TIFF 2021 TO KILL THE BEAST: Reflections by Carol Borden

 By Carol Borden

 

Director Agustina San Martín describes To Kill The Beast / Matar a la Bestia (Argentina / Brazil / Chile, 2021) as like an “exorcism” in her introduction to the film at TIFF. I have thoughts on what the film or its main character, Emilia (Tamara Rocca) might be exorcising, but those are thoughts probably best shared after a general release. 17-year-old Emilia has traveled from Buenos Aires to a town on the border of Argentina and Brazil in search of her brother, Mateo. She seems ambivalent about him, describing him as a violent man, at one point, but still she is angry at him for not calling her back and in the phone calls she leaves we see her desire to connect with him. We don’t know much about the cause of their estrangement or the reason for her desire to find Mateo. As in life, we are not presented with a backstory--just what we can piece together. Emilia stays at her Aunt Ines’ (Ana Brun) boarding house where there is no connectivity and even the phone cord has been cut. Aunt Ines’ boarding house is contemporary, but also very Gothic. It contains secrets and resentments. The film itself is contemporary, but also very Gothic. It opens on a misty blue moonlit landscape reminiscent of Gothic book covers. And there is at least one diaphanous robe and nightgown. 

 

No one will help Emilia find her brother. Mostly people don’t even answer her questions. They stare. The townsfolk are pre-occupied by a beast that might be the spirit of a bad man that has come out of the forest. It does “the worst” things to women. The townsfolk seem most concerned about the stretch of forest behind Ines’ house and Ines drives them off with all the aplomb of Betty Davis or Lillian Gish with a shotgun. Emilia herself continues to search for her brother, but she’s distracted, too. Though maybe distracted is the wrong word. She has more in her life than Mateo and she’s interested in several of the other teen girls in town, especially Julieth (Julieth Micotta) who also comes to stay in the boarding house--conveniently in the room next to Emilia’s. 

To Kill The Beast is an evocative film with beautifully shot cramped interiors and expansive exteriors. And in an era when so much film is plotted down to the minute, I appreciate its looseness and its trust in the audience to take a moment and let ambiguity sit with us.

(Just so you know: The dog does not die).

 

 

TIFF 2021 EARWIG: Reflections by Robert Aaron Mitchell

 

I just watched the newest film from Lucile Hadžihalilovać, Earwig. The film is based of a novel, of the same name by Brian Catling. Lucile in her video introduction of the film informs us that the idea of the novel came to Brian in a dream, “where a young woman offered him her teeth.” An image that does not show up the novel nor the film. However it is teeth that will indeed make the copy of any writing on this film.

A young girl has ice cubes for teeth. She has a caretaker by the name of Albert (Paul Hilton) who several times a day fashions her new ice dentures. She eats. He sits across the table and silently observes. The clicking and chiming off a clock break up the silence. The girl has much time on her hands and plays with a self-created foil animal. More unsettlingly, a rotary telephone seeps into the quiet. Albert answers. A mysterious voice asks about the condition of the girl. Albert responds, “Everything is well.” We are left with the feeling that everything is not well.

 

The film takes place in a gothic and timeless world. The film moves as though it was a dream. The palate is drab. The color orange permeates the film. The psychology of the color orange lends itself to feelings of excitement, enthusiasm and warmth. Orange is the only color in a painting of a large mansion the girl fixates on. The sky above the mansion is orange. The color glows from the main doorway. It illuminates a light near the rotary phone a link to another world. Orange as a promise of escape. 

With the arrival of another phone call and then a red winter coat for the girl comes with the prospect that she will be leaving this caretaker and apartment soon. They exit the apartment and head to large iron-rot gates. Albert opens the gate and they go for a walk where empty drab streets lead to a scenic wooded area and a small lake. The girl free for the first time runs. Albert calls after her. He gives chase. The girl approaches the still water and leans down. She catches a glimpse of herself for the first time ever. She falls in. Albert panics and arrives on the scene. He pulls her out. It looks as though the girl has drowned. Anxious time passes. She stirs. A woman on a bridge looks on. (Romola Garai)

 

Everything is well.

 

Once the girl has seen her first glimpses of a larger world she then dons her red coat and tries to spur Albert into taking her out again. He refuses. She is energized and insistent. She falls asleep at the foot of the door to the outside world.

 

Everything is well.

 

Albert leaves his duties for the day and heads to a local pub. Imbibing in spirits a stranger approaches. Words are exchanged and this leads to an irreversible moment of great and sudden violence.

 

The girl is on her own for the first time and tries to fashion her own teeth. She wanders in empty and quiet rooms. Albert eventually returns. The plans for the girl to leave continue. 

