Losing My Religion

Years ago, I tried to make a film consisting of three interlocking stories that shared a theme. It didn't work out so well. The stories had fit together so beautifully in my head and on paper, but on film it just wasn't going to work. They were too different, the thematic links were turning out to be tenuous, I was trying to shoehorn three stories to fit an idea I'd had months before... a recipe for much pulling of hair and gnashing of teeth. Thanks to some luck and a supportive team, I was able to salvage the film by re-thinking it completely, but I vowed never to try this again - no more threes.

This is the first thing I thought of when watching Rama Rau's Losing My Religion. The film, made for the doc strand on Omni, the multicultural broadcaster, is an exploration of the way people's faith changes in a new cultural environment. The three subjects are: a woman who came to Canada as a child and has rejected her parents' Ismaili Muslim faith, a Sikh boxer who battled the Canadian Amateur Boxing Association for the right to compete while bearded, and a man from the former Portuguese colony of Goa who's converting from Catholicism to Hinduism after studying the colonial history of this Indian state.

On paper, it works: the apostate, the devout, and the convert - a nice triangle. I can imagine how the proposal was written. But in reality, these stories are so different that it's difficult to see how they belong together in one film. The Ismaili woman argues with her mother and thinks about how she and her Danish husband will raise their soon-to-be-adopted child. There seems to be little at stake for her: her religion was lost long ago, and neither her disappointed but sweet parents nor her secularist husband seem to be making a big issue of it. The boxer simply recounts his (long-ago, it turns out) battle with the boxing authorities, but we learn little about the nature of his devotion to his Sikh faith. Did having to take a stand bring him closer to his faith? Or was he just being stubborn, as befits a young boxer? And the convert... well, his main interest is the history of Goa, which strays very far from the theme of transformation in the diaspora. His motivation and concerns appear to be very different from those of the other subjects, and while he's definitely a familiar type of immigrant intellectual, his change of faith just doesn't strike me as fitting into this film at all.

Losing My Religion is about three very different intellectual and emotional journeys, but it never gives a sense of the internal struggle that people who take faith seriously go through on their way to losing it. Perhaps that's why we don't see the commonality among the three subjects -- the struggle would have been the common element that would have tied them together. Instead, it feels like all they have in common is their South Asian heritage.

Stylistically, the film has its virtues. The boxer is a quirky little man (yes, little - he fights in the light flyweight division) who drives a freakish vintage lowrider. And the camera moves nicely with him as he drives, runs, trains, etc. But there is less opportunity for a cinematic treatment of the other subjects, and they pale in comparison.

So all in all, my advice to any young filmmaker contemplating a film about three unconnected characters: think very, very hard before you shoot a frame. Then find one great character and forget about the rest.

The Man Who Crossed the Sahara

What happened to Doc-a-Day? It's been more than a week since my last post. So soon after starting my challenge, I've run into a snag: I can't always work and blog at the same time. The next two months or so are going to be a blur of travelling, shooting, screening and writing. The beast of television must be fed. I'll be lucky if I manage a doc a week.

Nevertheless, I do have a film to discuss: The Man Who Crossed the Sahara, by Montreal filmmaker Korbett Matthews, which played at Hot Docs and is having its television premiere on Bravo! in a couple of weeks.

The Man is Frank Cole, a Canadian filmmaker recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records for being the only person to make a solo crossing of the Sahara. Cole documented his journey with a Bolex camera, spent the next ten years trying to finish the film, and then headed back to the Sahara to try another, even longer, solo crossing. This time his luck ran out, and he was murdered by bandits, just 70 km from the start of his journey.

The Man Who Crossed the Sahara tells Cole's story and tries to get at the mystery of why he was the weird, death-obsessed dude that he was.

The challenge in making a film like this is to help the audience connect with a subject who is a) not there to speak for himself, and b) largely unknown. As a viewer, why should I care about this guy? Does the film raise questions for me that I want to see answered? Is there something in the film that I can connect with? Does the film address any universal concerns or themes?

