ALCAN HIGHWAY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Klymkiw HOT DOCS 2013 HOT PICK

Alcan Highway (2013) ***1/2
Dir. Aleksi Salmenperä

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Finland used to be the suicide capitol of the world, but times have changed. It now ranks as the 19th highest suicide rate in the world out of 100 or so countries. This should be cause for celebration.

Not for Hese.

He's in his forties and feels like a stranger in his own land. His dream is to leave his country behind and embark on a gruelling odyssey of self exploration. It's not enough just to leave, though. As he is Finnish - and I base this assumption solely on the cinema of the Kaurismäki Brothers - he must throw himself into an almost Herculean (some might say Sisyphean) endurance test.

God Bless Finland.

So, what does any bearded, healthy (of mind as well as body) forty-something single male do? Well, what anyone of us would do - he journeys to Alaska, buys a broken down late 40s model truck, affixes a mobile home to it, drives through harsh, but spectacular wilderness and aims his sights on Vancouver Island where he will park his truck and live forever.

Sure. Why not? Life is short, isn't it.

Alcan Highway is a strangely funny and compelling film and, in its own way, it's infused with a similar Buster Keaton-like deadpan quality that the 80s Kaurismäki films so memorably pioneered. It's not enough, for example, to detail the journey - fraught as it is with constant mechanical breakdowns - but director Aleksi Salmenperä captures the actual restoration process in painstaking detail.

At times, one wishes to put a gun to the movie's head and say, "Come on, buddy, move your ass."

Curiously, this is exactly what Hese's collaborators feel like doing. It takes 36 of the 86 minutes of the film's running time to get Hese on the open road. At times this is mildly infuriating, but it's also a canny way to place us in Hese's groove. He's meticulously obsessed with every detail and we're treated to this stubborn single-mindedness with the cinematic equivalent to what actually appears to have occurred.

Hese eventually parts company with the two men who have been helping him realize the inaugural portion of his dream and finally, he's on his own. Along the way and not surprisingly once he hits Canada, there are plenty of friendly, polite people who come to his rescue and/or offer support. When things seem at their bleakest, out pops a friendly Canadian with a helping hand.

The entire journey is so perverse in its single-minded trajectory that it successfully mirrors Hese's character traits - at times, perhaps, to a fault - but it's finally never less than compelling as we're sucked into his dream and root for him all the way. In fact, Kaurismäkiian traits aside, the movie also feels a bit imbued with the sort of existential male angst that drove the collective engines of so many American films of the 70s.

All in all, Alcan Highway (and by extension, Hese himself) is like some crazed Jack Kerouac-like wet dream that presides over Leningrad Cowboys Go American meets Two Lane Blacktop meets Taxi Driver by way of Paul Mazursky.

This is not a bad combination at all.

"Alcan Highway" is playing at the Hot Docs 2013 Film Festival. For showtimes and tickets, visit the Hot Docs website HERE.

BOMBER - Review By Greg Klymkiw

Bomber (2009) ***
dir. Paul Cotter
Starring: Shane Taylor, Benjamin Whitrow, Eileen Nicholas

Review By Greg Klymkiw

A terse, tight-lipped old Brit and his seemingly vivacious wife coerce their touchy-feely layabout son into driving them to a village in Germany to fulfil Dad's decades-old obsession of finding a building dotted on a 60-year-old aerial photo and in this odyssey on the backroads of Europe, the family reaches new understandings about each other and Dad finds redemption in the unlikeliest of places.

Road trips in the movies are certainly not without merit. Tried and true, this is a genre wherein an old chestnut of a story premise will not trouble anyone due to familiarity with the narrative backbone if the ride itself proves rewarding.

Given the title Bomber, one has a fairly good idea what the "secret" revelation and need for redemption will be in this film written and directed by Paul Cotter, but again, that's less important than the journey itself. For such yarns to still have punch, there are several questions that need to be answered in the affirmative. Is the pilgrimage rife with drama and emotion of the highest order? Is it compelling? Is it plausible? Are the literal twists and turns in the road carefully and evocatively mirrored with twists and turns of the thematic and psychological kind? Are they layered, original and, most importantly, entertaining and thought provoking?

