Looking on the bright side

A mostly virtual event might be a good thing, writes Ann Hornaday.

Festivalgoers are encountering a radically upended reality. Although Venice continued as an in-person, albeit trimmeddown event, Telluride decided to cancel. The Toronto International Film Festival will be mostly online, with its Bell Lightbox theatre and a few drive-ins open to a limited number of masked, socially distanced local viewers over the first five days. TIFF will be online for the full 10 days, its digital program open to Canadian viewers and members of the international press.

No red carpets. No press junkets. And some cherished late-summer rituals will also be falling by the wayside.

For TIFF, I have developed certain habits. First among them: Perusing the press screening schedule, using a red pen to mark must-see screenings on the grid, then crossing it all out and starting over again.

Then there are the rituals that feel unique each and every time: Those moments when, having settled into my semi-private opera box, the lights go down, the movie begins and I know, maybe within 10 or 15 minutes, that

I’m seeing something special. A tingling sensation sets in: This movie is actually … good. And almost simultaneously, a sense of dread encroaches: For the love of all that’s holy, please don’t mess this up.

And then, the final triumph, when the filmmaker sticks the landing and I feel moved to shout from the downtown Toronto rooftops: Hey, you guys! Everyone! You, over there! I just saw a great movie!

That emotional morphology is reflected in the hieroglyphics of dozens of reporter’s notebooks, in which I’ve scribbled my stream-of-consciousness reactions since first attending Toronto. In 2007’s notebook, you can tell when I was watching Into the Wild or The Diving Bell and the Butterfly simply by how words and quotes gave way to ecstatic exclamation marks. The following year it was Steve Mcqueen’s directorial debut Hunger, whose astonishing second act still gives me goosebumps. More recently, at the Toronto première of Spotlight in 2015, I walked out of the theatre on air — not because I was blown away by the film’s visual pyrotechnics or auteurist flourishes, but by its quiet restraint and taut sense of control. I couldn’t wait to tell someone, anyone: I just saw a great movie.

Joana Vicente, TIFF executive director and co-head, says as she and artistic director and co-head Cameron Bailey decided whether and how to go ahead this year, “We said we can’t look at it as compromising. Let’s focus on the positive and look at the opportunities this time and everything that comes with it affords us.”

Although most online screenings will be limited to Canadian audiences, Vicente says some events will be free to viewers around the world, including conversations with Priyanka Chopra and Halle Berry.

And buried within the rubble of disruption are nuggets of potential good news. The absence of Netflix’s production and marketing juggernaut could lend more visibility to movies with a smaller profile.

I’ve always tried to avoid the kibitzing with other critics, preferring to let a film settle before I share my response publicly — even when I want to shout praise from the rooftops. In the past, I might have done my reflecting over a solo cone at Sweet Jesus. I’ll miss the ice cream this year, just as I’ll miss the crowds and the buzz, the swirl and the camaraderie. But I’m confident I’ll still experience the thrill of discovery — maybe even the tingle of greatness — and they might be even purer with the gift of solitude.