The Hot Docs Film Festival starts today, and we’ve got thoughts on several of the most highly-touted titles. For convenience, we’ve ranked ’em, from one star to four. (Check back for further reviews Friday and Monday.)
The Queen of Versailles: Whatever your feelings about billionaire couple Jackie and David Siegel, you have to give them credit for letting director Lauren Greenfield into their outlandish, absurd lives, even when the going got rough (relatively speaking). Originally, the film was to be about the Siegels’ new home: a 90,000-square-foot pleasure palace in Florida. But then the recession hit, taking a huge bite out of David’s fortune, and the film turned into a tragicomedy about the perils of runaway consumerism. The movie is hugely entertaining — funny, astounding, and disturbing all at once — and yet Greenfield never clucks her tongue at the Siegels. Instead, she draws us closer to them, revealing them as fun-house reflections of our own materialist striving. Hollywood has always liked telling us money can’t buy happiness, but The Queen of Versailles is maybe the first film I’ve seen to convincingly illustrate the point. ★★★★
Screens May 2 at 7 pm; May 3 at 9:15 pm; and May 4 at 8:45 pm.
Revision: A murder mystery drained of all interest. German “artist-filmmaker” Philip Scheffner looks at the 1992 shooting deaths of two men attempting to cross the border between Germany and Poland, but his technique — if one can dignify it as such — is inept. Instead of doing straightforward interviews with his subjects, he films them listening to interviews they did with him earlier, a meta approach that adds precisely nothing and results in us staring at blank faces for two hours. Elsewhere, he deliberately leaves in cutting-room-floor material, including a roughly four-minute sequence in which his cameraman frames a shot of a field. But his worst crime is organizing the interview material from the outside in, starting with the people with the least knowledge of events. It takes so long to establish the basic scenario that, by the time we get it, we could care less. ★
Screens May 2 at 3:30 pm; May 4 at 9:45 pm; and May 5 at 3:30 pm.
Indie Game: The Movie: I’m not particularly into video games, but I was deeply engaged by this debut doc from Canadian filmmakers Lisanne Pajot and James Swirsky. It looks at the lives — or, rather, lack thereof — of a handful of game designers working away in basements on their dream projects, without the support or interference of the big game companies. Though the movie will definitely interest gamers, it will elicit shocks of recognition from all sorts of creative types: writers, filmmakers, visual artists, etc. It’s less about video games and more about the semi-derangement brought on by solitude and working round-the-clock on something you believe in. By the finale, when the designers of Fez and Meat Boy anxiously unleash their creations on the world, you’ll be so invested in the reception your stomach will be tied in knots. ★★★
Screens May 3 at 9 pm.
Big Boys Gone Bananas!*: In 2009, Swedish director Fredrik Gertten made the documentary Bananas!*, about a group of Nicaraguan banana farmers battling food giant Dole over unsafe working conditions. Gertten’s new doc is about what happened after the film was completed: how Dole tried to discredit it, threatening legal action against Gertten and against any film festival or media outlet that promoted it. There’s interesting material here about the power of big business to control public discussion, but in turning the camera on himself, Gertten gets rather self-pitying and disingenuous. He’s shocked — shocked! — that Dole would retaliate, making him perhaps the most naïve documentarian alive, and therefore probably not the best person to illuminate this subject. In any case, Big Boys feels less like a film in its own right and more like supplementary material for the Bananas!* DVD. ★★
Screens May 2 at 5:30 pm.
Detropia: No documentary filmmakers working today balance form and content better than the team of Rachel Grady and Heidi Ewing (Jesus Camp, 12th & Delaware). Though the duo work in an unobtrusive, fly-on-the-wall style, they think cinematically, coming up with dynamic, expressive images on the spot. In Detropia, a look at the spectacular ruin that is Detroit City, they take in a wide cast of characters — an elderly barkeep, a United Auto Workers chapter head, a self-styled “urban explorer” — and fashion an epic lament for a country in decline. There’s no narrative thread to pull you along, but it doesn’t matter — you’re held rapt by the apocalyptic mood, and by the beauty of decay. Made for PBS, the film isn’t slated for a theatrical release, so see it now. Detropia is that true rarity: a great doc that’s also a great cinematic experience. ★★★★
Screens May 5 at 5:45 pm.
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Hot Docs Festival runs from April 26 to May 6, 2012 | Tickets are available online.
Scott MacDonald writes about cinema for Toronto Standard.
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