It's too big.
It didn't provide any answers about the Oscar race.
It was a pretty good year for deals, even though some major players stayed out of it. (Where were Weinstein and Sony Classics, anyway?)
And it was a festival for body parts: Michael Fassbender's penis (on ample display in "Shame") , Keira Knightley's jaw (perpetually jutting out in "A Dangerous Method"), Jonah Hill's brain (the source of Brad Pitt's success in "Moneyball"), George Clooney's grin (everywhere you looked the first weekend of the festival).
The 2011 Toronto International Film Festival, which began on September 8 and essentially ended on Sunday with the announcement that "Where Do We Go Now?" had won the People's Choice Award as the festival's best movie, was big and bold and inconclusive.
A rundown:
BIG
The festival didn't screen substantially more movies than usual, with about 260 films spread out across the 11 days. But particularly in the first several days of the front-loaded event, the sheer number of galas, red-carpet screenings, press conferences, dinners and receptions seemed so overwhelming that it became a running topic of conversation among festivalgoers.
"How can you have five red-carpet premieres on one night?" asked one exasperated publicist.
Even opening night, which usually features a relatively low-key Canadian film and not much else, saw an embarrassment of riches: the U2 documentary "From the Sky Down" having its gala premiere with Bono and the Edge in attendance, opposite marquee screenings of Werner Herzog's "Into the Abyss," Wim Wenders' "Pina," Gus Van Sant's "Restless," Aki Kaurismaki's "Le Havre" and several others.
The next night, Sony's big guns, "Moneyball" and "The Ides of March," premiered opposite the Weinstein Company's Best-Picture hopeful "The Artist," Fernando Meirelles' "360," Michael Winterbottom's "Trisha" and Lynne Ramsay's "We Need to Talk About Kevin."
The day after that, "The Descendants" (right) debuted opposite "A Dangerous Method" and "Melancholia." All weekend long, extending into the following week, companies wishing to fete their filmmakers – which is to say, just about every company at the fest – hosted so many soirees as to make for an insane amount of party-hopping
In six days I saw 18 movies, did six interviews, moderated two panels, went to eight parties and found that I had to cross at least two dozen other films, receptions and dinners off my wishlist because there simply wasn't enough time.
And everybody I know was in the same boat – which is to say, overwhelmed by the size of the event, and frustrated by the inability to see and do everything we wanted.
This isn't a problem with a real solution: it'd go against the nature of TIFF to make it smaller, and frontloading is inevitable. But this year, the sheer size became a steady topic of conversation, and a constant annoyance.
BOLD
This was a year, and a festival, in which filmmakers and studios did not shy away from the tough, the dark and the explicit.
