How To Change The World (2015)
Dir. Jerry Rothwell

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Preamble: A few things about Robert (Bob) Hunter that contribute, for me personally, to his legendary perch in Canadian history.

"If we wait for the meek to inherit the earth, there won't be anything left to inherit" - Robert Hunter

Robert (Bob) Hunter was many things. Mostly, I just always thought he was cool. And well, you'd kind of have to be that to have accomplished so much in so short a time (he died of cancer at age 63).

As a dyed-in-the-wool Winnipegger, I especially thought it was cool, given Robert Hunter's deep concern for Canada's Aboriginal people, that he was born in the City of St. Boniface which eventually amalgamated with all the wonky neighbourhood city-states along the Red, Assiniboine and Seine Rivers of Manitoba to become - you guessed it, Winnipeg.
All this rich land, which not only became the city we all know and hate/love (plus all points north-south-east-and-west) historically belonged to the Metis Nation, but was torn from their possession by the Canadian Government's land transfer scrip system which was virtually useless except to rich white guys who knew how to push it through the complicated bureaucracy to actually cash it in. The vast majority of uprooted Metis were starving, so they sold their scrip to the rich white guys, for pennies on the dollar.

Even more interesting to me was that Hunter's birthplace in St. Boniface ended up being the one community which contributed the most to Manitoba becoming (even now) Canada's largest French-speaking region outside of Quebec. Why? Many of the displaced Metis were also targets for violence because of the 1870 Louis Riel wars against the corrupt rich white guys of Winnipeg and the eastern power-brokers who held a vicelike grip upon the government of Canada. This resulted in a huge number of Metis forcing their Native heritage underground and bringing their French heritage to the fore and living in - you guessed it, St. Boniface.

His tenure as a columnist at the Winnipeg Tribune and Vancouver Sun was before my time. I didn't even become aware of him as a journalist until I moved to Toronto in the early 90s and began watching CITY-TV (when it actually had a real personality thanks to its eventually-departed head Moses Znaimer). Here, I began to enjoy the amazingly cool, almost Hunter S. Thompson-like "environmental reporter and commentator. I was soon compelled to begin reading his books wherein I discovered that he was Bob Hunter, the heart, soul and public face of the environmental group Greenpeace.

This, for me, was virtually cooler-than-cool and when he passed away in 2005, I was genuinely saddened that we'd lost him. Thankfully, this film now exists. It's not a biographical documentary of Robert (Bob) Hunter, but in many ways, it might as well be.



And now, the Film Review proper:

There were many things about Hunter I didn't know after all these years and I'm grateful to director Jerry Rothwell for his almost-epic-like motion picture documentary How To Change The World which presents a side of this great Canadian that was not only fresh to my already-admiring eyes, but kind of jettisons Hunter into some supreme inter-stellar glowing orb of coolness.

Rothwell poured over hundreds of 16mm rolls of film that had been canned and unopened since the 1970s. Seeing, pretty much before his very eyes, the visual history of the Greenpeace organization, Rothwell consulted with Hunter's colleagues, foes, conducting fresh interviews with all of them, blending the result of Herculean research and expertly selected and edited footage from the Greenpeace Archives. (The fact that Hunter was so brilliantly media-savvy pretty much accounts for this wealth of material even existing.)

What we get is the story of a respected counter-culture columnist who aligns himself with a motley assortment of friends and colleagues (most of them of the 60s/70s "hippie" persuasion) to head out on a boat in an attempt to stop nuclear testing on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean and then, with the same bunch, to go tearing after Russian sailors butchering whales up and down the coast of the Pacific Northwest. The campaigns continued and somewhere along the way, the movement of Greenpeace was formed.

With both the existing archival footage and the new interviews, Rothwell has painted an indelible portrait - not only of the key events in the movement, but the individuals themselves - as disparate a cast of characters you could ever imagine. What makes them cool is how different they are as people, but as such, they each bring individual qualities to the movement that had a symbiotic relationship - for a time. As is the won't of anything or anyone growing beyond initial beginnings, egos as well as legitimate desires/directions begin to rear their ugly heads and minor cracks in the "vessel" become tectonic plates, yielding high-Richter-scale fractures.


In addition to the dazzling filmmaking, I was swept away onto the high seas and weed-clouded back rooms of Greenpeace thanks to the perfectly selected and abundant readings of Bob Hunter's exceptional reads. Embodying Hunter is the magnificent character actor Barry Pepper who delivers us the man's words with the kind of emotion which goes so far beyond "narration". Pepper captures the soul of Hunter impeccably. It's a brilliant performance. (If anyone does a biopic of Hunter, Pepper is the MAN!!!

The first two-thirds of the movie is compulsive viewing. The first third, focusing upon seafaring derring-do is nail-bitingly thrilling. With Bob Hunter at the helm of some totally crazy-ass dangerous antics - like some mad, dope-smoking, Sterling-Hayden lookalike - Rothwell creates a veritable action picture on the high seas with an obsessive Captain Ahab targeting not whales, but the hunters of whales. (So much of the film is charged with a great selection of period hit songs and a gorgeous original score by Lesley Barber also.)

Who'd have thought environmental activism could be as thrilling as Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin "Master and Commander" adventures? The middle section begins focusing on the leaks in the organizational battleship that became Greenpeace. Mixing in more derring-do with internal conflicts is easily as thrilling as the intrigue-elements of O'Brian's high-seas swashbucklers.

The final third of the film tends to fall by the wayside a touch. It's not Rothwell's doing, as that of - gasp - real life. There's a great deal of sadness and acrimony in this section of the film and part of me wishes that life didn't throw the kind of curve-balls that surprise your favourite batter at the plate into striking out. This is ultimately a minor quibble though, in light of the sheer force, power and entertainment value of the picture. What epics don't suffer from a sag or three? At least this one eventually builds to a note of well deserved and earned high notes and the movie finally packs a major one-two emotional punch. When this happens, tears might well be flowing amongst many and the lapses of real life will be fleeting, especially when you exit the cinema feeling, "Goddamn! That was one HELL of a good show!"

The Film Corner Rating: **** Four Stars

How To Change The World is making its Canadian Premiere at the 2015 edition of the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. Visit the Hot Docs website for dates, showtimes and tickets by clicking HERE.

A Different Drummer: Celebrating Eccentrics (2014)
Dir. John Zaritzky

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Marching to the beat of one's own drum is not without merit and the title alone was enough to pique my curiosity, but then, my heart sank. During the first few minutes of A Different Drummer: Celebrating Eccentrics, I felt primed to hate it. Why wouldn't I? I detest both whimsy and standard TV-style docs - both of which seem overbearingly present within the picture's opening.

We get the digestible bite-sized thesis in which we learn how a ten-year study revealed that eccentrics are healthier, happier and indeed, manage to live longer than everybody else. We then get the de rigueur snippets of introductory interviews from what will be our wild, wooly and wacky subjects - a lot of which are all set to a frightfully jaunty musical score.

Ugh was dancing across my cerebellum and I almost flushed the sucker down the toilet bowl of unmentionables in order to slap on a different doc, but then, as if by magic, genuinely delightful movie magic began to snuggle up to me and the next ninety-or-so minutes yielded one of the happiest, funniest and moving little pictures I'd seen in awhile.

Zaritzky clearly loves his subjects, but not to the film's detriment. He settles in on each glorious nutcase (a man who lives in caves, a zany inventor, a duck lady, a "joke" politician, a man who celebrates a "useless" American president and one real lollapalooza I won't spoil for you here) with sensitivity and good humour. He's never laughing at them and neither will you. Some you'll laugh with and others you might even need to shed a few droplets of ocular moisture.

At the end of the day, it has been said that I'm eccentric. As such, I luxuriated in Zaritzky's sweet, lovely ode to madness of the most glorious kind and I'd be delighted to host any one of these people in my own home.

The thesis is proven, the whimsy in the opening a minor aberration and one of the more delightful feel-good documentaries made in recent years won me over completely.

Oh, and the best news: I look forward to a long, healthy and happy life.

The Film Corner Rating: ***½ Three-and-a-half Stars

A Different Drummer is making its Toronto Premiere at the 2015 edition of the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. Visit the Hot Docs website for dates, showtimes and tickets by clicking HERE.

For the next fourteen days I will only review movies I liked, loved or that totally blew me away during the 2015 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in Toronto, Canada. Life is short. I won't bother reviewing movies that were godawful, mediocre or just plain okay. Note my picks, mark your calendars and save some precious hours, days and weeks of your life on planet Earth. Instead, spend it travelling the world via one of cinema's most vital genres.


Haida Gwaii: On the Edge of the World (2015)
Dir. Charles Wilkinson
Prd. Tina Schliessler

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Some of the most important environmental documentaries being made in the world include the work of Canadian director Charles Wilkinson who knocked us on our collective butts with his powerful energy-consumption doc Peace Out and his potent, strangely uplifting Oil Sands Karaoke, that focused upon the face of humanity amidst the horrific environmental exploitation in the Alberta Tar Sands. His new film, Haida Gwaii: On the Edge of the World, comprises the third of what feels like an unofficial trilogy (which one hopes will continue well beyond its current trinity).

On one hand, the current picture essentially supersedes Wilkinson's previous work with the film's delicate blend of cold, hard facts which, we should all be actively concerned about and, on the other paw, a very gentle (deceptively so) tone poem to one of the greatest natural treasures of the world. Officially known as the Queen Charlotte islands, this gorgeous archipelago in northern British Columbia (BC) comprises about 150 islands and is home to a varied and important population of flora and fauna - vital to the area itself, but also to the world at large.

The Haida Gwaii, which literally translates as "Islands of the Haida people" was traditionally the domain of this great aboriginal nation who prospered here for over 10,000 years until Colonialism decimated the population through both disease and, of course, Canada's uniquely polite form of genocide (both literal and cultural, the latter of which has always been the big stick Whitey calls "assimilation").

Treaties continue to be broken and ignored under the aegis of Canada's belief that all lands, even if they belong to Aboriginal Nations, are Crown Lands and as such, can be dealt with in any cavalier fashion the government chooses - dispensing, willy-nilly, all manner of dispensation to corporate rapists of the environment. One of Canada's more appalling back-handed acknowledgments of Aboriginal Rights in the Haida Gwaii has been to convert a huge chunk of land not destroyed by clearcut logging and other crimes against the environment into a massive national park. Yes, this protects the land (supposedly in perpetuity) but the park is essentially "owned" and administered by the "Crown" as opposed to those who really own it, the Haida Nation. It's the Government of Canada's God-like assumption that with one hand it giveth and with the other taketh, all in the schizophrenic snow job to make it seem like they respect the First Nations (and by extension, the environment), when in reality, it's to feather the nests of Big Money (and by extension, the on-the-take pockets of politicians).

What we continue to learn in Wilkinson's film is alarming. Canada's Federal Nazi Party (aka The Conservatives), in cahoots with corporate oil interests and the Fascist Party of BC (aka The Liberal Party of BC, aka Really Not Much Different Than The Conservatives Party) are all threatening to upset the natural balance of life in this paradise on Earth with the current desire to plough through the Tar Sands seaway to Asia. The powers-that-be want us to believe it's all about jobs (BC Premier Christy Lemire's spurious excuse for all her dubious decisions), but in reality, the short-term gain of this smokescreen will potentially wreak havoc that can only yield long-term environmental pain.

Wilkinson's film cannily places the anger of the Haida Nation over Canada's flagrant violation of Aboriginal Rights within the context of a people who are not only trying to live as traditionally as possible, but in many cases are working towards a reclamation of traditional cultural values which were under Colonial attack for so long. Wilkinson introduces us to Haida elders, activists and even the youth who all provide us with an important perspective - that the people and land are one; they're inextricably linked to the degree that any violation of this connection is not only an infringement upon the Haida, but by extension, all Canadians and frankly, the world. In fairness, Whitey is not only represented as the faceless corporate/governmental evil; Wilkinson also introduces us to those of the pale-skinned persuasion who are equal partners with the Haida in protesting the pillage of this paradise.

The poetic qualities of the film are what ultimately create a love and appreciation for what is both sacred and in need of protection. We are lulled, not into complacency, but the sheer magic these islands provide and the greatest impetus for Canadians and the world at large to reject the illegal, immoral use of these lands to ultimately benefit the very few.

Haida Gwaii: On the Edge of the World might well provide the most persuasive aesthetic argument to save these islands at all costs by placing us into frame of mind which is ultimately the next best thing to actually being there. By the end of the film, we're consumed with deep emotional ties to the land, but most importantly, we're firmly placed in the corner of those who possess the best chance to save our world, those indigenous First Nations who have been able to thrive in spite of the deadly roadblocks placed in front of their right to live freely in their own cultural and environmental milieu.

The Haida are fighters, but their greatest weapon is the land itself. Hats off to Wilkinson for crafting a film which walks tall, yet softly and carries the big stick of our ultimate salvation, the environment itself and, of course, its people, the Haida.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

Haida Gwaii: On the Edge of the World enjoys its World Premier at Hot Docs 2015. For tickets and info, visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.


Fractured Land (2015)
Dir. Damien Gillis, Fiona Rayher

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It's the stuff good movies are made of; WITNESS: a young, handsome, rugged, Mohawk-pated Aboriginal man of the Dene Nation in northeastern British Columbia with a penchant for hunting, trapping and expert tomahawk-throwing is also an impeccably groomed "monkey-suited" lawyer entering his articling year with a desire to focus on Native land rights and environmental issues. He's split between the town and the country - a kind of Clark-Kent-Superman figure who is already on the cusp of shaking up the world of evil corporate and government exploitation.

