By Leonard Klady Klady@moviecitynews.com
TIFF12: Confessions Of A Film Fest Junkie
The Festival of Festivals looms.
For the uninitiated, the Toronto International Film Festival began some three decades-plus ago as the aforementioned F of F. The aspiration of this fledgling event was to cull great films from Cannes, Berlin and the like and put on a show for the local gentry and cinephiles.
It kinda worked out… or worked too well. Toronto still provides the North American premieres from those vaunted showcases but additionally world premieres as many films or more than any of the select handful of bastions to the seventh art.
I haven’t counted but there will likely be some 300-plus features from every corner of the globe on view at this Olympian extravaganza. These films will also run the gamut of contemporary movie art from A to Z… Well, maybe just A to R. Regardless, even as storied a stop as Toronto cannot program 300 great movies unless it includes vault restorations and revivals as well.
Barring floods and fires I’ll likely see about 40 films during my stay in Toronto. My game plan for the past decade has largely been no game plan; more instinct than premeditation.
Film festivals—especially one as large as this one in Ontario—are an experience not unlike going shopping at a supermarket. I challenge anyone to select a breakfast cereal from those on the shelf based on logic, content or visual design. It’s arguably easier (though I can’t vouch for the results) to select one of any eight films playing simultaneously during the Toronto festival.
I’ve noticed an additional hurdle this year. While hardly novel for a film to be represented by a publicity agency, it now appears to be the exception when a production arrives on the scene without a phalanx of press and industry reps. The selections seem more massaged and more readily consumable. Any prospect of stumbling onto a hitherto unrecognized gem has virtually been removed from the equation.
But enough of this carping.
The Toronto 2012 program is chock-a-block with the films one anticipates will figure on the top tier of critical respect. Some have already debuted at Cannes, won festival prizes, been embraced by first string reviewers or divided the house.
While hardly the ultimate bellwether, historically the films that fail to find critical consensus or more precisely elicit reaction on the extremes are invariably the most rewardin—regardless of which side of the fence one ultimately finds a perch. Just about anything from Terrence Malick is going to divide the room and that’s already occurred with his latest To the Wonder, which debuted days ago in Venice.
However, I’ve been trying desperately to rid myself of the auteur bias that was so utterly etched in my consciousness back in the 1970s. I’m not sure of the lesson learned when a good filmmaker loses his or her way; other than perhaps that no one bothered to notice that the “king” had no clothes.
Wish me luck and good viewing… you know I mean it back.
