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I woke up this morning feeling a bit fuzzy. My eyes were bloodshot, my knees were spasming, and I was a bit worse for the wear. But I’m not the only one, really. Everyone at the festival — whether it’s the audience, the staff, or the volunteers — seems a bit worn out. This late in the week, people get a bit slap-happy. If the film festival trailer that they always play before the movies had lyrics, people would be singing along by now (I can still hear last year’s song playing over and over and over in my head). During movies, people laugh a bit louder — and at random times. Collectively, as a group, the entire audience is losing it. It’s probably a good thing that it’s almost over.
My husband showed up this morning, so he’d helped to pick out the weekend’s movies. Normally, when he’s here, we take it a bit easier — just four movies in a day, with a nice, long break somewhere in the middle. But we had a full schedule planned for the day, and I couldn’t see where we could take anything off the list. Add to that the fact that it was Saturday — and the crowds get crazy on Saturday — and we knew we were in for a long, long day. So we braced ourselves for the long haul as we headed toward the city.
We started the morning off with The Chaser, an intense, violent South Korean thriller. Not exactly the kind of thing you’d normally see on a Saturday morning, but it worked for us. Good way to get the heart pumping, I suppose.
It was a pretty long film, though, and it didn’t leave us a lot of time before movie #2: Jennifer Lynch’s Surveillance, which was another one of the festival’s big buzz films. Between the buzz and the whole Saturday-crowd thing, I knew we might have a problem getting decent seats. So once The Chaser got out, we moved right over to the next theater (which had also just finished showing The Chaser) to get in line for Surveillance, and that worked surprisingly well. And that’s the key to surviving the weekend film festival crowd: plan ahead, be prepared for lines, and show up early.
As much as I’d like to say that David Lynch’s daughter is out making romantic comedies, I’m afraid that’s not the case. Think long close-ups of dead birds on a desert highway. The movie was interesting enough, but it was just too messed up — and not in a good way.
Then, after starting the day with two movies about serial killers, we decided to have lunch.
After lunch, we went for a movie without all the buzz: Sticks and Stones, a Canadian film about some hockey playing kids. It’s a cute feel-good kind of movie with a good family-movie message. A bit After School Special, but good anyway. And, well, it was about hockey.
From there, we walked right out of the theater and into the next line. It was just that kind of day: watch a movie, wait in line… But I was amazed today by how smoothly things ran. The crowds are still here (in fact, at around 2 this afternoon, the festival beat its 54,000-viewer festival-long record), but I don’t feel it as much as I did last year. Last year, on the weekend, I felt like I was constantly waiting in long lines or trying to make my way through packed hallways, but things seem to be running like clockwork this year. It’s all very well-organized. That’s not to say that it was unorganized last year, but I think they just weren’t prepared to get as many people as they did. This year, they’re definitely prepared. And people are pretty good about playing by the rules, too. Sure, there are always those people who think they’re better than everyone else — that they should be the exception to the rule. There are always people who don’t think they should have to wait in line. There are always people who complain that, despite having a wide-open theater to choose from, they can’t sit in the five rows that are reserved for pass-holders until the Reserved signs are taken off the seats ten minutes before the movie begins. But the staff and volunteers have done a great job of keeping those people under control. As a result, it doesn’t feel as cramped or as frantic as it has before — even though there are even more people here.
Movie #4 was A Deal is a Deal, another one running on two screens. It’s a British comedy about a London Tube driver and a suicidal Irish guy. Entertaining stuff. No, really.
We had a short break before the last movie, so we wandered around for a while to stretch our legs before loading up on sugar for the last movie of the day. From what I’d heard about The Candidate, we’d need to keep our wits about us — not an easy task at 10:00, after having seen four movies already. But the sugar helped — and the movie didn’t disappoint. I loved the actor, and the story was filled with enough twists to keep me on my toes.
Overall, it was a pretty good day of movies. And now I’ve got just one day to go. Originally, I had three movies down for tomorrow, but I hadn’t heard good things about one of them, so I though we could just take an easy day instead. So we’ll catch one movie at 11:45, take a break, and come back for another one at 4:30 before heading back home. It’s too bad that I’ll miss the closing ceremonies — they sound like quite the shindig this year — but that would mean making the two-hour drive after they announce the winners at 9:30ish, and there’s no way I’d stay awake that long. Best to leave early and get home in one piece.
So…fourteen movies down, two to go.
