Author: Elijah Bukreev

The award-winning romance fantasy is a perplexing experience

If you had to choose an animal to be turned into, a lobster would be a fine choice—they live up to a hundred years and remain fertile far into their old age. That’s what David’s (Colin Farrell) reasoning is, anyways. Of course, he forgets that a lobster’s life is likely to be cut short by a gourmet’s appetite for seafood, but that’s part of the joke. The Lobster, which is full of such sarcasm, is a stunningly bleak and bizarre dark comedy from Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos. It seems to be the work of a man deeply hurt by love or offended by the way it is regulated by society, and desperate to get his revenge, even if in cinematic form.

The title is not metaphorical—David may actually get turned into a lobster. The world seems to have regressed into a near-fascist system in which single people are no longer tolerated. All single people must be transported into a hotel in which they are given a set number of days to find a suitable life partner, or—and this is where the fantasy element of the story comes into play—be transformed into an animal of their choice.

Life in the hotel is conditioned by a number of entirely absurd rules, the most notable of which is that lovers must share a common trait—if one suffers from nosebleed, so must the other, if one is a sadist, then the other one must be the same. That makes little sense, as a sadist-masochist couple would logically be better suited for each other, but there you have it.

If these single people refuse to comply, they become Loners, hiding in the woods from collective hunts led by inhabitants of the hotel. Life among the Loners is equally hard—they entirely reject coupledom, and so their rules are based on abstinence. Any kind of intimate contact is forbidden, and people who kiss shall have their lips removed. It is then predictable but sadly ironic that David shall fall in love with one of their own.

Remarkably, actors succeed in explaining the specifics of this world with a straight face, but then again, that’s the only mode of acting you’ll see here. Obviously a stylistic choice to amplify the dogmatic nature of this environment, it soon backfires, reducing the film to a one-note exercise in facile cynicism. Most regrettable is the waste of an impressive cast that includes John C. Reilly, Rachel Weisz and Léa Seydoux. Farrell himself as the leading man is not permitted to display emotion, performing mostly by way of his mustache. You might wonder what the mood was like on the set, and the number of rules by which it was itself regulated.

In portraying different forms of torture on screen, a film must be careful not to become torturous to the viewer, which this one, just like the director’s previous drama Dogtooth, ultimately becomes. Violence, more often suggested than shown, here feels like a cheap psychological tactic to assert the film’s self-importance, which makes for an only episodically amusing experience. While The Lobster may have been meant to be perplexing, the film is hardly any more tolerable for it. As repetitive as the main theme’s music cues that endlessly punctuate the action, it bludgeons its point with the skill of a hardened bureaucrat. Obnoxious social norms can, and perhaps should, be attacked, but is it really true that you can only fight fire with fire?

Release date: March 25, 2016

Directed by: Yorgos Lanthimos

Starring: Colin Farrell, John C. Reilly, Ben Whishaw, Rachel Weisz

Stars: 3

118 minutes

Knight of Cups is another one of Terrence Malick’s cinematic reveries

In his last few films, Terrence Malick has come close to fulfilling the whole potential of cinema as the sum of all previously existing art forms. His films are carried by music, and indeed they flow along with it. The camera waltzes through space, images flash by as though notes in a symphony. Editing is Malick’s paintbrush—over the years, the American director has collected a massive repertoire of cinematic visions, and he has worked patiently to assemble them into feature-length works of modern impressionism.

The theme of Knight of Cups is set in its opening lines, which tell the story of a young prince who is sent by his father to look for a pearl, but loses his way and drinks himself into a deep sleep. Rick (Christian Bale) is, in a sense, this prince—a Los Angeles screenwriter who wanders through the city and various love relationships like a lost soul, always searching, always trying to understand what he’s after. He rarely speaks, and the conversations of others are usually muted or half-heard. The lines that matter are read as voice-over—everything else is dust, to be washed away by time.

Unlike To the Wonder, Malick’s previous film, which was distinct for its apparent attempt to reconstruct memories, Knight of Cups is more clearly set in the present. Shot partially on GoPro cameras, it is more intrusive, sometimes close to 3-D in in the way it invites you into its image, while maintaining the dreamlike tone of its predecessor. Despite its hopeful finale, it is drenched in a sense of loss, as if it had lived through millions of years and gone all the way back to craft this diary of days forgotten.

