The Lookout (Director Scott Frank, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Jeff Daniels)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt has come a long way from the goofy, somewhat nerdy and culturally confused alien/kid who grew up on “Third Rock From the Sun.”

The film that first brought him to my attention was “Brick,” a neo-film noire directed by Rian Johnson. It’s set in a high school and comes complete with a clever, snappy vernacular invented for the students, a teen-aged femme fatale and jocks, druggies and art geeks all convincingly transformed into feuding factions.

Gordon –Levitt is the protagonist; intense and single-minded as he penetrates headfirst into the dark world of high school crime to find out who killed his ex-girlfriend, and get revenge.

I think I was three quarters of the way into the film before I finally figured out that he was the kid from Third Rock, and I was suitably impressed by the transformation.

In “The Lookout,” too, Gordon-Levitt seems to crawl inside a new skin and transform himself into Chris Pratt, a troubled, disabled young man who once had everything – money, a beautiful girlfriend and a promising athletic career.

“It only happens once a year, and then they die,” he says at the start of the film, while racing down a country road in the middle of the night with his friends. He then switches off the headlights, revealing a mesmerizing sky filled with fireflies.

Soon after, tragedy strikes, and Chris’s life changes dramatically.

We catch up with him a few years later. He now lives with a physical and mental disability that has left him only a shell of the high school hero he once was, and he simply exists, bitter at the memory of what he once had and struggling just to survive, cohabitating -- and co-depending -- with Lewis, his blind roommate played expertly by Jeff Daniels.

Increasingly bitter at his life – or lack thereof as he sees it – Chris is targeted by bank robbers who rope him in with the promise of friendship and power.

“Whoever has the money, has the power,” says Gary, the charismatic and charming but still creepy leader of the gang, played by Matthew Goode (Match Point, Chasing Liberty.)

With little to lose, as he sees it, Chris is easy pickings, and becomes the key to their plan due to his part-time job as a night cleaner at a small town bank.

I didn’t know what to expect with this film. I couldn’t predict where it was going to go. At one point, I thought it would end with Chris helping pull off the heist, then living with the guilt from his involvement.

At another point I was sure he would be killed and the film would end darkly and realistically with bloodshed.

But you quickly realize that little is predictable or simple for Chris – whose disabilities make it nearly impossible for him to carry out simple tasks, such as sequencing what he did during the day, much less formulating a plan of action and carrying it out.

As a result the film isn’t predictable or simple either. Chris’s personal challenges give the film a sense of frustrated urgency and lend it a volatile, exciting quality that kept me on the edge of my seat until the dramatic conclusion – much like “Brick.”

Watch out for Gordon-Levitt. Thus far his film choices have been impeccable, and it’s refreshing to see a young, promising actor who hasn’t yet sold out to the highest bidder, but seems committed to making good films.

Here’s hoping he keeps it up!

The Danish Poet (Director Torill Kove)

I gained a new appreciation for storytelling when I lived in North Africa. The people of Morocco and Mauritania maintain an oral culture that we in the west have lost, for the most part, in the age of television and the Internet and iPods and Wiis.

I remember sitting on a train from Marrakech to Casablanca, listening as a tiny, old, frail looking woman held an audience of young businessmen spellbound for 20 minutes as she told them a story about someone in the market trying to swindle her earlier in the day.

Another time, my friend Ahmed and I sat in a café in the medina in Casablanca, and he listened for ages as I recounted the beautiful story of the Prodigal Son – at the end, when the father runs out to meet his son who has squandered his inheritance and come home in shame, there were tears in Ahmed’s eyes and he was genuinely touched.

It was amazing! I don’t think that would never happen here.

But I think inherently, deep inside, we still have an appreciation for the simple, beautiful, storytelling of the type done in “The Danish Poet” -- an animated short film with Canadian connections.

