(Canada, 83 min.)
Dir. Alan Zweig
Programme: Canadian
Spectrum (World Premiere)
I started writing a list of fifteen reasons to see this
beautiful film at Hot Docs this year, but a baker’s dozen and a bit doesn’t
seem sufficient. I just loved 15 Reasons
to Live. As only the very best documentaries can do, 15 Reasons to Live captures the seemingly mundane shards of life
that rarely receive inspection, yet it turns them over in a fine light and
pieces them together into a radiant, unabashedly life-affirming mosaic.
Director Alan Zweig, inspired by Ray Robertson’s collection
of essays Why Not? 15 Reasons to Live,
creates an uplifting collage of soul-searching as he devises a vignette to
capture the spirit of each of these fifteen reasons. In segments titled “Work”,
“Love”, “Duty”, and others, Zweig interviews a collection of ordinary Canadians
to reveal what gives meaning to their lives. The stories are deceptively simple
in their ability to magnify the minute pleasures that make life worth living.
One story, “Solitude”, follows a Toronto woman named Tabetha
who relishes the silence when she flees her busy home of five children. It’s
not that she dislikes being a mother—far from it—but Tabetha is an escapist and
traveller at heart. She injects the thrill of travel into her day by slipping
out to the local mall and simply allowing herself to be engulfed by the hum and
hustle-bustle of the crowds as she sits in the mall and people watches. Home
can sometimes feel like the loneliest place on earth, and Tabetha’s story shows
that one sometimes needs to get lost in the crowd to feel grounded again.
Other reasons to live champion the need to stand out from
the crowd. A ten-year-old girl named Julia, for example, transforms a hairy
situation into an eye-opening one when she is kicked out of school for refusing
to kiss a portrait of Jesus Christ on the lips in front of her class. Julia’s
story, appropriately entitled “Critical Mind”, celebrates awareness. Articulate
and intelligent for a girl of her age, Julia makes the incident a learning
experience: she keeps her faith and she finds personal growth by refusing to
conform to the masses. Likewise, “Humour”, offers a hilarious anecdote from a
man named Adam Nobody who was beaten by police for protesting at the G20. All
Adam did was make a sign that said “Let Donna Graduate.” Perhaps the draconian
summit was not the best place to make an ironic reference to 90210, but Mr. Nobody’s attempt to bring
a laugh to a bad day revealed the absurdity of authority’s staff. Look back not
with anger, these stories explain, but with pride on standing out from the
crowd.
Some of the other stories presented in 15 Reasons to Live are anecdotes that are less about newsworthy
events and more so about a state of mind. “Home” offers the story of an elderly
woman named Emmaline with a youthful lust for life. Emmaline’s passion derives
from the solace of feeling at home in her lighthouse, where she met her husband
as a young rebel and lived with him until she died. Emmaline was forced to
leave soon after his death, but yearned to return to the lighthouse. She
finally did. As Emmaline describes how she takes comfort in the sounds of the
waves on the rocky shoals or the view of the endless horizon she cherished with
her husband, it sounds as if she never really left the lighthouse. Home can be
a state of mind, and Emmaline’s contagiousness tranquility is sure to afford a
sense of reassurance for viewers who reflect on the place that holds their
roots.
Like Emmaline’s story, the tales in 15 Reasons to Live outline simple pleasures that could easily pass
us by. The joy of reading, the thrill of creating, or the satisfaction of a job
well done are all part the answer. Even a memory of good friends and good wine
(which make some of my favourite memories!) is enough for Zweig’s inverted bucket list of things to do to live.
The finest story is Zweig’s own. The final chapter of 15 Reasons to Live, entitled “Death”, is
a stunning animated account of Zweig’s friendship with the late actress Tracey
Wright. “Death” is a fond remembrance of the parties that Wright and her
husband Don McKellar would have to celebrate the annual crop offered by the
pear trees in their backyard. The parties were like a communal toast to life or
a festivity of renewal. Zweig’s expressive sequence closes the film with a
poignantly bittersweet endnote on living life to the fullest because one never
knows when the harvest is complete
One could easily unpack the inspiration afforded by each of
the fifteen vignettes as a reason to see the film, but Zweig’s feat of creating
a whole through the amalgam of stories is the best. The sentiments of one story
echo its neighbours, as each episode appears as a stand-alone piece framed
within Zweig’s musing on the journey from crossing the bridge between death and
life. These ways of looking at the world through a sunny filter are like a
collective consciousness.
15 Reasons to Live
comes together as a guidebook for finding the silver linings in life. One
participant notes that happiness is a choice, and the fifteen reasons outlined
in the film are guides to help one arrive at such a decision. Being happy,
though, could be among the most difficult choices one ever has to make. The choice to be happy has a ripple
effect in the lives of others, as one kind action encourages another in turn.
(Think of when you hold a door open for someone and then they open the
next door for you.) The goodwill of one story infuses another, and 15 Reasons to Live amasses the stories
in gradual accumulation of emotion.
The infectiousness of the film builds a kind of euphoria,
which Zweig frees in the final chapter of the film by ending on a poignant line
offered to him by Wright about the will to live. The cathartic release afforded
by the stories makes the choice for happiness rather clear. 15 Reasons to Live therefore provides
its audience with one of the few chances they will have at Hot Docs of taking
the lessons provided by a film and realizing them to better this world. One
leaves 15 Reasons to Live feeling an
affirmation of life, which is reason alone to see this great, buoyant film.
Rating: ★★★★½ (out of ★★★★★)
15 Reasons to Live
screens with the excellent animated short Yellow
Sticky Notes | Canadian Anijam (directed by Jeff Chiba Stearns), which I
reviewed for Point of View.
15 Reasons to Live screens:
Saturday, April 27 – 6:30 pm at TIFF Bell Lightbox
Monday, April 29 – 1:30 pm at the Isabel Bader
Sunday, May 5 – 1:30 pm at TIFF Bell Lightbox
Please visit www.hotdocs.ca for more info on films, tickets, and show times.
UPDATE: 15 Reasons to Live opens in Toronto at the Bloor Cinema Oct. 4
UPDATE: 15 Reasons to Live opens in Toronto at the Bloor Cinema Oct. 4
