TIFF 2024 - Nutcrackers, Better Man, The Friend

It has been several years since my husband and I seriously attended the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF).  Prior to retiring in 2012, we would buy a few movies to watch on the weekends, and we once took vacation during TIFF so that we could watch movies for an entire week.  After retiring and having more time, we really got into the festival experience, watching 25-30+ movies in the 10-day span. At the peak, I once watched 44 movies, with a few days where I saw 5 in a row, trying to catch a cat nap in between by snagging a comfy chair in the upper floors of the TIFF (formerly Bell) Lightbox.

Starting in 2020, COVID and other factors put a stop to our annual TIFF attendance.  Once we got out of the habit of going each year, we found that we didn’t miss it.  September is a lovely time of year to be outside and not stuck in a dark movie theatre. We have since switched our patronage and moved our entertainment dollar more towards live theatre. The festival scene was fun while it lasted, but I don’t think I would have the stamina and attention span anymore to watch as many movies in such quick succession.  This year, we got a brief reminder of the whole TIFF experience when we were gifted tickets to some movies for the final weekend of the festival.

Since our last major TIFF attendance back in 2019, the ticketing process has changed and you are now assigned seats when you purchase your movie tickets. The advantage of that is that you no longer have to stand in line for long periods of time, waiting for the theatre to open in order to claim an acceptable seat (which for me is at the back of the theatre since I am far-sighted).  The bad news is that you are limited as to what seats you can select and may be assigned seats in undesirable locations.  Luckily none of the seats that we were given were within the first few rows of the theatre which would have been much too close for me.

We ended up watching three enjoyable movies starting around 1pm, then 5pm and finally 9pm which allowed us to have a late lunch/early dinner after the first movie and a snack after the second one.  The first two movies were fairly derivative, following well-tread plotlines but each with a twist that made it a bit more memorable.  The third movie was our favourite because it felt fresh and original, which is a rare achievement these days.

Our first movie was Nutcrackers, starring Ben Stiller in the stereotypical role of the high-powered urban businessman pulled out of his natural habitat when his estranged sister and brother-in-law die in a car accident, leaving behind four unruly orphaned boys (aged 8-13) who live on a working farm which is overrun by animals.  Following all the standard fish-out-of-water tropes, Stiller’s character Michael is put through the ringer as he is tested by the boys until slowly, they learn to care for him and he for them.  Much of the movie deals with Michael and the local child services representative Gretchen urgently trying to locate a suitable foster home for the boys that would keep them together.  It is not much of a spoiler to say that by the end of the movie, Michael’s eyes are opened (metaphorically and literally!) and he realizes that the perfect home for them is with him.

Despite hitting all the expected, clichéd notes in this age-old plot, Nutcrackers wins you over due to the winsome, charismatic performances by the first-time-acting children and a surprisingly nuanced one from Stiller who reins in his usual neurotic, high-strung acting style.  As Michael gets to know them, he realizes that underneath their rough-and-tumble façades can be found sensitive, imaginative and intelligent boys.

The plot twist and reason for the title of the movie comes from the fact that Michael’s sister was a talented ballerina who ran a ballet school and taught her boys to dance.  The older boys Justice and Junior are quite accomplished. To attract prospective foster parents, Michael convinces the children to mount a performance of The Nutcracker’s Moustache, which is Junior’s adaptation of the classical ballet but featuring a sword fight between a Samurai and Rambo, played by the younger twins Simon and Samuel.  Justice’s crush and fellow ballet student Lily plays Clara.  

A more significant twist came during the opening credits, which revealed that the children were played by actual siblings, the Janson brothers.  We left this feel-good, tug-at-your-heartstrings movie wondering how the casting director found the perfect family for the roles of the children.  It turns out that the reverse happened.  The director David Gordon Green was a film school classmate with the Janson brothers’ mother Karen and visited them often at their working farm.  Charmed by the children, Green developed the script for the movie for them, filmed at their farm incorporating all of their animals including pigs, chickens, dogs and guinea pig, and included the ballet plotline because the boys were all trained ballet dancers. The revised Nutcracker’s Moustache ballet featured input from middle child Ulysses Janson.  This great back story gave a tired plot a new life.

The next movie was Better Man, a biopic following the trajectory of (self-proclaimed?) international singing superstar Robbie Williams from his childhood growing up in Stoke-on-Trent, England, to his stint between 1990-1995 with the British boy band Take That, to his solo career leading up to current day.  In terms of story, Better Man hits many of the usual themes or plot points that come with biographies of celebrities in general and rock stars in particular.   We have the precocious talent and drive for fame, the daddy issues that come with a neglectful, absentee father, the initial big break followed by insecurities, self doubt and depression that lead to alcohol and drug abuse, the fall from grace, hitting rock bottom, then finally overcoming adversity and rising up again to become the current day success.  At a high level, this could be the life story or trajectory of a number of different artists.