The film, which probes the nature of coincidence, is a joint venture between a Norwegian director, the National Film Board of Canada, and is set largely in Denmark. I, obviously, am from Canada, and two close friends whom I travelled with in North Africa, are from Denmark and Norway. Weird eh?

I watched “The Danish Poet” today at one of the personal viewing stations at the NFB on Richmond Street – to which my friend bought me a yearly membership for my birthday. Thanks Amelia!

The film, which is only 15 minutes long, starts with the Scandinavian-sounding narrator posing some of the key questions of the film over a softly glowing, animated starry sky.

“I used to think everyone was adopted from outer space,” she says. “That before we were born we were little seeds floating around in the sky waiting for someone to come and get us. The selection process was random and there was no rhyme or reason as to who our parents would be. In a way I was right because our chance to be born hinges on our parents.”

Then she begins telling the story about the fascinating series of coincidences and timely intersections that led to her parents meeting, all the while providing very funny insight into Scandinavian relations, and with brilliantly simple, mesmerizing animation that I couldn’t look away from.

A Danish poet named Kasper has writer’s block. At his wits end, he visits a psychologist who tells him to take a vacation.

“But where can you go if you have no money and you don’t speak French?” he replies.

“What about Norway? It’s cheap and they’re practically Danish,” the doctor replies (It’s a joke my Danish friend Daniel would find hilarious, but my Norwegian friend Gjermund would reject outright.)

So Kasper takes the advice and starts doing some research about Norway. He comes across an epic novel by a Norwegian writer that tells the tale of a young man who falls in love with a girl who is engaged. Despite her father’s wishes she breaks off the engagement to marry the young man, and regrets the decision for the rest of her life.

Inspired by the story, Kasper plans a trip to meet the author.

I’ve been to the Copenhagen harbour where Kasper sets out from for Norway, and it’s captured beautifully and realistically – though in caricature-style -- in the film, complete with colourful, tall narrow buildings, beer-swilling, jolly Danes and vivid, watercolour skies, contrasting with the solid, chunky colours used in the animation.

After arriving in Norway, Kasper gets caught in the rain, and takes shelter at a local farm, owned by a family, it turns out, that is related to the writer whom Kasper was planning to visit.

He quickly falls in love with Ingeborg, the farmer’s daughter, who “tends to the chickens and romantically maps the stars above the farm,” and regains his inspiration.

“Ingeborg you changed my life. Ingeborg please be my wife,” he writes in a poem dedicated to her.

But she reveals that she, like the heroine in the novel that inspired Sigrid to come to Norway, is also engaged.

“This is exactly like when Kristen Laurens can’t marry Erilund because she’s engaged to Syran. But she breaks up with him and marries Erilund anyway in spite of her father,” Kasper says, excitedly recounting the plot line of the famous novel.

“Not exactly,” replies Ingeborg sadly, explaining that she has read the book, and has learned from the moral of the story and won’t make the same mistake.

Though her husband is killed randomly by a falling cow soon after, a series of post-man errors and goat incidents prevent the news from reaching Kasper and much time passes before the two are brought back together again and their romance is once again sparked – this time by the death of the writer, whose funeral they both attend, though perhaps unwittingly.

“You must go to the funeral,” Ingeborg’s friend tells her.
“Why?” she asks.
“Because she was your relative.”
“But she’s Danish!”
“When a relative dies, you go to the funeral, whether she’s Danish or not,” she is told matter-of-factly – a joke my Norwegian friend would appreciate.

And, thus Kasper and Ingeborg begin their happily-ever-after life together in true Hans Christian Andersen style.

Later, in the final coincidence of the film, the same friend who urged Ingeborg to attend the funeral, while travelling to visit the couple in Copenhagen, meets a young poet on the train who is on his way to Copenhagen to gain inspiration from Sigrid, who has become quite a successful writer.

So, like any good old-fashioned story, we have some clever twists along the way that eventually lead to a happy ending, and an intriguing exploration of coincidence and fate and how they affect our lives.