These then, are the challenges, not only of the filmmaker in general, but frankly, the reviewer who must assess the worth or lack thereof in this specific film. And the answer to each question above is, rather maddeningly - yes... and no.

Bomber is certainly a film worth seeing, though the whole is definitely not equal to the sum of its parts. Granted, with any film, one takes away individual moments, scenes, sequences and the like, holding on to them long after we've seen the picture, but I think what separates the good from the great in cinema (we can leave the mediocre and merely wretched behind in discussing this work) is when everything comes together in the actual process of watching the film - when what we see while we see it is as seamless as possible, so that questions about character, motivation and plot are answered in due course as the picture unspools. Questions should (almost) always come after. Analysis and thought about what we've seen is richer when the picture delivers a narrative that has as few speed bumps as possible to take us out of the drama, unless taking us out of the drama is an intentional tool to enhance the drama as the film progresses.

For example, Bomber has an uphill climb in gaining our avid interest. This is not a case of a film leisurely giving us necessary information in order to lull us into acceptance of the narrative and/or tone and pace, but rather the fact that the picture seems to start off on the sort of footing that strains credibility in the actions of the main character - who, as it turns out, is not necessarily the father figure, but the son.

At the outset, we are introduced to the son as he tries silently waking while his live-in girlfriend sleeps. Alas, she wakes up and he needs to explain to her that he's popping out to see his parents off on their trip to Europe. The girlfriend reminds him they have an important commitment and that he must not blow it "again". He emphatically assures her he won't, but just as forcefully insists how important it is he visits with his parents.

So far, so good.

He shows up at Mom and Dad's house, helps them pack their car, says his goodbyes and offers his well wishes. We're given an excellent series of clues and character traits about all three characters and their relationships with one another. The son hugs and kisses Mom. When he goes to give Dad a hug, it's rebuffed in favour of a handshake. It's true-to-life, intriguing and entertaining.

And then... Dad and Mom start the car, back out of the garage and... KAPUT! The car dies.

This is where you start to get a sinking feeling as the next series of shots are of the son transporting Mom and Dad to Germany in his van - accompanied, sadly, by some horrendous up-tempo folkie tune. We don't actually see the son's decision to screw things up with his girlfriend (presumably yet again) and drop everything to drive his parents which, in and of itself is not a big problem, but because considerable running time passes with ho-hum driving shots and scant few clues as to how the son agrees to let this happen, all one thinks while watching is, "Why the hell is he doing this?" and "Oh, give me a break, I'm not buying this." Not only is credibility being strained, but also we're not given enough clues for quite some time as to why the son would do this. All the while, we're taken out of the narrative and left with borderline cutesy-pie quirkiness.

Annoying as hell, really. Here we are at the beginning of the road trip and we're NOT buying it, but instead are forced to feed upon a few jaunty dollops of whimsy. Ugh!

Eventually, we come to understand the son's motivations, but frankly, this has taken far too long to occur and it becomes a real chore to stay with the movie. Once we eventually do, there are considerable pleasures to be had, but they come in fits and starts - the entire film being marred by either lapses in credibility or forced quirkiness.

All that said, when the film is clicking, it's funny, bittersweet and often very moving. The trio of performances from Shane Taylor, Benjamin Whitrow and Eileen Nicholas are uniformly fine. Whitrow, in particular offers up knockout work. The scene where he finally encounters what he's been looking for sees him deliver such a moving monologue that we're riveted and though his "audience" in the film is finally less than enthralled, we're moved and shattered to see this character redeem himself. When he discovers the real truth behind the thing he's been haunted by for over sixty years of his life, I defy anyone to control the opening of their tear duct floodgates.

Bomber is without question a flawed work, but in spite of this you'll experience any number of moments so profoundly moving that you'll be grateful to have experienced the parts, if not the whole.

"Bomber" is available on DVD from Film Movement.



10/17/10