Given that Robbie Williams found most of his success in UK and Europe and that we are not familiar with his songs either from Take That or as a solo artist, this movie would have been mostly forgettable were it not for the major twist, or should I say gimmick?  Throughout the entire movie starting from when he was a child, Robbie is depicted as a monkey through the use of motion capture technology and CGI.  When Robbie becomes an adult, the monkey is endowed with Williams’ own expressive eyes overlaying the eyes of the actor Jonno Davies, who performs the physical movements while Williams provides the speaking and singing voices.  The inspiration for this interpretation comes from a comment that Robbie made where he said he always feels like a performing monkey when on stage.

It is debatable whether this artistic choice helps or hinders the movie.  In retrospect, I think it does a bit of both. It is jarring and even distracting seeing Robbie the monkey interacting and carrying on conversations with the people around him, and especially in several nude scenes where the hairy simian is seen in full glory without the shield of human clothing.  Where the gimmick does work is during the musical numbers and his on-stage performances.  In particular, when Robbie looks out at the audience while performing, he sees hostile, angry apes glaring at him and judging him.  This becomes the perfect visual manifestation of his own insecurities and self-loathing.   The lyrics of many of William’s songs address themes of personal struggle, feelings of shame and inadequacy.  In the case of Better Man, the song which the movie is named after, he voices his desire for redemption as he sings: "As my soul heals the shame, I will grow through this pain, Lord, I'm doing all I can, To be a better man".

The other choice that made watching Better Man more palatable for me was that the first half was staged as a musical with characters singing soulful tunes to voice their feelings, and massive choreographed dance numbers that harkened back to the golden age of movie musicals.  In one scene where Williams first meets and falls in love with Nicole Appleton from the group All Saints, their spectacular dance across the bow of a ship channels the spirits of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.  I am a sucker for musicals, even when performed by a monkey, so that won me over for a while before the second half of the movie turned into a straight melodrama.

Whether portraying Robbie Williams as a monkey turns out to be a good idea or not remains to be seen. It is clear that even the director is not sure, since he felt the need to start the screening of Better Man with a brief preamble interview between him and Williams where they explain the reason behind the concept.  Without this, you would have spent the entire movie thinking, "What’s going on?!?!?" One thing is for sure, good or bad, the choice makes this film memorable.

The final movie that we watched was titled The Friend, starring Naomi Watts, Bill Murray, and Bing, an enormous Great Dane who really should get top billing and possibly an Oscar nomination for his most expressive, soulful performance.  Iris (Watts) and Walter (Murray) are fellow writers and longtime friends with a complicated history.  The movie starts off at a dinner party where Walter describes being out for a run when he comes across an abandoned Great Dane that he keeps and names Apollo. By the next scene, we find out that Walter has committed suicide and left instructions that Apollo should be taken in by Iris, much to her surprise.  Unfortunately, Iris lives in a rent-controlled midtown apartment building that does not allow dogs and faces being evicted for keeping one, even temporarily, while she searches for a new home for him. The parallels between this movie and Nutcrackers are interesting as they both involve protagonists who unexpectedly have unwanted responsibilities thrust upon them.  But where Nutcrackers felt formulaic, The Friend does not, in no small part because of the gigantic, majestic dog.

The Friend is a slow-paced, subtle, dialog-driven movie about love, friendship, and grief, as felt by Iris and also by Apollo who vocally mourns the loss of his master, and finally acceptance.  As Iris struggles to befriend and console Apollo, she slowly comes to realize that he provides her with consolation and companionship in return.  At some point, you wonder who the title “The Friend” actually refers to, since it might be Apollo who is featured in much more of the movie than Walter is.  “But what to do about the dog?” becomes an overlying question throughout the movie.  Even when Iris realizes that she may want to keep Apollo, she cannot risk losing the only apartment in the neighbourhood that she can afford.

While dealing with her own grief and even anger at Walter’s actions, Iris must also grapple with Walter’s wives (referred to as wife #1, wife #2 and the current wife #3), his recently discovered adult daughter, the completion of Walter’s memoir which Iris was helping with, and her writer’s block in completing her own novel.  It slowly comes out that Walter seduced many of his female students including Iris while he was teaching and probably got “Me-too’ed”, possibly leading to his depression.  As this is revealed, some of the earlier seemingly innocuous conversations start to take on new meanings.  Despite the movie’s serious themes, there are some light moments including a voice-over memory of Walter dryly commenting “The more suicidal people there are, the less suicidal people there are …”.  I’m ashamed to admit that I laughed out loud at this morbid but ironically funny observation.

The cinematography of The Friend is a love letter to Manhattan as it lingers on street signs such as 8th Avenue and Washington Place and provides sweeping views of Washington Square, Central Park, Chelsea and other prominent areas.  The film is based on a short novel of the same name by Sigrid Nunez, which won the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction.  I have it on hold from the library but was able to read a short sample of the first few pages.  So far, it is told in short snippets of thoughts and memories by Iris as she processes Walter’s passing, some of which have become Iris’ voiceovers in the movie.  The writing style is invigorating and addictive and I look forward to reading the rest.  In the meantime, I’m happy that I watched this movie.

In addition to being a world-class film festival, TIFF is trying to position itself as the marketplace that brings together the creatives and the moneymen to facilitate major movie deals.  It is interesting to note that at the start of the festival, only Better Man had a distribution deal while Nutcrackers and The Friend had not yet secured one.  Maybe the monkey was a good idea after all?