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June 19, 2009
His first feature-length film
Set in the late 1980s, Victoria Day looks at transitions in life.
BASYA LAYE
Known for his collection of short fiction, Natasha and Other Stories (2004), originally published in Harper's and The New Yorker, Canadian David Bezmozgis has also written and directed several short films, among them L.A. Mohel and The Diamond Nose. Victoria Day is his first foray into the world of full-length feature film and, judging by the warm welcome it received at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, this won't be his last.
Set in May 1988, Victoria Day centres around the Bob Dylan-loving young hockey star Ben Spektor (Mark Rendall), navigating the first blushes of young adulthood and negotiating just what kind of a man he wants to become.
In setting the film in the late 1980s, the 36-year-old Bezmozgis – who emigrated to Canada from Latvia with his family when he was a young boy – seamlessly takes the audience back to the era when the Berlin Wall still stood, the Soviet Union had yet to unclench its iron fist, Wayne Gretzky was leading the Edmonton Oilers to a victory against the Boston Bruins in the Stanley Cup final and teenagers everywhere were taping songs off the radio.
The plot is driven by the disappearance of Ben's classmate, Jordan. The tension created by this disappearance imbues the film with a light wash of apprehension and uncertainty that deepens when Ben understands that the five dollars he lent Jordan to purchase drugs may have contributed to his friend's disappearance.
Though Victoria Day is firmly rooted in late 1980s Toronto, audiences will readily identify with the ubiquitous growing pains experienced by the young Ben and those around him, including his randy band of charming best friends, Noah and Sammy. Ben's parents, played by a standout Sergiy Kotelenets and Nataliya Alyexeyenko, who speak only Russian to their Canadian-born son, have come to Canada to give their son the kind of life they could only dream about in the Soviet Union. However, their parenting of the second-generation Ben is infused with a persistent anxiety, manifested in their high hopes for their son, as well as an underlying sense of fear that perhaps comes from having lived in the KGB-dominated Soviet Union.
The idea of transition permeates the film, as Bezmozgis noted in an interview with the Independent, the Victoria Day long weekend "heralds the beginning of summer, and a sense of the energy and optimism that comes with summer. It's a time of excitement and romance and this contrasts with the tragedy of the missing boy."
A film so firmly rooted in a specific era can end up alienating a contemporary audience, but Bezmozgis said he "wanted it to feel at once of the time, but also timeless.... As far as teenage experience goes, I don't think much has changed between 1988 and 2009. So I didn't want today's teens to see the film and feel that it was dated."
Bezmozgis said he is fascinated with the teen years as a "time of self-definition" and that he "rarely sees films that do much justice to that experience. Usually films about teenagers are either crass or moralistic or both. But I remember my time as a teenager very differently. I wanted to represent it as faithfully as I could – in all of its comic and tragic glory."
The characters' Judaism isn't overtly expressed, except by an occasional Yiddishism uttered by Ben's father.
"When I conceived of making the film and conceived of making it a faithful reflection of my teenage experience, it seemed natural to set the characters in this kind of Jewish environment," said Bezmozgis. "That Judaism is never mentioned also seemed appropriate since the thrust of the story has nothing to do with religion or Jewish identity. It's simply a story of Jewish kids in Canada growing up as most kids in Canada do. They play hockey, they fall in love, they mess around in ways basically identical to most other teenagers – certainly those who grow up in the suburbs of a city like Toronto.
"In trying to depict the world faithfully, I saw no reason to exaggerate the Jewish aspects of their lives, but I also was very deliberate about including objects and mannerisms that indicated that these people were Jews. The items that are seen in the Spektor house and in the Chapman house are items that I've seen in every Jewish home. And it gave me pleasure to know that, for my Jewish audience, these objects would be immediately recognized and would help to identify these people in a cultural way."
In addition to depicting teenage life as he remembers it, Bezmozgis said, "it was also important for me to bring to the screen an authentic rendition of a Russian Jewish family. In my work as a fiction writer, I have tried to chronicle the experience of the Russian Jewish émigré experience. I wanted to do the same with this movie."
While the disappearance of the young Jordan serves as a frame for the film, Bezmozgis explained, he isn't the focus. The film, Bezmozgis contended, "explores how a young man would act in a complicated moral situation. And also to show how I think other people act in the face of this kind of tragedy. I didn't want it to be precious or moralistic, but rather to consider how different people would behave given their individual connections to the missing boy."
He expanded on this point. "In making a movie or writing a story," said Bezmozgis, "I'm really just interested in exploring what life feels like. I have no lessons to impart or any particular position on correct behavior, I'm just fascinated by how people react in different situations. I also believe that in life there are mysteries that we will never solve, that there are things about even our most intimate friends and family that we will never know. Movies often seem to want to be conclusive about these things, to bring closure, but often that closure feels to me to be artificial and not representative at all of the way we experience our lives."
Victoria Day premièred at the Sundance festival and though some viewers might consider it a very Canadian movie in both topic and tone, Bezmozgis said that, at the festival, "most of the audience was American. They were all able to relate to it because the essential experience is the same all over the world. Canadians, however, will relate to it more specifically because there are certainly details that are unique to Canada. Playing with Victoria Day fireworks is one example. The devotion to hockey is another. Watching CBC's Hockey Night in Canada also possesses a particular cultural charge. But I think that this is true of any realistic work of art. It functions on many levels, and the people who are most familiar with the time and place will always find more and, possibly, deeper resonances."
While the film is wistful and contemplative, it also contains many laughs. "These are laughs of recognition and identification," explained Bezmozgis, "[as] people see themselves, their friends and their parents in the characters on screen. They laugh at shared foibles, quirks and the awkward moments that, in a way, define teenage life."
When asked if there was anything else he thought Jewish Independent readers should know, Bezmozgis said, "A Canadian movie often has to fight to get a theatrical release, and it's always something of a triumph to get it to the screen. If we want to continue to have films that tell our stories, it's vital that people go to the theatres and see them."
Victoria Day opens June 19 at Cinemark Tinseltown in Vancouver.
Basya Laye is a freelance writer living in Vancouver.
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