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The Toronto International Film Festival, which wrapped up its 10-day run this past weekend, is arguably the most important film festival in North America. But to the average moviegoer it's not as well known as Sundance, in part because TIFF samples the most promising new film from around the world while Sundance emphasizes home-grown movies, for better or worse. But TIFF showcases its share of English-language films, too -- often with star-studded red-carpet premieres -- and this year some of the festival's best movies were among them:
Rachel Getting Married
I'll have to admit that the new film from Jonathan Demme (Silence of the Lambs) wasn't on my must-see list. He's a respected filmmaker, but his latest film, the story of a woman getting married, gathering with her extended family, and clashing with her sister, sounded a little too much like Noah Baumbach's Margot at the Wedding. But I stepped into the screening on a lark and was stunned not only by Demme's patient and unadorned approach but also by Anne Hathaway's razor sharp, painful, quivering performance as the bride's sister. Demme injects melodrama into the story at regular intervals, but he observes the results like a documentarian huddling in the corner with a small, handheld camera. The rehearsal dinner plays out in near real time, complete with speeches from moms, dads, cousins, crazy uncles, and poetic troublemakers, and the gathering feels so honest that I was cringing along with the guests when the sweet, emotional moment threatened to collapse, and I felt their sigh of relief when it mostly didn't. The rehearsal dinner is one set piece; the other is the wedding itself, a jubilant, eclectic affair in which Robyn Hitchcock and Fab 5 Freddy show up to perform. In between those tent poles is a harrowing roller-coaster that may vaguely resemble the films of Noah Baumbach but has significantly more heart and soul.
Wendy and Lucy
Kelly Reichardt, whose previous film, Old Joy, was one of my favorites of 2006, returns with a quiet melodrama called Wendy and Lucy. Wendy is played by Michelle Williams, Lucy is played by a dog named Lucy, and together they're on the road, headed to a job in the Northwest with a few dollars, a few clothes, and a car with a bad serpentine belt. Reichardt says she wanted to explore the idea of bootstraps, so often recommended but so rarely examined, and in the modern world she finds daily demands that pass unnoticed by people with money but lie like pernicious traps for anybody living at the edge of existence. Wendy keeps track of her funds and miles-to-go in a notebook, but the entire film takes place at one stop, mostly outdoors, in a town where her lack of safety net is tested at every turn. Williams is excellent in a simple film about a surprisingly complicated world.
Che
For several years, Steven Soderbergh has been following each of his big-budget extravaganzas (Oceans Eleven, Twelve, and Thirteen) with smaller films shot on video, and while I appreciate and support the idea, I wish I enjoyed his serious films more than I do. His latest effort is an epic look at two points in the life of Che Guevara, the Argentine revolutionary who helped Castro come to power in Cuba and failed to repeat the experience in Bolivia. In total, the film, appropriately titled Che, is over four and a half hours, but it's divided into two parts that may be released separately -- although many people who've seen this Spanish-language project wonder if it will play in US theaters at all. The first half is about Che's Cuban years and it appears light and upbeat only by comparison to the downward spiral of the second half which takes place in Bolivia. Benicio Del Toro is Che, and he's excellent at playing a casual charismatic. And I welcome a slow and probing look at Guevara, but Soderbergh adopts a simple view of the events -- a symmetrical rising and falling -- and remains uncritical of the Cuban adventure mostly because he needs it to be the positive counterpoint to the Bolivian one. Every failed action in Bolivia has a parallel in the implicit Cuban ideal.
Much of what happens involves jungle fights and military strategy, but both halves are deliberately muted and undramatic. The film has lots of characters, but Soderbergh doesn't let the viewer cozy up to any besides Che -- and briefly Castro in the first half. Put another way: Soderbergh has given us the slow but not the probing. In Toronto Che's two halves screened back to back for press, and we were told that during the 15-minute intermission we'd see a short video test on the screen because the projectionist needed to change formats. Sure enough, the first half's wide screen narrowed when Che reached Bolivia, a neat and subtle stylistic gesture. I wish Soderbergh had made more of them.
Me and Orson Welles
Like Soderbergh, Richard Linklater sometimes seems to be working in a see-saw pattern of "one for them, one for me," following up movies like Tape and Waking Life with a crowd-pleaser like School of Rock. But he's often blurred the lines, and I'm not sure where I'd seat his latest, Me and Orson Welles, a lighthearted, thoroughly entertaining period drama about a young actor who lands a role in Welles' Broadway production of Julius Caesar. The film is accessible and straightforward, and it stars young Hollywood actors like Zak Efron and Claire Danes, but Linklater's flash of brilliance was casting relatively unknown Christian McKay to play Welles. He's a spitting image for the mercurial actor, and he projects the charisma necessary to explain why so many people flocked to the side of an egotistical but brilliant bastard. So much of Welles' legacy revolves around Citizen Kane and his (supposed) subsequent decline that I'm also glad to see a story that doesn't mention either -- it takes place earlier, in 1937. Me and Orson Welles does contain a reference to The Magnificent Ambersons, though, Welles' followup to Kane, and it gives us all a taste of what it must have been like to spend time with Welles in his prime.
The Wrestler
The biggest surprise among the English-language films at Toronto, for me, was seeing big-name directors like Jonathan Demme and Darren Aronofsky adopt a style more often identified with European masters like Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne. Aronofsky's film, The Wrestler, is a harsh and nuanced look at a professional wrestler who's twenty years past his prime, and even in his prime he was the king in a world of cheese. Now he mumbles. He breathes heavily. He wears bifocals to read. And he lives in a rented trailer for which autograph sales and appearances at the local rec center can't always pay. I haven't been following Mickey Rourke's career or the details of his surgeries -- fodder for tabloids, I imagine -- so The Wrestler came as a shock to someone who expected him to look like that guy in Angel Heart. In this film, he's a bulked-up, modified, bleached-and-shaved hulk, perfectly cast in a story about people who pay the bills with self destruction. Distant from his daughter, he has only one sometime companion, a still-attractive but aging stripper played by Marisa Tomei, and Aronofsky beautifully explores the parallels of their lives. The movie, with its dime-store romance and emotional jolts, feels a bit like a grungier Rocky, but at times the understated attitude -- the grime and destitution -- are closer to Raging Bull.
Slumdog Millionaire
Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later...) unveiled his new film, Slumdog Millionaire, at Telluride, but then, just two weeks later, it ended up winning Toronto's "People's Choice Award." It's a vibrant, violent, action-packed movie about a kid who grew up on the streets of Mumbai and surprised everyone by winning the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, even though he had no education. The story is primarily a flashback as the 20-year-old tries to explain to the authorities how he knew every answer. He learned each one on the street in a harrowing escape from bandits or a humorous moment with friends, and the film ticks them off one by one. "Your story is bizarrely plausible," one character tells him, but I'm not so sure. There's a brother in the mix, and a pretty girl, but she's a flag to be captured, not a real character. Still, given the silly premise (based on a true story, they say), Slumdog Millionaire is surprisingly satisfying as a splash of color, movement, and music. The modern Indian soundtrack thumps throughout, and nearly everyone I talked to enjoyed the film. My knee was bouncing right along with them.
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I'm really excited about The Wrestler and Slum Dog—and now, I guess, Rachael Getting Married.