To me, this film doesn't do anything of the sort. It fails to find any answers or to get beneath the surface of Cole's character. And worse, it fails to make me see why Cole is compelling to the filmmaker himself.

On the surface, The Man Who Crossed the Sahara is certainly beautiful: great footage of the desert, a hypnotic soundtrack. But it's not engaging. It's not clear to me why Frank Cole is interesting, why he's worth more than an honourable mention in the Darwin Awards. The scenes from his early films certainly don't give any clues - the clips from A Life and The Mountenays just look amateurish. Life Without Death, his film about his successful Sahara crossing, appears to be more compelling, but there's something artificial and oddly pathetic about a documentary where a guy sets up a camera and then jumps in front of it to act out a scene.

So if it's not Cole's filmmaking, then what can draw us in? It's not his relationship with his family - his parents are stoic Anglos who add some unspoken emotion but no psychological insight. His best friend and some of his artistic collaborators tell a few stories about him, someone makes an oblique reference to some kind of extreme sexual tastes, but there's no psychological probing, no real insight or emotional connection, no controversy, no dialogue. Are his friends and family still trying to figure out why he did what he did? Or are they simply telling a well-practiced tale about a guy who was obsessed with death? There is no emotional arc to this film, it's a one-note story. We are to take it on the filmmaker's word that Cole was interesting, and then we are led down a linear path from the first signs of his death obsession to his violent end in the Sahara.

The kindest thing I can say is that The Man Who Crossed the Sahara is a forbidding film - it does not invite the viewer in. But really, I would go further. It's a film that doesn't know what it's about, that does not ask any hard questions or prove any theme. It's not that it leaves questions unanswered; it doesn't know what questions to ask.

There is one clip that illustrates the central problem with this film: one of Cole's filmmaking pals says, "The fact that he made films is proof to me that he was human." Really? To me, that's proof of nothing at all. And yet Matthews seems to take this as the gospel truth. As a young filmmaker, does he feel that his craft is proof of his own humanity? What's the connection he feels with Cole? From the film, it's impossible to tell. Maybe that's the emptiness at the centre of this film.

Daddy Tran: A Life in 3D

I've been thinking about what to write about Daddy Tran: A Life in 3D, because it's an interesting case study in the family-film subgenre.

Daddy Tran - cinematographer John Tran's father, Hai - is a character: a diminutive Vietnamese immigrant with a list of obsessions the length of your arm, the biggest of which is photography. He was a professional photographer in North Vietnam, until the post-Vietnam-War situation became untenable and he fled with his wife and three young children, in a leaky boat, through pirate-infested waters. The family eventually settled in Calgary, where Daddy Tran worked in a photo lab and spent every available cent on used cameras, to the consternation of his long-suffering wife. Eventually, he opened a used-camera store, which was a local institution until it closed last year, a victim of the digital revolution. Now retired, Tran spends all his time taking 3D photographs - an odd format that is hard to convey in film. And he haunts his children - including John, the cinematographer, who clearly made the film (with his wife, producer-director Siu Ta), not just as a tribute to a patriarch but as an attempt to come to terms with a difficult man.

The tone of the film is lighthearted - it's a lovely tribute to a man who sacrificed a lot for his family and built a good life in difficult circumstances. But it mainly skims the emotional surface until family members start to talk about Daddy Tran's fears and obsessions (the multiple locks on all the doors in the house, the need to show off his wealth), and his explosive temper. It turns out that everyone is afraid of Hai's moods and caters to his demanding behaviour. This is where the film cries out for a response from Daddy Tran himself... but it doesn't come. It feels like it took all the courage the filmmakers had to even broach the subject in the film. And it's true - I asked John about this; he said he and Siu were too afraid to bring it up with him.

But apparently something really interesting happened after Daddy Tran saw the film (at its Hot Docs premiere): he started talking more to his family about his life, his fears and his temper. Turns out, he may be open to dialogue and change after all. I'd love to see another chapter to this film - Hai Tran a year later, more reflective about his life, his family and his emotions, and dealing with the need to slow down. In Daddy Tran, he never stops moving or talking, as if he can't bear to stop and reflect. I'd like to see what comes out when he's ready.

