Jolt of Films and Crowds in Toronto

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/14/movies/jolt-of-films-and-crowds-in-toronto.html

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TORONTO — How big is too big? That was the question that faced the tide of humanity as it flowed into this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, filling theaters and spilling into halls. For decades, the festival, which wraps up this weekend, has served as one of the year’s essential film events because of its mix of new-season offerings and titles cherry-picked from earlier festivals. It’s where you can admire Matthew McConaughey’s continuing career rehabilitation in “Dallas Buyers Club”; giggle through “The Liberator,” a hair-in-the wind adventure about the 19th-century Latin American hero Simón Bolívar; and sit in stone-silence through “12 Years a Slave,” a coolly intellectual look at slavery in America.

Fresh from its sneak-peek screening at Telluride, Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” jolted Toronto. So powerful was its effect that some attendees wrote themselves silly as they breathlessly praised the film, only to trivialize its seriousness of purpose by hysterically handicapping its Oscar chances. The film <em>is </em>a strong work of cinema. What makes it an exceptional one, though, isn’t the awards it will pick up, but how effectively and, for the most part, unsentimentally Mr. McQueen reveals slavery’s machinery of terror. Much as Roman Polanski did in his World War II film “The Pianist,” which shows how the Nazis sought to dehumanize Jews, Mr. McQueen examines how human beings in America were transformed into capitalist chattel.

“The Liberator” is another revolutionary tale to which Édgar Ramírez, following “Che” and “Carlos,” has lent sex appeal. It was directed by Alberto Arvelo with enjoyably goofy sincerity: when Bolívar isn’t trying to rid Latin America of its colonial masters, he’s galloping hand in hand with his lady love. But it’s largely notable because it is one of the latest movies about revolutionaries and fanatics to emerge since Sept. 11.

Another such title is “Night Moves,” a low-key thriller from Kelly Reichardt about an environmentalist (Jesse Eisenberg) who turns to violence. As she did in the more lyrical and narratively restrained “Old Joy,” Ms. Reichardt has set her sights on a man who’s at once gravely conscious of his world and disenfranchised from it. “The Liberator” and “Night Moves” could not be more different in their cinematic and commercial imperatives, yet each says something about the state of the art and industry, a reason they’re here.

This is also where you could catch “Violette,” a deeply satisfying fictional film about the French writer Violette Leduc (1907-72), who rose from illegitimacy (the subject of her memoir “La Bâtarde”) to move among the likes of Simone de Beauvoir and Jean Genet. Although the classical style of the director Martin Provost — his films include “Séraphine,” another portrait of an artist — can feel overly staid, he holds you with the ferocity of two very different and difficult women — Emmanuelle Devos as Leduc and Sandrine Kiberlain as the no-nonsense de Beauvoir.

“Violette” is the kind of European art movie (i.e., it’s in French) that is likely to find a receptive American audience, but here’s hoping that “We Are the Best!” does the same. A delightful return to form for the Swedish director Lukas Moodysson (“Together,” “Lilya 4-Ever”), this joyous, heart-swelling story of youthful rebellion set in the 1980s turns on three Stockholm teenagers (played by a perfectly cast troika) who discover themselves through their friendships with one another and by forming a hilariously terrible and great punk band.

Also patrolling the youth beat is Gia Coppola (Francis’s granddaughter!), whose promising feature directing debut, “Palo Alto,” stars Emma Roberts and a good Jack Kilmer (Val’s son!) as kids adrift in that old anomie. It’s based on a collection of stories by James Franco, who directed another entry, the very strong “Child of God”; I’ll have more to say about that title when it plays at the New York Film Festival.

The pickings were particularly excellent in Wavelengths, the most radical of the festival’s 12 programs. Among the highlights was “Manakamana,” an experimental ethnographic film from Stephanie Spray and Pacho Velez. Austere and complex, this 117-minute knockout consists of a series of fixed shots inside cable cars carrying visitors (including animals slated for sacrifice) to and from the Manakamana temple in Nepal. With a lush, mountainous valley spread out behind them, men, women, children and feathered and furred animals take a 10-or-so-minute ride that, trip by trip, opens a small window onto a world. Because the directors don’t presume they can tell you about a people in one film, this self-limiting approach becomes a strength.

Toronto isn’t a boutique like Telluride, nor does it have an official market like Berlin and Cannes, even if business deals are sealed and announced here. It’s both a people’s event and an industry focal point. And because it has become the biggest launching pad for fall titles, it is also a convenient one-stop source for entertainment media types, especially those who take the hour-and-a-half flight from New York. This year, attendees could choose from 288 features (146 of them world premieres) and 78 shorts from 70 countries. The diversity and numbers are exciting, but when combined with head-scratching scheduling that pitted hot title against hot title, created a chaos of plenty.

During its first few days, the festival seemed overwhelmed as attendees jammed locations, including the Scotiabank multiplex, where getting in and out of theaters became tricky and sometimes unnerving. (More than 400,000 people were at last year’s event.) You shouldn’t flash on images of soccer fans being crushed to death when inching your way through a crowd, as I did after Alfonso Cuarón’s “Gravity.” Set in outer space and starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, Mr. Cuarón’s film is 93 minutes of pure cinema that — in its emphasis on spectacle over narrative, and in its sensual and psychological impact — is a contemporary version of the kind of film that dominated the early 20th century, work scholars call “the cinema of attractions.” It’s terrific if not worth dying for.

By Tuesday morning, at least one honest worker was greeting attendees with an apology for the “numerous confusions” that the festival had created and announcing a new and incomprehensible entrance system that never seems to have been used. Every festival faces logistical hurdles, and the problems at Toronto this year were unusual for one that has, in my 20 or so years of attending, been generally efficient and reliably friendly (what some just may call Canadian). And while part of the disorder is probably due to the usual behind-the-scenes contingencies that bedevil every large-scale enterprise, it’s also clear that like other events of this type, Toronto is working hard to refine and perhaps redefine the festival experience in a rapidly changing movie world.