The show banners have come down and the patrons have scattered in all directions but many thoughts and impressions linger from this year’s festival. And, as always, Telluride was the first to host U.S. premieres of several films which are being showcased in the Toronto Film Festival that began Sept. 6th and runs through September 15^th. Among them were the 2007 Cannes festival favorites, SECRET SUNSHINE & 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS and 2 DAYS, plus JAR CITY, PERSEPOLIS, JUNO, BRICK LANE, WHEN DID YOU LAST SEE YOUR FATHER?, MY ENEMY’S ENEMY, ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD and several others.  

Of the films I was able to attend, here are some brief impressions.

ZUBEIDAA (India, 2001)

Presented as part of a tribute to director Shyam Benegal, who is often considered the most important Indian filmmaker after Satyajit Ray, this epic melodrama with irresistible songs by A. R. Rahman is not your ordinary Bollywood musical and is much richer in character development and cultural detail. The story of a film journalist trying to unravel the details of his mother’s turbulent life and her tragic early demise is told in flashbacks a la “Citizen Kane” with various characters revealing their own memories of the Muslim movie star who became the second wife of a Hindu prince. The intense colors, dazzling art direction and passionate performances bear favorable comparisons with such florid Douglas Sirk soap operas as “Written on the Wind” and “Magnificent Obsession.” And Karisma Kapoor in the title role goes against the grain of the typical Bollywood heroine as she rebels against her assigned role in Indian society and becomes increasingly fatalistic not unlike Jeanne Moreau’s Catharine in Francois Truffaut’s “Jules and Jim.”

SPIDER (Australia, 2007)

This nine minute short, directed by Nash Edgerton, is a nifty little black comedy shocker that starts in a deceptively mundane manner as a quarreling couple stop for gas during a road trip. What happens next involves a peace offering of flowers, candy and a rubber spider which triggers a series of unexpected incidents that had the audience gasping in unison at the final grotesque shot which I can’t reveal here.

DILLINGER IS DEAD (Italy, 1969)

Praised by such avant-garde experimenters as Jean-Luc Godard, this bizarre and fascinating portrait of an industrial designer going quietly mad is generally considered Marco Ferreri’s masterpiece and features one of Michel Piccoli’s greatest performances, most of it rendered in pantomime and gesture with minimal dialogue. The majority of the film takes place within the confines of Piccoli’s home – a pop-art showcase – as he putters around, preparing dinner, attending to his lethargic wife (Anita Pallenberg of “Performance” and “Barbarella”), spying on his sexy maid (Annie Girardot), watching home movies, and toying with a gun he found in the cupboard. There is no convention storyline but Piccoli’s character generates an undeniable tension as his self-absorbed activities begin to take on a sinister air. The film displays a sensuous surface, full of seductive colors and unusual objects. And the playful soundtrack by composer Teo Usuelli (sorry folks, it’s out of print) incorporates Italian lounge music and second rate American pop music to comment on the oppressing mediocrity that drives Piccoli to his final act.

MADAME TUTLI-PUTLI (Canada, 2007)

A truly astonishing stop motion wonder (17 minutes) from Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski that combines human and puppet performances with handmade sets created from recycled trash and atmospheric lighting effects. The sound design was created by David Bryant, the founding member of Godspeed You! Black Emperior, and Jean-Frederic Messier of Theatre Momentum.

Here’s a link to the film’s official website -

http://www.onf.ca/webextension/madame-tutli-putli/

INTO THE WILD (U.S., 2007)

Sean Penn’s adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s fascinating nonfiction bestseller was probably the biggest surprise in terms of my expectations. I am not a huge fan of Penn’s previous directorial efforts – THE INDIAN RUNNER (1991), THE CROSSING GUARD (1995), THE PLEDGE (2001) – though I do admire the fact that he refuses to pander to commercial considerations in his relentlessly downbeat dramas. Despite his interest in delving deeply into character and exploring human behavior, however, Penn’s films have always struck me as arty downers and morose “Actors Studio” exercises that are more rewarding for the actors than the audience. Not so with his new film, INTO THE WILD. Penn has finally found the ideal protagonist in Chris McCandless, a stubbornly determined idealist who renounces materialism, cuts himself off from his family and begins a cross-country journey that ends tragically in the Alaskan wilderness. The film is a “road movie” in the best sense of the term, taking the audience on a voyage of discovery that is brimming with human pain but also exhilaration, joy and spirituality. Emile Hirsch is remarkable as the ill-fated McCandless but the characters he meets along the way – wonderful cameos by Vince Vaughn, Catherine Keener, Hal Holbrook and others – are no less memorable.

FOUR MONTHS, THREE WEEKS AND TWO DAYS (Romania, 2007)

Winner of the Palm d’Or at this year’s Cannes film festival, this feature by Cristian Mungiu is one of several he plans to make in a series called “Tales from the Golden Age.” According to Variety reviewer Jay Weissburg, “Mungiu’s goal is to visualize the overwhelming weight of the soul-destroying compromises of life during the Ceausescu years through clear-eyed, deeply humane stories.” FOUR MONTHS is indeed a heartwrenching drama but it also works on the level of an unnerving suspense thriller. The narrative follows Otilia (Anamaria Marinca), a student, as she helps her pregnant roommate Gabita (Laura Vasiliu) through the process of a dangerous and illegal abortion. Reminiscent of Krzysztof Kieslowski’s DEKALOG in its focus on morality and human behavior, FOUR MONTHS also has a similar visual style and setting that moves from dreary, cramped rooms in housing projects to wintry streets for secret meetings with black market dealers. The film was one of many that involved an unwanted pregancy – the unofficial theme of this year’s Telluride festival – but it was the most sober and thought-provoking of the lot; the others included the archival screening of Paul Fejos’ MARIE, A HUNGARIAN LEGEND (1932), Teuvo Tulio’s THE WAY YOU WANTED ME (1944), and Jason Reitman’s JUNO (2007).

THE SAVAGES (U.S., 2007) – Trailers for this new film by Tamara Jenkins are already popping up in theatres everywhere and are creating the general impression that this is a comedy. However, this tale of two siblings – Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman – trying to put their estranged father in a nursing home is no laughing matter despite Jenkins’ attempts to inject humor into a depressing situation with little chance for a “happy ending.” The subject of grown children faced with ailing, elderly parents and what to do with them is a great subject for contemporary cinema but THE SAVAGES fails to find the right balance between pathos and black comedy. It starts off on the wrong foot with a satirical opening sequence and some broad comedic caricatures before settling into a more intimate character study with moments of genuine pain and self-awareness. Like Jenkins’ see-saw narrative, the performances are also uneven (with the exception of Hoffman and Gbenga Akinnagbe as a sympathetic nursing home staffer) but the movie is worth seeing for its offbeat approach to a situation with no easy solution and one that faces everyone with aging parents.

There isn’t enough space to go into detail on several other films that played Telluride but some of the audience favorites included Julien Schnabel’s THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY, based on the memoir of ELLE France editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who was left paralyzed from a stroke except for his left eye which he learned to use for communication through blinking; the Chinese film BLIND MOUNTAIN by Li Yang; THE COUNTERFEITERS by Austrian writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzky; a quirky Israeli comedy, THE BAND’S VISIT; CHRIS & DON: A LOVE STORY, a candid documentary portrait of author Christopher Isherwood and his longtime companion, artist Don Bachardy; and the last minute addition of JUNO with its breakout performance by 16-year-old Ellen Page. Look for all of these films in theatres later this Fall and through the rest of 2008.