Three Canadian Films
by K.S. Sivakumaran
I saw three Canadian films at the recent international film festival in
Goa. They were interesting films in exploring candidly experiences we
have not had in this part of the world. And the film techniques,
technology with added electronic devices and cinematography were also
matters of study for a dedicated student of cinema as a medium.
The films were: The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess directed by Bruce
McDonald, Looking for Angelina directed by Sergio Navarretta, and The
Wild Guys directed by William F Gereghty.
Let me describe briefly what they were about.
The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess
The film is exciting in several ways. One is that it is about the story of
Pop singer Phil Collin’s daughter Joely Collins. And the other is the film
is erotic and thirdly it presents the other side of life of a celebrity. Joely
Collins plays the role of an irreverent and bold character of a TV
presenter, Gillian Guess. She is a product of the post 1990 - chaotic
cultural scene in the ‘decaying’ west.
The film is also about a trial of a notorious gangster by name Peter Gill.
It happens that Gillian Guess has had an affair with the latter, but
strangely she is a juror at the trial. Ultimately, it is a question of justice,
fairplay, sexuality, motherhood and electronic presence.
The film begins with a chatty and disrespectful talk show on the TV
featuring Gillian Guess Hugh Dillon, the moderator (played by Peter
Gill). It was shocking to see beautiful, buxom and brave mother unravel
her past and present seated on a chair facing a live audience in a TV
studio. The shots here were reminiscent of Sharon Stone appearing in a
police inquiry in the film Basic Instincts
The style of presentation is uniquely fresh – jump cuts, flashbacks, close
ups and other magical use of the camera in a multitude of formats. The
cinematography of Danny Nowak is brilliant. In a conventional sense the
film envelops dark comedy, melodrama, animation, music and thrills.
This film which has won awards at several international film festivals is
one of the best films made by Bruce Mc Donald. He is a versatile man
with immense talent in all departments of film making.
Looking for Angelina
The debut feature film by popular electronic presenter, Sergio
Navarretta is Looking for Angelina. Canada like the west and India
encourages everyone irrespective of their ethnicity to encourage talents
and not mono - racial. This film is an example as it is about an Italian
family. It’s about a true murder that took place in the early 1900s. We
may be not familiar with the case. A pretty young Italian immigrant
woman Angelina, a mother of four killed her abusive husband Pietro
Napolitano with an axe as he lay asleep in their bedroom.
Although I didn’t like the gory events in the film, I did remain amazed at
the technical virtuosity in the film. The use of multiple cameras was
functional. Peter benison was responsible for the cinematography. Lina
Felice plays the role Angelina remarkably well.
The Wild Guys
The next Canadian film is directed by dual American and Canadian
citizen William F.Greghty. This is his debut feature film. Adapted from an
adapting play, this film is supposed to be a comedy, but I am not sure
whether I have a sense of humour in the western style. And the wild life
and the adventures related to it are yet to engross me. Do not know
why. But seeing this film, I was compelled to witness some of the moving
images that made me feel empathetic to the plight of the wild guys –
Randall, Andy and Robin.
The theme of the film according to the director: The middle aged - men
are confused about where life has taken them. They need some
answers––any answers.
The changing waves of the film medium
Readers would have noted that the films described in this week’s column
are based on crime and related subjects. The ‘Cinema’ today all over
the world is difficult to be described, because technology has taken over
the content and anything under the sun goes as the subject of the film.
The classical methods of distinguishing the art film and the mere
entertaining film have become thin. Of course, any art form should be
primarily entertaining ; but what happens is that in a box office directed
film as in most of the Asian and other films are, the presentation gets
blurred with lack of sense of purpose and concentrated focus.
Let me conclude this column a few quotes from an academic, Joy Gould
Boyum:
"We find that during the 1950s and 1960s, movies began to make a
major effort to reshape their image and to reshape it very distinctly in
the mould of art... "film" and "cinema" became cultivated labels. The’
reviewers ‘were magically transformed into ‘critics’.
"And films in their efforts to be accepted as art has had to o deal not
only with such obvious extrinsic burdens as its blatant commercialism
and the inescapable trashiness of so many of its products.
"Arguing for film as art, Vachel Lindsday felt it necessary to put forth a
case for film’s uniqueness, and theorists since his time have felt similarly
impelled. But try as they might to isolate qualities truly special to the
form, these theorists simply haven been able to come up with any
beyond, that is the facts that film is a machine art, depending on
mechanical equipment for both its creation and reception, and it relies
on illusion, on our acceptance that pictures of art actually moving when f
course they aren’t"
(Double Exposure: Fiction into Film- 1989)
This book was written in the 1980s, and we are in 2006. It’s very difficult
to catch up with fast development and latest theories on the Moving
Image.
Perhaps our own directors and critics in the calibre of Lester, Tissa or
Vasantha , Pathi or our new directors could enlighten us. [Island]
