SUNSET SONG - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Oh Dear, Another Terence Davies Masterpiece. What else is new? UK's Greatest Living Director Serves Up Epic of Romance and War.

Sunset Song (2015)
Dir. Terence Davies
Nvl. Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Starring: Agyness Deyn, Peter Mullan, Kevin Guthrie, Jack Greenlees, Daniela Nardini, Douglas Rankine, Ian Pirie, Linda Duncan McLaughlin, Mark Bonnar

Review By Greg Klymkiw

To my mind, Terence Davies is a National Treasure and easily the United Kingdom's greatest living director. Over the course of 30+ years, he's brought us eight feature length diamonds. Some have been exquisitely in the rough like 1983's The Terence Davies Trilogy of short films, the 1993 Southern Gothic of The Neon Bible and the shimmering 2008 Liverpool documentary Of Time and the City.

The carefully hewn diamonds are something else altogether - one picture after another to take their rightful place as cinematic equivalents to the priceless Persian Koh-I-Noor diamond. Blending painterly tableaux, to-die-for lighting, sweetly breathtaking camera moves (often slow and subtle), replete with Davies's virtually trademark recurring themes of time and memory, are, with few peers, amongst the best films of all time.

The masterpieces include 1988's Distant Voices, Still Lives, the gulp-and-tear-inducing exploration of a family seeking solace in "old songs" at the local pub to allay the constant physical, verbal and psychological assaults from a brutal patriarch, 1992's The Long Day Closes, a ravishing ode to movies in post-war Britain, 2000's The House of Mirth, the finest Edith Wharton film adaptation anyone will ever make, and 2011's The Deep Blue Sea, the finest film adaptation of any Terence Rattigan play that (you guessed it) anyone will ever make. (That said, Anthony Asquith's adaptation of The Browning Version with Michael Redgrave is a pubic-hair-close-second in the Rattigan movie sweepstakes.)

And now, a new masterpiece can be added to the pile.

Sunset Song is the ravishing, romantic story of a young woman who gives up her dreams of a higher education to care for farm and family. Her father is a brute who physically abuses his eldest son and demands constant sex from his wife, turning her into a breeding machine long after she is physically able to handle it. Upon the matriarch's death, Daddy Dearest gets a stroke and attempts to demand sexual favours from his only daughter. As she always has, she fights back against the unfairness and evil of patriarchy. Though her dreams of teacher's college were dashed, she discovers that her real dream consists of a deep love for the land, its people and the sweet-faced kindness offered by marrying a handsome, caring young man.

All seems well and then, war.

What's precious about her life is about to flip topsy turvy, but her strength, indomitable courage and intelligence will constantly be set upon the greatest of life's challenges. Davies charges this simple, yet complex tale with an astonishing mise en scène. Never has an on-screen courtship been sweeter and the love experienced by the young man and woman beats its heart constantly through joyous events, strife and hardships of the most devastating order and beyond.

We're faced with a myriad of life's moments with Davies's masterly direction: a deliriously romantic exchange amidst a sea of sheep, a glorious wedding sequence and barn dance, the cruelties of shell shock and the horrors of war.

There's a sequence in Sunset Song which is blessed with one of the most moving series of images and sounds that you're likely to see in any films - period. It's pure Terence Davies, yet also worthy of the very best of John Ford. The sequence is especially reminiscent of those stirring moments from Ford's screen adaptation of novelist Richard Llewellyn's How Green Was My Valley - a cornucopia of knockout moments wherein Welsh miners sing songs of sadness and joy at key points in Ford/Llewellyn's narrative of the land and its people.

Davies, of course, is not in Ford's Wales, but delivers his narrative of the land and people of Scotland in this heartbreaking, but ultimately moving and soaring film adaptation of Lewis Grassic Gibbon's immortal book "Sunset Song", the first in his important trilogy, "A Scots Quair".

As this is a Terence Davies film, music and song carry us to euphoric and elegiac heights. Using what might be the ultimate contemporary recording of Hugh Robertson's arrangement of Katherine Tynan's gut wrenching "All in the April Evening" (performed by The Glasgow Orpheus Choir), Davies and cinematographer Michael (Winter's Bone) McDonough's dazzling camera follow the people of the Estate of Kinraddie in Kincardineshire Mearns of northeastern Scotland as they slowly make their way over the rolling fields of yellow grasses until they converge upon the parish cathedral to prepare for a very solemn Sunday Service.

As beautiful and rich as the images are, along the country road and past the ancient rock buttressing the House of God, the camera, then dollying slowly backwards inside the cathedral as the townsfolk sit whilst sun streams through the majestic windows, waiting for the words of Reverend Gibbon (Mark Bonnar), there is a portent we cannot help but feel to our very core. It doesn't seem lost upon the townspeople either - what begins as a happy parade to worship, soon betrays visages of both melancholy and trepidation and the gait of the assembled, is ultimately not unlike a funeral march.

Tynan's song tells the tale of Christ's Passion, but given that Scotland has been corralled into war by England against The Hun, we cannot help but ascribe the meaning of the lyrics to reflect what really awaits the folk of Kinraddie:

The sheep with their little lambs
Pass'd me by on the road;
All in an April evening
I thought on the Lamb of God.

The lambs were weary, and crying
With a weak human cry;
I thought on the Lamb of God
Going meekly to die.

As the camera passes by the newly, happily married couple, Chris (Agyness Deyn) and Ewan (Kevin Guthrie), the lyrics are timed thusly:

. . . but for the lamb, The Lamb of God
Up on the hill-top green;

Here, Davies and McDonough reverse the angle upon the pulpit as the grim-faced Reverend slowly makes his way to the "holy" perch above the people. And the lyrics lament:

. . .Only a cross, a cross of shame
Two stark crosses between.

The Reverend ascends the stairs to his lectern of doom, lowers his head, then raises it, staring straight out at the congregation as the final lyrics hang in the air like a harbinger of death:

I saw the sheep with their lambs,
And thought on the Lamb of God.

The light then shines upon the suitably creepy Reverend as if it's been cranked-up by God Himself. Taking its place amongst such hellfire and brimstone cinematic sermons like John Gielgud in Joseph Strick's 1977 film of James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Orson Welles in John Huston's film of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, Davies is blessed with the casting of Mark Bonnar to have us (and the congregation), quaking with horror.

With his brogue pitched to hysteria and meanness, Bonnar's rendering of the sermon seems to be the very core of the film (even though the picture is essentially a grand coming of age story). It goes thusly:

"As you know, we are now at war with Germany. This NEW BABYLON has as many corruption as the old one. How long it will rage is what God in His wisdom will only know. But it's a chastisement by blood and fire that the nations must arise and prevail against this enemy. And Scotland, not the least of these, in its ancient health and humility to tread again the path of peace and courage that will ultimately lead to our victory.