“Had it not been for the Danish poet and Sigrid Undset, a rainy summer in Norway, a slippery barn plank, a careless mailman, a hungry goat, a broken thumb and a crowded train, my parents might never have met at all. And who knows, I might still be a little seed floating around in the sky, waiting for someone to come and get me.”

This film won the Academy Award for best animated short and is definitely worth paying $2 at the NFB to go see. I recommend it!

Mother Night -- 1961 (In memory of Kurt Vonnegut)

My father first introduced me to Pink Floyd when I was about 11 years old.

I remember listening to it on my Walkman, lying back on the bed late at night. I expected rebellious rock-and-roll but instead I got helicopters and screaming, the sound of a cash register clanging open and heavy, deep soundscapes that reverberated in stereo sound from one ear to the other.

I thought: “What is this??” and wondered if I was too young to be listening to it. (I probably was)

But my dad had recommended it and that carries great weight between a son and a father, so I kept trying, kept listening, and slowly I began to understand, appreciate, and finally to love that album, and the band -- the kind of appreciation that some people call blissful, because it takes work to get there, but is always worth the effort.

I had a similar experience the first time I picked up a Kurt Vonnegut novel, also on my dad’s recommendation, and again, probably at too young an age.

I think it was “Slaughterhouse-Five” – a semi-biographical account of Vonnegut’s experience during the Second World War, combining science fiction, satire and black humour in a tale that mixes time travel and a first hand account of the aftermath of the fire bombing of Dresden.

As with Pink Floyd, my senses were bombarded and I was overwhelmed and I wasn’t sure I liked it. But I was stubborn, and somewhere about halfway through I began to see the beauty in the short sentences and clever vocabulary and simple but smart storytelling that painted such vivid pictures.

Since then I’ve read almost all of his novels – many of them several times. And in honour of his death just over one month ago at 84, I have just finished re-reading “Mother Night” for the third time.

What a brilliant book. I recommend all of Vonnegut’s work – you should read them and own them too – but Mother Night, as a novel and a concept, is incredible.

Vonnegut’s introduction to the novel begins as follows: “This is the only story of mine whose moral I know. I don’t think it’s a marvelous moral, I simply happen to know what it is: We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

It’s about a man named Howard W. Campbell Jr., an American playwright living in Germany, married to a beautiful German actress named Helga Noth, prior to the Second World War.

The story begins in an Israeli prison where Campbell is awaiting trial on war crimes, and writing his memoirs, but as he tells his story the scene quickly shifts to Greenwich Village where Campbell lived-out the post-war years in obscurity, for the most part all alone, his family dead and his existence forgotten.

As the story develops, we learn that Campbell is considered a war criminal because of the work he did as a propagandist for the Nazis. He was an anti-Semitic radio broadcaster all through the war, and was responsible for some of the most fantastic, unbelievable lies ever fabricated about the Jewish people.

But we also learn that before the war began, Campbell was recruited by an American spy to broadcast secret messages – using strategic pauses and stumbled sentences as his means of delivery -- over the radio to U.S. agents, which he did consistently throughout the entire war.

“From the simplicity of most of my instructions, I gather that I was usually giving yes or no answers to questions that had been put to the spy apparatus. Occasionally, as during the build up for the Normandy invasion, my instructions were more complicated and my phrasing and diction sounded like the last stages of double pneumonia,” he explains.

Simultaneously, Campbell was the best spy the Americans ever had, and the greatest Nazi who ever lived.

The story raises big questions about truth and identity and whether an inherently good act can compensate for a lie, but in typical Vonnegut style it’s caustic and cynical and bitterly funny all at the same time, and provides no clear answers to any of the questions it poses.

I like the fact that the story begins with a moral -- a simple, humble truth presented more as a nugget of wisdom than as a point in a sermon, then sets about proving it in gentle terms through Campbell’s life.

I like that style of story telling. Vonnegut was a master at it, as proven in Player Piano, Sirens of Titan, Deadeye Dick, Breakfast of Champions, and many more.

