After 6 festivals, you'd think I'd at least start to get the hang of doing this. Juggling working with volunteering with seeing films. And yeah, I think I actually am getting better at this. But when I realized that I had scheduled something downtown for 11 days straight, I started to doubt it.
Not being able to even begin writing about the experience until a full week after the fact is a pretty good indication that I needed some serious recovery time.
I Know How To Pick 'Em
I went through the usual motions to pick the films I wanted to see, but I chose not to focus as much on the buzz before I picked them, and then looked around to see if there was any buzz about them after I had settled on my picks. And, surprisingly, I picked some pretty good ones based only on either the synopsis or nothing at all. Here's a brief run-down:
The Past: A real look at messed up relationships. I hadn't seen A Separation but this is dubbed as the unofficial sequel. A guy returns to Paris from Tehran to finalize his divorce. In the process he gets sucked into the issues of her life, including meeting the guy she's going to marry (who's still married to a comatose woman), and dealing with her teenage daughter from a previous relationship.
Empire of Dirt: When the Toronto Star does an entire behind-the-scenes piece on a film, there must be something interesting going on. Three generations of First Nations women dealing with their past and trying to break the cycle. A woman, who was a teen mom and a drug addict, travels with her daughter from Toronto to Northern Ontario to see her mother, who was also a teen mom and a compulsive gambler.
The Last of Robin Hood: I knew nothing about Errol Flynn going into this. But he led an interesting life. The film focuses on the last two years when he had an intimate relationship with an underaged girl, which was encouraged by the girl's mother living vicariously through her daughter's career. Even though I went to the morning screening the day after the premiere, the stars and directors were there. Susan Sarandon made a point that the studios used to own the actors, and they would do anything and everything to protect them. All of the scandals - sex, drugs, even murder - were all covered up.
Philomena: Lots of good buzz for this one (it was first runner up for the People's Choice Award). I didn't even know it was based on a true story. A teenage girl in Ireland becomes pregnant out of wedlock in the 1950s. Her family disowns her and dumps her in a convent where unwed girls give birth. The girls can only leave if they pay the nuns £100 or work for 3 years. In the meantime, the nuns can freely adopt the children away with no say from the mothers. 50 years later, the woman decides to look for her son with the help of a reporter. The film is both heart-wrenching and hilarious at the same time.
The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby-Him & Her: So excited for this one, and the most inventive film I've seen in a while. The story of a relationship is told twice - from his and her perspectives - in two full-length films played back to back. They can also be played in either order. The most intriguing thing is that although there are similar scenes in both versions, there are actual differences (they say different things, he's wearing a different shirt, the furniture is in different places) showing how each person can remember the same event or conversation differently based on their point of view. An experimental, work-in-progress film that will hopefully be shown in theatres.
Blind Detective: My Chinese film for this year. Andy Lau plays a detective who went blind but is still solving cold cases. He recruits a young female cop who helps him by reenacting the crime scenes with him so he can envision the crime in his mind. Some typical Chinese slapstick mixed in with some serious scenes and a mystery.
Beyond the Edge: This was a fantastic documentary that used 3D effectively. It recreated Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay's historic climb of Mount Everest. Old footage and audio interviews were mixed in with reenactments by actors. The impressive part was that some of the film crew actually climbed to the summit of Everest to get the footage. This was the second runner up for the People's Choice Documentary.
Role Reversal
This happened 3 days into the festival, which will now be my story of TIFF 2013. I was working a volunteer shift at Ryerson. A group of us were waiting to be the "link-up", which is the human chain that holds the people back while the actors go from the back door to the waiting cars. The film was still playing and they hadn't started the Q&A yet. A guy comes out and asks where the bathroom is, so we point down the hall. A little while later, everyone becomes really quiet. I look over and standing next to us in the hall was Kate Winslet, who was fiddling with her cell phone with her assistant. We all do the "stare-but-don't-stare" routine, and the next thing we know, Kate steps back and says "Ready?" Then takes a photo of us with her phone. Then she pads off to the bathroom, literally barefoot and pregnant (I don't know how she was able to wear those 4-inch stilettos in the first place). The girl next to me, who's a newbie, was so excited, saying "I used the same bathroom as Kate Winslet!!" That will be her story for the rest of her life. As for me, I spent the weekend looking around the internet to see if she had an Instagram account.
A little while later, we did the link-up. Kate came out first and blew past us, which was fine. Josh Brolin came out and signed a couple of autographs. Then James Van Der Beek came out, looking exactly the same as he did however many years ago when he was Dawson. That was creepy. Caucasian guys aren't supposed to do that, it's an Asian thing.
Non-Stop
My mind and body gave up on day 11. I was going to try and see a couple more films but just couldn't do it. There were a few other times during the festival that I had to go to Plan B, and I missed some films like Only Lovers Left Alive, The Lunchbox and The F Word. I'll have to catch them later, I guess.
Then, my life kept right on going. I did a fly-in-fly-out to Montreal, which was a new and strange experience. I'd never just gotten on a plane with my purse before. It was like taking the bus, only with more security. Tomorrow I'm flying to Las Vegas for a packaging equipment expo. I know, it's going to be so hard. I'll have to try my best to have some fun.
"Old, but I'm not so old, young, but I'm not so bold"
