When CBC radio reporter Jim Brown and Canadian indie film director Gary Burns (Waydowntown) decided to embark on a project together, they only had to look slightly past their own backyards.
While suburban sprawl has been proliferating at the boundaries of most major cities for decades, the directors decided to investigate matters in their hometown of Calgary, where planned communities lure individuals into tiny, impersonal, monocultural cells-complete with cloned homes and vehicles-that alienate and endanger healthy forums of social interaction.
Their film Radiant City, which nabbed a spot on the Toronto Film Festival’s Canada’s Top Ten of 2006, focuses on the Moss family, a pack of brain-dead suburbanites who are about as generic as the brick fortress they live in. While the Moss children mill about on the desolate and homogeneous neighbourhood streets, their father, Evan, is stuck in commuter traffic, and their housewife mom, Ann, obsesses over mundane details.
Brown and Burns brood over all the facets of suburban living, from the necessity of a car-crucial for getting anywhere important or interesting-to the divided nature of the family living quarters. During a recent stop in Toronto, the directors discussed the reasons people choose to live in cookie-cutter bedroom communities.
FILM review
Radiant City
Directed by Jim Brown and Gary Burns
Starring: Joseph Heath, Mark Kingwell
Rating: VVV / VVVVV
“Everyone’s talking about and the prices of houses,” said Burns. “But nobody talks about the kinds of houses, or the choices that come with the house. You’re going to have to drive forever to get to work with traffic, and you’re going to have to drive your kids everywhere.
“We talk so much about real estate and houses, but we talk so little about the kinds of communities that we’re building. So hopefully some people will walk out of this film and at least start that conversation.”
Brown adds that suburbia is sold as a lie, posing as a form of community life as half-baked and silly as the development’s name.
“Everyone has a hard time saying the name of their suburban community,” Brown joked. “They’re a little embarrassed of it. You know, ‘I live in Copperfield or Scenic Acres,'” he quipped.
The manipulation inherent in suburban neighbourhoods’ masquerade as distinct communities is something that Brown and Burns reflect on with the divisive nature of this film.
The directors also interview a host of intellectuals who offer insights on suburban developments, including two University of Toronto philosophy professors, Mark Kingwell and Joseph Heath.
Burns comments on how the directors never actually planned to feature Kingwell in their film, but when the professor arrived in Calgary for an urban forum, they jumped at the opportunity to speak with him. As it turned out, a significant swath of Radiant City is given over to Kingwell’s insights.
Brown and Burns mused over how little time Kingwell actually spent with them-just long enough for the interview.
“Gary and I actually spent months with Mark Kingwell-in the editing room. Mark Kingwell spent fifteen minutes with us.”
Brown and Burns sought out professor Heath, after hearing him speak on the CBC Radio One program Ideas.
“Heath had written a book called The Rebel Sell, which I had read and really enjoyed,” Brown recalled. “I heard him on Ideas, right when we were looking for experts. I didn’t know who he was at first, and I was listening to what he was saying. He was talking about the way people are manipulated to buy certain things. I’m listening to him and at the same time I’m trying to think, ‘Who could we get for this film?’ And then all of a sudden I realized, hang on, what this guy is saying would be great for the film.”
Brown also acknowledges that Heath ended up altering the message of Radiant City by suggesting that every social danger the film points out about suburbia is already common knowledge.
“He in a sense flipped the message around,” Brown comments. “His argument was that people know what they’re doing when they move out here. People aren’t stupid. They want a big house. They want a big lawn. And that’s just what they’re getting.”
And maybe that is what’s most scary about Radiant City. It suggests that the manipulation of the suburban community isn’t a big secret. It’s that, in reality, we’ve gone past the point of caring.