Parent films are emotionally difficult to make. You have to be ready for anything the parent throws at you and ready to face the consequences (see Mark Wexler in Tell Them Who You Are). With a difficult parent, that's a daunting task. It only seems worth the risk if the filmmaker believes that something good will come out of the process - something more than just a watchable film.

For the Trans, good things are happening, now that the film is finished. But I wish these things were in the film.

Air India 182: Take 2

I've been thinking about my review of Air India 182, and talking to colleagues, and I feel more and more that I missed the boat. I never thought I'd be writing reconsiderations, but I am trying to make this blog as honest and useful as I can - and I guess that sometimes means writing an addendum.

From a craft standpoint, Air India 182 is most certainly an impressive film: well thought out, and masterfully shot and edited. But the film's scope is extremely narrow: it tells the story of how the bombing of Air India 182 was carried out, why Canadian authorities were unable to stop it, and the effect it had on the families of the victims. That's it. It provides little context, and gives us nothing new aside from an interview with a CSIS agent. Aside from that one interview, it's a story we've heard many times, albeit usually in bits and pieces, over the last 23 years. And so the question is, after 23 years... that's it?

Surely, with a budget rumoured to be in the range of $2-million, the film could have accomplished more than that. It could have explored in much greater depth the growth of Sikh radicalism in the B.C. temples, and its roots in the Punjab - in other words, the environment in which the plot was hatched, and the culture of fear and silence that protected the perpetrators. It could have looked more closely at the failed investigation, and the lackadaisical attitude of the Canadian government, which sent condolences to the Indian government but not to the families of the hundreds of Canadian victims. In other words, it could have explored the culture that produced the terrorists and the one that allowed them to get away with mass murder. But the film barely touches on these aspects. Director Sturla Gunnarsson, whose wife (and Associate Producer) is a Sikh British Columbian, acknowledged his anger at the Canadian government in media interviews, but in the Q&A at Hot Docs all he had to say was, to paraphrase, CSIS and the RCMP didn't bomb the plane, the terrorists did. It's almost as if Air India 182 goes out of its way not to disturb the peace.

I can't help but think that the $2 million spent on this film could have paid for three or four films with less expensive visuals and more depth.

And another problem: the Ken Burns Effect. No, I'm not talking about the photo-manipulation tool in iMovie. The real Ken Burns Effect is this: when Burns tackles a subject - say, baseball, or the Second World War - it effectively puts the kybosh on any other filmmaker going to PBS for funding for any other story on the same subject. Burns, by eating up huge amounts of money and presenting his film as the definitive story, sucks the oxygen out of the room and - inadvertently, to be sure - shuts down debate. (The Canadian corollary is the People's History effect, but Ken Burns is more famous than Mark Starowicz, and he did it first.) Now that $2 million has been spent on the "definitive" Air India story, how likely is it that anyone else will be able to get funding for a different take?

As Slow As Possible

The trouble with seeing great films, as I did today (more about this later), is that it makes the defects of the merely average ones stand out even more. I snuck out of Must Read After My Death and ran across the street to catch As Slow As Possible, drama director Scott Smith’s first documentary.

There had been a lot of buzz around this film, and I loved its central metaphor: Ryan Knighton is slowly going blind from retinitis pigmentosa, an illness with an unpredictable course. Now, 15 years after his diagnosis, with his sight nearly completely gone, he travels to Germany to witness a rare and momentous event in the performance of a John Cage piece called As Slow As Possible: the changing of a note.

Nice idea. What about the execution? Well, first off, Knighton is indeed a great film subject. He's articulate, thoughtful, funny and emotional. He's thought (and written) a lot about blindness and how he is dealing with it. And the journey - a blind man travelling alone to a small town in Europe, looking for a church where a specially built organ is supposed to take 639 years to play this John Cage composition - is ripe for all kinds of great documentary moments. So far so good.

