Baby Clyde's TIFF Diary Finale
Tuesday, September 20, 2022 at 1:10PM by Baby Clyde
TIFF travelsIt’s over. I’m done. Managed 25 films in all. 3 down from 2019 but I did start a day later. The Fabelmans winning The Audience Award was as inevitable as me getting this final round up in 2 days late . Have to say that I did not think this was a vintage year. There were loads of big premiers and highly anticipated movies being shown but I was pretty underwhelmed by much of what I did see. Luckily, things perked up a bit towards the end.
Here’s a run down of my last 2 days which turned out to include some of the best in show.
Friday started with The Inspection the narrative feature debut from documentarian Elegance Bratton. For some reason I’d assumed this was a period piece so the opening 10 minutes of a homeless Jeremy Pope jumping the turnstile on the contemporary New York subway, meeting up with a gang of queer friends and visiting his estranged mother (An unrecognisable Gabrielle Union) took me by surprise. Both were a real thrill and suggested something less generic to come...
Jeremy Pope is a gay marine in "The Inspection"
But this is a military training movie after all, so we get every single cliché of the genre including the obligatory hard-ass drill sergeant, the assault course montage and the graduating class throwing their hats in the air. We’ve seen it all before but in this case, it’s really well done and the performance from Pope and Union are outstanding.
All Quiet on the Western Front
Followed that up with Edward Berger’s unsparing adaptation of the Erich Maria Remarque novel All Quiet On The Western Front which is Germany's Oscar submission. Anyone with a vague knowledge of film history will know that we’ve been here before and great as this version may be making something more explicit does not necessarily make it more powerful. This is especially true if said work has already been made to perfection. It’s like remaking Casablanca and including a scene of Rick and Ilsa fucking. While it's fantastic filmmaking, powerful, and brutal... it's also entirely unnecessary. Also, too long but that goes without saying these days!
I ended the day with Chevalier a historical drama about the long forgotten, biracial, French classical composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges. Diversity isn’t shoe-horning people of colour into white stories like we see so often these days, it’s finding fresh, new diverse stories to tell. This is especially true in period productions, where making Prostitute #3 a black woman or having a man in turban randomly turn up in World War I with no context has become the norm. It’s lazy and borderline insulting.
That’s why this film is so refreshing. It’s not a great movie, but the fact that the effort was made to tell the story of exceptional black man lost to history is admirable. It’s a start. There are hundreds more to go.
On my last day I only had two films pencilled ion. First up from Netflix was The Good Nurse. It’s a classy, medical/serial killer procedural with great performances from both of its Oscar-winning stars, Eddie Redmayne and Jessica Chastain. We don’t get this kind of thing much these days and with the recent boom in true crime longform story telling something of this nature can seem a bit old fashioned and naive (This is not how police investigations are conducted!) but good to see an intelligent, adult drama like this being made even if it could have been a bit pacier.
Ended the festival on a high with the film that opened it. Writer/Director Sally El Hosaini tells the true story of swimming champions Yusra and Sara Mardini, whose escape from war torn Syria is aided by their well honed aquatic skills. Fantastic refugee/sporting success drama that makes you realise just how little you’re actually doing with your life (I’m not sure watching every acting Oscar nomination compares!). Inspirational in the very best way. I’m a total sucker for any story about someone achieving their dreams through hard work. Add in the Olympics and I’m a goner. (Side note: Two Syrian sisters persuading their DJ cousins to help smuggle them into Germany with the lure of playing at notorious Berlin gay club Berghain had me howling.)
One of my very favourites of the week meant that the festival ended on a high. My adventure should be over but being a middle-aged homosexual, I’m heading to New York to see some Broadway shows (with a special guest appearance by one Nathaniel Rogers) and then a trip of such preposterous movie fan nerdom I may have to tell you all about it on a later date. In the meantime, here’s my TIFF 2022 rankings...
Baby Clyde’s #TIFF22 Rankings:
- Holy Spider
- Return of Tanya Tucker
- The Swimmers
- Woman King
- Glass Onion
- Empire of Light
- Bros
- My Policeman
- The Inspection
- All Quiet On Western Front
- Good Nurse
- Sidney
- Charcoal
- Moving On
- Chevalier
- Lost King
- Causeway
- Living
- Triangle of Sadness
- Corsage
- The Fabelmans
- Women Talking
- Banshees of Inisherin
- The Son
- Allelujah
Reader Comments (3)
I, too, loved The Swimmers but couldn't believe how decisive the reviews were. I get that it was 20 minutes too long, but it's such a well-directed and well-told movie.
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