 

 

What does it mean to care for someone? How does it feel to care for someone and have to let go? How does one move forward with life from tragedy? How does the brutal and subtle violence that comes so easily to men shape society?

 

The phone rings once again. Albert says, "Everything is well; everything is as it should be." The world we are in hauntingly suggests that everything will not be fine but perhaps that is the male intention of how it should be.

 

Lucile said prior to the film, “I’d like you to be hypnotized by the film.” Towards that end, she succeeds.

TIFF 2021 NEPTUNE FROST: Reflections by Carol Borden

 

By Carol Borden

Neptune Frost (Rwanda/USA, 2021) Saul Williams, Anisia Uzeyman

Dense and ambitious, allegorical and musical, Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman’s Neptune Frost (Rwanda, 2021) is unified field theory of a film combining Afrofuturist cyberpunk science fiction, music, poetry, history, post-colonialism, critical theory, reflections on war, genocide, decolonization and resistance. And I’m going to add swank futuristic fashion and make-up.  
Neptune (Cheryl Isheja and Elvis Ngabo), an extremely fashionable hacker and intersex person, flees after being assualted and meets Matalusa (Bertrand “Kaya Free” Ninteretse), a coltan miner, in a village of hackers in Rwanda. Together in songs and discussions, the community tries to escape the Authority, realize their own power and envision a world free of war, genocide, colonialism, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, slave labor and extractive industries that contribute nothing to the people who “do the work behind their screens.”

How effective is it? I think Neptune Frost is exactly the movie Williams and Uzeyman wanted to make. They have expressed what they want to express in the form they want to express it. And that is one of the ways that art is successful.  Neptune Frost is the kind of movie I need to sit with for a while. There is a lot ot think about and it certainly bears more than one viewing. Once more people have seen Neptune Frost, I expect there to be some deep, thoughtful and compelling pieces on it that I look forward to reading. In the meantime, you’re welcome to join me in just pondering what we’ve seen.
 

 

TIFF 2021 THE GUILTY: Reflections By Carol Borden

Antoine Fuqua The Guilty (USA, 2021) 

By Carol Borden

Antoine Fuqua’s The Guilty is opening soon in limited release and then will be available on Netflix US on Oct. 1. Normally I’d wait to watch the movie until then. At festivals, I like to see movies I am not sure I’ll ever have another chance to see. But Jake Gyllenhaal is why I watched it now.. Gyllenhaal plays Joe,  a police officer put on duty in the LAPD communications center answering 911 while an “officer-involved shooting” is investigated. Joe being the involved officer who shot a 19-year-old kid. Joe very much resents this work and wants to get back to helping and “protecting” people who he thinks deserve it and, though he doesn’t explicitly state it, punishing people he thinks deserve it. Then he takes a call from a woman who pretends she is speaking to her child. She’s been abducted. Joe continues to alternately express a rage he can barely contain and withdraw from the other officers at the center, as he works to discover where the woman is and who has taken her so he can save her life.

The Guilty is a remake of a 2018 Academy Award-nominated Danish film, Den skyldige / The Guilty, directed Gustav Möller. I haven’t seen Möller’s film and I am curious how closely  the screenplay by Nic Pizzolatto (True Detective) tracks with the original--especially with the ending.  The Guilty is a solidly made film because Antoine Fuqua knows what he’s doing. And Gyllenhaal is adding to his array of roles playing people who are terrible one way or another. Gyllenhaall is fantastic as he sits in a call center mostly reacting to audio. He was fantastic at making me cry at one point in the film, even though his character is an awful, punitive, rage-filled police officer.  Gyllenhaal is an affecting and effective actor, but is this the story I want to see re-set in an American context right now? Is this whose feelings I want to see explored right now? I don’t think we should not have stories about rage-filled LAPD cops realizing the horror of what they have done when they thought they were doing the right thing. But I also don’t know how much I want to see their feelings right now. Then again, this is Pizzolatto’s wheelhouse and I should have expected what I was getting into when the film started. Fuqua surrounds Joe with police officers of color who respond rightfully to him like he’s out of control and isolating himself, which helps. But still, I wonder how differently this story ends in the original film and how differently it comes across in a Danish context. All of this is to say: The Guilty is a solid, well-acted film and maybe make sure you are in a place to explore the psychology of a messed up police officer if you watch it.