Their King, which they also call Kaiser, is the Antichrist - a foul evil upon this Earth that must be swept away by the righteous.

Those who will not fight to defend their country, must be exposed for that they truly are.

Cowards. And pro-German cowards at that."

History proves that the needs of the state are always bolstered by organized religion. Worse yet, World War I notoriously sacrificed the youngest and largest number of men from Scotland, Ireland and the colonies (including Canada, Australia, etc.) to ensure victory. Whole swaths of generational promise were sacrificed in this dirty war fought between the "ruling classes".

God forbid Davies should ever be politically obvious in a didactic fashion, but in so far as he chooses his material and presents it, he still exposes as many terrible truths about humanity as only the best filmmakers/artists do. Sunset Song is a love story, a coming-of-age story, but most of all, it serves as one of the most heartbreaking and potent antiwar films of the new millennium.

And here's my guarantee, you will shed copious tears.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Sunset Song Opens in Canada via Unobstructed View:
May 13: Toronto, Cineplex Cinemas Varsity and VIP (55 Bloor St. W)
Toronto Holdover, Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas
May 27: Vancouver, Vancity Theatre (1181 Seymour St.)
May 28: Winnipeg, Cinematheque (100 Arthur St.)
June 3: Calgary, Globe Cinema (617 8 Ave SW)
June 3: Waterloo, Princess Twin (46 King St. N)
June 17: Montréal, Cinéma du Parc (3575, av. du Parc)
Cinéma Beaubien (2396, rue Beaubien Est)
June 17: Ottawa, ByTowne Cinema (325 Rideau St.)
June 17: Québec City, Cinéma Le Clap (2360, chemin Sainte-Foy)
June 17: Cobourg, The Loft Cinema (201 Division St.)

THE RAINBOW KID - Review By Greg Klymkiw -

The Rainbow Kid (2015)
Dir. Kire Paputts
Starring: Dylan Harman, Julian Richings, Tony Nappo, Nicholas Campbell

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Is it possible for a picture to hover in the strange never-never land of neorealism and magic realism? Well, it's improbable, but not impossible and if there's a picture that manages to do so whilst creating its own unique voice, then said honour belongs to the new film by Kire Paputts. Original, moving and transcendent, The Rainbow Kid leads us to the very heart of humanity.

Impossible journeys to achieve even more impossible goals are the stuff dreams and good films are made of. Happily, Paputts gets to have his cake and eat it too with this lovely picture. The film has a surface sweetness and gentle demeanour which masques the darkness which can befall and/or threaten the innocent in a world rife with meanness.

Eugene (Dylan Harman) has Downs Syndrome. His healthy obsession with rainbows leads him to embark upon an odyssey to discover the pot of gold which, it has been said, rests ever-so gently at the end of those splendorous bands of colour arching across the sky after a good rain. Like any great quest tale, Eugene experiences a series of episodic adventures along the way. Many of them take the form of meeting and relating to a variety of people including an old punk rock star played one of Canada's greatest character actors, Julian Richings.

The film has an incorruptibility that borders on the whimsical, but happily never careens into the sickening tweeness of films, mostly of the French and Spanish persuasion, which annoyingly force us to bathe and/or drown in a septic tank full of treacle and bile. The tough-minded core always remains just below the surface, always threatening to impinge up Eugene.

If anything, The Rainbow Kid is imbued with the tone so overwhelming in David Lynch's immortal The Straight Story in which old contemporary cowpoke Richard Farnsworth (The Grey Fox) traverses the highways of America on a lawn mower to reunite with his long-estranged brother. In both cases, humanity reigns supreme as the respective central characters transcend their challenges by an immersion in the challenges, tears, joy and, yes, meanness of others.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

The Rainbow Kid opens the Canadian Indie Film Series May 4 and theatrically May 6 in Canada via A-71. Canadian Indie Film Series screenings on May 4 include: Kingston, Waterloo, Calgary, Kamloops, Penticton, Cranbrook, Campbell River, Courtenay, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Kanata, Whitby, New Westminster, Kelowna, Nanaimo with special events at Staircase Theatre in Hamilton (date TBD) and Market Hall Theatre in Peterborough (June 8).

SLEEPING GIANT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - One of 2015's best films opens theatrically across Canada via D Films. If you dare miss this film on a big screen, I hereby utter the immortal words of Liam Neeson: "I will find you and I will kill you!"

Preamble to Review: For years I've been blowing chunks in the direction of Canada's Cineplex Entertainment for their continued non-support of Canadian Cinema and indie cinema in general. When I say Canadian Cinema, I am not referring to grotesqueries like Hyena Road and Passchendaele, nor am I referring to fake-Canadian international co-productions that are not Canadian in any way shape or form (yet are supported with funds from the Canadian government and even championed by them as Canadian).

No, what I mean are bonafide, culturally significant Canadian films like Sleeping Giant. Cineplex Entertainment has bestowed an opening weekend upon the film in its flagship Toronto cinema, the Varsity. Personally, I believe it would have been a supreme embarrassment for Cineplex if they'd NOT played the film. That said, the exhibition of Canadian cinema is not solely incumbent upon major exhibitors, but requires commitment and ingenuity from Canadian distributors. Luckily, Sleeping Giant is being handled by D Films in Toronto and they have stepped up to the plate marvellously with first-rate publicity, magnificent marketing and an excellent theatrical opinion-maker preview prior to the opening day. Exhibition and Distribution go hand-in-hand, BUT exhibition of Canadian Cinema at the level of major chains like Cineplex seems to only garner their support and commitment when they feel like it (Flopperoo Hyena Road, anyone?). Why, oh why, oh why, are there not Sleeping Giant one-sheets (which are excellent) up in every Cineplex cinema across the country and why, oh why, oh why have there not been Sleeping Giant trailers (also excellent) playing on way more Cineplex screens coast-to-coast? The P.R. commitment Cineplex made to flopperoo Hyena Road was ridiculously substantial. I have seen nothing on a similar scale for Sleeping Giant. For those living in Toronto, see Sleeping Giant this weekend. This is a movie that deserves to hold on at the Cineplex Entertainment flagship for many weeks.

