TIFF - Day 4

Well, I can't sleep, so I may as well blog - fortunately tomorrow I don't have to get up early, I have all the day's tickets already in hand!

As you no doubt have gleaned from my last post, I tend to go on a bit, and I find I either have very little or quite a lot to say about what films I've seen. I also find it really hard to rank or rate them; nevertheless, this year I decided to give it a whirl. One note - I use .5s more as extra credit than a further ranking delination; it's a way to note somethin a bit more that stood out. My parameters are: 0 = horrible; 1 = not good; 2 = too many flaws outweigh total good; 3 = good; 4 = great; 5 = fantastic

Day 1 - Passchendaele 2.5 cats
Paul Gross wrote, directed, co-produced and co-starred in a movie inspired by stories told to him by his grandfather about serving in the Canadian army during WWI and experiencing the horrors of trench warfare and the battle at Passchendaele, part of what Americans might know better as the battle for Ypres. It's a story of a German-Canadian brother and sister in Calgary suffering for the actions of their now dead father and the shellshocked soldier (Gross) who has returned to a Canada that no longer feels like home, until he meets these two young people. I heard someone say that this was Canada's Saving Private Ryan, and while that's partly true I think it's also trying to be Canada's Mrs. Miniver. Unfortunately I think whatever larger meaning or significance the film was meant to have is never realized because of the lack of attention to the specific story being told. Which is a shame, because the casting was overall quite good, Calgary looked gorgeous and the warfront/battle scenes were brutal and unforgettable.

Day 2 – The Sky Crawlers 3 cats
Japanese anime, based on a novel about a war that's been wholly privatized by two companies who are at endless war, and the Kildren, genetically mutated humans who cannot age. Yuichi is a new pilot at one of the Rostock bases and quickly becomes an ace, all the while feeling like he's met his fellow pilots and base leader before. the aerial animation was pretty amazing, and the implications of the plot as it unfolded was thought provoking and well developed - but it went on a good 20 minutes too long, and the use of repetition as both a theme and technique was overused and hamhanded. Definitely the first time I've seen a Japanese animated film where I felt the editing was lax.

Day 2 - 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould n/a
This was the Open Vault reissue, and I went because I'd never seen this film all the way through, and thought I should take the chance to do so on the wide screen with a big sound system to get the full effect of the music. The director (Francois Girard), the co-writer (Don McKellar) and the producer (Niv Fichman) were there, and it was pretty incredible to think about how far the three have come since that film was first released 15 years ago - they're now all giants of Canadian cinema.

Day 2 - 35 Rhums 5 cats
Michael will be very happy. So far (end of Day 4) this is my favorite film of the festival. It's a character study, a few days or so in the lives of a father and adult daughter as they go about their daily lives in Paris. He is a subway driver, she is a student - he has raised her as a single parent, with the help of neighbor friends in their building. I can't say enough about the two leads, Alex Descas and Mati Diop, whose dynamic together was astonishingly palpable - at times it felt like the camera truly was just spying on a real single-parent/only child relationship.The supporting cast is uniformly fabulous, of course it's Denis so the visuals are evocative and striking - nut that I am I adored the wonderful shots she got of the Paris rail system. During the Q&A she mentioned that this was kind of her homage to Ozu - which made me appreciate even more the framing and cinematography of her interior scenes. Images are still staying with me, 2 days after seeing this - it's definitely a must-see if you get the chance.

More tomorrow, I hope!