Toronto International Film Festival 2018 Report Part 10: The End Of The Affair—And TIFF, Too!

Monrovia, Indiana (Frederick Wiseman)

Frederick Wiseman is one of the hardest-working filmmakers alive today. There can be no doubt. His career has spanned over five decades and taken us to asylums, hospitals, high schools, libraries, universities, zoos, galleries, and everything else in between. His documentaries are voiced by those he films; their rhythms and tics dictated by the events he happens to witness while stopping by. There is casualness to his method. It is also deceptive, as he knows how to keep up the illusion of objectivity while he films. It feels very observational—except when Wiseman gives us a reminder that it isn’t. Those are the moments you especially treasure, as they remind you of his mastery of the documentary mode.

There are a few instances of this in Monrovia, Indiana, Wiseman’s sojourn to the heart of rural America in the Trump era. One instance I will not spoil, because it is one of the funniest moments in the film, and best left to catch you by surprise. But another instance is less obtrusive. It’s during a sequence filmed at a Masonic lodge, where one of its oldest members is honored for fifty years of service. The ceremony bumbles along due to some missed cues and stumbling speeches. It’s unintentionally humorous in its earnestness.

But we also come to recognize the solemnity of the event. A few times, the old man being celebrated quietly thanks those giving him plaudits. Then, he quickly glances in our direction and seemingly thanks Wiseman, who we assume is congratulating the man off-screen. The moment is fleeting, yet it reaffirms the fact that Wiseman is not just some fly on the wall, dispassionately doing his duty and calling it a day. Sometimes there are slippages to break the wall, and instead of discarding them, Wiseman shows us that they belong in his documentations. They are bursts of spontaneous life, unembellished and remarkable.

In fact, no matter where life is, an engaging story can always be told. Wiseman has taught us this time and time again. Monrovia, Indiana is a slightly stickier prospect than his other recent works, since it focuses on people who helped bring Trump to power without taking any political stance whatsoever. It seems that, in this age, we have to slake our thirst and vilify everyone who goes against our beliefs, and if an artistic work does not do this, it deserves our contempt. However, if you cast politics aside for a moment, there is still something to be said about how life is lived by small-town folk. How some of the pressing concerns of the day end up being where benches and fire hydrants should be installed, and how some of the most moving moments can arise from a preacher comforting a dead woman’s grieving family.

Wiseman knows that you don’t have to take sides in order to make relevant cinema. Gains can be made by having an acutely anthropological lens from which to view the world outside your typical purview. So, sure, the people Wiseman films in Monrovia don’t interest or endear me politically. I don’t need Wiseman to remind me of that. But the way they talk, congregate, celebrate, mourn, worship, work, play, and debate? Yes. When I watch them do these very human tasks, they interest me very much.

Cold War (Paweł Pawlikowski)

“Life is but a song” should be a famous quotation from somewhere, though it isn’t (I’ve checked). It would be a fitting tagline for Paweł Pawlikowski’s Cold War, which is dictated by the mutability of a couple’s on-again, off-again relationship in the key of shifting geographical and political climates. Their song echoes amidst uncertainty and betrayal, starting off in postwar Poland and ending there in the early 1960s, after zigzags through Germany, France and Yugoslavia. Years pass, hairstyles change, wellbeing deteriorates. The past, as emblematized by a hardy Polish folk tune sung with a capella gusto, bleeds into the present, when that same folk tune is transposed to become a sultry jazz standard, sung like a tearstained cloth being clipped onto a clothesline for the wind to dry. We adapt. We persevere. But always, always, we search for a completion that is never within reach.

Pawlikowski has a masterful eye for staging. Filming using the 1.37:1 Academy ratio, so that each scene is laid out with artful compactness, his camera lovingly caresses his actors and finds a striking majesty in their faces and bodies. This helps accentuate Joanna Kulig’s performance as songbird Zula, a third of which is comprised mainly of singing. But whether she sings in offices, crowded theatres, or smoky bars, the notes she hits become etched on the screen, becoming a silent duet with the audience as we quietly recite the heart—and heartbreak—of her tune. And when Kulig is not singing, she is given time to fill out Zula’s personality and private passions, so that when she next takes to the stage, her latest song becomes that much more comprehensive.

Tomasz Kot is a fantastic counterpoint to Kulig’s fortitude. As a folk ensemble impresario-turned-defector, his Wiktor almost underplays the passion he has for Zula, even from the moment he hears her sing. He is not the most outwardly romantic leading man in 2018 cinema, but there is a way he looks at her that is unmistakably tender. A look that makes you believe he would go to the end of the world with her. It’s this approach, of using small expressions and brief moments of intimacy, that helps soften the blunt impact of the fragmented narrative structure, which interrupts this couple’s relationship at every turn and never fulfills it on a higher level.

