A few hours ago we saw The Wind That Shakes The Barley (tiff | imdb) at the Elgin. It was as compelling as advertised, and I felt none of the unevenness that other reviews have described. I thought the swings between the quiet conversations  — portents of what was waiting to erupt — and the bursts of violence mirrored the Irish conflict itself.

My two main problems were that I couldn’t understand most of what was said in the first 15 minutes, and that I was left wanting to know more about what happened…what led to the beginning of the story, what followed after, and what happened in parallel. Neither of these were really faults of the film; the sound was a bit too low and the accents very thick, and my own knowledge of the roots of the IRA are lacking. I also thought that the ending seemed to almost slip by, that it wasn’t as powerful as it might’ve been, but I suppose that’s Loach’s style.

The analogy to present-day Iraq (or any other occupied country) is obvious, but the world could do with a bit of blinding obviousness now and then. It presented a new side of such conflicts to me though, one that seems as wicked as it is unfair:  powerful countries hold all the cards in situations like Iraq, or Ireland, or Palestine, or colonial India. The reasons for occupying another country can be the most outrageous and unfair in the world; it matters little. The occupied citizenry, faced with violent oppression and having only the choice between peaceful resistance and violent opposition, usually opt to respond in kind; those opting for violent reprisal have no “official” military to muster and so are branded terrorists, whether deserving of the title or not. The occupying force then has moral authority to continue with the occupation.

History often remembers occupiers as imperialist aggressors and “terrorists” as revolutionaries, unless the revolutionaries becomes as corrupted by violence as the occupiers, in which case both sides find themselves in a morass, a cycle of violence with no morality or means of breaking free. No means, that is, except the spilled blood and declining memory of wasted generations.

[tags]tiff, toronto international film festival, the wind that shakes the barley[/tags]

I didn’t have the highest expectations for Citizen Duane (tiff | imdb); while I thought it interesting enough on my first scan through the book, it was one that Nellie wanted more than I. The few mediocre reviews I’ve read in the past couple of days didn’t give me much hope either, but it turned out a little better than I was expecting. Early in the film the acting felt quite…wooden, I guess. Forced, maybe is a better word; there were a few silences where presumably laughs were meant to be. It got better, and the humour picked up nicely, but it never really got very high off the ground.

In the end it was an ok movie with ok acting, nothing special. Thankfully, though, it provided a bit of levity in between German possession and Irish terrorism. And Vietnamese P.O.W. camp. And heroin addiction. And suicide. Yeesh.

Also: we started off the evening with a short film called True Love (tiff). Cute. Funny. Got a laugh out of an abandoned, parentless child, which always works.
[tags]tiff, toronto international film festival, citizen duane, true love[/tags]

Every review or synopsis of Requiem (tiff | imdb) that I’ve read has compared it to last year’s The Exorcism Of Emily Rose. This one will be no different. To put it simply, this is what Emily Rose could have been if it wasn’t stock Hollywood fare.

Because we’re preconditioned to expect the same schlocky tactics in every horror film, I spent the first half hour completely tense, waiting for a demonic face to appear in a closing bathroom mirror or a hand to grab an ankle from under a bed. After a while I realized it just wasn’t going to happen. Instead, director Hans-Christian Schmid built this creeping, lurking fear that this poor girl, who we got to know and wished the best for, was going to be ripped from the burgeoning life she’d only just begun to reclaim from her parents. The afflictions that eventually catch up with her manifest in (again) un-Hollywood ways, such that we’re never sure what’s wreaking havoc on her. No melting faces or speaking in tongues here, only behaviour that could be explained by possession, psychosis or stress, depending on what you want to believe.

[tags]tiff, toronto international film festival, requiem[/tags]

…We’re off!!

[tags]tiff, toronto international film festival[/tags]

Tomorrow night we start. Our first film is the fifth screening of the festival: Requiem. We ease into it slowly: one movie tomorrow, one Friday, two on Saturday, two more on Sunday and then three on Monday (we’re taking the day off work). Tuesday we only have one, though we’re taking that day off work as well; we’ll need the break. After that we do one film each night for the next three, then a night off on Friday before returning for one last screening — Outsourced — before I leave on course for a week (which reminds me…must pack!). I’ll try to find time in there to blog, whether from my computer or my blackberry.

Here’s our final lineup:

1. Requiem
2. Citizen Duane
3. The Wind That Shakes the Barley
4. Rescue Dawn
5. Candy
6. Kurt Cobain About A Son
7. Diggers
8. Blindsight
9. Fay Grim
10. The Half Life of Timofey Berezin
11. Day Night Day Night
12. The Pleasure of Your Company
13. Outsourced

[tags]tiff, toronto international film festival[/tags]