Reviews, part I

Les Revenants – 8 out of 10
Our first movie last night was Les Revenants, a French film that – quite frankly – renewed my faith in French films. It certainly wasn’t a new concept: the dead come back to life. But they weren’t zombies, they weren’t trying to kill anyone…they just came back. Not all of them, just those who’ev died in the past ten years or so. They get jobs, they go back to their families, government agencies are created to deal with them, the red cross has to shelter and feed them like refugees at first. Slowly the “regular” people see that there are slight differences about them: their body temperatures are about 5 degrees colder than usual, they move slowly, their eyes are always vaguely distant, they lack the capacity for complex thought, etc.

It was a terrific concept done remarkably well and it raised several questions. Why did the dead come back? What caused the slight physical differences? Are they aware that they were once dead? Why do they mass together at night? Are they here for a reason? Why did some back and not others? What’s to be done with them? Of course, the living families have to struggle with these questions, and also deal with guilt and loss and confusion, some for the first time, some reliving it.

After disasters like Adolphe and anything Catherine Breillat gets her hands on, this film gives me hope for French films at the TIFF again.

Creep – 7 out of 10
Hoo boy. So, anyone who’s been to a Midnight Madness showing before knows the movies are usually a combination of scary, disgusting, disturbing, freaky, demented, surreal and hilarious. Man, did Creep ever fit the bill nicely. Basically the plot is this: Franka Potente falls asleep in a London tube station and the last train leaves, leaving her trapped inside ’til morning. Someone — or something — starts chasing her, doing nasty things, basically threatening to kill her in utterly horrible ways. She flees into the subway tunnels (of which London has many), causing her to be alone in the dark an awful lot.

Now, were you to watch this movie at home, on your TV, in daylight it would seem a pretty generic movie. But the combination of occasional pitch-blackness with bloodcurdling screams and the usual tension-building devices caused a great big freakout in the crowd, who were mostly college students fuelled by ridiculous amounts of caffeine. Lots of shrieking at key moments, and the tension in the room was unmistakable. In fact, my wife said that about 30 minutes into the movie she wanted to leave, because she’d been wound tight since in the first scene and didn’t know if she’d get through it all. But she did, and we were glad. For a dopie-ass scary movie, it was pretty goddamn good. I only wonder if I’d think the same thing if I’d seen it in less charged setting.

Undertow – 6 out of 10
Undertow was a classic first-half-good-second-half-not movie. The performances were excellent — particularly Jamie Bell — and the story had potential, but it just drifted in the second half. I’m a fan of dramas that build tension with character, in tight confined spaces; when they hit the open road I tend to lose interest somewhat, and I think the audience did too. The story, the photography, the characters…all good. It just sideways around the halfway mark.

Still, I don’t want to diminish how good Jamie Bell was. The movie is worth seeing on its own merits; it’s even more worth it when you factor in how good Bell was.

The Merchant Of Venice – 8 out of 10
It can’t be easy to make a film where the titular character disappears for long stretches, where the actor and most famous character disappears almost as often and as long, the reputation of anti-semitism follows it around like a cloud, and the star has a reputation for failed attempts at bringing Shakespeare to the masses.

However, they pulled it off. And then some. Taken on its own the movie was a successful adaptation of the play to an entertaining film. But when you overlay it with current world politics — and how could you not? — it accomplishes much more. Vengeance, persecution, retribution, justice, mercy — voluntary and forced…all pushed my mind to the middle east more than a few times.

Truth be told I could happily remove a good portion of the film, everything but Shylock’s “prick us…do we not bleed?” speech and the court scene, and still have thought it both relevant and true to the original work, but the filmmakers can hardly be blamed for that. The implications of the pound of flesh, the scales and the doctor’s justice will flash through my mind every time I watch news coverage from Jerusalem or the Gaza Strip.

Hotel Rwanda – 9 out of 10
I should mention, before I really get started, that I only gave this movie 9/10 instead of a perfect 10 because I’m sure the events leading up to and immediately following the film influenced my enjoyment of it.

It was the world premiere of Hotel Rwanda, the film described as Schindler’s List set in Rwanda. Accurate enough, in that it involves man of some minor power and influence helping protect people from a massive attempt at genocide, but different in that it makes clear the additional agony of frustration at the lack of help from the rest of the world. True, some people – specifically German civilians – were aware of the slaughter of the Jews and did little, but the entire world was aware of the Hutu atrocities and almost nothing was done.

The face of that frustration was Nick Nolte, here playing a Canadian Colonel named Oliver but almost certainly based on Romeo Dallaire. His character had to try to protect an entire nation with a few hundred peacekeepers, none of whom were really allowed to fire their weapons. He also brought word of the west’s disregard for the Rwandan plight (and for Africans in general), as well as the bureaucratic delays and political indecision that prevented help from coming.

But the real star of the movie was Don Cheadle. As Paul Rusesabagina, a hotel manager compelled to act as caregiver to hundreds of Tutsis (including his own family), he completely engrossed us in the character, and showed the soul of a reasonable person surrounded by insanity, struggling with the balance between professional and personal, detached and emotional. It was a tiny story in an enormous saga of needless death, but ultimately an inestimable act of kindness by a few people, and one man in particular.

As soon as the credits rolled the lights went up on one of the balconies. In that balcony, along with the actors who played them, were Paul Rusesabagina and his wife Tatiana. The crowd stood and applauded them for several minutes, as the actors and director stood back in the shadows, to let this audience spend a few moments alone with a hero. After seeing the man’s story on the screen…to now see the man himself nearly caused me to weep. For the first time in 17 years (when my pet kitten died of an infection), my lips trembled and my throat closed up. I’m just thankful that the lights didn’t come up for a few minutes while I regained my composure (even as I write this, I choke up when I think about him standing there). As left the theatre I saw grown men wipe tears from their cheeks, saw husbands comforting wives as they cried, and took deep breaths as I tried to hold it together. It was, without a doubt, one of the most profound and moving moments of my life.

On another note, adopted native son Michael Moore strolled into the Elgin theatre just before the screening started. We stood to give him a standing ovation as he walked down the aisle; as I was occupying an aisle seat he was only a few feet from me. After he walked by myself I regretted not shaking his hand, but oh well. It was cool that he was there. I’d like to think that he was as moved by it as I was.