coming-of-age

The Tree of Life

by James McNally on October 10, 2011 · 1 comment

eOne released The Tree of Life on DVD and Blu-ray in Canada on October 11, 2011. Help support Toronto Screen Shots by buying it on Amazon.ca.

The Tree of Life (Director: Terrence Malick): When I first saw Terrence Malick’s long-awaited fifth film back in the spring, I simply couldn’t write about it. Certainly still in the top spot for my Film of the Year, it hasn’t become any easier to articulate my thoughts about a film so personal and yet so universal. I can say with certainty, though, that the film looks every bit as stunning on Blu-ray as it did projected theatrically, and that means that you should certainly add it to your collection.

The Tree of Life has been described as Malick’s most personal film yet, featuring a family very much like his own in a time and place very similar to where and when he grew up. At the heart of the story is a tragedy, the loss of a beloved child, and the oldest son’s remembrances of his brother, his own childhood, and especially his relationships with his mother and father. As young Jack (Hunter McCracken) leaves childhood behind for the turbulence of adolescence, he’s torn between the comfort of his mother’s (Jessica Chastain) unconditional love and his more conflicted feelings toward his strict father (Brad Pitt). There is an ever-present narrator, though the voices change. Sometimes it’s the voice of his mother, sometimes his father, and sometimes you wonder if it might even be God.

Quite apart from the remembrances of Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn), there is an entire sequence visualizing the formation of the Earth and the beginning of life itself. Malick worked with special effects expert Douglas Trumbull to make these look as natural as possible, depending on computers only when absolutely necessary. The imagery is stunning throughout, both the special effects stuff and the warmly nostalgic cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki, who worked with Malick on his previous film The New World.

The Tree of Life is Malick at his most Malickian, and by that I mean that plot and character are not revealed through traditional narrative, but more by the accumulation of details and impressions. Music is important and the camera sweeps around like a paintbrush on a canvas. The voiceovers can seem a bit ponderous to someone not expecting a film about the Big Questions, but if you’re prepared to be stirred emotionally, existentially and, dare I say spiritually, this film will simply knock you out.

The most helpful thing I can say about this film is that it’s a mirror. What you end up thinking or feeling about it will be very much determined by what you bring into the experience. That’s why I’m so excited to have such a beautiful work of art in such a pristinely presented package. The Tree of Life is a film that will deeply reward patience and repeated viewings, at least for me.

Tagged as: childhood, coming-of-age, spirituality

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Amy George

by James McNally on September 13, 2011 · 1 comment

in Film Festivals,TIFF

Amy George screens at part of the Canada First programme at TIFF 2011.

Amy George (Directors: Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas): Toward the end of this quietly resonant film, 13-year-old Jesse’s mother tells him about a time when he was a child that his parents thought they had lost him, but that they knew to just look up: “You came down from the trees like a monkey turning into a man.”

And although it’s a rare case where the writing feels a tiny bit forced, it just might sum up this intimate slice of adolescent life. It’s a glimpse, a snapshot of a man in the process of formation. And it’s all the more remarkable because the average age of the cast and crew must be somewhere around 20. Director/writers Yonah Lewis and Calvin Thomas are very recent (2008) film school graduates, and the film’s executive producer is 15-year-old actor Connor Jessup.

“Write what you know” is good advice for writers and Lewis and Thomas certainly are not so far removed from the small terrors of adolescence. And newcomer Gabrielle Del Castillo Mulally is stuck right in the middle of them, ensuring that his constant expression of puzzlement comes from a genuine place.

Jesse is the son of well-meaning but flaky liberal parents (ex-Rheostatics drummer Don Kerr and his real-life spouse, author Claudia Dey) who are navigating a frightening new stage of parenting in which neither of them seems able to communicate with their son. Mother Sabi nags Jesse to eat his vitamins but wonders to her husband whether he might be gay, or unpopular at school. It’s the stage where taking care of your kids seems to become exponentially more complicated than just making sure they’re fed and clothed and sheltered.

In reality, Jesse has lots of friends, even a close female friend, but he also seems to enjoy spending time by himself. When an art teacher’s assignment requires him to take a photograph that represents some aspect of himself, he convinces his parents to buy him an “analog” camera and a telephoto lens.

