At Five In the Afternoon
Directed by Samira Mahkmalbaf (Iran/France)
Rating: VVVV
Yet another offering from the amazing filmmaking Mahkmalbaf family (Samira’s father Mohsen is known as an auteur the world over, and her 14-year-old sister recently debuted her first film at the Venice festival), this is one of the first movies to be filmed in post-war Afghanistan. And the setting makes for some truly indelible images-the dusty ruins of Kabul stand in stark contrast to the bittersweet story of Noqreh, a young girl who wants to become president of the country. That country may lie in tatters around her, but the new opportunities presented to women, like the seemingly simple act of going to school, opens up a new world for girls like Noqreh and allows them to dream. It’s not a fairy-tale, however-Noqreh has to hide the fact that she’s attending school from her father, and her family lives in a bombed-out palace.
The film is shot like a documentary with first-time actors, not unlike Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s similarly-minded Kandahar. As a director, his daughter seems to have inherited his grand visual sense-there are some beautifully shot sequences here that take full advantage of the setting. At Five in the Afternoon does seem overly long and politically preachy at times, but its compelling story and scenery pack a powerful cinematic punch.-TS
Broken Wings
Directed by Nir Bergman (Israel)
Rating: VVVV
Broken Wings is an absorbing and moving film about a young family failing to cope, months after the death of the father. “It was based on my family, we went through a hard divorce. While writing it I had to understand the difference between what we went through versus a death. We went through grief as well,” said director Nir Bergman at a screening of his film last week.
At times very funny and often painfully poignant, the film focuses on 17-year-old Maya, who Bergman says was “Daddy’s girl, and is now stuck with the mother.” From the first minutes we see that all four kids resent their mother for not being around enough, but also love and need her at this difficult point in their lives. Bergman skillfully ensures sympathy for the mother, as in scenes where we see her working with hospital patients. In fact, this is the brilliance of the film-all the characters cause each other pain, yet we are shown a strong undercurrent of caring and become sympathetic to their behaviour. The film is filled with an enormous sense of humanity. Asked about his decision to include no politics in the film, the first-time Israeli filmmaker answered, “Life is more precious than any political statements or thoughts.”-DS
Dying at Grace
Directed by Allan King (Canada)
Rating: VVVVV
Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Allan King recounts the lives and deaths of five patients who spend their last days under the care of Toronto’s Salvation Army Grace Hospital.
A straight-ahead look at death and dying, King’s film manages to convey a sense of the difficulties that face patients nearing the end of their lives while conveying the inevitability of decline. Shot on digital video, the film stands in stark contrast to images we’re used to seeing through this medium and instead takes the time to meticulously document the slowness and agony of actual death. As one family member says in the film, “Dying is like giving birth, it takes a lot of work.” King’s film allows us to see this unfold first-hand, and it is an incredible testament to his abilities as a filmmaker, but also to the remarkable lives that are featured in the film.
The film consists of interviews with the patients, their families and the doctors that care for them, but also personal moments, like footage of the patients’ laboured breathing. All these elements combine to create a brilliant and often heartbreaking account of the obstacles facing the dying, and ultimately the peace they attain through their respective deaths. While Dying at Grace is an extremely slow movie, the pace is entirely appropriate to the subject matter and exists as an antithesis to the kinds of fast-paced and sometimes shallow perceptions of death that exist on medical TV shows and the news.-CT
Elephant
Directed by Gus Van Sant (USA)
Rating: VVVVV
The Elephant in the title of Gus Van Sant’s new film comes from two sources-first is the idea of the elephant in America’s living room that no one is prepared to talk about, and the second comes from an ancient parable about a blind man feeling the individual parts of an elephant in order to comprise a whole picture of it from the sum of its parts.
The elephant in the film is an understanding of high school kids, and specifically the factors that could lead them to feel that they need violence as an outlet. While the film is obviously inspired by the Columbine massacre, it is not strictly about a school shooting at all. Rather, it is a stunning presentation of the problems and issues that teens face today.
The director’s method is to simply follow his characters through the tight confines of their high school in order to illustrate their environment. In this way, the film nearly resembles a documentary, and the improvised dialogue of the actual high school students acting in the film contributes to the authenticity of the portrait. Van Sant also skillfully edited the film to convey a growing sense of dread, but keeps the viewer riveted to the screen simply by the sheer tension and the continuous investigations into the everyday lives of its characters.
The winner of the Palme D’Or for best film at the Cannes festival, Elephant is an important look at the factors that lead youth to take up arms against each other even in seemingly placid places. The beauty of the film is that it shows that these issues exist in the everyday fabric of high school life, and the filmmaker leaves it to the viewer to draw their own conclusions by allowing the environment to resonate.-CT
Falling Angels
Directed by Scott Smith, starring Miranda Richardson and Callum Keith Rennie (Canada)
Rating: VVVV
Scott Smith’s follow-up to his acclaimed debut film Rollercoaster paints a vivid portrait of troubled family life in the suburbs of Don Mills when 1969 became 1970. The film follows the lives of three teenage girls as they are forced to confront the realities of their drunken parents, used-car salesman Dad (Callum Keith Rennie) and their nearly catatonic mother (expertly played by Miranda Richardson), in addition to simply trying to grow up in their own ways.
One of the most impressive things about the film is how it conveys world events through a filter of Canadian consciousness. Through flashbacks we are shown the family vacation in the homemade bomb shelter and how that affected the girls’ present lives. As a result, they all rebel in their various ways against their father’s overbearing nature and drunken rages, while still managing to take care of their mother’s needs.
