Italy Trip Videos - Part 1: Churches, Ancient Rome

I've edited some of the pictures from my trip to Italy this summer into video slideshows. This is the first batch, there will be more to come!

Churches

A quick tour of some of the many churches in Rome and Florence (not including the Vatican, which deserves its own video). The song is "There Is a Number of Small Things" by the Icelandic electronic group Múm.



Ancient Rome

Palatine Hill, the Roman Forum, and the Colosseum. Music from the Inglourious Basterds soundtrack ("The Green Leaves of Summer", "Rabbia e Tarantella").

Impressions from TIFF: City of Life and Death

Links: TIFF site, IMDB

When I think about this movie, two scenes stand out in my mind. In the first scene, the camera follows a Japanese soldier as he walks up a hill and looks down. The camera continues to move upward to show what the soldier sees on the field below: the bodies of Chinese POWs that the Japanese troops have just killed in a mass execution. The second stand-out scene shows a firing squad execution of a Chinese man, softly focused in the background, while a Japanese soldier's face is shown in the foreground. The composition of the frame is phenomenal.

Both scenes depict horrible events in a visually stylish way, which pretty much sums up the movie for me. The film is about the Nanking Massacre, an event that took place just before WWII. The Japanese Army invaded the city in China and committed many atrocities there. For a movie like this, it's hard to separate the heavy subject matter from the artistry of the filmmaking. I don't really want to tackle what the film is about. Many words have been written about the topic and I don't think I have anything to add to that discussion.

What I want to focus on is how the movie addresses the subject matter. First of all, the black and white cinematography is simply stunning. The set design is very realistic, and it really makes you feel like you're there.

So what does it feel like to be there? For the first third or half of the movie, I had a very uneasy feeling because I was anticipating what horrors were going to happen next. Being familiar with the history, I went into the movie expecting to see shocking images. Sure enough, it is very uncomfortable to watch, but actually not as graphic as I expected. The emotional impact comes more from the suggestion of what's going on rather than showing it, and in that way, it's very effective. For example, one scene shows a mass shooting of Chinese POWs, but only in brief glimpses. The film spends much more time showing the reactions of the other inhabitants of the city to the sound of guns they hear in the distance.

For the latter parts of the movie, my sense of uneasiness died down and was replaced by numbness. The movie is so unrelenting in portraying one unpleasant situation after another that after a while you just have to block it out and stop thinking about it. The performances of the characters in the movie seem to become increasingly hopeless and lifeless. Basically, the only thing I felt was lack of feeling, which is what I think the film is going for in depicting the stress and trauma of war.

This is one of those movies that's difficult to watch, but I would like to see it again. I feel like I should have deeper opinions about it, but as I said, all I felt was numb in the end. Maybe on a second viewing, I'll be more able to absorb it. All in all, it was a powerful experience.

4 out of 5

Impressions from TIFF: The Sunshine Boy

Links: TIFF site, IMDB

When I first looked at the schedule for TIFF (seems like so long ago), The Sunshine Boy was one of the first movies that caught my eye. I've always been interested by the subject of autism. I think it's because I like to learn about how different people experience the world in different ways. It's hard to imagine how someone with autism perceives their environment, which is exactly why I find it fascinating.

The film is a documentary which follows the mother (Margrét Dagmar Ericsdóttir) of an autistic boy, as she interviews experts and other parents of autistic children, while trying to find some way of improving her son Keli's life. The film does a good job of mixing educational material with more personal stories so that it doesn't devolve into information overload. It's shot beautifully, especially the scenes showing the family exploring various Icelandic landscapes. As an added bonus, the film uses songs by Sigur Rós as background music throughout; they're one of my favourite bands and I thought the music suited the movie well.

To me, the driving force of the film is Margrét's desire to get to know her son. Keli's autism is quite severe and he is non-verbal, so I believe that the family saw him, understandably, in terms of his disorder, rather than who he was as a person. As she meets other families who have been able to learn to communicate with their autistic kids, she starts to hope for the same thing with Keli, and this hope transfers to the viewer.