It’s sad to say goodbye.

But here goes…

Goodbye.

Kurt Vonnegut
Born: Nov. 11, 1922, Indianapolis, Indiana
Died: April 11, 2007, New York

Spider-Man 3 (2007, director Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire, Kirsten Dunst)

I had such high hopes for Spider-Man 3. I looked forward to it for months, imagining how the third and supposedly final installment in the trilogy would build on the plot lines of the previous two, further explore the relationship with Green Goblin and delve into Spider-Man’s dark struggle with Venom.

There was so much potential!

And it was such a disappointment.

Now, to be fair there were some positive characteristics to this film, and I’ll start there just to avoid bumming myself out all over again.

The relationship with Harry Osborn – son of the Green Goblin who takes on the role after his father dies – is treated really well. Harry’s deep resentment and bitterness is still there – affecting his friendship with Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) and eventually spilling over into his romance with Mary Jane Watson (Kirsten Dunst).

But as both Peter and Harry overcome their demons the relationship comes full circle and friendship eventually prevails. And this is nice to see, because through the series, despite their ups and downs, I always got the feeling they cared pretty deeply for each other.

Hmm. What else was good? Oh, the technology definitely drives this film. The fight scenes are amazing. The introduction of Sandman – though definitely an unnecessary complication to the story – provides some of the most incredible CG seen yet in the trilogy. One very cool scene in particular has Spidey and Sandman fighting in a sewer – with some very cool melting involved.

Also, Venom is done pretty well, despite being played by Topher Grace – Erik from “That Seventies Show” – whose character doesn’t exactly break new ground from that role.

But my overwhelming feeling walking out of the film was…huh??

My friends Jed, Ahmeda and Jared and I stood around for half an hour outside the Rainbow Cinema with puzzled looks on our faces, analyzing all the things that went wrong, and wondering if director Sam Raimi had forgotten to do test screenings before releasing the film.

I mean, at one point, meant to be the emotional climax, as a weeping Parker holds his dying friend in his arms and the camera zooms in on his emotion-wracked face – everyone in the cinema broke into spontaneous laughter. I was too upset at how painfully bad the scene was to actually laugh, but I couldn’t blame them for doing so – it was really ridiculous.

Parker cries about 10 times in the film, and it’s just too much.

I was expecting the film to really focus on Parker/Spider-Man’s internal and external battle with Venom – the evil alien force that gives him new powers but threatens to turn him into a villain.

This was a great opportunity to do what the Spider-Man franchise has always done well – explore the self confidence issues and personal struggles Peter Parker has always dealt with, providing a really interesting reflection to his super-hero side.

But instead, there’s a 20-minute montage in the middle of the film with Parker – sporting a cheesy new emo-style haircut and black clothes – strutting around John Travolta style, leering at girls and jutting his crotch out at creepy angles.

And that’s supposed to be how the Venom persona affects Spider-Man?? They could have done something so much darker, and so much better.

My solution to the problems of this film are as follows:

* Cut out some characters. Sandman, though I loved how your face got grinded away sandblaster-style against a moving subway, you were an unnecessary complication. My apologies to Thomas Hayden Church of “Wings” and “Sideways” fame, who actually did a pretty good job!
* Topher Grace’s role as Venom needs to be darker. He needs to be less annoying, but more evil.
* The whole Staying Alive montage needs to GO!

In good conscience, I can’t recommend going to see this film. But, on the other hand, the trilogy has become such a part of the pop culture fabric of this decade, that you might regret not seeing it on the big screen.

I leave the choice in your hands. But always remember, “with great power, comes great responsibility.”
-- Ben Parker

Artists for Action

There’s something good, something real and revolutionary and anti-establishment about artists and creative people and those with a desire to effect change, getting together to discuss how to bring about a better life.

It’s inspiring and grassroots, and never fails to leave me thinking ‘Yes! This is what we’re here for!’

