SCREENINGS
& MEANINGS
By
Gerald Schmitz
Short
takes to a summer at the movie theatre
On the eve of Canada celebrating
its 143rd birthday, I feel there should be some Canadian angle to this
column. Yet apart from the Quebec scene — which really is a distinct
cultural milieu — there are slim pickings cinematically.
The horror/sci-fi flick Splice gained a mass North American release accompanied by a biggest ever marketing budget for a part-Canadian feature, thanks to some Hollywood mogul’s liking, not popular demand. A couple of rogue researchers create a futurist female Frankenstein named “Dren” (an anagram of nerd, for whatever that’s worth) in the lab, with dire results. It left me cold at Sundance and warm reviews haven’t changed that. The off-putting plot makes zero mention of Canada anyway, a small mercy. There was nothing Canadian either in the subject of the fine Canadian-made Sundance documentary Last Train Home, about the desperate crush of millions of Chinese migrant workers trying to return home for New Year’s.
In foreign productions, Canada typically appears more as stereotype
than reality. An egregious example is Iron Man II, which far more Canadians
are likely to have seen. In a bombastic speech, the Robert Downey Jr.
protagonist, an American weapons tycoon superhero/psycho, remarks that
“this ain’t Canada” — you know, that nation
of wimpy security slackers where people leave their doors unlocked.
I guess he never got the memo about the G8/G20 summits!
Far kinder, and in a much better film, is the idea of Canada as a desirable
“beautiful but cold” destination that runs through the 2009
Israeli melodrama Five Hours from Paris. It’s a moving evocation
of an impossible love triangle among immigrant Russian Jews. Following
a protracted immigration process to Canada, the husband, a physician,
is determined that his wife emigrate with him, even after she confesses
to a simmering romance with a troubled divorced taxi driver.
This was one among a selection of recent Israeli features in a festival
showcasing that country’s internationally renowned cinema presented
by the Ottawa-based Canadian Film Institute this month. And one of my
best of last year’s Toronto festival, the superb Jewish-Palestinian
collaboration Ajami (Israel/Germany 2009), is finally showing up in
Canadian arthouse theatres. It swept the Israeli film awards before
being nominated for a best foreign-language Oscar. Unfortunately, the
vibrant diversity of this culture and society rarely gets represented
to Canadians, as if Israelis themselves don’t count, only their
state’s controversial policies subject to loud, polarized and
narrow polemics.
I had a reminder of how seldom we are exposed to the complexity of Israeli
life nine days ago when an entrance to my 12th floor office in downtown
Ottawa — Israel’s embassy is directly two floors below —
was temporarily blocked by an “anti-Israeli” demonstration.
No, the protest didn’t have anything to do with the Gaza blockade
or pro-Palestinian concerns. Rather, it was by black-clad ultra Orthodox
“anti-Zionist” Jews harshly condemning the Israeli government’s
alleged desecration of holy archeological sites. As a matter of Jewish
faith, these religious fundamentalists, numbering in the hundreds of
thousands, fervently deny the legitimacy of the Israeli state. Imagine
that.
When was the last time you even heard of an Israeli film, much less
saw one? Does it surprise that some of the best are apolitical and never
mention Judaism? In the rest of Canada, I could almost substitute Quebec
for Israeli and ask similar questions. Quebec cinema has also maintained
a world-class standing and devoted home audience that can only be dreamed
of outside la belle province. Among new releases, I was enthralled by
Luc Dionne’s masterful L’enfant prodige (“child
prodigy”), about the phenomenon of genius Montreal pianist-composer
André Mathieu’s meteoric rise and tragic descent into alcoholic
madness. Acclaimed as a “young Canadian Mozart” in the 1930s,
he died in obscurity at age 39.
Then there’s Quebec’s new “enfant terrible”
of the screen, writer-director-actor Xavier Dolan’s Les amours
imaginaires (Imaginary Loves, though the English title is Heartbeats),
a precociously brilliant followup to his 2009 Cannes festival debut
I Killed My Mother. Again applauded at Cannes, this one subsequently
won best film at the Sydney (Australia) film festival competition. By
the way, Dolan is just 21. Pray for another Canadian release some day.
If you are not seduced by the juvenile vampire Twilight Saga: Eclipse,
opening today, and have an opportunity to resist the lure of Hollywood’s
big-budget mythmaking machine, below are capsule comments on a half
dozen alternative choices. Vive la différence!
Mother and Child (Spain/US 2009)
From writer-director Rodrigo Garcia (son of Latin America’s Nobel
Prize-winning literary giant Gabriel Garcia Marquez), this interwoven
narrative delivers an effective exploration of parent-child dilemmas.
