By: Henry J. Fromage –
Day 4, and we’re still rolling right along up here north of the border. One hell of a haul this year, even with the strikes.
503. Origin
Ava DuVernay’s latest was a late addition to the TIFF lineup, but I made sure to move my schedule around to make room for it, and boy, am I glad. This globe- and time-trotting film illustrates Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson’s grand thesis of her groundbreaking work Caste: The Origins of our Discontents, which is that Caste (in which humans artificially other a group of people to establish and reinforce dominance over them), and not Race, is the systemic force driving most all evil in this world, past and present. DuVernay and star Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor deftly interweave the personal tragedies of Wilkerson’s own life as she starts this work and the historical and cultural examinations that come together to form it. It all boils down to something very simple: treat others- all others- as you yourself would expect to be treated. The Golden Rule and the foundation of Christianity should not be so novel an academic concept, but DuVernay renders it exceptionally powerful here. A Toast.
TIFF Special Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: for every act of othering or discrimination
Take a Drink: whenever Jon Bernthal is just the sweetest
Do a Shot: every time Isabel loses someone
504. Shame on Dry Land
Apparently there are a lot of Swedes with quasi-legal video gambling businesses in Malta, and that shady world is where this thriller is set, as our protagonist, who looks like the uncanny union of Bradley Cooper and Tim Robinson, crashes his old friends wedding and gets swept up into it. There’s a lot of shady history between them, and the film does a good job of keeping its vaguely noir detective vibes humming along, even if the sum total is a bit underwhelming in the end. Three Beers.
TIFF Special Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: whenever past financial crimes come up
Take a Drink: whenever our Elon Musk-looking antagonist does something creepy
Do a Shot: whenever the boy toy pops up
505. After the Fire
This French drama reminds us that the U.S. does not have the market cornered on racial and societal strife stemming from unwarranted police killings of young non-white men. This is a sensitively crafted film that pits different members of a family who’ve lost their youngest brother and son to mysterious death in police custody against each other as each have different ideas about the best way to mourn him and honor his memory. An all to common story, but one that resonates beyond its cultural and political specifics. Two Beers.
TIFF Special Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: whenever the police make an unbelievable excuse
Take a Drink: whenever something on fire is shown
Do a Shot: whenever the siblings vehemently disagree on how to proceed with the case
506. Concrete Utopia
This Korean disaster/survival film, in which an unprecedentedly massive earthquake destroys an entire city (and maybe even country) except for one extremely fortuitous apartment tower block. It may cover a lot of the same territory a lot of these films do (guess what? The real danger is… other people), but it does so very well. Lee Byung-hyun in particular gets a meaty role as a somewhat wallflowery man who may not be the brightest, but gets elected leader after a moment of proactivity anyway, and then, of course, lets it go to his head. Another interesting tie-in to Origin‘s all evil comes from caste theory, too. Two Beers.
TIFF Special Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: whenever you see or hear about cockroaches or “cockroaches”
Take a Drink: whenever the social hierarchy of apartment renters, owners, and others comes up
Do a Shot: whenever someone fails to speak up at a instance of cruelty
507. 100 Yards
The Ip Man franchise has stoked an appetite for tales from the early days of the global recognition of Chinese martial arts, and this 1920s-set story of the constant struggle between the inheritor of a famous master’s school and the son who did not received it features all the elements you’d like to see. The fights are prolonged, inventive, and thrilling and all the period detail and costuming is beautiful to look at. Unfortunately, it’s a bit hard to draw a bead on who we’re supposed to be rooting for when both gradually reveal themselves to be selfish assholes only really interested in their own reputations, and even more perplexing when the receive the loyalty of supporting actors with more honor anyway. Three Beers.
TIFF Special Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: whenever short swords or a potential fourth fist form are mentioned
Take a Drink: whenever a character does something that makes you cock an eyebrow
Do a Shot: whenever our dueling protagonists face off (hint: it’s the duo from the very first fight)
508. The Zone of Interest
While many filmmakers have commented on the banality of evil in their films, even in their films featuring Nazis, nobody will ever equal the statement Jonathan Glazer makes with this film about the Rudolph Hoss family, who lived in a quaint brick home with a large, beautiful garden right next to dad’s work- Auschwitz. Glazer never shows the horrors of that horror-filled place, but you can clearly hear them as this German family goes about their lives, playing in the pool, pulling weeds, having an after-dinner cigar in the night air. That awful hum of the ovens never stops. This is the kind of film that enters the lexicon, and will be studied for decades to come. A Toast.
TIFF Special Drinking Game:
Take a Drink: whenever you spot smoke in the air
Take a Drink: whenever our seemingly normal family let out a little of the unfathomable evil within
Do a Shot: whenever someone expresses how much of a paradise (the house next to) Auschwitz is
