Support strong Canadian climate journalism for 2025
I've been following the awards progress of the great Canadian documentary Sugarcane which is possibly the strongest yet in recalling the evil of Indian Residential Schools. It focused on one at Williams Lake, B.C. and is so potent that it's been nominated in a number of international competitions. Last night in New York, at the Cinema Eye Awards it won for its cinematography. The top winner was No Other Land which a combined Palestinian-Israeli crew made about forcible evictions of Palestinians to make way for an Israeli tank warfare training site. Dahomey, Porcelain War and Union also got awards and I know because I've covered them here that all five deserved their win.
Today you can read about an Oscars front-runner and four other newly-arrived films.
The Brutalist: 4 stars
The Seed of the Scared Fig: 4 ½
The Room Next Door: 3
Young Werther: 3 ½
Better Man: 3
THE BRUTALIST: This is the one to watch as the awards season moves along. It’s already won Golden Globes for best picture, actor and director, and has many wins or nominations elsewhere. It deserves them all. It’s a compelling film with a strong story, excellent performances and a narrative drive that’ll keep you engaged through its staggering 3 ½ hour running time. It’s got a 15-minute intermission built in to help you, though that reveals the one weakness that I can detect. The first half is strong and suggests even bigger things coming. The second half is weaker, not stronger. Don’t let that deter you though.
Adrien Brody is the Brutalist, which refers to building with concrete. He’s an architect who survived a Nazi death camp, came to the US and worked with a furniture-maker cousin (who has put aside his Jewishness, changed his name and married a gentile). He’s hired by the son of a very rich power broker to redesign the man’s personal library as a surprise birthday present. The man (Guy Pearce with the grand New England-sounding name Harrison Lee Van Buren) is outraged. Until, that is, a magazine prints a color spread and praises the design. And Van Buren’s research reveals that the architect had an illustrious career back in Hungary. So he hires him to design a massive new civic centre, to honor his mother, but, we suspect, maybe more as a monument to himself.
Big disagreements come up between the two men; and one benefit. A lawyer helps to bring the architect’s wife (Felicity Jones) and a niece to America.
That both smoothes and complicates the story which already has many layers of meaning. Class differences, whims of the privileged, overcoming a harsh past, immigration, assimilation, are just a few. Reviving the love between the long-separated husband and wife is an important one. With a prostitute when he first arrived in the US, the architect couldn’t perform. A couple of modest sex scenes now help but not completely. The various story strands fit well together, a sign of skilled direction by Brady Corbet who also co-wrote with his wife, Mona Fastvold. (In theaters) 4 out of 5
THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG: That odd title is an allusion to the suffocating results of the strict Muslim regime in Iran. It refers to a species of fig that wraps itself so tightly around another tree that it strangles it. A similar scenario is brilliantly conveyed in this film by Mohammad Rasoulof, who, after he finished it, had to escape his country. He was sentenced to 8 years in prison, which could include flogging, for propagating content deemed harmful to the regime. It is harmful, justifiably so.
The story tells what happens when a low level official is promoted to be an investigating judge at the Revolutionary Court in Tehran. He can sentence people to death. Gradually he learns he is expected to do exactly that and on the flimsiest of evidence. Sometimes on no evidence at all. While those doubts arise within him, his home life is threatened. He’s under increased surveillance. Promotion has made his life more dangerous, not safer. And he’s got two daughters who have joined in with the protest movement. That brings further danger that he’ll be assailed. And something else looms. Along with his new job he’s been given a gun. It’s disappeared and if that’s discovered he’s in big trouble. The family has to get out of Tehran and the story and it’s main question are resolved on a long car trip. The film is thrilling and sometimes scary but so well directed, and so well acted (by actors who are now forbidden to leave Iran) that it’s a riveting depiction of political life in that country. (In theaters) 4 ½ out of 5
THE ROOM NEXT DOOR: Pedro Almodóvar’s latest won a big award at one of the key film festivals (Venice) but it may have been for its good intentions. The film, very well-acted by Julianne Moore and Tilda Swinton, suffers from leaden dialogue, too much exposition and an apparent urge to push its agenda. Medically assisted suicide is the issue, possibly illegal in Pedro’s Spain but here in his first English-language film hardly a forbidden topic. There is a consultant listed from Exit International, an advocacy group, so the tone of the film may also be designed to advocate, not upset with overblown emotions. The result is a film that’s too low-key and not engaging enough.
