Fifty Dead Men Walking<\/a><\/i>, which tells the true story of how a member of the IRA saved a few dozen lives by leaking information to the Brits. What is the Canadian connection, you ask? Well, it was produced with a bit of Canadian money, and writer-director Kari Skogland comes from British Columbia. Even better, a brief prologue shows the former snitch living in hiding somewhere in Canada \u2014 but the rest of the movie, told as one giant flashback, still takes place in Belfast.<\/p>\nSee the problem? If the purpose of promoting Canadian filmmakers \u2014 whether by giving them government grants or by devoting an entire festival series to them \u2014 is to help our artists to \u201ctell our stories\u201d, then these particular films wouldn\u2019t quite seem to do the trick. They may be \u201cCanadian\u201d behind<\/i> the camera, but in front of<\/i> the camera, they tell basically Scottish or Irish stories instead.<\/p>\n
Now, Canada certainly has a strong connection to the British Isles in general, and to its Celtic roots in particular, so it\u2019s not surprising that we would have an affinity for stories like these. And there were certainly lots of other<\/i> films at this festival which were indisputably Canadian on both sides of the camera. But it still seems a little odd to see these two particular films highlighted in this way.<\/p>\n
Oh, how were the films themselves? Okay, but not great, I thought. Stone of Destiny<\/i> is a bit rote and perfunctory in some ways, and shamelessly Scottish-nationalist to boot; but it tells a story I had never heard before, which has to count for something, and the night of the heist itself is an amusing series of errors and near-misses. Fifty Dead Men Walking<\/i> is more of a jumble, with its relentlessly brutal depiction of Belfast\u2019s streets, its seemingly indestructible protagonist, and its fitful explication of the political landscape; but it has its moments, too.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Alas, I pretty much missed the last few days of the Vancouver International Film Festival this week, but I hope to get a few capsule reviews up in the near future anyway. In the meantime, I think it\u2019s worth noting how this year\u2019s festival, perhaps unwittingly, underscored the ongoing question of what, exactly, constitutes a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>