Best year ever for Canadian film?
The Genies used to honour films few Canadians had even heard of. Not anymore
You won’t see Grain Handling in Canada among such golden candidates as Monsieur Lazhar and A Dangerous Method at Thursday’s Genie Awards, but this ancient doc deserves recognition anyway.
Coincidentally screening at nfb.ca, where the National Film Board is honouring 100 years of the Canadian Grain Commission, this earnest 1955 short serves as a reminder how achingly Canuck our movies used to be.
The Genies used to be almost as hoser-headed as this, not so long ago. They frequently honoured films that a majority of Canadians hadn’t even heard of. That’s emphatically not the case this year. The five films up for Best Picture honours at the Genies — Philippe Falardeau’s Monsieur Lazhar, David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, JeanMarc Vallée’s Café de Flore, Larysa Kondracki’s The Whistleblower and Ken Scott’s Starbuck — have opened eyes both inside and outside of Canada.
Boasting Canadian and international stars in a diverse mix of comedy and drama, art house and genre, these five movies have already had theatrical runs in Toronto and other major cities, a rare confluence for Genie candidates. All have also screened stateside, or are expected to.
At least two of the films have had spectacular success by any measure.
Classroom drama Monsieur Lazhar competed for Best Foreign-language Film at the recent Academy Awards, the second Quebec film to do so in as many years. It arrived at TIFF last fall having won two major prizes at the Locarno Film Festival in Switzerland, where it premiered.
The sperm-sowing comedy Starbuck already has Genie kudos with its Cineplex Golden Reel Award for being the top-grossing Canadian film in 2011, taking in an impressive $3.5 million at the nation’s multiplexes. Starbuck also won audience awards at film fests in Palm Springs and Calgary, and star Patrick Huard was named Best Actor at Spain’s Valladolid International Film Festival.
Psychosexual drama A Dangerous Method and time-tripping love saga Café de Flore, meanwhile, showed up on many critics’ Top 10 lists for 2011, while The Whistleblower won rookie director Kondracki applause for skillfully tackling the difficult subject of alleged UN complicity in Bosnian sex crimes.
“I think it’s a really cool, diverse group from some established filmmakers and some emerging filmmakers,” says Steve Gravestock, TIFF’S senior programmer in charge of Canadian film.
“It’s a good mix of different genres. These are films that Canadians can be proud of. And they’ve gone to see these films, too.”
All but The Whistleblower were also listed in Canada’s Top Ten for 2011, the Tiff-sponsored honours list that Gravestock oversees, and which are selected by critics, filmmakers and other industry players.
It’s rare to have such symmetry between TIFF’S tally and the more commercially minded Genies. And there were a lot of quality films to choose from, says Toronto filmmaker Patricia Rozema ( I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing), who was a member of the most recent TIFF Top 10 jury.
“I think we’ve had a very strong year in Canadian film,” she says via email.
“Quebec is always healthy, but I suspect the rest of us are truly coming into our own as a movie-making/movie-loving nation. I predict we’ll finally have a few English-canadian commercial hits in the next couple of years. We are finally ready to like ourselves.”
Her prediction is already coming true. The hockey comedy Goon, directed by Michael Dowse and co-written by Jay Baruchel and Adam Goldberg, Canadians all, scored a vigorous $1.2 million upon its debut two weeks ago, enough to give it the penthouse berth at the country’s box office. It continues to do well as a U.S. rollout approaches.
One of the most impressive things about this year’s Genie roster is the bench strength.
Look down the 2011 list and you could easily pick nominees in other categories — including Take This Waltz, Edwin Boyd, Nuit #1, Marécages (Wetlands), Keyhole, In Darkness and You Are Here — that could have credibly replaced the current Best Picture contenders.
Another noteworthy thing, Gravestock says, is how international this year’s Best Picture field is, while at the same time retaining a distinct Canadian identity. A Dangerous Method, for example, stars American Viggo Mortensen, German-born Irishman Michael Fassbender and England’s Keira Knightley in a movie shot in Austria and Germany about the difficult dawn of psychotherapy.
The Whistleblower is another marvel of international cooperation. It’s credited as a Canada/germany co-production, and stars Britain’s Rachel Weisz as a Nebraska cop seeking to stop human trafficking in UNcontrolled Bosnia.
Films like Monsieur Lazhar, which stars Algerian actor Mohamed Fellag, and Café de Flore, which traverses decades and continents and stars France’s Vanessa Paradis and Quebec’s Hélène Florent, speak to Canada’s increasing embrace of stories from many lands and cultures.
“We’re very good at presenting alternate versions of history, rather than the conventionally heroic, easily-arrived-at opinions about historical events,” Gravestock says. “We accept them as something that has affected the development of Canada.”
The Genies have caught this wave, which makes Thursday’s celebration more than just another occasion to tip the toque to the same old, same old of Canadian cinema.