Oh, and he has a physical "defect", a cleft-palate which is the result of environmental poisoning in his family's gene pool. It's a defect which, like all great movie heroes, causes him considerable and painful rumination upon his childhood and how this "defect" has affected him, but also how it empowers him. Joaquin Phoenix is a natural for the role if it's ever turned into a feature length drama (hopefully directed by Paul Thomas Anderson) or an HBO limited series.

For now, though, it's ALL documentary and ALL real. The aforementioned young man, one Caleb Behn, is the primary subject of Fractured Land by co-directors Damien Gillis and Fiona Rayher and they've deftly focused their interviewing techniques and cameras to capture the kind of complex, charismatic character that screenwriters and directors toil to bring to life on both the page and screen of feature narrative. They allow us to follow Behn in both the wilderness and the city, buffeting his compelling tale with a solid variety of interview subjects - friends, family, locals, elders, big oil honchos and, among others, fellow land claims and environmental activists.

We're privy to the cold, hard facts of the environmental devastation that has already taken place in northeastern BC as well as what's happening now and will, indeed, happen in the future if something is not done. It's a given that the right side of the war will be populated by many Native Canadians, but the film's thematic subtext reveals the overwhelming sense of fractures - not just in the fracked/clearcut and formerly pristine land, but in those Aboriginal people who are direct beneficiaries of the jobs on offer and the economic benefits of environmental exploitation. Even Caleb Behn knows that his opportunities to receive a post secondary education are rooted in the employment his own parents benefitted from.

BC's Liberal Premier, the sickening Christy Lemire with her continually smiling oh-so perky, chirpy cheerleader stance of "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" is currently leading the way for more environmental abuses and playing right into the hands of Canada's psycho Nazi Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Government and Big Money also have deep pockets to fight any challenges to their blatant theft from Canada's First Nations.

Worse yet is the fact - once again - that any benefits of pillaging, raping and murdering the environment are strictly ephemeral. The future, however, could be very bleak for everyone and this is where Caleb Behn could make a difference. In the midst of his gruelling work as an articling lawyer/student, he is a much-sought-after public speaker on environmental/Aboriginal issues and he simply can't seem to say "No" to any invitation for him to publicly denounce the evils of fracking, clear cutting and all other manner of "legal" criminal actions against the Earth's potential for survival.

A very powerful sequence has Caleb visiting New Zealand and meeting with Maori leaders who discuss and then show him first-hand the devastating effects of tracking upon their land. It's potent and empowering, but also deeply moving. Caleb seems even more energized to fight the good fight in Canada.

It's a cool movie that way. Caleb Behn is going to become one of the country's important leaders (if not the world's) and here we get a ground-floor glimpse at the beginnings of what will be a stellar ascension. Looking forward to sequels will, in fact, be looking forward to Planet Earth's health and longevity with Behn leading the charge.

I can hardly wait.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** Three Stars

Fractured Land enjoys its World Premier at Hot Docs 2015. For tickets and info, visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.


Chameleon (2014)
Dir. Ryan Mullins

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Anas Aremeyaw Anas not only seeks to fight crime, he wants to expose it publicly, shame it and then create enough evidence for the evil-doers to be tossed into prison for a good long time. Anas will go to seemingly absurd lengths to "get his man". He's a master of disguise - so much so, that most people, even some who are close to him, don't even really know what he looks like.

Chameleon, indeed!

Oh, and he's not a cop.

Anas Aremeyaw Anas is Ghana's most popular tabloid investigative journalist. Working closely with the police, Anas pursues those who have eluded incarceration. He's not only fighting crime, he's getting the story first-hand for his readers.

The film entertainingly follows Anas at every step of the way during his detailed investigation into a notorious human trafficking ring. We get to see him behind the scenes, his collaboration with trusted members of law enforcement and even his speech (in disguise, of course) to a whole whack of admiring kids (which provides a ton of great tidbits about his past successes).

The movie offers a lovely appetizer case; an abominably deviant abortionist coerces women into having sex with him before he performs the fetal extraction. He claims that his highly skilled prodigious schwance-pronging will open up a woman's passageways in a natural fashion prior to the doc diving in and ripping the blob of living flesh from the abortion-seeker. The guy is a total dirt-bag and seeing him taken out is very pleasurable, but the lead-up to his capture is also nail-bitingly suspenseful due to Anas'"bait", a colleague placed in clear danger to help make the bust.

Though the film provides a tiny bit of tut-tutting about journalistic ethics, this (thankfully) takes a decided backseat to Anas' derring-do. The human trafficking case is especially suspenseful, but director Ryan Mullins captures the bust's aftermath superbly; giving us a very real, telling and melancholy exposure to the conflicted feelings of the traffickers' victims.

This is yet another doc that has feature film drama and/or dramatic TV series potential splashed all over it. I don't think this is a bad thing at all. It'll be fun to see if Chameleon becomes a franchise tentpole.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** Three Stars

Chameleon will have its World Premiere at HOT DOCS 2015. For schedule and tickets, visit the Hot Docs website HERE.


Milk (2015)
Dir. Noemi Weis

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I have to admit that Milk was a huge eye-opener for this fella and might well have a similar effect upon millions upon millions of people. On the surface, the film seems like a fairly standard, straightforward look at motherhood - most notably in the area of breast-feeding. As the film progresses, it is so much more. The picture touches upon areas like midwifery versus traditional medical birth methods, but in many ways this is the springboard needed to jettison us into the shocking and sickening misuse and abuse of women's bodies and by extension, those of their newborn babies.

Once again, corporate interests are promoting extremely unhealthy practises all in the name of profits. What I personally learned was the extent to which the commercial baby food industry held sway over women worldwide - especially in the area of promoting milk supplements instead of good, old fashioned breast milk. Frankly, I just assumed all babies were breast-fed except in rare instances where milk supplements were the only route to take.

Unfortunately the marketing and lobby of corporate pigs is so strong, that kids are being fed powdery packets of poison and chemicals because safety and convenience play such a huge part in the selling of said supplements. One of the more appalling examples of the lengths to which infant formula manufacturers will go to are presented by their purported altruism wherein they donate their product in far-flung reaches of the planet which have been decimated by natural disasters or war. Mothers and their babies get hooked on the crap, and then, the companies having not provided enough donations of formula, force families to pay for more of it in the supermarkets. Some families are so destitute they seek alternate forms of powdered food which end up being much cheaper.

And you know what? As the jingle goes, "Coffee Mate, tastes great, Coffee Mate makes your cup of coffee taste GREAT!"

The last time I checked, synthetic coffee cream powders are not food, but are fed to babies anyway. The marketing of said product does little to dispel the notion that it can be used successfully.

Milk goes well beyond its TV doc roots and delivers a powerful, insightful look at this detestable exploitation and does so across five continents. The scope is wide; as it should be in the case of children and what they're (force) fed during their earliest years.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** Three Stars

Milk will have its World Premiere at HOT DOCS 2015. For schedule and tickets, visit the Hot Docs website HERE.

Leaving Africa (2015)
Dir. Iiris Härmä

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Uganda is a beautiful country and so are its people, but it's been fraught with scourges like the butcher dictator Idi Amin Dada and in recent years, organized religion. The intolerance, repression and mass-manipulation continue to run rampant in the country, but there are many brave people who constantly struggle against it. Certainly, the 2013 Hot Docs presentation of Call Me Kuchu by Katherine Fairfax Wright and Malika Zouhali-Worrall was a numbing, powerful and moving experience which detailed the country's hatred towards the LGBT/GLBT community.

Leaving Africa is a new film which superbly presents its material and story with a combination of filmmaking excellence and compulsively fascinating subject matter. Friendship forged through a mutual appreciation for education is the heart that drives Iiris Härmä's truly great film.

Finland's Riitta Kujala lived in Uganda for 27 years, bringing public health education to the country and nurturing new domestic generations of those who can continue this vital work. When the film begins, she is 67 years old, already past retirement and embarking upon what might be the crowning glory of her legacy and by extension, that of Finland and the Ugandans who carry-on and support her endeavours. She begins an important workshop devoted to gender equality and sexual health aimed squarely at Uganda's religious leaders. Given that so much of the country's difficulties have stemmed from the backwards idiocy perpetrated by many of God's cheerleaders in collaboration with a government too often exhaling a miasma of extreme conservatism, this is not only an action of utmost significance, but a brave one as well.

Riitta's best friend and housemate Kata Othieno is also a chief and equal partner in all of her educational initiatives. She's as big-hearted as they come and visually, her tall, robust, full-figured beauty is a lovely contrast to that of Riitta's lean, slender and seemingly steely - dare I say, "buff" - physical countenance. At age 63, Kata could still have her pick of any litter of hunky suitors, but after an often tempestuous and outright abusive life with men, she's eschewed their place in her life - she's tired of lap-doggish gents hiding their pit bull nature. Education is her constant bedfellow and driving force.

Luckily for Riitta, she not only has a dear friend and colleague in Kata, but a family. Kata's children and grand kids are the genuinely loving progeny she avoided physically bearing herself, especially having remained single her entire life.


And then, there is the work - a life's work that these two dynamic women have shared. One of the more fascinating and delightful elements of this are the workshops for the Ugandan religious leaders. They've come from all over the country and represent a variety of faiths within the purviews of Christian and Muslim persuasions. Huge drawings of female genitalia with a pointer aimed at various parts of the equation meet the (often) open-mouths of the assembled pupils.

Role playing, discourse, questions and answers relating to sexuality and gender are engagingly presented by the filmmaker in a manner that documents the undertaking itself as well as delivering ideas and information that the participants are ultimately eager to learn about. These deftly-captured-and-cut sequences also contribute greatly to film's compelling narrative. (I'd even argue that some of these sequences might well provide a much-needed education to "enlightened" Western gentlemen who see the film, though, for me, as a descendant of sensitive, open-minded, Easter-Rite-influenced Ukrainian Cossacks, it served merely as that which has already been bred in the bone. Sort of.)

Though much of the film feels idyllic, the crushing reality of repression, tribalism and corruption rears its ugly head - threatening to scuttle Riitta and Kata's influential ongoing legacy. Riitta feels the pull of retirement and returning to her native Finland, but none of that is going to achieve fruition if an anonymous letter to the Ugandan government, fraught with horrendous allegations and serving as a virtual poison pen blackmail tome, destroys everything.

Riitta and Kata are going to fight this to the end. It might be bitter, bittersweet or uplifting, but love, friendship and dedication will persevere through whatever tempests brew up in the grand, but oft-repressed nation of Uganda.

The miss-en-scene and cutting that impel Leaving Africa are so potent that director Iiris Härmä's extraordinary film feels like one of the best independent neo-realist dramas I've seen in years - worthy, certainly, of the same pantheon occupied by the likes of the Dardennes Brothers. The difference, of course, is that we're watching a documentary and matched by filmmaking of the highest order.

The Film Corner Rating: ***** Five Stars

Leaving Africa is making its International Premiere at the 2015 edition of the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival. Visit the Hot Docs website for dates, showtimes and tickets by clicking HERE.

Chameleon (2014)
Dir. Ryan Mullins

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Anas Aremeyaw Anas not only seeks to fight crime, he wants to expose it publicly, shame it and then create enough evidence for the evil-doers to be tossed into prison for a good long time. Anas will go to seemingly absurd lengths to "get his man". He's a master of disguise - so much so, that most people, even some who are close to him, don't even really know what he looks like.

Chameleon, indeed!

Oh, and he's not a cop.

Anas Aremeyaw Anas is Ghana's most popular tabloid investigative journalist. Working closely with the police, Anas pursues those who have eluded incarceration. He's not only fighting crime, he's getting the story first-hand for his readers.

The film entertainingly follows Anas at every step of the way during his detailed investigation into a notorious human trafficking ring. We get to see him behind the scenes, his collaboration with trusted members of law enforcement and even his speech (in disguise, of course) to a whole whack of admiring kids (which provides a ton of great tidbits about his past successes).

The movie offers a lovely appetizer case; an abominably deviant abortionist coerces women into having sex with him before he performs the fetal extraction. He claims that his highly skilled prodigious schwance-pronging will open up a woman's passageways in a natural fashion prior to the doc diving in and ripping the blob of living flesh from the abortion-seeker. The guy is a total dirt-bag and seeing him taken out is very pleasurable, but the lead-up to his capture is also nail-bitingly suspenseful due to Anas'"bait", a colleague placed in clear danger to help make the bust.

Though the film provides a tiny bit of tut-tutting about journalistic ethics, this (thankfully) takes a decided backseat to Anas' derring-do. The human trafficking case is especially suspenseful, but director Ryan Mullins captures the bust's aftermath superbly; giving us a very real, telling and melancholy exposure to the conflicted feelings of the traffickers' victims.

This is yet another doc that has feature film drama and/or dramatic TV series potential splashed all over it. I don't think this is a bad thing at all. It'll be fun to see if Chameleon becomes a franchise tentpole.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** Three Stars

Chameleon will have its Canadian Premiere at HOT DOCS 2015. For schedule and tickets, visit the Hot Docs website HERE.

