a&e | film/movies
Film Feature
The Big Picture
Reconnaissance Mission
Report from the Telluride and Toronto Film Fests
by Roger Durling
This year, I had the opportunity to attend both the Telluride and Toronto film festivals—two different approaches and two very different experiences. Hollywood uses these two festivals to launch its serious films and possible Academy Award contenders. Toronto is very glitzy—a North American answer to Cannes—and some of its programming choices are questionable, but it is still a wondrous experience for the film aficionado. Comparatively, the approach at Telluride—which was held September 3-5—is a little more discreet and totally geared toward the film-lover.
Like the film Brigadoon, about the magical town that appears only once a year, the Telluride Film Festival takes over the small Rocky Mountain town during Labor Day weekend. The main street is something out of an old western film. One of the fantastic things about this festival is that its slate of films is kept secret until you arrive. The experience is very democratic—in order to get in you have to queue up, sometimes a few hours in advance. I love this part because I get to overhear comments about what’s good or bad. Having attended this festival for 21 years, I’ve made some very good friends while waiting in these lines. It seems that at any given time, Leonard Maltin could be standing next to you chatting with Peter Bogdanovich about the latest Martin Scorsese documentary on Bob Dylan. The atmosphere is laid-back, but the conversations are passionately about film. The weather is always perfect cinema weather: rainy and cold.
In my opinion, the Telluride Film Festival is the best fest in the U.S. Its programming is eclectic and always curated with the filmgoer in mind. From classics to films that deserve to be revisited to great independent cinema, Telluride has something for everyone. And the 32nd edition did not dissapoint.
Standouts included Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, with Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, which made it hard to think of a better film this year. It shatters every cliché about cowboy movies. That it is a cowboy love story between two men makes it the most controversial film of the year, and the most heartbreaking.
Ledger’s performance is one for the history books.
Capote, starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, is a phenomenal portrayal of the great author and his struggle to write his masterpiece, In Cold Blood. Michael Haneke’s Caché (Hidden), which already took Best Director honors at Cannes, is the most challenging and rewarding entry yet from the auteur of The Piano Player and Code Unknown. Liev Schreiber’s Everything Is Illuminated is delightful also, but not in the same category as the former three films mentioned because he unfortunately sacrifices depth for whimsy.
ON TO CANADA
It’s difficult to transition from Telluride Film Festival to Toronto, which occurred the following week. Toronto is a big city and unlike Telluride, the venues are not concentrated in a small radius, but spread out. There is not a sense of film community like the one you feel in that Colorado town. That aside, Toronto’s festival has a plethora of movies, and once you learn to navigate the schedule, it’s a terrific place for a film-lover.
I saw some exceptional movies and some disasters. One of the more exhilarating films I viewed, Banlieue 13—a French movie co-written and produced by Luc Besson—is one of the best action films I’ve seen in a long time. It’s refreshing and taut. I followed that fun experience by seeing a brand-new film from Brazil called Casa de Areia (The House of Sand), starring Academy Award nominee and Brazilian grand dame, Fernanda Montenegro; it was visually stunning and worth the journey. My good luck continued with an unexpected treat from China titled Sunflower, starring Joan Chen. It is the story of a young Chinese boy and his family, from 1976 to the present. It’s a long one, but it grows on you, like a well-written novel. Since there’s a big French population in Canada, the Toronto fest features an extensive section dedicated to French films. There were several standouts, and if luck will have it, we will be seeing them in February in Santa Barbara, especially a film directed by Anne Fontaine called Entre ses mains, about a woman’s fascination with a serial killer.
The two biggest disappointments were Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown and Steve Martin’s Shopgirl. Both felt derivative and stale and I noticed several major critics walking out of both.
A visit to the Toronto Film Festival wouldn’t have been complete without a visit to a VIP party. I was invited to New Line’s party for A History of Violence, and it was quite overwhelming since I didn’t know anybody. Was that Viggo Mortensen, the star of the film, who just walked by? I spotted S.B. International Film Festival boardmember Neil Koneigsberg and he introduced me to his client, the great American actor, Ed Harris. Harris leaned forward and said he’d heard the Santa Barbara Film Festival had greatly improved. “Hopefully you will invite me to go there sometime,” he added. I smiled.
Even actors like Harris have heard that we in Santa Barbara have come a long way, but biases aside, I have to say that Telluride certainly sets a pretty high standard.