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By Robert Alstead
There is more than one reason why documentary has been historically spurned by movie theatres: "People want escapism, not reality," "It's not commercially viable," "The image quality is bad" and so on. Yet last month, the 21st Vancouver International Film Festival showed that there is a pent-up demand for topical documentaries on serious subjects. This year VIFF had the largest non-fiction program in its history showing a total of 71 feature or mid-length documentaries, and as they did last year VIFF audiences voted for documentaries over drama when it came to handing out the awards.
America's favourite corporation-basher Michael Moore could not be here in person last month but that didn't bother those who saw his feature-length doc Bowling for Columbine, sponsored at VIFF by Common Ground. The big man's acerbic, chilling and sometimes amusing attack on US gun culture scooped the People's Choice Award For Most Popular Film.
Fix: The Story of an Addicted City, which documented the struggles to alleviate the problems of the downtown East Side, shared top spot for the Award For Most Popular Canadian Film. If you want to see the power of a documentary to galvanise people, Fix is a prime example. It tied with Expecting, an improvised ensemble drama showing the interactions between a group of friends as one among them goes through a home-birth.
Technological advances mean that the image quality of documentaries on the big screen is on a par with many movies, so we could see more theatrical screenings of documentaries in the future. Many of us would relish the chance to collectively experience the latest non-fiction features at the theatre rather than interspersed with advertising in the relative solitude of our living rooms months later.
"The audiences that come to the film festival share the concerns of the filmmakers and we almost have an urgent need for good, critical intelligent assessment of things that mattered," reflected VIFF artistic director Alan Franey as the festival drew to a close. Franey cited the non-fiction series Holding History Accountable as "one of the highs" of this year's fest for him.
"There is a sense of a countervailing tendency to this sort of wrap-yourself-in-the-flag nationalism we're seeing so much in the states and that you are seeing more and more in Canada," said Franey. The strand featured programmes as diverse as Nick Broomfield's investigation into rap murders in Biggie and Tupac, and the celebratory Standing in the Shadows Of Motown, The Age of Terror, which charted the development of modern terrorism to the damning indictment of the least worthy Nobel Prize Winner ever in The Trials of Henry Kissinger. Let's see more of them outside the fest!
On a different note, VIFF's closing film Far From Heaven, a sumptuous pastiche of the Fifties melodramas of Douglas Sirk shows a Cosmopolitan-style idyll of Fifties suburban modernity cracking open under the strain of sexual and racial tensions.
At the centre of the film, out on the 8th, is Cathy (Julianne Moore in blonde wig) a Connecticut socialite, and mother of two, whose chief preoccupation in life seems to be in keeping up the appearance of the perfect couple with her successful businessman husband Frank (a good choice in gravel-voiced Dennis Quaid).
However, her perma-smile wilts when she discovers him in the embrace of another man. Feeling humiliated and embarrassed, Frank promises to see a psychiatrist for his "illness", but the sessions only drive him to the bottle, which in turn leads to ugly scenes in front of their gossipy friends and growing estrangement between husband and wife. In a state of emotional turmoil, Cathy breaks with societal attitudes and finds solace in the company of her black gardener, a man of unexpected sensitivity and sophistication.
Although he could have injected a little more action into the proceedings, director Todd Haynes (Velvet Goldmine, Safe) has the look, the mores and the storytelling style down to a Fifties tee. The camera is discrete, looking away when things threaten to get steamy; glances, silences and pregnant pauses speak volumes. Julianne Moore's perfectly pitched performance, deeply sympathetic as the loyal housewife but constantly changeable as the fickle socialite, is worth watching for alone.
Armenian-Canadian Atom Egoyan has made complex narrative structure a hallmark of his cinematic style. His latest feature Ararat (opening Nov. 15) is no exception. A film within a film it aims to show the impact of the Armenian genocide in 1915, and its denial ever since by its perpetrator, Turkey, on the descendants of survivors today. The film, which features an excellent performance by Christopher Plummer, is at times unwieldy and wayward, but its multi-layered investigations into themes like truth versus art, history versus the present has some moments of great clarity that Egoyan fans will appreciate.
Release dates are correct at time of going to press but may be subject to change. Robert Alstead writes for movie ezine iofilm.com.
Vancouver International Film
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