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Day Three is my first five-film day of the festival, a fact
that is both exciting and slightly intimidating. I've done a number of three-
and four-movie days in my life, both in festival environments and just
catching up with stuff in Chicago. But five films in one day is different--a
rarer form of commitment. Will I be functional by the time the last screening
tries to stare me down? The day doesn't start well when I realize that the
Toronto subway system doesn't open till 9 a.m. on Sundays. Seeing as I was
planning on catching said subway to my first film, I now have the choice of a
2-3-mile walk or a cab. I've gotten an early start and the weather is
beautiful (again), so I decide to take a morning constitutional. At least I
think that's what it's called.
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| The line for Zhang Yimou's House of Flying Daggers
almost encircles the Ryerson Theatre. Fortunately, I've arrived early enough
so that I won't be relegated to the balcony like I was for Clean.
Instead I sit next to a couple who are clutching multiple (and different) DVD
copies of Hero. Now I like martial arts movies a fair amount and Zhang
Yimou even more, but still, that's taking fan-boy devotion to an unhealthy
level.
House of Flying Daggers lives up to every fan-boy's hopes, though, for
at least 90 of its 120 minutes. It opens with a dance by Zhang Ziyi and then
a thrilling competition in a spectacularly beautiful room that's supposedly a
brothel but looks more like the throne room for a powerful emperor. The
competition is called The Echo Game, where a police captain throws small
pieces of food (nuts, I think) at various sound devices. Then Zhang Ziyi, as
an especially captivating showgirl, uses her long arms of fabric to try to
strike the same ones. It's a great set-piece, and takes advantage of Zhang
Yimou's tremendous use of colored fabric (think Ju Dou).
From there, the film becomes a chase movie with the dashing and daring
Takeshi Kaneshiro saving Zhang Ziyi from government forces. You see, she's
part of the titular group that's working against the corrupt government in
order to save the poor (no pro-empire works on display here). But Kaneshiro
is actually part of the police and is only helping Zhang Ziyi so that he can
uncover the group's ringleader. As they spend time together, though, they
start to fall in love. Can Kaneshiro continue with this deception? Will Zhang
Ziyi stay with the House of Seven Daggers or run off with her new companion?
And what of Kaneshiro's boss, the enigmatic Andy Lau? How does he fit into
all this?
For 90 minutes, Zhang Yimou effortlessly combines amazing martial arts scenes
with heart-felt emotion, something I felt was missing from Hero. Zhang
Ziyi is flawless (of course), and she has real chemistry with Kaneshiro. And
when Yimou pulls a narrative trick out of his bag, I was ready to call this
the most entertaining movie of the year. But then we have the final act, an
embarrassingly long battle/death sequence that lasts long enough for fall to
change into winter. Yimou is clearly going for something operatic, but cinema
is not opera. What might work on a stage with singing and a large orchestra
turns flat when you transfer it to a big screen with close ups. The grandiose
becomes strangely cliched in the more immediate environment of film, and the
tragic becomes comical. Literally. On three different occasions, the Toronto
audience burst into guffaws during this final scene, and with good reason.
It's a shame. The movie is still worthwhile. Zhang Yimou doesn't have Chris
Doyle behind the camera (and it shows), but he still knows how to combine
color and set design to breath-taking effect. And the actors are all
top-notch. If only the script's final act were the same. Three
1/2 stars, out of five. |
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3-Iron |
Kim Ki-duk
South Korea
2004 | | |
| The second film on Day Three is also at the Ryerson. On
the good side, this means I don't have far to walk. On the bad side, it means
that I have to sit in the Ryerson seats again. As I mentioned yesterday, the
Ryerson is a great space. It has one of the best sound systems I've ever
heard, and the screen is huge. But the seats are small and cramped and old.
Sitting through one film, my butt started to hurt. Sitting through two films
will be an endurance test. Is Kim Ki-duk's 3-Iron up to the challenge?
Sort of.
The movie is a comedy about two strange individuals. I won't say much because
part of the movie's charm is figuring out what's going on. But Kim deploys
many conventions of silent comedy with a particularly Korean slant. The film
is genuinely funny, with numerous laugh-out-loud moments. I had a goofy smile
on my face for much of the first half. But about half-way through, I found
myself getting tired of the shtick; I wanted something more. It hurts that
Kim introduces some serious, even tragic moments into the film. They ruin the
comic mood without taking it into more substantial territory. Furthermore,
the actors don't quite seem cut out for their parts; the intense-looking Jae
Hee doesn't fit his calm character, while the lovely Lee Seung-yeon can't
quite convey the wallflower she's supposed to be. Maybe it was that I wanted
more from the man who did Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter...and Spring,
maybe it was that I wasn't in a jokey mood, and maybe it was my seat. In any
event, 3-Iron was entertaining for a while but disappointing in the
end. Two 1/2 stars, out of five. |
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| Victor
Morton, an extremely nice guy despite his right-wing tendencies, and I
both had tickets to my third film of the day. So we grabbed a quick sandwich
and headed over to the Paramount. Never has stadium seating seemed so
comfortable. And out of place considering what we were going to see —
the incendiary new movie from Lukas Moodysson, A Hole in My
Heart.