Julianne’s Ingrid and Tilda’s Martha were good friends years ago when they worked at the same magazine. They drifted apart. Ingrid wrote novels, Martha became a war reporter and was recently diagnosed with cancer. She contacted her old friend to come and be with her when she takes a euthanasia pill. She’s to sleep in the room next door and if she finds Martha’s door closed one morning it’ll mean “it’s done.” Naturally, there are some false alarms on the way, and a great deal of reviving of their friendship with memories in flashback, going to a Buster Keaton movie in a theater and a lot of talk about the English artist Dora Carrington and her friendship with the writer Lytton Strachey. That adds an artistic tone to this discussion of death. There’s also an up-to-date tone with mentions of climate change and “the rise of the far right.” But also this proclamation: “Cancer can’t get me if I get me first.” Point made. (In theaters) 3 out of 5
YOUNG WERTHER: According to one note I read, this is based on “the classic smash hit novel”, which is odd to say about The Sorrows of Young Werther written way back in 1774 by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. Surprise though at how easily it adapts into a modern rom-com in this Canadian-made film. It’s light and frothy, sparkling with dialogue, updated with cell phones and voice mail and a new ending and enlivened by a self-assured performance by the English actor, Douglas Booth. He’s ever witty and charming but through the course of the film gets called “frustrating”, “juvenile and immature,” “a narcissist lothario” and “a jerk.”
When he meets a woman at a party (Alison Pill) he decides she’s the love of his life and pursues her. The problem is she’s engaged--to a lawyer, a decent guy, but always working and not too attentive to her. Her friend pronounces Werther’s interest as “healthy”. A friend of his tells him to stop. Not so. He won’t be dissuaded.
He’s even more attracted when he finds she loves to read and, since her parents have died, has taken care of her younger siblings. She can’t marry a workaholic, he reasons, and, with that thought, justifies the sabotage he’s planning. There’s more, but you get the gist. It’s funny and clever, written and directed by José Avelino Gilles Corbett Lourenço who is in Toronto but has also lived in Nova Scotia, Alberta and B.C. Very Canadian. (In theaters) 3 ½ out of 5
BETTER MAN: If you’re in the mood for something unusual, try this. It’s a biopic of pop music superstar Robbie Williams (big in the U.K. and Australia, never caught on in North America) done with an odd presentation. He’s depicted as a monkey. Apparently, he told the director and co-writer Michael Gracey that’s how he feels, like a performing monkey, when he’s before an audience. And ugly and odd when he was a boy. Both times in his life are shown and the on-screen image surely has his approval; he’s one of the film’s producers and plays himself under all that simian facial hair.
Other than that, it’s a quite common show biz tale: a driving urge for fame, a problem dad, drug use, infidelity. Since he’s not well known over here, it’s interesting to get his own story. A small town boy in England, a Frank Sinatra fan thanks to his father’s lead, part of a boy band called Take That, ousted but working his way up solo to become a huge star (75 million records sold). He’s depicted as competing with Oasis and the film builds towards a huge triumph in his career when he played to over 375,000 people over three nights at Knebworth. That’s a private estate that hosts festivals and mega-concerts and another part of this story that’s new to most of us. Fans know it all, I’m sure, and instantly recognize songs like Angels, his biggest hit with its plaintive lyrics “When love is dead, I’m loving angels instead.”
There’s a rocky love affair with a member of a girl band (played by Raechelle Banno) who objects to his straying and his drug use. Insecurity may have brought them on and there’s a hint of an apology here, though that’s upstaged by the music. From giant concerts to smaller scenes that look like rock videos (e.g. dancing through London streets to one song), we get a good sampler of his work. And in a powerful climax: his version of I Did It My Way, an obvious but seemingly correct pronouncement. And just like the film: peppy. (In theaters) 3 out of 5
Comments