Topical political pictures make way for less-specific fare
TORONTO -- At this year's Toronto International Film Festival, the war movies ar all wearing camouflage.
Last twelvemonth, topical political pictures wish "Rendition" and "In the Valley of Elah" came into the Toronto with a head of steam and leftfield in a cloud of dust. This time some, although in that respect is some other onslaught of films with war themes coming to the fest -- which kicks off Thursday night with Canadian filmmaker Paul Gross' World War I saga "Passchendaele" -- they are being billed as everything simply war movies.
Where the 2007 crop sought to mine topicality, producers and publicists are placement their new titles as movies that could just as well be occurrence in any other time or place.
"This movie is not well-nigh the Iraq war. It's an action-adventure movie that happens to be set in Iraq," producer Nic Chartier aforesaid of his film "The Hurt Locker." Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, the film, which focuses on an Army squad in Iraq that must defuse a dangerous bomb in a crowded city, will be seeking a U.S. distribution deal. "This could have been the British and the IRA. It could have been anywhere, in truth," Chartier said.
The cool Toronto reception and subsequent boxoffice bath taken by last year's movies might get stopped some from unspooling war-themed films. But given production imprison time and filmmakers' belief that there are stories still untold, a grouping of war-inflected titles rides into the festival that begins Thursday at Roy Thompson Hall.
Another of those films, "The Lucky Ones," a Tim Robbins-Rachel McAdams tale of U.S. soldiers recently returned from the Middle East, has as well sought to hit a different note. The picture's trailer and ad campaigns emphasize drollery and comradeship and, with a Sarah McLachlan ballad, it has a softer feel that might appeal to women.
"Iraq is a lousy word in film marketing right now," said Roadside Attractions co-topper Howard Cohen, who is distributing the picture, which has been held for a Sept. 26 spillage in hopes that the zeitgeist might change, fashioning the plastic film more marketable.
"Our goal, in the deuce seconds you have to communicate this to people, is to show that this is not about the warfare in Iraq. It's around American fellowship and how we treat people."
To some degree, the movies indeed represent a new wave.
Festival programmer Jane Schoettle noted, "(These) films are not necessarily about the war itself, just rather the war is a circumstance. Films like 'The Lucky Ones' and 'Hurt Locker' are victimisation the contexts of the war to tell more personal stories."
More specialized fare also contains Middle Eastern themes. The somber "Stoning of Soraya M," a feature from the producers behind "The Passion of the Christ," is a visceral film about the mistreatment of women in Iran. Sony Classics' "Adoration," the Atom Egoyan drama that debuted in Cannes, addresses Islamic terrorism.
But the movies volition face obstacles, at least perceptually. Even without battle scenes, attempts to do movies about how we live nowadays could be doomed by the problem of besides much relevance.
"When you make a flick, you try to be distinctive," the Film Department's Mark Gill said. "Unfortunately, what's beaten you to it is every hour, on the hour, on your wireless, on television, in the paper, on the Internet, is the Iraq war."
And one person behind a Toronto war film terminal year aforesaid that they were "questioning that these (new) movies will do any better."
Still, filmmakers ar hoping that new elements, and some other year of distance, volition overcome that skepticism. But the evidence has still to acquaint itself. As one fest insider aforementioned, "Everyone is still wait for the one to be embraced."
More info
