The Pagan Agenda

Commence TIFF withdrawal.

As a sort of trade-off this year, I saw more films than ever before and consequently wrote less. I have scribbled notes for four films but now that I am facing school again head-on, realistically I am not going to have the time to review each film individually. So this is my somewhat rambling account of my TIFF experience.

Last year remains the high watermark with this one on the whole providing a lot of above average cinematic experiences but rarely burgeoning on the great. The rare exceptions are all of relative equal value in my mind two of which fall within the category of conventional art films, the third escaping all conventions (Todd Haynes’ ‘I’m Not There’). Carlos Reygadas’ ‘Silent Light’ and Alexander Sokurov’s ‘Alexandra’ were both second, even third picks, and yet they both floored me with their depth of awe-inspiring humanity. My only prior familiarity with the Russian director Sokurov was the fantastic-though-at-times-tedious ‘Russian Ark’ and after seeing ‘Alexandra’ I am hungry for more and am looking forward to discovering his back catalogue. ‘Alexandra’ is the story of a spirited grandmother who visits her grandson who is stationed at a military base. Much comedy and satire is made of the juxtaposition of the burly old women as she defies every command of the officers around her, nosing around the base and outside of it, meeting up with the soldiers who appear child-like and foolish in their warfare campaigns. It is such a simple conceit and yet an effective commentary on the absurdity of war, and I was entirely won over by the bigger-than-life personality of Alexandra.

Other films worthy of mention include Gus Van Sant’s ‘Paranoid Park’ and Joe Wright’s ‘Atonement’.

I saw only one horrible film and that was Woody Allen’s ‘Cassandra Dream’. Apparently Woody admitted in an interview recently that he considers himself a lazy filmmaker… boy is that the truth! What an absolute mess of a film, and utterly pointless.

Observations about the festival itself:

The Wintergarden theater is the new great place to see films, and the Elgin this year was a thorough disappointment due to the frequency of out of focus films and wretched sound quality. I did notice that many of the showings I saw at the Elgin were also not to capacity which I can only suspect is due to the ridiculous spike in price for single tickets ($40 for rush!). I was also disappointed by how rarely stars and directors appeared or offered Q&A’s this year, I just do not get it.

Next year will be my first full-blown TIFF experience, taking the week off and seeing upwards to 35 films.