The strength of the film lies in the actors. Rennie is especially good, as is Richardson, but Monté Gagné, Kristin Adams, and Katherine Isabelle root the film with solid performances as the troubled daughters. Isabelle (who rose to fame with Ginger Snaps)’s performance is particularly poignant as is Mark McKinney’s appearance in a supporting role.
Falling Angels has the wistful nostalgic quality of a good Tragically Hip song, and asks us to remember a past despite its faults, and thus come to an understanding of the contemporary reality of what Canada is.-CT
Greendale
Directed by Bernard Shakey [a.k.a. Neil Young] (USA)
Rating: VVVv
Oh, to live in Neil Young’s brain, where the pitfalls of education don’t hold sway and simple thoughts are allowed to run amuck. Where old people are pure and deserve respect, and Vietnam still really fucks people up. Where you can easily pack things in, buy a pick-up, and drive up to Alaska. Where saving the planet is a noble and attainable goal, and all you need to rock is a guitar, drums and bass.
A Super-8 film set to his latest 78-minute album by the same name, Greendale is Young’s third feature film, and his most recent ode to America and small-town life. His aging rocker virtues and pleas for revolution are acted out through simplistic criticisms of CNN, the Bush administration, and police corruption. A cast of friends and family play the townsfolk of fictional Greendale, California, and lip-sync as Neil belts out the narrative in song. Sounds horrible and cliché, the death knell of a 40-year career, I know. But if you know Young’s music, or are willing to suspend cynicism and disbelief, Greendale is a revelation. Not for it’s shaky, out-of-focus shots, and not for its need to beat a thematic dead horse. It’s revelatory because it proves that even at 60, Young is speaking his mind and continues to rock, putting the rest of the pen-pushing world to shame.-RA
Mambo Italiano
Directed by Emile Gaudreault, starring Paul Sorvino, Ginette Reno
Rating: V
It’s impossible to consider Mambo Italiano without mentioning My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Here is another attempt to capitalize on the stereotypical behavior of a specific ethnic group confronted with the everyday issues of modern life.
Based on the successful play by Steve Galluccio, the story is set in Montreal’s Little Italy, a place where the charm of the old country is brought to the streets of Canada. It is here that our protagonist Angelo creates conflict with the discovery that he is gay. Ah, the madness that ensues! Ah, the terrible stereotypes! See Paul Sorvino clutch his chest and Ginette Reno throw her arms wildly in the air. See badly-rendered Italian accents (from the main players, I might add). See the tame display of gay love, and the clichés of problems and their cures. See the eventual acceptance of La Famiglia! Feel good about how liberal you are and how harmless gay people really are!
The main problem with the film is how dated the issues are. One need only to look at Ang Lee’s 1993 film The Wedding Banquet (essentially a dramatic telling of the same story) which attained mainstream success ten years ago without resorting to any self-destructive ethnic stereotypes.
If you consider the sophistication that mainstream gay culture has attained, and its acceptance by predominantly straight audiences (see HBO’s Six Feet Under) and the current debate over same-sex marriage, Mambo Italiano is a relic and a callous attempt to undermine (and offend) not one but two cultures simultaneously, all the while hoping to exploit their way to the bank.-CT
My Life Without Me
Directed by Isabel Coixet, starring Sarah Polley, Scott Speedman, and Mark Ruffalo (Canada/Spain)
Rating: VVVV
A small, quiet Canadian/Spanish co-production that lets the characters be just that-unassuming and ordinary-in short, Canadian. Sarah Polley carries this movie about a young mother dying of cancer who decides not to tell her friends and family. She makes a list of things to do before her impending death, including finding a new wife for her husband (Scott Speedman) and taking a lover (Mark Ruffalo). It’s a definite movie-of-the-week premise, but the actors work hard to elevate the material.
You can dress her down, dye her hair a mousy brown, and stick her in the trailer park, and yet Polley still lights up the screen. She is the rare actor that makes you truly believe in each and every character she plays. Here, despite looking about 14 years old, she’s completely realistic as a mom of two young daughters-a scene where she records a message to her kids for when she’s gone is utterly wrenching. Speedman is finally finding roles that let him stretch beyond the boring mope he played on Felicity, and Ruffalo takes a character that could be clichéd and instead shows us why his name is on every critic’s lips.
A movie about dying that ends up celebrating life instead.-TS
Nothing
Directed by Vincenzo Natali, starring David Hewlett and Andrew Miller (Canada)
Rating: Vv
If an eight-year-old Samuel Beckett got together to smoke a joint with a nine-year-old Jean Paul Sartre, and they decided to collaborate on a $20-million dollar special-effects movie, the result might look a little like Nothing, the flaccid and often boring new comedy from Canadian wunderkind Vincenzo Natali.
The film begins on a great note, introducing protagonists Dave (David Hewlitt) and Andrew (Andrew Miller) in cool flash animation, and renders their environment (Toronto) in a highly stylized manner. When outside forces conspire to ruin their lives, they discover that somehow they have the ability to make it disappear, just by hating it enough. While the premise is interesting enough, the substance of the film is reduced to the kinds of conversations you have when you’re very tired or drunk and attempting to be really deep.
While the aforementioned playwright and philosopher are obviously influences, the film sacrifices any sense of drama in favour of special effects, which themselves consist of simply turning everything into a vast whiteness of nothing.
Inconsequential and vastly disappointing (considering that Natali’s previous off-kilter film Cube attained huge international critical and box-office success) Nothing follows the string of Canadian films such as Men With Brooms and Duct Tape Forever that were specifically designed for domestic success, but instead reflect the emptiness of the commercial Canadian film industry, and the cynicism with which they view their audiences.-CT
