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Sweet Country - My pick for 'Best of the Fest' TIFF |
TIFF might have scaled back its programming by 20-ish
percent, but the Festival of Festivals still felt as big and loud as ever. The
movies were good if one was willing to look for them, but anyone who complained
about 2017 being an off-year for the programming didn’t stray beyond the Galas
and Special Presentations or was too concerned about premiere status. There
really were some hidden gems and discoveries. Out of the 50 feature films I saw
before and during the festival, about 43 of them were good to great. A pretty
good average, I think.
Getting a streamlined look at two aspects of the
festival—TIFF Docs and Platform—was a good way to go. TIFF Docs offered a
typically strong line-up from the reliable Thom Powers with a good mix of music
docs, political films, and character studies. The best documentaries, however,
we’re outside the TIFF Docs mix: Agnès Varda and JR’s Faces Places and Jennifer Baichwal and Nick de Pencier’s Long Time Running, which won the
People’s Choice Award for documentary and the runner-up prize, respectively.
Documentary also found a TIFF highlight in Lady Gaga’s showstopper of a
performance at the world premiere of her documentary Gaga: Five Foot Two, which was one example of TIFF’s effort to
champion the power of collective, live experiences. Having Gaga rock the house
is an experience one simply can’t get watching a film on streaming.
TIFF’s Platform line-up, on the other hand, was the best
party at the festival. This 12-film programme was the most tightly-curated
roster of the festival and it yielded oodles of riches in terms of new voices
and singular visions. I’ll keep this section brief out of respect for the
upcoming reprort, but Platform delivered the two best films of the festival:
Warwick Thornton’s badass re-writing of the western in Sweet Country, which won the Platform prize, and Xavier Legrand’s
adrenaline-pumping domestic drama Custody.
When it comes to lows at the festival, I can’t really fault
anything with TIFF the organization aside from the exorbitant pricing that
inspired many friends to sit the festival out. A frequent complaint from Canadian
media at TIFF was the front-loaded nature of the festival with the Americans
coming in for fly-by junketing that all had to be done the first weekend.
Sunday’s hectic junket day was so overloaded that multiple roundtables featured
an exodus of media running from junket to junket, which worked in my favour in
one case where literally every other person bailed on an actor to sprint over
to the Mark Felt junket. There were
exceptions, but one couldn’t overlook the fact that the 11-day festival became
a ghost town by day four or five.
One upside to everyone fleeing town meant that the back-end
of the festival let TIFF be all about enjoying the movies. It was such a treat
to enjoy hidden gems like Who We Are Now
and Hannah, which boasted excellent
performances from Julianne Nicholson and Charlotte Rampling, respectively, as
well as Oscar hopefuls like Film Stars
Don’t Die in Liverpool and First They
Killed My Father. Annette Bening’s interpretation of Gloria Grahame in Liverpool nails the blonde icon’s voice
and sultriness, while Angelina Jolie’s Cambodian film was among the most
visceral and emotional experiences at the festival. While the film debuted on
Netflix during the fest, it was still worth catching on the big screen for the
full effect. Father is officially
Cambodia’s submission to the Oscars’ Best Foreign Language Film race and it
might be the one to beat. Jolie delivers her best film yet as a director by
drawing upon her humanitarian heart and building a sweeping epic on the
Cambodian genocide under the Khmer Rouge. Her direction is first rate,
particularly in handling the child actors who give riveting and emotionally
intelligent performances.
Other notables in the foreign race include Hungary’s On Body and Soul, Austria’s Happy End, Belgium’s Racer and the Jailbird, and Morocco’s Razzia, which was a highlight of the Platform
competition. Canada might be smart to send François Girard’s outstanding
historical saga Hochelaga, Land of Souls,
which is a particularly timely choice for Canada’s sesquicentennial.
Distributor eOne announced today that Hochelaga
will open in Medicine Hat, Calgary on September 22—a move akin to that which brought
Monsieur Lazhar into the race.
Best of the Fest
As a said earlier in this post, TIFF had many strong
offerings this year. My early favourite going into the festival, though, was Sweet Country and nothing matched the
very high bar it set. I loved the film’s uncontrived glimpse of history that filtered
the western through an Indigenous lens. A potent manhunt embroiled with racial
tensions and nasty characters, Sweet
Country is a rugged and visionary historical tale that resonates strongly with
contemporary politics. Thornton’s outstanding cinematography made the Outback a
land of great danger and beauty, while the film’s arresting violence and
excellent performances, particularly Bryan Brown as a salty war veteran, gave
the genre a thrilling spin.
My picks for the top ten, in alphabetical order, of
TIFF 2017 are:
Custody
Euphoria
Faces Places
First They Killed My
Father
Hochelaga, Land of
Souls
Long Time Running
The Seen and Unseen
Sweet Country
Cinemablographer’s
TIFF Awards:
Best Film: Sweet Country
Runner-up: Custody
Top Doc: Faces Places
Runner-up: Long Time
Running
Best Lead Performance
– Female: Margot Robbie, I, Tonya
Runner-up: Julianne Nicholson, Who We Are Now
Best Lead Performance
– Male: Matthias Schoenaerts, Racer
and the Jailbird
Runner-up: Ben Stiller, Brad’s Status
Best Supporting
Performance – Female: Allison Janney, I,
Tonya
Runner-up: Eva Green, Euphoria
Best Supporting
Performance – Male: Bryan Brown, Sweet
Country
Runner-up: Paul Bettany, Journey’s End
Best Screenplay: I, Tonya
Runner-up: Sweet
Country
Best Cinematography: Hochelaga, Land of Souls
Runner-up: Sweet
Country
Best Film Editing: Long Time Running
Runner-up: I, Tonya
Biggest
Disappointment: mother!
Worst Film: If You Saw His Heart
Runner-up: Omertá
Best Q&A: Michael Haneke, Happy
End
Runner-up: Kidman and company, The Killing of a Sacred Deer