Thirteen or so hours of travel yesterday, and I’m back at one of my favorite fests, the Toronto International Film Festival. The first couple years I came here, I didn’t enjoy it much, other than the films. Everything was spread out more, the part of town we stayed in (right on Yonge) smelled funky all the time, I couldn’t find a decent pad thai anywhere, and Yonge between the Marriott and Ryerson gets a little dicey late nights. But hey, Toronto, honestly, it wasn’t you, it was me. It was a rough time in my life, which colored my tolerance for the noise and bustle and whatnot, I didn’t know as many people way back then, and it was a very different fest experience than what TIFF is for me today.

Unfortunately, I kicked off this year’s fest by going to baggage claim at Billy Bishop Airport (cutesy little island airport right near downtown, which I like SO much better than Pearson) and finding that, in some weird case of luggage jet lag, my bag had not quite caught up with the rest of me. Particularly irritating given that I had to retrieve my bag in Boston, schlep over to the International Terminal, and recheck it there. Which I did. So I started off Thursday feeling a bit discombobulated. Thankfully, movie theaters are dark, so I sucked it up, grabbed my badge, and made it to The Gatekeepers and then On the Road, later in the evening, following a lovely media party hosted by the Toronto Film Critics Association, made it back over to the Lightbox to check out a small doc called Fidai, in which a young filmmaker seeks out his uncle, an aging Algerian freedom fighter, in order to tell his life story. Very small crowd spread out in the very small Lightbox 4 theater, which is too bad because it’s actually quite a good story, and certainly one that hasn’t been done and overdone.

One of my missions this year at TIFF is to try to catch as many of these small venue, later evening screenings as I can, in part because the films screening there tend to get overlooked in the rush and hubbub of urgency to cover the bigger, shinier films, and in part because I’ve stumbled across a few real gems hitting these less-publicized screenings (admittedly, a few real stinkers as well, but that’s part of the crap shoot of any major fest, even with the bigger films). Last year I caught Oslo, August 31 at a quiet little screening up there toward the end of the fest, and that turned out to be one of my favorite films of the fest.

This year TIFF feels like it’s finally settled into the whole “Festival Village” thing that kicked off in earnest last year around the Lightbox and Scotiabank. Heaps of friendly, bravely smiling, orange-shirted volunteers, valiantly trying to direct foot traffic and be helpful in spite of the occasional snippy industry person being on their high horse about whatever it is they think they’re entitled to that they aren’t getting. I jokingly suggested to one strained-looking volunteer that the fest should arm the volunteers with paint guns loaded with bright orange pellets so they could mark particularly asshole-ish industry dweebs as a warning to others to look out for them; he chuckled before diplomatically allowing that most of the P&I folks have been quite nice so far, in spite of a couple of bad apples here and there.

Lots badges running to and fro, rushing to get to screenings and interviews and meetings over coffee or lunch, spirits high in anticipation of what looks to be an overall solid slate of TIFF offerings; the whole area around the Lightbox and fest headquarters kind of reminds me of the Amsterdam airport: lots of people rushing to get somewhere, and a veritable babel of languages surrounding you. The curious, outgoing side of me loves to take it all in, while the claustrophobic, occasionally neurotic side keeps wishing I’d brought earbuds to plug into my iPhone so I could crank up some Sugar or Bettie Serveert and drown it all out. The crowding around the Lightbox, especially around the red carpet screenings, tends to get a little crazy, with lines of people clogging the sidewalk and people craning to get a glimpse of any big stars; you walk by wearing sunglasses and they glance at you surreptitiously, trying to figure out if you’re a star-in-hiding, losing interest once they realize you aren’t.

Today I’m schlepping over to the Ryerson to catch Rust and Bone, which I keep hearing great things about. Buzz has also been very solid on the Sarah Polley doc, Stories We Tell, which is now more on my radar than it was. I’ll have write-ups on the films I’ve caught as soon as I have a breather to sit down and write them up, but for now a few brief words on them. The Gatekeepers is very solid; the first of the three Israeli/Palestinian-themed docs I hope to catch at TIFF, it features several former heads of Shin Bet, Israel’s secret service, talking candidly about the moral compromises necessitated by fighting violence with violence. Most intriguing to me about this doc is how many of the things these guys had to say about their attitude around dealing with the Palestinian issue and terrorism could probably be found in vintage interviews of former Nazis discussing the “Jewish problem” before and during WW2. I couldn’t help but think to myself, listening to them, “How can you not hear that what you’re saying there is so similar to what an SS officer might have said about the need to ‘deal with’ you?” The casualness with which they discuss interrogations, beatings, and assassinations was chilling. Do we as a people never learn that when what we do unto others when we hold the position of oppressor, when we view the world from purely an “us versus them” mentality, it takes a toll in ways we can’t begin to calculate until we examine our own morality with unflinching honesty? More on this one later.

As for On the Road, after hearing mixed reviews out of Cannes on this one, I was on the fence about working it into my TIFF schedule, in spite of my general admiration for director Walter Salles. But I’d heard Salles had done a serious re-cut post-Cannes, so I wanted to check it out. And boy, I’m glad I did. I haven’t seen the Cannes version, but the cut playing TIFF is fantastic — it moves, it engages, it tells a great story in a way that somehow conveys the sense of restlessness and need to move and question and find your place that defines Jack Kerouac’s seminal beat generation novel. I still find Dean Moriarty to be less of an admirable free spirit and more of a self-absorbed, destructive whirlwind, but all the performances in this film are rock solid, and Salles’ re-edit hits every note right in terms of pacing and story. I hope those critics who saw this at Cannes and were unimpressed will give this fresh take another look, because it’s really very good.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 
•