Strange Sons. Movies Reviewed: The Boxtrolls, The Guest, The Notebook
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
This week I’m looking at movies about strange sons. There’s an action-thriller about an American soldier-son replaced by a stranger; an animated film about a son raised by strange creatures; and a wartime drama about twin brothers sent to a strange place.
The Box Trolls (in 3D)
Dir: Graham Annable, Anthony Stacchi
What are boxtrolls? They’re trolls who live in cardboard boxes. Well, they don’t actually live in them; they wear them. And, like box turtles, whenever there’s danger, they retract their heads, arms and legs until they look like an ordinary cardboard box. Trolls have pointy ears and crooked teeth, and, oh yeah – they kill babies and eat them!
Or at least that’s what the people in the faraway town of Cheesebridge believe. Because it’s what the boxtroll exterminator Archibald Snatcher (Ben Kingsley) tells them. But Archibald – who bears an uncanny resemblance to the child snatcher in Chitty Chitty, Bang Bang – has an ulterior motive. Though poor and uncouth, he longs to wear
the white hats of the ruling class, an effete coterie of millionaires – led by Lord Portly Rind – who meet in closed chambers to sample exotic cheeses. The boxtroll killer will do or say anything to become a white hat.
In fact, not only do the boxtrolls not eat babies, but they actually have one hidden away in their underground headquarters, a steam-punk paradise of spinning wheels, gears, pumps and pulleys. The boy, named Eggs (the boxtrolls’ names correspond with the words on their cardboard box) grows up among the boxtrolls, never realizing he’s human. He depends on them, especially the long-headed Fish. But when the trolls begin to disappear, he realizes its time to act. Only Winnie, Lord Portly Rind’s privileged daughter, can help Eggs pass as a normal boy and expose Archibald’s nefarious scheme. Can they save the boxtrolls? Or are their efforts for naught?
Though clearly aimed at small children, I found Boxtrolls totally enjoyable, and was especially impressed by the art and wonderful stop-motion photography.
The Guest
Dir: Adam Wingard
David, a soldier (Dan Stevens) shows up, uninvited to spend the night at the family home of another member his unit who was killed in combat. While initially surprised and a bit uncomfortable, the Peterson family – Mom, Dad, and kids Anna and Lucas – agree to let him stay. Soon enough he integrates himself into the family, literally taking the dead son’s place, sleeping in his bedroom, sharing meals with the family. When young Luke (Brendan Meyer) gets bullied, David teaches him to stand up for himself. And he goes to parties with older sister Anna (Maika Monroe) and greatly impresses the locals. David has a military bearing but seems somehow quicker, more precise, than the average grunt. Mom and Dad start to notice unusual changes in their lives since David moved in with them. Things are working out well, it’s better for all of them.
But when Anna follows her suspicions and calls veteran affairs, everything changes. There’s a red flag attached to David’s name and events snowball as government agents zoom in on the small town. Is David a good guy or a bad guy? A defender or a terrible danger to the Peterson Family? Why is he there and why does he act the way he does? And who is he, really?
The Guest (which premiered TIFF’s Midnight Madness) is a good, tight action thriller, sprinkled with dark humour and some unexpected plot turns. This includes camp references to classical slasher/horror movies, complete with dry ice. The action takes place in a small town around Halloween. So if you’re looking for a gripping violent story, with unusual characters, told with a tongue-in-cheek sensibility, this one’s a good choice.
The Notebook
Dir: János Szász (Based on the novel Le Grand Cahier by Agota Kristof)
A soldier and his wife live in 1944 Budapest with their twin boys (András and László Gyémánt). Life is beautiful. Then, suddenly, the Germans are moving into Hungary. So they send the twins off to stay with the wife’s estranged mother in a remote farm, to keep them safe. It’s wartime, their dad says, everything’s different. He gives them a big black ledger – the notebook of the title – and they promise to record everything that happens.
Grandmother – fat, gruff, unmannered – is known by the locals as the Witch. She has no friends, and takes care of the farm all by herself. She puts the boys to work – nobody eats for free. The twins – dressed in navy peacoats and clean white shirts — are terrified by the evil witch. They turn to their one book – the 
bible – for help, but only to improve their memorization skills.
