Nothing kills an otherwise good movie than too much buzz. While it’s true that word of mouth helps bring great films to the multiplexes in any year, the ultimate result of going to the theatre after having your expectations raised sky-high is often disappointing.
However, film festivals are where all the action begins-where you can encounter a movie largely free of any preconceived notions, discover it for yourself, and finally announce proudly to your friends that you saw that film that everyone’s talking about “at the festival.”
Confronted with over 300 films in the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) guide (known as “The Bible” to festival junkies), where do you start? It’s best to avoid the gala presentations, because tickets are nearly impossible to get and eventually all the films screened come out within months of their debut at the festival.
Try something a little more challenging like the Masters programme-the best bet here is Eros, a collaboration between three of the most distinct auteurs of the past, present and future. Here, Michelangelo Antonioni (L’Avventura), Steven Soderbergh (Traffic), and Wong Kar-Wai (In the Mood for Love) all contemplate a single subject within a larger framework.
Finally gaining recognition for her contribution to the early stages of the French Nouvelle Vague movement, Agnes Varda returns to the festival with her latest compilation of photographic montages in the form of Cinévardaphoto. Additionally, French master Jean-Luc Godard, perhaps the greatest living innovator of film, returns to Toronto with his film Notre Musique. As in all of his works, he contemplates the relationship between cinema and life, this time at the site of the Bosnia-Herzegovina conflict.
Other notable directors with new films at this year’s festival include Danny Boyle with Millions, the incomparable Todd Solandz’ Palindromes, and America’s greatest independent filmmaker John Sayles’ neo-political noir Silver City.
TIFF also provides a magnificent window to world cinema, and it is often the fledgling film industries of the world that have the most exciting and innovative works. Alongside the Spotlight on South African film, Buffalo Boy from Vietnam’s Minh Nguyen-Vô should be a good bet.
Two films documenting the relevance of the Rwandan conflict to the parallel situation in contemporary Sudan in the form of Gardiens de la Memoire, a documentary talking to survivors of the Rwandan genocide, and Shake Hands with the Devil: The Journey of Roméo Dallaire should also be weighty food for thought.
Continuing in the documentary vein, both Gunner Palace (Michael Tucker’s frontline account provides the first insight into the actual conditions of soldiers in the current Iraqi conflict) and Z Channel (Xan Cassevettes) chronicles the rise and fall of the visionary program director whose obsession with films hides his clinical depression and yields tragic results.
While there are numerous films worth mentioning in this brief list (including Steven Chow’s Kung-Fu Hustle, Ghost in the Shell 2, The Machinist, and the Robert Bresson’s classic Diary of a Country Priest), always keep in mind that the films that most people end up talking about will be those that you can eventually see at the local cineplex, and that rarer films should not be seen for the sake of obscurity itself, but because they might not be bought by a distributor, and you might never have the opportunity to see them again.
The Toronto International Film Festival runs September 9-18. For a complete schedule of films, see www.bell.ca/filmfest.