Because, in truth, a fateful love affair during one of the most tumultuous periods of the last century cannot be given the fulfillment it deserves. Only the briefness of a moment was safe enough to keep love alight; stay too long, and you could find yourself in a worse position, liable never to see your love again. That spectre of inadequacy hanging over Cold War is deliberate, and also its tragedy. The only film that would show Wiktor and Zula consummating their love in a comprehensive and complete way can never be made without sacrificing the very realism that makes it so vivid. So, to compensate, Pawlikowski must give us only the bare essentials, making sure they look (and sound) as stunning as possible.

Transit (Christian Petzold)

I find Christian Petzold to be a very good filmmaker who constantly strives for greatness, and is always just this short of reaching his goal. To his credit, I think Transit is the closest he’s come to greatness yet, upping the ante from his previous works Barbara and Phoenix by taking a period text (a novel called Transit Visa by Anna Seghers) and making it atemporal, examining the traumas and tribulations inherent to transiency that speaks resolutely to the contemporary moment.

The film follows Georg (the captivating Franz Rogowski), a German technician and refugee tasked with delivering a letter to a Communist writer named Weidel. To his dismay, he finds Weidel dead from suicide in his hotel room, and now has to lug more of his effects to the port city of Marseille, including a book manuscript and a travel permit to Mexico. Hoping to get the permit to Weidel’s widow Marie (Paula Beer), Georg takes it to the Mexican consulate—only to be mistaken for Weidel himself. Georg, despite an initial moment of doubt, decides not to correct the error, because there is nothing left for him in Europe. He might as well seize the opportunity given to him. Only, it isn’t so easy, because his visit to the consulate has alerted Marie into thinking her husband is still alive and looking for her. What complications can ensue? Do I even need to tell you?

Petzold’s decision not to set this during the novel’s period, when Nazi invaders propelled the underlying story, is an unsettling creative decision, as it strips the historicity away from a potent plot and transforms it into something ungrounded from tangible terrors. What possible cause could people have to flee from Germans—by boat, no less—in today’s climate, if this tale is even set in the modern day? Petzold doesn’t say.

Rather, it is the very possibility that this could happen that prompts us to take the chill in the air seriously. We know that millions of people in the world are already fleeing from something, and their flight is continually being met with stone hearts and manifest populism in the countries they turn to. What Petzold does is to move on from literal Nazis and turn Seghers’ tale into a melodramatic parable for our present moment, where not only Middle Eastern families have to flee from untold horror, but Caucasian Europeans, as well. Everyone is jostling for position in a perpetual waiting game, no longer people with solid identities, but ghosts whose names can change in an instant.

It is mightily effective in that sense, and Petzold’s gorgeous aesthetics give it a bygone-era sumptuousness that upholds the mystique he wishes to bring to the affair. My only request, as both critic and casual viewer, is that he move on from tales with bombshell endings. Though I have to assume the ending here matches what Seghers wrote (I have not read her novel), it still comes across as Phoenix-lite, jabbing us with a conclusion that is not so much a twist as a self-congratulatory slap on the back. It’s all very “Look here, ma!” when it doesn’t have to be, and it’s also one of the only things that’s holding Petzold back. Give me melodrama as much as you want, but realize that not every melodrama needs to have a big million-dollar ending in order to be effective.

Short Cuts Programme 8

I’ve been attending TIFF for about seven years now, and this year I figured I’d do something I haven’t yet done: go to a Short Cuts programme and see some short films on the big screen. We ought to remember that some truly stunning work can be achieved in short form, and most of the time, that work tends to go unrecognized. Sure, prizes can be won at festivals, and a select few end up with Oscar nominations, but rarely do I come across people who actually care. So, if you ever attend a festival and need a change of pace, do try a short film programme, because you might luck out and see something that becomes a personal favorite.

I did not choose Programme 8 deliberately; it was more so because it was playing during an empty slot in my schedule. I also cannot say which programme had the best films, but judging from C.J. Prince’s earlier list of Must-See Short Films, Programme 8 probably wasn’t the one. And that is perfectly okay. You take the bad with the good, as long as you can make the most out of the experience.

All These Creatures (Charles Williams)

This won the Palme d’Or for Best Short Film at Cannes this past May. Deservedly? It depends on what you want in a short film. This one is heavily stylized, shrouded in impressive cinematography and metaphorical signifiers (the major one being a cicada infestation). Within the house the cicadas are invading is a boy dealing with a mentally ill father, not knowing how best to further their relationship without being engulfed by his dad’s violent rages.