You cannot watch Knight of Cups as you watch all other films—you will have to surrender yourself to it. Cinema is usually expected, if not required, to entertain, but why must that be the case? You wouldn’t sit down in an art gallery and complain about it having no plot. You wouldn’t complain about a symphony’s lack of discernible purpose. But if a film is made without a script, then there will always be someone to label it as empty.

Complaining that a Malick film has no plot is like saying the Mona Lisa could use some lipstick. Malick stopped using scripts because he had no purpose for them anymore. He relinquished himself from the constraints of storytelling, achieving a liberating sense of freedom and grace through cinematic movement. To see his films is to experience the world anew. Someday they might be studied to understand what it must have meant, beyond all political, social or even openly artistic implications, to simply be alive in our day and age.

There is no doubt that Malick has alienated many viewers with his approach. Some say his films are not made for everyone, but I truly believe that they are—it just turns out not everyone is made for them. There couldn’t have been more than 10 people at the screening I attended, and there was still one who walked out. There will always be some to walk out, in any group. In some groups, it might be the whole group. That’s fine. Knight of Cups, as all Malick films, exists outside of time. It has conquered time and put it in a bottle. It will never get old. It can afford to wait.

Release date: March 18, 2016

Directed by: Terrence Malick

Starring: Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Natalie Portman

Stars: 4

118 minutes

When book-to-film adaptations go too far into the realm of fan fiction

About a year ago, the world first saw the release of the trailer to a new adaptation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince. When it was greeted by exalted posts and shares on my Facebook newsfeed, I decided to set my reservations aside and take a look. Immediately, I sensed something was not right. The screenshots promised an interesting stop-motion rendition of Saint-Exupéry’s famous illustrations, but a Pixar-esque computer-generated face was screaming at me from the thumbnail. Increasingly worried, I watched the trailer and was left in anger and sadness.

Now that the movie—which I have no interest in seeing—is out in theatres and getting mostly admirative reviews, I am brought back to that state of mind. I don’t mean to be a killjoy, but there is a fine line between reinterpretation and fan fiction, and movies have frequently and unceremoniously crossed it. For instance, you don’t go around pretending that the author’s original work was in any way incomplete and “only the beginning,” as many a trailer would claim, especially when the author is no longer there to defend themselves. You don’t repurpose a story to be about different characters in a different setting.

And, look, I’m not a snob. There are many things I can understand. I can understand that books and films are very different mediums. I can understand that, as with any form of translation, book-to-film adaptation means ideas, subtexts or entire passages may be transformed or lost. I can understand parody, like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I can understand modernization, like Romeo+Juliet. I can understand Disneyfication, like The Little Mermaid. I can even, maybe, understand musicalization, like Les Misérables.

What I can’t understand, is that filmmakers who have the skill, talent, money and opportunity to make an even approximately accurate adaptation of a literary classic, would instead attempt to involve the original characters in a contrived resolution or update to the original text. There’s nothing inherently wrong with fan fiction—but it must be identified as such. To make a film titled Alice in Wonderland or The Little Prince while entirely modifying its storyline is not adaptation, it’s deceit. And by going through excerpts from positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, you’ll notice something that many reviewers think but won’t outright say—that The Little Prince is a betrayal of its source material.

I’m sure the filmmakers meant no harm, and envisioned the project as more of a tribute. Yet, this notion that everything must be updated and followed up on is a worrying trend in today’s cinema. It is true that there always comes a point where a classic story must be modernized, which is a healthy cultural phenomenon in an incessantly changing world. Updating, however, is not the same as modernizing—it’s putting words in an author’s mouth that were never there.

What brings screenwriters to update texts that need no updating? An inflated sense of ego, perhaps, that tells them they can do just as well as the original authors? Well, no, they can’t. They should leave The Little Prince to Saint-Exupéry, Alice in Wonderland to Lewis Carroll, and go write a masterpiece of their own.

The mysterious follow-up to 2008’s Cloverfield is edge-of-your-seat material

A good marketing campaign can take a movie a long way. Too often, a blockbuster gets announced years in advance, trailers become unreasonably long and ubiquitous as the campaign goes on, and by the time the movie comes out, you feel like you’ve seen it already. Good marketing doesn’t mean you should know exactly what you’re getting, down to the little details. Quite the contrary—you should be made to feel that some major secret is being withheld from you.