Sleeping Giant (2015)
Dir. Andrew Cividino

Scr. Cividino, Aaron Yeger, Blain Watters
Starring: Jackson Martin, Nick Serino, Reece Moffett,
Katelyn McKerracher, David Disher, Erika Brodzky, Rita Serino

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Most teenage boys have experienced dull days in cottage country - so dull, so sleepy, so quiet, that often, extreme measures need to be implemented. Sleeping Giant is a skilfully directed, gorgeously written and nicely observed slice of life that most of us from the male persuasion - young, old and those who never quite grew up - will be deeply affected by. It also has a terrifically unique Canadian flavour in that it eschews the usual sentimental sweetness of most coming of age films like the sickening tweeness of The Kings of Summer and the nostalgic goo of Stand By Me.

There's plenty of tough North Western Ontario hoser-speak and the kind of swagger that can, more often than not, lead to danger. (My own Canuck adolescence was so pathetic, we'd think nothing of driving eight hours from Winnipeg to Thunder Bay, where Sleeping Giant was shot, to hang in the heavy metal watering hole The Inn-Towner to simply ogle all the amply-bottomed-and-bosomed hoser chicks with big hair that seemed to glow like radiation in the fluorescence of this dank monument to Canuckian redneck-ism.)

The three young lads at the centre of the film don't even get to hang at the Inn-Towner. They're stuck in a cottage community overlooking Lake Superior where the massive Sleeping Giant (so named by the area's indigenous peoples because the humungous outcropping of turf in the lake looks just like some Brobdingnagian creature keeled over on its back) consumes all views upon the water. The Sleeping Giant is also the name of an insanely dangerous hunk of rock exploding upwards as a beacon for all strapping young men to idiotically dive from the top of it.

Director Cividino has a great feel for the lives of these young men: their wrasslin' bouts, hanging around, stealing beer from the local vendor, zipping around in a golf cart, tear-assing along the rural asphalt on skateboards, watching pathetic fireworks and hitting the noisy arcade. The central figure of the trio is a bit of a dull, pampered rich boy from the city with a Dad so liberal he preaches the healthy sowing of wild oats (while secretly boffing the babe-o-licious hoser chick checkout girl behind his wife's back).

The other two boys are your garden variety country cousin trailer park dwellers living with their raspy-voiced, plain-spoken, chain-smoking Grannie. One of the two white trash laddies is a handsome, young rake who looks to the rich boy's Daddy with a mixture of envy and yearning for a father figure in his life, whilst the other is a deliriously foul-mouthed, mean-spirited misogynist full of bilious utterances about sex.

Most interesting of all is the fact that our rich boy hero takes on so many of the properties one can ascribe to an almost historical stylistic trademark in Canadian cinema. He's the semi-mute observer. He takes it all in passively and the notion of overt action is a rare thing for him to choose. Pretty much every film from the late 80s to mid-90s Golden Age of English-Canadian film, most notably in work by Atom Egoyan, Guy Maddin and John Paizs, is happily populated with leading men of this variety. The difference here though, is that Cividino's style, unlike the near-expressionist qualities of the aforementioned, is rooted in the kind of neo-realist perspective one would more often experience in early Donald Shebib works.

There's also a point when some of us might be thinking, "Hey, as great as this is, are we really going to be staring at nothing but guys? Hell, they're all nice looking young bucks with distinctive qualities, but where, oh where, are the babes?"

Well, Cividino does not disappoint. When a hot young teenage babe enters the picture, loyalties become strained, if not divided.

And, getting back to one of my favourite topics, our burgeoning young fellas experience even more division and tantalizing temptation when the film's smouldering homoerotic qualities wend in and out through the picture. Sadly, said homoeroticism is never requited to the degree one of the characters (and some audience members, including moi) would have hoped for, but there's plenty of smouldering in the movie to keep our eyes glued to the screen.

There is, you see, that dangerous sleeping giant cliff. It's a rite of passage that's claimed more than a few lives over the years and the film is charged with a slowly mounting and creepy sense of malevolence tied both to the land and the burgeoning machismo of our three young heroes.

Something bad is going to happen. You can't help but feel it and it's the very thing which adds to the ample qualities of the picture's compulsive form and spirit.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** 4 Stars

Sleeping Giant opens in Canada on the following dates:
April 8th - Toronto
April 15th - Vancouver, Montreal
April 22nd - expansion to rest of country

SON OF SAUL - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Best Film of the Year & theNewMillennium

Son of Saul (2015)
Dir. László Nemes
Scr. László Nemes, Clara Royer
Starring: Géza Röhrig

Review By Greg Klymkiw

After seeing Son of Saul, I thought, well, there's not much reason to see anything else. It's a feeling that's certainly followed me throughout the myriad of pictures I've watched since, and even though some are very good, if not even exceptional, this extraordinary film by László Nemes is even suppressing films from my consciousness that I have seen before it - not just in the recent past, either. What Nemes accomplishes here as an artist is what we hope and pray great art will do.

I've only seen the picture once and I simply cannot shake its devastating effects. It has been seared upon my brain and weeks after seeing it, I keep playing the film over and over in my mind. The picture is beyond recollection, beyond reminiscence.

I feel that the act of seeing it is to finally experience a dramatic work, which is as close to bearing witness to events, emotions and experiences as any film I've ever seen. I feel that the act of seeing it is to finally experience a dramatic work, which is as close to bearing witness to events, emotions and experiences as any film I've ever seen. It's so grippingly real the sights and sounds feel like they're accompanied by a smell - pungent, horrific odours of death, filth, fire, rot and decay.

We know what occurred during the Holocaust, we know how insane and reprehensible genocide of any kind is, we know these things. We've seen Night and Fog, Shoah and Schindler's List, but I cannot think of any film which will ever do what Son of Saul has done.

Nemes places us in the very eye of this hurricane of devastation, this Hellfire on Earth, this 20th Century abomination which forces us to question how and why we continue to accept any hatred which is responsible for genocide.

Nemes and his co-writer Clara Royer spare nothing to plunge us directly into the madness of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the astonishing mise-en-scene of never leaving the face of Saul (Géza Röhrig), a Hungarian-Jew who works an "enviable" concentration camp job in the Sonderkommando. This group of prisoners are worked to the same levels of exhaustion as other inmates, but they are afforded a slightly loftier place in the pecking order of eventual extermination. They get slightly increased rations and slightly more "humane" work-shifts for herding their fellow Jews into the gas chambers.

The film begins with a group of prisoners forced to strip, then shoved into a shower room. Throughout the whole process, Nazi guards offer words of solace - placating the doomed prisoners with lies of a better life. Once locked into the shower room, Saul and his fellow Sonderkommando madly rifle through the clothing to extract all items of value as the screams of the nude prisoners pierce through the steel walls of the gas chamber.