That’s how I felt Tuesday night, spilling out onto Gerrard Street East from the cozy Abrams Studio at Ryerson University, after experiencing Artists for Action, a night of performances and discussion all on the theme of social justice, with the proceeds going to PEDRRU, a Ugandan NGO.

My friend Kathy Lewis organized it along with Sarah Fregeau and Irene Whittaker-Cumming, and I give them props for doing so because it’s never easy to get a dozen or so creative, artsy types to meet deadlines and arrive on time, let alone organize a creative, eclectic night of performances that somehow works coherently.

She pulled it off though, and for that I salute her!

After a brief introduction by Kathy and Antonio Cayonne, the night started with an emotionally charged performance by spoken-word artist Araya Mengaesha.

Spoken-word is one of those mediums that can really flop or fly – and in the hands of this capable young artist, it flew.

I was carried away by his first piece, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. It personified rebellion, describing an observer’s journey into an underground gathering of revolutionaries, the emotions, the stocky, nondescript speaker who brought the crowd to a crescendo with his message of freedom, and finally the smash and crash as windows were shattered and tear gas filled the room and finally, as a club comes down on the observer’s neck and he’s rendered unconscious, having scribbled down only two words on his notepad …

And perhaps the brilliance of this piece is the ending -– we don’t find out what those two words are, and we’re left to imagine what, for us, they would have been.

Thank you Araya. The delivery itself was a thing of beauty – intense, impassioned, poetic and from somewhere deep inside. I wondered how he could keep the tears from his eyes as he poured this out in words, pounding his chest for emphasis.

It brought me back to one of the first major events I covered as a reporter – a massive Ontario Coalition Against Poverty rally in the downtown core of Toronto. I was a small town journalism student and rode into Toronto on a bus with a bunch of activists –- and I came filled with big ideals about objectivity and journalistic integrity and whatnot.

But there were times throughout the day that I, like the man in the piece, filling the role of an observer, a recorder of events, couldn’t keep my fist from slamming punches into the air along with the electric crowds around me, demanding something better for those who have the least.

I came home with a new perspective on what it means to be empathetic and objective and a new appreciation for those who face off with authorities to make their voices heard.

Yeah, Araya, you captured the organized mayhem that occurs.

But beyond the spoken word, the night boasted a host of talented performers. Antonio and Dan Chapman-Smith prompted us to think about what art really is and how it can affect us and the world around us as a force for change.

Irene Whittaker-Cumming’s "Asante Sana" took her experiences working at an orphanage in Kenya and turned them into a modern dance piece that conjured up images of destruction, sorrow, connection to the Earth, rebirth, passion, progress and joy that made me miss Africa so, so badly.

She performed with Miranda Forbes, Sarah Fregeau, and Andrea Lithgow – all of whom expertly avoided the massive beam located smack in the middle of the stage area until you almost forgot it was there.

Then "Stephanie Street," a grim, intense, and challenging (five?) act play about helping the homeless and our often wrong-headed approach to doing so gave me some sober second thought. It was performed excellently by Warren Bain, Stephanie Bye, Michael Iliadis, Araya Mengaesha and Claudia Yiu –despite some minor technical issues.

Aviva Zimmerman performed what I think was part of a piece she put together for the Fringe Festival, called "Huffing Lysol," that was an entertaining and thought-provoking look at mass media and advertising and how the images we’re bombarded with affect our brains.

Ellen Hurley’s "Tipping Point" monologue took a different approach to the social justice theme, speaking with the voice of a dying planet and an Amazon rainforest that is facing a crucial juncture – a grim, critical mass moment at which the total destruction of the forest, the “earth’s lungs” will soon be unavoidable unless drastic change takes place.

And finally Antonio rounded out the night with some spoken word of his own.

Perhaps the most memorable part though, was the discussion that followed – artists and audience discussing the ideas and arguments that were rendered on stage, challenging each other to make a difference and find that ephemeral means of making art make a difference.

