Those who follow my Film Festival reviews will know that I have missed my personal deadline of Thanksgiving weekend by a long shot. Now I’m hoping to be done by the end of October.
A great deal of transit-related activity has been getting in the way.
Two films that I saw at the festival have now opened in Toronto, and I am pushing their reviews out the door while they’re still vaguely current.
These are:
- Religulous
- Happy-Go-Lucky
Directed by Larry Charles
Bill Maher has a problem with religion. The idea of belief in some external agency, a supreme being (or beings) whose rulings dictate the behaviour of billions, is totally beyond credibility for Maher. His road show of religious stupidities touches many branches — Christianity, Judaism, Islam — trashing them equally. Sadly, Maher chooses to pick the easy targets, the folks who can be ridiculed either as cartoon characters or simply through intrusive editing, rather than engaging the subject matter.
In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that I am an atheist and have no brief for organized religions. Much evil has been perpetrated in their names, and if any divine beings exist, they should make regular appearances to denounce their own “followers”. A bit of selective “smiting the unworthy” could do wonders for mankind, but of course this assumes that the right bunch of loonies are smitten. From a purely aesthetic view, I prefer the polytheistic classical religions whose stories read more like soap operas than dour commentaries on sin, deadly or otherwise.
That said, Maher does his thesis great damage in his choice of subjects and his intrusive interviewing and editing style. As a commercial venture, taking the most ridiculous of the believers may sell more tickets, but it won’t convert anyone to disbelief.
Maher has fun treating representatives of various sects as one would politicians who have escaped their handlers. Point a camera at them, ask incendiary questions and watch the fun. Maher’s problem is that too often he interjects, he fails to let reasonable people advance reasonable arguments, and he cuts off true idiots before they are finished digging a hole to fall in.
Maher’s editorial slant portrays all religions as corrupt or violent, and I really must take issue with this. Regardless of whether one ascribes one’s “morals” or “ethics” to a higher power, or simply takes responsibility for leading a responsible, upstanding life, there is a distinction between religious organizations and their abuse of social and political power, and the underlying belief system that supports “good will”.
Probably the best sequence of all, one that does have enough breathing room, is at a Christian theme park in Florida. Jesus is very charming on camera (there is a still on the TIFF page linked above), but a press flak shows up and worries that the wrong message is getting out.
In its final moments, Maher cannot resist his own brand of preselytizing. If we cannot disabuse mankind of its dependence on organized religion, we are doomed.
“Repent or die” saith the prophet.
Save your money for charity, and give Religulous a pass.
Directed by Mike Leigh
Mike Leigh’s films can be hit-or-miss, even within the same film, because so much of the action is improvised. This challenges the actors, but it also challenges the director and the editor. Segments that might have seemed good at the time don’t work quite as well on the screen, and might better have been dropped. Of course, if you drop too many, you have a short, or no film at all.
Shortly after we meet our heroine, Poppy (Sally Hawkins), she’s at a dance club and has had rather too much to drink. Next morning, she’s recovering with her friends., and it’s not the best first impression a character might make. As Happy-Go-Lucky gets rolling, though, we come to respect Poppy as a caring person, an excellent primary school teacher who has a good rapport with her students, more than the superficial Pollyanna she might appear to be.
Quite early in the story, Poppy’s bike is stolen. This is a sign that she should learn how to drive (sorry to all the environmental, pro-transit folks out there), and she winds up with Scott (Eddie Marsan), a driving instructor with very strict ideas about how to learn. Scott is a one-man school of motoring, and he is very, very attached to his car. It’s a real stretch for him to let anyone else actually drive it.
Scott has a thing for Poppy, for her flighty friendliness, her boots (no, this is not a fetish flick) and her smile. All of this is heading to a crisis that’s a bit overdone, but we’ll come to that.
Poppy meets Tim (Samuel Roukin), a social worker who’s a nice, gentle guy, maybe even the right man for her. Well, maybe.
The combination of impromptu acting and an episodic story give us wonderful scenes, vignettes in which Poppy flits, butterfly-like, through other people’s lives. A bookseller who sees clearly she’s not going to actually buy anything, and probably hasn’t sold a think himself for ages. A flamenco dance class where the nature of the art runs headlong into Poppy’s inability to be serious for more than a moment. A tramp met late at night with whom Poppy is almost too caring. The only real problem is that there are a few too many of them.
By the end of the film, Scott has gone right off the deep end obsessing about Poppy and feeling that she led him on with her flirtatious ways. I’m not convinced that this is the end Scott should have come to. His breakdown may be a great piece of improv acting, but it doesn’t quite fit in this story.
We leave Poppy and her friend, Tessa (a fellow would-be flamenco dancer) rowing across a pond. The sun is shining and the world is a happy place.
There’s some great acting here even though some of it belongs in another movie, and Poppy is fun to spend a few hours with in the theatre. In longer doses, she would probably drive a person like me bonkers, but she’s the sort of person who is fun to know as someone else’s friend.
Steve Munro 