海角大神

Sometimes you need a life raft in a storm. Looking back on the more than 300 movies screened at the recent聽Toronto International Film Festival, the most burningly divisive were the controversial satire 鈥淛ojo Rabbit,鈥� featuring Hitler as a 10-year-old German boy鈥檚 imaginary friend, and the very dark 鈥淛oker,鈥� starring Joaquin Phoenix in an origin story about Batman鈥檚 nemesis.

All that high-intensity badness made me hungry for some prominently showcased goodness. I found it, in varying degrees, in at least four of the 20 movies I saw in Toronto: 鈥淎 Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,鈥� 鈥淛ust Mercy,鈥� 鈥淭he Two Popes,鈥� and 鈥淰arda By Agn猫s.鈥� (All of these movies will be released theatrically by the end of the year.)

I must admit that when I first heard about 鈥淎 Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,鈥� I didn鈥檛 relish putting myself through a biopic about Fred Rogers, even one starring Tom Hanks. We already had a wonderful documentary, Morgan Neville鈥檚 鈥淲on鈥檛 You Be My Neighbor,鈥� that canvassed that neighborhood.聽

But the filmmakers 鈥� director Marielle Heller and screenwriters Micah Fitzerman-Blue and Noah Harpster 鈥� do something very canny. The film鈥檚 focus is not Mister Rogers, it鈥檚 Lloyd Vogel (Matthew Rhys), a magazine writer notorious for his dirt-digging investigative pieces, who reluctantly accepts an assignment to profile the public TV icon for Esquire magazine. (Vogel is based on real-life journalist Tom Junod.) Vogel is a new dad who has a fraught relationship with his abusive father (Chris Cooper). The movie is about how Rogers, by his words and his example, undoes the writer鈥檚 cynicism and heals his wounds.聽

Now goodness is extremely difficult to portray convincingly in the movies. Or in literature, for that matter 鈥� the villains in the novels of Dickens, for example, are almost always juicier than his paragons of virtue. Any actor will tell you that he would much rather play a bad guy than a good guy. Goodness can seem wan and insubstantial and uncomprehending of the dark dungeons of life. But what if the goodness on display acknowledged that darkness and bursts through anyway? Might not the strength of that radiance be doubly valued?

Something like this happens in 鈥淎 Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.鈥� The audience is initially placed in the same position as Vogel. We can鈥檛 quite believe 鈥� even though we might want to 鈥� that Rogers is as humane as he comes across. But Mister Rogers isn鈥檛 merely disarming in his encounters with Vogel; he is beneficent in a way that seems to come from deep inside. Hanks and the filmmakers do not portray Rogers as a saint. If they did, we would not buy it. He is a human being with an unshakable belief in the sacredness of every individual, large or small. The movie鈥檚 standout achievement is that it makes this belief seem not only believable but necessary.

Of course, good messaging does not always make for a good movie. 鈥淛ust Mercy鈥� is about the Harvard-educated real-life
lawyer Bryan Stevenson, whose decadeslong career has entailed getting unjustly convicted prisoners in Alabama, most of them poor and black, off death row. Stevenson is portrayed in the movie by Michael B. Jordan, a dynamic actor who tamps down his vitality here. As portrayed in the film, Stevenson鈥檚 goodness is worthy and righteous but also a bit boring. His rectitude doesn鈥檛 have enough psychological levels. He is, in the end, no Atticus Finch. It is Jamie Foxx鈥檚 Walter McMillian, as the convict Stevenson rescues, along with McMillian鈥檚 extended family and friends, who provide the film鈥檚 true transcendence.

As a master class in acting, I enjoyed 鈥淭he Two Popes,鈥� which is structured as a series of imagined conversations in 2012 and 2013 between then-Pope Benedict XVI, played by Anthony Hopkins, and his eventual successor, Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, played by Jonathan Pryce. Polar opposites in many ways both personal and doctrinal, these very human eminences bond over soccer and ABBA songs. Hokey, yes, but, to quote the film鈥檚 director, Fernando Meirelles, 鈥淲hat I like is this idea of two guys who [at first] didn鈥檛 like each other but had to learn to listen. That was tolerance. Nowadays we don鈥檛 like to hear people with whom we disagree; we prefer to kill them.鈥澛�

The Toronto movie with the greatest glow for me was Agn猫s Varda鈥檚 final film, 鈥淰arda by Agn猫s,鈥� a documentary completed shortly before her death in March. She conducts a playful guided tour through her marvelously variegated seven-decadeslong career as filmmaker, photographer, and creator of art installations 鈥� like the 鈥渃inema shack鈥� she created out of hanging strips of celluloid from one of her early movies.聽

What comes through most in this film is Varda鈥檚 great gift for communion. Even if you have never heard of her, the experience of watching this movie is like reconnecting with an old friend. The feeling she engenders is a tribute to her intense curiosity and her compassion for humanity in all its wayward permutations.聽

She tells us in the film, 鈥淣othing is trite if you film people with empathy and love.鈥� Her final film testifies to that. What a fitting valedictory it is.