They decide to make themselves impervious to pain, hunger, and remorse – the only way to survive the war. They refuse food from Grandmother, and take turns punching and hitting each other to see who can endure the most pain.
They start to meet people and learn things. There’s a destitute girl they call harelip (Orsolya Tóth) — who 
teaches them how to steal. A kindly Jewish shoemaker gives them boots. And the corrupt deacon at the church and his lascivious secretary – she introduces them to the adult world… but they recoil from her black heart. And a gay Nazi officer, fascinated when he sees the twins punching each other. The twins record it all, good and bad.
They witness wartime atrocities and gradually start to kill: first insects, then bigger, working their way up the food chain. Will they become killers, just like the people around them? Or will they retain a sense of 
morality?
The Notebook is an amazing, rich, and disturbing coming-of-age story, told through the unnamed twins’ eyes. The boys lend a mythical, novelistic view of life under Nazi occupation. I saw this movie over a year ago at TIFF, but I still remember it, vividly. This is a great movie, don’t miss it.
The Guest, Box Trolls, and the Notebook all open today in Toronto; check your local listings. Also playing is a fourth movie about strange sons: Kim Ki-duk’s Moebius. It’s a bizarre movie with no dialogue about a crazed mother who chops off her son’s dick and runs away with it! Not for the faint of heart.
And the Palestine International Film Festival opens tomorrow, showing exciting movies like the hit Omar. Go to tpff.ca for 
details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Daniel Garber talks with Sono Sion and Young Dais about Tokyo Tribe at TIFF14
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Imagine a dystopian future, where Tokyo is divided up into neighbourhoods ruled by rival gangs, that jealously guard their borders. Follow the train up the east side of the city and you’ll hit places like Shibuya, Shinjuku and Ikebukuro, and further out Musashino and Nerima.
Musashino is peace and love; the character Kai just wants to hang with his bros at the local Denny’s (aka Penny’s). But ‘Bukuro is a land of brothels, gangsters, kidnappers and cannibals. Nera, a ‘Bukuro blonde muscleman has it in for Kai. Will this lead to all out war between the Tokyo Tribes?
Tokyo Tribe is the name of a new movie based on the manga by Inoue Santa. It’s a fantastical epic shot as a hip-hop musical, full of crowds, choreographed fights, a constant beat and more flashing lights than a pachinko parlour. It’s directed by Sono Sion, known for Guilty of Romance, Cold Fish, and Why Don’t You Play in Hell?. He’s always testing the limits of what can be shown in a film… and then 
going beyond that limitation. The movie stars Young Dais, well-known Japanese rapper, doing double-duty as a movie star. It opened at The Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF14), as part of Midnight Madness. I spoke with director Sono Sion and rapper Young Dais at the Royal York Hotel.
People’s Choice. Movies Reviewed: The Imitation Game, Honeymoon
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
TIFF – the Toronto Interntional Film Festival – is over for the year. The klieg lights are dimmed, the red carpets rolled up. It’s like a carnival sideshow leaving town, with celebrities and their droves of fans replacing the bearded ladies and tattooed men of yore. And the hundreds of members of the media, myself included, are forced to look elsewhere for the Next Big Movie.
On the last day of the festival, this past Sunday, they announced the winning films in 
competition. Unlike most major film festivals which use panels of critics and filmmakers as judges, TIFF relies on moviegoers to vote for the most important prize, the People’s Choice award. They say Torontonians are a good barometer of what kind of movies appeal to the public these days. The proof is in the pudding; People’s Choice winners, more often than not, become next year’s Oscar winners: the wonderful Slumdog Millionaire, the moving Twelve Years a Slave, the pandering King’s Speech, and the so-so Silver Linings Playbook.
So this week, I’m going to tell you about the TIFF Grolsch People’s Choice award winner, and a low-budget horror movie opening in Toronto.
The Imitation Game
Dir: Morten Tyldum
It’s the dawn of WWII. The British have captured Enigma, one of Nazi Germany’s secret devices. All their military messages use that encryption machine. Cracking it could mean an early end to the war and countless millions saved. Alan Turing — a shy, super-intelligent mathematician and Cambridge – is asked to visit the Bletchley Radio works – actually a branch of MI6. They need him to join the team and solve the puzzle.