Once the screams dissipate, Saul and the others drag the bodies ("the meat") out of the chamber, stack them, clean the chamber of all "filth" (urine and faecal matter expunged in both horror and death) and, of course, point out prisoners who are still alive.

These poor souls are shot or strangled. Some of them are selected by the "mad scientists" for autopsy in order to glean information as to how they survived.

It's here where Saul discovers a young boy who appears to be his son. He watches as the child is snuffed out and then tagged for autopsy. As if we, through Saul, have not already experienced a living nightmare, Nemes ramps things up even further.

The Nazis are attempting to beat the clock as the allies are ever-approaching and everything begins over again as new groups of victims are herded, stripped, gassed, piled like meat and transported to be burned.

Saul's goal is to keep up appearances, but to also obtain a proper Jewish burial for his son. The rest of the film is devoted to this, in addition to the ever-increasing pace of destruction.

The camera almost never leaves actor Géza Röhrig's face through any of this. It occasionally arcs around for us to get Saul's point of view, but these moments are fleeting and we can never escape his look of mad determination, whilst in the background, we see and hear the endless factory of death.

There is no musical score. If anything, the score is the soundscape of destruction - clangs, screams, gunshots.

Our senses are jangled, as actor Röhrig manages to keep the same face throughout, modifying it only slightly to move through the madness and achieve his goal. This might well be one of the greatest works any actor has done in any film.

The horror never lets up, but there is one sequence involving mass shootings and burnings as Saul fiercely attempts to achieve his goal, but to also convince some over-zealous Nazis that he is not to be shot and burned, that he is Sonderkommando. This sequence might well be the only time we will witness Hell on a movie screen - any movie screen. We are beyond jangled and pummelled here. The mise-en-scene forces us to experience Saul's elevated levels of horror.

The film continues to build to ever-intensifying crescendos of terror and Nemes inflicts a final cut to black that we don't see coming and winds us so painfully and horrendously that we physically feel the need to gasp for air.

This is a first feature for Nemes. One can't even imagine where he goes next as an artist, but with what he's created here, he has extraordinarily vaulted himself into the position of a Master.

There is, within the context of Saul's story, no hope, but the very act of experiencing it and bearing witness allows it anyway. No matter how devastated one is by the end, an overwhelming sense of hope swirls over us. We have experienced a work of art that we have had to experience. This is a film that defines the word "necessary".

Anything and everything we can do to urge others to see the film is our mission.

This is the hope.

The world needs to see this film and maybe, just maybe, there will be hope that the world can, because of this film, because of bearing witness, because of its mere existence, become a better place.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Son of Saul is a Mongrel Films release and currently playing in Canada at the TIFF Bell Lightbox.

HITCHCOCK/TRUFFAUT - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Disappointing Doc from historic book

Hitchcock/Truffaut (2015)
Dir. Kent Jones
Starring: Alfred Hitchcock, Francois Truffaut, Martin Scorsese, David Fincher,
Arnaud Desplechin, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Wes Anderson, James Gray, Olivier Assayas,
Richard Linklater, Peter Bogdanovich, Paul Schrader

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"Hitchcock/Truffaut" was published in 1966 and remains one of the few genuine Holy Bibles on cinema. In 1962, the acclaimed former film critic and French New Wave director Francois (The 400 Blows) Truffaut sat down with Alfred Hitchcock for an entire week to discuss the Great Master's entire filmography in detail. Though Truffaut is clearly a fan, he's far more than that. His love for Hitchcock as a genuine film artist borders on the rhapsodic, but he's clearly able to talk with the man in the most penetrating detail. Perhaps most importantly, Truffaut brings the skills of both a great film critic and filmmaker to the table and I can think of no better volume to lay bare the inner workings of a brilliant and complex filmmaker like Hitchcock.

Since the original audio recordings of these conversations still exist, in addition to the amazing photographs taken during the week-long meeting of minds, one wonders what took so long for anyone to make a feature documentary based on this amazing book. Now that such a film exists, it's with a heavy heart that I must declare what a disappointment Hitchcock/Truffaut, the documentary is. Director Kent Jones had access to all the aforementioned materials, plus all the gorgeous film clips money could buy and interview subjects like Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Arnaud Desplechin, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Wes Anderson, James Gray, Olivier Assayas, Richard Linklater, Peter Bogdanovich and Paul Schrader to expand on the materials selected from the historic interviews.

One big problem is that the film can't begin to come close to capturing the sheer importance of this event. Director Jones employs a kind of by-the-numbers chronological approach to the material smattered with illustrative clips from the films and occasional interviews with a whack of contemporary directors. Sure, we certainly get breathless (albeit all-to-brief) moments as to why Hitchcock was so great, but we seldom get the feeling just how important he was to the art of cinema. The movie speeds along like a standard TV-style documentary and few of the interview subjects are allowed enough time to expound on the material in the same manner Truffaut himself did. No need to slag here with specific finger-pointing, but several of the subjects aren't even worthy to kiss Hitchcock's feet. Their inclusion seems relegated to an ooh and ahh effect - mostly, it would seem, for those too bone-headedly convinced that some of these filmmakers have opinions on the matter (or any matter) worth considering. Thank Christ, Jones didn't shoehorn Christopher Nolan into this thing. He gets points for that.

Some of those who are worthy are given short-shrift. Anyone who has spent any time listening to Peter Bogdanovich in person or in interviews as he waxes eloquent upon Hitchcock knows just how magnificently The Last Picture Show director can discuss both the work and the man. Bogdanovich is a first-rate raconteur and his Hitchcock impersonations are second to none, yet he's barely on-screen. Arnaud Desplechin, Kiyoshi Kurosawa and Paul Schrader have insightful observations, but we simply don't get enough of them and, fuck it, I'll point one finger and say that the insufferable Olivier Assayas has nothing to say at the best of times - either in person or in his pretentious overrated films, so that his inclusion here is a huge downer.

Happily, we get a few healthy dollops of Martin Scorsese, who comes closest to the insight Truffaut demonstrated in the unexpurgated interviews in the book itself. In fact, Scorsese, with his clinically insane ability to recall individual moments, shot by shot, beat by beat, might actually have had observations to give Truffaut a run for his money. Alas, we still feel hungry for further Scorsese. Less, in this case, is certainly not more.

It's impossible to know what filmmaker Jones tried to accomplish here. It's a hodgepodge and at best feels like an elongated DVD supplement. As such, though, this is somewhat insulting to the truly great DVD supplements we've seen on the Criterion Collection and Kino Lorber labels and occasionally on the Universal and Warner Brothers supplements. The great filmmaker Laurent Bouzereau has created the best - bar none - documentary materials on Spielberg, Hitchcock, DePalma, Polanski, Friedkin and the list goes on and on.