TIFF 2021 NIGHT RAIDERS: Reflections by Robert Aaron Mitchell

Danis Goulet Night Raiders (Canada/New Zealand 2021)

In Saskatchewan-born Cree-Métis writer/director, Danis Goulet’s feature film debut Night Raiders the year is 2043. The resonance of this story could reflect 1883 or 1943 or 1997. In the aftermath of a North American civil war people have suffered greatly, food is scarce and opportunities are few. The film opens with Niska (Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers) who is a Cree mother trying to navigate this stark and dangerous world and protect her daughter Waseese (Brooklyn Letexier-Hart). They forge for food while trying to stay out of view of the omnipresent drones. Waseese encounters a bird and calls to it. After several attempts the bird responds to Waseese’s call. She then gets caught in a man-made trap and a drone appears from the gray, chilly sky. Niska and Waseese return to their current place of residence, an old school bus. Niska destroys the dwelling as they try to cover their tracks from the ever-present surveillance state. 

 

Even with the world in ruins the powers that be do everything possible to exert maximum control. Danger is everywhere. Children are property of the state. People are not naturally citizens of the state. That must be “earned” by sending a child to the Academy. As Niska and Waseese make their way through the ruins of the nearest city, large, loudspeakers are everywhere proclaiming, “The academy keeps your children safe”, “Every child deserves a brighter future”. The academy is a sprawling state system that is brainwashing children to turn them into soldiers for the state. As I watch and write this I am currently sitting in my wife’s civics classroom in a small town in South Texas where the politics of the day is a battle between teaching “critical race theory”, referencing the “1619 project” and the state trying to impose the “1836 project”. Who controls the textbooks, controls the history and the narrative, which ultimately controls the common knowledge of events which influences how people treat one another. History is powerful. Both freeing and controlling, depending what is being taught. To truly find justice for the horrors of colonialism, the kidnapping and killing of Indigenous children, broken treaties, stolen land and genocide the truth must be sought out and taught.

Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Brooklyn Letexier-Hart deliver powerhouse performances as they navigate this world. We see the strength, determination and the emotional toll of daily survival avoiding viruses, a state that wants to control and kill you. The world of 2043 is fully realized. There are elements that are both recognizable and pieces of a future that are realistically not that far away.

There are films that arrive a precise moment of time. Night Raiders was years in the making and the result of several generations preceding it. In October, 2018, Goulet emailed Taika Watiti. "I've known Taika for about 15 years: at Sundance where we both had our films, through my work at Imaginative where Taika has been many times, and then meeting on the festival circuit as we do year after year. There's a tight-knit global community of Indigenous filmmakers who have all grown up together. I sent him the script and asked if he wanted to be involved. He said, he'd do whatever he could. And then Ainslee Gardner and Georgina Condor, who he'd also worked with, came on as the New Zealand producers and that was when Chelsea came on as the New Zealand on-set producer representing their company." Night Raiders became the first Canadian/ New Zealand Indigenous co-production.

The amount of work and imagination that Goulet has put into this also show how prescient this story is. The Meekaw Virus first occurs in the Night Raiders timeline in the year 2042. Principal photography for the film took place in October through early November, 2020 and predated the first mention of COVID-19 by a month. This is both a story of a hundred years ago, our own present and if white people do not actually embrace reconciliation and justice for what our forefathers have sown, this story will continue in the year 2043. The state of cinema in recent years has sparks of light bursting through. Here in 2021 although the events of the modern day are frightening and isolating, we are also living in an exciting time of seeing new voices smash through glass ceilings and long controlled systems of who helms a film and what stories are elevated. Cinema at it’s finest is inspiring and brings us together. Congratulations to Danis Goulet and her entire team for making a dystopian film that illuminates, scares us, and gives us hope.

TIFF 2021 DUG DUG: Reflections by Carol Borden

 

By Carol Borden

My next film was Ritwik Pareek’s Dug Dug (India, 2021). Both Vengeance is Mine, All Others Pay Cash and Dug Dug start with the sounds of a motorcycle. And I thought, “Hey, that’s neat.” Because I watched both movies in the same day and I enjoy themes. Both movies offer social criticism but Dug Dug is a straight up satire. Dug Dug shows the growth of a religious movement from a memorial shrine in rural Rajasthan to temples, businesses, charitable foundations and hospitals. Thakur Lal, drunk and stoned out of his mind, falls off his motorcycle. And thus begins a chain of events that lead to Thakur’s ascension as his motorcycle re-appears at the site of his accident. People decide that a miracle has happened. They build a shrine. Local officials get caught up in the popular fervor and the worship of Thakur Sa is noticed by television.  