(T)ERROR (2015)
Dir. David Felix Sutcliffe, Lyric R. Cabral

Review By Greg Klymkiw

This is one blistering, nerve-jangling political thriller, not unlike the kind Costa-Gavras (Z, State of Siege) and Alan J. Pakula (The Parallax View) used to make - dark, scary and tingling with urgency, borrowing dollops of ennui from espionage pictures like Martin Ritt's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and serving it up in a tidy, almost neorealist package.

Shariff Torres is an informant for the FBI. His job is to root out terrorists. Well, not just terrorists, but anyone who even sympathizes with them, no matter how remotely. Besides, even if that target is not a terrorist, the FBI could really care less. It's always been very good at building a fake case to nail non-criminals. After all, they need to keep their arrest stats up to ensure the holders of the purse strings that their usefulness as a crime-busting agency is still vital. As such, they'll continue to get the ever-rising carte-blanche support from the government.

It's the American Way. (And Canadians, don't get all smug about this. Our Nazi Prime Minister Stephen Harper is trying to ram through sweeping anti-terrorist powers that might make our neighbours to the South look positively benign.)

Sharif Torres has been an informant for two decades. Since America's spurious "War on Terror" began, his duties are becoming ever-dangerous and the guilt he associates with what he's doing to innocent American Muslims is weighing heavily upon him. He'd almost not care about himself; he's in mighty deep, but he has a young son and in this dirty business, family is how "they" get you. He's going to do one last big job, but how easy will it be to "retire" in relative peace?

The eyes of "terror" are always upon him, but who is more terrifying? The Terrorists (if they genuinely exist at all, at least to the degrees with which they're sought out)? Or the FBI?


Torres decides that the best thing to do is make one last cash grab, but in so doing, betray the corrupt hand that feeds him. He invites a documentary film crew to follow him around and give them unprecedented access to espionage activities as well as the lengths to which the FBI will go to nabbing, charging and incarcerating whomever they choose.

The crew captures all the ins and outs of espionage activity. Sometimes, what transpires is so ludicrous and appalling that you find it hard to believe. In fact, if this were a dramatic thriller, you might actually find yourself saying, "I don't buy this."

But you do. You buy it hook, line and sinker; not just because the filmmaking is so first-rate, but because this is, in fact, a documentary. Torres is a real spy and his victims are real and the filmmakers are very, very real. David Felix Sutliffe (director of the powerful Adama) and his co-filmmaker Lyric R. Cabral are indeed the documentary crew whom Torres has chosen to detail his actions as dictated by the FBI.

I can assure you, there are few documentaries which ever get so close to such subjects and subject matter and watching (T)ERROR is pure edge-of-your-seat suspense.

This is one scary movie, but even more so when the filmmakers decide to also follow the target of Torres's surveillance. "What the fuck?" you might find yourself exclaiming out loud. They're following the target, too?


(T)ERROR is quite unlike any documentary ever made. It's a film about counterterrorism in which the spy and his target become subjects of the filmmakers - up close and personal. After seeing it, I'm still chilled to the bone. Watching it is so creepy, so horrifying, so downright jaw-agape shocking, you might even consider wearing a pair of adult diapers in case you-know-what is scared right out of you.

(T)ERROR receives its International Premiere at Hot Docs 2015. For info visit the Hot Docs website HERE.

Milk (2015)
Dir. Noemi Weis

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I have to admit that Milk was a huge eye-opener for this fella and might well have a similar effect upon millions upon millions of people. On the surface, the film seems like a fairly standard, straightforward look at motherhood - most notably in the area of breast-feeding. As the film progresses, it is so much more. The picture touches upon areas like midwifery versus traditional medical birth methods, but in many ways this is the springboard needed to jettison us into the shocking and sickening misuse and abuse of women's bodies and by extension, those of their newborn babies.

Once again, corporate interests are promoting extremely unhealthy practises all in the name of profits. What I personally learned was the extent to which the commercial baby food industry held sway over women worldwide - especially in the area of promoting milk supplements instead of good, old fashioned breast milk. Frankly, I just assumed all babies were breast-fed except in rare instances where milk supplements were the only route to take.

Unfortunately the marketing and lobby of corporate pigs is so strong, that kids are being fed powdery packets of poison and chemicals because safety and convenience play such a huge part in the selling of said supplements. One of the more appalling examples of the lengths to which infant formula manufacturers will go to are presented by their purported altruism wherein they donate their product in far-flung reaches of the planet which have been decimated by natural disasters or war. Mothers and their babies get hooked on the crap, and then, the companies having not provided enough donations of formula, force families to pay for more of it in the supermarkets. Some families are so destitute they seek alternate forms of powdered food which end up being much cheaper.

And you know what? As the jingle goes, "Coffee Mate, tastes great, Coffee Mate makes your cup of coffee taste GREAT!"

The last time I checked, synthetic coffee cream powders are not food, but are fed to babies anyway. The marketing of said product does little to dispel the notion that it can be used successfully.

Milk goes well beyond its TV doc roots and delivers a powerful, insightful look at this detestable exploitation and does so across five continents. The scope is wide; as it should be in the case of children and what they're (force) fed during their earliest years.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** Three Stars

Milk will have its World Premiere at HOT DOCS 2015. For schedule and tickets, visit the Hot Docs website HERE.

Fractured Land (2015)
Dir. Damien Gillis, Fiona Rayher

Review By Greg Klymkiw

It's the stuff good movies are made of; WITNESS: a young, handsome, rugged, Mohawk-pated Aboriginal man of the Dene Nation in northeastern British Columbia with a penchant for hunting, trapping and expert tomahawk-throwing is also an impeccably groomed "monkey-suited" lawyer entering his articling year with a desire to focus on Native land rights and environmental issues. He's split between the town and the country - a kind of Clark-Kent-Superman figure who is already on the cusp of shaking up the world of evil corporate and government exploitation.

Oh, and he has a physical "defect", a cleft-palate which is the result of environmental poisoning in his family's gene pool. It's a defect which, like all great movie heroes, causes him considerable and painful rumination upon his childhood and how this "defect" has affected him, but also how it empowers him. Joaquin Phoenix is a natural for the role if it's ever turned into a feature length drama (hopefully directed by Paul Thomas Anderson) or an HBO limited series.

For now, though, it's ALL documentary and ALL real. The aforementioned young man, one Caleb Behn, is the primary subject of Fractured Land by co-directors Damien Gillis and Fiona Rayher and they've deftly focused their interviewing techniques and cameras to capture the kind of complex, charismatic character that screenwriters and directors toil to bring to life on both the page and screen of feature narrative. They allow us to follow Behn in both the wilderness and the city, buffeting his compelling tale with a solid variety of interview subjects - friends, family, locals, elders, big oil honchos and, among others, fellow land claims and environmental activists.

We're privy to the cold, hard facts of the environmental devastation that has already taken place in northeastern BC as well as what's happening now and will, indeed, happen in the future if something is not done. It's a given that the right side of the war will be populated by many Native Canadians, but the film's thematic subtext reveals the overwhelming sense of fractures - not just in the fracked/clearcut and formerly pristine land, but in those Aboriginal people who are direct beneficiaries of the jobs on offer and the economic benefits of environmental exploitation. Even Caleb Behn knows that his opportunities to receive a post secondary education are rooted in the employment his own parents benefitted from.

BC's Liberal Premier, the sickening Christy Lemire with her continually smiling oh-so perky, chirpy cheerleader stance of "Jobs, Jobs, Jobs" is currently leading the way for more environmental abuses and playing right into the hands of Canada's psycho Nazi Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Government and Big Money also have deep pockets to fight any challenges to their blatant theft from Canada's First Nations.

Worse yet is the fact - once again - that any benefits of pillaging, raping and murdering the environment are strictly ephemeral. The future, however, could be very bleak for everyone and this is where Caleb Behn could make a difference. In the midst of his gruelling work as an articling lawyer/student, he is a much-sought-after public speaker on environmental/Aboriginal issues and he simply can't seem to say "No" to any invitation for him to publicly denounce the evils of fracking, clear cutting and all other manner of "legal" criminal actions against the Earth's potential for survival.

A very powerful sequence has Caleb visiting New Zealand and meeting with Maori leaders who discuss and then show him first-hand the devastating effects of tracking upon their land. It's potent and empowering, but also deeply moving. Caleb seems even more energized to fight the good fight in Canada.

It's a cool movie that way. Caleb Behn is going to become one of the country's important leaders (if not the world's) and here we get a ground-floor glimpse at the beginnings of what will be a stellar ascension. Looking forward to sequels will, in fact, be looking forward to Planet Earth's health and longevity with Behn leading the charge.

I can hardly wait.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** Three Stars

Fractured Land enjoys its World Premier at Hot Docs 2015. For tickets and info, visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.

All The Time In The World (2014)
Dir. Suzanne Crocker

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A happy, progressive family from Dawson City realize that the stress of modern living is wreaking havoc with their quality of life and creating barriers between honest, real communication in their home. They do what many dream about, but never do - they pack their bags with kids, cat and dog in tow and hightail it up north to the most isolated reaches of the Yukon to live for a year completely off-grid. Mom (Director, Producer and Cinematographer Suzanne Crocker) also decided to document the family's journey and given how much old settler-style toil the family endures (especially during the first third of the picture), she probably deserves some manner of SuperMom Oblation to have made a movie and carried on like Honest Abe Lincoln's Mom must have done in that old log cabin.

Happily, we don't spend too much time in the city, nor are we subjected to what must have been a seeming lifetime of rumination, then planning and finally getting everything ready that they're going to need to live on in the middle of nowhere - a place bereft of any means to communicate with the outside world. We get just enough of the aforementioned so we can get to the good stuff.

And wow! What good stuff! We get to experience the utter drudgery of carting what seems like half the contents of a storage locker warehouse from their boat up to the cabin deep in the forest, building a humungous above-ground storage facility for their food, rigging a platform to pull their boat onto dry ground for the winter and a whole whack of other necessary duties to get themselves set up.

I was especially delighted to note that the family brought along archery gear, big sharp blades and firearms. I know from experience that the wilderness can be home to bears, wolves, coyotes and perhaps, most menacing of all, inbred country cousins. My fingers were crossed. All good storytellers know you don't introduce weaponry into your yarn without making good use of them.

The film has a unique three-act structure which naturally follows the events of the family's journey, but clearly much effort and thought has been placed into evoking more than mere narrative beats. What the film provides us with is the actual tone and almost poetic nature of this lifestyle. The family have no phones, no computers, no radios, no television sets, no walks, no CBs and perhaps most importantly, no clocks of any kind. The sense of time having no meaning is something the film beautifully evokes. We get to experience genuine conversations, the simple pleasures of reading aloud, preparing all the food from scratch, chopping firewood (one of my personal favourites - NOT!) and endlessly hauling buckets of water up and down a steep, rugged hill (double NOT on this for me).


There's fun, of course: skating on rivers, ice-sledding, playing in the snow, building a huge tent which gets covered with snow (becoming a cool clubhouse/fort) and even celebrating events like Halloween and Christmas in ways unique to the isolated setting. There's also a real sense that the family is in on stuff together - the kids often present very cool ideas and contributions to their lifestyle. There's danger, too. (No, the inbred country cousins haven't shown up yet.) There's a humungous snow storm and Dad's out in the wilds on his own, thus injecting a few beats of genuine tension.

What the film does not show (or chooses not to show) is the kind of nasty, verbal sparring that can rear its ugly head when family or friends are afflicted with cabin fever. I longed, with baited-breath for some Edward Albee or Eugene O'Neill-like acrimony - Mom and Dad sloshing back several beakers of rotgut then hurling barbs of verbal abuse at each other while the children cower in the corner.

Oh well, they seem like nice people. I cannot fault them for that.

Finally, what really hits home (at least for me) is the silence and then realizing, life in the middle of nowhere is NEVER silent, but that the sounds of the natural world are not unlike a gorgeous symphony orchestra. I personally know quite a bit about living off-grid (because I indeed do) and certainly found much in the film I was able to connect with, but even I couldn't do what this family did. They're not simply off-grid for most of the picture's running time, they might as well be off the planet. Me, I need my shortwave radio to listen to crazy survivalists and evangelists barking madly into the deep night and while I'm perfectly adept at chopping wood, I much prefer getting one of the locals to dump a few cord of wood every six months or so. I do, however, enjoy stacking it.

Much to my consternation, the inbred country cousins never do show up. Damn! I harboured images of Dad blowing the grizzled, drooling psychopaths away while the kids got into the action with bows, arrows, knifes and axes. (Mom would be filming all this, of course.) I was ready to throw in the towel when the reality of this hit me. However, an unexpected visitor DOES show up and yes, the gun must be fired.

This made me happy. Then again, don't mind me. As James Cagney would always say in Raoul Walsh's Strawberry Blonde, "It's just the kind of hairpin I am."

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** Three Stars

All The Time In The World will have its Toronto Premiere at HOT DOCS 2015. For schedule and tickets, visit the Hot Docs website HERE.

Haida Gwaii: On the Edge of the World (2015)
Dir. Charles Wilkinson
Prd. Tina Schliessler

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Some of the most important environmental documentaries being made in the world include the work of Canadian director Charles Wilkinson who knocked us on our collective butts with his powerful energy-consumption doc Peace Out and his potent, strangely uplifting Oil Sands Karaoke, that focused upon the face of humanity amidst the horrific environmental exploitation in the Alberta Tar Sands. His new film, Haida Gwaii: On the Edge of the World, comprises the third of what feels like an unofficial trilogy (which one hopes will continue well beyond its current trinity).

