The rhythm of the third and final chapter in Miguel Gomes‘ Arabian Nights shifts gears to the point of bewildering (as opposed to enchanting) those who are already done digesting The Desolate One. The Enchanted One is difficult (I’d even go as far as to say impossible) to fully appreciate as a standalone piece, considerably moreso than the two previous volumes. Its parts are divided up in the most irregular of ways. It begins with a prologue, before morphing almost entirely into something like a documentary about bird-trappers in Portugal. Stylistically, Gomes opts for the written word over Scheherazade’s (Crista Alfaiate) voice-over, asking his audience to literally read (a lot), or get lost. Then, suddenly, a Chinese girl (Jing Jing Guo) narrates her life-changing experience as a foreigner in Portugal, while images of people protesting fill the screen. The method in the meandering and meditative madness of Volume 3 is a mystery solved long ago, leaving the final chapter of Gomes’ masterwork somewhat disarmed of direct excitement.

While it’s considerably tougher to engage with the action here, in the bigger picture The Enchanted One is still a vital piece. For one thing, it feels important to spend a bit of intimate time with Alfaiate’s Scheherazade, even if that time ends up being somewhat disappointing. Her doubts over the effects her stories are having on the king, her sense of imprisonment, and her yearning to experience all the wonders of life outside the castle’s walls; all of these bring her character down to earth and, magically, enhance every story she told in The Restless One and The Desolate One. Once she starts roaming Baghdad’s archipelago, some of her encounters are decadent to an off-putting degree, but all it takes is one conversation with her father, the Grand-Vizier (Américo Silva), and we’re immersed again. Perhaps it’s because he reminds her of the importance of stories, and where they come from.

Scheherazade returns to her king, and begins the story about the songs of chaffinches. While it certainly looks labored, the choice of going with title passages over narration to tell this story must’ve really been no choice at all. As beautiful as Alfaiate’s voice is, it would only serve to disrupt the birds’ stirring songs and the bird-trappers’ silence in attending to their beloved passion. For The Enchanted One is at its most entrancing when it follows Chico Chapas (yep, Simao ‘Without Bowels’ from Volume 2) and other bird-trappers in Portugal—unemployed men, lonely men, men hardened by the harshness of life—in their efforts to find, nurture, and teach new songs to the little feathered crooners.

For the first time in Gomes’ Arabian Nights, Scheherazade breaks from a story and concludes it at a later point. In between, we get a brief, wholly captivating, rendition of Ling’s experience in Portugal. Her voice-over narration (in Mandarin)—as she recounts her experience with falling in love and living with a Countess, told over images of Portuguese demonstrations—is beautiful stuff. The fact that it’s so brief, and that Scheherazade returns to the chaffinches right after it, marries the incantations of the human voice with the musical chirps of the birds in a deeply profound way.

As fitting of an ending to Arabian Nights as it is—with a wondrous cover of Klatuu’s ‘Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft’ to send us off—The Enchanted One is considerably less powerful than the previous two chapters in this unforgettable saga. It would be an interesting experiment to see if its effects would be any different in a single sitting of all three volumes. Viewed as a single entity, though, it’s the least accessible piece of work Miguel Gomes—occupant of interplanetary craft—that he has ever done. In this way, it also feels like the most personal section of Arabian Nights; an impression that’s supported by a final, heartfelt, message from the director himself. As strong a case The Restless One and The Desolate One make as stand-alone films, The Enchanted One embraces all three into one inseparable whole. A whole suffused with a singular poetic imagination, confirming—as all great pieces of film art do—the powerful storytelling medium in cinema.

Originally published on October 2nd, 2015 as part of our coverage for the New York Film Festival.

We plunge into the second volume of Miguel Gomes‘ Arabian Nights without the introductory support of prologues. Only the familiar yellow titles remind us that what we’re about to see is not an adaptation, but an inspiration. Told through fictionalized accounts of actual events that occurred in Portugal between 2013 and 2014, events which left many citizens even more impoverished than before. As soon as The Desolate One ended, only a few fully formed thoughts rose out of the rubble left of my mind. Namely, I silently thanked the director for dividing Arabian Nights into three volumes, for it would be highly detrimental to the overall experience if the audience were tasked with watching all six hours in one sitting.

Partitioned into individual stories—some with multiple narrative tangents of their own—the cinematic wealth of information in Arabian Nights is best digested in fragmented doses. The Desolate One, with its three vastly varied reflections of soul-squeezing desolation, might turn out to be the most emblematic of this richness. A point which—unless I find Volume 3 to be some otherworldly masterpiece—no doubt played a part in selecting this particular volume as Portugal’s Oscar entry for Best Foreign Language Film. For even the most emotionally barren tale here, about a reclusive villager of ill-repute on the run from local authorities, is draped in pensive mystery and fried in sun-dried humor. Simao (Chico Chapas) is a son of a bitch, and part of a population of people who are rarely represented on screen. Throughout his story, Gomes constantly pits our perceptions of him and his actions (often bizarre but harmless) with legendary rumors of evil and violence about him, including the reason why the authorities are hounding him. It’s a story of evil full of curiosities, imbued in the kind of lonesomeness found under the surface of so many Westerns.

