KO Film Review- CIFF Opening Gala: Donovan's Echo

Last night was the opening Gala of the Calgary International Film Festival at the Globe Cinema. The Festival Opened with Donovan’s Echo (Jim Cliffe, 2011). The film is about a man named Donovan (Danny Glover) that has deja vu or premonitions from his past that echo in the future. He moves back to a town he lived in previously to save a young girl, who has the same name as his daughter.

The cinematography in Donovan’s Echo was beautiful. There was definitely real talent at work on this film. The editing was very Hollywood and didn’t try anything new or fresh. The films sound track was pretty sterile. I think the diagetic sounds and backtrack contributed to the predictability of the events. The story was very Hallmark Channel meets Inception. The temporal continuity was so littered with flashbacks and flash forwards so much so that the viewer couldn’t even possibly make a guess about any of the foreshadowed events. The events didn’t have time to digest because they were force fed to the viewers. I find more unexpected plots in my daughter disney channel shows. Why CIFFchose this film for the opening Gala? I guess because it was Canadian feature length film and the key actors are Hollywood  elite (Danny Glover, Bruce Greenwood and Chelah Horsdal). I just expect films i

n a festival to be trying to accomplish something very different than a typical Hollywood formulaic film. I don’t want to go to a film festival to see a Canadian Film try and be a Hollywood film. I know that CIFF has in their mandate of Calgary’s festival that they are interested “Demonstrating unparalleled diversity and accessibility as an arts medium”, but I didn’t feel it. I heard at the gala following that Donovan’s Echo was heavily funded by Telefilm Canada and the provincial government of British Columbia.  Other comments I heard were “…it wasn’t bad for a Canadian Film”. These comments disappoint me, I feel our Canadian dollars should be funding fresh and innovative ideas in film.

First Photo courtesy of Binzento Vincente: Jacqueline Dupuis, Executive Director of CIFF, Second Photo courtesy of Binzento Vincente: Bruce Greenwood, Third Photo courtesy of http://donovansecho.com/images.htmlCopyright 2011 Diyah Pera Donovan’s Echo Productions Inc.: Danny Glover.