Waiting at TIFF and The Imitation Game
The Toronto International Film Festival is a festival about waiting. There are films and celebrities but it’s mostly about waiting. You wait for the festival to arrive, you wait for the various announcements, you wait for the name of celebrities who will be in Toronto, you wait to pick your movies, you wait in line to pick up your tickets, you wait in line to catch a glimpse or photo or autograph of a celebrity and finally, you wait in line to see a movie.
There’s a lot of waiting. The downtown streets surrounding the Bell Lightbox at King and John remain crowded for the ten days as people jostled behind barriers. TIFF is a festival that bills itself as the people’s festival and brings fans from all over the world to see world premieres, documentaries and films that will never open in the Canadian market. The trick of it is that you don’t have to be a member of the media or the movie industry to participate in the excitement. You just have to be patient, plan and wait.
Diane, Kath and I decided to see The Imitation Game, based on British mathematician and cryptographer Alan Turing. His work broke the Engima machine, used by Nazi Germany to send encrypted messages to their troops.
It’s not as simple as deciding to see this movie. The movie had buzz thanks to its cast – Benedict Cumberbatch, Matthew Goode, Kiera Knightley and Mark Strong – creating enough demand for the festival to add a third screening. Once we decided to see the movie, I got up at 7 a.m. and $75 dollars and 15 minutes later, had three tickets. We were going to see The Imitation Game at 10 p.m. Overpriced definitely. Worth it?
That night, we met up at The Friar, a pub up at Richmond and John for dinner and drinks. It would be another three hours before the movie started and we had time to kill. To get into the pub, you have to walk down a short set of stairs where you are greeted with a low-light space decorated in British tat.
Reinforced with food and drink (both unremarkable but filling), we slowly wandered down two main streets to the Princess of Wales theatre. As we walked past Adelaide Street, we saw the tail end of a line and we thought it was the rush line – the line you join with the hope of getting a last minute ticket.
We passed the start of the rush line and went to the main doors of the theatre on King Street. There, we were told that the line was curving nearly a block. It was 45 minutes before the start of the movie. We hustled back to where we nearly started – up to Adelaide to join that long, long line.
Once we were at the end of the line, it was, yes, a matter of waiting. We would creep forward a few metres at a time, stop, then creep forward again. It was dark and the temperature was dropping. I was very close to leaving and eating the cost of a $25 ticket but the excitement of my friends and the other movie fans kept me in line.
Finally, the line kept moving until we were in the theatre, heading up to the first balcony. My friends and I got seats and waited for the movie to start.
With TIFF, the previews aren’t of other movies but of the sponsors and volunteers who support and work the festival. They’re as long as regular previews but infinitely more boring. Finally, after waiting an hour, the movie began.
The Imitation Game is very-well acted but suffered from a lack of strong storytelling and direction. There were competing stories and that led to a movie that swung across different moods and tones. Yet it seemed to work for quite a few people as it got The People’s Choice Award today.
After the movie, there was yet another line to get out of the theatre. Was it worth it? It wasn’t as we all had problems with the movie itself. Yet it was, partly. The movie might have been the focal point but TIFF offers the chance to watch a movie surrounded by fans of the art. It’s possibly the only time you can watch a movie without surrounding chatter or that one annoying person who didn’t turn off their phone.
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