Bouzereau brings a distinctive voice to his work - so much so that one is not only tantalized by the films he focuses upon, but one can identify his work within a minute or two of watching them. As a documentary filmmaker specializing in cinema, he's the real thing, and then some.

Alas, with Hitchcock/Truffaut, I certainly have no sense of who Kent Jones is and perhaps even less than zero a sense of what in hell kind of movie he wanted to make.

By default, mostly because of Scorsese, Jones's film has about 20 genuinely engaging minutes. The rest of it feels like the supplemental materials cobbled together for a lower-drawer DVD release. Given that the movie's running time is only 80 minutes, but feels twice that length because of its dull, ham-fisted structure, one thinks Mr. Jones might best tend to his duties as the Director of Programming for the New York Film Festival. His previous cinema documentaries, most notably his mediocre Val Lewton doc, are equally dull. This one, though, represents some kind of nadir.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *½ One and a Half Stars

Hitchcock/Truffaut plays theatrically in Canada at the TIFF Bell Lightbox and Vancity Theatre via Pacific Northwest Pictures. In the USA it is released via Cohen Media Group.

JAMES WHITE - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Privileged Wankers Can Suffer Too

James White (2015)
Dir. Josh Mond
Starring: Christopher Abbott, Cynthia Nixon, Makenzie Leigh, Scott Mescudi

Review By Greg Klymkiw

With James White, his first feature film as a director, acclaimed producer Josh Mond (Martha Marcy May Marlene) has not made it especially easy to like his title character. In fact, he's made it downright difficult to even like his movie.

This is not as bad as it sounds.

James (Christopher Abbott) is a spoiled twenty-something jerk with no job, no prospects and no ambition. He whiles his Manhattan days and nights away in clubs, fraternizing with pals (most notably old chum Nick, played by rapper Scott Mescudi), getting into macho bar brawls, drinking like a fish and ingesting all manner of hallucinogens. He couch surfs in mom Gail's (Cynthia Nixon) comfy apartment and seems oblivious to being a screw-up, not just in life, but in the one thing he's supposed to do properly - take care of his mother who is recovering from cancer.

He's recently lost his father (Gail's ex) to a heart attack and though he cherishes his Mom and wants her to be around a good, long time, he keeps screwing up with his relatively simple chores like making sure her scrips are filled. He even bamboozles her into forking out enough dough to head down to a Mexican resort to "clean himself up." It's the last thing he does, of course. Meeting another New Yorker, the gorgeous Jayne (Makenzie Leigh) he continues ingesting booze, drugs and getting more than his fair share of nookie.

"Alas", his "recovery" vacation is cut short by the news that Gail has had a relapse. Here the film settles into a detailed and harrowing virtual two-hander as a wayward son provides palliative care to his mother who is in Stage 4. Gail is in and out of consciousness and quickly deteriorating physically. James is often stymied by what he's supposed to do, but he refuses to give up on making her every last moment as comfortable as possible.

In her last days, the film's POV upon James comes from Gail and hauntingly, it's the first time we see why she loves him. We even vaguely come to understand why he might not be a complete piece of shit. It's not only haunting, but downright heartbreaking and anyone who has experienced the last days of a beloved parent in palliative care will be rendered to mush as the painstaking reality of both the performances and events are infused with a reality we seldom see in movies.

Abbott as Chris goes all out in making his character as repellent as possible, but when faced with the reality of a Mother who is dying, he also lets us in - just a sliver, mind you, but a shard that is lodged deep with us so that we find ourselves inhabiting his point of view.

Cynthia Nixon delivers one of her sharp, wisecracking, vaguely annoying performances (a la the sicking Sex and the City), but even she manages to let it all hang out in the final third so that we, like her son, desperately hope she'll stop suffering, which she does, but not before Nixon emits one of the most creepily realistic death gasps you'll experience in any film.

Love and connections are made, but the notion of redemption finally seems ambiguous. This is as brave and powerful a stand for any drama to take. I don't like this film, but I cannot help but admire it wholeheartedly.

The Film Corner Rating: *** 3-Stars

James White is limited release via Films We Like at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto.

FEBRUARY - Review By Greg Klymkiw at "ELECTRIC SHEEP - a deviant view of cinema" - TIFF 2015: Atmospheric Babes in Peril Thriller with Lewton-like touches.

Read Greg Klymkiw's TIFF 2015 *** review of FEBRUARY at "Electric Sheep - a deviant view  of cinema" by clicking HERE.

THE WITCH - Review By Greg Klymkiw at "Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema" - TIFF 2015: Decent Cinematography not enough to save pretentious, dull, bargain-basement late-career Terence Malick rip-off crossed with Roman Polanski aspirations and dollops of half-baked Bergman. Worse yet, pic is not unlike lower-drawer M. Night Shyamalan. That's truly chilling!

Read Greg Klymkiw's ** TIFF 2015 review of THE WITCH at "Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema" by clicking HERE.

BASKIN - Review By Greg Klymkiw at "ELECTRIC SHEEP - a deviant view of cinema" - TIFF 2015: Turkish Tarantino-esque Cops Meet Satan during Black Mass investigation

Read Greg Klymkiw's **** review of BASKIN, a TIFF 2015 Midnight Madness wad of depravity. Just visit "Electric Sheep - a deviant view of cinema" by clicking HERE.

DEMON - Review By Greg Klymkiw at "ELECTRIC SHEEP - a deviant view of cinema" TIFF 2015: Chilling Polish Dybbuk Horror Thriller by 42-year-old Director who died one week after World Premiere at TIFF

Marcin Wrona, the brilliant young Polish filmmaker presented the World Premiere of his chilling horror film DEMON in the Vanguard Series at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2015) one week before his sudden death in Poland on September 18, 2015. My **** 4-Star review can be read at Electric Sheep by clicking HERE.

NINTH FLOOR - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Racism, Civil Disobedience & Canada TIFF 2015

NINTH FLOOR (2015)
Dir. Mina Shum

Review By Greg Klymkiw

There's much about Canada that's wonderful and has earned the country a reputation worldwide as a paradise of caring, culture and tolerance. Führer Stevie Harper eroded that view, but in spite of his evil and his fascist government presiding over us for far too long, there is still much about Canada that remains wonderful. Even that fact, though, is a bit of a smokescreen.

In reality - Harper or not - Canada can be downright creepy. It's a country where the War Measures Act was applied against its own citizens and treated innocent people like criminals and terrorists. It's a country where the military has repeatedly been used to bully our indigenous people when they've even moderately protested exploitation at the hands of big business and government. "The Fruit Machine", anyone? This All-Canadian invention was used to identify homosexuals in the civil service and provide the necessary grounds to turf them.