But here I go again with another complaint about craft: the shooting is bad and the sound is worse - Smith is no cinematographer. After a nice set-up, the film follows Knighton around Europe like a kid brother shooting a travel video for mom and dad back home. There are some nice scenes because Ryan gets himself into interesting situations: he meets some people who don't believe he's blind; he has an odd conversation with a man in a bear suit. And the film is almost saved by a young boy who appears as if out of nowhere to lead Ryan to the church. The interaction between them is so lovely, it could be the basis for a dramatic short. But for the most part, while there are lots of good interview clips, the film's visuals don't do anything to support its ideas. The film never establishes a visual style (actually, that's not true - the style is "set camera on auto and follow the blind guy"), never uses pictures to set the mood or drive the story forward - it's as if the director didn't think through the look of the film at all.

I am a bit puzzled by all the rave reviews As Slow As Possible has gotten. I think the critics were reviewing Ryan Knighton and his ideas, not the film as a film.

I sense a theme emerging in my doc-a-day exercise: I have little patience with people who think that all it takes to shoot a documentary is picking up a camcorder and pressing record.

Air India 182

Sturla Gunnarsson is definitely not one of those people who've had to wait for success. His first film, After the Axe, was nominated for an Oscar in 1982, and since then he's gone on to a stellar career as a director of both documentaries and drama. So it's no surprise that his new film, Air India 182, is masterfully crafted. Though very much a television project - one of those high-profile, big-name productions the CBC's Documentary Unit loves to throw bags of money at - this is a film that looks great on a big screen.

Much has been written and broadcast over the past 23 years about Air India Flight 182, which blew up off the coast of Ireland with 329 people on board in June, 1985 - the worst terrorist attack in North America before 9/11. There have been a few documentaries about it, notably Shelley Saywell's Legacy of Terror, made in 1999, and most recently an episode of the factual series Mayday. But Air India 182, with its A-list director, A-list budget and authoritative title, clearly has ambitions of being the definitive one.

Gunnarsson chooses to tell the story in straightfoward fashion, boiling the story down to the bare essentials: a step-by-step account of the last few hours of the lives of the victims, told by their families, intercut with a reconstruction of the planning and execution of the crime, based on evidence presented at the two trials and the recent judicial inquiry.

The most significant new element that Gunnarsson brings to the film is the dramatic re-enactments, which are very elaborate, well-cast, and at times extremely moving. Score one for the master drama director. Also impressive is the interview with a senior CSIS official (now retired? I don't recall), who provides a lot of context and details about the investigation. How did Gunnarsson get this guy? Normally, CSIS people aren't even allowed to admit they work for CSIS. Score one for the master documentarian. There's no question the film works well on its own terms.

But here's where the discussion goes over post-screening drinks: Where else could this film have gone? Why did Gunnarsson stick to the narrow storyline he chose, instead of A) delving more deeply into mainstream Canada's (non-)reaction to this horrendous crime and the seriously messed up investigation, which produced only one conviction, or B) looking more deeply into the roots of the conflict between extremist Sikhs and the Indian state, the politics of British Columbia's Sikh temples, etc. Based on my quick survey, non-Indian Canadians tend to want to know more about the former, immigrants from India about the latter.

I'm not a fan of judging films based on what I think they should be, rather than what the filmmaker intended. But I do wonder: how many other, more revealing, films could come out of this horrendous event?

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Not all of us who toil in some part of the "arts sector" are blessed with instant success. Many of us work hard for years, watch our peers go on to international glory, and wonder if we should put away the paint brush, or the camera, or the violin, and get a "real job." The kind of job our dentist uncle might at least recognize as such, if not entirely approve of. And yet, we persevere. Sooner or later, we figure, it will turn around for us. We'll make something that will break through, that will reveal our genius to the world.

I know plenty of people for whom I doubt it will ever happen, and plenty more in between - those like me, who make an honest living in some semi-artistic, semi-commercial enterprise. Many of us hope for more, but sometimes it's hard to keep the dream alive.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil is for all of us.

