Stuck inside of Toronto with the movie blues againDay Five of the Toronto International Film Festival: I had to make a Bob Dylan pun above because today I saw I'm Not There, Todd Haynes' tribute to the star (focusing on the young, exciting, pre-Victoria's Secret sellout years, thankfully). There's a lot going on here -- I'm sure you've already heard about the gimmick of having several different actors play Dylan or Dylanesque characters. It makes for a fascinating comment on perceptions of stardom and celebrity -- and art, I guess -- with stirring music (duh), contrasting visual textures, and some random cameos by an enormous cast (David Cross as Allen Ginsberg -- works for me). A few moments felt transcendent (Cate Blanchett was my favorite Dylan); others felt clipped from A Mighty Wind. This was maybe the only movie at the festival where I got that overwhelming, I'm-enveloped-by-this-film feeling ... which is not to say I was one hundred percent in love with it. But it was plenty stirring.
Just like a ... woman?
Meanwhile, unless something bedazzles me during my half-day tomorrow, I think I'm ready to declare my personal best-of-fest.
Harmony Korine's known for his polarizing, envelope-pushing works -- he wrote Kids, and directed Julien Donkey-Boy and the immortal Gummo -- but Mister Lonely is easily his most accessible film to date. Which, uh, isn't to say our man Harmony is hewing to some newly boring path. In Paris, a Michael Jackson impersonator who's known only as, well, Michael Jackson (Diego Luna) meets a reasonably convincing Marilyn Monroe-alike (Samantha Morton), who tells him about her beloved home in the Scottish highlands -- a commune for celebrity impersonators. Most of the movie takes place in this weirdly magical place, a castle where the sheep are herded by James Dean and Abraham Lincoln, and Buckwheat rides a Shetland pony. Marilyn's got problems with her hubby -- Charlie Chaplin (Denis Lavant) -- but Michael falls for her just the same. Considering all of this is very bizarre, the movie actually portrays the complexities of relationships with heartfelt realism.
There's also a second storyline -- connected only thematically -- about a group of nuns whose quiet jungle life is interrupted by the amazing revelation that they can, in fact, fly. There's an incredible scene where a nun leaps from an airplane and rides a BMX bike through the heavens. Werner Herzog (Donkey-Boy flashback!) plays the priest.
Other stuff I saw today: caught the last hour of Woody Allen's Cassandra's Dream, another Brit-set drama about crime and deceit. Colin Farrell and Ewan McGregor play brothers who're forced into a desperate act for financial reasons. From what I saw, in the vein of and probably better than Match Point. In Honeydripper, John Sayles revisits one of his favorite leitmotifs, the African American juke joint, for a 1950-set tale of an Alabama club owner (Danny Glover) forced into a desperate act for financial reasons. Unlike many of Sayles' previous films, Honeydripper doesn't feature overlapping storylines -- it's pretty straightforward, and is enjoyable, but it's ... well, it's straightforward. Some good blues numbers though. The big disappointment of a big day was Alexi Tan's Blood Brothers -- an interesting premise (gangsters in 1930s Shanghai) and nifty cast (Daniel Wu, Chang Chen) wasted on a so-so script (characters are one-note; overriding message: "Big cities are bad!"). The best part by far? Co-star Shu Qi's foxy jazz-baby outfits. Fab, but not enough to save the movie.
One more day of movies for me, then it's back to San Francisco. I can't lie -- my eyeballs are tired.
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