Film Reviews

By Rob Ferraz 

Forgiveness: Stories for Our Time

Directed By Johanna Lunn

The phrase “senseless violence” is one we hear so often that it’s lost much of its meaning and impact. When watching director Johanna Lunn’s film, however one gets grimly reacquainted with it.

Forgiveness: Stories for Our Time tells the stories of four people whose lives were permanently changed through acts of violence.

It opens with in Toronto, where Lesley Parrot talks about living in the Summerhill neighbourhood and how much she and her family enjoyed it. She then starts to talk about her 11 year old daughter, Allison, and how she was always smiling, happy, cheerful, and friendly.

At this point, the feeling of dread creeps up your spine as you know that the story will soon take a turn for the worse. And it does. She goes on to describe the last time she spoke to her daughter in 1985 before she was raped and murdered.

This sets the tone for the rest of the film as three others tell similar stories. One is Alan McBride, a man in Northern Ireland whose wife and young child were victims of an IRA bomb. Another is Anglican priest Julie Nicholson, whose daughter was killed in the London subway bombings in 2005. And the final interviewee is a woman from rural Newfoundland named Anne Marie Hagan who, as a teenager, watched her father murdered by a schizophrenic neighbour.

Through the interviews, we get an uncomfortably close look at the range of feelings experienced by these people and their eventual ability, or inability to forgive those responsible.

The choice of subjects who were the victims of politically-motivated violence is a timely one. Some may wonder why no one who was affected by 9/11 was involved. But if you consider the fact that that tragedy has been so heavily scrutinized for the past six years, it’s easy to see why. And despite what some may think, the London bombings were clearly part of the ripple of the aftermath of that day.

This is a powerful film and although its heart wrenching and difficult to watch in some points, it delivers by doing what good documentaries ought to do; it makes the viewer think.

 Driven By Dreams

Directed by Serge Giguere

Driven By Dreams film follows the lives of six Quebecers ranging in age from their 72 to 94 years old. The choice of subjects is interesting in that these are normal people living out the twilight years of their lives. One is a nun who scoots around the convent in her motorized cart and reminisces about her days as a music teacher; another is an antique shop owner who specializes in French Canadian furniture; one builds and flies model planes and operates an animal rescue sanctuary; one is an artist, while another is retired although he still helps his son cut wood on their ramshackle farm property.

Intercut with the interviews are scenes of an amateur senior’s orchestra which specializes in big band tunes.

Veteran doc director Serge Giguere does a good job of taking the everyday and using it to tell an interesting story. Although none of the subjects’ stories would likely sustain a feature length film on its own, when blended together to show how life can pass us by, the result is alternately uplifting and melancholy.

They are all well-aware of their own mortality and discuss it without any dramatic flair. They know it is coming but refuse to let it get in the way of how they live their lives as they describe their ups and downs and aches and pains. It’s this frankness that helps make the film interesting; although at times it’s somewhat depressing.

Things occasionally drag a bit and although the film isn’t quite 90 minutes in length, it feels somewhat long. There’s a tendency by the filmmaker to add in transitions in which there is no dialogue accompanied by some action that aren’t all that exciting to watch. Their inclusion could be a reflection of the slowed-down lifestyle of the film’s cast, but all it does is slow down the film. That’s not to say that this is boring, but it could’ve been about 10 minutes shorter without losing any of its poignancy.

Driven By Dreams is the kind of film that all ages can appreciate because even though the people in it are elderly, it’s really about life and living it to the fullest, no matter what.