- When I read the film description in the TIFF catalogue last year, I tried desperately to get tickets but failed miserably. I was obviously drawn by both my love for Soviets and my mostly not-so-secret-anymore love for Jay Baruchel. I never thought this would actually ever end up in theatres, limited in number though they are.
- Hello, Colm Feore, I haven’t seen you in anything recently and that makes me sad. The predictably evil principal was high school movie predictable but I don’t really care because it’s Colm Feore and Colm Feore is great everywhere, always.
- If Leon is excellent for one thing and one thing alone, it’s in how he calls everyone fascists. He makes sure he uses it in contexts where rights of one kind or another are being infringed on, so at least he’s not being excessively liberal with the word to the point where it loses all meaning. “Fascist” is just such a great, great insult, although for Leon I think it’s less of an insult than it is a statement of political fact.
- There were a lot of really great lines in this but I think my favourite part may have been when Leon gets interviewed in E!Talk by Ben Mulroney.
Leon: I’m surprised you’re the one doing this interview.
Ben: I’m flattered.
Leon: That’s not what I meant.Zing! Besides being the son of a terrible Canadian prime minister, Mulroney is also just a douche in general. I’m glad he’s able to poke fun at himself, though.
- Love, love, loved that the theme of the school dance was Social Justice. Amazing.
- There’s just a lot of good history nerd humour in this one.
- I also like “demonic concubine” as an insult.
- I loved that one kid holding the “Fuck you, Dwight” (or something similar) sign when the students finally got their act together to march on the school.
- Loved the music of Bolsheviks with their voices raised in song that they kept playing through the film. Can you buy CDs of this stuff? I’d like to listen to it really loud while doing incredibly mundane tasks around the house to lend a sense of monumentality to the proceedings.
- I don’t think there was enough done to explain why Leon thought he was the reincarnation of Trotsky aside from sharing a name. It probably would have tipped the film into serious drama territory if they had explored these particular beliefs as it’s likely we would have had a story about mental illness on our hands but as a device to service Leon’s motives, the revelation is a little stunted.
- There is of course one thing that is preventing me from fully loving this movie and it is the Leon/Alexandra romance. It was twinged with all these elements that I definitely do not like when I see them elsewhere, e.g. adults knowingly dating high school students, drunkenness being a stand in for consent, stalking and other irrational behaviour being used to whittle down someone’s resistance to dating you, etc. I haven’t made up my mind exactly how I feel about this and whether some parts of their relationship (or, say, narrative conceits) make up for other parts. I am deducting half a star from my rating for this, FYI.
- Great closing credit sequence in awesome Soviet-style poster art. I LOVE THIS STUFF.
- Torontonians: I don’t know when this started, but the Cumberland is now doing a cheap movie night combo on Tuesdays and Wednesdays where you get your ticket, popcorn, and pop for $10.95. I suspect this was to rival Cineplex’s Telus Tuesdays, but it’s always seemed to me that the Cumberland and the Varsity always offered complementary rather than competing films. Either way, I was happy for discount movie dinner tonight.
The Trotsky
Fellow comrades, get yourself to your closest limited-release theatre as soon as possible.
IMDB Plot Synopsis Leon Bronstein is not your average Montreal West high school student. For one thing, none of his peers can claim to be the reincarnation of early 20th century Soviet iconoclast and Red Army hero, Leon Trotsky.
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