Change Your Image
carmenmartino
Reviews
Juste la fin du monde (2016)
You need to look more closely & listen to what's NOT said
b.r.i.l.l.i.a.n.t! I saw this movie at TIFF on Sept. 17 and it was the first Dolan film I've seen. It deserves the award it received at Cannes! Despite all the shouting and intensity, this film conveys with subtlety, suggestive dialogue and glances, the range of emotions felt by different members of a family when there has been an unexplained loss of another family member. Even though the main character, Louis, is still alive and returns to the family, they react as if he has returned from an unexpected death. They range from guilt, rage, idealization, and denial.The close-up filming style also reveals each family member's pain in intimate detail. Dolan is brilliant in his interpretation of that family's deep pain and Louis's coming to terms with not only his own impending death but the "death" the family already has had to deal with when he went away the first time.
Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom (2013)
Mandela movie shows his vision and conviction but also the heartbreaking consequences to his personal life.
I saw this movie on Sept. 8 at the Toronto Film Festival. It was an honest and powerful portrayal of Mandela the man and the toll his striving for a better South African society took on his personal life. The movie showed how his first marriage crumbled because his wife couldn't take his long absences from her and their 4 children while his role in the ANC and the anti-apartheid movement became his greater focus. Although he explained to her that he was doing this work for all of South Africa's black people and the children who were growing up in those oppressed conditions, his own children suffered for his strong convictions for the greater good. He married a woman he truly loved, Winnie, and had 2 daughters with her. Although Winnie supported and fought alongside Mandela for the cause, this family ultimately suffered, too, when he continued his campaign with the ANC and it turned to more drastic means to send a message to the South African government. As a result of his arrest and conviction for those actions, he spent 27 years away from his young family. There were some truly heart-wrenching moments and the actor who played Mandela, Idris Elba, convincingly conveyed the doubts and regrets that Mandela felt in not being able to be with his wife and children all those years.
The movie showed this personal side of the Mandela story well. It skipped through the facts that are well known and easily accessed. This wasn't the focus of the movie. Now knowing the great sacrifices he endured to achieve the freedom he desired for all black South Africans, it made me ever more grateful for having witnessed a small part of the Mandela story. I was part of the "Free Mandela" movement in the late '80's and I saw him speak when he came to Toronto in 1990. Seeing this movie, with it's inclusion of live footage from that time, brought back memories of the emotions of the era, the "Boycott South African goods" campaign, the elation when Mandela was finally freed, and feeling the goosebumps when he spoke. He was, and is, one of the most inspiring, great leaders of our time. I highly recommend everyone go see this movie when it is widely released. It will leave you wanting to learn more about Mandela (I plan to read his autobiography bearing the same name as the movie), and maybe even go out and do your part to make this a better society too, however small the contribution. As Mandela says in the movie, "Alone we have no power, together, we have the power to change the world".