Turing (Benedict Cumberbatch) probably got an “F” as a child in the “plays well with others” category. Instead of working with the other recruits, notably his supervisor Hugh Alexander (Matthew Goode) he decides that cracking codes, one by one, is a waste of time. Instead he sets about creating one of the world’s first computers. He names the giant wall of wires and 
spinning discs “Christopher”, after his first gay crush.
He quickly alienates Commander Denniston (Charles Dance), his boss, who decides to get rid of him. Will he succeed? In a compromise, Turing decides to recruit ordinary people with extraordinary minds to work on his project, using a hard-to-solve cryptic newspaper crossword puzzle to locate his geniuses. Smartest of all is a woman, Joan Clarke (Keira Knightley). Together they try to crack the code and win the war. But will they succeed? Will Joan and Alan fall in love? And what will happen after the war?
The story jumps back and forth from his time as a wistful schoolboy, to the thrill and excitement of wartime, to the dark period afterwards, where he is persecuted by the police as a gay man. The Imitation Game tells a fantastic, true story of unrequited love, action and adventure, and the dark politics of postwar Britain. While it’s skimpy on the sex – as in, none at all – it is still a wonderful story, miles above most biopics. Benedict Cumberbatch plays another irritating and emotionally-stunted Sherlock, but he does it so well, conveying his thoughts through a twitch of an eye. Many critics deride Keira Knightley as a one-dimensional movie star, but I found her great in this one. In fact all the cast, including supporting characters, are wonderful. Though patently Oscar-bait (wartime, British costume drama, no yuck factor) it’s wonderful Oscar-bait. I strongly recommend this movie.
Honeymoon
Dir: Leigh Janiak
Paul and Bea are up in cottage country to celebrate their marriage. Bea (Rose Leslie: Game of Thones) is big-boned and robust with a winning smile. Paul (Harry Treadaway: Fishtank, Cockneys vs Zombies) is naïve, boyish and fragile. Rose’s childhood summer home is filled with wooden ducks and a giant bearskin covering one wall. They intend to skinny dip in the lake, make pancakes at noon, and spend the rest of the day in bed, screwing like rabbits.
All goes well, until they encounter Will – Bea’s ex – and his disturbed wife Annie. Something is wrong with those two. And they seem to have affected Bea. Is she cheating on him? Paul finds her sleepwalking in the woods at night. Light beams shine through the window. Strange 
marks appear on her thighs – just mosquito bites, she tells him. And strangest of all, he catches her memorizing basic phrases like “My name is Bea… my husband is Paul… we’re married”. Is she really Bea? Or an eerie imposter? Or has she gone completely mad?
Honeymoon – a horror movie with a female director: quite rare! – has great acting and an interesting premise. It starts out like a dull love story, but starts to pick up after the first 20 minutes. It has me going for a while, but eventually falls prey to some awful, endlessly repeated lines that take the zing away. Honeymoon is a good try, but doesn’t quite do it for me.
The Imitation Game is coming this fall, and Honeymoon starts today in Toronto: check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
Dark Humour at TIFF14. Films reviewed: A Pigeon Sat on a Branch…, The Editor, Wild Tales, Magical Girl
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
It’s the final weekend at TIFF, with the hits rolling out… There are amazing biopics, like The 
Imitation Game starring Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing; period romantic drama’s like Christian Petzold’s stunning Phoenix, starring Nina Hoss, and the dramatic drama from Ukraine called The Tribe — told entirely in sign-language, no subtitles! — about a boy at a school for the deaf who is pulled into a criminal gang. All fantastic films.
But these are all opening this fall, so I’d like to talk about the kind of festival movie that’s harder to categorize, harder to grasp. This week I’m going to look at the some unusual films from Sweden, Argentina, Canada and Spain. What do they have in common? Dark humour, whether used ironically, absurdly or for its camp.
