May 2006

Darkon

by James McNally on May 1, 2006

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

Darkon

Darkon (USA, 2006, Director: Andrew Neel and Luke Meyer, 89 minutes): An immersive film about an immersive hobby. Darkon shines a light into the little-known world of Live Action Role Playing (LARPing). Darkon is a fantasy world where groups of people gather every two week­ends and fight real battles over ima­ginary land. Dressed in armor and armed with foam swords and shields, they do battle as an escape from their everyday lives. While there are plenty of laughs in the film, they’re never at the expense of the people who play the game, who turn out to be reg­ular folks searching for a little excite­ment in their lives. People play to let off steam, to con­nect with the big themes of good and evil, honour and bravery, loy­alty and betrayal. One of the recur­ring themes is that people in today’s world feel pretty power­less. They’re part of a society that tells them what to do and how to do it. In Darkon, many of these indi­viduals feel in con­trol of their lives for the very first time, and while it can seem a little bit sad, they’re having a blast.

Unavoidably, real life seeps into the game, and people’s char­ac­ters are often informed by the things shaping them in their lives out­side the game. When stay-at-home dad Skip Lipman (or Bannor of Laconia, as he’s known in the game) decides to lead other small nations in a revolt against the imper­i­al­istic nation of Mordom, it’s hard not to see him aven­ging his own exclu­sion from the family busi­ness by an older brother. And it comes as no real sur­prise to learn that Mordom’s arrogant leader, Keldar (Kenyon Wells), is actu­ally in man­age­ment at his company.

Some of the best scenes in the film are the battle scenes. Though often looking like some­thing out of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, they’re shot with mock epic ser­i­ous­ness, with the players reciting lines of awkard Arthurian prose. With the addi­tion of a stir­ring score swelling behind them, the battles actu­ally look pretty exciting.

Though I’ve never par­ti­cip­ated in a Live Action Role Playing game, I was an avid RPG (role-playing games) buff for sev­eral of my teenage years. I feel like I have some level of under­standing for the sub­cul­ture, and it provides a much-needed com­munity for people who often feel out­side the main­stream. The film pre­serves their dig­nity while still allowing us to laugh a little. After all, it’s a game. And it’s play. And play is sup­posed to be fun.

Visit the film’s web site

Visit the site of the Darkon Wargaming Club

10/10(10/10)

EYE Weekly: **** (out of 5) (review)

9/14/07 UPDATE: The film is finally get­ting a lim­ited the­at­rical release in the US, only 18 months late! Go and see it on the big screen if and while you can.

Tagged as: #hotdocs06, Documentaries, Hot Docs, manhood

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They Chose China

by James McNally on May 1, 2006

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

They Chose China

They Chose China (Canada, 2005, Director: Shui-Bo Wang, 52 minutes): An utterly com­pel­ling look at a for­gotten group of US pris­oners of war who refused to be repat­ri­ated to the United States after the Korean War. At the time, these 20-odd sol­diers were branded “turn­coats and traitors” by red-baiting Senator Joseph McCarthy. In archival films, we see them making state­ments against Senator McCarthy and the cur­rent polit­ical cli­mate in America, and although many of these archival films seem to have been cre­ated for pro­pa­ganda reasons by the Chinese, the men claim that they were never mis­treated in the prisoner-of-war camps. In fact, we see them organ­izing games and sports, even an “Inter-Camp Olympics”! Of course, having these men stay in China was a huge pro­pa­ganda coup and they were quickly sent for “edu­ca­tion” on the his­tory of socialism and the Chinese Communist Party. Despite that, some stayed and even mar­ried in China. Gradually, most of the men returned to the United States, where they faced courts mar­tial and scorn from the media and public.

It was a strange and almost for­gotten episode in the Cold War and there is still a lot of ambi­guity about what really motiv­ated the men to stay. At the time, the American media spec­u­lated that they had been brain­washed (like in The Manchurian Candidate), but it didn’t appear that simple. It was just as clear that when the men returned home, the media used them in its own sort of pro­pa­ganda war. One man’s inter­view with Mike Wallace was painful to watch, as Wallace con­tinued to use the term “turn­coat and traitor” over and over again. They were very dif­ferent times.

