Is the Toronto International Film Festival getting too big for itself? For the first time in a veteran festival-goer's memory, the fall season's major movie event feels in danger of spiraling slightly out of control. With many of the most prominent films (and related appearances by A-list stars) frontloaded into the first five days of an 11-day schedule, the festival has a hectic, overloaded feel.
Lines are longer and more fractious, the race from one must-see screening to the next is more harried, and publicists are tearing their hair out in larger chunks than usual. The crowds lining the streets for the evening premieres seem more obsessive, too. One night, as Joseph Gordon-Levitt arrived outside the Princess of Wales Theatre for the opening of his directorial debut, the porn-addict comedy-drama "Don Jon," the cellphone-wielding hordes set up a chant: "Jo-SEPH, Jo-SEPH." The night before, outside the Elgin Theatre on Yonge Street, another mass of fans had spied Ralph Fiennes alighting from a limo for the world premiere of "The Invisible Woman," and chanted "Ralf! Ralf!" No matter that it's pronounced "Rafe". It all feels positively un-Canadian.
But Toronto has always been a festival with a split personality: Half glitzy opening gun for the Oscar season and half carefully-curated buffet of global cinema. More than ever, the awards bait has expanded to fill the opening days while the back half is where the discoveries are.
Which isn't to say that the first half doesn't have its lasting pleasures. A movie like "August: Osage County," due in theaters in December, is rich with absurdly juicy performances from a cast that almost beggars belief: Meryl Streep, playing the toxic midwestern matriarch of Tracey Letts' hit play, goes head to head with Julia Roberts as the daughter who's almost as mean as she is, and the stark contrast in their styles -- craft versus charisma, an actress who loses herself in roles versus a star who's embodied in them -- is nothing less than thrilling to behold.
But everyone brings their A-game here: Ewan McGregor, Juliette Lewis, Abigail Breslin, Chris Cooper, Sam Shepard, Benedict Cumberbatch, Julianne Nicholson, and character actress Margo Martindale, who almost steals the final act from the rest of the company. Who cares if John Wells directs "August" like a play that occasionally wanders outdoors for a look-see? The movie promises a thespic cage-match, and it delivers, even if the Weinstein company is still dithering over whether to keep an ending that slightly softens the play's punch. (For the record, I'm in the camp that feels the movie should end, as in the play, with Streep's character rather than Roberts' -- you'll know what I mean when you see it -- no matter how much audience whining Harvey is hearing in the test screenings.)
If the media descends on Toronto looking for likely Best Picture contenders, it also tries to sniff out great performances and overarching themes. "12 Years a Slave" (photo above) and "Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom" provide both. Along with the recently released "The Butler," the films represent a deepening in the presentation of black life in commercial cinema, and both are being singled out for lead performances by actors whose career breakthroughs are long overdue.
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