Review: ‘Tower’ by Kazik Radwanski

by Christopher Heard
Tower by Kazik Radwanski

There is a new emerging cinematic talent coming out of the indie scene in Toronto that I believe could end up being a force to be reckoned with. His name is Kazik Radwanski and he is a product of the film program at Ryerson University. His debut feature, called Tower, put me in mind of some of the earlier films from the late, great John Cassevettes.

One thing I particularly liked about what Radwanski has done with this feature debut is he made sure the film was shown on the big screen (it played a week at great old Royal Cinema on the big screen). Because films are so easily disseminated through sites like YouTube, it is often the way young filmmakers go to simply get their films out there to be seen. What Radwanski has done is make sure his film is seen as films ought to be seen, and in doing so he pays closer attention to detail and is a bit more patient in working the film into shape because, rather than being viewed in a casual setting his audience is sitting in the theatre with their attention strictly on his presentation.

Tower tells the story of a Toronto man, thirty four years old, named Derek who has dreams of working as an animator but is one of those lost souls who seems stuck in a kind of suspended animation. He lives with his parents, he has no real career and works only part time for a relative’s construction company. He is weighed down by constant comparisons to his brother who is not only better adjusted and more successful but has a grandchild on the way for his parents to enjoy.

In his loneliness, Derek walks the streets at night looking to make contact with someone, anyone. It is during one of his nocturnal sojourns through the city that he meets a woman named Nicole who shows an interest in him that gives him reason to hope that he can indeed develop and evolve into the kind of person having the kind of life he has dreamed of having. From here the story veers off in a curious direction that is quite interesting and unfair to the film to disclose.

While the small cast all perform well the two leads, Derek Bogart and Nicole Fairbairn drive the movie with interesting character choices–Radwanski, who wrote the script as well as directing the film, chooses to use his actors real names as their character names–something good indie filmmakers have done before him to free up his actors to bring as much of themselves to the roles as they can. This was also something that can be found in the early work of John Cassavettes.

Earlier, in complimenting Radwanski for his decision to have his feature debut play the big screen does not mean he is going all old school on the whole process–he and his team at his production company (MDFF) cleverly used social media (Facebook in particular) to get the word out on the film and on its scheduled screenings at the Royal Cinema. In fact it was a posting on Facebook by longtime ace Toronto International Film Festival programmer Steve Gravestock that alerted me to this movie and this new filmmaker (Gravestock calling him “one of the freshest voices to come along in Canadian cinema in a long time”).

Kazik Radwanski’s development as a filmmaker has been confident and steady. He started off making short films and his first three short films in a row were highlighted at the Belinale Shorts Competition (Princess Margaret Blvd., 2008, Out in that Deep Blue Sea, 2009, and Green Crayons in 2010) before putting Tower together with his producer Daniel Montgomery and the results reflect that confidence. A lot of first time features from headstrong young filmmakers end up wobbling under the weight of their own pretentiousness–not because the filmmakers are particularly or deliberately pretentious, but because they are over-reaching, trying hard to impress rather than simply expressing themselves honestly and simply. Radwanski never crosses into that–there are scenes in which he comes close but his restraint wins out.

If you can find Tower out there on the big screen somewhere it is worth a look, in fact it is worth a look no matter what format or media you end up seeing it but since this interesting new filmmaker Kazik Radwanski made the effort and was sufficiently committed to his work to see to it that it made it to the big screen a bit of reciprocal effort from movie goers/lovers is not too much to ask at all.

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