When the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) was founded in 1976, it was originally called The Festival of Festivals, and the idea behind the fest was to gather all of the best films from the three great European festivals—Cannes, Venice, and Berlin—and bring them to North American audiences. And although TIFF has since evolved into a major premiere festival as well, its original spirit still remains, and many TIFF highlights every year are films that first premiered at Cannes, Venice, or Telluride. Of the 23 films that made up the main competition at Venice this year, 10 of those journeyed to TIFF shortly after, including three of the most anticipated films of the fall season: The Whale, The Son, and The Banshees of Inisherin. Are they worth the hype? Well therein lies a tale…
We’ll start at the bottom. The Son is the nadir of TIFF ‘22, the nadir of my filmgoing year, and (other than Joker) probably the worst film I’ve seen at TIFF in the last five years. If you’re very online like me, you’ll undoubtedly see countless people describe the film as shamelessly manipulative; and while that’s certainly true, let’s try to dig a little deeper than that. After all, as Mark Harris once wrote, every film is manipulative. The nature of the art form is that the director is deliberately creating their film to elicit specific emotions in the audience. So simply calling a film “manipulative” says nothing. Instead we have to make our case for whether those manipulations are skillful, successful, or fair. And The Son fails on all three fronts.
The Son is meant as a companion piece to writer/director Florian Zeller’s previous film, 2020’s The Father, which (deservingly) won Anthony Hopkins his second Oscar for Best Actor. If you liked The Father—and I very much did—you’ll be sad to find out that all of its wonderful subtleties, like the way it used production design to play with memory, are completely absent in The Son. The two films actually have very little relationship to each other, beyond their creator and their titles (and that Hopkins is in both, though his part in The Son is small and bad and should have been cut).
The Son stars Hugh Jackman as a successful lawyer and aspiring political strategist who is trying, and failing, to adequately handle his teenage son’s spiraling depression. Laura Dern and Vanessa Kirby co-star as his ex-wife and new wife, respectively, while Zen McGrath plays the titular son. Let’s not bury the lede: McGrath is terrible, and he doesn’t sell his character’s alleged emotional state at all. But I’m also not going to throw a 19-year-old, fairly inexperienced actor under the bus, when the real culprit is Florian Zeller. A good director never should have allowed a performance this bad to reach audiences, and if he can’t recognize that, or elicit a better performance from one of his lead actors, then he shouldn’t be directing (or casting, for that matter).
But lest you think a terrible central performance is the main issue with The Son, I have sad news for you. The script is even worse. Before seeing the film at TIFF, I had already been privy to plenty of negative reactions coming out of Venice, so I was unfortunately watching the film through that lens. And there was a quiet moment in the third act where I thought to myself, “If this is really as emotionally manipulative as everyone is saying, Thing X would inexplicably happen right about now.” And within 20 seconds of my having that thought, Thing X inexplicably happened.
Sidney Lumet once said that the mark of a great character piece is that you have no idea where it’s going, but when it gets there you know it never could have ended any other way. The Son proves to be the complete opposite of that sentiment: You know exactly where it’s going, but that trajectory still makes no damn sense when it’s done.
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Luckily the other two big Venice films were much better, including The Whale, which I expected to hate and very much didn’t. It’s no secret that The Whale is centered on Brendan Fraser clad in a very large fat suit, which I assumed would make me uncomfortable from egregious body shaming, but the emotional resonance of The Whale is so considered, so thoughtful, and so delicately deployed that you forgive it any sins of representation or judgement.
Having said that, I must admit a bit of discomfort at having said that. Although I’m a man of a certain age—complete with the encroaching dad bod that comes with the territory—I’m not generally a person who’s struggled with their weight, and I question whether this makes me fit to review a film like The Whale. A few days before its Venice premiere I saw someone on Twitter (and apologies that I don’t recall who) plead for major publications to “let fat critics review The Whale,” and I’m inclined to agree with that idea. So think of this less as a review of The Whale and more as a review of Brendan Fraser’s performance in The Whale.
