MIFF Session #1: THE REAL CHARLIE CHAPLIN

As the subject of this documentary has had a slow but genuine rethink in the past decade or so, thanks to YouTube and scrubbed up remasters of his classic works, I wondered if I would be in for archaeology or hagiography. I got a serve of both, ranging from platitudes that had the sheen of packaged depth but also genuinely thought provoking musings on the uses that the famous and well loved can put to their celebrity.

Using a blend of film loops, re-enacted interviews and press conferences, film distortion and manipulation, and a constantly hand-holding narration, The Real Charlie Chaplin first takes us through the expected streams: rags to riches, film tinkerer to innovative auteur before settling into a number of phases highlighting both the celebrated and controversial aspects of Chaplin's life and work.

A sequence on the straining trouble he took to find the joke in the flower girl scene in City Lights illustrates the kind of obsession we more readily associate with Stanley Kubrick. What at first feels like an overstretched comparison between Chaplin and Hitler does finally land with a focussed examination of the Great Dictator and its powerful final speech (I welled up all over again, even though it was clearly an illustration of creative power rather than a purely celebratory moment). And then there is the elephant in the room that has to do with the age differences between Chaplin and his wives which only grew as he aged and bore more than a few hints at his darker side. This adds depth rather than sensation and is the better for it. After that sequence we are compelled to view the man through both public and private selves, such as we can know them.

This is a feature documentary that extends well beyond the worthy toward the essential. Early cinema remains one of the swiftest timelines of an art forming and innovating in service and defiance of its public. And the comics like Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd worked like Trojans to match the galloping possibilities of cinema with its value as amusement. Any time you see a current comedy that winks at you with its high concept, whether it's an Adam Sandler vehicle or Being John Malkovich, the basic tools that the pioneers found in the early 20th century remain in place. This film seeks the mind and conscience behind the pratfalls and majestic set pieces in an idiom that cheekily joins in the fun it's describing. Can't ask more than that in a movie about Charlie Chaplin, now can ya?

Seen at the Forum. Oh, to everyone who seemed to gleefully cough without the courtesy of wearing a mask in this third plague year, put it on when in a confined place like a cinema, you monster-flapping barbary geese! I've a good mind to get Monique Ryan back down here to deal with you.