Before getting underway with the subject matter of today’s column on the 32nd annual Vancouver International Film Festival, we’ll start off by recommending three of the strongest films VanRamblings has seen in preview over the past three weeks, about which we will write at some greater length during the course of the Festival, which kicks off tomorrow, to run for 16 fun-filled (if challenging) days, through Friday, October 11th.
- Oil Sands Karaoke: We were knocked out by Charles Wilkinson’s stunningly well-realized and incredibly moving documentary, non-fiction film fare that digs deep into the experience of the film’s protagonists, while offering abiding insight into the devastatingly broken lives of five Fort McMurray oilpatch workers. The result: one of the most humane, truth-telling docs you’re likely to see at VIFF 2013, as harrowing a time inside a darkened theatre as you’re likely to have this year, yet a document that is filled with hope and the possibility of redemption.
- Felix: The feel-good film of this year’s Vancouver International Film Festival, an absolute must-see, a humble, deeply affecting, cross-cultural coming-of-age story set in South Africa that left the audience verklempt but heartened, with nary a dry eye in the house. Everything in Felix works: the cinematography, the production values, performances, screenwriting, and directorial ambition. Quite simply, a moving and accomplished film that is not to be missed at VIFF 2013.
- Gore Vidal: The United States of Amnesia: Despairing, melancholy, screamingly funny at times, and filled with more wit and perspicacity than any film you’ll see this year, here’s another doc that is not-to-be-missed. Quite simply, doc director Nicholas Wrathall, while offering a document on the nature of the 21st century state, has outdone himself. Which is all to the good, in a film that VanRamblings is awarding an A+. Just yesterday, we were suggesting to Festival Director Alan Franey that he’s got a hit on his hands, that once word gets out on the Gore Vidal doc, The Cinematheque is likely to prove inadequate as a venue to meet the demand of an audience that is going to rush out in large numbers to see what could very well prove to be the strongest non-fiction film to be screened at VIFF 2013.
The titles of the films above are linked to the VIFF web page for the film, where you can purchase your ticket online. Once word gets out on these films, tickets are going to be hard to come by, so you’re going to want to act immediately to schedule each of these films, and purchase your tickets.
Now we get down to the initial task at hand in offering you more “best bets” for VIFF films to screen over the next 16 days.
Truth to tell, VanRamblings loves the arcane, the “just a little off centre”, the weird but beautiful and moving sorts of films, movies where you find yourself lost for awhile, either inside your head or inside the lives of the characters you see in the tales of life unfolding before you on screen.
For instance, we loved The Strange Little Cat, which we saw in preview earlier in the week (and will review towards week’s end), while those with whom we screened the film, well … they weren’t quite so sure. Hmmm. With that in mind, today we’ll start off by steering you towards …
“It’s not hard. One need only to hit the right keys at the right time.”
Johann Sebastian Bach
Matterhorn: Fred is a lonely 54-year-old man. Since the death of his wife, he has lived alone in his small bible-belt village. His son disappeared from his life years ago. Each day, Fred rides around town in his hamlet’s old-fashioned yellow bus, virtuously attends his local parish church, and makes sure to eat his green beans, and meat and potatoes at 6 o’clock, precisely, each day. Then Theo, who might affectionately be referred to as a tramp, wanders into his life. After some initial misgivings about the prospect of doing so, Fred takes Theo in. Like a strict father, Fred tries to educate his new housemate, but rather than change Theo, it is Fred who is changed, as the two embark on a journey that slowly allows Fred to appreciate the world around him in new and transformative ways.
While Matterhorn is set in the present, the Dutch Calvinist atmosphere of the 1950s pervades, pressing heavily on the characters. As you can see in the trailer above, the film’s production design is beautifully attuned to the God-fearing, stern mood the Dutch know so well. The style of Matterhorn is then, as you might imagine, that of the tragicomic and the absurdist, a poignant film of circumstance that is compelling from beginning to end.
Winner of the Audience Award at both the Rotterdam and Moscow film festivals, Matterhorn is making its North American début at VIFF 2013, so were are fortunate indeed to be afforded the opportunity to see this heartbreaking film of friendship and melancholy existence, long before anyone else on this continent will be afforded the opportunity to do so.
