The Claim

The Claim (2000) dir. Michael Winterbottom
Starring: Peter Mullan, Sarah Polley, Mila Jovovich, Wes Bentley, Julian Richings, Natasha Kinski

****

By Alan Bacchus

Refashioning Thomas Hardy’s novel The Mayor of Casterbridge for the post gold rush Sierra Nevadas along with a not-so-disguised influence from Robert Altman’s snowy western classic McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Michael Winterbottom created an emotional powerhouse of a film, full of brooding drama about greed, gold and deep-rooted Catholic guilt.

It’s also Winterbottom’s most beautiful film he’s shot – a classical and elegant style much different than his street realism fly-on-the-wall films such as A Might Heart or 24 Hour Party People, and on second viewing on the big screen this week at my latest Canadian Cinema in Revue screening (plug plug), it resonates as one of beautiful films of the decade (hell, yeah I said it).

Sarah Polley plays a naive waif Hope Burn who comes to the town of Kingdom Come with her TB-inflicted mother Elena (Natasha Kinski) to meet a long lost ‘relative’ Daniel Dillon (Peter Mullan). But unbeknownst to her, he’s actually her real father. Dillon runs the town like a king and hordes a stash of gold in his bank. Flashbacks recounts and reveals how Dillon’s sold his wife and baby for the deed to the land and thus his ticket to wealth. So much wealth and nothing to spend it on, but when he meets Hope for the first time, instantly a wave of guilt fuels a new zest for life and need for redemption.

At the same time, an ambitious young railroad engineer Dalglish (Wes Bentley) comes into town to survey the surrounding lands, which will ultimate cause the town to move thus nullifying everything Dillon built up in his life.

Winterbottom doubles Alberta’s Rockies for California’s Sierra Nevadas to magnificent effect. In every exterior frame he maximizes the awesomeness of the engulfing mountains, sharp darting evergreen trees which dot the background and the omnipresent snow which gusts around constantly. Remember, it was the year 2000 and CGI was a rarity, so everything in the film is real. Though CGI is able to come very close to achieving the real thing, our minds can sense fakery. And so in The Claim, when we see a young Dillon and Elena climb a mountain in a blustery snow storm the realism on the screen allows the emotions of these scenes to hit us harder.

Winterbottom crafts a number of astounding set pieces which remind us of the grandiose aspirations of David Lean, Sergio Leone and Werner Herzog. The finale, which has Dillon setting all the buildings of his town on fire is a sight to behold, not because Winterbottom actually burned down his entire set, but because it compliments Dillon’s emotional state and completes the atonement for his egregious sins against his family. There’s also the house moving scene, wherein Dillon, at his most ambitious like Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, wills the impossible into being, steering a team of men who literally pull his house to Elena as a gift of his rekindled love. It’s also an impossible romantic moment which seals Dillon’s last courtship of his ex-wife.

And the three of four surveying scenes taking us into the Albertan and Colorado valleys of where Dalglish charts the new path of the railroad, are no less spectacular. The last of which features a trip on a vintage 19th century railroad through a curving corridor of stunning beauty.

The Claim resonates beyond the mere beauty of what’s put on the screen. Michael Nyman’s masterpiece of a score send the film into the stratosphere, going way over the top in the tradition of the classic Morricone scores composed for Sergio Leone. The moral complexities of Dillon’s journey is the stuff of great storytelling – though credit is due here to Thomas Hardy, Winterbottom’s brings it all to bear with a power only great filmmakers could do.

The pulse of the film beats all the way to the final frames. The last shot, a stunner, sums up the all consuming power of wealth which so easily corrupts the feeble minds of men.

In a new era of epic filmmaking where elements like snow, fire, background actors are ‘enhanced’ with computers, The Claim feels like a throwback epic, and perhaps the last of its kind.

Project Grizzly

Project Grizzly (1996) dir. Peter Lynch
Documentary

****

By Alan Bacchus

There’s something about grizzly bears that just make people go mad. Lynch’s masterpiece documentary, ‘Project Grizzly’ would make a good companion piece to Werner Herzog’s equally great though more well-known ‘Grizzly Man’. Both films tells stories of psychologically-challenged mad men, who, in the name of science, are as much in search of personal fame as they are the research they purport to be gathering.

Lynch’s hero is Troy Hurtubise, after a chance meeting in the woods with a grizzly bear, which left him mesmerized with the animal, took it upon himself to build a suit of armour impenetrable to bear attacks thus allowing him to study them up close. Lynch joins in Troy’s journey after 10 years of trial and error. In a riotously funny sequence of stock footage we see each of Troy’s previous attempts at making Grizzly armour (signified with a military-style numeral – Mark IV, Mark V, Mark VI etc) fail, and then get improved upon. Troy is a glutton for punishment having guns fired at him, logs dropped on him, even being through thrown down an escarpment – all in the name of science.

Or is it?

Troy is a character, a man with a persona, aware of the camera and people’s impression of him. Fashioning himself as a rugged mountaineer/cowboy/rebel, his attire includes a Davey Crocket buckskin jacket, two huge bowie knives strapped to his chest and leg, a red beret, and moccasins.

Troy talks with the confidence of a mythic wilderness hero, a John Wayne-like legend in his own time. Certainly in his own mind. What Lynch’s miraculously manages to discover, just by having his camera observe without prejudice is the damaged inner soul of Troy – a self-conscious regular Joe, with passive aggressive tendencies which manifest itself as severe delusions of grandeur.