It packs a lot into thirteen minutes, though I found the style overwhelmed the emotion in parts, leaving behind an ending that is not as upsetting as it ought to be. I’d say the sound design (particularly the chirping of the cicadas) is the most impressive aspect, and one that was really highlighted in a theatre with a good sound system.

Caroni (Ian Harnarine)

Spots of bright Trinidadian foliage intermingle with New York’s drabness in this ultra-brief exploration of a woman’s longing to be with her daughter. As an immigrant nanny, though, she needs the money, so she must settle for grainy Skype videos until the day she can touch Trinidadian ground again.

The film rather quickly solves the mystery of whether or not the woman will meet her daughter in the flesh, and it does so with some very obvious symbolism that isn’t quite earned. The motivations that lead to this “solution” come out of nowhere, and so the bittersweet ending trips over itself in wanting to feel earned.

Veslemøy’s Song (Sofia Bohanowicz)

Mixing the personal with the fictional, Bohanowicz delivers a quietly moving portrait of how the search for truth and meaning can be cruelly compromised by the passage of time. The search here involves a rare recording of a composition dedicated to violinist Kathleen Parlow, a child prodigy with intimate connections to Bohanowicz’s family. Perhaps never heard by a soul living in the twenty-first century, Bohanowicz (via her fictional stand-in, played by Deragh Campbell) travels to the New York Public Library to listen to the only recording in existence.

The power, of course, comes from seeing what happens next. The use of black-and-white 16mm, and Bohanowicz’s humanistic combination of close-ups and musical cues, gives this short a lot of mileage. She’s also working on a feature-length extension, so if you miss out on this one, you’ll have more reason to see it in a longer iteration.

Ballad of Blood and Two White Buckets (Yosep Anggi Noen)

This Indonesian tale sees two laborers collecting pig’s blood and selling its congealed form to people who believe it to be a nutritious food source. Sales are down, however, due to quibbles about it being haram. There’s also the fact that the female partner has a terrible hacking cough that grows worse with each passing day.

Noen does a fairly good job of evoking the mundanity of this unusual venture, which involves a lot of waiting around for both the resource and the profits. The use of the cough motif seems to gesture toward a literal sickness caught from hypocritical mindsets. I wish the short wasn’t so gross to listen to, though. By its end, it devolves into a cacophony of phlegmy coughing that sets your teeth on edge, and makes you reach for phantom disinfectant. Germaphobes, this is your trigger warning.

Accidence (Guy Maddin, Evan Johnson & Galen Johnson)

An apartment complex is the scene of a crime… and a lot more. Such is the premise of Canadian weirdo Guy Maddin’s latest offering, which I can best sum up as a diorama of danger that turns into a mellow music video. There is so much happening on the screen that one viewing is simply not enough to take in every single detail. That is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good because it cannot be reduced to a single interpretation. Bad because it lacks a certain control that you would want to see from a filmmaker as seasoned as Maddin.

I will say that my eyes were constantly drawn to a window that showed some shadowy monster skulking back and forth. I have no idea what it was. It made me ignore a few other active windows around it, so if I saw this again, I’d have to watch those instead. I also can say that there is a ghost haunting another area. I think I spotted him once.

This Magnificent Cake! (Emma De Swaef & Marc James Roels)

The last short of the programme was, by far, the best. Using stop-motion animation with felt puppets, De Swaef and Roels take an anthology approach to the Scramble for Africa that is equal parts hilarious and humbling. In five parts, they tell the stories of both colonizers (a haunted king, an unlucky clarinetist, a belligerent meat monger-turned-explorer, and an army deserter) and the colonized (a Pygmy bellhop, and a porter who briefly survives drowning), finding in their tales a surreal fatalism that is as damning to imperialists as it is delirious in scope.

It’s incredibly difficult to juggle disparate tones while maintaining a firm grasp on the material, yet they pull it off. The film swerves from bitingly comic to intensely tragic—often in the same scene, and yet it always feels purposeful in representing the savagery of colonialism (and, by extension, the savagery of their critique of it). If anything, it could have been cut down by an act, as it begins to stretch toward the feature-length mark at forty-four minutes.

At the very least, I don’t think you can look at snails in the same way after watching this one.

Toronto International Film Festival: Conclusion

And that is a wrap! Can you believe you ended up reading 42 full-length reviews from me (plus an additional six capsules) in the span of these past few weeks? That’s an uptick of four from last year. And I did it all much faster compared to then, when my last report was filed in mid-October. See, I promised to get these reports over to you by the end of the month, and I kept my word. Now, how I did it remains a mystery to me.