The second story, with a Judge (Luísa Cruz, pulling off the most memorable performance in Arabian Nights so far) presiding over a case that gets ridiculously out of hand is, in all respects, an intense masterpiece of imagination. Arabian Nights hits the peak of its seductive powers in ‘The Tears of the Judge’ from the increasingly bizarre buildup of crimes and passive-aggressive blame-avoidance and Sayombhu Mukdeeprom’s purplish tinctures cinematography which adds to the phantasmagoria in the air. This chapter is the epicenter of the entire piece. The Portuguese court system gets a fantastical make-over in this story; a smorgasbord of cultures, traditions, time periods, and social classes. It’s bonkers magic realism with an endless lifespan, peppered with mercurial humor, and momentous beyond words.

The third and final tale in The Desolate One immediately recalls Gomes’ beautiful Tabu, thanks to the familiar faces of Isabel Muñoz Cardoso and Teresa Madruga. Centered around a block of apartments, ‘The Owners of Dixie’ is in the lonely spirit of Simao’s story, yet it borrows heavily from the imaginative streak from in the previous chapter. A woman finds a mysterious dog which uncannily resembles her old one, and gives it to her friends in an effort to add some joy into their depressing lives. The dog goes from owner to owner, and is the adorable witness to a perceptible sense of nostalgia and dilapidated human spirit, held delicately together by that strange little thing called love.

My mind turned to rubble by the end because it completely succumbed to the film’s undeniable charms. The Desolate One continues where The Restless One left off, building a bridge from literature to cinema. And in more ways than one, this chapter of Scheherazade’s storytelling edges closer to the cinematic end of that bridge. As an art form that envelops all others unto itself. It’s similar to a piece of classical music; here’s the midsection that’s more abstract, more contemplative, and slower in sinking in, but only because it’s slightly more profound in execution and style than what came before. With its mesmeric mixture of genres and moods, a superb screenplay and inspirational camera work and composition (naked Brazilian ladies sunbathing on the rooftop, in one jaw-dropping shot), The Desolate One may just be the most haunting movement of Gomes’ glorious, deeply melancholic, symphony. The Enchanted One is the next and final volume, but it’s already clear that we’re in the midst of the director’s magnum opus.

Originally published on October 1st, 2015 as part of our coverage for the New York Film Festival.

It takes 20 or so minutes before we see the vibrantly playful title of the first chapter in Miguel Gomes‘ latest project, all bedecked in gold; Arabian Nights: Volume 1, The Restless One. Before it; a prologue interweaves three narrative threads in a hypnotically potent way, gluing the intended audience to the screen. First-person accounts of Portugal’s declining shipbuilding industry, a wasp epidemic, and a film director (Gomes himself) who is plagued by the apparent stupidity of his own idea for his next film. That is, a metaphorical linkage of the infamous “One Thousand And One Nights” fairytale structure to his interpretation of Portugal’s economic crisis. This meta-documentary approach with the prologue is odd and endearing, but it resonates, above all else, because of its raw honesty.

A single shot stands a cut above the rest from this introduction. A wonderfully long wide shot of a large group of people seeing off a ship from Viana’s seaport, as the voice(s)-over swing between shipyard employees and a self-made wasp exterminator. It’s pregnant with a kind of romanticized melancholia that has become one of Gomes’ signature traits, and augurs—before we’re even introduced to Scheherazade (Crista Alfaiate)—how the director might just pull off his “stupid” idea in remarkable fashion. Indeed, from the moment we delve into the first story about ‘The Men With Hard-Ons,’ to the emotional precipice we’re left with by the end of ‘The Swim of the Magnificent,’ Gomes proves The Restless One is everything under the sun, but never, ever, stupid.

Scheherazade’s unique way of avoiding imminent death at the hands of her mad king husband has attracted Gomes to use her method in order to create a work of surreal, humorous, and vigorously compelling cinematic art. For those unaware of the Arabian Nights premise, a quick brief: the beautiful Scheherazade takes it upon herself to stop her Persian king’s violent ways, a man with a reputation for murdering his wives after taking their virginity. Each night, right before he’s about to sentence her to death, his new wife starts telling him a story, only to stop it halfway. The king, unable to bear the thought of not knowing how the story ends, spares her life for another day so that she may finish recounting it the next night. This surrender to the power of storytelling courses through Gomes’ entire filmography, so it’s easy to see why he’s so attracted to Scheherazade’s method.

Getting into too much detail about the first three stories in The Relentless One would be the equivalent of spoiling the twist in a Shyamalan movie, so I’m not doing it. Suffice it to say that, through finespun camera work, unostentatious cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom (Apichatpong Weerasethakul‘s DP), and Gomes’ screenplay (written with Telmo Churro and Mariana Ricardo), the allegories of Portugal’s unemployment crisis and her government’s negotiations with the European troika are generated with an insoluble type of electric charge. Though not an actor’s showcase by any means, Adriano Luz (who plays the “haggard romantic” Luis in the third story) and Dinarte Branco (who delivers the greatest monologue of the entire chapter as Lopes in the first story) are vital to The Restless One‘s emotional undercurrent. One that’s in constant flux between love for a country and rage at the state it’s in.