The original Cloverfield is a textbook example of movie marketing done right—mystery is what made it so massively popular when it was released, even though the film itself came as a disappointment to some. Seven years later comes another, equally mysterious project, very loosely connected to the earlier monster movie and a massive improvement on it in every regard.

10 Cloverfield Lane is one of the most tense and exciting films in recent memory. Its immediate success couldn’t have been foreseen, for the simple reason that the film, directed by newcomer Dan Trachtenberg, was never even announced. In January 2016, there was suddenly a trailer for it, and now, two months later, it’s out in theatres.

Its story is still well guarded. The trailer won’t tell you more than you need to know, and, frankly, neither should this review. The film’s secrecy is part of its magic—looking at a roller-coaster before you take it will not diminish its effect, but 10 Cloverfield Lane, a roller-coaster in movie form, is best experienced if you walk into it in a blindfold. That’s just friendly advice, but if you’re not convinced, read on for its central mystery.

Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) is knocked out in a car crash, and when she wakes up, she’s handcuffed to the wall in an underground bunker. The large and domineering Howard (John Goodman), who built the place under his home as a shelter from nuclear warfare, tells her it’s for her own good—there’s just been an attack, he says, that killed most living creatures on Earth, so by bringing her to his bunker, he actually saved her life. Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.), an agreeable young man who helped build the bunker and has taken refuge in it, confirms the story—the outside air has been poisoned, and so they have no choice but to remain locked inside. Is Howard a kidnaper or a saviour? What can be believed?

Like last year’s Room, to which it deserves comparison, 10 Cloverfield Lane toys with its characters’ perception of reality, and the outside world, from within an enclosed space. The constant ambiguities and tonal changes that arise from every plot turn make the movie a strangely unpredictable experience, and a stunning mind game—depending on your perception of what’s happening, you may be watching a psychological thriller or a minimalistic disaster film. Or perhaps it is, like its predecessor, a monster movie? Right from the get-go, Goodman is effortlessly terrifying. Before you first see him, you hear the deafening stamp of his heavy footsteps, and when he appears, he is possibly more massive than you’ve ever seen him before. His behaviour is unreadable, his motives always under question. The clenching and unclenching of his fist is a more arresting image than any fantastic creature a computer could conjure.

Release date: March 11, 2016

Directed by: Dan Trachtenberg

Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, John Goodman, John Gallagher Jr.

Stars: 4

103 minutes

It’s never too late to see it, even if it’s past October 3

Apparently, I’ve been living under a rock. I have a confession to make: up until recently, I’d never seen Mean Girls. As a film buff, I was well aware of it, and could tell you it was shot in 2004 by Mark Waters (who also made Freaky Friday) and starred Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams. I was also aware of its cultural impact and could guess it was set in a high school and featured girls being mean to each other in some way. But the appeal of Mean Girls was still shrouded in mystery for me.

Here are a few realisations I had after watching it:

–       All these jokes, memes and endless references to the movie I’d been seeing for years all across the Internet are finally funny.

–       Lindsay Lohan was actually probably never a good actress. This may not be a popular opinion, but I found she just never looked the part of a homeschooled math geek. On the other hand, the film gave me a newfound appreciation for Rachel McAdams. I guess you can see another actress as Cady Heron, but you sure can’t see anyone else as Regina George.

–       The Tina Fey/Amy Poehler collaboration has been going on for longer than I realized. Fey is also one mighty screenwriter. How did she never write another movie after this?

–       My high-school experience was drastically different from most people if they can actually relate to everything that happens in Mean Girls. I should feel lucky. Also, it’s one of those films where everyone looks like they’re in their mid-20s but you just kind of go with it.

Mean Girls has definitely aged well, and in fact it’s refreshing, not to mention a bit surreal, to see a film about teenagers that barely features modern technology—I suppose if it was still possible to make a film with no computers or social media in it in 2004, that might not be possible anymore. And by not over-relying on existing pop culture, instead making her own contribution to it, Fey made Mean Girls something of a modern classic.

So why is this film so important to so many people? Why did people gasp upon learning that I’d never seen it, and insist that I needed to? As film critic Roger Ebert once wrote in a 1992 essay, “Look at a movie that a lot of people love, and you will find something profound, no matter how silly the film may seem.” Silly would be a good word to describe Mean Girls, which, for all its immortal lines about making “fetch” happen and asking people why they’re white, makes no pretense to profundity—some will say it’s about being proud of who you are, which is as good a moral as a story can get.

