Program: Trilogy of Trilogies
When : Friday, June 15th, @ 7:00PM
Where : The Cumberland

The Trilogy of Trilogies program at this year’s Worldwide Short Film Festival, as its title suggests, screens three Canadian short film trilogies: I Am Boyband, The Patterns Trilogy, and The Saskatchewan Trilogy. It is Jamie Travis’s masterful Patterns Trilogy that makes this program a must-see.

The Patterns Trilogy is my personal favourite; I saw parts two and three at the 2006 Toronto International Film Festival and was eager to have the opportunity to see part one. The trilogy is a bizarre, absurd, and absolutely wonderful set of films that continues to surprise you more and more with their originality and mind-blowing silliness. The cinematography and set design are particularly striking and gorgeous, and much higher quality than a lot of what you’ll see in your average multiplex feature. The trilogy is a twisted love story, with Patterns 1 told from the perspective of the woman, Pauline, and Patterns 2 the same story at the same time from Michael’s perspective; Michael is her strange romantic interest. Patterns 3 ties it all together, told in split screen with both characters present, and descending into creepy yet delicious musical dance numbers. All three films put a particular focus on photographing patterns with beauty: patterned clothing, the patterns on a china teacup, the patterns made by stacks of sandwiches, or the sugar in a bowl of sugar cubes. Patterns 3 is the best of the series, and includes a whimsical yet jarring song-and-dance number which I spent the better part of the last year quoting and speaking about with praise. The Patterns trilogy is so absurd at times that it leads to much discussion as viewers try to puzzle out its mysteries. Having seen these films twice now, I’m more than eager to go back for a third viewing and to take others with me just to see how they’ll react. So far my companions have laughed through them just as I have with jolly glee and perhaps a bit of confusion as to what the heck it’s all about.

I Am Boyband is made to look like a worn out VHS tape from the 1980s of a bad top 40-esque love song music video by a boy band. Self-consciously silly, the lyrics to the pop song have old English words in them like “thou” and “thee” so that it sounds like a terrible sonnet gone bad. It reminds me of this year’s Music and Lyrics when Hugh Grant pelvic thrusts his way into B List fame as the backup in a 1980s pop band. But I am Boyband has no-name bland actors like you’d expect in your average boyband, and the humour comes more from the boyband spoof than from watching a star make an ass out of himself for the fun of it. Its sequel, Live To Tell, is a 16-split screen video, reminiscent of the album cover of A Hard Day’s Night. You can tell the film belongs to the series from the crummy picture quality, but Live to Tell is less a gay romp and more an experiment with media; it doesn’t work very well. The last in the series, Subtitled, is set to Kylie Minogue’s “Can’t get you out of my head”, which is funny in its awkward weirdness, but still not as delightfully bouncy as the original I Am Boyband.

Last and absolutely least, is The Saskatchewan Trilogy. About two minutes into Saskatchewan part one, I found myself asking with disdain how on earth I was going to survive watching yet another two of these, for the first one was excruciatingly painful at the start. The film is as slow as and even more boring than I would have imagined Saskatchewan to be, and the slow motion footage set to a melancholy twangy guitar doesn’t help matters much. The films tell the story of Saskatchewan’s history interspersed with the filmmaker’s very dull life and experiences growing up in Saskatchewan: by the end of the third film, he’s reached age 7 and we’re ready for him to get old fast so we don’t have to hear any more about his banal life. The film is supposed to be an ode to Saskatchewan and to the good ole days. At times, it plays like a weird promotional video for Saskatchewan tourism. But unlike Woody Allen’s Manhattan, which is brimming with its fair share of bustle and grim, a veritable and admirable ode to New York City, The Saskatchewan Trilogy is a series of boring montages punctuated by the occasional eerie or delightful shot. After seeing this film, my interest in going to Saskatchewan has decreased exponentially. I sat on the edge of my seat in anxious anticipation of leaving the viewing room, with this boring film but a painful memory.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 14th, 2007 at 11:51 am and is filed under Events, Film, Review, Wish You Were Here. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.