A scarily young (14) teenage mother Karen gave up her baby for adoption
37 years ago. Into bitter middle age she never gets over it. Her daughter
Elizabeth has become a high-powered single lawyer who uses sex as a
means to accelerate success. Meanwhile Sister Joanne, a sympathetic
nun at the church-run adoption agency, counsels both Karen trying to
find her child and a young infertile black couple seeking to adopt.
Annette Bening and Naomi Watts are especially compelling as the estranged
mother and daughter.
The Kids are All
Right (US 2010)
After a bright Sundance premiere, this offering from writer-director
Lisa Cholodenko is coming out in July. The title is a riff harking back
to The Who’s 1979 rock anthem. The movie is a brave foray into
the world of unconventional family bonds. What happens when your teenage
children want to know their biological father, and he’s “cool”
with that? He is played by the excellent Mark Ruffalo. Annette Bening
is again terrific as the co-parent Nic, this time starring opposite
Julianne Moore. The tagline is: “Nic and Jules had the perfect
family, until they met the man who made it all possible.” Sharing
the love can be more complicated than it seems.
Babies (France 2010)
Thomas Balmes directed this rather slight under 80-minute documentary
— sans narration, commentary, or words — that goes ga-ga
over the behavioural patterns of infants in Tokyo, San Francisco, Mongolia
and Namibia whose domestic situations are worlds apart. From playing
naked in the dirt to the kid who has everything, progeny of all kinds
and circumstances can be fascinating to observe. For a while. Like looking
at photos or videos of other people’s contented bundles of joy,
the expected ooing and ahing only lasts so long. In case you’re
wondering, concerns about maternal health (G8 alert) or infant mortality
cast no shadow over this sunny side up view of babyhood.
Sweetgrass (France/UK/US
2009)
I was actually more taken with this quite wondrous documentary —
also with no intrusive narration or commentary — that follows
a last mass drive of some 3,000 sheep from vast wool-shearing barns
and lambing quarters to rugged high pastures in the Beartooth mountains
of Montana. From 2001-2003, married filmmakers/anthropologists Ilisa
Bardash and Lucine Castaing-Taylor recorded every stage of the journey
from springtime shearing and birthing to railside return to market.
Spectacular visuals speak for themselves. The only words spoken are
by gruff men of few words, the sheepherders on horseback who with faithful
dogs prod and guard their noisy flocks on public lands. Thoroughly engrossing
without being sentimental, the movie preserves an authentic picture
of a disappearing tradition.
The Father of My
Children (France/Germany 2009)
This is certainly no happy Fathers’ Day movie. Loosely inspired
by the devastating suicide of film producer Humbert Balsan at age 51,
writer-director Mia Hansen-Løve’s passionate drama won
a special jury prize at the 2009 Cannes festival. Grégoire Canvel’s
life is a workaholic whirlwind of juggling incessant work and family
demands. He has the love of a supportive wife and three daughters, but
when failing independent film projects overwhelm him, he loses control.
Those left behind must struggle to carry on. Writes Darrel Manson on
the website HollywoodJesus.com: “Sometimes we can persevere through
that darkness with the help and support of friends and family —
and perhaps by God’s grace. . . . For viewers willing to take
the trip into this dark tunnel, there may be insights to their dealing
with darkness — or the darkness of people they love.”
Exit Through the
Gift Shop (UK/US 2010)
A late addition to the Sundance lineup, this is an entertaining romp
through the wacky underworld of urban guerrilla graffiti art. Calling
itself “the world’s first street art disaster movie,”
director “Banksy” — the shadowy anonymous London-based
icon of the movement — has culled some pretty amazing footage
from the hundreds of videotapes obsessively shot by a manic zany Frenchman
living in L.A. The said Thierry Guetta gets turned on to the form by
the antics of a Paris cousin codenamed “Space Invader.”
When pieces attract the attention of well-heeled art collectors, he
gets in on the amateur act too. Although failing to make a watchable
home movie, billing himself as “Mr. Brainwash” he scores
absurdly big at a grand 2008 L.A. show of his work. There’s nothing
like taking other people’s money. From clandestine capers to cult-pop
sensations, it’s all for real, folks. More proof, were any needed,
that those who think markets behave rationally will buy anything.
Also recommended:
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Eclipse, The Secret in Their Eyes.
To be reviewed July 14.
Schmitz is a member of the Sundance festival’s patron circle and an ambassador member of the Canadian Film Institute.
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