What we’re most excited about at TIFF

A red carpet at TIFF

TIFF is happening.

It’s the first time I’ve covered a film festival outside of Montreal, and the first time I’ve had to deal with an event of this sheer magnitude — the Toronto International Film Festival  screens more movies than Fantasia in less than half the time. I’ve therefore already had to contend with the disappointment of missing out on some huge films, like Bennett Miller’s Foxcatcher, Jon Stewart’s Rosewater, the Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy, Jean-Luc Godard’s supposedly groundbreaking Goodbye to Language 3D, Abel Ferrara’s Pasolini and Edward Zwick’s Montreal-shot Bobby Fischer biopic Pawn Sacrifice. This is but a handful of films that I won’t be able to see for various reasons.

As for what I will be seeing, I’m most excited for Dan Gilroy’s Nightcrawler starring Jake Gyllenhaal, a bonkers-looking thriller about the underground crime-scene photography scene (?!) and for David Gordon Green’s new film Manglehorn, starring Al Pacino in an increasingly rare dramatic performance. Pacino’s also appearing in Barry Levinson’s The Humbling alongside Greta Gerwig, but given the fact that Levinson’s been spotty these days and that it’s based on a Philip Roth novel that was pretty poorly received, I’m putting that in the “It’d be nice if this didn’t suck” pile alongside Kevin Smith’s dubious new horror film Tusk and the frankly unpromising Men, Women & Children, Jason Reitman’s film about sex in the age of the Internet starring Adam Sandler.

I’ve already seen a few TIFF films at preview screenings. Here’s your proto-official pre-TIFF preview:

 

Leviathan

 

Russian director Andrey Zyvagintsev has been compared to Tarkovsky, but even the idea of the Russian master’s work can’t prepare you for how precisely and epically heavy his new film Leviathan is. Based loosely on the Book of Job, it’s the story of a struggling mechanic who sees his property taken from under him by a greedy mayor who wants to build something ‘for the community’ in order to atone for his own sins. Slow-moving but beautiful, Leviathan is a satire that contains no laughs but only the bleakest truths. It sometimes verges on the near-parodic in its sheer misery, but it never becomes self-conciously miserabilist or manipulative.

 

Wild

 

Jean-Marc Vallée follows up the acclaimed Dallas Buyers Club with another sun-bleached drama  about overcoming impossible odds. Reese Witherspoon stars as Cheryl Strays, a former drug addict who decides to walk the entirety of the Pacific Coast Trail after the untimely death of her mother and the end of her marriage. Witherspoon does some of the best work of her entire career as the emotionally-bruised Strays, and Vallée constructs the film using more abstraction and experimentation than you’d expect for this kind of self-actualization drama, but the film sometimes falls victim to its worst instincts in appealing to the Oprah crowd. The ending is so full of feel-good mirth, it’s a wonder it didn’t include footage of Oprah herself yelling, “And YOU’RE getting a new lease on life ! And YOU’RE getting a new lease on life ! YOU’RE ALL GETTING NEW LEASES ON LIFE !” Thankfully the talents of Witherspoon, Vallée and his team elevate this past the level of basic Oscar bait.

 

Deux jours, une nuit

 

The two biggest differences between this film and the Dardenne brothers’ regular output are that they’re working with an A-list movie star in Marion Cotillard and this is their first film not to win any prize at Cannes. Otherwise they deliver another grounded, highly affecting drama about the everyday trials of regular people. Cotillard plays a factory worker who learns that her job has been terminated in order to pay out her coworkers’ bonuses. In order to save her job, she decides to visit all sixteen of her coworkers in order to get them to consent to a new vote. Cotillard is a powerhouse in the lead, infusing the movie (which has no music and minimal, hand-held camera work) with the intensity of common life. The Dardennes are uncommonly good at spinning drama out of common situations and Deux jours, une nuit is no different. ■

 
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