Through all the Luis Buñuel-esque hijinks and splashes of sheer brilliance, moments stick out. An intensely languid tracking shot of a man describing his experience as someone “unemployed by circumstance”. A preadolescent love triangle composed in a humorously exaggerated version of Generation Y SMS language. A man remembering the time he got his finger stuck in Biology class—a memory orchestrated by the most effective shot transition in the whole film. Moments of joy, devastation, despair, love, acceptance, and washed-up whales that explosively birth mermaids. You don’t need to see all three volumes to understand that Arabian Nights sees Miguel Gomes at his most ambitious, exposing his artistic soul in the most honest way he knows how. The realism of the film’s prologue is contrasted with the surrealism of everything that comes after it, but both share Gomes’ impulse to lure the viewer in through the power of story, intimate and epic alike.

The second story, ‘The Cockerel And The Fire,’ is decidedly weaker than the others, or at least the first half of it is, which impacts the glorious momentum of The Relentless One. Anticipation for the second volume, The Desolate One, is no less palpable for it. Even more significantly, the emotions evoked by watching how low fantasy embraces socioeconomics in one of the year’s boldest cinematic events, remain none the wiser.

Originally published on September 30th, 2015.

Filmmaker Miguel Gomes‘ sprawling six-and-a-half-hour reaction to The Great Recession of Portugal insists its influenced by events that occurred in Portugal between August 2013 to July 2014. A helpful on-screen text reminds audiences of this near the beginning of each of Arabian Nights‘ three volumes: The Restless One, The Desolate One, and The Enchanted One. Despite that, through three volumes, Arabian Nights travels through time, across the country, and to Baghdad. Text is one of the many ways in which Gomes subverts expectations across his trilogy. “I see a connection between the voiceover in the second part of Tabu and the text [in Arabian Nights],” says the Lisbon-born filmmaker. “As you hear the voiceover, you have a completely different sensation. It’s inventing a wall you don’t see. The text here is the same.”

Gomes’ films connect disparate people and elements across Portugal to create a surreal, spellbinding experience. In an interview with Way Too Indie, the Portuguese filmmaker addresses the concept of adapting the “Arabian Nights” structure without adapting the book, creating the sensation of getting pulled in and out of a film, and why he didn’t want to “hit” his audience three times.

Did your interest in “Arabian Nights” predate your desire to talk about Portuguese austerity?
It came before. I started to read Arabian Nights—I never got to the end, though. Because it’s a huge book, but I’m still reading it [laughs]. I do it regularly since 12 years old I think.

My intention was not to adapt any story from the book but [instead] the sensation I had with the book, which is a different thing. It’s kind of a sensation that you’re almost vertical—living in a labyrinth of stories. This kind of baroque structure amazed me when I started to read the book. So for me, Arabian Nights, is like a bible of fiction. You have all the possibilities of fiction—shifting fiction, inventing fiction within fiction—in this book.

And it’s a way to cover a lot of territory. You address so many people from a variety of backgrounds and occupations.
That moment in Portuguese society was very intense and it continues to be—it’s not over yet. People are still suffering the consequences of this financial, economical crisis but I would say that [the film has] the sensation of being alive in that country, Portugal. My intention was also to gather a certain number of stories that were happening at that moment and try to build tales for Scheherazade to tell to the King. Stories about how it is to be in that country nowadays.

There’s also a lot of dealing with the thought process, coming to terms with where society is—from the filmmaker’s struggle to encompass all these stories to the judge who keeps discovering these new layers of malfeasance. They have to come to terms with these elements.
I think every one of them—they have their connection with Portuguese society. For instance, you were talking about the segment of the judge, it has this more global aspect of now having a copy of the Portuguese society in front of the judge. The judge, who’s job is to put order in the world, cannot. She doesn’t have the tools because the situation got out of order. She cannot tell who’s guilty, not guilty. She cannot do her job as a judge. This of course resonates with an issue that’s so important in Portugal: who’s at fault? Who’s guilty?

People try in a very quick way to put the guilt on someone just to protect themselves. It’s a human, natural tendency to defend yourself but I think things are more complex. This is why I had this impression that it would be important to have as many segments as possible because there is not only one way to watch Portugal today, as there is not only one way of making films. So I thought my Scheherazade would be able to tell very different films, to tell and show things in very different ways.

Volume One begins chaotically with all the different voiceovers and settings but as the film goes along it slows down. I wonder if that pace was built into your stories?
It was built in with the editing. When we were shooting the film, we didn’t even know if what we were shooting would appear [in the finished film]. We didn’t know that there would be three volumes when we were shooting. Only in editing we understood that we could control the mood of each volume. This kind of development [of the changing pace] from The Restless One to The Enchanted One was pretty much built in the editing.
Even though I have the sensation that sometimes you have two speeds at the same time. For instance, for me the judge moves absurdly quickly, if you try to really follow the events and the crimes.

It goes out of control fast.
And the same time you have the sensation that it’s not moving at all because it’s all moving in circles so it’s not going anywhere. It’s like not moving and moving very fast. For instance, in part three, in the Scheherazade section, I also have the feeling that sometimes the film goes very fast—she’s always drinking, or singing, going from one situation to the other.