On one hand, the current picture essentially supersedes Wilkinson's previous work with the film's delicate blend of cold, hard facts which, we should all be actively concerned about and, on the other paw, a very gentle (deceptively so) tone poem to one of the greatest natural treasures of the world. Officially known as the Queen Charlotte islands, this gorgeous archipelago in northern British Columbia (BC) comprises about 150 islands and is home to a varied and important population of flora and fauna - vital to the area itself, but also to the world at large.

The Haida Gwaii, which literally translates as "Islands of the Haida people" was traditionally the domain of this great aboriginal nation who prospered here for over 10,000 years until Colonialism decimated the population through both disease and, of course, Canada's uniquely polite form of genocide (both literal and cultural, the latter of which has always been the big stick Whitey calls "assimilation"). Today, however, the dominant population of the Haida Gwaii are the indigenous people of the island and surely they have the right to self-determination. In fact, they do have that right, only it is continually ignored and/or bamboozled by Canadian government bureaucracy.

Treaties in particular continue to be broken and/or ignored under the aegis of Canada's belief that all lands, even if they belong to Aboriginal Nations, are Crown Lands and as such, can be dealt with in any cavalier fashion the government chooses - dispensing, willy-nilly, all manner of dispensation to corporate rapists of the environment. One of Canada's more appalling back-handed acknowledgments of Aboriginal Rights in the Haida Gwaii has been to convert a huge chunk of land not destroyed by clearcut logging and other crimes against the environment into a massive national park. Yes, this protects the land (supposedly in perpetuity) but the park is essentially "owned" and administered by the "Crown" as opposed to those who really own it, the Haida Nation. It's the Government of Canada's God-like assumption that with one hand it giveth and with the other taketh, all in the schizophrenic snow job to make it seem like they respect the First Nations (and by extension, the environment), when in reality, it's to feather the nests of Big Money (and by extension, the on-the-take pockets of politicians).

Ownership of these lands seems almost preposterous to one of the film's subjects. Allan Wilson, the Haida hereditary Chief makes the astute observation: "We care for the land here, but we don't own the Animal Kingdom, it's a part of us, it's family. I kinda think that's the way it is because everything has its part and every part has its value and every value contributes to our life."

The Government of Canada, however, has no values save for those which fill the pockets of politicians' rich friends, and of course, themselves.

Wilkinson's film contains a plethora of alarming facts with respect to this. Two thirds of the Haida Gwaii's forests have been decimated by illegal logging and billions of dollars of profits from this has been dispersed into the pockets of the very few. Yes, Haida people had jobs in logging, but not to the tune of billions of dollars. Besides, in recent years, the jobs issue is a public relations smokescreen since mechanization in the logging industry has swallowed up most of the available jobs. Land and resources are sucked dry, but nothing comes back to the Haida.

Even more sickening is that Canada's Federal Nazi Party (aka The Conservatives), in cahoots with corporate oil interests and the Fascist Party of BC (aka The Liberal Party of BC, aka Really Not Much Different Than The Conservatives Party) are all threatening to upset the natural balance of life in this paradise on Earth with the current desire to plough through the Tar Sands seaway to Asia. The powers-that-be want us to believe it's all about jobs (BC Premier Christy Lemire's spurious excuse for all her dubious decisions), but in reality, the short-term gain of this smokescreen will potentially wreak havoc that can only yield long-term environmental pain.

What the world needs to know, what it needs to wake up to is that First Nations people all over the world have lived with a sustainable relationship to the environment for millennia. This is certainly the case with the Haida. Not that Herr Harper and his cronies at the federal and provincial level care. They and their rich buddies don't need to care. The government has forgotten that it is the People - all people. Still, the rape of the Haida Gwaii is ongoing. At one point, it's revealed that in addition to pipelines, there are plans afoot for huge tanker ships to traverse along the shorelines which are in extremely rough, rocky waters. (Way to go Government and Big Business! Morons!) Even the slightest spill - clearly an inevitability - will contaminate a huge part of the ecosystem and result in both people and animals eating poison food. Then again, why should Harper and his gang of Nazis and Fascists care?

Wilkinson's film cannily places the anger of the Haida Nation over Canada's flagrant violation of Aboriginal Rights within the context of a people who are not only trying to live as traditionally as possible, but in many cases are working towards a reclamation of traditional cultural values which were under Colonial attack for so long. Wilkinson introduces us to Haida elders, activists and even the youth who all provide us with an important perspective - that the people and land are one; they're inextricably linked to the degree that any violation of this connection is not only an infringement upon the Haida, but by extension, all Canadians and frankly, the world. In fairness, Whitey is not only represented as the faceless corporate/governmental evil; Wilkinson also introduces us to those of the pale-skinned persuasion who are equal partners with the Haida in protesting the pillage of this paradise.

The poetic qualities of the film are what ultimately create a love and appreciation for what is both sacred and in need of protection. We are lulled, not into complacency, but the sheer magic these islands provide and the greatest impetus for Canadians and the world at large to reject the illegal, immoral use of these lands to ultimately benefit the very few.

Haida Gwaii: On the Edge of the World might well provide the most persuasive aesthetic argument to save these islands at all costs by placing us into frame of mind which is ultimately the next best thing to actually being there. By the end of the film, we're consumed with deep emotional ties to the land, but most importantly, we're firmly placed in the corner of those who possess the best chance to save our world, those indigenous First Nations who have been able to thrive in spite of the deadly roadblocks placed in front of their right to live freely in their own cultural and environmental milieu.

The Haida are fighters, but their greatest weapon is the land itself. Hats off to Wilkinson for crafting a film which walks tall, yet softly and carries the big stick of our ultimate salvation, the environment itself and, of course, its people, the Haida.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

Haida Gwaii: On the Edge of the World enjoys its World Premier at Hot Docs 2015. For tickets and info, visit the festival's website by clicking HERE.

Censored Voices (2015)
Dir. Mor Loushy

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Censored Voices might be one of the most profound anti-war films made in recent years. Though the backdrop is the 1967 Arab–Israeli Six Day War, the picture brilliantly transcends all contemporary controversies, acting simply and poetically as a testament to the madness of all war and the reality that it's the "people" who suffer as much, if not more than the armed forces.

A few weeks after the war, writers Amos Oz and Avraham Shapira conducted a series of interviews (on reel-to-reel tape) with numerous Israeli soldiers. These tapes were suppressed and/or heavily redacted by the Israeli government for over 40 years until filmmaker Mor Loushy accessed the unexpurgated audio to listen intently to these young men, to hear their thoughts on what they'd just been through.

Blending news footage, archival materials and using the audio tapes as narrators, Loushy provides a shocking, surprising and deeply moving experience. Tracking down some of the original interviewees, all now old men, Loushy combines the aforementioned with gorgeously lit/composed shots of these former soldiers - listening silently to their own voices from 1967. Their voices from back then, reveal the unexpected. Their faces reveal all.


This profoundly and decisively victorious war is how Israel laid claim to Gaza, the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula and the West Bank. Decimating the enemy's military forces was a veritable cakewalk, but the real war endured by the Israeli soldiers turned out to be, at least for many of them, a much more haunting, tragic and frustrating experience than the fields of battle.

In the historic interviews, we hear men - young men some 40+ years ago - who are deeply saddened, confused, conflicted, disappointed, if not outright shocked that they found themselves at war with civilians. It's as if they were front-line pawns, but not as cannon fodder as so many young soldiers in war are. While the trauma is still fresh in their youthful minds, we hear devastating stories of non-military personnel being gunned down, beaten, tortured, corralled and forced to leave their homes.

The soldiers, it seemed, were no longer fighting-men, but glorified cattle herders.

In reality, they were not soldiers, they were occupiers.


The men are expected to rejoice over the return of many historical places to Israel, but they can't. They are privy to the suffering of innocent people, even forced to be the instruments of the dehumanizing process of destabilizing and forcing tens of thousands of people to flee and become refugees.

As one of the men states, this has nothing to do with God and/or The Torah. These are, after all, physical structures which have been won. There's nothing in Judaic culture about the holiness of a place. It's the human spirit and God that are Holy.


So many of these stories are heartbreakers - especially since director Moushy leads us into the film with the happy, hopeful sense of statehood and the determination of a people to reclaim what was once theirs so many millennia ago. The skill, training and superiority of the Israeli armed forces is simply a forgone conclusion. The strategy and surprise Israel employed is also a thing of beauty (albeit a terrible beauty). In fact, we get a sense that the war is a masterstroke of military genius and might. It's all the shining stuff of good, old fashioned boys' adventure. The qualities of the sublime dissipate quickly, however.

The questions many of the men ask do indeed resonate in a contemporary context. They wonder, so long ago, how a nation (Israel) constantly under attack, surrounded by enemy states can ever really and truly be a nation? Alternately, others feel that a nation which must occupy in a kind of perpetuity can also never truly be a nation.

Hearing these sweet, young men facing such complex moral dilemmas so soon after a victory they should be celebrating, forces them (and us) to confront realities that have always been at the core of war. To hear these voices juxtaposed with actual footage from the period, but most evocatively, against the silent faces of the old men who listen to the sound of their own voices has a strong element of poetic tragedy coursing through the entire film.


Though the current conflicts between Israel and Palestine can't be ignored in the context of Censored Voices, Loushy seems far more interested in capturing a reality that ultimately faces all of us upon realizing that a Six Day War, a 60-day war or a six-year war - at any time, any where - is still war and that the true casualties of war are the innocent on both sides of the equation.

Hearing the story of Arab men - civilians, no less - standing with their hands raised in the hot sun for hours on end would be despairing enough, but to hear that they've been filling their shoes with their own urine in order to have something to drink, is infused with the kind of sorrow we, as an audience, can never forget. Clearly, the soldiers don't forget this either, for when these same Arab men, learning they'll be given fresh, cool water then collapse in front of the soldiers, kissing their feet in gratitude as they also retch and vomit upon the soldiers' boots, grinds our collective faces into the realities of both war and nationhood.

Occupation is not nationhood. It's merely the residual blight of war - one in which we are all guilty of, and as such, a party to the inherent shame of it all.

Censored Voices enjoys its Canadian Premiere at Hot Docs 2015. For info visit the Hot Docs website HERE.

Missing People (2015)
Dir. David Shapiro

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The art of Roy Ferdinand is bathed in the blood, sweat, pain and fears of the New Orleans mean streets. It pulsates with life (and yes, death). His rich, crazily skewed work is so vital, vibrant and unique that he'd be a natural for any obsessive to get obsessed over. Martina Batan is just such a person. She has a huge collection of Ferdinand's art in addition to a few of his personal effects; nothing too odd, but the smelly socks balled up in a pair of boots might not be everyone's first choice to tingle the olfactory nerves.

On one hand, her obsession makes sense. She is, after all, the director of one of the coolest galleries in Manhattan. Ronald Feldman Fine Arts has hosted more than its fair share of astonishingly original work, so her taste in all things artistic is top of the line.

Martina, does have other obsessions, though. She doesn't sleep much and most nights she's up past the witching hour constructing a massive Lego sculpture in her living room, a project she's been working on for years and which, she admits, seemingly has no end in sight.

I can accept that.

However, she has one other obsession. Well, perhaps not so much an obsession, but rather, a mystery which has haunted her for over 35 years. Her little brother Jeffrey was brutally murdered and the case has remained unsolved all these years. There's been no closure on this horrific loss and if anything, her sleeplessness, Lego construction and almost mad love for Roy Ferdinand's brutal depictions of the New Orleans underbelly might well be tied to the tragedy which plagues her.

She's reached a breaking point and hires a private detective to investigate her brother's murder.


As the amiable gumshoe goes about his business, Martina heads down to the Big Easy to track down a number of Ferdinand artworks she's yet to lay eyes upon herself. She's also determined to meet with Ferdinand's surviving family members to get more insight into what made him tick.

Yes, Ferdinand is dead and somehow, these are all pieces of a deeply disturbing and ever-complex puzzle which director David Shapiro follows as closely and obsessively with his lens as Martina now delves even deeper into the world of an artist whose unflinching eye for violence on the filthy, grim pavement of New Orleans mysteriously parallels her own baby brother's brutal end on the equally mean streets of Queens.

Violence has touched Martina and followed her her whole life. The artist she loves more than any other was also irrevocably tainted with the ruthless, vicious barbarity of a world where life is as cheap as it is precious. Somehow, this must all converge. The journey she allows us to take with her is both harrowing and moving. It's an odyssey to find answers, and in so doing, we are faced with terrible truths which also betray the deepest depths of humanity.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

Missing People has its World Premiere at Hot Docs 2015. For info click HERE

A Sinner in Mecca (2015)
Dir. Parvez Sharma

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I think filmmaker Parvez Sharma (A Jihad for Love) wins the grand prize, hands-down, for making one of the bravest films of this or any other year. Sharma is a deeply devout Muslim and required, as all able-bodied Muslims are, to make the pilgrimage to Mecca (The Hajj) in Saudi Arabia at least once in his life.

The time for him is now. He needs to affirm his faith by making this Holy journey, but he also needs to address a deeply personal conundrum of conscience. Has he been a good Muslim? Is he a good Muslim? Can he continue to be a good Muslim?

