The Vancouver International Film Festival returns this year, and for the first time, I’ve been able to truly dedicate some time to the festival. Over the next two weeks, I’ll be releasing brief updates on the screenings I attend, including initial reactions and thoughts. The festival hosts screenings across the city, allowing for a unique experience with each venue, some better suiting the films they are showing. I am deeply thankful for the festival and all the volunteers who help make it work every year.
The Old Oak
Ken Loach is the most prominent socialist filmmaker working in the world today. His work, while never overly explorative of the medium, always has a vicious eye for social commentary and the wrongs of the world. While these emotional pleas for a better world can at times be blunt and overwhelming (as in his Palme D’or winning I, Daniel Blake) with The Old Oak he is able to find a balance between righteous anger and hope.
The Old Oak takes place in a rural British village in 2016, and follows the local pub owner and his interactions and relationships with the newly arrived Syrian refugees. The community, having spiraled into destitution for decades due to the closing of the local mine, is unkind and abrasive to the newcomers, and TJ finds himself in the middle of a feud between his past and his future. Playing on the strong racial tensions that can still be found in Britain (and not just the villages) and connecting it directly with the ideas of unions and what communities are, Loach is able to thread a beautiful story about searching for hope in a world destined to tear you down.
Wonderfully acted by mostly non-professional actors, the film also plays on the idea of the old Britain and the new Britain. TJ is the owner of the classic British pub, at one point the symbol of British culture. Now near ruin, he finds both his pub and himself have new life available to him in reaching out and welcoming those in need. In this film everyone is in need, everyone is near their breaking point, and it is only through reestablishing a true sense of community that they, and we, are going to make it through this world. A powerful reminder of what we can accomplish together.
The Invention of the Other
Following a group of thirty government workers as they travel deep into the Amazon rainforest in order to make contact with an isolated tribe, this documentary floats between genres, as subject and documentarians take turns becoming the focus of the feature. The Kurobu tribe featured in the film is so isolated that many have never seen someone from outside of their tribe, and as the filmmakers are fascinated with their way of life the tribesmen are fascinated with these interlopers.
Unfortunately, this fascination can only take a viewer so far. There is little to no narrative structure to the film, instead becoming more of a beautifully crafted educational document than an emotionally satisfying film. There are some wonderfully crafted images here, shots that are deeply expressive and speak volumes to the idea of community and the engrained love of humanity we have. But these moments are fleeting, and in between them is an overly long and unengaging film that never seems to hit the mark.
We have a tribe that has warred, fought, and suffered, some of whom we see being reunited with family they haven’t seen in months, and yet these moments fall flat on screen. These are people who are being driven from their land by an unknown force (farmers and loggers) and yet we never see them truly grapple with the idea of their way of life dying away. Instead, we follow them through day-to-day activities, and outside of a stranger’s curiosity in something they’ve never seen before, the filmmakers seem to lack any initiative in making the film more than informative. A film that never justifies itself as art.