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Borat Rules! But fest shows its serious side, too
Borat gives Mary a big hug.
Mary Nersessian, CTV.ca News
Updated: Fri. Sep. 15 2006 5:18 PM ET
Films of political intrigue, international conspiracies, and terror
plots dominated the Toronto International Film Festival lineup this
year. But the highlight of the nine-day run reared his head — for me,
at least — on opening night.
Barely concealing my unabashed glee, I watched as intrepid Kazakhstani
journalist Borat strode into town to the oom-pah-pah beats of an
Eastern European brass band.
Despite a projector breakdown at its first screening, Borat’s antics
on the red carpet stole the show and set the scene for the Toronto
International Film Festival’s opening night.
In the awkwardly titled Borat: Cultural Learnings Of America For Make
Benefit Glorious Nation Of Kazakhstan, the mustachioed fictional
television reporter makes his journey across "the U.S. and A." as a
fearless anti-Semitic Kazakh reporter.
On a professional level, I was thrilled to snag Borat’s attention on
the red carpet to give colour to my article.
But on a personal level, I was even more ecstatic that one of my comic
heroes had deigned not only to talk to me, but to pose for a photo
with me the very next day.
Fast forward a few days — midway through the course of its nine-day
run — the September sun returned to its hiding place as the tone of
the festival turned somewhat more sombre.
The flap over whether Angelina Jolie would show up and whether
Jennifer Lopez would reveal she was pregnant seemed to die down as the
festival began to show its true colours.
Festival shows true colours
Instead, the glitter of the stars was overshadowed by serious films
about global politics, post 9/11 tensions, and terror plots.
Jennifer Lopez appears in the eTalk eLounge.
By this point, I had screened Patrice Leconte’s Mon Meilleur Ami; a
film about a Parisian antique dealer who is dumbfounded to realize he
has no friends; Leon Ichaso’s El Cantante, the Jennifer Lopez vehicle
that follows the tragic life of a salsa legend; interviewed Shortbus
director John Cameron Mitchell and deliberated on the finer points of
what defines a porn.
The festival wore its politics on it sleeve, with films chronicling
acts of defiance, presenting portraits of artists at odds with the
establishment, and launching no-holds-barred attacks on the Bush
administration:
The festival’s most controversial film was Gabriel Range’s Death of a
President, a documentary-style film chronicling the fictional
assassination of U.S. President George Bush.
Another scathing indictment was Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke: A
Requiem in Four Acts, in which the filmmaker targets the White House’s
inept response to Hurricane Katrina.
Meanwhile, Dixie Chicks: Shut Up and Sing traces the fallout for the
country music trio after singer Natalie Maines told a concert audience
in 2003 that the group was ashamed that Bush comes from Texas.
Michael Moore, the controversial Oscar-winning director of the
gun-control critique Bowling for Columbine and the Bush-bashing
Fahrenheit 9/11, was also at the festival to give audiences a taste
from two works-in-progress: Sicko, which takes aim at the
U.S. health-care system and The Great ’04 Slacker Uprising, which
traces his travels during the 2004 presidential election.
Paul Haggis appears in the eTalk eLounge on Saturday.
Canadian-born Paul Haggis, the Oscar-winning writer-director of Crash
who lives in the U.S., told The Canadian Press that the festival
"really opens its arms to all divergent points of view."
"In the States we’re marching one way with the government, with a lot
of us marching the other way," said Haggis, who suggested that the
anti-Bush films are indicative of an upsurge of discontent south of
the border.
"Film and television at its best, it’s just a hair ahead of what
people are thinking."
Arguably one of the most damning new films was The Prisoner or: How I
Planned to Kill Tony Blair, by Michael Tucker and Petra Epperlein,
which follows the couple’s successful 2004 documentary Gunner Palace
with a story of an Abu Ghraib detainee.
Coming full circle
A scene from ‘Voyage en Armenie’
By the time I watched my last screening, I had come full circle —
having travelled on both a cinematic journey and a personal one.
Beginning my journey with Borat taking pot shots at former Soviet
nation Kazakhstan, I ended it with a film about the current state of
another former Communist country.
Indeed, as a Canadian of Armenian origin, I had a vested interest in
director Robert Guédiguian’s Voyage en Armenie, a film that was
screened as part of the Masters program.
Having returned from my own first voyage to Armenia less than two
months ago, the film conjured memories from my childhood as well as my
recent trip.
The first scene showcased young Armenian dancers practicing to a folk
song at the local community centre in Marseilles, with a requisite
mural of Mount Ararat as the backdrop.
In the same hall sat wizened men playing backgammon, their brows
furrowed, their noses hooked — a scene that would not be out of order
in any Armenian diasporan community in Syria, Lebanon, Israel, France,
or Bulgaria.
Indeed, the scene could very well have been lifted out of my own
recollection of Armenian-language Saturday school recitals in suburban
Scarborough, where I once performed as part of a dance ensemble.
The film, Voyage en Armenie, tells the tale of a Marseille
cardiologist who has long been at odds with her father.
After she informs the stubborn patriarch that he must undergo an
operation to save his life, he disappears on a trip to Armenia — a
country he spent a mere three years in decades ago.
Despite her misgivings, Anna sets off in an ill-tempered pursuit to a
country she has no interest in, where she knows nobody, and does not
speak the language.
But through a series of fiery confrontations and uneasy relationships
with the country’s inhabitants, Armenia gradually breaks down Anna’s
resistance. And soon, she too is proclaiming her shared affinity for
her people.
By the time she made her way up the cobbled steps of an ancient church
overlooking Lake Sevan, following the same path I took a few short
weeks ago, my near-silent sniffles threatened to give way to full-out
sobs.
Angrily, Anna told her companion that she felt wonderful on the cliff
overlooking the lake, but so what of it?
A far cry from the giggles Borat evoked, the film touched a core deep
within me.
Upon exiting the theatre, I realized that a diasporan Armenian’s
struggle to pinpoint one’s identity is the same be it in Marseille or
Toronto.
"I feel as though I lived here long ago," Anna conceded in the film,
though she had presumably lived in France all her life. The same
sentiments have echoed within me, also.
Indeed, this is what a film festival does best — and where TIFF
succeeded — mirror our own trepidations, push us to tears, and
provoke us to reflect on our own walk-on role in the world.
As film critic Marjorie Rosen once wrote in the 1970s, "Does art
reflect life? In movies, yes. Because more than any other art form,
films have been a mirror held up to society’s porous face."
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