MUN Cinema Series

Everyone loves the Booker-prize-winning novel by Claire Keegan on which this adaptation is based. And everyone seems to love this cinematic version. Set in 1980s Ireland, the film centres on Murphy’s Bill Furlong, a respectful, quiet fuel-merchant boss, father of five girls, and husband of a good woman (Walsh). On the surface, all seems fine, but the small Wexford County town in which they live holds secrets too terrible to mention. You might recall we screened The Magdalene Sisters many years ago, a film about the Catholic Church-run asylum where “bad” girls were forced to work the convent’s laundry, abused and shamed for life. Bill’s daughters go to school right next to the place, and so it is not long before the dark business of the convent is revealed. Cillian Murphy carries more pathos in his hollow cheek bones than all the coal in Wexford. You loved the novel, come see it realized in the best possible winter light of Ireland.

Winning the Grand Prize at Cannes, this magnificent feature has been on a roll ever since. Definitely one of the best films of last year, ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT focuses on the lives of three nurses in modern-day Mumbai, all of whom have come to the big chaotic city from small villages. Besides the dramatic interest in each of these characters and their hopes and dreams, the film’s appeal in its first half lies in the glorious shots of Mumbai, so absent from our screens these days. The city is teeming with people and things, and we can’t get enough of the wide screen views of so much humanity going about its business. The narrative interest rests with the unfolding challenges these women face, as romance, religion, or class clash and converge to complicate their plans for happy lives. This is a brilliant, tender film that will stay with you long after the dreamy second half of the film, set far from the density of Mumbai, brings change and resolution.

Is there anyone alive who doesn’t love Alan Cumming and is there anything he can’t do? This award-winning film is based on a true story, that of the director’s grandfather and great uncle. Set in the Seventies, it tells the tale of a New Brunswick man who is compelled to travel to Toronto to bail his estranged brother out of jail. The jailed man, played by Cumming, was arrested for having sex with another man in a public park. Once he is let out of jail, the brothers reluctantly take the long drive back to New Brunswick together, thereby learning a lot more than they bargained for, while discovering their common humanity. Goin’ down the road is a familiar theme in Canadian films and for good reason. It’s a big country. We’re glad Cumming was able to find his role in it, Canadian accent and all.

All you really need to know is that this is a film by Mike Leigh, arguably the finest filmmaker of our time. We’ve shown just about all of them in the last thirty years (Life is Sweet, Naked, Happy-Go-Lucky, Mr. Turner, Secrets and Lies, etc.). Leigh works his magic here through the brilliant performance of Jean-Baptiste who plays a chronically unhappy woman with enough slights and grievances to fill a sound stage. Her family, especially her cheerier younger sister, puts up with her—to a point. As always, Leigh puts the spotlight on characters living out their tragicomic lives, the way we all do. The effect of his films is an organic, improvisational form of storytelling informed by an intensely collaborative creative process. This is realism at its most powerful and persuasive and you are bound to embrace it.

What a cast, what a film, what luck that we can see it. Almodóvar’s first film in English, it took the big prize at the Venice Film Festival and has been lauded ever since. Ingrid (Moore) and Martha (Swinton) were once close friends, but over time their lives took them to different places. When Ingrid learns that Martha has cancer she decides to get in touch. They both have a lot to talk about and talk around, not the least of which is the spectre of death. These are two superb actors playing highly educated, literate women of the world. How they navigate their shared past as well as the darkening future is the subject of this fascinating film. Notwithstanding the heavy theme, the film is gorgeously shot in very living colour, blocked and carefully composed, a stylistic approach familiar to those who know the filmmaker’s work. Also familiar is the way characters possess a sense of humour, a necessary trait that gets them through it all. Rarely has friendship been so intensely tested and scrutinized.

Quebec filmmaker Deraspe is one of Canada’s best and SHEPHERDS is definitely her strongest feature to date. Here she takes us from bustling Montreal to the sublime French Alps, where a young and weary executive, Mathyas, decides to plant his walking stick, tired as he is of the grim workaday world of the city. It’s a romantic journey, but one that starts to pose serious challenges as Nature likes to have her way with him. Accompanied eventually by a young woman, Élise, the other “shepherd” of the title, Mathyas must confront all manner of unexpected obstacles, testing his resilience and resolve to live with his choices. As you might imagine, the scenery is breathtaking, even while it refuses to comply with human experience. SHEPHERDS is a beautiful narrative meditation on choice and change, on Nature and Civilization.

A Sundance favourite, GHOSTLIGHT draws us into the troubled lives of a (real) family comprising a married couple who seem to have lost touch with each other and a teenage daughter from hell, which might be redundant. Each has reasons for being who they are, as we slowly find out. At the outset, however, and almost randomly, construction-worker dad gets unexpectedly drawn into playing a role in a local production of “Romeo and Juliet.” Soon his daughter is cast in the play, as well, and the play within a main story starts to reveal secrets of loss and tragedy experienced by the actors. The interplay of art and life underscores the dynamic of this film, as the filmmakers explore the nature of the life of the theatre as much as they focus on the haunted nature of the characters themselves. If all the world’s a stage, GHOSTLIGHT makes a fine film of it.