What's creepy about Canada is just how sneaky, nastily backstabbing and "polite" it is when it chooses to fuck people over. A Canadian is just as likely to spit in your face, then immediately apologize for soiling you with their sputum. Because of the country's mask of benevolence, it makes them very good spies, infiltrators and deceivers.

In 1969, one of the most horrendous examples of this Canadian creepiness was perpetrated in Montreal. Its effects resonate to this very day - even though MOST Canadians do not know, care and/or do not remember the events which precipitated a justifiable act of civil disobedience - one in which its participants brought institutional racism in academia to the attention of the world.

Thankfully, the National Film Board of Canada (an equally creepy government agency with its own fair share of blood on its hands - Arthur Lipsett, anyone?) has allowed Mina Shum (Double Happiness) one of Canada's finest filmmakers the opportunity to bring the aforementioned events of 1969 to light in the powerful, superbly crafted Ninth Floor.

In the shadow of Canada's Expo '67 in Montreal, an international celebration of multicultural achievements, a group of Black students enrolled in Sir George Williams University were shocked to learn that their Biology professor was intentionally grading them at far lower levels than the White students. Though he was charged with racism, the university's administration pretty much did nothing about it. The students had only one choice - to take matters into their own hands. They occupied the ninth floor computer lab and brought this shameful incident to the attention of the world - not, however, without consequences and most certainly not without scary police-state-like machinations.

Shum brilliantly uses archival footage, current interviews and effective re-enactments to piece together this story fraught with the sheer evil of Canada's oh-so subtle and, uh, creepy, surveillance. Further presenting the aforementioned materials through the eyes of surveillance cameras adds immeasurably to the creep factor.

Ninth Floor might well be a documentary, but its sizzling storytelling and mise-en-scene places it squarely in the tradition of such brilliant 70s thrillers of paranoia like Alan J. Pakula's The Parallax View and Haskell Wexler's immortal Medium Cool. In addition to being creepy and often downright chilling, Shum also infuses the picture with considerable humanity and emotion, placing her work squarely in the tradition of Michel Brault's Les Ordres, the astounding dramatic expose of the War Measures Act during the FLQ crisis.

Canadians are especially good at following orders. They're nice, polite bureaucrats who have borrowed from the centuries-old history of British Colonialism, espionage and backstabbing. Shum rightly provides justification for the civil disobedience in the film and canonizes those who fought against one of the most insidious evils in the world.

Canada has always been a world leader at masking hatred against its citizens. Shum's film harrowingly and effectively lifts the veil upon one of this country's most shameful acts of terror and subterfuge.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **** Four Stars

Ninth Floor enjoys its World Premiere in TIFF DOCS at TIFF 2015.

SPOTLIGHT - Review By Greg Klymkiw ****TIFF 2015**** MUST-SEE

Spotlight (2015)
Dir. Tom McCarthy
Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Michael Keaton, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci, Brian d'Arcy James, Liev Schreiber, Billy Crudup, Len Cariou

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Organized religion has always had about as much to do with genuine faith in God as the Corleones' Genco Oil Co. had to do with selling olives. In both cases, neither parties are what they seem on the surface. The Catholic Church is probably more insidiously evil than the Mafia.

Built on secrecy, shame and corruption of the highest order, the Church has always been the perfect hiding place for sadists, psychopaths and pedophiles. Catholicism is so powerful that it's been almost impossible to break through their fortresses of protection. Too occasionally, through dogged determination, commitment and bravery on the part of its victims and valiant supporters, the Church has occasionally been exposed.

Where there is a Catholic Church…
there are Child Rapists!

The movie Spotlight takes deadly aim upon Catholic corruption and is so terrific, the picture easily takes its place with a handful of classic films featuring journalists as crusading detectives under the yoke of dark forces. Director Tom Mcarthy expertly lays out the proceedings in such a clear, precise fashion that his picture knocks us on our asses as mightily as 70s stalwarts All The President's Men and The Parallax View managed to do.

Telling the true story of a team of Boston Globe investigative reporters, the film powerfully and breathlessly details the eventual discovery and exposure of not one, not two, nor even a handful of Catholic Church pedophiles, but hundreds of them. In fact, this was one of the most significant takedowns of Catholic proclivities towards sexual abuse in recent decades.

McCarthy serves up one of the most astonishing casts in recent American cinema to lead us into the labyrinthine evil that plagued Boston as horrifically as Whitey Bulger. We follow Marty Baron (Liev Schreiber), a newly appointed Globe editor who pushes the long-respected "Spotlight" team to drop everything and pursue the story behind the story and yet, behind the story, on Catholic pedophiles.

Robby Robinson (Michael Keaton), the team leader, initially complies under duress, but as he comes to know and respect his new boss and discover the twisted truth, he drives his crack reporters to dig deeper than they've ever dug before. The reporters are all Catholics, albeit of the lapsed variety, but even their "lapses" descend into pits of outright indignation as they realize how many children have been sexually abused by priests how both the Catholic Church and the legal system have buried the truth.

Mark Ruffalo - Lapsed Catholic Reporter

Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) takes on Mitchell Garabedian (Stanley Tucci), a lawyer representing ninety victims. The attorney wants to help, but can only do so surreptitiously. He also has knowledge of documents that can only be secured legally by suing the Catrholic Church. Matt Carroll (Brian D’Arcy James) discovers pedophile priests who are merely reassigned to new parishes to rape anew (with the full knowledge and blessing of the Archdiocese of Boston), while Sacha Pfeiffer (Rachel McAdams) discovers even more victims than the aforementioned ninety - hundreds more. She also goes after slime bucket lawyer Eric MacLeish (Billy Crudup) whose collusion only protects the Catholic pederasts further.

Collusion, of course, is the key, and as the film progresses it seems the entire city of Boston is protecting this Confederacy of Holy Child Rapists: the rich and famous, the captains of finance/industry, the Crown, the cops and even the parents of victims (one victim describes his mother putting out cookies for his rapist). Oh, and just so the Globe doesn't come off completely lily-white in all this, McCarthy and co-writer Josh Singer make sure to nail the local media also - especially The Globe and its early collusion with the Church.

McCarthy's mise-en-scene is intelligently, tastefully un-fettered by overwrought visual excess. He spins the yarn by allowing the terrific script and first-rate cast do their business within well-blocked scenes that play-out in longer takes with punch-ins occurring only when they're necessary to genuinely tell the story and move the picture ever-forward. This is not to suggest McCarthy's work is by-the-numbers - instead he subtly creates three primary looks which assist in terms of tone - garish, fluorescent lights in office settings, dark interiors punctuated with glowing warmth when in the presence of the denizens of the Church and finally, a kind of drab, grey quality to most of the daytime exteriors as the reporters go about their business.

