Roger Ebert Weighs in at Toronto

Posted by Michael Dance

Roger Ebert, writing more than ever, has been posting a ton of articles on his blog about his experiences at the currently-in-progress Toronto Film Festival. So what's he had to say?

On Creation, the Charles Darwin movie starring real-life couple Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly:

This will adamantly not be a review of "Creation," which will await its opening. It will be a discussion of some of the thoughts it inspires. I expected the film to be focused on Darwin's theory of the origin of species and the controversy it provoked in mid-19th century, but it is primarily about his domestic life, centering on Down House, Bromley, where he and his wife Emma lived from 1842 until until his death in 1882. There they had ten children, three of whom died young. The film is much concerned with his grief at the loss of Anne (1841-51) who was one of the brightest and most delightful, and whose direct questions perhaps helped embolden him to publish On the Origin of Species in 1859, after a 20-year delay.

On Pedro Almodovar's new film, Broken Embraces:

"Broken Embraces" (Los Abrazos Rotos) is the much-awaited new Pedro Almodóvar collaboration with his recent muse, Penelope Cruz. It's about an old man remembering a woman he loved. Lluis Homar ("Bad Education") plays a director who went blind in an auto accident that killed his love (Cruz), who was his secretary, and who he met as a call girl. Now he works as a successful screenwriter, using touch-typing. One day he's approached by an ambitious young filmmaker named Ray X (Ruben Ochandiano), who he suspects is the son of the evil millionaire he holds responsible for the woman's death.
As always with Almodóvar, it isn't nearly as simple as that. Using interlocking flashbacks, the film reconstructs what actually happened in a combination of overwrought Sirkian melodrama and Hitchcock. The music, indeed, pays homage to Bernard Hermann's work, particularly his score for Hitchcock's "Vertigo," and the film's romantic entanglements pay homage to Almodóvar's own pansexual stories. Cruz is a life force, but Homar's work is the film's engine.

This next film, Enter the Void, I hadn't heard anything about but sounds...icky:

"Enter the Void," by Gasper Noe of France is a nearly unendurable in-depth investigation of a very shallow idea. The camera positions itself close behind the head of a callow youth, jug-eared and crew-cut, as he films with his video camera and then becomes the camera as the remainder of the film is seen from his POV. The hero, an orphaned American, lives with his sister in Tokyo, where she is a nude dancer and possibly a booker, and he is a druggie and possibly a dealer. If they don't practice incest, you could have fooled me...The visuals might have been juicier if [Noe] had known abut fractals. The film includes obligatory genitals of both genders, and one of the voids the POV plunges into is the mess in a stainless steel pan after an abortion.

On Precious:

"Precious," one of the best films of the autumn, is Lee Daniels' story of a physically and mentally abused poor black girl from the ghetto, who summons the inner strength to fight back for her future. It contains two great performances, by Gabourey "Gabby" Sidibe, in the title role, and Mo'Nique as her pathetic mother...I think it's a plausible winner of the Audience Award--which is sort of like the grand prize at a festival without any juries or any prizes.

I think Darwin could land some Oscar nominations (possible controversy from creationist Christians can only help), and Precious looks like it could grab Original Screenplay and Supporting Actress (Mo'Nique, who knew?) Almodovar always has a shot at an Original Screenplay nomination as well.

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Roger Ebert Weighs in at Toronto

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