Every film festival has its own personality, its own unique selling point. And, for Toronto, one of the main selling points is its audience. Eagerly egalitarian in outlook, TIFF (to give the festival its jaunty nickname) is all about the punters. Not for nothing are we reminded at every screening that the most important prize at the festival is the People’s Choice, voted for by the audience.
Toronto screenings are famously warm and fuzzy. Unlike the fractious industry crowd at Cannes and Venice, the Toronto audience would sooner drop kittens from the top of the CN Tower than boo at a movie premiere. All of which makes for a uniquely upbeat experience for film-makers who choose to premiere films there. But it can make it harder to gauge the real potential of a film, to sort the buzz from the noise. The concept of a crowd-pleaser is slightly devalued when the crowd is pleased by pretty much everything.
This is further complicated by the sheer scale of the event. Although positioned at a slight disadvantage in the autumn festival season – just after the super-exclusive boutique showcase of Telluride and overlapping with awards launchpad Venice – Toronto dwarfs both with the size of its programme. And with so many starry, high-profile titles sucking the oxygen from the discourse, the worry is that some smaller titles get lost in the mix.
That’s unlikely to be the case for the superb Irish crime drama, Calm With Horses. The feature debut from Nick Rowland, adapted from a short story about a boxer turned enforcer by Colin Barrett, was widely praised. In this film, the thoughts flow a little more slowly around the head of Douglas “Arm” Armstrong (a star-making turn from Cosmo Jarvis, last seen in Lady Macbeth); the feelings take a little longer to process. But that’s not to say they aren’t as deeply felt as those of anyone else. The assumption is that a man who is used as a blunt weapon by a criminal family is somehow immune to the emotional consequences of the damage he inflicts. But each of the punches he lands at the behest of the Devers clan leaves a bruise on his soul. He wrestles with the conflict between the violence of his life and his duty to his ex-girlfriend and their autistic son. The order to kill, delivered with red-rimmed ruthlessness by the hardest of the Devers hard men, is a step over the brink for Douglas in this outstanding study of a flawed man trying to be better.
Another first feature that made an impact on critics and audiences alike is Sound of Metal, by Darius Marder, who co-wrote it with his brother, Abraham. The picture stars a bullet-eyed Riz Ahmed as a heavy metal drummer who suddenly loses his hearing. The story was loosely inspired by the experience of the brothers’ grandmother, who unexpectedly lost her hearing after taking antibiotics. Sound design is key in this film, which presents an alternative view on disability; Ahmed’s character, a recovering addict, is struggling with his demons as well as his deafness. He finds an addiction support group that is part of a wider deaf community united by the philosophy that deafness is not a disability or something to be fixed.
Elsewhere in the festival, another pair of film-making brothers, Josh and Benny Safdie, followed up their grungy Robert Pattinson-starring thriller Good Time with another nerve-shredding assault of a movie. Audacious, thrilling and exhausting, Uncut Gems stars Adam Sandler as a brash, wheeler-dealing jeweller with a disastrous gambling habit and a knack of turning even his rare flashes of good luck into bad.
It’s a remarkable performance from Sandler, all sweat and bluster, with a desperate veneered grin. Much of the awards speculation at TIFF has built on the Venice momentum of Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker. But if I was inclined to bet, which, after two jangling hours of watching Sandler bleeding cash, I am not, I might take a punt on Sandler for best actor.
The awards conversation must also include Renée Zellweger, who received what was reportedly the festival’s longest standing ovation after the screening of Judy, in which she plays a fragile, late-career Judy Garland. As one of the few festivals seriously attempting to redress the gender imbalance in its programme, Toronto boasted a strong selection of female-directed pictures. A stand-out was Sarah Gavron’s Rocks, about teenage female friendship in east London, a film that crackles with energy and honesty. Workshopped with a multicultural cast of non-professional actors, it’s a picture that felt truly vital, like real adolescent life in all its noise and chaos playing out in front of the camera.
Teen girls were also well served by Coky Giedroyc’s How to Build a Girl, with Beanie Feldstein as an awkward Wolverhampton schoolgirl who reinvents herself as the wicked witch of rock criticism, the scourge of mediocre bloke rockers. The joyously boisterous screenplay, adapted by Caitlin Moran from her own book, is the star here.
Another highlight was Marielle Heller’s follow up to Can You Ever Forgive Me?. Tom Hanks is perfectly cast in A Beautiful Day in the Neighbourhood as much-loved US children’s TV personality Mr Rogers. One might assume the film’s impact to be limited to people who grew up watching the show, but it is a quietly profound piece of cinematic group therapy, characterised by unexpectedly eccentric and inventive choices. I adored it.
There were disappointments. Jojo Rabbit by Taika Waititi, about a Nazi boy who has Hitler (played by Waititi) as his imaginary friend is tonally uneven and not nearly as funny as a provocative “anti-hate satire” needs to be. And the long-awaited adaptation of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch felt like the longest two-and-a-half-hour movie ever made.
But there was plenty of fun for audiences who looked in the right places. Rian Johnson’s first film since Star Wars: The Last Jedi was a blast. Knives Out is an Agatha Christie-inspired country house murder mystery starring Daniel Craig chewing his way through scenery and a southern accent as thick as gumbo, with Chris Evans, cast entertainingly against type. It’s pure pleasure. And Armando Iannucci’s The Personal History of David Copperfield, starring Dev Patel, is equally enjoyable.
For me, the most unexpected treat was Justin Kurzel’s emphatic return to form with True History of the Kelly Gang, a swaggering, sexy, dissolute take on the story of Australia’s most famous outlaws. George MacKay plays Ned Kelly as a punk dandy psychopath; Nicholas Hoult, as Kelly’s law enforcing nemesis, is the biggest thief of all, stealing every scene in which he appears. It’s a demented meltdown of a movie and I loved every frantic frame of it.
Toronto’s top moments
Best films
Uncut Gems, directed by Josh and Benny Safdie; Calm With Horses, directed by Nick Rowland; True History of the Kelly Gang, directed by Justin Kurzel.
Best performances
Adam Sandler in Uncut Gems; Lesley Manville in Ordinary Love; Riz Ahmed in Sound of Metal; Deragh Campbell in Anne at 13,000ft.
Best ensemble cast
The actors in Rocks, with special mentions to Bukky Bakray, Kosar Ali, D’angelou Osei Kissiedu and Shaneigha-Monik Greyson.
Best cinematography
Darius Khondji’s work on Uncut Gems, which borrows the colour palette of the gem of the title, a rare opal.
Best costumes
True History of the Kelly Gang.
Best lack of costume
Nicholas Hoult’s monologue in just sock suspenders in True History of the Kelly Gang.
Most random tattoo
Riz Ahmed’s character in Sound of Metal has a pair of underpants tattooed on his right shoulder. Rock and roll.
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