Here’s what Twitchfilm’s Ard Vijn has to say about Matterhorn …
A dryly absurd comedy that ends with one hell of a pay-off, Matterhorn fully deserves all the accolades it’s been afforded at film festivals across Europe. Ton Kas is phenomenal as Fred, allowing writer-director Diederik Ebbinge’s début film to emerge as a triumph, as it builds throughout towards an emotional crescendo that feels wholly earned. Gifted with remarkable art direction, Matterhorn is a warm and achingly funny comedy filled with dry humour, claustrophobic Dutch stuffiness, and the promise of redemption through connection.
Plays only twice at VIFF: this Friday, and next Monday. See ya there.
Here’s what our favourite film blogger, Jeffrey Wells, has to say about J.C. Chandor’s sophomore film, “All Is Lost is a landmark film, dazzling and incontestably brilliant.” This is the film Wells raved about at Cannes, earlier in the year. Meanwhile, Owen Gleiberman, reviewing the film at Cannes, found the film to be haunting, and Robert Redford’s (certain-to-be Oscar nominated) performance “powerful, believable and human-scale”.
The Hollywood Reporter’s lead film critic, Todd McCarthy, calls All Is Lost “Hemingwayesque”, and Variety film critic Justin Chang writes, “Margin Call director J.C. Chandor avoids the sophomore slump with an impressively spare, nearly dialogue-free stranded-at-sea drama starring a superb Robert Redford,” as he goes on to write that …
All Is Lost is as close to pure existential cinema as American filmmaking is likely to get these days. The dread and anxiety in J.C. Chandor’s open water thriller are slow to build. Although he (we never learn the mariner’s name, who is “Our Man” in the credits) manages to temporarily repair the hull, the boat’s navigational functions have been completely shut down, leaving the Virginia Jean to sail helplessly into the path of a gathering storm. Our Man barely manages to keep himself afloat as he and the boat are repeatedly tossed and turned by the waves, lashed by pounding wind and rain. Apart from the momentary threat of attack when the raft enters shark-infested waters, the film finds drama in the little details: the ingenious method of obtaining fresh water that the protagonist discovers, or the sunburn that creeps ever more visibly across his face as the days progress.
A subtle, visual film that speaks with grave eloquence and simplicity about the human condition, All Is Lost is destined for Oscar contention. You can see it at VIFF 2013 weeks before its planned release late next month.
Miss Violence: Winner of Best Director (the Silver Lion) and Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month, we believe Miss Violence should be considered a must-see (if a tough sit) at VIFF 2013. Part of Greece’s new “weird wave” of filmmaking, but more realist (and, perhaps, more upsetting) than, say, Dogtooth, Guy Lodge (writing in Variety) says …
Alexandros Avranas’ airless but accomplished sophomore feature is another one of the new Greek cinema’s nightmare narratives. Before the opening credits are up, the 13-year-old birthday girl has plunged to her death from a fourth-story balcony, while her family’s strangely stilted response to the suicide suggests she had her reasons. Avranas’ film employs an irony-free meter that distinguishes his work from that of other Greek “weird wave” directors, lending the film’s most explicitly severe sequences of domestic and sexual abuse a kind of cumulative numbing power. The truth is unspeakable, the family’s interactions unnatural and violent, the narrative serving to confirm our worst fears.
As we say, a tough sit. Lee Marshall, in Screen Daily, weighs in on this “story of horrific domestic abuse and implacable tyranny,” as does Boyd van Hoeij, in The Hollywood Reporter, both of whom are approving of the film. Let’s face it, you don’t attend VIFF because Hollywood movies with straightforward narratives and tidy endings are your cinematic cup of tea. If that is, in fact, the case, Miss Violence would seem to be the film for you.
After some thought, and at the request of our readers — who’ve asked that we keep our posts to a readable 1,000 words a day (we actually ran 1500 words yesterday, and a couple hundred more words than that today), tomorrow we’ll offer you Part 3 of our VIFF “best bets”, and in the coming days some insight into various logistical aspects of the Festival, and some (we feel, at least, is) salutary and oh-so-heartening news respecting the almost certain-to-be troubled Cineplex International Village venues.
- In the meantime, for those of you who did not catch our Monday introductory VIFF 2013 post, just click here.
- Part 1 of our ‘best bets” post may be found here.
- The search engine for VIFF 2013 films may be found here.
Well, that’s it for today’s VanRamblings post. We’ll see you back here tomorrow — the first day of the 32nd annual Vancouver International Film Festival — for Part 3 of our VIFF “best bets” posts.
