Hi there! And welcome to my final MIFF post for 2017.My final new film of 2017 involved my second switcheroo of the festival. My previous exchange, as you may recall, was when I accidentally bought tickets to the wrong session of Let the Sunshine In, and was able to switch them for the correct one (for a very reasonable $1 fee). The second, however, was an actual switch in titles, as it was on the festival's second-to-last day and there would be no opportunity for any encore screenings of the title in question. But the movie I chose had a number of funny things in common with the film it was replacing.
I was supposed to see the Cannes Jury Prize winner Loveless from Russian director Andrey Zvyagintsev, about a couple going through a bitter divorce. That was playing at 3:45 Saturday afternoon at the Forum, and at the time I purchased the tickets it was set to be my only screening of the festival in my favorite venue. (Wednesday's Golden Exits screening was ultimately moved there, but I didn't know this at the time.) But I was forced to abandoned that viewing due to a late-developing conflict with an early dinner my wife had to attend. I greeted this with a shrug -- I wanted to see the movie, in part because I was pretty heavy on English language films this year, but I wouldn't say I had a particular preference for it.
I did have a preference for seeing something at the Forum, so I looked to see what was on there earlier in the day on Saturday, and found Azazel Jacobs' The Lovers, which had been on my initial long list of candidates when the schedule was first released. It was playing at 11 a.m. The movie hits theaters here in only a couple weeks, which was one of the reasons it hadn't progressed on my initial shortlist. But under the circumstances, it was a good fit.
Jacobs directed the film Terri, which I really liked, and The Lovers featured Debra Winger and Tracy Letts, both of whom I also like. It's funny how much The Lovers and Loveless have in common -- both are about a divorcing couple, both have the word Love in their title, and both were on at the Forum on Saturday. It was almost like a little inside joke by the festival programmers.
Braving a burst of rain that wasn't at all previewed by the sky at the time I left, I ditched my bike a couple blocks away from the theater and made it in plenty of time for the screening. I was damp, but the screening was only 2/3 full, and I always like to sit off to the right at the Forum, so I had most of the row to myself to spread out and dry out.
I can't speak to the quality of Loveless, of course, but I was very glad I'd chosen this as its replacement. Jacobs takes a big step forward in craft from Terri and has made an extremely humanistic (and very funny) film about a husband and wife, the parents of a college-aged young man, who are in the last stages of a dead marriage. They're both having affairs (unbeknownst to each other), but as they sit on the precipice of confessing their affairs to each other and separating, they realize a renewed mutual attraction and affection. The film follows a cute but effective parallel structure between them, as their relationships with the people they're cheating with are strained in ways that mirror each other, and even the timing of the impending confessions -- right after their son visits -- is aligned.
I don't know why I found this film so entrancing, but the performances of Letts and Winger must have a lot to do with it. I have long appreciated the talents of Debra Winger, but Letts, the playwright, really surprised me in the first leading role in which I had seen him. Both bring enviable subtlety and layers of emotional complexity to their performances. Their lovers, played by Melora Walters and Aidan Gillen, are a bit more purposefully broad, but still effective as well. The movie was sailing toward my top five of the year until it faltered just a little bit in the third act. But, just a little bit.
I enjoyed having an early afternoon -- nay, morning -- screening for the first (and of course last) time of the festival, for its own sake but also because it allowed me to make my first visit to the festival lounge downstairs for a bit of lunch afterward. The downstairs area at the Forum is set aside for a fancy bar and dance floor area, which I'd tried to visit on Wednesday except it was already closed for the night. At 12:45 it was understandably sparsely attended, but no matter. It looked as glitzy and well-appointed as it always does, and I enjoyed a craft beer and pastrami sandwich in an enjoyably mellow state of post-film bliss.
My final film of the festival came that night at 9 p.m., and it was my second film of the festival I'd already seen. The circumstances of the first -- Fantastic Planet with live musical accompaniment -- made it a must see. The second was just because I felt like it, dammit.
That was my first-ever big screen viewing of Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days, and my fourth overall. The film is a personal favorite, ranked #62 on my Flickchart. At this writing I am still not sure why it was selected as part of the festival program, as these old releases usually conform to some theme, like all the films of a particular director, or some overt sociopolitical topic. I could probably find that information online somewhere, but I can't be bothered right now.
I will say that when it became clear my wife was going to use only one of the two evening tickets that still remained on our festival minipass, I started scouting for possible candidates on the final weekend, and when I found this one, I couldn't shake it from my mind. Sure, on some level it goes against my festival-going philosophy, which is to acquire new films before they're available, or films that might never be in any easy way. But I thought of this last ticket a bit like found money -- I never expected to have it. I was already feeling good about my selection of films for the festival and didn't feel like I really needed another. So might as well take that rare opportunity to see a film you love on the big screen. It felt like a fitting way to close the festival.
And it did have that effect on me, though I'll say that I liked the film a little bit less than when my last viewing in 2011 reconfirmed it as a personal favorite. It's still a personal favorite, no doubt about that, but #62 on Flickchart seems a bit high. As such, it'll probably steadily get busted down, maybe landing around #100 to #120, where it probably really belongs.
But I still love the sci-fi vision of this film, as it's that rare type of sci-fi that serves as a great mixture of our current world and a vision of a possible near future. At the time this was made in 1995, it was looking only five years into the future, yet Bigelow and screenwriter James Cameron (!) imagined a world where people were addicted to a black market product that allowed them to immerse themselves in other people's recorded experiences. As VR is really taking off in a big way now, and as tensions between the police and African-Americans are as bad as they have ever been, the film feels timely in any number of ways. And those may indeed by the reasons it was considered a good candidate for inclusion in this festival.
It was timely for me as well. At my fourth MIFF, I also had fourth viewings of both this and Fantastic Planet. And that's the type of synchronicity you know I love.
And I love MIFF, so it's with a little melancholy that another good one comes to an end.
Until next August ...
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