Festivals & Awards

TIFF #2: “Antichrist” redux

Roger Ebert

Lars von Trier’s “Antichrist” is poised to detonate at the Toronto Film Festival. This willfully controversial director will inspire, as he often does, a storm of controversy, debate, critics clamoring to get into advance screenings that are already jammed, and a contentious press conference. Of the 400 or so films at TIFF this year, “Antichrist” was the first that sold out in advance. It was the same last May at Cannes, and that was before it has even been seen.

Von Trier was nothing if not canny in his title for the film. By naming it “Antichrist,” he provides a lens through which to view its perplexing behavior. By naming his characters only He and She, he suggests the dark side of an alternative Garden of Eden, and then disturbing his ending becomes a mirror image of Christ welcoming the faithful into the kingdom of heaven. The title instructs us where to begin. If he had named the characters John and Mary, and titled the film “A Nightmare,” what conclusions might we have arrived at?

TIFF #3: Some of the films I’ve seen

Roger Ebert

I have a quirky policy about writing of films from a film festival. In the early years, I tried to avoid an actual “review,” especially negative, because I believed a film deserved a chance to open before I laid into it. This was grandiose–as if the world was awaiting my opinion. Then I began suggesting my thinking, without going into detail. Then, being human, I allowed that approach to enlarge into specific descriptions of films I really loved, or hated.

Alex Vo, editor of Rotten Tomatoes: No Meter when he needs it most.

That’s now the strategy I use, with amendments. I can only review a film for the first time once, and if I’ve used all my energy in rehearsal, what have I saved for opening night? I’ll reflect the general reception of certain films, however, if only in the spirit of providing news coverage. The first year I was here, I was one of four members of the American press. These days, with half the audience members filing daily blogs and twittering immediately after a film is over, it’s simply all part of the festival process.

TIFF #1: Darwin, Herzog, the Coens and the Antichrist

Roger Ebert

I’ve just finished combing through the list of films in this year’s Toronto Film Festival, and I have it narrowed down to 49. I look at the list and sigh. How can I see six films a day, write a blog, see people and sleep? Nor do I believe the list includes all the films I should see, and it’s certainly missing films I will see. How it happens is, you’re standing in line and hear buzz about something. Or a trusted friend provides a title you must see. Or you go to a movie you haven’t heard much about, just on a hunch, and it turns out to be “Juno.”

Nicolas Cage in “Bad Lieutenant”

I can’t wait to dive in. Knowing something of my enthusiasms, faithful reader, let me tell you that TIFF 2009’s opening night is a film about the life of Charles Darwin. The festival includes the film of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road.” And new films by the Coen brothers, Todd Solondz, Michael Moore, Atom Egoyan, Pedro Almodovar, Hirokazu Kore-Eda, Alain Resnais and Guy Maddin–and not one but two new films by Werner Herzog. Plus separate new films by the three key talents involved in Juno: The actress Ellen Page, the director Jason Reitman, and the writer Diablo Cody.

Okay, I’ve already seen two of those. They were screened here in Chicago (Page as a teenage Roller Derby in “Whip It,” Cody’s script for “Jennifer’s Body,” starring Megan Fox as a high school man-eater, and that’s not a metaphor). I already saw more than ten of this year’s entries at Cannes, including Lars on Trier’s controversial “Antichrist,” Jane Campion’s “Bright Star,” Gasper Noe’s “Enter the Void,” Almodovar’s “Broken Embraces,” Bong Joon-Ho’s “Mother,” Lee Daniels’ “Precious,” Mia Hansen-Løve’s “The Father of My Children,” and Resnais’s “Wild Grass.” A lot of good films there. Not all of them, but a lot.

Outguess Ebert on the Oscars

Roger Ebert