Sharma, you see, is gay.

Virtually all organized religions have a problem with homosexuality, though some more than others. It's probably safe to say that Islam falls into the more category. Uh, like, big-time more. Not only will Sharma embark upon this deeply spiritual odyssey, but it will be extremely dangerous to do so. It might well rival that of Homer's Odysseus, only in this case the Cyclops Polyphemus, the man-eating Laestrygonians and six-headed Scylla will seem tame in comparison to the deeply fundamentalist members of Sharma's faith.

He might not come back at all.


Here's the deal on the "not coming back at all" part of the equation.

First and foremost:

Hello!

Sharma is GAY!

In Saudia Arabia this is a crime and the penalties include corporal AND capital punishment.

Secondly, he is going to film the experience.

Uh, it's utterly, absolutely, completely FORBIDDEN to shoot anywhere in the Holy city of Makkah (Mecca).

This is simple math here, folks.

The results of the equation seem so daunting and yet, one gets the sense from the film that Sharma is even more convinced that this is something he must do.


The bulk of the film is indeed a profoundly moving and alternately, terrifying experience. It's also imbued with the kind of Cecil B. DeMille-like sweep, only with the "real thing" on view - not thousands of extras, nor grand, spectacular make-believe sets, but real people and real locations. Sharma takes us deep into Masjid al-Haramthe an 88-acre mosque which contains the Kaaba, a massive cube-like structure said to have been built over 2000 years before Christ by Ibrahim and Ismael.

We witness, from afar, and then right in the midst of it, tens upon tens upon tens of thousands of the faithful as they circle the Kaaba, protected by armed guards, in order to get close enough to touch it for absolution. This is surely some of the most astounding footage you'll ever see. As far as I can tell, no film has ever been close enough to the Kaaba to photograph it in all its glory. It's also plenty suspenseful since at anytime, Sharma risks being beaten, arrested and/or killed for photographing the proceedings and/or being gay, but also, because the mass of constantly moving human flesh is, in and of itself, extremely dangerous. At one point, we're even privy to what appears to be a violent stampede.


Sharma takes us, step-by-step through every single challenge of the pilgrimage: the running of the Saee (to pay homage to Hajjar, the mother of Ismail), a whole day under the blistering sun upon the plains of Arafat (to pray for forgiveness), an entire night on the plain of Muzdalifah (to collect stones) and eventually to enter the Jamrat in order to hurl stones at the massive columns representing Satan.

The film also presents a sense of outrage and even ironic humour as we bear witness to the grotesque accoutrements imposed upon this holy site by the idiot ruling families of Saudi like toilets replacing the original home of Muhammad and his first wife, the endless skyscrapers (including a garish clock tower) and - I KID YOU NOT - the MALL OF MECCA. Yes, a massive shopping mall; perhaps the largest in the world.

What's truly astonishing about Sharma's film is not just this amazing footage, but that his journey is so damn moving and inspirational. He obviously lived to tell the tale, for which we all must be grateful for, but for some of us, religious or not, Muslim or not, his trip to Mecca has the power to touch us well beyond the bravery and aesthetic of the film, but affect an audience on a deeply spiritual level.

This is what makes cinema so special. We can live vicariously through Sharma's experience, but in so doing we are also susceptible to being imbued (albeit mediated) with the holiness of Allah, or God, or whatever higher power we acknowledge.

Note: Sharma and his film have already been denounced and he has received death threats. This has forced the Hot Docs festival to provide Sharma with bodyguards. It's ludicrous. I can think, especially in the current climate of intolerance towards Muslim people, of no better way to represent Islam to all of us.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

A Sinner in Mecca has its World Premiere at Hot Docs 2015. For info click HERE

Shoulder the Lion (2014)
Dir. Erinnisse Rebisz, Patryk Rebisz

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Loss takes many forms, but the scariest thing for me would be to lose a part of myself that would prevent me from doing what I love to do more than any other thing in the world, the part of my being that essentially defines me. Shoulder the Lion focuses upon three people - artists - who have all lost parts of themselves which would, to most "normal" people keep them from experiencing life to its fullest.

Graham Sharpe was a musician on the cusp of greatness when the horrific, debilitating tinnitus reared its ugly head and caused him severe pain and the almost endless sound of ringing and buzzing in his ears. Playing live in a band became yesterday's new for him and he's had to spend most of his life learning to live with this incurable affliction. He still plays, but he can only do so for himself and by himself. What he does beyond this, though, is extraordinary and he's become the the senior producer of a massive music festival.

We meet Katie Dallam, the woman who was the real-life inspiration for Clint Eastwood's film Million Dollar Baby. During Katie's first professional boxing match, she took hundreds of blows to her body, a good portion of which were to her head. The result was severe brain damage and the need to relearn even the simplest things, never mind that which she was ultimately placed on this earth to do. Katie is a painter and sculptor. In her strange, dream-like world of memory loss, she manages to keep making art.

Alice Wingwall is a photographer. She started to go blind. Now, with virtual darkness and occasional flashes of light in her line of non-sight, she continues to take photographs - extraordinary work based on her instincts, her prowess with cameras and a tiny bit of verbal direction from friends (but rooted in her own needs and desires to express herself).

Shoulder the Lion is hugely inspirational, but it's not like it's some stereotypical disease of the week documentary about brave people overcoming their afflictions to find new meaning in their lives. These are people who brilliantly embrace their afflictions. This is not about overcoming them, but finding new dimensions in the hearts, minds and artistry to create work that pushes all the boundaries of their chosen mediums.

Directors Erinnisse Rebisz and Patryk Rebisz bring the kind of filmmaking artistry to this astonishing triptych of tales which not only captures the vital essence of these three people and their art, but does so with the highest level of aesthetic command of the medium of cinema to render narrative, character, documentation of creation and most of all, to do it with astonishing visuals and moments of genuine film poetry.

Loss has seldom seemed so elevating. The film takes us to higher planes, just as its subjects soar to stellar limits on the steam of their own inner flames.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

Shoulder the Lion Premieres Internationally @ Hot Docs 2015. Further info click HERE.


3 Still Standing (2014)
Dir. Robert Campos, Donna LoCicero
Starring: Will Durst, Larry "Bubbles" Brown, Johnny Steele, Robin Williams, Dana Carvey, Paula Poundstone

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If one was to deign the existence of an official capital of standup comedy, San Francisco during the 1980s was it. Anyone with even the remotest talent in this uniquely American art form ventured forth to this great, vibrant city to ply their trade, but only the very best prospered. The best of the best, like, for example, the late Robin Williams were able to utilize the 'Frisco stomping grounds as a springboard to stardom, if not, superstardom.

Robert Campos and Donna LoCicero provide an extremely entertaining and informative history of this hotbed of laughs, though like the best humour, good cinema provides a deeper context and so it is with their feature documentary 3 Still Standing. The tale is told through the exceptionally talented comics Will Durst, Larry "Bubbles" Brown and Johnny Steele. None of these guys have become household names, but long after the well ran dry in San Francisco's almost insanely prolific comedy club scene, these three brilliant funny men have continued to live and work in the majestic, glorious "City by the Bay".

There's clearly a sense of loss and melancholy which runs through the picture. We get a cornucopia of period comedy footage which details the onstage routines of comics from the period and our three subjects acquit themselves astoundingly with all the bonafide superstars-to-be. Seeing contemporary footage of the men, they still do. These guys are hilarious - especially, to my taste, Larry "Bubbles" Brown who seems completely well-equipped to have achieved the heights afforded to so many others beyond this scene.

What we get within this amazing historical view of comedy is the story of a place which demanded the ongoing presence of America's best comedians, but now stands as one great city, but one without the same buzz, if not outright mania for standup. Our three protagonists are pretty much all that's left from that era, but they are solidly working comics,

There's also a massive elephant in the china shop of the film's more doleful qualities and it's the lovely, loving presence of one of the greatest comic talents of all time. The film is richly buttressed by contemporary interviews with comics who did indeed move beyond the localized parameters of the city: Paula Poundstone, Dana Carvey and the late Robin Williams. The gleam of admiration in Williams's eyes for the 3 comedians still standing is genuine.

Poundstone, Carvey and Williams have great stories about the "old days", but also seem genuinely beholden to the comedy genius of Durst, Brown and Steele. While the film doesn't overtly attempt to analyze what made some stars, and others not, there's plenty of material on view for us to make our own assumptions. That said, it doesn't seem to matter. Stardom is an elusive, unexplainable entity and what counts is how brilliant the three working comics actually are (and the filmmakers give us plenty of their comedy).

There is, however, a mournful quality to the film, especially Williams's appearances. Those glints of admiration in his eyes occasionally seem distant and somewhat infused with regret. I've watched these sequence a few times and I'm convinced I'm not finding it because I feel the reality of us losing him, but because there's a genuine wistfulness in how he talks about those days that will, I suspect, move many to tears.

Ultimately though, we're always brought back to Durst, Brown and Steele. If anything, Campos and LoCicero's film might be enough to bring these guys greater notoriety. Stardom is a bitch-goddess; she giveth and she taketh away. I've got my fingers crossed that she's going to giveth to these guys, thanks to this film.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½ 3 and-a-half Stars

3 Still Standing Premieres Internationally @ Hot Docs 2015. Further info click HERE.


On Her Own (2015)
Dir. Morgan Schmidt-Feng

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The family farm has long been under attack in America, but oft-times we're privy to tales of various financial crises or corporate pigs like Monsanto wreaking havoc with this venerable tradition and lifestyle. However, there are still many farms that continue to thrive and provide a decent living for agricultural families and On Her Own is a film which focuses on just such a situation - at least at first.

When we meet our subjects, there are certainly all the usual problems or running a farm; stuff breaks down and has to be replaced, cash flow is not always steady and personalities amongst the family occasionally clash. Nancy Preblich and her sister are the youngest adults (in addition to the sister's husband) who work the farm which has been in the family for five generations. Though Mom and Dad are getting on in years, they're both seemingly spry and, in addition to their grandkids from Nancy's sister, all contribute to the daily maintenance of the farm.

Director Morgan Schmidt-Feng focuses in a straight-forward direct cinema fashion upon all the usual farm activities which, in this case, are primarily livestock-centred. What seems like a film that begins one way (a family maintaining a generations-old way of life), morphs into something else altogether. This is not so much the result of an exigency of production, but rather the exigencies of life.

In a very short space of time, Mom and Dad pass away, leaving the farm activities to the sisters. The central conflict arises when Nancy's sister and her own family reveal a flagging commitment to working the farm. Nancy faces the daunting task of running the family business all on her own steam.

Here we're faced with the potentially sad realities of family farms. What happens when there's only one person left to tackle the myriad of chores once handled by so many? The film provides us with the cold, hard palpability of such a situation and adds to the important cinematic legacy of documentaries detailing this fading tradition.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3 Stars

On Her Own Premieres Internationally @ Hot Docs 2015. Further info click HERE.


Warriors from the North (2015)
Dir. Søren Steen Jespersen, Nasib Farah

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Watching a father who has lost his son to death is bad enough, but the most agonizing aspect of Warriors from the North is seeing a father fret about his son who could die any second, any minute of any day. The picture focuses upon three Muslim friends, all born in Denmark after their Somalian parents had fled their country of birth for a better life - not so much for themselves, but for their children.

Alas, the ennui of feeling like strangers in their own land renders the lads susceptible to being taken in by radical extremists. All three boys join the militant Islamic group Al-Shabab and leave their comfortable lives in Europe behind to devote themselves to serving as potential suicide bombers. It's the father of one of the three whom we follow closest of all.

Everyday the father prays and worries about his son. He is endlessly on the telephone with friends and relatives in Somalia and trying desperately to connect with the child he loves so dearly.

While the film provides many fascinating details about how groups like Al-Shabab reel in their victims for the cause, the actions and motives of these young men still seem as alien to us as they appear to be for the desperate Dad. All he wants is his son to come to his senses, come back home and to live.

In these horrible days of war and uncertainty, it's not too much to ask.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3 Stars

Warriors from the North North American Premiere - Hot Docs 2015. Further info click HERE.

Listen To Me Marlon (2015)
Dir. Stevan Riley

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Superlatives declaring something's the best are a dime a dozen. I've made more than a few in my lifetime, but one I'll affix a substantially greater value to is this: We will never see an actor as great as Marlon Brando. Ever. Nobody can touch the guy. When he's been at his laziest, he's still managed to blow the best work away like so many puffs on the three little pigs' houses - including the one made of brick. When he's been at his best, nobody, but nobody can catch up. He was always ahead of the rest.

Listen To Me Marlon is as great a filmed biographical portrait of Brando as we could ever imagine. During his life, he recorded hundreds upon hundreds of hours of audio tape, none of it having ever been heard before. Director Stevan Riley has poured over this wealth of material and assembled it with an astonishing collection of film clips, home movies, archival footage and a few interview sequences; giving us the closest we'll get to a living, breathing autobiography of the man himself.

Brando's tapes include his deepest thoughts and musings, but also include an endless number of self-hypnosis tapes. The man knew how to use his voice - so much so he was able to use it, lay it down upon reel-to-reel and listen to those mellifluous tones and words as a form of self-therapy. Using a blend of stock footage, including makeup tests and other behind-the-scenes footage which show Brando as himself, often at his moat vulnerable, we hear him speak slowly, rhythmically and ever-so hypnotically:

"Now let your mind drift back, way back in time, to a time when you were very young, when you used to put on your clothes, very early in the morning, when everyone was sleeping. Walk down the sidewalk and sit underneath that big elm tree back in Omaha, with the wind blowing the light, the shadow of leaves. It is like a wonderful soft dream, that soft wind calling. That's a wind that you can trust. You are the memories."

