“Eye Weekly” gave the film another plug

Adam Nayman recently gave the film a 5 star review in advance of the Vancouver Film Fest. Now, only a few weeks later, he offers a different slant, though no less positive, for Toronto’s Planet in Focus festival.

The best film on display this year happens to be the last: Laura Dunn’s The Unforeseen (Oct. 28, 7pm, Royal, 608 College) is probably the American documentary of the year. It’s the story of an oasis within an oasis — a limestone aquifer in the middle of Austin, Texas that served in the 1970s as a sort of ground zero for the city’s famously left-leaning constituency. The real estate developers looking to raze the area were rebuffed, time and again, until the election of a certain smirking Texas governor in the mid-1990s left the back door wide open.

It’s an infuriating development, but the story is larger than Texas: its subject is nothing less than the death of idealism, and Dunn is generous enough to allow her apparent villain — the former wunderkind developer at the centre of the conflict — his own heartfelt lament. She also neatly integrates the seemingly disparate aesthetic imperatives of her famous producers Terrence Malick and Robert Redford, resulting in a film that’s both achingly lyrical and blisteringly direct.

I know I speak for Laura when I say that I don’t know where the film would be without critics. It’s not exactly the feel-good movie of the summer. We really owe folks like Gavin Smith, Robert Koehler, both Nathan Lee and Scott Foundas at Village Voice and Adam Nayman an enormous debt of gratitude for their writeups.

p.s. We’re also grateful to the Federal Reserve, CDOs and the collapsing mortgage market for increasing the topicality.