Even as a watered-down version of something like Welcome to the Dollhouse (seriously, check that one out), it addresses peer pressure and different forms of bullying in an unhealthy high school environment with sincerity, but also undying humour and everlasting quotability. So, yes, I do feel a bit richer for having seen Mean Girls, and if it ever becomes obsolete, it’s probably still a good many generations from happening. It’s never too late to see it for the first time and start wearing pink on Wednesdays.

Zootopia is another success from the animation studio, a familiar but thematically rich delight

The Walt Disney Animation Studios may have done it again, but no, they’re still not Pixar. Yet, it’s hard not to give them credit for the way they’ve reinvented themselves in the 10 years or so since they embraced computer animation. While Zootopia does follow familiar narrative tropes, it may be the most thematically bold and accomplished film of the studio’s new era. When you think of Disney, you expect princesses and cute animals, not a fine parable on multiculturalism and race relations, which their new film surprisingly delivers—even if it does focus on cute animals, such as Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin), the first rabbit police officer in an entirely animal-populated Zootopia.

Although you may have to think twice about calling her “cute”—rabbits can call each other that, but other animals shouldn’t. You get the idea—with so many species living side by side, most of them carrying some form of prejudice, things are bound to get ugly. Not ugly enough for them to eat each other—predators and prey seem to have achieved some sort of harmony in that regard—but an elephant might refuse to serve a fox in an ice cream store, because everyone knows foxes are up to no good.

Case in point: Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a smart-mouthed but utterly charming con artist fox who Hopps will have to team up with to investigate a series of mysterious disappearances across the city. Having two seemingly incompatible beings—rabbits and foxes are natural enemies—work together to solve a crime despite their differences, predictably becoming the best of friends in the process, makes Zootopia a model buddy cop comedy. The plot is straight out of the ‘80s—it’s hard not to think of 48 Hrs.—but its timely social commentary makes it unfit for any other decade than our own.

You may choose to read very closely into the film’s allusions and metaphors, in which case you might be disappointed to find some questions are left unaddressed—namely, what do predators have for lunch, and why are there no interspecies couples?—or you may enjoy the film for its wonderful comedy timing and engrossing world. If there’s a criticism to be made, it’s that for the many wonderful touches that make Zootopia so pleasurable, screenwriters have also recycled a device that has grown increasingly tiresome. Has Disney retired its career baddies? Sorry for the spoiler, but this is the studio’s fourth animated film in a row to use a plot twist in which a positive character is unmasked as the main villain, and by now all it deserves is an eye roll.

For the most part, the film truly works by presenting you with an unusual world you’d actually want to explore. There have been many other fictional metropolises in animated films, many variations of that archetypal “big city”—Monstropolis in Monsters, Inc., Robot City in Robots or an unnamed insect-populated town in A Bug’s Life—but none as cleverly detailed as Zootopia, which lends its name to the film mostly because the city itself often outshines the characters. Which isn’t to say anything bad about the characters—they’re the ones that make it all come alive, and through them, the film achieves a delicate balance between stereotype and self-determination. Are you ever justified in expecting a rabbit or a fox to behave as such? Films aimed at children typically offer easy answers to complicated questions, but this one is so contagiously optimistic it might just get a pass.

Release date: March 4, 2016

Directed by: Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jared Bush

Starring: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Bonnie Hunt

Stars: 4

109 minutes

Embrace of the Serpent leads you on an exploration of Indigenous civilization

Deep in the Amazonian jungle is a people who were brought to Earth on a giant anaconda that descended from the Milky Way. At least, there used to be, until there was no one else to tell the tale to, and it was forgotten. Embrace of the Serpent invites you into a vivid dream from a culture that has been allowed to go extinct. It’s like finding an old photograph, wishing you could step into it to learn its mysteries, and then being able to do so.

In the early 20th century, a shaman named Karamakate (played by Nilbio Torres and Antonio Bolivar), who is the last of his kind, accompanies two scientists, one German and the other American, on their separate quests for a sacred plant. The two stories, inspired by the scientists’ actual journals, are set thirty years apart, but you wouldn’t know; there’s no sense of time in the jungle, only a feeling of eternity and vastness of space. To call their journey an adventure would be misleading—it’s much more of an exploration, and it goes deeper than the literal jungle.

