44th Toronto International Film Festival Coverage: Day Six

Tuesday, September 10th, 2019 by Ian Evans

Harriet courtesy of TIFF.

Day six of TIFF and I’m getting my chance to screen Joker. Director Todd Phillips teams up with Joaquin Phoenix to trace the origin of one of Batman’s most notorious adversaries. From Cesar Romero, to Heath Ledger, to Jared Leto, the character of the Joker has been looked at and performed in many ways. Phoenix does his own unique take on the character. Arthur Fleck was a clown-for-hire, a wannabe stand-up. He’s forgotten and ridiculed by the system and society. He can no longer get help for his mental issues, he’s ignored by women, and ridiculed by the rich and powerful, including talk show host Murray Franklin (Robert De Niro). Phillips and Phoenix paint a bleak picture. Phillip’s Gotham is a crumbling city seemingly populated by angry Twitter users who are at war with the one-percenters who see them as a means to an end. Phoenix steps into this world a broken man, physically transformed into a bone-skinny punchline for all the city’s woes plus his own issues with family, work, and relationships. The film has already caused much online debate. Is it a rallying cry for conspiracy-believing incels that may incite real violence or is it just a movie featuring an amazing all-in performance by a talented actor? I think the latter is true, while the former thought is good TV panel fodder for the 24 hour news cycle. Definitely worth a look.

I emerged from the Joker screening to discover the streets had not devolved into anarchy, so let’s see what else was happening at TIFF today. Over at Roy Thomson Hall, Kasi Lemmons’ Harriet had its world premiere. The biopic stars Cynthia Erivo as Harriet Tubman, the abolitionist who escaped slavery in the 1840s and then helped others escape to free states and Canada via the series of safehouses that became known as the Underground Railroad. The film, which also stars Janelle Monáe, Leslie Odom Jr., and Joe Alwyn, is already garnering awards buzz for Erivo. Considering she already has an Emmy, Grammy and Tony, an Oscar win would put her in the rare club of EGOT winners.

RTH also hosted the gala for Honey Boy. Directed by Alma Har’el, the movie is a semi-autobiographical look at the childhood of screenwriter Shia LaBeouf, who is also cast as the abusive father. The cast is rounded out by Lucas Hedges, Noah Jupe, and FKA twigs.

The VISA Screening Room was abuzz with the premiere of Judy, which I’ll be screening tomorrow. A lot of the buzzing was about star Renee Zellwegger’s performance as troubled singer Judy Garland as she performed a series of concerts in the last year of her life. That premiere was followed by Motherless Brooklyn, which stars and was written, directed and produced by Edward Norton. Assembling a cast that includes Bruce Willis, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Bobby Cannavale, Cherry Jones, Leslie Mann, Alec Baldwin, and Willem Dafoe, Norton tells a story about a private eye with Tourette syndrome. Working to solve the murder of his friend and mentor, the evidence leads him from the Brooklyn slums to the halls of New York’s power brokers.