A survival guide to the festival

Sean Penn’s ‘Into the Wild’ is a tour de force.

By MILAN PAURICH

VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT

TORONTO — The first thing any self-respecting journalist learns at the Toronto International Film Festival is that you can’t see everything. It took me nine TIFFs to finally figure that out.

With 349 movies (271 features) from 55 countries to choose from, even the hardiest, most dedicated cinephile is forced to make some excruciatingly tough decisions. And because your eyes are inevitably bigger — if no less resilient — than your constitution, the best-laid plans inevitably fall by the wayside at festival midpoint.

Should I see the Romanian abortion drama (“4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”) that won the Palme d’Or at Cannes or catch an extra hour of sleep? Do I join the rush line for the new Woody Allen movie (“Cassandra’s Dream”) or grab a bowl of ramen noodles for the sustenance to make it through a midnight screening of George A. Romero’s latest zombie flick (“Diary of the Dead”)?

The cold, hard reality of TIFF is that sleep and food are such rare and precious commodities — especially during the front-loaded first weekend when you’re seeing a half-dozen films a day — that by the time day six rolls around you’re so punch drunk you’ll sacrifice practically any movie, no matter how “important,” for a nap or a blueberry scone.

So, in that confessional spirit, here is one diligent, but oh-so-human critic’s report from the front lines of the greatest, most maddening film festival on the planet.

World’s best cinema

For those of us on a limited — or in my case, nonexistent — expense account, Toronto has become an indispensable one-stop-shopping destination. On the first official day of festival screenings, I saw three movies that killed in Cannes (the Guillermo del Toro-produced Mexican spooker “The Orphanage,” the Coen Brothers’ masterful Cormac McCarthy adaptation “No Country for Old Men” and “Control,” a biopic about the late Ian Curtis, lead singer of the seminal British rock band Joy Division), and another (Ang Lee’s NC-17-rated “Lust, Caution”) that would go on to win the Golden Lion in Venice three days later. Toronto is the only passport you really need for sussing out the best in world cinema.

The most exciting news out of TIFF this year was the graduation of several heretofore promising directors to “world-class” status. Joe Wright followed his excellent “Pride and Prejudice” from two years ago with “Atonement,” a soul-crushing masterpiece. Based on the great Ian McEwan novel, “Atonement” re-teams Wright with Keira Knightley in her finest performance to date. If “P&P” was Wright’s “A Room With a View,” “Atonement” is his “Howards End”: a darker, richer, more resonant work on every level.

Australian director

Another director who made the leap to front-tier status was Australia’s Andrew Dominik.

Dominik’s first film (2000’s “Chopper”) was most notable for its star-making turn by Eric Bana. The star-is-born moment in “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” is reserved for Dominik himself. A revisionist Western so good that it could hold its own against such genre benchmarks as “The Wild Bunch” and “McCabe and Mrs. Miller,” Dominik’s movie has some of the same rapturous visual beauty of Terrence Malick’s “Days of Heaven” and “The New World,” but with a stronger narrative arc. And Brad Pitt is pretty darn good as Jesse James, too.

Julian Schnabel followed up worthwhile, if uneven past efforts such as “Before Night Falls” and “Basquiat” with “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” the true-life story of Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby who was paralyzed by a stroke that left him with the use of only one eyelid. Infinitely superior to “The Sea Inside” — a similarly themed Spanish film from three years ago — “The Diving Bell” is dazzlingly, intoxicatingly cinematic and extraordinarily well-acted. The three lead actresses (Emmanuelle Seigner, Marie-Josee Cruze and Anne Consigny) are superb, and Mathieu Amalric is astounding as Bauby.

Sean Penn graduated to Clint Eastwood-level auteur status with “Into the Wild,” the year’s single most illustrious achievement. Based on the Jon Krakauer best-seller, it tells the incredible saga of 22-year-old Christopher McCandless (Emile Hirsch) who threw away a life of privilege to hit the open road. McCandless’ voyage of self-discovery took him to Alaska and eventually cost him his life. Penn’s emotional bruiser is a great, uniquely American story, and it has a profoundly spiritual dimension that’s almost unheard of in contemporary Hollywood cinema. Even though the movie runs nearly 21⁄2 hours, I wouldn’t cut a single frame. I can’t wait to see it again and again.