It’s an exploration into a culture that has continuously remained hidden. You can hardly apply Western values to this world, and what’s more, you wouldn’t want to; to see your own identity imposed on these people is revolting and sad. While colonialism is not the film’s only focus, it is shown how civilizations clash when they come in contact, as one, perhaps inevitably, suppresses the other.

A memorable scene involves the German scientist, known as Theo (Jan Bijvoet), showing a compass to the members of a tribe and then realizing his grave mistake. They refuse to give it back; Theo is dismayed, as their original knowledge based mostly on astronomy will now be lost. Other, more extreme situations involve the rubber trade and the Catholic church, as the characters encounter a tyrannical priest who bans Indigenous children from speaking their birth languages, and a psychotic self-proclaimed messiah that recalls Apocalypse Now.

The film makes no attempt to entertain or deliver a traditional narrative and yet is effortlessly awe-inspiring, filming the jungle the way you would film a church. No set can possibly compare to the real thing, and there’s no doubt at any point that it was shot on location, which makes the director’s control over image all the more impressive.

It’s eerily quiet and restrained, and you could even say unemotional, but then you wouldn’t know how to judge. When has Amazonian culture ever been portrayed with such utmost respect and wonderment? How often has a film taken an Amazonian perspective at all, and not just exploited it for its exotic qualities? There is a strangeness to it all, a captivating otherness that will speak to anyone interested in Latin American magical realism.

Only 16 people remember the language spoken by the main characters. The Colombian director, Ciro Guerra, has said in several interviews that the Indigenous people he cast were the only ones he could get, simply because there are so few of them left. Does a falling tree in a forest make a sound if there’s no one to hear it? Does a dying civilization? As long as such films will be made, the answer will be yes.

Release date: March 11, 2016

Directed by: Ciro Guerra

Starring: Nilbio Torres, Jan Bijvoet, Antonio Bolivar, Brionne Davis

Stars: 4

125 minutes

The Witch, a period horror film, is exactly what the genre needs

Several times in the past decade, an independent horror film came along and put to shame any studio-made competition. In fact, all you have to do in order to understand what makes The Witch so unusual and compelling is sit through the previews that precede it. Robert Eggers, a first-time director, has admitted in an interview with Vice to not being particularly fond of horror, and perhaps that’s exactly what the genre needs. When a genre stops reinventing itself, it dies—and fresh blood usually comes from outside the system, not from within.

Adapted from various folktales and records of 17th century New England, The Witch follows a family so deeply religious that they can no longer remain part of their community. Having moved away to the edge of a forest, they start a new life of farming, following scripture the way William (Ralph Ineson), the Puritan father, has interpreted it.

This should be their Eden, but something feels very wrong. Their newborn child disappears midway through a game of peek-a-boo. Their crops start dying. Even the littlest of animals carry an air of menace. Members of the family turn against each other as the oldest daughter, Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), is suspected of being a witch. It is not clear whether the darkness that eventually engulfs these people has arisen from their obscurantist ways or from the ominous forest that looms over them.

The time period works like a charm. The setting alone—one in which illnesses would be treated with bloodletting—is inherently troubling, and if supernatural elements are so much easier to accept when they are set in the distant past, maybe that’s because witchcraft and dark magic really were part of people’s reality in those ages. The film treats superstition as fact because it was commonly accepted as such, which makes for an impressive blending of myth and reality. The sense of authenticity is reinforced by Eggers’ fine ear for old English speech and accents, as well as a remarkable amount of period detail—even the title gets spelled “VVitch” with two “v”s for additional accuracy.

As a horror film, it unsettles more than it terrifies. Working insidiously, like a slow, steady crescendo of impending doom, it lures you in not with jump scares or gore, but with haunting imagery, shocking for its use of both animals and children. The Witch shares Antichrist’s representation of nature as “Satan’s church,” to quote the latter film, but is made with a puritanism not unlike that of its characters. Too often, it teases you with mystery and unease, not always delivering on its promises. Only in its striking conclusion does it finally take the step from the mainstream to the arthouse.

Part of Egger’s art is in putting this near-Shakespearean tragedy in place. First leaving England for a still-unknown New World, and then preferring self-exile to compromise, the patriarch runs his family into a dead-end by pridefully renouncing civilization. Totally isolated in the permanent twilight that they inhabit, the characters find themselves in a place of faith and sin, reality and nightmare, and sometimes just unmistakable but undefinable creepiness. You’re not sure you feel for them, but you might not want to leave their side to wander into these deep dark woods.

