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

This week I’m looking at three new movies set in the 1950s, 60s and 70s, about Americans abroad. There’s a novelist in Mexico City, a TV sportswriter in Munich, and a documentary filmmaker in Montreal.

Queer 

Dir: Luca Guadagnino (I am Love, A Bigger Splash, Call me by your Name, Suspiria)

It’s the 1950s in Mexico City. William Lee (Daniel Craig) is a middle-aged American writer addicted to heroine who hangs around local bar called Ship Ahoy. If he doesn’t get completely drunk he might spend the night with a man he meets. He’s friends with other flamboyant ex-pats, especially Joe (Jason Schwartzman) a portly, bearded man who shares Lee’s lascivious predilections. Lately, he has had his eyes on Eugene Alerton (Drew Starkey), an ex-GI who spends most of his days playing chess with an older red-haired woman. Eugene is no “queer”, but is up to talking with Lee.

After repeated drinks, and some opiates he eventually shares Lee’s bed in his seedy rental. Lee is smitten, Eugene content. Later the two head south in their quest for ever more potent drugs culminating in a journey toward the ultimate psychedelic experience. They end up in the Ecuadorean Amazon, in a remote shack guarded by a vicious but slow-moving three toed sloth. Inside, a mysterious doctor (Lesley Manville) holds the answers to all their questions. Is Eugene the man of his dreams? Will they ever reach hallucinatory nirvana? Or is life just an illusion?

Queer is a bizarre, sex-and-drug-filled psychedelic fantasy. It’s divided into three chapters: their meeting in Mexico City; their journey south; and their adventures in Ecuador.  It’s adapted from William S Burroughs’ semi-autobiographical novel written in the 1950s but not published for another 34 years. It swerves wildly between actual memoirs and pure imagination. Burroughs was a writer in the beat movement, and was married and had a son with another writer Joan Vollmer (perhaps she’s the red-haired woman Mary in the film).

The thing is, Queer is not a grave, serious movie, it’s a high-camp comic fantasy. Psychedelia has always been difficult to film, and there’s a fine line between the profound and the ridiculous. Some scenes, like the unfortunate semi-nude, interpretive dance sequence, falls on the (unintentionally) funny side. Others scenes were kinda cool. It’s a beautiful film to watch, for its music, set, costumes and art direction. Shot entirely in Rome’s Cinecitta, it’s never meant to look realistic. Daniel Craig plays Burroughs not as the usual chill junkie observer, but as a panting and sweating horndog, with bulging eyes, nearly choking on his own lust. 

If your looking for a sentimental romance a la Call Me by You Name, or a deeply profound meditation on psychedelic trips, this ain’t it. But if you just want a weird and funny drug-infused dream-filled movie with lots of soft-core gay sex, you’ll probably have a great time.

September 5

Co-Wri/Dir: Tim Fehlbaum

It’s September 5, 1972 at the Munich Summer Olympics and the crowds are roaring. Americans are glued to their sets watching the US cleaning up, with swimmer Mark Spitz winning an unheard of seven gold medals.  ABC is the perennial loser of the top three networks. So their sportscasters are thrilled to have won exclusive coverage rights. The team behind the cameras are hard at work. Geoffrey Mason (John Magaro) is the newbie, trying to prove his chops. His boss Marvin (Ben Chaplin) wants things to run smoothly, and his boss’s boss (Peter Sarsgaard) is thinking of the bigger picture. Jacques (Zinedine Soualem) is their French cameraman with Marianne (Leonie Benesch) the only woman on the team, is a German journalist, and their de facto translator. Everything is great until they hear gunshots… not at the games, but at the nearby Olympic village. A group of masked militants, known as the Black September Organization is holding Israel’s Olympic team hostage. 

Suddenly, the ABC sportscasters realize they are the only American TV journalists in Munich. They have the cameras, the boom mics and the broadcast and satellite rights ready to send stories home. They shift their telephoto lenses from pointing toward the swimming pools to the athletes’ dormitories, trying to catch a glimpse of the hostages. What will happen next? Will German authorities step in? And can a sports crew handle crisis news?

September 5 is a journalistic thriller about 24 hours at the Munich Olympics. Despite its title, this isn’t about the Israel/Palestine conflict — they barely delve into it. That’s just the backdrop. What it really looks at is how a team of US journalists — at the right place at the wrong time —  figure out how to get the news out even as the crisis grows. I love the period details: giant-sized spools of reel-to-reel videotapes, and how little white tiles on a black background were superimposed onto a sports channel screen. So cool. I’ve never heard of Swiss director Tim Fehlbaum before, but he keeps the action moving in the midst of constantly shifting mayhem. The acting is ok, but best by far is Leonie Benesch who starred in last year’s The Teacher’s Lounge. I went into this movie full of dread. It’s clearly Oscar-bait; Hollywood churns out journalistic dramas every year. But this one is surprisingly good, and had my heart pumping all the way through. If you’re looking for some journalistic excitement, check out September 5. 

Oh Canada

Co-Wri/Dir: Paul Schrader (First Reformed)

Based on the story by Russell Banks   

Leo Fife (Richard Gere) is a renowned documentary filmmaker in Montreal. He is getting ready for an interview in his own living room in the grand old home he shares with his wife Emma (Uma Thurman).  The director, Malcolm (Michael Imperioli) and his crew are longtime admirers of Leo’s legendary work. After crossing the northern border in the 1960s to protest the war in Vietnam, he ended filming docs that changed the course of history. He uncovered the use of Agent Orange at the military base in Gagetown, New Brunswick, and became a university prof teaching young journalists how to make movies. Now, decades later, Leo is on his deathbed, dying of cancer, so Malcolm wants to record his final thoughts.

Leo treats this film as a confession — he wants to clear the record. He starts by talking about his first wife and son, a family he left behind in Virginia. But she’s not the only skeleton in his closet. His past life is full of lies, deceptions and possibly terrible acts. Emma doesn’t like him talking like this and wants him to stop. Leo’s nurse thinks can’t take all this stress. But the filmmakers persist and Leo perseveres.  Are any of his stories true? Was he a good man or a bad man? And what do we really know about Leo Fife?

Oh Canada is a fictional story about a day in the life of an American filmmaker and activist recalling his past. It’s a simple concept with a slight plot. It’s structurally divided between the documentary being made about him, and his hidden past, shown in a series of flashbacks (He is played by Jacob Elordi as his younger self.) The film is  almost too simple. But with Paul Schrader at the helm, you know there’s going to be more to it. He wrote Taxi Driver and Raging Bull for Scorsese, and directed movies like The Yakuza (1974) First Reformed (2017) and American Gigolo (1980) that also starred Richard Gere.

Unfortunately, Gere is the weakest part of this film; he rants and complains, but there’s no heart in his performance. The film’s called Oh Canada, but it’s really Oh America. It was entirely shot there, with so-called Canadian characters using americanisms like “restroom”. What’s interesting is Schrader’s use of false visual narratives. There are  flashback scenes where Elordi as a young Leo is suddenly replaced by a contemporary Gere while all the other characters remain unchanged. Likewise, the names of past lovers seem to melt away. Perhaps Leo has dementia, or maybe this contrasts Leo’s current story with his past truths. Also interesting is the way we see Leo’s face throughout the eye of Malcolm’s camera, giving it a meta aspect that messes with your brain.

Oh Canada is not one of Schrader’s better films, but there’s enough stuff going on to keep it intriguing. 

Oh Canada, Queer and September 5 all open this weekend in Toronto; check your local listings.

This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website culturalmining.com.