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Film
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The Long and Winding Road
Like that line from the famous Beatles song, many of this year’s Toronto International Film Festival offerings concern incidents that “left a pool of tears crying for the day.”
Thursday, September 13, 2007 at 12:50 PM
By Pam Grady
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Focus Features
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A powerhouse cast
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Watch enough films at any film festival and themes will start suggesting themselves. At this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, loss is one that jumps out, encapsulated in such films as Jeremy Podewsa's opening night drama Fugitive Pieces, Juan Antonio Bayona's thriller The Orphanage, Neil Jordan's The Brave One, Paul Haggis' In the Valley of Elah, the Sigourney Weaver-starring The Girl in the Park and Helen Hunt's directorial debut Then She Found Me. Even Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg pays homage to the feeling that the core elements of a city have been lost.
Then there is Hotel Rwanda director Terry George's Reservation Road and Carl Bessai's Normal. The first is a slick Hollywood weepie with a phenomenal cast that includes Joaquin Phoenix, Mark Ruffalo and Jennifer Connelly, while Carrie-Anne Moss heads up Vancouver-based Bessai's far more modest drama. Both films limn the aftermath of an accident in which a child was killed, capturing the parents' grief and rage and the guilt of the person who caused the accident.
The pain is fresher in Reservation Road, as lawyer Dwight Arno (Mark Ruffalo) loses control of his SUV momentary and plows into 10-year-old Josh (Sean Curley), killing him instantly in front of his horrified father Ethan (Joaquin Phoenix), before driving off in a moment of panic and fear. Normal begins two years after Catherine's (Moss) teenage son Nick died. Walt (Callum Keith Rennie), a college professor and failed writer, drunk, hit the stolen car Nick was joyriding in with his best friend Jordie (Kevin Zegers), but was not held legally responsible for the accident.
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Mongrel Media
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The matrix of personal tragedy
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Both Reservation Road and Normal offer dark portraits of people whose lives changed forever in an instant and who may never be able to move past this defining moment, whether they suffered the loss or caused it, that moment ruptured time. Rage, despair and the feeling that their boys' killers will not be held accountable for their actions are all that is left to Ethan and Catherine.
Dwight is a walking dead man, his guilt utterly consuming him. On the face of it, Walt has moved on as he starts an affair with a pretty student and takes care of his autistic younger brother, but he keeps a clipping about the accident, a reminder that keeps his guilt fresh. It was alcohol that got him into trouble that night, but now he drinks to dull that memory.
So far, so much the same, but Reservation Road turns into something of a thriller as Ethan, disgusted that his child's killer would serve no more than 10 years if he is ever caught, becomes obsessed with finding the hit-and-run driver and it seems unlikely that he will call the police if he does. Catherine harbors no such Death Wish fantasies, but anger and grief are her intimate companions, leaving no room for her alienated husband or her surviving child (Cameron Bright). Guilt also drives her as she realizes more and more that she never really knew Nick and that while Jordie may have stolen the car, the idea to do it might have been Nick's.
Both movies offer phenomenal performances. In Reservation Road, Ruffalo is particularly effective as the tortured Dwight, while Moss, Rennie, and Zegers are terrific negotiating their separate rungs of living hell in Normal. The latter is the superior drama, keeping the story very simple as it concentrates on the characters and their emotional landscape.
Reservation Road, in contrast, falls curiously flat. It is partially because that thriller aspect feels false; Ethan's quest for vigilante revenge does not fit the character. Also, it is a curious movie in that Dwight comes across as the far more sympathetic character, in spite of the fact that he is the one that has done the horrible thing and then tried to evade responsibility for it. Reservation Road plays like just another Hollywood movie, while Normal – which is far from perfect – is messier but resonant. It feels more like real life.
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