Release date: Feb. 19, 2016

Directed by: Robert Eggers

Starring: Anya Taylor-Joy, Ralph Ineson, Kate Dickie, Harvey Scrimshaw

Stars: 4

The new Coen Brothers film takes on ‘50s Hollywood with their trademark panache

The Coen Brothers had partially left the field of comedy to experiment with a western and a folk music drama, from which they have returned unhurt—Hail, Caesar! is classic Coens material, complete with a kidnapping, a ransom and deliciously foolish characters. It’s not their best, but who cares? Such cinematic delights are much too rare to turn down. This is original, unrelenting fun, and if you’re familiar with the Coens’ style and ‘50s Hollywood films, it will be right up your alley.

Hail, Caesar! is set in the Golden Age of Hollywood, right in the studios and backlots and offices where Eddie Mannix (Josh Brolin), a so-called “fixer,” works on getting stars out of trouble and production running smoothly. He may be the most important man in Hollywood, and he’s certainly treated as such, but he goes to confession every day, full of existential doubting. Still, if you’re a film director and your lead actress gets pregnant, but she’s unmarried and can’t say for sure who the father is, Mannix is your man. If the star of your biggest production gets kidnapped, well that’s going to be a bit more complicated, but Mannix may just get to the bottom of it.

That star is Baird Whitlock, played by George Clooney in another looney performance in a Coens film. Clooney has shared in interviews that he’s concerned about the directing duo saying they write these characters specifically with him in mind. He’s right to be concerned, because he fits Whitlock like a glove, making some of the funniest facial expressions you’ll see this year. Is there such a thing as facial comedy? If so, there’s lots of it here—countless characters come and go with few or no lines, but their faces speak with the virtuosity of silent-era actors.

Making a film about Hollywood usually comes with mocking and admiration in equal measure, which is certainly the case here. Scenes of westerns, Biblical epics, musicals and costume dramas are reconstructed with not only a feeling for parody, but a stylistic and technical precision that spells out the directors’ attachment to the era. As you’d expect, there’s also talk of the Cold War, and a subplot that is so uproariously silly, it might finally put to rest any suspicion of a leftist takeover of Hollywood.

Hail, Caesar! is the kind of film where you want to discuss every scene and plot detail, but any trailer—trailers for Coen Brothers films are often masterpieces in themselves—will give you a full feel of what you’re getting without divulging much, and it really is better not to divulge anything about the scene-stealing parts of Alden Ehrenreich and Channing Tatum. The two are total newcomers to the Coens universe, but they get the tone and the looks exactly right. The line “Would that it were so simple” may not mean anything to you now, but once you’ve heard it in the proper context, it proves rather unforgettable. A leitmotiv of sorts that runs through all of the Coen Brothers’ work, it suggests that while life is often strange and absurd, it’s also entirely possible to have a little fun with it.

Release date: Feb. 5, 2016

Directed by: Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

Starring: Josh Brolin, George Clooney, Alden Ehrenreich, Channing Tatum, Scarlett Johansson

Stars: 4

David Homel on how to recapture a book’s spark in another language, and a changing Canadian literary scene

Some of you will have read Flaubert, Kafka or even Tintin in English. Can you name the translator? It’s hardly news that many books you read were originally written in a different language, but for some reason literary translation is an art form you don’t often hear about.

“It shouldn’t be a full-time business, it should be something you do when you find a book you want to [translate],” said David Homel, a part-time instructor at Concordia who is also an award-winning literary translator. Homel, who translates from French to English, came to prominence in the late ‘80s for his work on Dany Laferrière novels such as How to Make Love to a Negro. He has since authored several books of his own, including 2014’s The Fledglings.

“It sounds like you’re just sitting on your butt all day, whether you’re writing or translating, but actually it’s quite physically challenging,” said Homel, noting that the fatigue a translator may feel at the end of their workday is usually a good sign. While a lot of a translator’s work comes down to interpretation, a successful translation must be seamless enough not to pull you out of the story. “Bad translations are the ones that make you aware that they’re translations,” Homel said.

A novelist may not have an ending in mind as they start writing, but a translator is always limited to the original text, which Homel sees as a major disadvantage. This fact is reflected in his personal approach—he never reads a book before he translates it. “That creates a certain excitement and tension and energy,” he said.