The story, in a nutshell: two guys meet in high school at the age of 14. They form a band, practically invent a whole subgenre of heavy metal, sell some records, play a few really big shows, and then fade into obscurity, watching the bands they influenced - Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer - sell millions of records and become superstars. Now, 25 years after their last successful record, it turns out they're still at it: two guys past the age of 50, working joe jobs to feed their families, and still pursuing the rock'n'roll dream. Now, they're about to make one last push for success.

Given the Flying-V guitars, the shoulder-length curly locks, the tight pants... and, oh yeah, the crushingly loud guitars and bombastic lyrics, you'd think this is going to be some kind of real-life This Is Spinal Tap. And certainly there are elements thereof. At the start of the film, guitarist Steve "Lips" Kudlow explains his job at a school-lunch catering company in a manner not unfamiliar to fans of Nigel Tufnel and David St. Hubbins. But then the story turns. Lips and his lifelong best friend, drummer Robb Reiner, reveal more of themselves. They are honest, hard-working guys who love their wives and children, and whose slightly baffled middle-class Jewish families have stuck by them. They know the door is closing on them, if it hasn't closed already (the audience is pretty sure it closed somewhere around 1986), but they just can't bear to give up.

Do Lips and Robb get the Hollywood ending they deserve? Suffice to say the film has a Hollywood structure that befits its Hollywood director, Sacha Gervasi (who made this film because of his own Almost Famous-like history with the band). But it's still a documentary, and E.T. does not necessarily get to go home. Some people I talked to after the screening felt the film was entirely too predictable, that nothing unexpected happened. And as far as the story goes, that may be true. But I disagree: the unexpected thing is the characters - the guys are real, emotional, and completely open with the camera.

The great virtues of this film are not in the structure (which, actually, works very well, as Hollywood structure generally does). They're in the story that comes out in between the expected beats: the strains on the almost 40-year friendship, the pressures and joys of family, and Lips Kudlow's seemingly inexhaustible well of optimism and hope. How can you not root for a guy like that, even if he is a bit of a putz?

Ultimately, a good part of the reason I had a lump in my throat for much of the last third of the film is that it's a story about not giving up. There is great virtue in plugging away at what you love, and trying to get better, and just plain refusing to quit. For anyone who has a bit of Lips and Robb inside them, this is a moving, inspiring film.

P.S. Anvil! The Story of Anvil was the opening-night film at Hot Docs. More from the festival anon.

Manufacturing Dissent

I broke one of my rules tonight. When I started this blog a couple of weeks ago, I said I wouldn't finish watching films I hated. Well, tonight I did. I almost turned it off after a half hour, when I figured that I had the measure of the film and didn't need to see more. But somehow I felt I had to keep watching. I guess I wanted to see how the clips I'd seen when it first came out fit into the film as a whole.

The film was Manufacturing Dissent, an all-out, full-throttle attack on Michael Moore by the Toronto-based husband-and-wife team of Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine.

It's easy to dislike Michael Moore. He twists the truth, he takes cheap shots, he manipulates his subjects, he manipulates his audience... and all these things have made him millions of dollars. Damn that Michael Moore - he lies and he cheats, and he doesn't just get away with it, he wins Oscars for it! Let's face it, if anyone in the documentary business deserves a critical analysis, it's him. So when Manufacturing Dissent came out last year, a lot of people wanted to like it. By the time it had its Canadian premiere at Hot Docs, it had more buzz than a barbershop full of army recruits.

I missed the screening, of course, but then I started hearing from filmmakers who saw it, and the reports weren't good. A few days later, Debbie Melnyk appeared on a panel about personal filmmaking, claiming that it was entirely an accident that the spine of her film turned out to be her chasing Michael Moore around and being repeatedly turned down for an interview, à la Roger and Me. She had never wanted to put herself in the film, she said, but felt she had no choice. Nobody asked her how that could be true when the couple's previous film, Citizen Black, had exactly the same gimmick - Debbie Melnyk being turned down for an interview by Conrad Black.

So, anyway, given all the controversy, I felt that I should watch the film, and I recorded it when it aired on Bravo last week.