Troy’s coterie of minions only feed his hunger for adulation. His brother and other Canadian hoser buddies idolize him with supreme reverence. As we watch the boys interact and talk tall tales in the local donut shop it might as well be the high school cafeteria, with Troy serving as the alpha-male leading the weaklings along in his travails.

His suit of armour, a mash-up of hockey equipment, scrap metal, and duct tape, stands beside him at all times, like a trophy for him and us to admire and perhaps distract from the inner sadness which quietly plagues him.

In discussing the film with Lynch at my most recent Canadian Cinema in Revue screening he confirms the finer and fascinating details of Troy’s personality. Peter admits he could have painted a portrait which would have made the audience hate the character. But, like all great documentaries, Lynch’s film is his impression of the man – not the full story, but one impression.

What we see is a man with hubris is as large as Captain Ahab, and perhaps with more perseverance. His journey, not unlike Moby Dick, at once admirably in his determination and guile, but sadly comes off as delusions of grandeur.

Fido

Fido (2006) dir. Andrew Currie
Starring: Billy Connolly, Carrie-Ann Moss, Dylan Baker, Henry Czerny, K'Sun Ray

***1/2

It sounds absurd but 'Slingblade', meets 'E.T.', meets 'Lassie' meets 'Night of the Living Dead' could have been the pitch for Andrew Currie’s wholly original 'Fido'. The deliciously delightful comedy about a tamed zombie who is bought by a humble suburban family to do household chores but ends up developing a brotherly relationship with their young son, smoothly combines Douglas Sirk-style 50’s suburban melodrama with a post-modern zombie subversion of “Shawn of the Dead”.

A masculine and guttural voice of a 1950’s radio announcer in the opening voiceover explains the backstory in the style of a classic newsreel. Instead of a World War, Earth, in this fictional world fought a “zombie war” against a zombie infestation. A company called Zomcon was able to tame the zombies with a collar around their necks. With this device zombies became robotlike servants available to ordinary families to do their daily chores.

One day Helen Robinson (Carrie Anne Moss) surprises her husband, Bill (Dylan Baker) with a new zombie (Billy Connolly) for the home. Their young boy Timmy (K'Sun Ray) makes friends with the zombie and names him Fido. Fido performs his tasks well, but Bill is still suspect of his presence. Painful memories of the Zombie War are brought back which causes a disruption in the family. Fido is watched carefully by the neighbourhood skeptic Mr. Theopolis (Tim Blake Nelson) and one of the Zomcom executives (Henry Czerny) for fear that Timmy and Fido’s relationship might result in another potential zombie-outbreak.

Everything in the film, no matter how ridiculous is played deadpan straight. Director Currie assembles a perfect ensemble cast, Billy Connolly, as the sad indentured slave-zombie, Carrie Anne Moss as the perfect 50’s homemaker, Dylan Baker as the conservative suburban father, young K'Sun Ray is gawky enough to play the curious Timmy and Henry Czerny is perhaps the stand out playing his customary bad guy role with despicable menace.

Parodying the dull 1950’s suburban lifestyle is not new, but when combined with the absurd revisionist history Currie and co-writers Dennis Heaton and Robert Chomiak create with the zombies, it’s downright hilarious.

The film, shot by DOP Jan Kiesser, looks fantastic as well, shot with a beautiful widescreen frame, bright saturated colours and great use of the B.C. landscape. Composer Don MacDonald produces a top notch Elmer Bernstein-esque score and complements the heightened recreation of the period perfectly.

“Fido” manages to find surprisingly clever metaphors between zombies and the paranoia of the 1950’s - the fear of losing jobs to mechanical automation, the communist scare, and the need to keep up with the Joneses. But the heart of the film is the relationship between boy and zombie, which would have made an awesome pitch.

"Fido" screens tonight as part of the monthly 'Canadian Cinema in Revue' series at Toronto's Revue Cinema

Announcement: Canadian Cinema in Revue

I’m pleased to announced an exciting new venture from Daily Film Dose and Canadian Film Dose – CANADIAN CINEMA IN REVUE – a screening series devoted to putting some cool Canadian films where they deserve to be – back on the big screen.

Starting Monday, June 8, the Revue Cinema theatre at 400 Roncesvalles Ave in Toronto. launches Canadian Cinema in Revue, a program showcasing innovative and entertaining features, related short films and the people who made them.

Curated by yours truly, the series begins with Cube, part sci-fi horror film, part creative art film, directed by Vincenzo Natali.

Made for under $500,000 through the Canadian Film Centre's Feature Film Project, Cube is an impressive achievement that has allowed Natali to move on to bigger-budget genre films, including the Hollywood production of Cypher, and the upcoming genetics-themed thriller Splice with Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley.

Natali’s short film Elevated, in which he honed many of Cube’s themes, will also be screened.

In Los Angeles during June, Natali will link up electronically with the Revue, while co-writer Andre Bijelic will attend the screening for a Q&A.

Future Canadian Cinema in Revue screenings, scheduled for once a month, will include the awesome zombie film Fido, coupled with The Big Charade; Michael Dowse’s It’s All Gone Pete Tong, paired with If I See Randy Again… and the thriller Six Figures screened with Still Life; and many others.

The program is presented with the support of The First Weekend Club, the Toronto After Dark Film Festival and Daily Film Dose.com.

Tickets for the screening will be $8 for members of the Revue and sponsoring groups; $10 non-members.