Should I Go to a Film Festival?

A film festival?  Yes, of course, absolutely -- if you like movies, if you are in a town with a film festival, if you can afford tickets, if you can get tickets, go!

What can a film festival, specifically the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) do for you that just going to the movies or watching netflix doesn't do?

You can travel around the world and see what stories are being told right now by very dedicated and determined film makers.  You can meet the directors, producers, and actors and ask them questions.  You can engage with a community of many other informed film goers in the endless lines.  You can be part of something bigger than your own desire for distraction.  You can be distracted!  But most of all, you might get a view into the zeitgeist of the times.

I should say, you get a view of your unique slice of the zeitgeist.  At TIFF, you choose from over 300 films representing 60 countries.  Everyone has a different experience and probably arrive at different conclusions about the zeitgeist.

Last year, for some reason, many of the films involved terrorists and dictators.  It was a dark time.

Globe and Mail writer, Johanna Schneller, found that her selection of movies dealt with the idea of freedom:  physical freedom, legal and social freedom, and freeing oneself from addiction or abuse.  We shared only one film, a very hot lesbian relationship story which she squeezed into her thesis by saying it was about the freedom to love who you choose.  I didn't see any issues of freedom in the movie Blue is the Warmest Colour.  The beautiful young women were not prevented from expressing their love.  The film left me with two messages:

1.  Ultimately, you are more likely to want someone who is intellectually, socially, and creatively compatible with you than the person who satisfies you the most sexually.  (However, we will  make sure the audience sees exactly how good the girl-on-girl sex is).

2.  If you really want to break up with someone, you can find a way to make it her fault.

What, then are the preoccupations of 2013?

My movies seem to suggest that change is inevitable and change is hard.  The process of giving up illusions, growing up, and adapting has to happen over and over again - even when you are 800-year-old vampires as in Only Lovers Left Alive.

In Fading Gigolo, Woody Allen's bookstore goes under.  To adapt to his changing economic situation, he enlists John Turturro, a gentle florist, to provide sexual services to rich older professional women.  They also help a woman re-enter the world of the living after her husband dies.  Through courage, creativity, and compassion, people endure financial and domestic changes.

The take-home message from Hateship Loveship seems to be that you can get what you want by really really wanting it.  People can change, and with persistence and a great deal of housecleaning, you can help them.

Club Sandwich, a Mexican movie, deals with a mother whose son is ready for some independence.  She has to change to allow this to happen.  The take-home message?  Do not play truth or dare with your kids.

In Mary Queen of Scots, a beautiful young Catholic woman, cousin to Queen Elizabeth, has to navigate among the treacheries of the Sottish Lords, a controlling Catholic husband, and the rising Protestant movement headed by John Knox.  Mary just wants everyone to get along. They don't.

One theme that persists through many of the films (and most storytelling) is that things are not what they appear to be.  People who seem to be against you actually love you.  People who seem to love you or should love you want to kill you.  Sometimes they kill you through their neglect and inattention as seems to be the case in Paul Haggis's Third Person.  It will take several viewings of that movie to figure it out.  Nothing is what it appears to be.


My film festival was not completely free of terrorism, torture, and totalitarianism.  Manuscripts Don't Burn, tells the story of an attempt by the Iranian government to murder 21 writers and journalists.  The director was present at the screening.  He told the audience, "Don't enjoy it.  It's unpleasant."  


There were no credits at the end of the movie for fear that the Iranian government would punish anyone involved with the project.

The film festivities are over and the Toronto is moving towards another large collective art event:  Nuit Blanche.  I have looked, but have never found a unifying theme in these all-night arts events except this:  people like to do things together in large numbers, to be part of a mob, to share, to communicate, and to seize the night.

What Are the Preoccupations of Our Time?

In August, 1986, I read an article in Harper's called "Reflections in a Glass Eye:  A Videocassette Best-Seller List."  From the themes of the ten, top-selling videos, the author, David Black, drew conclusions about the preoccupations of the late 1980s:  the zeitgeist.  Black showed how all 10 videos, which included Jane Fonda's workout video and Rambo, shared themes which pointed to the struggles and values of the day.

One can attempt this exercise with any selection of current cultural artefacts, from top ten iTune songs to current best-selling novels.  Because of its international flavour, the just-concluded Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) might be an excellent lens through which to view our times.

TIFF screened 289 feature films from 72 countries.  I attended 13 of these.  My films were chosen somewhat randomly by friends curious about international trends and familiar with the track records of various directors.  Spoiler Alert:  The spoilers are minimal - but with the exception of Argo and Midnight's Children, it is unlikely very many of these films will come your way.

What was the weather of your film selections?
My films overall were quite stormy and dark - not a single comedy.  The funniest was Argo which involved rescuing Americans who were hiding out in the home of the Canadian ambassador during the 1979 hostage taking.  It had sharp, humorous banter, but overall very dark.

What was the "season" of your film selections?
Arab spring (After the Battle) quickly becomes Arab winter; A Few Hours of Spring:  winter; A Late Quartet:  winter.

