INDEPTH: TORONTO FILM FESTIVAL
A doc, a drama, a short
CBC News Online | September 10, 2004
One of the best performances you’ll see at this year’s festival isn’t by a professional actor. It’s by a professional soldier, namely Roméo Dallaire. Dallaire, as you may recall, was the Canadian who commanded the United Nations peacekeeping force that was ordered to stand by while the Rwandan genocide unfolded in 1994.
Dallaire is the central figure in Peter Raymont’s documentary Shake Hands with the Devil, which is based partly on the book of the same name. It follows Dallaire as he returns to the African country to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the slaughter, in which more than 800,000 people were killed in 100 days.
Dallaire’s stoic features, seemingly chiselled out of stone, are what hold the film together. He is the audience’s point of entry into the horrific story, which is both an exploration of how genocides are able to occur and a meditation on the emotional costs of being a peacekeeper. He’s the perfect conduit because on the surface he seems so stoic, so controlled, so … well … Canadian.
It’s hard to imagine that this apparently level-headed man could be driven to the point of insanity by anything. But that’s eventually what happened years after he was hamstrung by his higher-ups at the UN, and the documentary traces how Dallaire went from hoping he could prevent the carnage 10 years ago to finally realizing his function was solely to be a witness.
A decade after the fact, the images of butchered bodies remain – in Dallaire’s words – “digitally clear” in his mind. “I take pills just to stay reasonable,” he explains at one point to an interviewer. This isn’t your usual Canadian hand-wringing; this is a man whose soul was in jeopardy.
Raymont’s direction is as firm and understated as the subject of the documentary. Using interviews with the likes of UN envoy Stephen Lewis and Dallaire’s lieutentants, he reconstructs the impossible situation that the Canadian commander faced with a handful of troops. There’s even a genuinely funny moment when Dallaire describes how he used a song by Stompin’ Tom Connors to bolster morale during a bombardment.
What would make Shake Hands with the Devil twice as powerful is if Raymont had devoted more footage to other people directly involved – to the Africans who were the victims and perpetrators. As things stand, there’s really only one African voice in the entire 90-minute picture.
And here’s a thought: does Raymont know that he has crafted a movie that will likely be seized upon by those who want the UN abolished? Whether it was his intent or not, this movie make a powerful case for scrapping the world body. A single superpower acting alone, some might argue after seeing Raymont’s film, makes for a more effective global policeman.
Besides documentaries, this country is also known for producing dark, disturbing dramas. The latest entry in that category is Blood, Jerry Ciccoritti’s tale of a brother and sister who have an, er, unnaturally close relationship.
Ciccoritti is the director known for his work on projects like CBC’s Trudeau miniseries, and the source material for his latest effort is a Tom Walmsley play. There are, of course, those of us who believe there should be a strict separation between the worlds of screen and stage. The thinking goes something like this: there are things that plays do well and there are things that movies do well; they are not the same things.
The good news is that Ciccoritti hasn’t produced a movie that is simply a filmed version of a play. His uses his camera to remind viewers time and again that what they are watching is cinema. In some sequences, the screen splits and we can see the reactions of both brother and sister simultaneously. Then the screen splits again and we are confronted with three separate images, then four. You definitely couldn’t do that in the theatre.
Both of the leads, Jacob Tierney and Emily Hampshire, deliver solid performances. Cooped up in an apartment together, they represent a collision of worlds. All Hampshire’s Noelle wants to talk about is practical matters, like money; Tierney’s Chris answers with ephemeral responses, like his meditation on how neckties are the sartorial equivalent of linguistic clichés.
More than once, their verbal tussles turn physical and it’s unclear if the two are fighting or engaging in foreplay. Do they finally get it on? I still don’t know. I had to leave early to attend another screening.
I did, however, manage to take in all of My Old Man. Directed by Alex Levine, this short film is based on the work of the late Charles Bukowski. For Bukowski enthusiasts like yours truly, it requires an effort to get into this film because you must first forget that Bukowski’s fiction was rooted in one locale, Los Angeles, and imagine that he could have grown up somewhere else, like the True North for example.
In other words, what Levine is offering us here is something like a Canadian version of a Bukowski short story. While it’s hard to imagine a young Bukowski sporting a plaid shirt as the young man in My Old Man does, what Levine manages to capture in seven minutes is the emotional truth at the core of the author’s work. It just goes to show you that good art really is universal. Literature does some things well, and movies can sometimes do those same things with equal verve.
Dan Brown will be attending the Toronto International Film Festival for its entirety, from Sept. 9 to 18. Throughout the festival he will bring you reports on the latest Canadian films. Read his dispatches and follow his comments by clicking on the links.
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Dan Brown is the site's senior arts editor/reporter. Before joining us he was a lineup editor and senior writer for Newsworld International. Dan helped to launch the National Post's Arts & Life section, where he was a columnist and reporter. A former editorial writer, copy editor and journalism instructor, Dan has degrees from three universities.
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