Homel practices what he refers to as “strong translation,” meaning that he is usually unconcerned with finding a perfect equivalent for every word, and aims to replicate a text’s emotional tone instead. Having to take on someone else’s voice, a voice that may be very different from your own, is what Homel said makes translation comparable to acting. “It’s a lot of people to be at the same time,” he said.

Of course, knowing the author you translate is a plus. “In a couple of cases, and I’ve been lucky that way, I’ve become truly friends with the writers I’ve translated,” Homel said. “You should have some affinity with the voice of the person that you’re translating. If you don’t, sometimes it’s just mechanical … When I set out to translate a book, I like to meet the [writer], I like to just listen to [them] talk and hear the sound of [their] voice, because then when I read the book, it’s like [they’re] talking to me. And then I can sort of talk back to [them] in my translation.”

It’s uncommon for translators to be able to personally meet the authors they work with, but the fact that Montreal is a bilingual environment makes it a unique place for literary translation. “It’s a real phenomenon, and it doesn’t happen everywhere in the world, or maybe anywhere in the world, where your neighbour, or the person down the street, is translating your book into another language,” Homel said.

There is also a long history to literary translation in Montreal, and Canada in general, and much progress has been made since the ‘70s, as far as Homel is concerned. “There was a time when translators had this self-appointed political task of keeping the country together and allowing French and English Canadians to read each other’s work,” Homel said. “It was almost like a patriotic or political duty to help bridge the so-called ‘two solitudes.’ People don’t think like that anymore, they’re just looking for books they want to read. And that’s probably better.”

As Homel explained, part of the progress also seems to come from the fact that Quebec has allowed itself to explore English-Canadian literature in a way it previously hadn’t. “For a long time, English Canada was translating [creative work] from Quebec, but Quebec wasn’t doing the same thing. Now, French publishers here are doing many more English-Canadian novels … They now believe that English Canada has an imagination that’s worth looking into.”

David Homel and Marianne Champagne, who translated his novel The Fledglings into French, will take part in a bilingual discussion on translation on Feb. 10 at 7 p.m. at the Atwater Library Auditorium. Admission is free.

The French-Turkish Oscar-nominated Mustang is a moving tale of lost innocence

Oh, how sweet is the carelessness of a summer break in the countryside when you’re young, wild and beautiful. Such is life at first for the main characters of Mustang—Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s first film—but that would all soon change. The five sisters run around in the sun, their long hair flowing in the wind, toward the sea. Some boys carry them on their shoulders as they play fight in the water. When the girls get home, the whole village has heard of their proximity with boys. Their grandmother tells them they have dishonoured the family and will be locked up.

The film is set in Turkey, but it feels instantly familiar in that it has a fable-like tone, far from the naturalism one could expect. The sisters are orphans, subject to a controlling uncle who decides it is time to marry them off. These girls are more than inseparable—they are so united that they are almost the same. When one is attacked, all of them are. And yet, they will have to be torn apart from each other. While the film shifts between adventure and tragedy, the story feels particularly delicate, like a flower that slowly loses its five petals.

What may catch your interest is that the director brought European sensibilities to a setting presented here as a conservative patriarchal community. That blending of cultures seems to speak not only of Ergüven’s own status as a French-Turkish citizen, but also of the complexities of a country that is simultaneously part of two continents. The girls are so free and uninhibited, it is a shock to find them suddenly imprisoned and bereft of any free will. Perhaps that is commentary on a country that granted women the right to vote before France—and Quebec—did, but whose recent leaders have expressed alarming opinions on women’s rights, some of which are heard on a T.V. broadcast during the film.

Based partly on the director’s personal experiences in her home country and partly on her observations, Mustang remains very classical in its storytelling, relying on touchingly soft imagery, a compelling score by Warren Ellis and most of all the performances of the five young actors who dominate the cast. While they don’t look alike enough to be perfectly believable as sisters, they have genuine chemistry with each other and a comfortable screen presence. Never shy of the camera or their cast members, they seem to celebrate femininity with every move and every gaze.

Narrated with a certain sadness by the youngest sister, Lale (Günes Sensoy), who dreams of Istanbul and a different fate for her siblings and herself, the film can be taken as a half-rebellion and a half-surrender, in which captive characters can challenge a man, but will ultimately have to adjust themselves into a system they cannot change. Mustang could have benefited from a less straightforward narrative and looked closer into plot points that are only hinted at, but it’s an undeniably effective drama that is also, for all its difficult passages, a pleasure to watch.