EIFF: Rabbit so good it needs to be proud to be Canadian
Films like Rabbit make it easy on reviewers. When the material and performances are as nearly flawless as they are here, the only thing that needs to be decided is how much to gush – so get ready.
This film could easily be the best dramatic feature at this year’s Edmonton International Film Festival. It screens this Saturday at 4:30 pm.
This Canadian production written and directed by Jesse James Miller is a remarkable piece of work from beginning to end: A gritty, dark and brooding tale of a troubled past long forgotten, where the sins of a father are being revisited upon a son named Michael Kelly – played by Derek Hamilton with a smoldering and steadily intense perfection. In the hands of a lesser actor, such a conflicted character could fall easy prey to being overplayed and entering the realm of becoming unintentionally humourous. Hamilton is so in control of his character that his performance is can be compared to Ryan Gosling’s in The Place Beyond The Pines or Matt Dillon’s Drugstore Cowboy. Rarely does a character with relatively little dialogue speak so loudly. Hamilton has a serious future in film.
He’s supported by a rock solid cast, including Canadian cinematic lifers Ian Tracey (hands up if you remember him as Huckleberry Finn) and a virtually unrecognizable Nicholas Campbell (Da Vinci’s Inquest). Much like Hamilton’s character, the film’s plot line runs on a long and slow burn that’s metered out like an IV drip over the course of 90 minutes, slowly and methodically removing each successive obscuring layer until we no longer see through a glass darkly, but face to face. In the final minutes of the film, it’s revealed what exactly happened to these people to have caused them so much pain. In the end, every element is woven together seamlessly.
This film honestly deserves to win some awards – if not here, then somewhere else where its genius can be acknowledged.
There is one detracting element. It’s easy to identify Canadian productions these days: apart from funding acknowledgements being buried deep in the credits, there is often no indication anywhere that the film has anything to do with Canada – as if by doing so, American audiences will assume it was filmed there and deem it fit for mass consumption.
While the only geographical reference in Rabbit is given to Pittsburgh, this is obviously filmed amongst the mangy hills of BC’s central interior, and includes references to closing sawmills and laid off workers. This story is not just thoroughly Canadian – it’s a British Columbian one. The visual evidence accurately translates the hardscrabble lives of many of the province’s citizens outside of the major centres. Poverty in BC doesn’t just dwell in on West Hastings. It’s also in depressed towns like Fort St. John, Terrace, Vanderhoof, and Prince George. There is so much more to BC than just Vancouver or Victoria, and this film documents it. So why not own it?
When you’re a Canadian filmmaker who makes a virtually flawless film like this, for all of our sakes, just identify the setting as Canada. It can’t be that hard, can it? This film is of such an outstanding calibre that we, not just the rest of the cinematic world, deserve to know it came from here.
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