And what memories we get. Blending a variety of related media to certain topics, we're afforded the stuff of human drama in ways which inform Brando's genius, but also betray everything which haunts him as a person and artist. For example, Brando reveals on tape the sad memories of his mean, absent father and his tender, loving mother and the booze that drove his old man to pummel everything and everyone around him, and the same booze that his Mom used to ease the pain until finally, she had the courage to leave and the cowardice to abandon her child.

These are, of course, incredibly heartbreaking words, but even more so when director Riley cuts in a rare piece of news footage involving Brando in his hotel room in the hours before he'd win his Academy Award for On the Waterfront and his father, old and hard, sitting in an armchair, responds to the reporter's query as to whether he was proud of his son. Chillingly, he says: "As an actor, no. As a man, yes."

The elder Brando goes on to reveal his thoughts about Marlon's childhood and the camera picks up the son's incredulous look as his father talks. When the reporter asks Marlon if he'd care to defend himself, he waves it off and declares he could beat his father with one hand tied behind his back. Brando's tapes then sadly reveal the public act he and his Dad engaged in - a loving father and adoring son. "It was a lot of hypocrisy," says Brando. "When what you are as a child is unwanted then you look for an identity that's wholly acceptable."


Later on, we hear tapes Brando made of Bernardo Bertolucci talking about how he wanted Marlon to go ever-deeper with autobiographical details in the role of Paul in Last Tango in Paris. Brando expresses his anger about this, but also his acquiescence. Riley then offers a montage of clips from the film including Paul's monologue about his father and mother - s scene that's always been heart-wrenching, but takes on added emotional resonance in this biographical portrait as the "character" Brando plays repeats several "memories" which are virtually identical to the "real ones".

It knocks you flat on your ass - as does the whole film by how it shares the aforementioned approach through Brando's early years, his stardom, his adherence to the "method" and the brilliance of acting teacher Stella Adler, his "lost" years during the 60s in a string of flops in which he was scapegoated for their failure, his comeback period in the 70s, his activism with civil rights and Native American issues and his final period of laziness post-Apocalypse Now. Here, even Brando admits how it became all about the money. We even hear him confess how he demanded his character in The Formula be equipped with a hearing aid so the lines of the script could be fed to him as he repeated his dialogue, almost by rote.

Finally, we're led into the later stages of Brando's life when tragedy struck home big time and his children became involved in murder and drug abuse. We hear Brando's tapes both fearing and lamenting a repetition in his own life by engaging in the sins of his father, as a father. This is all juxtaposed with the harrowing news footage of Brando weeping over the deep misfortune of his children's actions, especially as they related to his own failure as a father.

Almost like a refrain or exclamatory narrative beat, we hear Brando talk about how he hired computer experts in the 80s to digitize his whole head as he delivered a variety of speeches from films, plays and literature as well as how he rendered every conceivable facial expression - not just for posterity, but in the event his strong belief that actors will become useless in the digital age comes to fruition and that he can live on, virtually, as an actor long after his death. The eerie dislocated, digitized head of Brando with a reverberating voice that's all his own, appears throughout the documentary.

If anything, though, the film ultimately acknowledges that Brando's gifts, which live on in his body of work, will provide far more immortality than the strange disembodied digital images which, one hopes, will never be used beyond the parameters of this stunning, loving and gorgeously crafted biographical documentary.

It moved me to tears.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5 Stars

The Canadian Premiere of Listen To Me Marlon is at Hot Docs 2015. Info HERE.

Hirsch (2015)
Dir. Noam Gonick
Starring: Louis Negin

Review By Greg Klymkiw

John Hirsch was one of the world's most important artists and I can think of no greater tribute than Noam Gonick's Hirsch, a lovely, expressionistic docu-fantasy created in the grand tradition of Winnipeg's vital prairie post-modernist aesthetic. Hirsch is credited with founding the professional regional theatre company, the Manitoba Theatre Centre (MTC) as well as revitalizing both CBC drama and the Stratford Festival. In particular, his work with MTC had a huge impact upon theatre worldwide by providing a model for regional theatre companies to aspire to and follow.

Though Gonick's films often find themselves focusing upon cutting edge outsiders in decidedly cutting edge fashion, here he brings his unique filmmaking voice to a tale that is as gentle and elegiac, as it is profoundly imaginative and deeply moving. (And Hell, one can't get more outside the box and cutting edge than a subject like John Hirsch.) Gonick frames this tribute to the grand impresario in a fictional setting in which a group of children find themselves exploring an old attic filled with the late Hirsch's memorabilia. One of the older boys suggests the attic is haunted by Hirsch's ghost, but he's quick to suggest that it's a benevolent spirit. A younger lad gets an opportunity to place a set of headphones on and listen to a reel-to-reel recording of final radio interview Hirsch gave before he died from AIDS-related complications at age 59.

As we hear Hirsch deliver a history of his life and philosophies, the children are infused with the overwhelming creative spirit of the attic and soon, Hirsch's words accompany a phantasmagorical transformation in which the space becomes a magical, creative playground of puppets, red curtains, gorgeous models, train sets and lantern projections springing to life.

We learn about Hirsch escaping Europe to Canada whilst his mother, father and brother perish in Auschwitz and then, his decision to settle in Winnipeg, a place so far away, nestled so deeply within a physically enormous country, that it's the only place he feels he will be safe. With only distant relatives left, he creates his own family, his own community of like-minded souls, discovers an amateur little theatre, learns everything he can about the world of the dramatic arts until finally, he establishes Canada's first professional regional theatre company. Its quality and reputation moves across borders and soon, many of the English-speaking world's greatest actors, directors, playwrights and technicians are tripping over themselves to work at the MTC.

The magic Hirsch's spirit creates is infectious - so much so that the children find themselves immersed in a world of complete make-believe. And so are we, yet the play is always tempered with Hirsch's lively storytelling. The filmmaking is at the highest levels of craft and the filmmaker has surrounded himself with a bright, rich team of artists to render gorgeous design (in all areas), exquisite lighting and camera, layered sound and every bell and whistle imaginable to create this indelible tapestry which betrays the film's (no-doubt) meagre budget. Gonick builds a gorgeous, bright, bold world of contrasts and eventually, the events of the film cascades into a gentle pillow fight which, in and of itself, transforms into a swirling, beauteous kaleidoscope of wonder and joy.

Like that kid who escaped the Holocaust so many years ago, clutching onto a suitcase filled only with his puppet theatre and toys of sheer make-believe, we can rejoice in both Hirsch's story and his lasting spiritual influence upon these young, creative minds. Hirsch's voice is beautifully rendered by one of Canada's greatest living actors, Louis Negin (last seen as Marv, the Bath Meister, amongst a cornucopia of roles in Guy Maddin's The Forbidden Room). Gonick casts a delicious spell with this imagined interview which acts as an epitaph of inspiration, a film which, in 11 minutes, is a perfect gem worthy of the lasting impression and memory of the late Maestro John Hirsch.


Via Negin's extraordinary voice performance, Hirsch's final words in the film inspire copious tears. They are thus:

"To create sense out of chaos, all the labyrinths, all the funhouses, ghost castles, cellars, the attics, the moors and mountains and swamps, all these begin to form themselves into a landscape one is compelled to go back and examine."

We are grateful Gonick has been compelled to offer this landscape for us to always go back to and examine the joy Hirsch infused in generations of audiences, then, as in now, as in the future. I suspect that somewhere out there, Mr. Hirsch feels likewise.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5 Stars


Censored Voices (2015)
Dir. Mor Loushy

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Censored Voices might be one of the most profound anti-war films made in recent years. Though the backdrop is the 1967 Arab–Israeli Six Day War, the picture brilliantly transcends all contemporary controversies, acting simply and poetically as a testament to the madness of all war and the reality that it's the "people" who suffer as much, if not more than the armed forces.

A few weeks after the war, writers Amos Oz and Avraham Shapira conducted a series of interviews (on reel-to-reel tape) with numerous Israeli soldiers. These tapes were suppressed and/or heavily redacted by the Israeli government for over 40 years until filmmaker Mor Loushy accessed the unexpurgated audio to listen intently to these young men, to hear their thoughts on what they'd just been through.

Blending news footage, archival materials and using the audio tapes as narrators, Loushy provides a shocking, surprising and deeply moving experience. Tracking down some of the original interviewees, all now old men, Loushy combines the aforementioned with gorgeously lit/composed shots of these former soldiers - listening silently to their own voices from 1967. Their voices from back then, reveal the unexpected. Their faces reveal all.

This profoundly and decisively victorious war is how Israel laid claim to Gaza, the Golan Heights, the Sinai Peninsula and the West Bank. Decimating the enemy's military forces was a veritable cakewalk, but the real war endured by the Israeli soldiers turned out to be, at least for many of them, a much more haunting, tragic and frustrating experience than the fields of battle.

In the historic interviews, we hear men - young men some 40+ years ago - who are deeply saddened, confused, conflicted, disappointed, if not outright shocked that they found themselves at war with civilians. It's as if they were front-line pawns, but not as cannon fodder as so many young soldiers in war are. While the trauma is still fresh in their youthful minds, we hear devastating stories of non-military personnel being gunned down, beaten, tortured, corralled and forced to leave their homes.

The soldiers, it seemed, were no longer fighting-men, but glorified cattle herders.

In reality, they were not soldiers, they were occupiers.

The men are expected to rejoice over the return of many historical places to Israel, but they can't. They are privy to the suffering of innocent people, even forced to be the instruments of the dehumanizing process of destabilizing and forcing tens of thousands of people to flee and become refugees.

As one of the men states, this has nothing to do with God and/or The Torah. These are, after all, physical structures which have been won. There's nothing in Judaic culture about the holiness of a place. It's the human spirit and God that are Holy.

So many of these stories are heartbreakers - especially since director Loushy leads us into the film with the happy, hopeful sense of statehood and the determination of a people to reclaim what was once theirs so many millennia ago. The skill, training and superiority of the Israeli armed forces is simply a forgone conclusion. The strategy and surprise Israel employed is also a thing of beauty (albeit a terrible beauty). In fact, we get a sense that the war is a masterstroke of military genius and might. It's all the shining stuff of good, old fashioned boys' adventure. The qualities of the sublime dissipate quickly, however.

The questions many of the men ask do indeed resonate in a contemporary context. They wonder, so long ago, how a nation (Israel) constantly under attack, surrounded by enemy states can ever really and truly be a nation? Alternately, others feel that a nation which must occupy in a kind of perpetuity can also never truly be a nation.

Hearing these sweet, young men facing such complex moral dilemmas so soon after a victory they should be celebrating, forces them (and us) to confront realities that have always been at the core of war. To hear these voices juxtaposed with actual footage from the period, but most evocatively, against the silent faces of the old men who listen to the sound of their own voices has a strong element of poetic tragedy coursing through the entire film.

Though the current conflicts between Israel and Palestine can't be ignored in the context of Censored Voices, Loushy seems far more interested in capturing a reality that ultimately faces all of us, especially once we recognize and accept that a Six Day War, a 60-day war or a six-year war - at any time, any where - is still war and that the true casualties of war are the innocent on both sides of the equation.

Hearing the story of Arab men - civilians, no less - standing with their hands raised in the hot sun for hours on end would be despairing enough, but to hear that they've been filling their shoes with their own urine in order to have something to drink, is infused with the kind of sorrow we, as an audience, can never forget. Clearly, the soldiers don't forget this either, as they recount how these same Arab men, learning they'll be given fresh, cool water, collapse in front of the soldiers, kissing their feet in gratitude as they also retch and vomit upon the soldiers' boots. This sequence (and so many others like it) grind our collective faces into the realities of both war and nationhood.

Occupation is not nationhood. It's merely the residual blight of war - one in which we are all guilty of, and as such, a party to the inherent shame of it all.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5 Stars


Dough (2015)
Dir. John Goldschmidt
Starring: Jonathan Pryce

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Oy! A perfect movie here is in store for all the Bubbies and Zadies in the audience. God of Abraham knows, my own late Mother, rest her soul, would have loved this movie. (And actually, I suspect the Zadies won't be too thrilled with it, but they will acquiesce to their husbandly duties to accompany their spouses to this one.)

Dough is a perfectly dull and competent movie, probably best enjoyed on a small screen where expectations are much lower. A 60-something widowed baker (Jonathan Pryce) keeps his doors open in the old neighbourhood which is rapidly changing so much that he's losing all his regular customers to death or retirement to old folks homes in burbs that are far, far away. When his longtime bakery assistant moves on to bigger money at a rival bakery, our curmudgeonly old hero is in desperate need of a new apprentice baker. Well, as luck would have it, the kindly African immigrant-lady of the Muslim persuasion who sweeps his floors, desperately wants her son to find a job so he'll no longer be tempted by a life of crime. More luck abounds when Sonny Boy is up for a job with a local drug dealer. However, the dealer requires the lad to have a full-time "day job" to act as a cover. Well, isn't this all just peachy.

Thank the Lord that Jonathan Pryce is in this movie and doesn't embarrass himself too much during these sickeningly twee and predictable proceedings.

