I sit in on the CFRA Ottawa morning show with host Bill Carroll to talk about the new movies coming to theatres including the one-horned horrors of “Death of a Unicorn,” the rompin’, stompin’ deja vu of “A Working Man,” the flightless dramedy of “The Penguin Lessons,” the character study of “Darkest Miriam” and the off-kilter Prime Video film “Holland” with Nicole Kidman.
Listen to the whole thing HERE!
SYNOPSIS: In “Darkest Miriam,” a new romantic drama starring “Severance’s” Britt Lower, and now playing in theatres, the title character’s emotional fog is lifted when she begins an unexpected relationship with an artist she meets in the park.
CAST: Britt Lower, Sook-Yin Lee, Jean Yoon, Jaimara Beals, Clyde Whitham, Susannah Hoffmann, Scott McCulloch, Igor Shamuilov, Joshua Odjick, Sarah Li Wen Du, Anita Yung, Peter Millard, Danté Prince, Scott Ryan Yamamura, Jamaal Grant, Aviva Armour-Ostroff, and Laura Afelskie. Directed by Naomi Jaye.
REVIEW: Set in downtown Toronto, “Darkest Miriam” sees “Severance” star Britt Lower play the title character, a librarian left grief stricken after the passing of her father. Her work life, involving a rogue’s gallery of characters who leave their dentures on library tables and masturbate in the stacks, is as chaotic as her private life is orderly and closed down.
Her life shifts gears when she meets Janko (Tom Mercier), a Slovenian artist and cab driver. Their immediate connection, coupled with odd, enigmatic letters addressed to her that she finds in the books at work—“I am Rigoletto, and I will not be doing any more suffering,” reads one of them—snap her out of the emotional funk that has enveloped her.
Based on a 2009 novel by Martha Baillie called “The Incident Report,” “Darkest Miriam” is a subtle film, one that values introspection and absurdist humour over walking an obvious path. Director Naomi Jaye takes her time unveiling the minutiae of Miriam’s life and the secret of the letters, but this isn’t a mystery that needs to be solved. It’s a slice-of-life that is comfortable in its vague nature.
Keeping it compelling is Britt Lower, who hands in a deadpan performance that, while understated, brings a wry charm to the film’s off-kilter humor and remains fully grounded amid the outlandish characters at the library and the mystery of the letters. The soft-spoken Miriam has been through a lot, and it shows in her haunted state, but Lower never lets us forget there is a real person aching to throw off the shackles of her emotional turmoil.
“Darkest Miriam” is a touching film that replaces sentimentality with a quirky sensibility, but, while unconventional, never forgets to be tenderhearted.
“Bones of Crows,” a new period drama now playing in theatres, covers decades of history, but is tied to recent, horrifying events.
Jumping through time, from the 1800s to the 2020s, the story of the intergenerational trauma caused by the Canadian residential school system, focusses on the family of Aline Spears (Grace Dove). A Cree woman born to a large, happy family in 1930s Manitoba, everything changes when Aline and her siblings are forcibly taken from their parents who are told they will be thrown in prison if they don’t sign over their children to the residential school system.
Abused, physically and emotionally—“I could kill you and bury you out back and nobody would care,” a priest snarls at the headstrong Aline.—the priests and nuns systematically attempt to strip the siblings of their Indigenous heritage, religion and identity, forcing them to assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture. It is, as one character says, “a lesson in unrelenting cruelty.”
During World War II Aline escapes the horrors of the school by enlisting in the Canadian Army.
“The only way we can make sure they don’t send you back to that school is to send you to war.” During her raining to become part of an elite squad of code talkers who used the Cree language to disguise military intelligence, she meets and marries Adam (Phillip Lewitski).
Returning home from war to raise their family, Adam suffers PTSD, while Aline is haunted by the abuse she suffered at the hands of her sadistic teachers.
As the movie skips through time, we learn more about the residential school, Aline’s life after the war, her sister’s legal woes and the next generation, the children that carry the trauma in their DNA.
The process of healing is ever present, however, as Aline remembers the words her mother said to her as she enlisted in the army. “You be everything you are meant to be. Don’t let the darkness win. Don’t let them win.”
Métis-Dene writer and director Marie Clements covers a great deal of ground, much of it hard going. The cruelty and attempts to dehumanize Indigenous youth are brought to horrific life, and the depictions of residential schools; child abuse, sexual and psychological abuse and racism may be very unsettling for many viewers.
But even though the film chronicles a century of generational trauma, it is also a celebration of Cree resilience and tradition. There are eye-opening depictions of atrocities, necessary to tell the story, but as Aline confronts the past, there is also a sense of justice.
It is a story of hard truths, told with skill—despite its sprawling nature, it doesn’t feel bloated—and emotion that gets to the heart of how generational trauma forever altered the lives of the characters.