He also takes an offhand remark from his teacher about being a “true artist” so literally that he checks out a book from the library called “True Artist” in which the male author says definitively that no man can be a true artist until he has made love to a woman.

Throwing this “advice” into the churning stew of Jesse’s adolescent sexual awakening leads him into some murky territory; namely, up a tree across from his slightly older neighbour Amy George’s room, where he snaps a picture of her. A few days later, the two are thrown together in unusual circumstances. After sneaking some alcoholic coolers from the fridge, and some experiments with hypnotism, Jesse finds himself tempted to go further than ever before in his sexual explorations on a passed out Amy.

In one of the film’s best scenes, he confesses his feelings of guilt to an older female family friend, who assures him he’s likely done nothing wrong, and that these things are more complicated than he thinks.

It’s barely an epiphany, but the film contains a few of them, making us feel that Jesse, despite his continued wide-eyed bewilderment, is on his way.

It’s a remarkably self-assured debut for the filmmakers, and though there are a few rough spots technically (shaky camera, less than perfect sound, a few uneven performances from the supporting players) and a bit of shapelessness to the story, it adds up to a satisfying experience. And it makes me happy to add another couple of young Canadian filmmakers to my radar.

Official site of the film

Tagged as: #tiff11, canada, coming-of-age, independent

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Kati with an I

by James McNally on February 11, 2011 · 1 comment

in Documentaries,Screeners

Kati with an I is screening on Monday February 14 at 8pm at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Missoula, Montana.

Kati with an I (Director: Robert Greene): Shot mostly over a tumultuous three-day period leading up to Kati’s high school graduation, this moving portrait, directed by her older half-brother, offers an intimate window into one particular life at one particular time and in the process achieves a beautiful sense of universality. By cutting in older home movies of his sister, Greene makes the documentarian’s capture of passing time even more poignant. We see this confident little girl growing into a slightly less-confident young woman on the verge of leaving her rural Alabama hometown and her childhood friends.

Her sense of panic manifests itself most keenly in her clinging attachment to boyfriend James, a sensitive young man a few years older who’s content to work at the local McDonald’s. After graduation, she’s moving to North Carolina to rejoin her parents and attend college, and she’s insistent that James come with her. He’s clearly hesitant to leave his own family, but professes his love with seeming sincerity. Yet her desperation seems to paralyze him, and he can’t promise her when they’re going to leave. Graduation day approaches, and her parents are coming to see her. They want her to return with them, but she’s terrified that if she leaves without James, he won’t follow.

The camera trails her everywhere in these emotionally fraught days, as she enjoys precious time with friends she may lose forever and as she prepares to face an unknown future as an “adult.” Seeing the shots of her as a younger child reinforces the fact that in many ways, she hasn’t grown up. This rite of passage seems an absurd and artificial border into an adulthood she doesn’t want to enter just yet. Clinging to James is her adolescent equivalent of clinging to a teddy bear. Her romantic illusions about James are intact but she seems aware that they’re precarious. There are some absolutely lovely moments of them together, especially when the two join in singing along to a CD of “their song” while riding in the car. The presence of her older brother, even unseen, capturing these fleeting moments adds depth to the moment and makes it nostalgic even as it’s happening. The whole film is suffused with a keen sense of these moments passing away even as they’re captured.

Despite the fact that this is a deeply personal film, and that the sound and video quality are at times uneven, there is a lot to love about Kati with an I. Like a few other recent docs (October Country, Billy the Kid, 45365, The Way We Get By), this film shows us a part of America not usually seen in the movies: rural, white, deeply religious and conservative, full of flawed but genuine people trying to get by. And by turning the camera onto a member of his own family, Greene is expressing something of his own feelings about his roots. Although some may find the film uncomfortably intrusive, it’s never exploitative. On the contrary, Kati with an I is a powerful expression of love, from a brother to a sister, from an adult to a child, and from an urban sophisticate to his rural roots. It’s moving and lovely and particularly alive. Like Kati.

Tagged as: americana, coming-of-age, family, highschool

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Submarine

by James McNally on September 14, 2010 · 2 comments

in Film Festivals,TIFF

Submarine (Director: Richard Ayoade): The debut feature from actor-comedian Richard Ayoade (The IT Crowd) wears its heart, and its influences, on its sleeve. Wes Anderson looms large, and behind him, Hal Ashby and Francois Truffaut, but Submarine still manages to be original, mostly due to the irrepressible charm and formal playfulness of its director.