Stanley Tucci - a lawyer holds the truth

The entire film grips you by the throat and its impossible to shake free of its grasp - ever-maddening, ever-frustrating, ever-creepy and at times, even downright scary. In addition to the corruption and collusion, the film doesn't avoid exposing the Catholic Church's virulent anti-semitism (especially when blame is placed on the Jewish editor of the Globe). There's also an unbelievably creepy performance from legendary Canadian actor Len Cariou as Cardinal Bernard Law, Boston's prime pervert priest apologist/protector.

The Catholic Church has never looked quite so evil as it does here, and for good reason. It's the sheer paper-pushing bureaucracy at all levels that is used to hide these rapists and then put them back into situations where they can rape again. The movie is so dazzlingly structured that in its final minutes we're not only on the edge of our seats, but are eventually dealt a mighty cathartic blow.

To expose the Church is one piece of the delicate process of healing for its victims - all of whom were children when they were repeatedly raped by supposed men of God, who in turn were protected by the Church itself. The Church should have been protecting the children, not the rapists of the Cloth. In a sense, it would be wonderful if the children had the final word on this. They're the future, not the Catholic Church. As Spotlight stirringly demonstrates, it's the Catholic Church and its legacy of shame that needs to be exposed, but also, placed in a coffin.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Spotlight is a TIFF Special Presentation at TIFF 2015 via Open Road Films

MEKKO - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2015 - Urban Rez on the mean streets of Tulsa

Mekko (2015)
Dir. Sterlin Harjo
Starring: Rod Rondeaux, Zahn McClarnon, Wotko Long, Sarah Podemski, Scott Mason

Review By Greg Klymkiw

They're living ghosts on the dirty, mean streets of Tulsa, Oklahoma, looking for a patch of turf to rest their weary bones, quaff cheap booze and await death whilst clinging desperately to life so they can numb the pain.

Far from home, family and dignity, they're Native Americans reduced to poverty at its lowest rung on this makeshift Indian Reservation in the heart of a flat, grey city on the open plains of the dust bowl state. Life is hard, but death without redemption will be harder. One pain will be replaced with yet another, only this time, it will last an eternity if the loose ends aren't tied up.

Not every man will be up to the task, but in the hands of one man, there exists the power of salvation for his community of homeless indigenous people.

For many of us and certainly within the context of both this film and life itself, the blood and violence that eventually explode in answer to a brutal, cowardly assault and murder, will seem like cold, calculating vengeance, but the writer-director Sterlin Harjo knows better. In his third extraordinary feature film, Harjo takes us deep into the life and spirit of one man to expose a truth we must all face and come to know.

His film Mekko bears the name of its protagonist, a quiet lean, gentle giant played by longtime stuntman Rod Rondeaux (a la such immortals as Ben Johnson and Richard Farnsworth); a man who still has enough of a spark left in him to conjure the memories emblazoned upon his soul in childhood by the words of his long-dead grandmother.

In the tradition of Lionel Rogosin's searing docudramas on America's post-war homeless and the early years of South African apartheid in On the Bowery and Come Back, Africa respectively, in addition to the neo-realist visions of Vittorio De Sica (Bicycle Thieves, Shoeshine, Umberto D), Harjo has created a contemporary masterpiece in Mekko, one which indelibly presents a portrait of Native Americans that's as much a harrowing slice-of-life drama as it is a piece rooted in the folklore of our indigenous peoples.

Harjo hangs his raw cinematic engraving upon the simple tale of a man recently released from a 19-year prison stint for murder who winds up homeless on the streets of Tulsa. He reconnects with an old friend from his youth who's also on the streets, is then befriended by a kind-hearted Native American waitress in a local greasy spoon and eventually confronts his nemesis, an odious street goon who keeps his own people hooked on booze and drugs to extort, bully and eke what cash he can out of them.

As in his grandmother's legends, Mekko and his people are always followed by a malevolent witch-spirit who will haunt them to their graves and beyond unless someone bravely takes action to rip the evil heart and soul out of this scourge, this blight upon humanity. It's ultimately all about looking inward to expose one's own demons and eradicate them with extreme prejudice in order to make the world pure again.

Mekko is an extraordinary work, gorgeously crafted, beautifully acted and even utilizing real indigenous street people in the cast. It's sad, shocking, profoundly moving and ultimately uplifting. The journey to elation is, however, fraught with danger and suffering. It's not cheaply and easily earned, but it's a journey you'll never forget, one with the power to fill you with the kind of truth that not only exposes the lives of real people, but the potential to inspire change within yourself.

Yes, this is what they indeed do. Masterpieces, that is.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***** 5-Stars

Mekko enjoys its international premiere in the Contemporary World Cinema section of TIFF 2015. For further info, visit the TIFF website HERE.

FIRE SONG - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2015 - Legacy of Canadian Colonialist Apartheid

Fire Song (2015)
Dir. Adam Garnet Jones
Starring: Andrew Martin,
Jennifer Podemski, Harley LeGarde-Beacham, Mary Galloway

Review By Greg Klymkiw

The legacy of British colonial rule in Canada has resulted in apartheid and virulent racism. Life on many Aboriginal Reservations is fraught with abject poverty, crime, sexual exploitation, incest and worst of all, an increasingly learned epidemic of suicide. None of this has been alleviated in the years of fascist rule in Canada under Prime Minister Stephen Harper and in fact, has only increased due to his government's complete disregard for Aboriginal nations on virtually every level including the theft of land, natural resources and pernicious backstabbing. The aforementioned blights are all explored in Adam Garnet Jones's feature length debut - and then some.

Fire Song is a deeply moving and an indelibly-captured slice-of-life portrait of young and old alike. They all seek a better life; if not on the reservation, then off it.

When his sister commits suicide, a smart, sensitive young gay man (Andrew Martin) is torn between leaving the reservation to get a post-secondary education and staying behind to care for his beloved mother (Jennifer Podemski) who has crawled into a pit of the deepest despair. Complicating matters further, he's kept his sexual orientation a secret between himself and his lover (Harley LeGarde-Beacham) whilst maintaining a "straight" appearance by dating a beautiful young girl (Mary Galloway), whose father keeps coming on to her incestuously.

In many ways, our hero bears the burden of being a protector, but in reality, he'd eventually fulfill that role even more effectively if he left the reserve to study.

