Master, Old and New

But if there is a cinematic common ground to be shared by old and new masters alike, it may be the one explored by Lars von Trier in his dazzling The Five Obstructions. Spanning the course of three years and four continents, this stimulating, one-of-a-kind undertaking pairs von Trier with one of his heroes, the Danish experimental filmmaker Jørgen Leth, as the latter sets out to film five “remakes” of his 1968 short film, The Perfect Human, each adherent to a set of structural limitations prescribed by von Trier. Mere months after the Cannes premiere of Dogville (also on display in Toronto), The Five Obstructions is von Trier at his most sadistically playful and self-revealing, as well as his most genuinely inquisitive into authorship and the functioning of cinema as the purest form of self-exploration.

What I have described aboveis not so much the Toronto Film Festival as a Toronto Film Festival — specifically, the one I managed to carve out for myself from the intimidating number of possibilities presented by the event’s programmers. Whereas one can attend most other film festivals with the reasonable expectation of seeing the majority of the “buzz” titles, Toronto is vast and eclectic enough to become whatever you make of it, and that is no doubt key to its enduring popularity. While many industryites view this annual fall pilgrimage as a chance to get a jump on a slew of forthcoming major-studio releases, Toronto seems to me most valuable when used to catch up with the latest work by the most important international filmmakers, given that such work is increasingly hard to see outside of the festival circuit. (Whenever I did take a break from my festival — to check out, say, Jane Campion’s In the Cut, a ludicrous, soft-core whodunit soon to rank among the all-time auteurist boondoggles — I soon wished I hadn’t bothered.)

Yet if there is an overall impression to be gleaned by all of Toronto’s disparate attendees — regardless of whatever private, personal festival at which they end up — it is that this is the most enthusiastic public film gathering in the world. Here, the desire to see a movie, any movie, seems as insatiable for natives of the city (who are said to be no less fervent moviegoers during the 11 and a half months of the year the festival hibernates) as for those outlanders who, for 10 days each September, count themselves among Toronto’s honorary citizens.