Margrét eventually chooses to explore a teaching and communication technique called Rapid Prompting Method (RPM). The method was developed by a woman named Soma Mukhopadhyay to communicate with her own autistic son, and involves the child spelling out words by pointing at a board with letters on it. (It's more complicated than that, but that is the ultimate goal that they work towards.)

This is where my feelings got a little ambiguous. I'm a skeptic at heart, and I began to doubt the authenticity of RPM and the letter board technique. In all the scenes where they showed the kids "speaking" with the letter board, Soma is holding the board. It almost seems as if she is moving the board as much as the kids are pointing to it. How much is Soma leading it or at least anticipating what the kids are going to say? Is she using the film to sell her method by making it look more effective than it really is?

My ambivalence and doubt reached its peak in one scene which could be considered the climax of the movie. We see Keli talking with Soma through the letter board while Margrét watches. The scene is either one of the most moving scenes I've seen in a while, or a somewhat exploitative fabrication, depending on whether I believe that RPM is what it claims to be.

I have been swinging back and forth between these two positions since I saw the film. When I was sitting, watching in the theatre, I had on my skeptical hat and was dismissive of the scene. However, when I got home and lay in bed trying to fall asleep, I thought back to it and changed my mind a little. There certainly is a lot of power in the words that Keli says, which, when coupled with the Sigur Rós song (Ára bátur) playing in the background, brought me close to tears just from thinking about it. (I won't reveal what he says because I think it needs to be experienced by watching the film.)

In the end, though, I don't believe that there's any black and white way of judging a teaching system or technique, and I'm sure that it works better for some people than others. My skepticism doesn't take away from what I think is the main message of the film: that autistic kids are capable of more than their condition would seem to allow on the surface, and that there is hope for reaching them through various techniques. Whether or not I fully buy into RPM in particular, the film is very informative and thought-provoking.

3.5 out of 5

Impressions from TIFF: The Warrior and the Wolf

Links: TIFF site, IMDB

This was a Chinese historical drama. The titular warrior hides out in a village during a break in the battle and meets a woman in the village and they develop a relationship. "The wolf" could metaphorically refer to any number of things and is open to interpretation, so I won't give anything away by discussing it.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this one. While I found the basic plot satisfying, and the visuals nice to look at (especially one special effects shot of a desert sandstorm), there were some issues with the film that prevented me from really getting into it. First, I had a problem with the introduction in the first 20 minutes or so. It attempts to give the background of the war and the warrior's involvement in said wair in a non-linear way. It jumps back and forth in time and I had a hard time following what the current storyline was. I don't have a problem with non-linear storytelling, but to use it to establish the foundation for the rest of the film didn't work, and it affected the experience for the remainder.

The other big problem I had was with the relationship between the warrior and the village woman. It reminded me of the flashback sequence in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (which was my least favourite part of that film). Boy meets girl, boy holds girl captive, boy rapes girl, girl inexplicably comes to love boy. Obviously within that culture and in that historical time period, gender roles were different, but I just couldn't believe in that relationship.

At the end of the film, there was a Q & A session with the director and main cast. Someone asked a question regarding how the two stars of the film (Maggie Q and Joe Odagiri) and the director (Tian Zhuang Zhuang), who all speak a different native language, dealt with the communication barrier on set. The gist of their answers was that it wasn't a barrier, and that the energy and the emotion of the film was understood by all, regardless of language. A nice sentiment, but unfortunately, I don't think this energy translated to the screen. In the end, I think the movie felt like a series of well-done scenes, but didn't come together into a coherent whole.

2.5 out of 5

Impressions from TIFF: The Disappearance of Alice Creed

Links: TIFF site, IMDB

Two men kidnap a girl. That's pretty much all I can say about the plot without giving away the various twists. What I found interesting about this film was that the three main characters are the only people in the whole movie. Also, almost the entire story takes place within 2 rooms
in an apartment, and everything develops from the dialogue and interaction between the characters and the performances, which were great. In that sense, it's kind of like a play. On the other hand, it's shot with some stylish cinematography, which gives it sufficient "movie-ness" that you might not even notice how small the scope is. (Some people in the audience actually chuckled when the credits rolled and they realized that there were only 3 people in it.)