It’s kind of entrancing the way it bounces from sections of extended dialog, or a speech, and then there’ll be silence or just the natural atmospheric noise. Did you try create that sensation of being pulled out and getting pulled back in?
Mostly I wanted have this kind of roller coaster entry in the film [in Volume One] with lots of more radical changes from moods and filmmaking from one to the other. The second one I wanted to be more horizontal. It had three stories and they are different from the first [volume’s stories] that are more up and down and this is like a line.

The final one, it’s the zen, atmospheric film, it has a different construction. You have lots of entries, like in an encyclopedia, and these entries invent for your two kind of communities: one completely fictional, with such absurd characters [in Baghdad] as Elvis the thief breakdancer, and also a community of the guys with the bird song contest that do as surreal things as the guys from Baghdad. Trying to teach your bird to sing by creating [a birdsong] in a computer—it seems quite Arabian Nights. Not quite delirious fictional. So there’s a clash of these two kind of communities with reality and fantasy working at the same level.

That’s the interesting thing when you blend elements of reality and surreality you can accentuate your message with those elements of absurdity.
This dimension is very important in the book. The realistic absurd kind of thing is very important and I really enjoy that. [The surreal] helps reality become more clear for me. It’s important not to try to mask fiction as if it was reality, which is sometimes a problem I have with some contemporary cinema. They make lots of effort to pretend to be reality. To be life.

The place of the viewer in these films is someone who is experiencing real life and I don’t like that kind of cinema. I like cinema where there’s lots of artificial elements and it’s up to the viewer to establish a pact with the film because in the artifice of fiction, there’s always certain truths about our real life. But I cannot also renounce the material world, I think it’s important to have this kind of [films].

I think this last volume. For me it’s like you start delirious like Scheherazade. And what happens to Scheherazade is completely mythological, like myths. It becomes much more down to earth because of the sun, because of the rocks in the landscape. We’re entering the world of Scheherazade and then it gets down to Earth.

I think that then the bird trappers, they do the inverse movement. It starts down to the earth and then they start to get this kind of mythological quality. So bringing the myth down to the earth and bringing [reality] to the dimension of the myth was the proposal of this volume. So for me, it’s always like this fantasy and reality and myth – like our practical, everyday lives – should have a place in the films. They are mixed.

Is that how you interpret the world, with that surreal element?
I think there’s always the world outside and the world that exists in our mind, no? I have to use both but I think we have to be aware of something which is if our mental world, or fantasy world, if we use it to hide reality I think it’s not good. We are trying to run away from things so I think for me it’s important to use both but being really careful with the fact that the fantasy cannot disguise reality.

Is there a version of this film that will exist at 6 hours?
Not really because when edited the film and we cut three volumes, we built every film like it’s a complete film. If you’re at the New York Film Festival, they show one every day. Like Scheherazade telling those stories to the kings, she finishes in the morning and then she continues the day after. This is my way to see the film, I think it’s a good one.

This idea of having the three in a row for me is a little like getting hit three times. I think it’s too violent. Every film has already the possibility of changing to defy the viewer. If you don’t have a little bit of a break and you start to see it continue, I don’t know if this can give you congestion or indigestion. It’s too much. If I would have had it one film of six hours I would not do it like this.

How did you arrive at what the ending would be of each volume? Was that also through the editing process?
It was in editing. Every time we shoot a story we didn’t know anything. Where to put it, if even we put it in the film or in the garbage. So it was in the editing that each end [was discovered]. I would say that for me that the most emotional thing is at the end of the finch volume. The Swim of the Magnificents, with all the unemployed people is emotional and thw ghost of Dixie [is emotional, too]. For me it’s very emotional material and so we thought during the editing of each volume that’s how to end it. It was not simple. Sometimes we changed the stories and it was not simple to get this point.

Is it even possible to whittle down TIFF’s line-up to 15? This year TIFF has 399 shorts and features playing the festival, an insane number that has us asking questions like “Why are there so many movies?” and “Why couldn’t the 400th movie be Carol?” among many others.

Every year at TIFF is an embarrassment of riches, and this year is no different, so we had a tough time narrowing our choices down to what we consider the essentials (even crueler: it’s unlikely we’ll catch all of these at the festival, meaning we’re praying some of these get released soon or get some sort of distribution deal). But we did manage to come up with a list, and it’s a varied one. There are some films we missed at festivals earlier this year, some brand spanking new ones by directors we love, a return from a master of the cinema, and one film from a newbie that looks like it could be one of the most unforgettable experiences of this year’s festival.

Read on to see our picks below, and be sure to keep reading the site for our coverage of the Toronto International Film Festival for the rest of the month.

