Current mood:

Canadian icon!

The Canadian film industry makes me laugh. And sigh. And *wonder*, sometimes.
Paul Gross's Passchendaele opened this year's Toronto International Film Festival (it doesn't hit theatres in wide release until October...17th, I think), and the reviews are mixed. While that's pretty much what I was expecting, what I'm finding interesting are the types of praise and criticism that constitute that mix.

Generally, this movie has a huge amount of goodwill going for it: it's a Canadian war movie made on a budget of about $21 million (in all-Canadian funds--it's not a co-production) that tells one of the more important yet often-ignored stories of our history and will be getting a wide release in theatres across the country. (I have no idea what international distribution's gonna be, but I'm betting it won't amount to much.) It was written, directed by, and stars (arguably) Canada's most high-profile stay-at-home celebrity--Paul Gross--who also happens to be one of the most passionate supporters of the Canadian arts scene. (For a distillation of all the goodwill Gross has going for himself both personally and professionally, see the National Post's '13 Ways Of Looking At Paul Gross'. My favourites are three and eight.) Gross has wanted to make this movie for more than a decade--I remember reading interviews back in his Due South days that mentioned this dream project of his, based on stories his grandfather used to tell of having fought at Passchendaele--and now he's finally made it, and it's opened TIFF.

Goodwill a-go-go, people.

In the Canadian film industry, stories like this are pretty much unheard of--celebrities with the necessary marriage of extensive resources, determination, clout, and sheer multi-hatted talent are few and far-between anywhere, much less in Canada, where the system is practically designed to frustrate creative ambition on this scale. The innovation of it all has provoked an interesting reaction from movie critics, if their reviews are anything to go by: they all want their readers to understand that the importance of this movie's mere existence and what Gross has accomplished simply by making and distributing it supercedes any trifling matters of quality--i.e., whether it's actually a good movie.

Most reviews confirm my expectations (based on my long-standing opinion of Gross's abilities behind the camera) by calling the movie "epic and sweeping but a tad overwrought"; impressively realistic in its battle scenes but riddled with melodramatic and cliched storytelling; and "a well-intended mess". Gross's performance in front of the camera has received unabashed praise from a few people; others have singled out Joe Dinicol and Jim Mezon. (No specific praise for Caroline Dhavernas yet, but I'm just going to go ahead and assume she's fantastic.) The battle scenes seem to inspire a lot of critical appreciation; the narrative that makes up the bulk of non-battle screentime, not so much. But the less ambivalent--and more generally positive--reviews tend to look squarely at what the movie does for Canada's sense of history and patriotism ("Passchendaele is both a mainstream romantic drama and a vivid testament to history [...] it's exactly the type of movie that younger people should also see, since it illuminates an important chapter of Canadian history"). But I think Empire Movies best encapsulates the majority critical response:

Above all, Passchendaele is a testament to the fact that Paul Gross is a gem in the Canadian film industry. [...] There are some aspects of this film that I could critique, but I think that it would be a bit un-Canadian of me to do that on the heels of the film’s gala opening.

Which makes me wonder: is this really just The Canadian Thing? Is the movie actively bad, thus giving the too-polite-to-tear-down-this-significant-patriotic-achievement critics no recourse but to comment solely on The Significance Of This Patriotic Achievement? Or is the movie basically decent but not particularly superlative, thereby making it more worthwhile for critics to focus on its Significance As A Patriotic Achievement instead of its identity as a movie about romance in wartime?

Which in turn makes me wonder: how frustrating must this be for Mr Gross? Assuming he wants to know what critics and the general public think of this movie he devoted years of his life and all of his various professional skills to making, to have the majority of critical attention so tightly focused on patting him on the back for his achievement of production instead of actually critiquing his achievement (or lackthereof) of product...

Like, he made his dream project, and it ended up opening TIFF. All of that is Big and Good and Important, and yay, him! But still.

Outside of Canada, at least, nobody seems to be pulling their punches: The Hollywood Reporter thinks that, though the movie has many difficulties, mixed messages are its biggest downfall (HUGELY SPOILERY); meanwhile, The New Zealand Herald makes me laugh. (It makes me laugh because apparently, since Passchendaele's a Canadian war movie about Canadian soldiers, it must be viewed through Canadian Patriotic Goggles, regardless of the viewer's country of origin. Because lord knows a] the "war is bad" message is only understandable/applicable to whoever in the audience shares patriotic allegiance with the soldiers onscreen, and b] the billions of American movies about the struggles and achievements of American soldiers throughout history live or die based on the amount of credit they graciously give to the other countries who may or may not have participated in the battles/victories/losses they depict. *eyeroll*)

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I always have such good intentions for my days off, and then when they actually roll around, I'm all, "...meh. Would rather bum around LJ/TWoP/YouTube."

And the next thing I know, the day is gone.