Normally due to work circumstances I’ve been unable to fully immerse myself in a festival, but this year I had the time to actually attend a bunch of in person screenings and was able to secure screeners for a lot of movies I was interested in for VIFF. While friends like Jeff Bulmer saw 40 films at TIFF, I consider it a pretty big accomplishment for making time for 14 movies watched during the fest. Including films I saw at other festivals it raises the number up to 18. I figured I’d recap the five best films I saw during the Vancouver International Film Festival and give out some awards.
5. The Zone of Interest – Jonathan Glazer
This film is about the banality of evil. It centers on the Höss family stationed in Poland. Rudolf is an upper manager who has to deal with overseeing a lot of employees, he’s in charge of an aggressive expansion at his place of work and he’s got a really fickle boss who likes taking Rudolf’s credit when it benefits him but won’t stick his neck out for him when Rudolf is being transferred away from the home he and his family has built. Hedwig has to entertain her husband’s co-workers’ wives, maintaining a certain amount of luxury, she also is constantly working on improving the home the family lives in. She’s installed central heating, a swimming pool, a large garden of both flowers and produce and much more. Hedwig has help taking care of her large family from some local young girls from the town but being the wife of a high ranking man means she also has to play the game of politics. They also live right against a twenty foot wall that encloses Auschwitz-Birkenau, the infamous concentration camp where an estimated 1.1 million people were murdered. Rudolf spends his days trying to figure out ways to be more efficient in killing people, but it is all about the bureaucracy of the war. You hear trains in the background, see smoke stacks cloud the air and ashes used to fertilize gardens but this movie is not Schindler’s List. That is what makes it all the more terrifying. It’s hard to compliment Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller considering their roles, but their performances are impossible to take your eyes off of. It’s been a decade since Under the Skin, but it is great having Glazer back.
4. The Royal Hotel – Kitty Green
Kitty Green followed up her searing indictment of the way women are treated in the entertainment industry with a searing indictment of the hostility women must endure when men know there won’t be any consequences. Julia Garner returns as Hanna with Jessica Henwick playing Liv, two young American women traveling abroad in Australia who run out of money and agree to work as bartenders in a remote mining town. There they must deal with the constant threats, both implicit and explicit from the rowdy drunk men that come to the only place to drink every night. Hugo Weaving, an Australian legend, shows up in a supporting role as the bar owner who tries to maintain order from the rowdy roughnecks but ends up too shitfaced everyday to do anything of consequence. It makes for a great breakout for Jessica Henwick who has been excellent in supporting roles in movies like Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery, The Matrix Resurrections and Love and Monsters. The film finishes with a blast of catharsis that helps make up for the grueling scenario that leads up to the finale making the film crowd pleasing in a way.
3. Evil Does Not Exist – Ryûsuke Hamaguchi
After the international breakthrough hit Drive My Car, which won Best International Feature and was nominated for three other Oscars including Best Picture, Hamaguchi follows up his three hour slow cinema exploration of grief with the brisk hour-45 Evil Does Not Exist. In a tiny mountain community, clean water and doing their best to not disturb nature is everything. Everyone is a part of the social contract to keep the water clean, because they are personally responsible for the next person downstream to them so if everyone takes care of their water supply, it will never be ruined. When a marketing agency comes to town wanting to build a glamping site, the villagers raise concerns about the placement of a septic tank that won’t even be big enough to contain the waste of all the guests. The proposed spot is also right in the middle of a field that deer live in, and while they aren’t necessarily dangerous they do carry communicable diseases and if they feel their young are threatened they will attack. The company also is trying to cheap out on paying for full time caretakers and considering the heavily wooded areas, it is ripe for forest fires. Unfortunately the agency, and the company footing the bill to build the glamp ground don’t care about these concerns and plan to move ahead regardless. The film is slow and meditative in typical Hamaguchi style and features not one but two extended uncut sequences of people chopping wood that is so enthralling it could have lasted for two hours and I wouldn’t have minded. The ending is sure to cause some consternation as it blurs the line between metaphorical and real without a clear explanation. It’s the type of film that will instantly cause a debate on the meaning, but so worth the experience.
2. The Teachers’ Lounge – Ilker Çatak
Being a teacher in today’s society is harder than ever. The profession has always been one with long hours, inadequate pay and parents that either care too much or too little about their children’s education at the expense of the system. In the new German film The Teachers’ Lounge a petty theft has occurred in Ms. Noawk’s classroom and the class representatives are coerced into giving up a potential suspect, a kid who comes from a refugee family. Nowak doesn’t like the method of questioning and after the child is vindicated, she feels even more uneasy. After seeing a fellow teacher steal money from the communal coffee fund, she sets up a trap by leaving cash in her jacket and setting up her laptop’s webcam and leaving it in the teachers lounge when she goes to teach. After reviewing the footage it appears a member on staff reached into her coat and stole the money. Despite this person’s protestations they are put on immediate leave while an investigation occurs. Unfortunately Ms. Nowak teaches their child and suddenly the child and Ms. Noawk are both bullied by other students, teachers and parents all of whom don’t understand the full situation. The film feels like an allegory of how the Gestapo operated in Nazi Germany. The students have forced wallet inspections, which are degrading. The parents have a group chat where the accused parent is able to spin the story against the teacher, which quickly grow out of control. The students feeling like they aren’t being listened to use the school newspaper to scapegoat the teacher even further using misleading quotes as propaganda. Add in to the fact that Ms. Noawk is Polish and you have a very interesting film that is so stress-inducing you will be thankful you’re not a teacher in today’s age (and if you are, I salute you for putting up with so much bullshit for so little pay).
1. Monster – Hirokazu Kore-eda
The experience watching this movie is something you’ll never be able to replicate with subsequent viewings. Mostly because the first thirty minutes or so are so baffling you don’t even know what movie genre you are watching. It starts with a young boy named Minato who starts acting depressed and saying some weird things like that his brain was replaced with a pig’s brain. Finally he tells his mother that his teacher told him this. When the teacher confronts the school, including the principal, Hori’s teacher and other teacher’s present at the meeting, we get the weirdest version of stonewalling I’ve ever seen. The faculty admits fault but won’t explain what is going on nor will they look the boy’s mother in the face. It all feels like an absurdist soft SciFi movie. Eventually we start getting a Rashomon effect, showing incidents happening at school play out, from Minato’s perspective, from his teacher’s and from another boy named Hori. Without spoiling the film and where it goes, Kore-eda shows what a master he is at toying an audience along and eventually absolutely destroying the viewers feelings.
Here are my individual awards if I could present them to the cast and crews.
Best Film – Monster
Best Canadian Film – Fitting In
Best Documentary – Mr. Dressup: The Magic of Make-Believe
Best Director – Jonathan Glazer for The Zone of Interest
Best Actor – Jussi Vatanen for Fallen Leaves
Best Actress – Julia Garner for The Royal Hotel
Best Supporting Actor – Hinata Hiiragi for Monster
Best Supporting Actress – Amanda Collin for The Promised Land
If you haven’t checked out our other VIFF coverage, listen to episodes 253: 2023 VIFF Preview, 255: 2023 VIFF Wrap Up and 256: VIFF Interviews – Wild Goat Surf and I Used To Be Funny.