Excellent acting, great script, great style, and some very cool and unexpected twists. My favourite of the festival so far.

4 out of 5

Impressions from TIFF: Harry Brown

Links: TIFF site, IMDB

Michael Caine plays Harry Brown, a retired widower living in a bad neighbourhood overrun by drug gangs. And then his friend gets hurt. And then he starts killing gang members. And then the cops get involved. That's what I felt like when I was watching this movie... it was just a sequence of plot events. I never got a sense of the characters' motivations and justifications for their actions. The characters were only there to move the plot along, and I didn't care about them at all.

For example, there's one scene where the police detective (played by Emily Mortimer) suddenly goes from being confused about the situation to being completely convinced that she's solved the case, all based on what I think was a very vague piece of evidence. Up to that point, she was portrayed as a fair and thoughtful detective, but then abruptly jumps to a conclusion, only because that's what was needed for the movie to set up its climax.

Overall, it was a disappointment. That being said, there are some moments of suspense that did work well, e.g., the scene where Harry goes to buy a gun from some nasty people. And Michael Caine delivers my favourite one-liner from the festival so far. After a shootout with a bad guy, he stands victoriously over his injured opponent and says: "You failed to maintain your weapon, son." Brilliant.

2 out of 5

Impressions from TIFF: The Most Dangerous Man in America

Links: TIFF site, IMDB

I attended a press & industry screening of this documentary. (My volunteer reward vouchers give access to these insider screenings that are not available to the public--a very nice perk. As an aside, P&I screenings are a completely different experience compared to public screenings. Everybody is there to work, not necessarily to "enjoy" the film, so it's totally lacking in energy. For example, Suck was also a press screening, and I heard maybe two people laughing. I'm
sure that there would have been a much bigger reaction at a public show.)

The film is about Daniel Ellsberg, a government official who, during the Vietnam War, leaked some top secret Pentagon documents (the "Pentagon Papers") that proved that the war was based on government lies. Americans probably know the history of the event, but ignorant Canadian that I am, I was not familiar with it. So on one level, I enjoyed the movie as a history lesson. But what really drove the film for me was Ellsberg's personality. (He narrates the film and is seen throughout in the typical talking head interviews.) When he speaks, you can tell that
he's absolutely committed to doing the right thing. More than that, he followed his words with actions--actions that put his own freedom at risk. I have great respect for this, and I think that he is a true hero.

On the negative side, I thought they overdid the portrayal of Nixon as a bad, bad man. The repeated use of sound clips of Nixon saying vulgar and awful things almost came off as unintentionally funny because it was so on the nose. (E.g. someone in an interview would say something like, "Surely, the government would not do XYZ." Then it would cut to a tape of Nixon saying "By God, we better goddamn do XYZ to those sons of bitches.") I would have preferred a little more subtlety. Minor criticisms aside, this was a very fascinating doc.

3.5 out of 5

Impressions from TIFF: Suck

Links: TIFF site, IMDB

I didn't watch this with 100% attentiveness because I was working as an usher/anti-piracy cop for the screening. (It really sucks watching a movie standing up and facing sideways.) But I did get enough of it to form an opinion. The movie is a comedy about a rock band where one of the members becomes a vampire.

I liked some parts, and I would have been laughing out loud had I not been wearing my professional volunteer mask. There is a scene--a flashback sequence involving Malcolm McDowell's character, which incorporates footage of a young McDowell from some old movie--that was really well done. Ultimately though, the jokes were hit and miss, because it was kind of cheesy, goofy humour which doesn't always work for me. But I can see this becoming a "cult favourite" type of film with a good fanbase. Oh, and it's Canadian.

2.5 out of 5

Impressions from TIFF

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to work as a volunteer for the Toronto International Film Festival. I'm going to be posting some impressions of the films that I've seen so far, with more to come.