Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.

There’s a great movie series on right now at the TIFF Bell Lightbox, highlighting a rarely screened cohort, one I’ve been covering for the past decade: contemporary Arab Women Filmmakers. It features movies from places like Lebanon, Algeria, Palestine and Tunisia, and cover a wide range of genres from avant garde to docs to dramas. Well worth seeing.

This week I’m looking at three movies, two docs and a comic thriller horror. – there’s a milkman worried about his daughters’ wedding; a bride whose inlaws want her dead after her wedding; and melting glaciers, waterfalls and hurricanes wetting everybody.

Fiddler: A Miracles of Miracles

Dir: Max Lewkowicz

In 1964, a new musical about a Jewish milk man in Czarist Russia, opened on Broadway to little fanfare. With songs by Jerry Bockand Sheldon Harnick and book by Joseph Stein it was based on Sholem Aleichem’s stories about Tevye and his Five Daughters and their neighbours in a shtetl. It was a risky venture with little hope if a widespread audience. Little did they know that Fiddler on the Roof would become one of the most popular musicals ever staged, with productions staged somewhere in the world until today.

This is a deep dive documentary that delves into everything there is to know about Fiddler on the Roof: is it a feminist fable? Jewish nostalgia? Is it about the American dream? The immigrant experience? And lots of esoteric news. Did you know the title came not from Sholem Aleichem stories but from a painting by Marc Chagal? That it’s wildly popular in Japan for its Japeneseness? Or that Zero Mostel (the original Tevye) was in a feud with director Jerome Robbin notorious for his perfectionism and slave driving style, but Mostel hated Robbins for a different reason. They were both called before the House Unamerican Activities Committee (the Macarthy hearings). Mostel stood up to them and refused to cooperate – and was blacklisted for years because of it. Robbins named names – gave them a list of suspected communists – not because of the Red Scare but because of the Lavender purge: he worried they’d reveal he’s gay.

Fiddler: A Miracle of Miracles is a fascinating documentary, full of interviews and stage footage and photos from the various productions over the past half century. It even plays songs you’ve probably never heard – they were cut from early versions. If you’re a theatre buff, this one’s a must see.

Aquarela

Dir: Viktor Kossakovsky

It’s Lake Baikal in Siberia. For some reason a team of men are digging holes into the frozen crust. Why? Because the usually solid ice melted early and cars crossing the lake are being swallowed up. The rescue team is there to save unsuspecting drivers. Then Boom! You’re on a sailboat navigating between drifting icebergs. And then you’re in the middle of a hurricane destroying an American city. Aquarela is a meditative collage of images of ice and water, turning on a dime to new locations across the globe. No explanations are given, no voiceovers no talking heads here, just a series of images tell their own stories, some slow and contemplative, others violent and arresting, as nature takes its toll. While not explicitly about climate change, when you see and hear glaciers calving mammoth icebergs which bob in the ocean like dinosaurs, you can’t help think about the meltdowns happening right now from greenland to Tuktoyaktuk.

Aquarela is shot at high speed ninety six frames per second, giving the doc an intense visual effect. It starts extremely slow, but this unusual documentary gradually switches to faster and faster images in a visual symphony. It may be a little slow and hard to comprehend, but it’s more than a week since I saw it, and it’s images are still haunting my dreams.

Ready or Not

Dir: Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Tyler Gillett

Grace (Samara Weaving) is a young woman raised by foster parents and who has never had a family to call her own. So when she meets Alex Le Domas (Mark O’Brian) she wants to be a part of his family in every way. It doesn’t hurt that they’re filthy rich. So after an 18-month bone-a-thon, they decide to get married. And all of Alex’s eccentric family are there: big brother Daniel (Adam Brody) his dad and mom (Henry Czerny, Andie MacDowell), various coke-snorting siblings and inlaws, and even his hate-filled Aunt Helene (Nicky Guadagni)

The Le Domas family made their vast fortune from playing cards, board games, and pro sports teams. They love games. So it’s no surprise that family tradition says a new bride or groom has to play a game on their wedding night. The big surprise? The rules to the game – its hide-and-seek – say she hides and the rest of the family has until dawn to find her and kill her. Why is thefamily doing this to her? Will her husband protect her? And can she ever escape from this nightmare?

Ready or not is a horror thriller with darkly comic undertones. It’s full of satirical jabs at a truly evil family of one percenters, while still being interesting enough to care when characters kill or are killed. Aussie actor Samara Weaving is terrific as the strong female lead – a Buffy the Vampure skater without special powers – , who has to transform herself from blushing bride to road warrior in a manner of minutes. It’s shot in and around a mansion in Ottawa as she t makes her way out of windows and down hidden passages. Warning: this movie is quite violent and gory, but it’s light tone keeps you watching. I liked this movie.

Fiddler: A Miracles of Miracles opens today at the Rogers Hot Docs Cinema, with Aquarela playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox; Ready or Not is playing now 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.