Does anyone win?
People mostly lose or gain a bitter victory.  For example, in A Few Hours of Spring, a woman takes advantage of a company in Switzerland that offers death with dignity to terminally ill patients.  While she fights with her son throughout the entire movie, they are only able to express their love for one another after she takes the life-ending concoction.

In Out in the Dark, a gay Palestinian student and an Israeli lawyer develop a beautiful love relationship, but the student's family want him dead and the Israeli military want him to betray the militants in his family.  Lose-lose-lose

In After the Battle, angry, frustrated Egyptians want freedom from dictatorship.  In the end, it seems one set of generals are replaced by another set.

The Attack begins with an Israeli-Palestinian surgeon being acclaimed by the Israelis for his contributions.  We gradually discover that he's not really trusted by the Israelis nor by his Palestinian relatives.  Meanwhile, his wife becomes a suicide bomber.  Dark dark dark.

What is the dominant imagery of the films?
Walls and borders - all kinds of walls:  walls around the pyramids, separating villagers from a source of livelihood; walls around the Palestinian territories; walls of small rooms where people are crowded; walls preventing communication between mother and son, between men and women; and borders thrown up between India and Pakistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh; borders thrown up all over post-war Germany.

Walls suggest separation, and walls also imply prisons.  People in these films are trapped and, if they transcend their own prejudices, they are trapped by the prejudices of their society.  Sarah Polley's mother in Stories We Tell feels trapped in her marriage; the characters in Midnight's Children are all trapped by the circumstances of their birth. Shira in Fill the Void feels trapped into a marriage she doesn't want.  To a certain extent, all the characters of all the movies are trapped by their socio-economic status, race, and religion.  Escape is attempted, but only occasionally successful.  Hannah Arendt escapes from Nazis and goes to Eichmann's trial to try and understand the evil she faced.  Wandering through the landscape of post-war Germany, Lore, a child of Nazis, gradually escapes from the tyranny of the beliefs she inherited.  In The Reluctant Fundamentalist, Changez  escapes from the greed and materialism of the corporate world.

Does redemption seem possible?
Midnight's Children is on some level a search for home and family.  Saleem creates a surrogate family, a baby lives, and magic is alive.  (In Inch'Allah the baby dies.  InThe Attack a lot of babies die.  Note:  No matter what the genre, babies represent hope; dead babies represent hopelessness.)  Fill the Void is redeemed by the compassion of the rabbi.  He will not perform a marriage if Shira's heart is not in it.  In A Late Quartet, the power of beautiful music redeems all the characters.

Can you draw any conclusions about our times?

• These are dark times.
• Dictators fall, but there are always more dictators.
• The country you love will not necessarily protect you.
• Your birth family will not necessarily protect you, but any family based on love and compassion is your true family.
• Humans seek peace and freedom through politics, but also through love and art.

The films were

1. After the Battle (Egypt, Yousry Nasrallah)  Poor people living outside the wall around the pyramids are befriended by one of the rich activists who is protesting against Mubarak in Tahrir Square.  
2. Out in the Dark (Israeli/USA, Michael Mayer) A gay Palestinian falls in love with an Israeli.  
3. Stories We Tell (Canada, Sarah Polley)  Sarah Polley goes in search of her bio-daddy and finds her mother.
4. Inch'Allah (Canada, Anais Barbeau-Lavalette)  A French-Canadian works in the West Bank, but lives on the Israeli side.
5. The Attack (Lebanon/France/Qatar/Egypt/Belgium, Ziad Doueiri)  A successful Palestinian surgeon working in an Israeli hospital finds out that the latest suicide bomber was his wife.
6. A Few Hours of Spring (French, Stéphane Brizé)  A trucker screws up his life and ends up in jail.  The film begins with his release from jail when he moves in with his terminally ill mother who is seeking an assisted suicide.  They have some communication issues.
7. Midnight's Children (Canada/UK, Deepa Mehta)  The political events in 20th century India as experienced by the children born at midnight the day India gained independence from Britain.  Events include the separation of India and Pakistan and the war in Bangladesh.
8. Lore (Australia/UK/Germany, Cate Shortland)  After their Nazi parents are arrested, five children, led by the oldest, a 14-year-old daughter, cross the destroyed German landscape to their grandparents home.
9. Fill the Void (Israel, Rama Burshtein)  An orthodox Jewish girl is looking forward to her wedding when her older sister dies in childbirth.  Her family wants her to marry the widower.
10. A Late Quartet (USA, Yaron Zilberman)  When the cellist and leader of a famous string quartet becomes ill, each member of the quartet has to adapt.
11. Hannah Arendt (Germany, Margarethe von Trotta)  An examination of the trial of Eichmann through the eyes of Hannah Arendt.  Her conclusions challenge the philosophical community.
12. Argo (USA, Ben Affleck)  The US government chooses the least worst solution to rescuing six Americans who are hiding in the Canadian embassy after all the others in the US embassy are taken hostage.
13. The Reluctant Fundamentalist (India/Pakistan/USA, Mira Nair)  A brilliant South-Asian American rises to the top of the financial world, but the all-profit mentality of it (merging companies, slashing jobs) combined with the post-911 harassment of American Muslims, causes him to return to Pakistan.