Awards Daily’s Megan McLachlan ends her time at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival with some highly anticipated films, including Till and The Whale, plus potential-future-cult-classic, Taurus.
The back half of the SCAD Savannah Film Festival really runs the gamut in terms of genre and theme. We have dramatic powerhouses like Till and The Whale, satirical palate cleansers like The Menu, emotional action flicks like Devotion, and of course whatever you would describe as Taurus. Here’s a look at the final films I screened at the fest.
Till
Back in 2019, I fell in love with Chinonye Chukwu’s direction and writing in Clemency, starring Alfre Woodard and Aldis Hodge, when it screened at the SCAD Savannah Film Festival. The film has a unique, indie feel to it with some scenes I will never forget. Her follow-up, Till, is a more restrained approach, with less distinct and dynamic movement, but with an impressive performance from Danielle Deadwyler.
This was probably one of the hardest films to sit through during the festival, if only because you’re watching a mother suffer for over two hours. During dramatic films like this one at the fest, someone in the audience might make a remark during a lighter scene to ease the tension, and when someone did that during Till, not a word was uttered. You could hear a pin drop in the room.
One particularly exceptional scene involves Mamie (Deadwyler) identifying her son after his lynching. The camera keeps the body hidden at the bottom of the screen, so audiences can only see Mamie and Gene’s (Sean Patrick Thomas) reactions. But when Mamie asks Gene to leave, the camera pans up so you get a glimpse of what she’s looking at. Chukwu’s directorial eye handles the subject of Emmett Till with careful grace.
The Menu
In many ways, Mark Mylod’s The Menu feels like a satire that came about a decade too late (wasn’t it more than 10 years ago that we hit peak foodie culture?). But in terms of originality, this movie takes the cake. There are a lot of laughs (I love the menu descriptions that aptly describe what’s going on in the film) and a intense WTF moments (re: “The Mess”), but it mostly felt like consuming empty calories. Like when so many foodies would tell me about a new avant-garde restaurant I hadn’t been to yet, I ultimately felt like I just didn’t get it, which maybe is the point. I would have loved to learn more about Hong Chau’s character and life on the island than hang with Anya Taylor-Joy’s Margot (so according to the movie, maybe I am a giver, not a taker!).
Devotion
J.D. Dillard’s Devotion is a film that hits close to home because Dillard was inspired by his father, a naval aviator. I talked to Dillard ahead of the screening about how this project came about for him.
“When I was introduced Devotion, about the Navy’s first black aviator, I suddenly found myself with this really weird opportunity to not just honor the story of Jesse and his wingman story, but in a way try to get to tell my dad’s story, too. It’s kind of a full-bodied experience to get to tell this story.”
Devotion includes the real-life friendship of Jesse Brown (Jonathan Majors) and Tom Hudner (Glen Powell) and the two actors really sell the relationship with their on-screen chemistry. Powell, who looks like he’s fresh off the Top Gun: Maverick set, plays the goody-goody boy-scout type to Majors’ Jesse, someone whose whole journey stems from breaking the rules.
Chanda Dancy’s score really propels the tension in the film during the flying scenes, and the sound design includes a lot of little nuances and complexity (at one point, I thought that people were laughing outside of the theater and then I realized it was coming from the film!).
The SCAD Savannah Film Festival audience really enjoyed seeing Savannah used as stand-ins for Cannes in the film and also seeing themselves on screen (there would be random outbursts during the screening).
Taurus
There are two films I’ve seen at the festival that have the potential to become a cult classic. The first is Bones and All and the second is Taurus. Written and directed by Tim Sutton, Taurus follows Colson Baker’s Cole as he loses his lucky crystal to a sex worker and spirals. That is the basic premise, but Cole also trespasses into a crime scene, gets into a silent fight with an ex (played by his real-life girlfriend Megan Fox), and does drugs with Ruby Rose (who looks like she auditioned to play the new Pinhead in Hellraiser).
This is a dark film, as the IMDB logline will tell you, but Baker plays Cole with some levity (I laughed each time someone asked him about a girl he didn’t know, and he repeatedly said, “Who?”). And surprisingly, it doesn’t feel forced. As Baker told me on the red carpet, some critics have said that it’s not much of a stretch for him to play this role, but maybe that’s okay. He’s comfortability is an asset, and look what stretching outside of your comfort zone can do for other musician-turned-actors.
The Whale
Darren Aronofsky has made some of the most memorable films of the last 20 years, including The Wrestler, Black Swan, and even the divisive Mother! There’s a comfort in watching an Aronofsky film because you know whatever he does, it’s going to be interesting, usually with an ending you won’t forget. The Whale is the first of his that doesn’t feel like an Aronofsky film. Maybe it’s because of the limitations of a one-room setting, maybe it’s working with someone in heavy prosthetics, but I kept wondering when it was going to feel like an Aronofsky film and it never does. That can be a good thing if the director does something different with risks that pay off, but other than depicting the ugliness of humans (and I mean that only in the emotional sense), I’m not sure what to take away from The Whale.
The Whale stars Brendan Fraser as Charlie, a morbidly obese man who teaches writing to students online but turns off his computer camera so he never reveals what he looks like. Ten years prior, he left his wife Mary (Samantha Morton) and daughter Ellie (Sadie Sink) for the love of his life, Alan. When Alan passes away, his depression manifests itself in compulsive overeating which puts a strain on his body and the need for a caregiver in the form of Alan’s sister, Liz (Hong Chao).
Charlie wants to have a relationship with Ellie, so he agrees to write her school essays for her (and pay her!) in order to spend time with her. Even though Charlie constantly reiterates that his daughter is a good person, Ellie is not just an angry teenager; she is a sociopath. There’s never anything in the screenplay or Sink’s performance to suggest Ellie has an emotional center, which makes for an unearned finale. Brendan Fraser has always been a great actor and it’s great that he’s getting accolades, but I wish that I learned more about his character instead of his pain. Watching him binge-eat and get berated by his daughter over the course of a week is heartbreaking and too much to bear. If ever a film should come with a trigger warning, it’s The Whale.