Anomalisa

Charlie Kaufman. A name that, for those familiar with the man’s work, justifies the length of a paragraph to be all but two words on this list. Kaufman’s screenplays—Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind–-burst people’s notions of original comedy, with plots, settings, characters, and dialogue that turned the ordinary into the fascinatingly unique. It’s easy to get lost in Kaufman’s eccentricities, but there’s profound stuff underneath his squiggly surface (especially evident with his directorial debut Synecdoche, New York). His latest effort is a stop-motion animation feature, co-directed by Duke Johnson, with Jennifer Jason Leigh, David Thewlis, and Kaufman regular Tom Noonan providing the voice talent, about a misanthrope travelling to Cincinnati to give a keynote speech about his bestselling book on customer service. From the purportedly fantastic look of the film, to the much welcomed return of Kaufman’s sui generis imagination, everything about Anomalisa so far (including early raves from Telluride) fills this film to the gills with promise. [Nik]

Arabian Nights

Miguel Gomes has been popping his head out from the subterranean levels of arthouse since 2008’s Our Beloved Month of August, but it was his sensational and half-silent 2012 film Tabu that wrote him on the proverbial map with permanent ink. Now he’s back with what is his most ambitious effort to date, a sprawling 6-hour epic split into three volumes based on the infamous Middle Eastern and Asian stories, 1001 Nights. Going by the popular English title of the collection, Arabian Nights pushes the boundaries of narrative with its three volumes—titled The Restless One, The Desolate One, The Enchanted One respectively—and sets events in Portugal, elucidating on the country’s socioeconomic issues through allegory and Gomes’ signature vigor for cinematic storytelling. Using a mesh of satire and fantasy, fiction and non-fiction, the film has been hailed as a genuinely stirring cinematic experience in all respects since it premiered in Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight, and we are beyond excited to see it at TIFF. [Nik]

The Assassin

Gestating in development for over ten years, and scaling a mountain of budgetary hurdles all while learning to adjust to the ever-changing climate of film production, Hou Hisao-Hisen’s latest film is finally here. For a film that’s been anticipated this long, directed by a beloved legend of Taiwanese arthouse cinema, the hype for The Assassin was strained with a mix of excitement and slight trepidation before it premiered at Cannes. The film turned out to be a critical hit, and Hou was commemorated with a Best Director prize (many believed it would walk away with the Palme). This wuxia tale follows a trained killer (Shu Qi) who is forced to choose between her heart and her profession when she gets her latest assignment. Yeah, it’s a synopsis bland enough to fit the description of the worst kind of Steven Segal movie, but its plot is not why The Assassin has already been hailed as a masterpiece by many. With a master filmmaker at the helm, the film’s qualities are found in its aesthetics, mood, composition, and a refined kind of slow-burning mystery that seems to cast a spell on all who see it. Yummy. [Nik]

Baskin

After discovering Baskin’s inclusion in the Midnight Madness programme, I contacted director Can Evrenol to get a glimpse at his 2013 short film (which this film is based on). Evrenol was gracious enough to let me see his short, and the moment it ended I knew I had to catch his feature-length adaptation at TIFF. Both the short and the film have the same synopsis: a group of cops responding to a call for backup arrive at an abandoned building that turns out to be the home of some sort of horrifying dark arts ritual. By the time the cops realise they’ve stumbled into some seriously freaky, occult type stuff, all hell literally breaks loose. The short is a brief and twisted slice of fun, and Baskin looks like it’s expanding in all the right ways: gorier, nastier, and with plenty more horrifying surprises in store. Midnight Madness programmer Colin Geddes has gone on record saying that Baskin might rival the legendary premiere of Martyrs at TIFF in 2008, and based on what I’ve seen of Baskin, I’m inclined to believe he might turn out to be right. [C.J.]

Beasts of No Nation

Fresh off the enormous success of True Detective, Cary Fukunaga returns to the big screen with more critical clout than ever before. Beasts of No Nation marks the writer/director’s third feature, and it looks to be a work of greater intensity and visceral impact than either of his previous films. From a Mexican immigration drama (Sin Nombre) to a classic bildungsroman adaptation set in Victorian England (Jane Eyre), Fukunaga now takes us to an unnamed country in Africa where a young boy struck by tragedy is forced to become a child soldier in a ferocious civil war. Fukunaga’s versatility is truly impressive, and with this film carrying the added plus of Idris Elba (in what could potentially be his greatest role yet), I’d say it’s shaping up to be yet another feather in the cap of an exciting and steadily rising filmmaker. [Byron]

Black Mass

Scott Cooper is someone who hasn’t quite broken out yet as a “name director.” Crazy Heart was acknowledged for its performances and music despite being a solid character study with real directorial sensitivity, and while Out of the Furnace proved to be somewhat bland and predictable, it still contained glimmers of a filmmaker with a distinct vision. With his third film, Black Mass, Cooper is tackling something of significant scale. It’s the story of the notorious gangster Whitey Bulger, and the project boasts a killer cast. Johnny Depp arrives in heavy makeup once again, this time in a different context, and he appears to be in rare form, exuding charisma that is terrifyingly deceptive rather than merely quirky. With such a weighty subject, there’s a lot that could go wrong, but hopefully Cooper rises to the occasion and finally takes the spotlight, delivering something more like The Departed than Killing Them Softly. [Byron]

