Short Take: At Any Price

Grade: B

*A version of this review was posted at The Film Experience during TIFF12.

At Any Price is Ramin Bahrani's first film to feature no immigrant characters, and perhaps subsequently, use Hollywood stars instead of amateurs. It’s an interesting change for a director whose films have come to be known for their intimacy and real life feel. At Any Price tells the story of a crumbling farming empire owned by Henry Whipple (Dennis Quaid). Whipple, who's inherited the farms from his father, is failing to convince his two sons to enter the family business. His elder son has left America and gone on an adventure in the mountains of Argentina.

It is his second son, Dean (Zac Efron), an aspiring race car driver, whom we see more of as he gradually begins to confront his father over years of repressed emotions. Bahrani, whose previous features dug deep into the realization of the American dream, here looks at how that dream is falling apart. The crushing "expand or die" mentality of modern America is constantly contrasted with a nostalgic, some might say sentimental, view of a not-so-distant past when life was, to put it simply, easier, or more innocent.

America itself is without a doubt the most prominent character in the film. But while I, along with many others, found the strongly pronounced symbolism a bit much, the good still far outweighs the bad. The sensitive imagery of the film, the sweeping vistas, Dennis Quaid's curiously over the top but poignant performance, even Zac Efron's efforts to make the leap to a more serious side of acting all pay off handsomely in the end. Bahrani continuously builds momentum and takes his characters in unexpected ways. The ambiguity of his film remains more engrossing than messy.

This will surely become Bahrani's biggest hit, though that's not exactly a major financial achievement since his best selling film made less than a million dollars at the box office. But if 2013 is not a specially competitive year for actors, expect to see a push for Quaid in the Best Actor category. That's as far as I imagine the film can go in the awards season.

TIFF Diary, Part 3: Four Short Takes

Over at The Film Experience, I've written four short reviews on At Any Price, The Place beyond the Pines, Foxfire and Beyond the Hills. Make sure to check them out!

TIFF Lineup...So Far

Nina Hoss in Barbara

The way I approach my ticket selection at TIFF every year is not to jump to films that I most want to see, but to first go for titles that I suspect will be sold out quicker. More often that not, there are some overlaps between these two sets of films, but just as often, my wish list includes films that go unnoticed for the first few days of ticket sales, allowing me to get to them once I've got the loftier titles out of the way. Although, as I've mentioned several times before here and on The Film Experience, the festival's biggest attractions usually aren't close to the top of my list. I came this close to being tempted by seeing The Master at the fest - for many people the experience of watching Boogie Nights is their best TIFF memory, though I think that's partly because Paul Thomas Anderson was more of a surprise package back then - but eventually I decided against it because of its pre-determined October 12th release in Toronto. I can always wait longer when there are other options at hand with no release date.

Ryan Gosling in The Place Beyond the Pines

Anyway, for now, there are ten films that I will watch for sure as I just finalized my ticket package. I'll be adding maybe another ten or so in the coming days and I'm hoping that my hunch that films like Ernest & Celestine, Like Someone in Love, The Central Park Five, Mea Maxima Culpa, The Suicide Shop, The Hunt, etc. will not sold out by Monday proves to be correct. I'd hate to miss out on any of those. We'll see. But you can look forward to my coverage of all of this at The Film Experience, where since last year, Nathaniel has been nice enough to invite me as his Toronto correspondent.

Christian Mungiu's Beyond the Hills

In the order of their screening dates:
The Place beyond the Pines,  At Any Price, Berberian Sound Studio, Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang, Lore, Beyond the Hills, Barbara, Dormant Beauty, What Maisie Knew, To the Wonder