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence
Dir: Roy Andersson
A pair of morose salesmen ply the streets of Gothenberg, Sweden. demonstrating their wares. They sell entertaining novelties. A rubber mask, vampire teeth, Bag o’ Laffs. One is always angry, the other one depressed. Needless to say, they don’t sell many novelties. They rent sterile, windowless rooms in a boarding house, and frequent Limp-Leg Lotta’s — once a boisterous bar, but now filled with sad, old men sitting alone. At some point, they wander off-map into a sort of a time warp, where an 18th Century gay Swedish king – followed by dozens and dozens of soldiers in three-cornered hats – marches through a modern-day bar on horseback. Sweden is preparing for battle with Russia.
Simultaneously, a large flamenco teacher keeps groping her male student, and a school for kids with Down’s Syndrome is putting in a show.
These are just a few of the story lines and gags that fill this strange but hilariously sad movie. It’s set in a timeless era, maybe retro, maybe present day. the movie’s like a series of New Yorker cartoons brought to life. It’s shot in sepia tones, and the actors all look like they’ve come back from the dead, with pale, powdered fleshy faces and beige clothing. The title “A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence” suggests the thoughts Roy Andersson imagined while viewing a diorama of a bird behind glass in a museum. It’s depressing, it’s funny, it’s uncategorizable – and it’s a comment on life, existence and man’s inhumanity to man. Seriously. You’ve got to see it – great movie, and it just won the Golden Lion at the Venice film festival
The Editor
Dir: Adam Brooks and Matthew Kennedy
It’s a dangerous time at a 1970s Italian movie studio. They’re shooting a sexy horror film, but someone keeps stabbing the stars. Luckily, Ciso, the one-handed, master film editor, is there to rework the scenes and save the footage. But Detective Porfiry thinks Ciso is the killer – and he’s gonna take him down once he finds the evidence. But he has to navigate round a suddenly blinded wife, devious movie stars, and a razor in a black-gloved hand. Oh yeah, and there’s the catholic priest warning him not to deal in the black arts or he might open the door to hell itself.
OK, that’s the barebones plot. But what The Editor really is, is a combination parody and homage to 70s-era Giallo movies – the sexy, bloody genre made by directors like Dario Argento. That means spooky music, gushing blood, dark shadows, screaming starlets, and blurry, soft-
core sex scenes. Throw in insanity, lust and suspicion, and you’re all set.
This parody goes out of its way to be authentic – things like characters who say lines, even though their lips aren’t moving.
This one had me laughing very loudly through much of the film, partly because it’s perfectly ridiculous. To say it’s full of gratuitous nudity and gore is like saying a musical is full of music. Of course there’s a lot of it, and in a normal movie it might be excessive, but in a movie like this, it’s not gratuitous, it’s essential to the genre. The movie stars the two directors in lead roles, blond Conor Sweeney as a sexually confused actor, and the marvellous Pas de la Huerta rounding off the cast. Made for drive-ins and Midnight madness. And to think they made it all in Winnipeg.
Wild Tales
Dir: Damian Szifron
A demolitions expert is furious when his car is towed from a valid parking spot. A waitress in a small town diner discovers the man she’s serving is the gangster who drove her father to suicide. A bride at a Jewish wedding suspects her new husband is already having an affair. A macho douche in a Lamborghini locks horns with a redneck thug in a junk heap on a rural highway. What do these short dramas all share?
They’re all ripping stories — almost urban legends — about ordinary people vowing revenge and retribution. Each of the six, separate segments in Wild Tales functions as its own short film. It starts with a small incident or conversation, but gradually escalates into something huge and potentially disastrous. Some of the characters are sympathetic, you can understand why they’re acting this way, even if you wouldn’t yourself. But it’s not just a random grouping of short films, shot like hollywood features. No. In Wild Tales the whole is more than just the sum of its parts. The tension grows as the movie rolls on to a series of amazing climaxes. Wild Tales is a compilation of funny, absurd looks at extreme consequences caused by small actions.
Magical Girl
Dir: Carlos Vermut
Luis, an out of work professor, is trying to take care of his young daughter. Alicia is into ramen, manga and anime. She says she and her friends go by Japanese names. But the girl is also dying of cancer. Luis will do anything for her. So in an effort to grant what he believes is her last wish, Luis decide to get her the dress the Magical Girl wears in her series. In desperation he decides to commit burglary, but is stopped by a strange coincidence that introduces her to Barbara (Barbara Lennie.)