Cemetery of Splendour

Arguably the greatest arthouse filmmaker of the 21st century, Apichatpong Weerasethakul is more beloved than the spelling of his full name is hard to memorize. Every feature he’s directed—most especially Tropical Malady, Syndromes of a Century, and Palme D’Or-winner Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives—has been studied by cinephiles for their hypnotic power and spiritual sensations. His latest is titled Cemetery of Splendor, and if that’s not enticing enough (it should be), its Cannes premiere was met with the kind of plaudits worthy of Weerasethakul’s venerated oeuvre. The film follows a housewife who volunteers at a clinic where she befriends a soldier with a mysterious sleeping sickness and meets a medium who helps family members communicate with their comatose relatives. In typical Weerasethakul fashion, dreams, memory, and romance are weaved together to create a mystical viewing experience. We couldn’t be more ready for this. [Nik]

Evolution

Way back in January of this year, I picked Lucile Hadžihalilović’s Evolution as one of my most anticipated films of 2015. I figured it would premiere at Cannes, given it went into production last year, but Cannes came and went without her film appearing. I forgot about the film (partially to not disappoint myself again), so once it got announced at part of TIFF’s Vanguard programme this year I was ecstatic. Little was known about Evolution back when I first wrote about it, but now there’s a better idea of what to expect. The film centres on a ten-year-old boy living on an island with no adult males, only women and young boys like himself. The boys undergo various medical experiments, and Nicholas decides to investigate what’s going on. Rather than explain why Evolution is on my radar again, I’ll just quote its programmer Colin Geddes who told me it’s “a sublime, body horror, fairy tale mystery.” I don’t think it’s possible to hear a description like that and not get intrigued. [C.J.]

High-Rise

I won’t lie: I’ve been deliberately avoiding learning much about Ben Wheatley’s High-Rise, which is having its world premiere this year in TIFF’s competitive Platform programme. I know it has a killer cast (Tom Hiddleston, Jeremy Irons, Elisabeth Moss and Luke Evans, to name a few). I know it’s an adaptation of a J.G. Ballard novel, it involves different people living in an apartment building, and that Clint Mansell is doing the score. That’s about it. So why am I putting this down as one of my most anticipated titles of TIFF? Because Ben Wheatley is one of the more exciting names in international cinema right now, hopping between genres with ease and delivering films that are truly distinct. This looks like a return to the moodier, intense fare of Kill List along with the chamber piece quality of his terrific debut Down Terrace (which largely took place in a house). High-Rise sounds like a literal expansion for Wheatley compared to his low-budget first feature: a bigger cast, a bigger budget, a bigger location and a bigger scale. Here’s hoping Wheatley makes the most of it. [C.J.]

Mountains May Depart

To be honest, I don’t know much about Mountains May Depart, but what I do know is that Jia Zhangke’s A Touch of Sin was one of the best movies to emerge from 2013. Brutal and depressing in equal measures, the film is an anthology that presented the deeply troubled nature of modern China through powerful allegory. Jia’s follow-up seems to cover similarly ambitious ground, spanning two generations and confronting the effects of a rapidly changing societal landscape. No matter what the story details are, Mountains May Depart is a must-see purely because it places the audience in the secure hands of a great cinematic social commentator. [Byron]

Office

Want to know how much I love Johnnie To? Whenever I see the word “musical” I tend to run in the other direction, yet I’m clearing my TIFF schedule to fit in the musical Office because he’s helming it. The film marks two firsts for To, a director who’s been working for decades with an insanely prolific and consistent output; it’s his first musical, and his first film in 3D. Seeing To tackle new areas only gets me more excited, because he’s shown multiple times that he has no problem adapting any genre to his economic and quick-paced style. Based on the hit play by Sylvia Chang (who also stars in Mountains May Depart), Office sounds like a continuation of To’s recent fixation on the corporate class and the 2008 financial crisis seen in films like Don’t Go Breaking My Heart and Life Without Principle. But this time, To has recruited big names like Chang and Chow Yun-Fat, along with (what sounds like) full-blown song and dance numbers. Early word on Office has been great, and I can’t wait to see what will surely be To’s unique take on the musical. [C.J.]

Sunset Song

Suffused with rich feeling and evocative melancholia, Terence Davies’ movies are like a vintage wine that sentimentality has rendered priceless; only to be uncorked for a momentous occasion. Which is exactly what the world premiere of his latest picture, Sunset Song, already feels like. Coming off the heels of The Deep Blue Sea, probably the most underrated and misunderstood film of its year, Sunset Song is a period piece set in the cinegenic Scottish countryside of the 1930s, and based on a book by Lewis Grassic Gibon that’s been called the most important Scottish novel of the 20th century. Other than a few gorgeous-looking stills, and the announcement of the cast which includes the brilliant Peter Mullan, mum’s been the word on the details behind Davies’ adaptation. But if he sticks close to Gibbon’s story, we’ll be following the hard life of young Chris Guthrie (Agyness Deyn), a woman growing up in a dysfunctional household, on a farm in Scotland. We expect nothing less than the same refined and lyrical cinematic precision we’ve been getting from one of Britain’s most celebrated auteurs. [Nik]

Where to Invade Next?