To add further blessings to this situation, the young lad of the dope-dealing Muslim persuasion, accidentally drops a whack of wacky-tabakky into the bread dough. My God, is this a sensation. Jonathan Pryce's bakery becomes popular indeed. All the usual conflicts and tribulations spin into motion and eventually, everything works out perfectly, especially the divides twixt Jew and Muslim, youth and old age and individuality versus conformity.

It's enough to inspire Peter, Paul and Mary to traipse into the cinema and lead the assembled in a rousing rendition of Kumbaya. Excuse me whilst I look for an air sickness bag.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** 2 Stars


Requiem For a Heavyweight (1956)
Dir. Ralph Nelson
Scr. Prd. Rod Serling
Starring: Jack Palance, Keenan Wynn, Kim Hunter

Review By Greg Klymkiw

When Rod Serling, the Jewish kid from Syracuse, New York became the King of Live Television Drama for Playhouse 90 in the 50s (and later, the immortal Twilight Zone and Night Gallery), his primary interest was telling two-fisted, socially-conscious tales of men on the battleground of life. Decidedly two-fisted was his script Requiem for a Heavyweight.

Solidly directed by Ralph Nelson, Serling etched the story of boxer Mountain McLintock (Jack Palance), a former contender for Heavyweight Champion of the World who is so punch-drunk that the Boxing Commission doctor informs his manager Maish (Keenan Wynn) that he can’t allow Mountain to fight anymore. Maish is devastated. He’s secretly placed a bet against Mountain with the mob, betting his boy will fall in the third. Alas, for Maish, Mountain takes seven rounds of punishment and Maish is into the mob for thousands of dollars.

Mountain is at wit’s end; boxing has been his whole life. When he visits an employment office he pours his guts out to a sympathetic job counsellor (Kim Hunter) who sincerely believes Mountain can contribute to society working with kids in the field of athletics.

Maish, however, has other plans for our hero. He decides to commit Mountain to a series of pathetic wrestling matches. It’s easy money, but hardly a dignified way for a former heavyweight contender to earn a living.

Thanks to both Serling’s brutal dialogue and Jack Palance’s visceral, moving performance, Requiem for a Heavyweight is extremely harrowing. Mountain faces a life drowning his sorrows in booze and trading exaggerated fight tales with other punch-drunk (and just plain drunk) former boxers. We’re forced into Mountain’s perspective as he peers through a beer glass into a mirror that shows how the rest of his life could be spent. It’s a story of exploitation, loyalty and finally, seeking a way out, and so doing, finding both redemption and a new future.

As dark as it is, Serling deftly wends his way to an ending replete with hope – it’s neither cheap, nor shoehorned. It’s perfectly natural, and for once, we get a story that has its cake and eats it too – dragging us through muck, but subtly pointing to a glimmer of a new life. There’s definitely a slight ambiguity to it, but by the end, we’re grateful that Serling has not drowned the heavyweight in complete and total despair.

There is, at least, a chance to clamber out of the pit, and that, ultimately, is worth its weight in gold.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5 Stars


The Go Go Boys: The Inside Story of Cannon Films (2014)
Dir. Hilla Medalia
Starring: Menachem Golan, Yoram Globus

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Golan and Globus were one of Israel's most successful and beloved filmmaking forces. After a series of successful domestic films (Myself, I was always a fan of their delightfully cheesy trifle, the 1974 musical version of Kazablan), the lads moved into pure exploitation cinema with their company Cannon Films.

With stars like Chuck Norris, Jean Claude VanDamme, Charles Bronson and Dolph Lundgren, these guys ruled action cinema throughout the 1980s (as well as other genre hybrids like teen musicals and sex comedies). Somewhere in there, they actually made a terrific picture called Runaway Train with Jon Voight, but this was surely an aberration.

Medalia's straightforward documentary charts the dynamic duo's early beginnings, their glory years and eventually their decline and eventual split. Both men are terrific subjects, offering plenty of great stories about the movie business and since, like the best teams, there's a fire and water element to them, we're subject to both humour and sadness.

And yes, there's a melancholy to the film's final third, but it's genuinely moving and the film offers a unique inside glimpse into the actual personalities of two men who held the world in the palms of their hands and eventually watched it slip away.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3 Stars


Forbidden Films (2014)
Dir. Felix Moeller

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Felix Moeller who brought us the interesting, though occasionally paint-by-numbers documentary Harlan – In the Shadow of Jew Süss, is back with this expansion on the themes he previously explored in his film biography of the notorious Veit Harlan who generated one of the most vile pieces of anti-semitic cinema in Nazi Germany. Here, the focus widens to include many other forms of Nazi film propaganda. We learn how much of the nitrate stock elements are contained in a bunker-like vault to protect them from both sabotage and the potential of the highly flammable materials to level several city blocks.

The films, in other words, are incendiary - in more ways than one - as Moeller's documentary proves. Most of the movies are banned, but many of them have been getting special moderated showings and Moeller includes interviews with a variety of academics and captures a rich variety of the moderated conversations in theatres where horrendous films like The Eternal Jew are shown. There are also detailed analyses of how the Nazi propaganda works throughout a myriad of films - not just anti-semitic, but anti-communist, anti-Polish, anti-British, etc.

Supported with generous clips, there's plenty of eye-opening material, but like Moeller's previous work, there's not much in the way of voice or personality to his presentation of the subject. It feels like a competent TV documentary on a very important issue. Someday I hope we get a truly great filmmaker to generate an epic documentary on this period of propaganda - something that could have the oomph and scope of Martin Scorsese's brilliant documentaries on cinema like A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese Through American Movies and My Voyage To Italy.

Until then, Forbidden Films will have to suffice.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** Three Stars


A Fuller Life (2013)
Dir. Samantha Fuller
Starring: James Franco, Bill Duke, Monte Hellman, Joe Dante, Wim Wenders, William Friedkin, Jennifer Beals, Constance Towers, Buck Henry, Tim Roth, Mark Hamill, Kelly Ward, Perry Lang, Robert Carradine,

Review By Greg Klymkiw

I've always loved Samuel Fuller, but it wasn't until the TIFF Cinematheque unveiled a full retrospective of Fuller's work a few years ago that I realized how few of his movies I'd actually seen. Like a psychopath I bought tickets to every single one of his pictures and went, week after week to bask in the glory of this genuine maverick. I remember that as the retrospective of 20+ films ploughed on, many of the screenings were more sparsely attended than the opening weekend of Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss.

I'd look around at every screening and soon got to recognize a few faces - a select few who, like me, were there for every single film. Soon, we'd acknowledge each other with silent nods. We were the Chosen Few - those who sat there for every film and thought about all the assholes at the opening weekend. It was as if we collectively sneered at those inaugural packed houses and thought, "Yeah, any asshole can come see Shock Corridor and The Naked Kiss, but where in the fuck are you for Dead Pigeon on Beethoven Street?

Or Verboten!?

Or The Crimson Kimono?

Yeah sure, many of you assholes came back for The Big Red One reconstruction and Pickup on South Street, but you're not here for Merril's Marauders or The Baron of Arizona or his two greatest pictures, Park Row and Steel Helmet.

You assholes!

We are The Chosen.

You're not!

A Fuller Life is pretty much a dream come true, a complete and total joy for the Fuller Chosen. It begins with a prologue in Sam's magical cluttered office as his daughter, director Samantha Fuller, slings an old army rifle over her shoulder and slowly carries her lithe form (Yup, she's a babe!) through the dusty rows of books, papers and memorabilia to tell us what treats are in store for us. They all sound great, but the one dog bone for us Fuller-loving dogfaces to chew on is the news that Samantha found 100 reels of 16mm film under a desk in the office, all of which feature never-before-seen footage Fuller shot on the front lines as an infantryman during World War II.

Samantha ends her sweet prologue informing us that every word from here on in will have been written by "Sam Fuller, my Dad!"

And it's a wonderful journey. Samantha has gathered together an amazing group of Fuller colleagues and admirers to read carefully selected passages from Sam's magnificent autobiography "A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking". His glorious writing is accompanied by a rich bonanza of film clips as we hear the tale of the feisty little Jewish kid who grew up on the mean streets of New York where, from age 12, he became a paper-hawker, then copy boy and finally, at age 17, the youngest crime reporter in the history of journalism.

He broke a myriad of amazing stories and once he went freelance, he was able to travel America and write stories about a myriad of topics, including the insanely brave act of attending a secret Ku Klux Klan meeting in the deep South - not the safest place for a young man of the Jewish persuasion. We learn how he ground out pulp novels and screenplays, then, gave up a mounting career in Hollywood to answer the call to arms during World War II.

At age 29, he enlisted in the infantry where he became a regular "dogface" in the Big Red One. He was older than most recruits, but he survived the most harrowing experiences in a variety of missions throughout Africa, Sicily, Belgium, Czechoslovakia and Normandy. Yes, Normandy, for God's sake. Sam Fuller was on the beaches during D-Day and even more horrifically, he was present for the liberation of a concentration camp wherein his film footage became some of the most important work to detail the atrocities of the Nazis (the fictional rendering of this in The Big Red One is still one of the most deeply moving sequences in all of film history).

Highly decorated with the Bronze Star, the Silver Star and the Purple Heart, Fuller went back to Hollywood and began to direct pictures. 23 pictures in 16 years! Astounding! Here he favoured low budget work to keep tampering to a minimum. His work is never less than electric - it's visceral, pulpy and infused with a kind of reality and life experience that's seldom been matched in the cinema.

The cherry on the ice cream sundae that is A Fuller Life are the many evocative readings of Sam's words. A handful, like James Franco and Robert Carradine, fall a touch short - but My God! - the readings of Bill Duke, Mark Hamill and Kelly Ward are extraordinary. Happily, the readings of women, Jennifer Beals and Constance Towers, blow us away completely and it's nice having filmmakers like Joe Dante, Monte Hellman and William Friedkin offer their verbal styling to the mix.

Samantha covers these readings with imagination and aplomb. She's her father's daughter, all right. These are no mere off-camera readings, but gorgeously shot and cut sequences in Sam's office. For me, her work during the Bill Duke sessions is especially gripping. (So many of Sam's screenplays went unmade. My dream is that Samantha will someday make many of them a reality. My other dream is that in another life I'd have married her, but I digress.)

By the end of the film, it beats me if any of it will work for non-Fuller fans - I think and hope it will, but for the Chosen, I can guarantee that A Fuller Life is everything one would ever ever want.

I'm convinced Sam himself would be deeply proud of his little girl.

Hell, I know I would be.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

The 2015 Toronto Jewish Film Festival is one of the coolest events in the city and I urge you to attend as many pictures as possible. For further info, visit the festival's website HERE.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973)
dir. Peter Yates
Starring: Robert Mitchum, Peter Boyle, Richard Jordan, Steven Keats, Alex Rocco

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The fate of Eddie Coyle (Robert Mitchum) is clear as he strides into frame from out of the pitch black Boston night at the beginning of the grim 1973 Peter Yates-directed crime drama. It's as if his downward trajectory has been infused in his very DNA; signed, sealed and delivered at birth with a profound and palpable inevitability.

The Friends of Eddie Coyle is a masterpiece.

Robert Mitchum inhabits every inch of Eddie: heavy-lidded, baggy-eyed, paunchy, world-weary and shuffling with the gait of a once-physically-powerful man now consigned to the throbbing aches of late middle age. Under the cold glare of fluorescent lights in a 24-hour cafeteria, Eddie places a slice of rubbery pie and a cup of coffee onto his tray and sits at the table occupied by Jackie Brown (Steven Keats), a dark-haired, gap-toothed, bug-eyed young thug.

Wolfing his pie down between slurps of watery coffee, Eddie’s manner is been-there-done-that as he negotiates with the thug to purchase an ordnance of powerful and highly illegal handguns. Jackie is clearly an upstart, oozing bravado – peppering it with promises he might clearly not be able to keep. Eddie sets him straight - almost like a schoolteacher lecturing his young charge. Holding his battered fist in front of the thug, Coyle explains he has twice the number of knuckles most people have. Eddie's nickname is "Fingers". His hand was crushed - punishment for lousing up a job based on false promises.

But Eddie’s not bitter. It’s business, he explains. It’s the life he chose in the only world he ever felt comfortable in. But now, Eddie needs a big score and he needs favours. If he can’t get them, he’s headed straight for hard time. By trade, Eddie's a Teamster truck driver. Unfortunately, he took the wrong driving gig and now he's looking at five years in stir. His wife will have to collect welfare and his kids will face the cruel taunts of their classmates for having a no-account Dad. It would seem Eddie needs a miracle. He needs more than that, though. What Eddie really needs are friends. Right now, he has none – at least none that he can count on.

Promises are cheap. So is life.


Robert Mitchum, one of the screen’s most legendary and charismatic actors has played everything from cops to cowboys to soldiers and everything in between (including his stunning turns as the evil Max Cady in Cape Fear and the malevolent psycho lay preacher in Night of the Hunter). Eddie Coyle is a role that not only fits Mitchum like a well-worn baseball glove but is, I truly believe, his best role and quite probably his greatest performance. Mitchum serves up a hardened criminal – albeit a marked, desperate one who knows what he needs to survive, even if it means succumbing to the lowest rung of his kind and turning stool pigeon to cops who seem, frankly, no better than the criminals they seek to incarcerate.