Barbara is a beautiful woman married to a rich but domineering psychologist, who decides 
what she can do, who she can talk to and what meds to take. Luis ends up sleeping with her, but then turns to blackmail to get the money for his daughter’s dress. Now Barbara must decide whether or not to return to a previous secret life. But will that lead to unpredictable consequences both for her and Luis?
This is a combination comedy, tragedy and drama. It feels like an O Henry short story brought to the screen.The audience poured out of the theatre in droves as soon as it was over, because they all found it disturbing — it is disturbing. But in a disturbingly good way.
A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, The Editor, Wild Tales, and Magical Girl are all playing at TIFF through this weekend. Go to tiff.net for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM, and on my website culturalmining.com.
Daniel Garber talks to Albert Shin and Igor Drljaca about their new film In Her Place at TIFF14
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
Three women come together in a run-down farm in rural South Korea: A beleaguered single mother struggling financially; a troubled daughter with an unwanted pregnancy; and a rich woman from Seoul. She’s moving in with them for awhile. And what brings them together? The unborn foetus. The mother wants it to go away. The daughter is struggling with internal conflicts. And the rich woman wants to take the future baby In Her Place.
IN HER PLACE is also the name of a new dramatic feature about family, names, order and 
chaos, gain and loss. It’s made by Toronto writer/director Albert Shin and producer and collaborator Igor Drljaca. Their films have played internationally and garnered awards and critical praise. This movie is having its world premier at the Toronto International Film Festival. I spoke with Albert and Igor, in studio, to find out more.
Le déclin de l’empire français. Films Reviewed: Run, Corbo, The Gate, Far From Men at TIFF14
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM, looking at high-brow and low-brow movies, indie, cult, foreign, festival, documentary, genre and mainstream films, helping you see movies with good taste, movies that taste good, and how to tell the difference.
France was once an imperial power, with colonies in Africa, the Americas and Asia. But much of it ended with terror, revolution, rival conquest, or all-out war. A chequered history at best, but one that makes for amazing movies. So this week I’m looking at four gripping historical dramas, all about men facing revolutions, of a sort, in former French colonies. One is set in Algeria in the 1950s, just before the Algerian War, another in Montréal in the turbulent 1960s, a third in Cambodia amidst the bombing and revolution of the 1970s, and a fourth in Côte d’Ivoire, West Africa, during the crises and war of the 2,000s.
Run
Dir: Philippe Lacôte
A crazed, homeless man dressed in a burlap sack walks into a cathedral in Abidjan. He pulls out a gun and shoots the Prime Minister, pointblank. Who is he? And why did he do it? The film immediately starts on a patchwork of events in the man’s life, forward to the present, back to the past and further still to his childhood.
Run (Abdoul Karim Konaté) is an orphan who wants to apprentice himself to a 
master. He quietly observes an old man: a master of the stars, of medicine, of rainmaking and the supernatural. Later Run becomes an assistant to a Liberian woman he meets named “Super Gladys”. She is a glamorous performer with red-tipped hair and elaborate clothes, and she’s a big woman. She’s also a professional eater, a “mangeuse”. With Run as her MC, she performs on a stage, shoveling – with both hands! — massive amounts of rice 
and dripping chicken into her pie-hole. Viewers applaud and pay her for the privilege. (“Ivoirians don’t know the meaning of money” she remarks in her mixture of French and English.)
An ultra-nationalistic movement sweeps the country but Run survives again. He joins a paramilitary gang of thugs who attack foreigners. The gang becomes almost an organized crime faction, but one with great political pull. And still later he meets, Assa, a revolutionary (Isaach De Bankolé), and has to decide where his loyalties really lie.
This is a great look at contemporary Ivoirian history, its ups and its down, as seen through the eyes of an everyman; a man called Run.
Corbo
Dir: Mathieu Denis
It’s 1966 in Montreal. Jean Corbo (Anthony Therrien) is a third-generation Canadian, a francophone, and the grandson of Italian immigrants who were imprisoned by the RCMP as enemy aliens in WWII. His dad’s a successful Italian-Canadian lawyer (Tony Nardi), a stalwart Liberal Party supporter, his mother Quebecoise. His family is rich – they live in Town of Mount Royal – and he’s sent to a Catholic private school, but he keeps getting kicked out for his political views. He likes jazz (jungle music, his family calls it) and doesn’t 
feel connected to the Italian community.