Pareek has a background in design and it shows in the film. Dug Dug leans into visual design, cinematography, music, sound and set pieces to tell its story. There are characters, but Dug Dug is not a strongly character-driven film. And I am fine with that. Different movies emphasize different things. I loved the use of pink and blue and the use of light. I loved the devotional art created for the film. And I’m pretty sure there’s a musical reference to Satyajit Ray’s fantasy adventure comedy, Goopy Gyne Bhagha Byne (1969), but it’s been a while since I have watched it. I also have to say that while I understand the criticisms of religious movements in the film, I also can’t help enjoying this new religious movement. I see the faulty basis, but I just love that motorcycle and the devotional paintings. This is not a failure of the film. The jaunty satire reminds me a bit of Juzo Itami’s work particularly, The Funeral (1984), A Taxing Woman (1987), and Minbo: The Gentle Art of Japanese Extortion (1992). But Pareek is less focused on the characters and more on Indian society. It’s a shame that Indian audiences won’t easily see Dug Dug given the way things are under Modi.

TIFF 2021 DASHCAM: Blair Witch Meets Twitch Meets WTF WTF WTF by Robert Aaron Mitchell

• FilmFan Great another film “reviewer”
• MIDNIGHTAHHHH Luv Horror!!!
• TIFF212121 SpOiLeRs!!!!!
• FilmFan Miss in person Screenings!
• MIDNTGTAHHHH @FilmFan Me too!
• TroLL TRUMP TRUMP
• MOVIES4U Hey Soldier of Cinema $ucks!!!!
• TIFF212121 Blumhouse 4 EVA!!!!!!
• AntiVAX Great another “lockdown” Movie fuck this
• FilmFan @AntiVAX get the shot moron!!! Fuck u
• AntiVAX @FilmFan hahaha Trummmmmmpppp!
• AnnieHardyFAN Love Annie say that shit Gurl111
• FilmFan Shout out to Peter Kuplowsky!
• AntiVAX Horse dewormer lol
• HORRORMANIAC MoreBLOOD!!!!
• TIFF212121 WTFWTF
• GOREHound666 Luv This Movie Libtards Suck it!!!!!!
• FilmFan Fucking Spoilers
• MIDNIGHTAHHHH Can't wait to see this in a movie theater!
• GOREHound666 LOL Did I just see that?!?!
• HORRORMANIAC Can u quit that BS just watch the movie!
• LIVE STREAM ENDED

The main protagonist of Rob Savage’s Dashcam is an online presence known as Annie Hardy. This is not someone I would spend time looking for and watching online. That being said, Annie would for sure have a band of merry followers. Annie is loud, brash, anti-mask, anti-vax. One item she makes sure she packs prior to getting out of pandemic lockdown Los Angeles to crash at a former band mates flat in pandemic lockdown London, England is a, “Make America Great Again” red ball cap. It is because I would not want to live-stream a Annie Hardy personality and her belief system online that I was cringing at what is rightfully so, something completely on the nose of our modern times that I personally kept shifting in my chair. I suppose this is by design and is a grand experiment to have a protagonist in a horror film that is completely divisive and thus divide the empathy - or lack there of – for the danger that Annie will be in. 

 

We the audience are participating in a live-stream called BANDCAR which is The internet’s #1 Live Improvised Music Show Broadcast from a Moving Vehicle. The key word here is improvised; according to Rob Savage the film was made in the middle of the pandemic lockdown, utilizing no script but a skeleton outline. I have to hand it to Annie, she sure does spit some freestyle while driving around empty pandemic streets. We spend a considerable amount of time with Annie in the first act of the film. It’ll be off-putting to some and delightful for others. Once Annie gets into some dubious job offer with a mysterious passenger does DASHCAM really start to ratchet up the intensity. There is a great unsettling moment of the passenger sitting in the backseat of the car just staring straight ahead. It is delightfully unsettlingly. For me this is when the film really starts going for it. The film really becomes a hard cold slap in the face from a good friend. There is a license plate in the movie that contains the letters WTF. By then you, yourself have been saying, “WTF” for quite sometime. 

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At this point in cinema, handheld, shakycam footage I do not believe can be called a limitation of low-budget filmmaking. In the hands of a talented cast and crew it becomes a sight to behold. DASHCAM is Blair Witch Meets Twitch. I do have to give props to editor Brenna Rangott and Director Rob Savage. To be able to pull all this together and make it watchable and entertaining is no small feat. The film also utilizes some great locations that provide some great visual aesthetics. 

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Watching this movie all the way down on a cattle ranch in South Texas made me long for the ability to see this in a crowded movie theater in Toronto. There were definitely many moments to react to. The crazy starts, it just keeps going up and up. Delightful. I will also say this, DASHCAM’s end movie credits…WOW…better step up your game MCU.