The director’s voice over, in Chinese-accented English, was some­times a little dif­fi­cult to follow, but he did make clear that he con­sidered these men heroes for trying to build bridges between enemies, and I’d tend to agree with that sen­ti­ment, even with so many ques­tions left unanswered.

More inform­a­tion on the film from the National Film Board of Canada

8/10(8/10)

EYE Weekly: *** (out of 5) (review)

Tagged as: #hotdocs06, china, Documentaries, history, Hot Docs, korea

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Raised To Be Heroes

by James McNally on May 1, 2006

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

Raised To Be Heroes

Raised To Be Heroes (Canada, 2005, Director: Jack Silberman, 53 minutes): A por­trait of sev­eral “refuseniks,” Israeli sol­diers who refuse to serve in the Occupied Territories, this film revealed a side of Israeli society that we rarely get to see on the nightly news. Not exactly paci­fists, these men simply think that their role in the Israeli Defence Forces is to defend Israel, and that what they’re being asked to do has nothing to do with that role. In fact, many of them say they are being asked to commit war crimes against civil­ians on a reg­ular basis, and so they have decided to face the con­sequences of dis­obeying their orders. For many of them, it involves long stretches in mil­itary prisons, but as one reserve officer said, he felt his 21 days in mil­itary prison did more to serve his country than all his years of obeying his superiors.

The film skil­fully weaved bits of Israel’s his­tory into the nar­rative so we got a bit of con­text for the men’s protests, and although it’s dan­gerous to sim­plify the polit­ical situ­ation in the Middle East, for these men, their decision reflects their real con­vic­tion that Israel’s occu­pa­tion of the West Bank and Gaza are mor­ally wrong. Unfortunately, the dir­ector was ill and couldn’t attend the screening, so while there was a short Q&A, I think it could have been more inter­esting had the dir­ector been in attend­ance. The film did bring up important issues sur­rounding the (poten­tial) con­flicts between duty and morality.

More inform­a­tion on the film from the National Film Board of Canada

9/10(9/10)

EYE Weekly: *** (out of 5) (review)

Tagged as: #hotdocs06, Documentaries, Hot Docs, israel, palestine

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Runners High

by James McNally on May 1, 2006

in Documentaries,Film Festivals,Hot Docs

Runners High

Runners High (USA, 2006, Directors: Justine Jacob and Alan D. Da Silva, 85 minutes): I am a total sucker for the inspir­a­tional sports doc, and every year I seem to gush about at least one of them. But even though this fol­lows a tried-and-true for­mula, I never cease to be amazed at what teen­agers can do when they’re motiv­ated and given a little help from some caring adults.

The film tells the story of four teens involved in a pro­gram called Students Run Oakland, which recruits “at-risk” high-schoolers to join a four-month training pro­gram to run the Los Angeles Marathon. There’s a lot of sweat and tough love and in the end, no real sur­prises, but I still felt a huge rush of emo­tion watching these kids actu­ally make it to Los Angeles to join 25,000 other run­ners. And I wasn’t alone. The audi­ence burst into spon­tan­eous applause sev­eral times near the end of the film. There was some great use of sound; for instance, after all the hoopla at the start of the mara­thon, when the run­ners are out there at mile 18 or some­thing, all they can hear are the sounds of their shoes hit­ting the pave­ment, their laboured breathing, and the pounding of their hearts. I haven’t run a full mara­thon, but have run a lot of shorter races, and this felt true to my exper­i­ence. Running is mono­tonous, it’s lonely, but when you accom­plish some­thing, there really is a “runner’s high.”

Visit the film’s web site

10/10(10/10)

Tagged as: #hotdocs06, adolescence, Documentaries, Hot Docs, sports

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