It is safe to say that no film at Toronto will inspire as much loathing as
this one has. Everyone around me hated it with a passion, and I've heard
similar responses from critics that I know. I, on the other hand, found it
challenging and provocative and worth the effort it took to watch it. With
the exception of one minor scene, the entire movie takes place in a small,
disgusting apartment. A middle-aged father lives with his son. The son
apparently despises his father and maybe for good reason. The father makes
porn films in their home with his friend Geko and whichever young woman they
can entice to disrobe. Meanwhile the shy teenage son huddles in his room,
making up his own philosophy and listening to music on the headphones to
drown out what's going on in the living room.
The film is shot in hand-held video, using close-ups almost exclusively along
with an aggressive editing style. This in-your-face approach is consistent
with Moodysson's desire to rub the audience's face in the filth of
contemporary society. And what filth! In a moment that will certainly achieve
a form of infamy, Geko vomits in a woman's mouth. This is Lilya 4-ever
(Moodysson's last movie) taken to an extreme; whether it's logical or not
will depend on your point of view. My friend Victor hissed when the movie was
done. I felt invigorated and will be thinking about it for months to come.
It's not a movie I can endorse necessarily, but I'm excited to see how
Moodysson continues to develop as a filmmaker. Three stars, out
of five. |
One of the best things about "doing" a festival is the
opportunity to see such a tremendous variety of movies, to experience world
cinema at a particular point in time. So it was only appropriate that I would
leave Moodysson and head off to see a pseudo-Iranian film set in Afghanistan.
The two movies have absolutely nothing in common except that they represent
different directions cinema is taking.
Before movie number four, I finally hooked up with Doug Cummings, a great friend from Los
Angeles and one of the more thoughtful film critics I know. And I was finally
introduced to on-line friend Darren
Hughes. Darren and I shared an amusing story. The night before we had
both been in the screening of My Summer of Love, and we were pretty
sure the other one was there, but we didn't know what he looked like. Both of
us were tempted to stand up in the theater and yell the other person's name,
but we were both too wussy to do it. Funny that we were thinking the exact
same thing.
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| But now we could see Earth and Ashes together.
The director, Atiq Rahimi, gave a somewhat self-congratulatory introduction
before the film, making claims of importance that raised the bar in my mind.
And for a while the film fulfilled those ambitions. The main character is an
old Afghani man on a quest to visit his son. Why, we're not sure at first.
With him is his rather obnoxious grandson. The two make a pair that echoes
many of the great neo-realist features as well as Kiarostami's Life and
Nothing More. Rahimi also has a beautiful way of situating his characters
against the Afghani mountains and along the rocky roads. A scene when the two
arrive in a village that has just been bombed by an unidentified airplane is
incredibly heart-breaking, with Rahimi using the magic-hour lighting to
haunting effect.
Unfortunately, the film loses momentum when the characters stop moving. A
long section on a bridge becomes way too talky, and the fascinating elements
of landscape and travel fade to the background. Then when the climax should
be occurring, Rahimi seems to lose his nerve, not knowing how to resolve what
should be the movie's defining conflict. He tries for mystery and grandeur
but achieves something much less compelling. Nonetheless, there's enough in
Earth and Ashes to appreciate. Besides, even pseudo-Iranian is better
than most authentic Hollywood. Three 1/2 stars, out of five.
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There often comes a moment on the third or fourth day
of a festival where a certain anxious mood sets in. The moviegoer, having
seen a dozen or so films, wonders if this was worth all the expense. Yeah,
he's seen a couple films that might make the Top Ten list, but he's also seen
a number of mediocre movies, and most importantly, he hasn't seen anything
life-changing or revolutionary. And let's be honest, that's why we take the
vacation time and spend the money — to see something that we absolutely
couldn't see at home. Is this festival going to provide that kind of
experience, or are we going to strike out all nine days? And then it happens,
often when you least expect it (high expectations being a killer when you're
hoping to be blown away). You see something that you know will stick with you
forever.
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| Like the 2003 Toronto fest, my Holy-Grail experience
came during the fifth screening of a five-screening day. Last year, it was
Shara. This year it was two non-narrative films in the
Wavelength series: Peter Hutton's Skagafjordur and Anthony
McCall's Line Describing a Cone. The program began with two short
works, one by Lynn Marie Kirby and another by Rose Lowder. Both were formal
experiments. Kirby's worked with available light in a combination of film and
video formats, while Lowder's experimented with pixilated images of flowers,
fields, and lakes. I appreciated both (and the Kirby even more after Michael
Sicinsky's helpful comments), but neither were in my wheelhouse, so to
speak.
