00pm — Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (USA, Director: Ken Burns)
• Friday September 17 — 9:00pm — Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession (USA, Director: Xan Cassavetes)

Good Morning, Night (Italy, director Marco Bellocchio): Buongiorno, Notte (its Italian title) is a quietly powerful film exploring the events surrounding the 1978 kidnapping (and eventual assassination) of former prime minister (and leader of the powerful Christian Democrat party) Aldo Moro by the Communist-inspired Red Brigades. The irony is that Moro had just played an instrumental role in forming a coalition government in which the Communist Party were going to participate for the first time in Italian history.

We follow events through the eyes of Chiara, a young “revolutionary” who begins to have doubts about her participation. Moro, though held for almost two months, never seems to have lost his humanity or his inner freedom. In contrast, the terrorists seem isolated from the outside world, from each other, and even from themselves in the claustrophobic apartment that has become as much their prison as Moro’s.

This is not an “action” movie. It is more contemplative, and there is a real sense of sadness, despair, and wasted life that pervades every frame. The use of actual television footage from the newscasts of the time add authenticity and bring home the fact that this is recent history. The only weakness, in my opinion, are the many scenes of Chiara dreaming of different outcomes (her poisoning her comrades, Moro walking out free). I am glad the scenes are in the film, but it is sometimes difficult to determine when she is dreaming, imagining, or actually experiencing certain events.

Overall, a powerful and humane exploration of a dark moment in Italy’s history. Bellocchio doesn’t dwell on the many conspiracy theories that are still swirling about who was responsible for the murder. Instead, he makes a film that celebrates the value of life, and mourns its waste.

(9/10)

The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 1: The Moab Story (UK/Netherlands, director Peter Greenaway): Here’s what the programme book has to say about this film, “The Tulse Luper Suitcases project will use five media: at least three feature-length films, television, numerous DVDs, the Internet and books. The content is a history that covers six decades, a period Greenaway refers to as the Uranium Years: from the discovery of uranium in Colorado in 1928 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Ninety-two suitcases (after the atomic number of uranium) will be opened, twenty-one of them in the first part of the project, The Moab Story.”

Of course, I don’t think most of the audience read the programme book, nor had most of them ever seen a Peter Greenaway film. Both were required prerequisites tonight. The Moab Story is a technical tour-de-force, using all manner of innovative film techniques. And all of the Greenaway obsessions are present: generous amounts of nudity (both male and female), numbers and counting, superimposition of text, sumptuous art direction, and a labyrinthine plot. I was baffled, frustrated, fascinated, baffled again, etc. It would be hard to attempt a plot outline, but the subjects covered include Mormonism, fascism, filmmaking (with winking references to several other Greenaway films), and the nature of confinement. A muddle, to be sure, but an ambitious one. Greenaway has given himself a huge canvas on which to paint a huge story. Or rather, this is like a million-piece jigsaw puzzle. Head-scratching, yes, but I can’t wait to find the next piece.

(8/10)

P.S. The website will probably not be of much interest if you haven’t seen the film, but there is a blog section where it’s possible to leave comments. Some people are leaving comments “in character” and addressing Tulse Luper as if he were a real person (and still alive, though he’d be 92).