When you show up for the Toronto International Film Festival, you have to get used to the overwhelming atmosphere of it all.

Movie stars here. Industry types there. Almost everywhere you look you see pinstripe suits and cocktails dresses and people sporting Industry and Press badges slung around their necks (due to reason’s unknown, the Sheaf was denied a press pass to this year’s festival).

I was lucky enough to attend the opening weekend of TIFF. This year more than in the past, the city of Toronto has come alive for TIFF. Last year saw the construction of the TIFF Bell Lightbox, a permanent year-round home for the festival located in the heart of the entertainment district. Now with the Lightbox firmly established, downtown Toronto is constantly abuzz with celebrities in limos, celebrities chilling outside the Lightbox, celebrities on red carpets and swarms of photographers who stalk the film venues like vultures hungry for carrion.

Click on any of the links below to jump to the corresponding review:
From Up On Poppy Hill
Into the Abyss
Melancholia
Twixt
Shame
I Wish
The Lady

(dir. Goro Miyazaki)

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On the opening day of the festival, I went to From Up on Poppy Hill, the latest film to come out of the greatest animation studio in the world, Studio Ghibli. Directed by Goro Miyazaki, the son of the legendary Hayao Miyazaki, the film is the bittersweet tale of high school students in 1963 Japan protesting the planned destruction of their clubhouse to make way for the 1964 Olympics. From Up on Poppy Hill is Goro Miyazaki’s second feature as a director. His first film was the poorly received Tales from Earthsea from 2006, an adaptation of the popular fantasy novels. While Tales from Earthsea proved to be a little too much for Goro Miyazaki to handle, this film really proves that he deserves his father’s name.

From Up on Poppy Hill is a case of a director finding his own voice as an artist. It is both a heartfelt teenage romance and a fascinating exploration of the generation that grew up in Japan following the Second World War. Gorgeous animation, fleshed out characterization and a wealth of humour make the film a real treat to watch. Although it is devoid of the magic that typifies most Ghibli films, its realism makes it all the more compelling. From Up on Poppy Hill is a wealthy addition to the Ghibli canon, standing alongside Only Yesterday and Whisper of the Heart as a great piece of animated realism.

A Q&A session with Goro Miyazaki followed the screening. Although he had to communicate through a translator, Miyazaki was quite forthcoming about his working relationship with his father. “Working with Hayao Miyazaki is a real pain in the ass. And not just for me, for everyone.”

(dir. Werner Herzog)

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Saturday afternoon I attended a screening of Werner Herzog’s latest and most restrained documentary, Into the Abyss. The German director best known for Grizzly Man and Aguirre: The Wrath of God typically layers his films with esoteric questions and colourful narration. Here his voice is only heard behind the camera, asking sombre questions about the facts of a horrendous case of human depravity and letting those involved in the events tell the story for themselves.

Into the Abyss is the story of a triple homicide in Texas in which two teenagers shot down a mother, her son and the son’s best friend. Through his interviews with the killers Michael Perry and Jason Burkett, the killers’ families, the victims’ families and workers on death row, Herzog sheds light on capital punishment and a troubled prison culture.

Within the film Herzog admits that he is against the death penalty, but the film is not an explicit argument against capital punishment. He never seeks to exonerate or condemn the killers, merely to illuminate the sad facts of reality that surround these particular murders.

This is an extremely dark film. Within it, Herzog tries to affirm life where he can, but the ultimate vision we come away with is that society is severely broken and that family is the greatest determinant of a person’s future.

(dir. Lars von Trier)

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The North American premiere of Lars von Trier’s Melancholia occurred on Saturday night with a red carpet presentation and stars Kirsten Dunst, Alexander Skarsgard, Kiefer Sutherland and Udo Kier in attendance. Von Trier was unfortunately not present, likely due to his controversial Nazi-related comments at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.

Melancholia is about Justine (Dunst), who struggles with depression, and her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg). It is also about a mysterious planet (named Melancholia) zooming towards Earth on a collision course. It is an ambitious and unconventional film, the kind a Hollywood studio would never produce. It is visually dazzling and von Trier often melds extreme slow motion with the music of Wagner, creating triumphant images of apocalyptic proportion.

Melancholia is also a profound exploration of depression, showing just how crippling and overwhelming it is. Both Dunst and Gainsbourg put in excellent performances.

During the Q&A, a gutsy audience member asked Sutherland whether Jack Bauer would have handled the film differently. Sutherland’s answer was priceless: “He wouldn’t have since Lars von Trier would’ve kicked Jack Bauer’s ass.”

(dir. Francis Ford Coppola)

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On Sunday afternoon I attended the world premiere of Twixt, the newest film by veteran director Francis Ford Coppola. Twixt is a dream literalized. It is more similar in tone to the films of David Lynch than any of Coppola’s previous films like The Godfather and Apocalypse Now. It follows a bargain bin hack writer, Hall Baltimore (Val Kilmer), as he investigates a murder and falls into a dream reality in a small Northern Californian town.