In a way, we were living out that theme of revolution, rebellion and grass roots movement that kept coming up throughout the night – and we personified, I think, that room full of rebels fighting against a dark, unnamed enemy that Araya described so well in the opening performance.

In some small way, we made progress towards that better life.

The Science of Sleep (Michael Gondry, 2006)

Sometimes, when I try to look at a star – I can see it clearly out of the corner of my eye, or I can catch it in my peripheral vision – but when I try to focus on it, it sort of evaporates and there just isn’t enough to focus on, even though I know it’s there.

That’s the way it is with my dreams too. I have a tendency to forget them immediately after I experience them. I wake up and the dream is there, so real I have trouble believing I didn’t just live through it – then in almost measurable increments it slips away piece by piece until it’s gone.

In The Science of Sleep, Stephane, a Mexican who returns to Paris to live with his French mother, has the opposite problem.

Since his childhood, his mother explains to a friend, Stephane, played by Gael Garcia Bernal, has “inverted” dream life and waking life – mixing the two together until he is unsure which is which.

The power of his imagination lends his dreams a sharp, vivid realness that he can’t escape, even outside of sleep, and that draws the viewer into the crazy cut and paste world of his imagination.

This tendency begins to complicate his life when he falls in love with Stephanie -- Charlotte Gainsbourg – his new neighbour across the hall, and begins confusing their real life interactions with those he has only imagined.

Michael Gondry, who expertly directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, along with a ton of music videos, takes us right inside Stephane’s dreams. And you feel like you’re there.

Using recycled, everyday materials like milk cartons, toilet paper tubes and cellophane, Gondry creates beautiful make-believe worlds that are so dream-like they help me recapture pieces of the ones I forgot.

There’s a beautiful scene where Stephane and Stephanie become excited about a project they want to work on together with old packing materials and old toys she has around her apartment. Their enthusiasm is infectious, as they describe how cotton balls could become clouds, pieces of cellophane could serve as the sea and how a small wooden boat could be filled with a forest to create a “vegetable Noah’s Ark,” Stephane explains breathlessly.
And as they run around picking up materials and planning it out the scene comes to life in simple, child-like animated goodness.

I got excited too and found myself planning my own little animated film sequence and convincing myself I was actually going to do it (mine involved a Lite-Brite).

His favourite dream involves a TV show where he is the host, camera-man and director, and the people in his life are the guests.

Stephane’s dreams run his life – to the detriment of his job cutting and pasting generic calendar components together – his strange pseudo-relationship with Stephanie, and even his day-to-day activities.

He never really outgrew the imaginary friends and imaginary life he created for himself when he was a kid, and as a result the cute factor wears off quick and he becomes somewhat frustrating to watch.

The aesthetic appeal of this film makes it worth watching – it really will blow your mind in a manageable way – but the story is a bit weak, the breakthrough you hope Stephane will make never really happens, and the ending is unsatisfying.

That being said it’s a feast for the senses, with dialogue flipping seamlessly between English, French and Spanish, beautifully rendered dream sequences and a meshing of fantasy and reality that will have you saying “what the..?” in a good way.

Why the Banff Mountain Film Festival helps me survive Toronto

I’ve been inspired for three days now, full of dreams of the mountains and adventures and freedom, thinking back to places I’ve been and those that capture my imagination and call out to me to visit.

It’s pretty much the way I feel every year for a week or so after the Banff Mountain Film Festival comes to town. I’ve been going to the festival for years now – five of the last six I think -- and have sought it out in Kingston, Barrie and Toronto, depending on the location closest to wherever I happened to be living at the time. It’s always been worth the drive and never fails to leave me dreaming of a better life.

That’s how I feel now, after my brother Ben and I attended the festival last Saturday at the Bloor Cinema.

The festival ran three nights in a row here in Toronto, with a different lineup of adventure or outdoors-inspired films each night, running over about a four-hour span.

