Well it took much longer than I could’ve hoped for, but it finally happened: I had a bad day at the film festival. Today was the first time I didn’t genuinely enjoy any of the movies I saw and in fact, the best one only got a mere two and a half star rating. However, I consider myself lucky to have made it eight days straight with at least one very good film on my daily schedule, before finally being beaten down by a barrage of boredom. Terry George’s Reservation Road is at best mildly emotional and at worst, easily forgettable. Next up was Todd Haynes’s Dylanopic vision I’m Not There. To be honest I feel inadequate discussing this film because I’m not a Dylan fan, but we’ll get to that later. Closing out the afternoon was an Australian film called Romulus, My Father, which was so utterly depressing that I contemplated slitting my wrists on the train ride home. In the end I was too tired to go through with it, so I figured I’d trudge on with CB’s continuing coverage of TIFF!
Reservation Road
Reservation Road is described in the TIFF program as “part tear jerker, part vigilante film that will probe your inner conscience, asking what you might do if faced with impossible moral choices.” Calling the decision between hitting a child and running versus staying an impossible decision is a pretty big stretch. The same goes for describing it as a tear-jerking vigilante film. Just because a guy buys a gun when he is angry does not make him a vigilante. The whole thing is a long reach for something that just isn’t there. For instance, Mark Ruffalo’s Dwight Arno is portrayed as the nicest guy in the world. He’s a great father, a die hard baseball fan (which is a good thing, even though he likes the Bosox) and definitely not the type of guy to drive away after accidentally slamming into a little child. If the movie can’t convince me that the characters and situations on the screen are real, then it certainly isn’t going to have me wracking my brain to figure out how I would act in their respective positions.
Ruffalo and Phoenix do an exceptional job with the material they’re given, but despite their talents I still wasn’t buying the story. Phoenix’s Ethan can barely grip the gun when he buys it, much less point it at the whimpering Dwight; I mean come on, when there is literally no chance of something happening, why even go there? Rather than presenting rational characters in an all-too real crisis, Reservation Road depends on two men who cry excessively, all the while attempting to emotionally manipulate us into believing that the end is in doubt. It never is, and as a result the film is a forgettable experience with two solid performances, in spite of the implausibility.
2.5/5 Stars
I’m Not There
As I mentioned, I am not a Bob Dylan fan and I know very little about the man, so be sure to take my thoughts on I’m Not There with a grain of salt. Actually check that, if you’re in the same boat as me in terms of familiarity with Dylan, I see absolutely no chance of you enjoying this film. I’m not saying that it’s a bad movie, it’s just that I hated it because I had no idea what was going on. I suppose I should have expected this, especially considering there were six different actors cast to play Dylan in the varying stages of his life, but for some reason I thought it would be more like Walk the Line. I knew next to nothing about Johnny Cash before I saw Phoenix’s film, but it was much more focused and straightforward so I had no trouble piecing his life together.
Haynes has Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger and Ben Whishaw each contribute their own Dylans, but Cate Blanchett absolutely steals the show. She is totally mesmerizing and if she nailed Dylan as well as I think she did, she’ll definitely be adding another Oscar to the mantle come next year. I guess the best advice I can give is if you aren’t a fan, skip this one or do some research before you go; and if you are a fan, check it out yourself and let us know! Due to my lack of Dylan lore, I will not rate this film because it feels unfair to do so.
Romulus, My Father
Romulus, My Father is a horrendous movie to have to watch at the end of a long day, so my dislike may stem from that. However, the sad and depressing tones of the film offer little room for enjoyment and no opportunity for sympathy. The melancholic mood only gets thicker and thicker as the film presses on, assaulting all the happiness left in each of the characters until it becomes a suicidal guessing game; who will do it and how? I understand that adapting as an immigrant isn’t easy, but I fail to see how it forces a mother away from a husband and child she loves, and a father to accept the disgrace of her infidelity. Instead of including random moments of happiness to lighten the mood amidst all the gloom, we only get strangely inexplicable scenes that serve no purpose other than to further darken the atmosphere. One of these consists of the live burial of a coup of sick chickens, and when it’s over there is no explanation – only tears of anguish from a young boy who can feel the world crumbling around him. I wanted to like the film more than I did because Eric Bana gives a great performance as Romulus, but I still didn’t enjoy watching it and I think I liked him better in the Hulk (I can’t believe I just said that). Walking out of the theatre I had the distinct feeling that I could’ve done without Romulus My Father, and I don’t often feel that way.
2/5 Stars