I’ve been coming to TIFF since 2010, and in that time I’ve seen almost two dozen performances at the fest that ended up winning Oscars, including Natalie Portman, Colin Firth, Jennifer Lawrence, Emma Stone, Brie Larson, Joaquin Phoenix, and Jessica Chastain, among many others. But only once have I seen a performance at TIFF that I immediately felt absolute confidence it would win an Oscar: Gary Oldman in 2017, in Darkest Hour. Well, Brendan Fraser in The Whale is now the second time that’s happened.
I’m normally loathe to make any “Person X is winning the Oscar!” proclamations out of the Fall festivals, because I hate the way such statements ultimately limit the conversation. And because statements like that almost always arrive more out of the desire to be right as early as possible than they do out of any reasoned or interesting analysis. I’ve literally only done this once before, in 12 years. But sometimes you just know.
There are several reasons to make a statement like that, beginning with Fraser’s shocking lack of competition in a category that’s normally overflowing with worthy performances. And then there’s the fact that Fraser clicks nearly every box for what Academy voters seem to respond to, from the comeback narrative, to the “they let themselves be ugly” narrative (which worked for Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, and several others), to the best-acting-equals-most-acting trend that seems to have overtaken the lead acting categories in recent years.
But you know what? More than anything, Fraser’s performance is really just that good. It’s a performance that you walk away from not merely assuming it will win an Oscar, but emphatically hoping you get to watch it happen. That’s the empathy that Fraser brings to the role of Charlie, a man who doesn’t feel sorry for himself and doesn’t let the audience feel it either. Fraser does such beautiful, life-affirming work that I’m prepared to give The Whale that rarest of compliments for a Darren Aronofsky film: I’m looking forward to seeing it again.
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And now welcome to the TIFF review I’ve been dreading writing the most, Martin McDonagh’s The Banshees of Inisherin. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson (in a reunion from McDonagh’s beloved 2008 film, In Bruges) star as two close friends in 1920s Ireland who suddenly find themselves at odds with one another when Gleeson’s character, Colm, decides one day that he doesn’t want to be friends anymore with Farrell’s character, Padraic, and never wants to see or talk to him again.
Folks, this is my nightmare. And I don’t mean that as a joke. More than any other topic, the sudden, seemingly inexplicable loss of friendships and working relationships is what I’ve spent the most time talking to therapists about over the last decade. It’s my biggest insecurity in life, and nothing else comes even close.
The Banshees of Inisherin made me profoundly sad and uncomfortable, but I’m reasonably certain I mean that as a compliment. If it weren’t so effective in its emotions and its story, it (probably) wouldn’t have had that effect on me. The Banshees of Inisherin hit so close to home for me because the film works, and because Farrell gives a career-best performance as the former friend who has no idea how to handle or what to do with the loss he’s experiencing. He’s angry, and he’s dreadfully confused, but more than anything he feels impotent, and Farrell beautifully (and comically) conveys all of the swirling conflict at play in his character. Gleeson is also wonderful, as are Kerry Condon and Barry Keoghan in supporting roles, and all four actors should find themselves in the Oscar hunt.
I should warn you that Banshees does have a very sad animal death (which isn’t too egregious of a spoiler because there are several animals in the film), but my one major complaint on the film is that the story has Colm go too far in his apparent need to excommunicate Padraic from his life. The lengths Colm is willing to go seem far beyond cruel and unusual, and part of my extreme discomfort with the film wasn’t just the too-close-to-home subject matter, but the truly shocking degree to which the actions are deployed. You simply don’t want to think of anyone needing to remove a former friend from their life that badly, and I, especially, don’t want to think of that. I feel deeply for Padraic in the film, and the lot in life with which he’s been given hurts me to my core. But then, a great film can do that to you.
