‘Slavery’s Schindler’s list’ is remarkable highlight of Toronto film fest
’12 Years A Slave’ is most talked-about feature, Gyllenhaal shows talent, Eisenberg doubles up, ‘When Jews Were Funny’ fails to tickle
TORONTO — The Toronto International Film Festival is hosting a reported 288 features this year. With so much to choose from, each attendee ends up having their own private programming slate. As you line up outside the theater for your 8:30 am first showing (after hobbling home from the previous evening’s midnight screening), the cross-chatter is of narratives and documentaries from all corners of the globe.
My own journey mixed big Hollywood premieres, oddball curiosities you’ll never hear about again and many future Oscar contenders. And as it has been since the dawn of motion pictures, Jewish people were on and behind the scenes. Here are some of the more notable examples.
“Prisoners” stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a police detective trying to find two missing children in a gray, rainy Pennsylvania town. I know… you’re thinking Gyllenhaal has a bit too much of a shayna punim to be believable as rough-hewn cop, but the kid’s got some talent. The movie ultimately devolves into standard thriller cliches, but for a while this film from French Canadian director Denis Villeneuve (whose previous work includes the Middle East-set “Incendies”) is a remarkable look at how people psychologically cope when faced with their worst fears.
Among the more gorgeous films at the festival was “Ida,” a Polish language picture from director Pawel Pawlikowski. Set in the early 1960s (and shot in shimmering black and white) “Ida” is a quiet and artfully designed look at identity.
Weeks before turning 18, Ida, a young woman who spent her whole life in a convent learns something about herself — she’s actually Jewish. Her parents and brother were murdered during the war (not by Germans, but by the people that had been hiding them) and she and her aunt (whom she never knew she had) go on a quest to find where they are buried. In addition to being a fascinating character study, it is a remarkable look at socialist Poland in its reconstruction years.
“The Dallas Buyers Club” is a heartbreaking and inspiring story about a man who turned his life around just as it was ending. Based on a true story, Matthew McConaughey’s character is stricken with HIV in the 1980s and uses his cunning to get his hands on experimental, unapproved drugs (and spread them to other people who need them.) I only mention it because there are not one but TWO references to the radical advances being made at Israeli pharmaceutical companies. Indeed, there’s a shot of Texan McConaughey in his cowboy hat overlooking the Old City during an invigorating musical montage.
Jesse Eisenberg appeared in two movies at TIFF. Well, actually, he appeared three times. Two of those times was in “The Double,” a whimsical and highly stylized adaptation of the Dostoyevsky novella, in which a meek, pencil-pushing worker comes up against his much more successful doppelganger. He also appears in “Night Moves,” a slow and meditative look at eco-terrorists (or activists, I guess it depends on your point of view) living in the Pacific Northwest.
Then there’s “Under the Skin,” an envelope-pushing film starring Scarlett Johansson as an interplanetary siren, using her fabulous looks to lure men to their bizarre deaths.
Filmed surreptitiously (the men didn’t know they were acting in a movie until later) Jewish-American Johansson roves around Scotland in a van and vintage shop leopard print jacket, looking for victims. If the movie’s premise sounds weird, its delivery is more so — with long stretches of no dialogue, odd sound design and psychedelic special effects that have open ended interpretations.
All of the above are worth your time, but there were also some duds.
“When Jews Were Funny” wanted to be an inquiry into what makes the Chosen people such cut ups. While some of the anecdotes are amusing, the movie fails to make any new or insightful points (or even land too many top level talking heads.) A recent, similar documentary “Where Comedy Went To School” is a far more successful work on a similar topic.
Also disappointing is “Fading Gigolo,” a love story pastiche of New York City ethnic groups. Written and directed by John Turturro, he gives a plum supporting role to Woody Allen, who has a couple of decent zingers as he masterminds Turturro’s new career as a sex worker. Vanessa Paradis does her best as a Brooklyn ultra-Orthodox woman who threatens to stray from her community.
The most talked about film of the fest by far, however, was “12 Years A Slave,” which I overheard being referred to as “slavery’s Schindler’s List” on more than one occasion. This remarkable film — emotional, yet artful — does us the favor of leaving the Jews out of it. While there were certainly Jews who owned slaves in the American South, this minority is not represented in this movie. To which I say “dayenu.”