Well, now I can say I watched it. Here are the top three things I hated about it:

1) The main problem is not that the film is a polemic (I like a good polemic as much as the next guy), it's that it's a one-note song, with no subtlety, no analysis, and not even an attempt to take Moore's arguments seriously or to consider him as a cultural phenomenon. It's a laundry list of bad things he's done and lies he's told. OK, I got the point after a half hour. Why watch any more? It's my own damn fault that I didn't turn it off at that point.

2) The film is full of shooting-fish-in-a-barrel non-sequiturs. Two young women in Michigan who've never heard of Moore come across as airheads in a streeter that goes on for about 30 seconds too long: is the joke on Moore or on them? A group of college feminists are shown doing some kind of goofy pro-choice cheerleader routine at a protest - how is this related to the film? A young Republican woman says she hasn't seen Farenheit 9/11 because she's too "sensitive." Michael Moore may be the big fish in Melnyk and Caine's barrel, but their shotgun blast hits a lot of minnows too. It all reminds me of, hmmm... what's his name again? That portly documentary guy who always wears a baseball cap.

3) It is appallingly badly shot and lit. One African-American fellow is interviewed with the sun behind him so that his eyes are completely in shadow. The rest of the (many) interviews have no style, no consistency, terrible eyelines, awful backgrounds (you can see one guy's back in a reflection behind him). Amateur hour.

One quote stood out, from a fellow commenting on the right-wing film industry that's sprung up in response to Moore: "The industry is laughably bad. So I don't think that those films mean crap."

I'd put Manufacturing Dissent in that category, too.

Monster in the Family: The Struggle Continues

Last fall, CTV aired a two-part documentary called Monster in the Family, which was one of the first things I recorded after mastering the use of my new DVD/hard-disk recorder. I liked part 1 very much (and hadn't realized that it had first aired more than a year earlier), but I never got around to watching part 2 until now.

Interesting story. Too bad it wasn't a 15-minute magazine piece.

The original Monster in the Family was a great investigative piece - the kind that once would have found a home only on the CBC's Fifth Estate. It examined the case of Martin Ferrier, a man whose own mother campaigned to have him declared a dangerous offender, claiming he was an incurable psychopath. Ferrier was even singled out by Stephen Harper in a campaign speech as the kind of guy the Conservatives would lock away forever. The filmmaker, John Kastner, built a solid case arguing that Ferrier wasn't terribly dangerous at all, pointing out that his actual crimes were far less serious than the media had reported, that at worst he was a serial passer of bad cheques and not a serial rapist or wannabe murderer as had been reported. By the end of the film it was clear that it was his mother who was the monster - abandoning him as a child, then later making wild claims about him that were contrary to all the actual hard evidence, and campaigning to keep him locked up. It was a great piece of journalism - taking a closer look at a story that had been widely reported and showing a very different reality. This is crusading television at its best. Would that there were more of it.

And part 2? An epilogue stretched into a TV hour. It picks up Ferrier's story a year after his release, and shows that he is indeed doing much better, staying out of trouble and learning how to live as a free man and a responsible citizen. But there just isn't much there aside from some interviews and b-roll. Ferrier, understandably, doesn't want to call attention to himself by having a camera follow him around. So we don't actually see him interacting with anyone except a volunteer mentor and a sympathetic landlord. We don't see him at work, we don't see him with friends... With the exception of one significant scene towards the end, the film feels entirely like an afterthought.

Kastner had a long and distinguished career as a CBC producer, winning three Emmys and various other honours. He's been an independent for many years now, but somehow, unfortunately, seems stuck still in the current-affairs style of filmmaking. There's heavy narration in the CBC style, we keep hearing him asking questions... I kept expecting the Fifth Estate's Linden McIntyre to step out of the shadows and do a stand-up, except that it was Kastner's voice that we heard throughout. There are lots of standard current-affairs shots, such as the guy being introduced in narration as he's walking down the hall. One might argue that this doc is largely a journalistic enterprise and demands this approach because a lot of information must be delivered. But to me, it just isn't cinematic.

