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Penultimate Days :
Festival of Tears
Francois Truffaut once likened making a movie to taking a trip by stagecoach, albeit one more likely to show up on screen than in any historical record. He said one sets out with high hopes and a sense of adventure and discovery. But as the days and weeks wear on, the dust and heat begin to take their toll. The vehicle becomes increasingly uncomfortable and the rest stops are marked by unpalatable meals. Add to that attacks by Indians and outlaws, flash floods, stampedes and other natural and man-made catastrophes and at some point all one wants to do is get to the final destination as quickly as possible.Film festivals follow the same trajectory and heading into the closing days of Toronto, one begins to resent all those folks that have already been and gone. It seems that all those little gems one was told about by friends and colleagues have had their last screening and aren't available at the video library. The upcoming selections on the fest program that has become increasingly front loaded and a junketeers nirvana, might aptly be termed the runt of the litter.
On Monday one could feel the machine grinding along with no mechanic to oil the parts. Those looking for a film acquisition or a worthy entry to herald in print were starting to abandon hope. One distributor confided that he was limiting his disappointment to three pictures a day. If that happened by 2 p.m., so be it. He would quit for the day.
Then came the revelation. Toronto was the festival of tears. The 2006 slate was informed by movies that weren't quite good enough artistically or commercially. There were, of course, exceptions but for anyone but the most compliant, it was tough sledding.
The gods obviously heard the cries emanating from this mortal coil and responded in sympathy by opening the heavens and weeping rain from the sky. The inclement weather was the all too appropriate coat to cloak the proceedings.
I was reminded that when festival director Piers Handling first became the event's chief programmer, more than a decade ago, one of the things he said in an interview in the Toronto Star was that Toronto would never program more than 130 features. Inflation aside, the current level of about 250 movies is well beyond the statistical margin of error.
Another bygone quote that came to mind was unrelated to the event. Swedish-Finnish filmmaker Jorn Donner once noted that there were never more than 100 good movies produced in a year. You do the math.
Without opening the financial records of the festival, there have to be some sound non-aesthetic reasons for a program of this size. This is a city that has always embraced its movie showcase and the breadth of what's on view will allow the canny to find some real gems such as Little Children, Le Colonel or East of Bucharest. The odds are considerably longer for someone whose work demands a diet of at least four films daily.
The dilemma of long lines and shut outs appeared to worsen this year. Virtually every professional I ran into had at least one horror story relating to not being able to get in. Personally, I just turned around and elected to see something else when confronted with hordes at a hot ticket movie. I caught up with one later; after the heat had dissipated.
So, we're at the point where just getting to the end can't come too soon. And with the passage of time - maybe as little as a few days - the possibility of selective optimism looms large.
And on a related note. The New York Times has decided it won't print reviews of selections playing at the upcoming New York Film Festival. Though the exact reasons behind the decision are a bit sketchy, it appears the publications was persuaded by a film industry emissary that the potential blot on a movie was neither good for it or them.
Ironically, it took years to convince the Times that doing reviews of movies at the festival during the festival was a boon to the films and filmmakers. Now its review staff will do something tentatively called portfolios that sound like backgrounders to the event's selections and might interject a degree of criticism.