The 35th Annual Toronto International Film Festival wrapped up yesterday with the Cadillac People’s Choice Award–there’s no festival jury, so this is TIFF’s only award–going to The King’s Speech, an English period piece about King George VI (Colin Firth) ascending to the throne and seeing a speech therapist. That award automatically puts the film in the Oscar race, as Toronto (and Telluride, more and more) now marks the beginning of the frantic award season. (And see Juno, Precious, and Slumdog Millionaire as examples of films that got the start of their Oscar campaign at Toronto.)
Besides that, there seemed to be not as many heavily buzzed-about films at this year’s TIFF. If you want to get into the word on the street, I heard that Danny Boyle’s new film 127 Hours (about hiker Aron Ralston, who had to cut off his arm in order to survive) was good; It’s Kind of a Funny Story (about some crazy teenagers and an institutionalized Zach Galifianakis) was bad; and Darren Aronofsky’s psychological ballet thriller Black Swan got mixed reviews (critics seemed to like it more than the general public). Nonetheless, I know I’ll end up seeing all three.
My final festival film was Rabbit Hole, an adaptation of the 2007 Pulitzer prize-winning play about a husband and wife’s grief after the accidental death of their child. On stage, the couple was played by John Slattery and Cynthia Nixon, which in the film is translated into Aaron Eckhart and Nicole Kidman. That makes sense–in both cases, he’s charming and she’s brittle. Both actors give strong performances (they’ve got the material to do so), and the patient, mature direction is surprisingly care of John Cameron Mitchell, best known for Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Shortbus. The film fleshes out aspects of the play, adding characters only mentioned in the original piece, as well as throwing in a support group subplot that is entirely unnecessary. But despite all those positive attributes, Rabbit Hole runs into the eternal problem of turning a great play into a film (see Doubt): The exact reasons that a play works well–the focus on the words and the big speeches and the acting flourishes–are what limit it as a film. Simply put, I like Rabbit Hole the play more.