America’s most divisive filmmaker returns with a new documentary sure to inspire an avalanche of critical blog posts, angry tweets and bitter Fox News segments. It’s been six years since Michael Moore released Capitalism: A Love Story, and little is known about his new project outside of the vague notion that it will concern the United States’ unending condition of being at war in some capacity. I’ve always been fond of Moore’s work, despite the loudness of his mouth and the dubiousness of his specific claims. For sheer entertainment value, his films are about as hilariously satirical as documentaries get, but beneath the unabashed agenda and supposed methods of misdirection lies a sobering reality demanding our immediate attention. For this reason, I can’t wait to see Where to Invade Next? and revel in the controversy it will inevitably stir up. [Byron]

The Witch

If the reactions out of Sundance earlier this year are any indication, The Witch is the latest installment in a recent string of thoughtful indie horror pictures (such as It Follows and The Babadook) vying for “instant classic” status. The film is a period piece—something far too uncommon in the genre these days—and tells the tale of 17^th century New England settlers encountering evil forces in a nearby forest while perhaps confronting their own inner demons as well. I like my horror cinema grim and ambiguous, and the film’s brilliant trailer seems to promise a gloomy tone and ominous atmosphere, along with what might be the most malevolent on-screen goat since Drag Me to Hell (although likely not as humorous). A 2016 release date pretty much guarantees a series of sold-out shows at this year’s fest, so don’t hesitate to check it out if you get the chance. [Byron]

Yakuza Apocalypse

Back in May when Yakuza Apocalypse premiered at Cannes, it sounded like Takashi Miike was back in full-force. But then again, considering his insanely prolific output (I’ve lost track of his films, there are too many), “full-force” seems to be status quo for Miike. The image above should give you an idea of what Yakuza Apocalypse might be like: insane, bonkers, all over the place, nonsensical and yet completely entertaining to watch. The film starts out with a Yakuza boss revealed to be a vampire, and soon the entire town he rules over gets converted into vampires as they try to remove threats to their way of life. And also there’s something about a fighting alien toad, the apocalypse, and whatever else Miike could think of apparently. When it comes to Miike, I don’t ask questions anymore. He’s proven himself to be an amazing director, so when I get the chance to see one of his latest films I’ll go on blind faith. Sometimes his films don’t work out for me, but other times they work spectacularly. Yakuza Apocalypse looks like it’s going to fall more into the “spectacular” category. [C.J.]

Right on the heels of two successful films that paid respect to the history of cinema, The Artist and Hugo, Tabu receives its title from the final film from one of cinema’s great romantics, F.W. Murnau, and serves as a love letter to the era. Critic-turned-filmmaker Miguel Gomes serves up a charming third feature, though fully appreciating the film requires some patience.

Part one is entitled Paradise Lost and follows a woman named Pilar (Teresa Madruga) who seeks company from anyone she can. The fact that she never manages to crack a smile, suggests that her life is rather gloomy. All that is known about her is that she is a practicing Catholic who spends time protesting outside the U.N. and enjoys watching cinema. When a Polish backpacker cancels plans to stay with her, Pilar spends more time with her elderly neighbor Aurora (in this part played by Laura Soveral). It is clear that Aurora has a gambling problem when she asks Pilar to pick her up from the casino after she runs out of funds. But her addiction is not what is alarming; Aurora’s mental state is declining, to the point that she is admitted to the hospital. Her last request is to have Pilar track down her former lover, Gian Luca Ventura (Henrique Espirto Santo).

When Pilar meets up with Ventura over coffee the film seamlessly transitions into its second part, appropriately named Paradise. During this half of the film, no actual dialog is spoken by the characters. Though it is not considered to be a silent film as it is narrated by the elderly Ventura who recalls the story of how he and Aurora first met. Also present are subtle ambient background noises such as birds chirping or water trickling, that provide a layer of texture.

After learning about the young Aurora (played by Ana Moreira), her senile outbursts about being in Africa and her talk of crocodiles suddenly make more sense to Pilar. It is confirmed that she actually did live in Mozambique and that she found a baby crocodile that she adopted as her pet. Her gambling problem later in life was inherited from her father who first suffered the addiction.

More details unfold about how Aurora and Ventura first met and it becomes clear that the heart of the story regards the forbidden nature of their romance. The two were separated by the different Portuguese social circles they ran with. Aurora was married, wealthy and pregnant and Ventura was part of a rock n’ roll band with the personality to match. Despite the doomed nature of their love, they held tightly to the love they felt for one another.

Tabu is incredibly well-written, and for better or for worse, no detail is left out. Background details are given to characters that do not seem all that important, especially in the first half of the film. It can be a lot to take in for such a simple love story but thanks to Gomes’ visually compelling filmmaking, the film is absolutely beautiful to watch.

Compositions of the rugged African wilderness are second to none, capturing the farming fields and distant mountains of Mozambique. Through the use of black and white photography in a 1:37:1 aspect ratio combined with being shot on 16mm, the film pays homage to 1950’s cinema. Gorgeous shots ranging from a blistering African sun to a cloudy downpour of rain, set the tone of the film with a sharp contrast of atmosphere and emotion.