Skagafjordur started in a way that didn't bode well for my enjoyment.
It was a black-and-white shot of the sun trying to pierce through the fog
along the Icelandic coast. Not only was the shot mostly static, lasting about
a minute, but there was no sound. Ugh, I thought. Thirty more minutes of
this? But my dismay soon turned to ecstatic joy. Peter Hutton is one of the
foremost landscape filmmakers, and his command of the camera is nothing short
of breathtaking. Add in the spectacular Icelandic scenery, and you have an
amazing combination. In his post-film comments, Hutton mentioned the beauty
of Iceland and modestly asserted, "It would be impossible not to make a
beautiful film in that country." But we and Hutton know that's not true. Just
as you can take a bad or banal picture of something beautiful (witness the
vacation slide show), so a landscape film is dependent on much more than the
landscape. It matters where you place the camera, how you frame the
composition, and what you do with the available light. You have to take into
account the speed at which you shoot and how long you hold the image. Then in
the editing room, you have to decide the order of your shots and how you'll
transition between them.
Every decision that Hutton makes in Skagafjordur is flawless. Each
shot plays with the available light in ways that are revelatory. We see the
sun pierce through the clouds, the way the waves catch the low-level light,
the shadows of the clouds passing over the mountain, the stark silhouette of
a huge object in the sea, the awesome view of the moon's rays illuminating
the clouds in front. Hutton often shoots over a valley or high up on the
coast, and yet each shot is individually striking. Nothing ever feels like
we've seen it before. There's a primal magnificence to this film that makes
it almost impossible to describe. It's ineffable in the way a religious
experience can be. It is simply the most beautiful movie I have ever seen.
But it is also a thought-provoking film. It made me think about how I look at
light, how the intensity of a light source can completely change how I see my
environment, how shadows create a sense of mystery, how black-and-white
creates one form of beauty and how color creates another. I could go on and
on, but I know I already sound like an over-excited nine-year-old. All I can
say is if you ever a chance to see Skagafjordur, it is worth a very
long drive.
As if that wasn't enough, I also had the great privilege of seeing Line
Describing a Cone. This 1973 installation work by Anthony McCall is even
more difficult to describe. We left the theater setting for a gallery space a
block away, then entered a dark room which had been filled with mist, a kind
of dry fog. A projector had been set up near one end of the room. We in the
audience could stand anywhere in the room that we wanted, though most stood
on either side of the projected space.
When the film began, at first it was just one ray of light shining on the far
wall. As it projected through the mist, we could see it "travel." It was akin
to shining a very thin flashlight through a fog. But as the projection
continued, the light changed. I can only describe it by noting that on the
far wall, the light started to form a circle. But in the room itself, the
light exhibited a different, more solid essence. I apologize for not being
able to describe the next thirty minutes in anything but the vaguest terms.
You really have to experience for yourself. Because as the circle continued
to form on the wall, the light continued to develop in the room. McCall is
absolutely right in calling it a sculpture.
What was most exciting, though, was the freedom we in the audience had to
move around and experience it from different points of view. Because the
light has tremendously different qualities depending on where you stand. At
first, the audience was shy, not quite knowing what to do. But then someone
bent down to look at the light from below. Another daring person put their
hand into the light to see what would happen. Another crossed the light to
see what it looked like from the other side. And soon we were all explorers,
charting new courses, experimenting with rays of light in ways we had never
done before. This was a shared experience in the best sense of that phrase.
Someone would do something and then quickly encourage those around him--total
strangers — to try the same thing. Not in the way someone shares gossip
(to show how much they know) but because you genuinely wanted to experience
something *together*.
Line Describing a Cone is a wonderful pairing with Peter Hutton's work
in that both "films" are showing something new about light and how we look at
it. What exactly is a ray of light, and what are its qualities? What do we
perceive when we look at it, and how does it change? And how does light make
a film? In fact, what is a film, and why are usually so limited with that
term?
But I don't want to get too philosophical, because then I would overlook the
fact that McCall's piece is great fun! It's an art work that inspires people
to blurt out "wow," to grin uncontrollably, to turn to a total stranger and
ask "have you ever seen anything this cool?" And as the thirty-minute
installation comes to an end, you actually see the paradoxical title come to
life — the line has created a cone in space. As I exited the theater, I
overheard someone remark that Line Describing a Cone should be a
permanent exhibit somewhere. I couldn't agree more. Together with
Skagafjordur, it made for a cinematic experience I will never forget.
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Well, I don't expect anything to top the end of Day Three.
But Day Four does include a documentary on Africa, a new work from Agnes
Varda, and a film from Kazakhstan. Can't wait.
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