This all may sound very serious but Twixt is most definitely not serious. It is fun and experimental with plenty of cinematic innovating. Parts of it are in 3D, parts are in a monochromatic colour that looks very similar to black and white, and the entire film is shot in High Definition Digital, giving the visuals a hyper-realistic quality.

Val Kilmer does not make many good movies anymore, but Hall Baltimore is a part that plays to his strengths, utilizing his excellent comedic timing. The film may seem unrefined and feel like an exaggeration of the macabre, but it does accurately capture the feel of Edgar Allan Poe’s short stories. Ultimately, Twixt is the rare example of a master director trying things new in strange, untested ways.

A very informative Q&A with Coppola and Kilmer was held after the screening. Unlike most filmmakers, Coppola actually gives profound and honest answers to questions. Most interestingly, he revealed that the whole film was based on an alcohol-induced dream he had in Istanbul. Twixt is Coppola trying to work out that dream.

(dir. Steve McQueen)

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The North American premiere of Shame took place on Sunday evening. Shame is a drama focused on one damaged individual: Michael Fassbender’s character Brandon, a compulsive sex addict. Brandon spends his days at the office surfing Internet pornography and masturbating in the washroom. He spends his evenings having sex with attractive strangers and prostitutes, and watching sex webcams. Brandon does not have a close relationship with anyone, so when his erratic sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan playing against type) arrives at his apartment, his whole routine of isolation and gratification is upset.

Fassbender is marvelous in this physically and emotionally taxing role. His performance is simply devastating. The comparison of Fassbender to a young Daniel Day-Lewis is not unfounded — his performance is just that good.

Steve McQueen’s direction is as impressive as Fassbender’s performance. McQueen displays the same formal command that he demonstrated in his debut feature Hunger (also starring Fassbender), but where that film lacked narrative and emotional continuity, Shame is focused. McQueen’s film environments are controlled — the sound design, the colour palette and the camera’s movements are all exact. With Shame, unlike with Hunger, McQueen has kept his editing consistent and his artistic flourishes never distract from the emotional arc of the character.

Shame is a powerful film. Fassbender won the Best Actor award at the Venice Film Festival for his work and an Oscar would be deserved.

Both Fassbender and McQueen were in attendance at the screening and stayed for a Q&A afterwards. The crowd predictably swooned for Fassbender, but it was McQueen whose answers were most interesting. When asked why he set his film in New York City, McQueen answered that “in no other city is there as much excess and access. Even London hasn’t caught up to it in regards to sleaze.” Fassbender quipped back, “you just don’t know where to look.”

(dir. Hirokazu Kore-Eda)

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I went into Monday’s screening of I Wish not knowing what to expect, as I was unfamiliar with Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-Eda’s previous work. Often, that is the best way to be surprised by a film.

I Wish is the story of two brothers who yearn to live back together. Koichi and Ryu’s parents are separated and Koichi lives with his mother while Ryu lives with his father. They live cities apart and haven’t seen each other in six months. Two new bullet trains are being built in their province so when Koichi hears and believes a schoolyard rumour stating that whoever witnesses the trains pass each other gets a wish, he sets out to see the trains pass and wish for his family to be reunited.

I Wish is a film about children. Its children are more mature than its adults, and the adults act like children. Kore-Eda’s portrayal of childhood friendship is similar to the kind displayed in this summer’s Super 8, in that the children are completely honest and realistic.

The child actors are simply wonderful. Most are first-time actors but their spontaneity and earnestness makes you think they were veterans. I Wish also has a serious amount of humour, much of it provided by the kids’ hilarious antics and camaraderie. It may dip occasionally into sentimentality and operate with fanciful logic, but I Wish is charming entertainment and an often-moving portrayal of childhood yearning.

(dir. Luc Besson)

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The final film I saw at TIFF ’11 was Luc Besson’s biopic of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese pro-democracy activist. Besson, the French director best known for action films The Professional and The Fifth Element, may not be the best man for the job of making a film about Suu Kyi. Not to say that the film is bad — it’s not — but Besson’s signature style and obsession with violence doesn’t lend itself well to a film about a great advocate for democracy and peace.

However, The Lady still has enough to recommend itself. Both Michelle Yeoh as Suu Kyi and David Thewlis as her British husband Michael Aris give admirable performances and the depiction of their strained marriage is the most affecting part of the film. The film’s script is what needs the most work. It’s often too simplistic in its themes and the dialogue can fall flat. Still, the subject matter is so compelling that it does most of the work of telling the story.

The Lady is not the film that Aung San Suu Kyi deserves, but it’s an admirable film in a similar way to Martin Scorsese’s Kundun. Perhaps the greatest reason the film doesn’t completely work is that Suu Kyi’s story is not over. Once we have a historical perspective on her work in Burma, we will be able to see a movie that is more than just a first act of her story.

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images: Studio Ghibli; Aaron Lynett; Zentropa; American Zoetrope; Fox Searchlight; Gaga Communications; EuropaCorp