The roster typically includes a mix of six or seven Canadian and international films, ranging from a couple of minutes in length to an hour or so, and there are usually a couple of slightly eccentric entries that don’t fit neatly into the genre, but usually still work pretty well with the overall theme.

There were three films this year that really captured my imagination and have occupied my thoughts for nearly a week now.

The first was called “Asiemut,” a film made by a young couple from Quebec as they travelled by bicycle through (check my geography) Mongolia, China, Tibet, Nepal and India – 8,000 kilometres – and got through thick and thin together and came out stronger on the other side. A truly inspiring film and a really likeable pair of Quebecois (not that that’s unusual.)

The second, and this fits in the category of “Adventure?? Film” is called “The Ride of the Merganser. Mergansers are a diving duck that call, among other places, the northwestern portion of the Great Lakes region of Canada and the U.S. home.

They’re pretty elusive and as such there isn’t a ton of footage of them in their natural habitat – and there’s definitely nothing like this. ROTM, a 15 minute film, follows a female as she lays eggs, hatches her ducklings, and urges them one by one to make the long leap from the nest down to the pond below – all in the space of 24 hours.

It’s so cool! Clever narration, a smart soundtrack and brilliant use of remote cameras make this one of the most purely entertaining films of the festival, for sure.

But my far-and-away favourite was undoubtedly “First Ascent: Didier versus The Cobra.”

Most of this hour-long film takes place in Squamish, B.C., and centres around Didier Berthod, a Swiss rock climber, and his attempts to climb “The Cobra” – a section of rock split from top to bottom by a narrow crack just large enough to get a toe and a couple of fingers into in places, and possibly the toughest crack climb in the world.

But the documentary-style film quickly becomes about more than achieving that one finite goal. Didier, who is living at a youth hostel and cleaning rooms to pay for his stay so he can hang around and climb, is instantly lovable, and the film-maker does an incredible job of bringing us into Didier’s life and showing us who he is, beyond being a world-class climber who appears to have been born on a rock somewhere.

At one point he tells the camera “I’m a Christian, but not a very good one,” and you can’t help but admire his ability to wear his heart on his sleeve.

The film follows Didier as he attempts, over and over again, to scale The Cobra (which had never been climbed), to the heartbreaking moment when he fails on his very last attempt before he has to fly home to Switzerland.

The story then takes us to Europe, where he climbs the toughest crack-climb in Europe, but only after Didier – a pure traditionalist -- removes the bolts that someone has driven into the rock to make the climb easier.

Then, after a year, he comes back to Squamish, and your pulse begins to quicken as you anticipate, finally, his success on the still-unclimbed route.

But like a quick-draw coming loose it all comes crashing down on his first day back, when he injures his knee and learns he won’t be climbing for months.

Then Didier has an epiphany, explaining that he had convinced himself his desire to climb The Cobra, to be the first, was the natural result of his love of the outdoors and the connection he feels to the rock.

But now, he says, he realizes it was all about “the glory.” He wanted to be the first. He wanted to be the best, and God used the opportunity to humble him.

“It’s as if He was saying ‘No Didier, it’s not for you,’” he says. And there were moments, at “the crux” of the climb – a one-finger hold that transitions to a slippery overhanging right-hand hold, where he felt as if the angels were gently pushing him down, because they knew it wasn’t his time.

“So, instead, I am here to be God’s witness,” Didier says with his typical, simple wisdom that runs deep.

Ahh man, it’s a beautiful film, and even writing about it makes me want to go out and climb a rock, or paint a picture or write a poem or move back to Banff.

See, that’s why I’ve driven halfway across the province to attend the BMFF – because it always breaks my heart and makes me cry and in the words of the great Wade Davis, helps me “understand what it means to be human, and to be alive.”

I’m getting carried away but you get the idea. If you like the outdoors, or have the tiniest remnant of an adventurous spirit left in your black corporate soul, or if you just need to escape this damn city and you don’t have the means to get out – do yourself a huge favour and go to the festival next year.

You won’t regret it.