Based on Joe Dunthorne’s novel, the film is the record of Oliver Tate’s painful coming-of-age. Neither cool nor an outcast at school, Oliver is infatuated with Jordana Bevan, a girl who seems just a bit tougher and cooler than him. After she uses him to get revenge on her cheating ex, they are more or less in a relationship, and Oliver strives to be a good boyfriend while still remaining incredibly self-absorbed. His parents haven’t had sex in months, and Oliver is certain that his mother is carrying on an affair with their neighbour, a spiky-haired “mystic” with a pimped-out van. When he discovers that said mystic is actually an old boyfriend of his mother’s, he becomes obsessed with wrecking any chance of infidelity. His father, a depressive marine biologist, seems too passive to care what’s going on. Oliver considers bringing Jordana into his plans, but when he finds out her mother is suffering from a potentially-fatal brain tumour, he retreats into his own world, leaving his girlfriend to deal with her own horrors.

Did I mention that this is a comedy? Ayoade is able to use a light touch to ensure that this potentially dark material doesn’t overwhelm the audience. Oliver, even at his most selfish, is never unlikeable. Instead, he reminds many of us what it was like to be caught between childhood and adulthood, realizing that our parents are fallible and that we are neither as safe nor as important as we once thought. In that sense, it is a bit like Rushmore, to which it’s being endlessly compared. But Oliver is far less self-assured than Max Fischer, at least outwardly. He admits that he’s trying on identities. The film itself is far scruffier than Rushmore, too, and Ayoade himself seems to be trying on identities as a director. There are sections of the film where he tries out different styles, and he lets the audience know that he’s experimenting. There is a lovely montage of Super 8 footage of Oliver and Jordana falling in love and it’s presented by Oliver as prepackaged nostalgia, which doesn’t make it any less gorgeous or romantic.

Another difference from the films of Wes Anderson is Ayoade’s very careful use of music. There are only a few songs in the film, all by the wonderful Alex Turner (frontman for Arctic Monkeys), and they’re only used for moments of dramatic importance. Even here, Ayoade can’t help being self-conscious. The songs are on two sides of a mixtape Oliver’s father gives him. One side is for the budding of the relationship, the other for its dissolution. I actually made a similar mixtape myself in my younger years.

The performances are all wonderful, especially young Craig Roberts and Yasmin Paige as Oliver and Jordana. Paddy Considine has fun playing Graham the rock ‘n roll mystic, and Sally Hawkins and Noah Taylor are appropriately low-key as Oliver’s jaded parents.

The film isn’t perfect. The pace sags a bit in the middle, and Ayoade’s direction can be a bit mannered at times. The Welsh accents may be a bit difficult for some audiences to decipher in a few places. As well, by the end, Oliver’s parents’ marital problems seem to have magically disappeared. But for a first film, Submarine manages to be funny, romantic, sweet and gorgeous to look at too. I’m looking forward very much to seeing Ayoade bury his influences a little deeper in his next film as he gains in confidence.

Here is the Q&A with director Richard Ayoade from after the screening.

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Duration: 11:34

8/10 (8/10)

Tagged as: #tiff10, coming-of-age, uk

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Love You More

by James McNally on October 6, 2009 · 1 comment

in DVD

Editor’s Note: Love You More is available on Wholphin No. 8, a great compilation of short films from the same people who publish McSweeney’s.

Love You More (Director: Sam Taylor-Wood): Based on a short story by English playwright Patrick Marber, this slice of life evocatively recalls the powerful combination of music geekery and sexual discovery that makes our teenage years so awkward and exciting. Buzzcocks fans Georgia and Peter meet at the record store on the day the band’s new single is coming out, but there’s only one copy. Cool Georgia invites the geeky Peter back to her place to listen to it. Their awkward attraction is unshackled as the 45 spins on the turntable, again and again.

In just 15 minutes, Taylor-Wood, known mostly for her photography, is able to convey so much. The swagger of teenagers, and the underlying terror of not knowing as much as you think. The way that shared musical taste can make you notice someone you never noticed before. The crumbling border between childhood and adulthood. It’s a beautiful piece of work, anchored in two brave performances and a couple of killer Buzzcocks singles.

Official site of the film