little bitty girl

Toronto is buzzing with activity this weekend — the 60km walk for breast cancer, the Toronto Taste Festival in the downtown core and my favourite first Fall activity, the Toronto Film Festival. Stefan and I are fortunate to have had the chance to get tickets for the past five years. My big thing when it comes to picking movies out of the hundreds, is not to pick a movie that I think will be too mainstream with "big" stars. In fact, I usually stay away from those movies. Last night was an exception and I am so glad that I was privileged to be at the world premiere of Neverwas.

Brilliantly and heavily cast with serious talent — Aaron Eckhart, Sir Ian McKellan, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lange, Willam Hurt, Brittany Murphy and Alan Cumming — Josh Michael Stern's debut project as writer-director is absolutely wonderful. It explores the pscychological effect of Dr. Zach Riley (Eckhart) who grows up in the shadow of his tortured father, R.L Pierson's (Nolte) fame as a celebrated children's author and his inevitable suicide. As described by Stern, he essentially wanted to explore the adulthood of children who are part of such famous novels such as Christopher Robin in Winnie The Pooh and Alice In Wonderland.

The movie starts off with the return of Dr. Zach Riley, now a psychiatrist, returning to his home town. He applies for a position at the hospital that had treated his father's condition, under a pseudonym. He does this in hopes of bringing some sort of closure to his anguish. He soon encounters Gabriel (McKellan), a mute patient who for some reason instantly recognizes Zach. He reveals his parallel delusions of having once lived in Neverwas, the fictionious paradise of Zach's father's book. Zach's once compartmentalized life becomes increasingly unsettled as Gabriel reveals more of the missing pieces to his father's mystery.

This movie is unique in the fact that it starts off as a children's story with wonderfully wrought illustrations, narrated by Ian McKellan, then reality blends in mixed with rememberances. The movie is a myriad of lush, fall saturated colours, and Zach's memories of his father are interspersed in black and white tones. Often in children's books there is a sense of underlying darkness of spirit, and this movie captures that darkness with Nolte's presence coming in spurts of dreamlike sequences. Having gone through his own personal demons, Nolte plays the suicidal, psychologically totured soul to perfection. The thing that stood out in my mind the most was the intensity of everyone's eyes, how so many emotions could be conveyed in mere seconds by the slightest flicker.

With so many varied layers, the movie is rich and poignant with human emotion. As loosely quoted by Nick Nolte during the Q&A period, "the story in itself is about life, death, continuance after death and deep down, a sense of hope."

A truly wonderful first attempt, Neverwas is a gem of a movie. I look forward to seeing Josh Michael Stern's next attempt.