Dylan film

Another “longish” film that blew me away was Todd (“Far From Heaven”) Haynes’ freewheelin’, wildly experimental “I’m Not There” in which six actors (including Cate Blanchett, Heath Ledger, Christian Bale and Richard Gere) play Bob Dylan at various stages of his life and career. After only one viewing, I’m still not sure whether I completely “get” it (it’s the sort of movie that demands multiple viewings), but a film doesn’t have to make complete sense to be great. I can’t remember the last time an American director took so many creative risks (narratively, stylistically, structurally, etc.). Bravo.

More welcome news came courtesy of Jason Reitman’s rapturously received “Juno.” Reitman got a lot of attention at TIFF two years ago for his snarky, one-note “Thank You for Smoking,” yet it’s “Juno” that proves he’s the real deal. A 16-year-old girl (Ellen Page) gets pregnant by her BFF (Michael Cera from “Superbad”), sending her parents (Allison Janney and J.K. Simmons) into a tizzy. Things get even more complicated when the mother-to-be decides to have the kid and give it up for adoption. The prospective adoptive parents (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner), naturally, have some major issues of their own. Whip-smart and riotously funny without condescending to any of its characters, “Juno” is being positioned for a year-end, awards-consideration release by Fox Searchlight. For what it’s worth, I think it’s better than “Little Miss Sunshine,” F-S’s “little movie that could” from last year. If nothing else, I’d love to see it generate some “Superbad” crossover business since it’s an equally smart and insightful movie about teenagers.

Veterans’ works

Toronto also featured superb, can’t-miss twilight works from veteran masters (Eric Rohmer’s “Romance of Astrea and Celadon,” Claude Chabrol’s “A Girl Cut in Two,” Allen’s “Cassandra’s Dream” and Sidney Lumet’s crackling heist drama “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead” starring Philip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke) and equally vital new films from younger masters (Noah Baumbach’s “Margot at the Wedding,” Hio Hsaio-hsien’s “Flight of the Red Balloon,” Alexander Sokurov’s “Alexandra,” Lee’s “Lust, Caution,” the Coens’ “No Country for Old Men,” David Cronenberg’s “Eastern Promises” and Gus Van Sant’s “Paranoid Park”).

Compared with glorious, out-of-left-field surprises from relatively new or previously unknown directors such as Christian Mungiu (“Four Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”), Anton Corbijn (“Control”), Ira Sachs (the terrifically entertaining “Married Life” with pitch-perfect comic performances from Pierce Brosnan, Chris Cooper, Rachel McAdams and Patricia Clarkson), Craig Gillespie (“Lars and the Real Girl” starring Ryan Gosling as a small-town sadsack in love with a life-sized doll named Bianca), Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud (the one-of-a-kind French-Iranian animated dazzler “Persepilos”), Juan Antonio Bayona (“The Orphanage”), Tom McCarthy (“The Visitor”), Eran Kolirin (“The Band’s Visit”), Christophe Honore (“Love Songs”), Garth Jennings (“Son of Rambow”) and perennial wild card and wild child, Harmony Korine (“Mr. Lonely”), the festival’s “big” star-studded vehicles (including “Elizabeth: The Golden Years,” “Michael Clayton” with George Clooney, chick-lit fave “The Jane Austen Book Club” and Helen Hunt’s all-over-the-map directing debut “Then She Found Me”) seemed a tad underwhelming.

Yet even TIFF’s rare duds (flat-footed “message” movies “Rendition,” “Rails and Ties” and “Reservation Road”; fizzless pop entertainments such as Kenneth Branagh’s gratuitous, reductionist “Sleuth” remake and the Houdini-in-love snoozer “Death Defying Acts”; auteurist train wrecks such as Brian DePalma’s “Redacted” and Paul Schrader’s “The Walker”) couldn’t dampen my enthusiasm in a year to remember.