Chris Knight: The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open — a five star movie in one continuous shot
Chris Knight, Postmedia News (natpostblogs+cknight@gmail.com)
Published: Dec 14, 2019 at 12:20 a.m.
Updated: Dec 14, 2019 at 2:20 p.m.
Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers and Kathleen Hepburn's The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open follows a day in the life of two women: Áila and Rosie.
There are two powerful, potent movies opening this season that appear to unfold in real time, in a single, continuous take, to tell the story of two people on an urgent mission of salvation. You'll have heard of 1917, set during the First World War and directed by Sam Mendes. It has best-picture nominations from the Golden Globes and the Critics Choice Awards.
The other one is The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open, written and directed by Kathleen Hepburn and Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers. It's a finalist for the Toronto Film Critics Association's $100,000 Best Canadian Film prize.
Tailfeathers plays Áila, a First Nations woman living in East Vancouver. Most of what we learn about her is from answers she gives to her OB-GYN during a quick procedure. He asks if her name is Polynesian. Áila, who like the actor who plays her is of the Blackfoot and Norwegian Sami tribes, just says it's Scandinavian.
When she leaves the doctor's office she bumps into Rosie (Violet Nelson), a pregnant 19-year-old who is barefoot and crying. Across the street, her boyfriend is screaming at her. Barely stopping to think, Áila bustles Rosie down the street and back to her nearby apartment.
There have actually been a couple of unobtrusive cuts up to this point, but for the rest of the film's hour and three quarters we're in a single shot that follows Rosie and Áila into the tidy apartment and then to a nearby home for victims of domestic abuse. The maternal Áila thinks Rosie should stay there. The young woman isn't sure.
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open takes its title from a 2017 essay about colonialism by First Nations writer Billy-Ray Belcourt. But the film touches on the subject only tangentially; it's there in the background, as pervasive and influential as air, and as unremarked.
More prominent is the way these two characters quietly jostle one another in conversation; the push and pull of conviction and assumption. "I'm not trying to tell you what to do. I'm just trying to help," says Áila. We believe her in the moment, but it's a phrase that has been spoken many times, with the best of intentions and the worst.
Rosie's words are more raw, less filtered. When Áila says her boyfriend, whose picture looks pale enough to be white, is Native, Rosie responds: "Everybody's Native these days, hey?" And when Áila says he wants kids but she's not sure, the pregnant youngster has a harsh opinion: "Maybe he'll just leave you."
It's worth remarking on the scant but effective use of the music in the film. This includes Mommy's Little Guy, a lullaby by First Nations artist Fawn Wood; and Little Green, Joni Mitchell's elegy to the child she gave up for adoption.
The latter plays over a phone call, washing out everything else on the soundtrack with its raw emotion. It's one of several scenes in the movie that may overwhelm you; craftily, because while the movie is small, its sentiments are universal, and huge. The filmmakers have constructed a world that you'll remember when it broke your heart open.
The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open opens at the Lightbox in Toronto on Dec. 13.
The real thrill of watching Weathering With You is in the visuals
What She Said: The Art of Pauline Kael captures the critic's incendiary and multi-faceted life
Clemency makes clear the trauma of those who deal in death
A little extra aging has done Bad Boys for Life no harm