Tabu, while comprised of two distinct parts that could easily be separate films, weaves it’s stories together to make one whole, told backwards to great affect. The majority of time is spent following Pilar in the beginning as she represents a movie audience, looking to fulfill the mundanity of her life with something cinematic. Her life is given the dramatic romance she craves as for both her and the audience, Aurora’s vibrant past comes to life.

A considerably better day at TIFF this time around thanks to the lack of delays and other logistical nightmares, but the festival’s troubles are starting to be felt. The comments today from people all around town were critical of the way things have been run so far. Hopefully the rest of TIFF will improve on its rocky start, but let’s get to the movies.

Tabu has been getting a reputation as a silent film (or just partly silent) since its Berlin premiere, but it isn’t true. The second half of the film has no dialogue (but sound effects are still present) but it’s dominated by a voice over running throughout the entire thing. Hopefully the second half won’t turn people off from watching Tabu since it’s a gorgeous piece of work and my favourite film at the festival so far. Miguel Gomes, shooting in black and white and 4×3, creates some truly beautiful moments. The first half, which follows a character obsessed with films and other people’s lives, is my favourite part of Tabu with Teresa Madruga doing an excellent job as Pilar. The well-known second half, shot on 16mm, operates as the kind of film Pilar would usually watch. The African landscapes in this half are beautiful to look at, and Gomes directs it with a huge level of enthusiasm. A romantic film about lost love and classic cinema, Tabu is definitely worth seeking out.

RATING: 7.5/10

Tabu

Next up was Amour, the big Palme D’or winner and front-runner for the Foreign Film Oscar. As a huge fan of Michael Haneke, Amour was a step down from his previous film The White Ribbon. This is definitely Haneke’s most ‘human’ film yet, but don’t expect him to soften up. We start out with an old couple living a happy life until the wife has a stroke. From then on it turns into scene after scene of degradation as the husband has to take care of his wife while she slowly dies. There are powerful moments throughout Amour, but Haneke’s cold, precise style doesn’t work well enough. This definitely feels like a mainstreaming on Haneke’s part, and there is little of the thought-provoking content that’s easy to find in his previous films. Amour is definitely a good film, but I’m judging this on the scale of Haneke’s previous films where it just doesn’t stand up.

RATING: 7/10

Amour

While I waited for my last film of the night I decided to rush 90 Minutes, a new Norwegian film. Things got off to a good start with some nice camerawork and its ominous introductions to the three storylines in the film, but the feeling quickly went away. 90 Minutes clearly wants to be a provocative movie, which we see when a sex scene covered by a doorway cuts to the bedroom to reveal (shock!) that the woman on the bed is tied up and badly beaten. But that’s not all, as the camera cuts back further to reveal (double shock!) a baby in the same room. And just to make sure the film’s message is understood, the scene dissolves to a shot of people walking in a busy intersection. If the director opted to just cut to a title card that said SOCIETY instead I’m sure it would have saved her some money while giving the same impact. The other two stories don’t leave anything worth looking back over. At one point in the film a character describes an art piece that’s pointless because it shows how the human mind is limitless. I’m sure the scene was meant to sum up what 90 Minutes is about, but probably not in the way the director wanted.

RATING: 5/10

90 Minutes

Finally I checked out the Midnight Madness film No One Lives. This is the return of Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura who last made the underrated Midnight Meat Train. Unfortunately, this is not a triumphant return for Kitamura, as No One Lives is a pretty stupid movie. Most of the blame is on the writing, which is filled with such atrocious dialogue that no one could make it remotely passable (key example: someone sees their friend’s truck with the tires slashed and says ‘Something isn’t right!’). Luke Evans delivers most of his lines with the charisma of a 2×4, but luckily the awkward first act makes way for the carnage that makes up the rest of the film. Evans plays a psychopath who has his kidnapped victim unwittingly taken by a group of amateur robbers (they steal his car, not knowing that a girl is locked up in the trunk). It’s when these robbers realize exactly who they’re dealing with that No One Lives becomes a lot more entertaining. Kitamura directs some hilariously disgusting scenes, with one involving a hiding spot that’s too good to spoil. Unfortunately, that’s where the fun ends, as the eccentric violence can’t elevate this beyond the DTV (or should I say DTVOD) trash it truly is.

RATING: It would have been a 3 or 4, but the insanity bumps it to a 5/10

No One Lives

NEXT UP: I try to muster enough strength to finish the weekend with two 2+ hour epics. One being Cloud Atlas and the other Sion Sono’s Land of Hope.

Recap of some of my Tweets from today:

Follow @WayTooIndie for full coverage of the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival!

TABU is a well-done love story. Gorgeously shot and romantic. Excellent music as well. #TIFF12

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 8, 2012

Filling in for AMOUR #TIFF12 twitter.com/WayTooIndie/st…

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 8, 2012

AMOUR: Good, but far from Haneke’s best. Simple case of his style not matching the subject matter.

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 9, 2012

90 MINUTES: says nothing interesting at all because it has been done before. Bland.

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 9, 2012

NO ONE LIVES: A terrible script elevated by Kitamura’s insanity. There’s no reason why this guy had to stop making movies #TIFF12

— Way Too Indie (@WayTooIndie) September 9, 2012