Then he has a chance encounter with two “ruffians” leaving pamphlets in the school. He likes what they say… and especially the young woman, Julie, who works as a waitress in a diner.
Who are they? What do they want? It’s the FLQ (Quebec Liberation Front)! They want to overthrow their “colonial” rulers, seize the means of production, and scare away the Anglo oligarchs. They attempt to do this, first with anonymous posters and graffiti, later escalating to actual 
explosions. It spurred the first flight of nervous Anglos from Quebec. Jean is allowed into the cel, despite his class, and agrees to hide copies of their secret mimeographed publication, La Cognee, under his bed at home. (He’s only sixteen.)
But violence grows and people are killed. Jean, Julie and others wonder, is it worth dying for? Or killing for? Corbo is an fascinating look at the genesis of the FLQ by a first time director, retelling the true events of the summer of ‘66. Anthony Therrien portrays a passionate but confused 16-year-old, in deeper than he knows. He’s excellent, and so is this movie.
The Gate (Le temps des aveux)
Dir: Régis Wargnier
François Bizot (Raphaël Personnaz: Quai d’Orsay) is a French ethnologist living in the former colony of Cambodia. He is 
married to a Cambodian woman, has a daughter and speaks fluent Khmer. He collects material from Buddhist monasteries for safekeeping as the US war in Vietnam starts spreading to Cambodia and Laos. He embarks on a trip to a “dangerous area” beyond Angkor Wat, with his assistant and a young artist who asks to ride with them.
But they are captured by Khmer Rouge rebels led by Duch (Phoeung Kompheak). He is put in irons, nailed to the ground by child soldiers. He must confess to being a spy for the Americans. But he is French, he protests, not American. I am neutral, he insists. Spies must confess their crimes (after which they are executed) but how can he confess to a crime he didn’t commit. So Bizot and Duch enter a prolongued period of discussion. Both appear rational.
Ironically, Bizot turns to Buddhist scriptures for inspiration, while Duch quotes French political philosophers like Vigny. Bizot os Jesus-like, bearded and dressed in austere black cotton. Will he and his friends ever escape the torture-filled prison camp?
The film continues until the apocalyptic mayhem of the fall of Phnom Penh, and the closure of the French Embassy. Unspoken is the mass murder, the Killing Fields, that would follow. Though selective in its historical blame (the film doesn’t deal with things like the US bombing of Cambodia or earlier French crimes in Indochina) It’s still an exciting and breathtaking (though darkly beautiful) look at the last days of Europeans in Cambodia.
Far From Men (Loin des homme)
Dir: David Oelhoffen (Based on a story by Albert Camus)
It’s 1954. Daru (Viggo Mortensen) is a school teacher in an isolated village. The map on the wall says France, but this is Algeria and the students are all Algerian. (Algeria was a French colony from the early 19th century, and fully annexed by France in 1948. It regained independence in 1962, after a harsh, protracted war with France.) He is ordered to take the prisoner Mohammed (Reda Kateb) — an accused murderer — to appear before a French judge in a distant city. He refuses at first, but realizes he’s the only one stopping the 
lynch mobs, both pied noir and Algerian, from killing him. He urges him to escape and is angered when he insists on facing French justice. Why would any man willingly give up his freedom? Daru wonders. (Though he was born and raised in Algeria, Daru feels apart from both the French and the Arabs.)
So he agrees to accompany the accused on his journey on foot. they set off on a two-day journey. And on the way they both reveal truths about themselves, their desires and regrets. This movie is a classic study in existentialism set at the dawn of the Algerian War. But it’s also a classic Western. Their trip is filled with posses, soldiers — both French and rebel — horsemen, rifles, cliffs, ridges, deserts, and saloons. Even the background music is by Nick Cave (with Warren Ellis) the Sergio Leone of modern-day oaters. Camus meets the old west? An odd combination. But it works.
Run, Corbo, The Gate, and Far From Men are all playing at TIFF. Go to tiff.net for details.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com
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