So what to conclude about Monster in the Family: The Struggle Continues? It never should have been a separate film. The original could have been re-edited into a 75-minute feature with a one-year-later final act. But the reality of independent filmmaking is, you make a lot more money from a new one-hour than from a re-cut.

The Cult of Walt

As I was writing the last post, I started watching a doc on Bravo about Walter Ostanek, the St. Catharines-based polka band leader. It's called The Cult of Walt: Canada's Polka King, and apparently it got a Gemini nomination for best bio. Go figure.

Why do people bother to make such things? The film has no structure, no style, and worse, no soul. The narration is full of cliches such as "perfecting music that is truly timeless" (to pick one that I happened to hear as I was writing this). It rides along on Ostanek's personal charm and the obligatory bits of polka perfomance. But all it does is keep repeating how great the guy is. There's no insight, no probing questions, no attempt to universalize the story or get beneath the surface. Yawn....

Ostanek has been on my radar for years. More than ten years ago I was hired to write a proposal for a doc series with the exact same concept as the BBC's (and CBC's) "Who Do You Think You Are?" I put Walter in the proposal... and the series didn't go. (Maybe if I'd put in Don Cherry instead...) Around the same time, I saw a lovely film at an early Hot Docs, when it was still held in conference rooms at the Park Plaza hotel. It followed Ostanek and his mentor Frank Yankovic on a tour of the Canadian prairies, and it captured the soul of polka, its players and its fans -- retired farmers who would polka for five hours straight, as long as Frankie and Walter could keep playing. That film made me want to learn how to polka. Watching this newer one, I didn't even tap my toes.

Mozartballs

I got up this morning with nothing on my plate. My better half is away for the weekend, and despite a looming deadline or two I had decided to take the day off. After breakfast, instead of heading out into the sunshine, I picked a DVD from the pile next to the TV, and popped it in.

The film was Mozartballs, by one of Canada's most interesting filmmakers, Larry Weinstein.

Mozartballs was an unexpected contribution to the celebration of Mozart's 250th birthday a couple of years ago. Instead of making yet another earnest bio, Weinstein decided to focus on the fans - Mozart's wackiest, most devoted fans. A woman in Oklahoma who is convinced she's the reincarnation of Wolfgang himself, and her lesbian partner, who is apparently the reincarnation of the love of Mozart's life, one of his generation's leading sopranos. (Hurray! They found each other in this life!) A man who believes that Mozart spoke to him and saved him from suicide. A fellow who writes music "in the style of Mozart" with the help of a computer. And an Austrian cosmonaut who took Wolfgang with him into space.

The thing that most impressed me about this film was how much respect Weinstein showed his wacky subjects. There isn't a single shot in the film that suggests he's making fun of them, and yet the film is full of hilarious moments. In this respect it reminded me of of Gates of Heaven, Errol Morris's great film about a pet cemetery. But just as importantly, the film is beautifully constructed and visually rigorous. It's not just a series of profiles of wacky eccentrics; the characters have an emotional arc, both individually and collectively. By the end of the film, we get it - Mozart helps keep these people alive. May we all have something that we care about so deeply.

Finally, a note about the shooting, by one of Canada's best documentary cinematographers, John Tran. There are two shots I will remember for a long time: a shot starts on black, then pans over to some kids playing in the back yard, seen through a glass door. The shot then moves up, and reveals that the black and the reflection were both parts of a grand piano played by the Mozart-loving astronaut. The kids were seen in a barely distorted reflection in the piano. The other shot puts Ms. Mozart on a ladder, face to face with a painting of the real Mozart and his family. As she reflects on the painting - and gets quite emotional - she's seen in a reflection, framed perfectly in a triangle of black that makes her face clearly visible. John Tran rocks.

So that's number one. A pretty enjoyable beginning.

P.S. I just put in a link to the Amazon page for the film, and as I was browsing through that page, I read a review of the film by one of the subjects, who talks about why she loved the experience and the result. It's quite instructive.