Director Jones captures reservation life with such a keen eye, eliciting superb performances from his entire cast, that it's a trifle disappointing that the screenplay feels so rigidly structured, capturing its story beats on its sleeve. The film needed a bit of breathing space and perhaps might have benefitted from writing which was even further rooted in a neo-realist tradition. As well, far too many conflicts and loose ends are addressed and dealt with in a positive fashion during the final third of the picture. They feel rushed and almost shoe-horned into the proceedings.

Given the often overwhelming despair and confusion, both redemption and positive movements forward are indeed very welcome, but they finally seem too forced to be fully effective. There is, however, one aspect of the tale which is handled beautifully on both the writing, directing and acting fronts which addresses the film's initial suicide in an alternately bittersweet and downright heartbreaking manner guaranteed to get the tear ducts flowing freely.

The mostly youthful cast handle themselves naturalistically, but the one knockout performance comes from Jennifer Podemski who demonstrates, yet again, why she's one of Canada's finest actors. She evokes the character's despair and vulnerability without the kind of histrionics the role might have inspired and Podemski very nicely moves into her character's sense of acceptance and love (especially for her gay son) with a reality that's inspiring. The camera loves her and she knows how to use it by keeping her performance delicately muted in a manner which allows for the kind of impact that only great, understated acting is capable of achieving.

The film ultimately elicits sadness and occasionally anger, but in a sense, it's both a positive and enormously important approach to place us in the heart and soul of a place, a way of life which should have been a paradise, but by virtue of being drafted so long ago within a racist context, is a living Hell - one that had (and still has) the potential for healing. Sometimes, though, healing can't only come from within. It needs genuine help from the outside.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ***½ 3-and-a-half-stars

Fire Song received its World Premiere in the Discovery series at TIFF 2015. For further info, visit the TIFF website HERE.

HOW HEAVY THIS HAMMER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - TIFF 2015 - Self-loathing 4 U

How Heavy This Hammer (2015)
Dir. Kazik Radwanski
Starring: Erwin Van Cotthem, Kate Ashley, Seth Kirsh, Andrew Latter

Review By Greg Klymkiw

"I know at last what I want to be when I grow up.
When I grow up I want to be a little boy."
- Robert Slocum in Joseph Heller's "Something Happened"

"You can spend the entire second half of your life
recovering from the mistakes of the first half."
- Tommy Wilhelm in Saul Bellow's Seize the Day

“...for your life to be worth anything you must sooner or later
face the possibility of terrible, searing regret."
- Frank Bascombe in Richard Ford's The Sportswriter

Erwin (Erwin Van Cotthem) has never grown up. He spends most of his leisure time alone in front of a computer playing a video game which takes him into the adventure world of viking warriors he desperately longs to have been a part of.

He barely acknowledges his wife and two boys. On rare occasions he lumbers out of his man-cave to eat dinner. With his late-period-Orson-Welles-like frame, the sounds he emits over the family dinner table are seldom conversation, but mastication is joyously present.

He's been a lucky man during this horrendous period of despair. His wife has been surprisingly supportive of his ennui, but she's quickly losing patience as his increasing misanthropy is affecting their two sweet boys.

His jowly countenance has stroke/heart-attack written all over it - he's in pure self-destruction mode. The only exercise he gets is playing rugby. In spite of his girth, the sport seems to fit him like a glove. Here his weight allows him to smash his opponents to a pulp and for a few hours per week, Erwin gets to be a Viking warrior on the pitch. After each game, he also has an excuse to quaff several barrel-fulls of beer, his inebriation hardly the sort of thing which engenders him to his wife and kids when he eventually stumbles home.

Erwin might even have it in him to be a good husband and father if it wasn't for the fact that he's only around in body. His spirit is lost under the layers of flesh and self-loathing.

Changes are indeed looming.

Though there are a myriad of films which dramatically render the mid-life crises of white, middle-class men, I can think of very few in recent years (and no, in case you were wondering, NOT the overrated Sam Mendes nonsense American Beauty) which achieve the kind of stark truth and resonance nailed by Kazik Radwanski in his intensely gripping kitchen sink exploration of male ennui in his sophomore feature film How Heavy This Hammer.

Certainly the 50s, 60s and 70s in both British and American cinema are periods which exemplify some of the best work in this tradition and Radwanski's picture can easily share a place with films like: Tony Richardson's Look Back in Anger, Elaine May's Mikey and Nicky, John Cassavetes' Husbands, Gilbert Cates' I Never Sang For My Father, Douglas Schwartz's Your Three Minutes Are Up and among many others, Bob Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces. (There was also many great Canadian pictures in this tradition, most notably Paul Lynch's The Hard Part Begins, Peter Pearson's Paperback Hero, Peter Carter's The Rowdyman and the grandaddy of all Canadian beautiful loser pictures, Donald Shebib's Goin' Down The Road.)

Rather than movies, though, Radwanski's picture seems much closer to a literary tradition, that of Saul Bellow, Joseph Heller, Phillip Roth, John Updike, Richard Ford, Frederick Exley, et al - the grand purveyors of the deepest depths of male angst. Radwanski does not disappoint in this respect. His film is as harrowing a dive into self hatred as one might imagine.

Using the British New Wave kitchen sink tradition of handheld cinematography, Radwanski takes a few steps further into despair as his brilliantly photographed film seems to live in perpetual closeups - most of the time focused upon the great performance of Erwin Van Cotthem as the hapless wannabe father/husband. Keeping us so glued to the faces of the characters forces us to examine virtually every blemish, wrinkle and pore.

What we see on the surface, of course, is skin deep, but we can't help but look deeper.

In spite of everything, in spite of Erwin's selfishness and repellence, Radwanski, his creative team and actors manage to maintain a level of humanity so that we're always in Erwin's corner - hoping and praying he doesn't keep fucking up.

The aforementioned closeups are a big part of this. When Erwin isn't completely blank, his eyes seem to mist over and moisten as if deep down in those ocular pools is the spirit of a man once imbued with great warmth and sensitivity, a man who has lost his way, possibly even irretrievably.

Still, he tries to change, but it gets even more calamitous as he continues to blow his attempts to turn things around. The will always seems to be there, but such is his lot in life to keep fucking it up. It's as if his attempts to change things are akin to merely paying lip service.

What Radwanski's film so tragically details is a man whose only forward movement is always accompanied by two steps backward. We're left with the portrait of a man whose lot in life is to ruin everything that could bring joy to his life.

The picture is a heartbreaker

The Film Corner Rating: ***** 5-Stars

How Heavy This Hammer enjoys its world premier in the Contemporary World Cinema program at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF 2015).