Even when I tried to keep the reviews between 400-600 words, it still took a lot of work to hash out my thoughts for each one. Made even worse when all I had were a notebook with scribbled phrases written in the dark, my own foggy memory, and not a single screener to rewatch (barring the three films I reviewed prior to the festival). Chalk it up to my youth that none of these films began to blur in my head the next day.

Did I have favorites? You bet I did. To this day, Barry Jenkins‘ If Beale Street Could Talk gets me all gushy every time I think about it, and I cannot wait to see it again in a few months. If you’ve seen the trailer, then you have some idea of what to look forward to. Both High Life and Roma were fabulous displays of virtuosity, and while you’ll hear a lot about the latter in the coming months, be prepared for some major Claire Denis adulation next year, when High Life is slated to come out.

I’d say Can You Ever Forgive Me? was my biggest surprise; I was expecting by-the-numbers Oscar bait, and instead got a very moving and melancholic examination of midlife insecurity writ on a criminal scale. My high expectations for In Fabric and Shoplifters were easily met, while the gorgeously lowkey Ray & Liz was the one film I felt wasn’t talked about enough. The one film people talked about a lot, A Star is Born, was as great as advertised, and dare I say, a film I’m actually excited to see again in a few weeks’ time? There’s just something about it that works like magic, and I still think about it often. I still can’t believe I saw Lady Gaga in person, and gave her a standing ovation. Was that moment real? The video on my cellphone says otherwise.

I’d round out my top ten with Monrovia, Indiana and This Magnificent Cake! (the reviews of which you’ve just now read); my honorable mentions go out to Vox Lux, Her Smell, Long Day’s Journey into Night, Non-Fiction, Peterloo, Summer Survivors, Ash is Purest White, Widows, What You Gonna Do When the World’s on Fire? and Transit, roughly in that order. As for my lowlights? Well, the new Xavier Dolan was rather disappointing, and I wasn’t too keen on Ulysses & Mona, Boy Erased, Red Joan, A Faithful Man or Destroyer, either. Luckily, none of them were as bad as some of the films I saw last year, so that’s one positive thing I can say about them.

In terms of favorite performances, I’d say all of these actors gave incredible performances in some shape or form. A couple will surely receive Oscar nominations in January, while others will remain close to my heart even if they get no awards for their work: KiKi Layne, Stephan James, Regina King and Brian Tyree Henry in If Beale Street Could Talk; Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche in High Life; Yalitza Aparicio and Marina de Tavira in Roma; Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant in Can You Ever Forgive Me?; Fatma Mohamed in In Fabric; Lily Franky, Sakura Ando and the late, great Kirin Kiki in Shoplifters; Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga and Sam Elliott in A Star is Born; Natalie Portman in Vox Lux; Elisabeth Moss and Agyness Deyn in Her Smell; Nora Hamzawi in Non-Fiction; Rory Kinnear in Peterloo; Paulius Markevičius in Summer Survivors; Zhao Tao in Ash is Purest White; Elizabeth Debicki and Daniel Kaluuya in Widows; Franz Rogowski in Transit; Steven Yeun in Burning; Joanna Kulig in Cold War; Brigitte Poupart in Les Salopes; Carmina Martíñez in Birds of Passage; Carey Mulligan in Wildlife; Gloria Demassi in Roads in February; Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy in First Man; Jessie Buckley in Wild Rose; Matej Zemljič in Consequences; and Julia Roberts and Lucas Hedges in Ben is Back.

Finally, I want to thank each and every person who clicked on and read my reports. I could not have gotten by without knowing you were there reading my work, somewhere in the world. I fully confess to not being the best or most polished critic there is. There are many, many others who’ve done this gig for much longer, and can thus whip up much better prose for your reading pleasure. They’ve seen more than me, they know more than me, and their connections are vaster. My hope is that, at the very least, I entertained you, and stoked your excitement for some of these films. I want you to see why I loved some of these films when you go out and watch them in the next few months. Because, maybe, you will love them in the same ways I did.

If I end up in this position again next year, with a new press pass and a brand new slate of films, I’d love to know what you think of my coverage. What can be improved? What specific areas do I need to focus on in my analyses? What types of films should I focus more on, and what types should receive less attention? What am I doing right? Your comments and suggestions would mean a lot to me, no matter how positive or negative they may be. My only goal is to make you, dear reader, feel the magic of a film festival like TIFF in the comfort of your own home. If I can do more, then please speak up and make your opinion heard.

In the meantime, I hope to review films on Film Inquiry on a more regular basis. You’ll see me around here more often, I promise! Until then, guys, have a great rest of your day, and stay cool.

What input do you have for Tomas when (and if) he covers TIFF again next year? Let him know your thoughts in the comments below!

The Toronto International Film Festival ran from September 6^th to the 16^th.