Mitchum pulls out all the stops, by plugging all of them in. He is, quite simply, less-is-more incarnate; taking his time, listening deeply to his fellow actors, pulling subtle shifts in emotion that register so deeply with us we can feel his pain, frustration, strength, sadness and finally, desperation.

As a director, Peter Yates was certainly no stranger to the crime genre when he made The Friends of Eddie Coyle. He’d already directed the Donald Westlake heist picture The Hot Rock, the gritty British-produced Robbery (a realist, almost semi-documentary-styled dramatization of 1963’s notorious “great train robbery” starring Stanley Baker), numerous episodes of such classic TV crime series as Danger Man and (one of my personal favourites) The Saint. Last, but certainly not least, Yates helmed Bullitt, the slam-bang Steve McQueen detective thriller that set the bar for all cinematic car chases that would follow.

There was always, however, another side to Yates who gave us the gentle comedy of Breaking Away and the tragic gay love story The Dresser. It is finally this combination of the macho stylist and the gentle humanist that made Yates a natural to direct The Friends of Eddie Coyle. These seemingly dichotomous qualities Yates possessed are probably what make the picture so great.

The other, of course, is Yates's gift with details and realism, especially getting the most out of locations. While Bullitt, showcased Steve McQueen’s baby blues, Jacqueline Bisset’s feminine perfection and a car chase that has seldom been matched, it most brilliantly and stunningly extolled the virtues of the city of San Francisco.


The Friends of Eddie Coyle is set in Boston and the last time I checked, it was and is a city of great beauty. You’d never know it from Yates's grim eye. He goes well out of his way to show us a Boston that nobody, save perhaps Eddie Coyle and other underworld denizens would bother to live in.

In seedy cafes, dank bars, endlessly indistinguishable parking lots, near-tenement slums, lifeless suburbs, abandoned cement factories, bowling alleys, cold, almost Kafkaesque inner-city financial district public squares and other equally unflattering locales, Yates and gritty, versatile cinematographer Victor (Dog Day Afternoon, The Gambler) Kemper train their lens on the non-descript and do so with harsh light, available light or no light at all. And lots of grain. Glorious chunks of swirling, dancing grain.

Of course, it makes perfect sense within the context of this world that "business" would always be done in plain view, in public places or, for especially sordid dealings, no man's land. It's not as if these guys have offices. They do, however, have homes. Eddie's home is clearly incongruous with his lifestyle - a clean, small two-story post-war job in an older city suburb with a loyal wife doing the ironing in the cramped, but homey kitchen and the Irish Catholic iconography in the hallway above a telephone set upon a tiny little desk and a patch of yard out front from where Eddie can watch his kids clamber onto their school bus. This is not a place for him to do his dirty business.

Paul Monash’s excellent script beautifully distills George V. Higgins novel of the same name. Higgins, a former prosecuting attorney turned crime writer always displayed a knack for dialogue that crackled with life and constructed narratives that defied typical crime story structures.

One of the astonishing things about Monash's adaptation of Higgins's novel and Yates's adherence to the literary sources is the strange focus upon the nasty, brutal crimes committed as a result of Coyle’s efforts. Coyle is peripherally involved as a supplier to the criminals, but Yates and his writers lavish considerable attention and detail upon the various bank robberies that take place – none of which ever directly involve the title character. Not only is this an opportunity for Yates to dazzle us with the slam-bang virtuosity of his many gifts as a filmmaker, but narratively and cinematically, it drives the nails of truth into us - that Eddie's dealings have serious consequences. His crimes are very real and not at all without victims.


And though our “hero” never gets so much as a moment to brandish a weapon, (which is, in and of itself highly unconventional for any crime picture), we are flung back to the reality and inevitability of Coyle’s eventual demise. Yates never lets us forget just how doomed poor Eddie is. Nowhere is this more haunting and downright moving than the heart-achingly tragic sequence where Coyle’s “friend”, the two-timing killer Dillon (Peter Boyle) takes him to a Boston Bruins hockey game (replete with "Number 4" Bobby Orr on the ice). As the game unfurls before cheering fans, Dillon plies Eddie with endless pints of beer and engages in pleasantries, all the while knowing that at the end of the evening, he has been entrusted with the mission to blow Eddie Coyle’s brains out.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw The Friends of Eddie Coyle as a kid with my ex-cop Dad. It was a movie that stayed with me and haunted me for the 40+ years since first seeing it. What I don’t think I’ll ever forget was my Dad’s response at the end of the movie. “That’s the way it is, kid, that’s just the way it is,” he said to me, with more than a little sadness in his voice, and with many long years under his belt dealing with guys just like Eddie Coyle.

Seeing the movie now, those words still hold true. I see Eddie, lumbering through his own Palookaville, the inevitability of his doom and those same words emblazoned, no doubt, upon his own brain.

That’s just the way it is.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5 Stars

"The Friends of Eddie Coyle" is available on a superbly transferred Criterion Collection Blu-Ray which features a lovely, informative commentary track recorded in 2009 by director Peter Yates.

A Day in the Country (1936/1946)
Dir. Jean Renoir
Starring: Sylvia Bataille, Georges D’Arnoux,
Jane Marken, André Gabriello, Jacques Brunius, Paul Temps

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A Day in the Country, made by Jean Renoir in 1936 is a mere 40 minutes long, but it's so perfect that I'd never wish for it to be any longer than it is. This short film, or featurette (often referred to now as a mid-length feature - mostly in the area of documentary films) is a dazzlingly romantic and bittersweet love story which resonates with deep humanity and truth, as much now as it surely must have when it was unveiled almost 70+ years ago. That the film has survived and not dated in terms of its aesthetic aims is a marvel, but then again, it is Jean Renoir, after all, one of the greatest filmmakers of all time. How could it be any less?

The short dramatic film is an art unto itself and in recent years (at least two decades, in reality), it's been extremely depressing to see so many of them that serve as little more than "calling cards" for young filmmakers wanting to make a feature, or worse, to get a job directing series television. These, for me, are the most egregious misuse of the art, but the other intolerable misuse are the seemingly endless punchline pictures wherein everything is set-up to solely deliver a surprise ending, usually reducing the whole viewing experience to little more than the cinematic equivalent of a joke. The latter I'm hesitant to bring up in solely negative terms, only because, it's an approach that can work when the filmmaker is generating work of a clever, razor-sharp satirical (not spoof or parodic) nature, as in the case of something like Marv Newland's immortal Bambi Meets Godzilla.

Ah, but Renoir! A Day in the Country is not only a great film for movie-lovers (and lovers, period), but is, I think an important film to expose to young filmmakers, in addition to the sumptuous, intelligent and highly inspirational added features on the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray, because I think the whole package has value to instil, at least within the best filmmaking students (at least those who truly count) the inherent values of what it means to strive for genuine moviemaking excellence. The film is a marvel of narrative genius, features a masterly use of the medium and ultimately, is a movie that resonates because its core thematic values are inherently entrenched in the work so as to always run parallel to every tool at a filmmaker's disposal to render dramatic beats.

I'm not meaning to get all Syd Field and/or (God Forbid) Robert McKee on you, this is Renoir after all, but it's important to acknowledge what makes great films immortal and to examine the simple details of the filmmaking process which contribute to achieving a universality within the storytelling - one which is regionally and historically specific and yet, not hampered by elements which render the piece ephemeral. And, of course, it's an adaptation of a story by Guy de Maupassant, no slouch in the writing department, if you follow my drift.

Like most great work, the veneer is perfectly simple. The Dufours are a mega-petit-bourgeois family of moderately comfortable means. Monsieur Dufour (André Gabriello) owns a hardware store in Gay Paree and decides to treat the family to a pleasant sojourn outside the city for a Sunday outing. The final destination is a country inn along the Seine where they plan to enjoy nature, order a meal of fresh fish and picnic outdoors.

Monsieur Dufour proves to be a plump stuffed shirt who either can't afford or, more likely, is too cheap to own a cart, preferring to have borrowed one from his milkman. He mostly ignores and tut-tuts his seemingly frivolous, but good-hearted and good-humoured wife (Jane Marken) and worse, is far too accepting that Anatole (Paul Temps), his miserable, dopey, rail-thin assistant at the store has been betrothed to his beautiful, vivacious and intelligent daughter Henriette (Sylvia Bataille, married in real life to Georges Bataille!!! AND then Jacques Lacan!!!). The snooty Grandmother (Gabrielle Fontan) mostly holds court from her generous tuffet, exuding all the more annoying traits of the petit bourgeoisie.


Into this set-up, we've become acquainted with a pair of boatmen, fishermen and jacks-of-all-trades at the inn who offer their services to city dwellers keen to traverse the gentle waterways and visit islands in the general vicinity. Whilst the Dufour family settles outside, the men eat their own lunch from inside the inn (rural types express derision over such indulgences) and, opening the window, gaze at the bourgeois antics with requisite incredulity, but most of all, focusing their gaze upon the assembled women.

Rodolphe (Jacques Brunius, actor, director, author, critic, British broadcasting personality) is by far the randiest of the two men and so desperately wants his friend Henri (Georges D'Arnoux, assistant director, race car driver) to pair up with him in attempting to make a grand seduction, that he agrees to go after the portly Madame DuFour and leave Sylvie alone for his pal. Henri is dolefully serious and insists that genuine love is his goal and that a cheap tryst is not his slice of cheese nor glass of wine. He grudgingly agrees to go along with Rodolphe's plan as he is genuinely struck by Henriette's beauty, but also does not wish to disappoint his best friend.

We're then treated to a delightful Renoir roundelay of discourse amongst the boatmen and the family until Rodolphe's plan bears fruit and he's on a skiff with the clearly charmed Madame DuFour and Henri, as agreed in advance, with Henriette. Grandma naps whilst Monsieur DuFour and the horrid Anatole engage in a series of botched attempts to fish in the Seine.

Most of the focus is upon Henri and Henriette and we are treated to one of the loveliest, most romantic interludes in all of French cinema. The film eventually flashes forward to a future juncture in the lives of the characters and here, Renoir delivers a one-two punch of sheer sorrow and regret, inspiring yet another superlative - one of the most profoundly moving sequences in all of French cinema.

Renoir, of course, was wise to have adapted de Maupassant's great story to the screen. Its framework and characters are not only film worthy, but perfect material for the director of such masterworks as The Rules of the Game and Grand Illusion and the rest of his vital dramatic examinations of class structure and honour. He brings incredible economy to cinematically introducing the world of the film and its characters. Most importantly are his visual perspectives upon the natural world and its relationship to the characters and by extension, to all of humanity. His subtly effective ways of always keeping the focus in the story twixt Henriette and Henri is so dazzling, its sheer genius can move especially acute viewers to tears, especially the focus upon Henriette, including the now iconographic sequence of the screen beauty on a swing.


Renoir also displayed his natural gifts as a filmmaker in terms of dealing with exigencies of production. The story required, nay, demanded clear skies and sun, but alas the weather in the area chosen for shooting (the Seine would, in 1936, have been far too populated and industrialized to tell this period tale) was stricken with an utterly anomalous series of rain and wind storms. Given that there are only two very brief scenes indoors, Renoir was faced with the decision of incorporating the weather into his story and it's astonishing how well it works, adding a fresh layer neither he, nor de Maupassant, could have imagined. Imagine, however, Renoir did and he renders it exquisitely.

Another fascinating aspect to the making of this stunning short drama is that some of the weather delays (there were days they absolutely could not shoot) is that Renoir had to leave the project before it was over. No matter. He planned his shots down to the most minute detail anyway, so that his trusty assistant director Jacques Becker (who would go on to be one of France's greatest directors, easily on a par with Renoir and Bresson) could continue in his absence. (I've always loved the fact that assistant directors in France are not cattle herders and/or pencil pushers as they are in North America - they're integral to artistic vision beyond mere mechanics.)

Further to the odd history of the film is that Renoir had an extended stint in Hollywood during the war, so that he was unable to completely finish and release A Day in the Country until 10 years later. It's been said this delay caused Henriette Bataille to lose a shot at stardom, but in actuality, production in France during the war years had changed drastically, plus she was also married at the time to the clearly insane, albeit brilliant Georges Bataille (no cakewalk, I assure you) and she did indeed gain considerable acclaim for her acting with screenwriter Jacques Prevert's acclaimed theatre company October and even won one of France's highest honours, the Suzanne-Bianchetti Award, bestowed only upon its most promising actresses (recent winners include Audrey Tatou, Isabelle Adjani and Isabelle Huppert, as well as Quebec's Genevieve Bujold).

A Day in the Country did indeed have a strange early life, but it now lives for all of us and will continue to do so for future generations.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5 Stars

A Day in the Country is available on Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection. In addition to a gorgeous 2K digital restoration, with an uncompressed mono soundtrack, a brilliant essay by the late Gilberto Perez and an all new Engish subtitle translation, the value of this release is huge for both Renoir enthusiasts and film fans, but the pedagogical value of the extras is of the highest level and includes a great 1962 introduction by Renoir, an interview with Renoir scholar Christopher Faulkner about the film’s production, a video essay by Faulkner on Renoir’s methods, an 89-minute compilation of valuable, eye-opening outtakes, screen tests and a 1979 interview with producer Pierre Braunberger. Please don't bother with getting this via iTunes or Hulu. This movie is worth owning in all its glory - to watch, study, fondle, fetishize and cherish.