TORONTO — A horrific First World War battle and the valour of Canadian
soldiers who fought there take centre stage as Paul Gross's long-awaited
epic "Passchendaele" kicks off the Toronto International Film Festival
on Thursday.
It's a prestigious opening slot for the ambitious tale of love, regret
and heroism, with Gross - the film's writer, co-producer, director and
star - confessing to some fruitless second-guessing as the result of his
bold efforts is set to debut.
"You get so obsessed with details, and I'm fixated on this one bomb that
I always thought was on the wrong side of the soundscape," says Gross.
"It's one explosion among thousands, and I have it in my head that if I
don't get that moved over to the right side, this film will be a
disaster."
Such obsession will have to be excused for someone who's been
visualizing this battle since before he even knew he was a filmmaker.
Gross's fascination with the First World War began as a teen when he
would pester his grandfather for real-life tales from the front.
These were doled out reluctantly and with more than a tinge of regret,
Gross recalls. One day his grandfather confessed to killing a German
teen with a bayonet through the forehead, for absolutely no reason that
he could articulate.
It was a senseless act of violence that haunted his grandfather to his
death, says Gross, noting that the man's final moments were marked by a
stream of apologies as he was plagued by wartime hallucinations.
Gross's grandfather did not fight at Passchendaele, but his harrowing
stories pushed his grandson to learn all he could about the First World
War. Some 12 years ago, Gross began his own battle to do***ent the
Canadian experience at Passchendaele, near Ypres, Belgium.
"In many ways, Vimy Ridge is the more famous of the Canadian engagements
in the First World War," says Gross, known for his starring roles on the
TV series "Due South" and "Slings & Arrows" and for his 2000 curling
comedy, "Men With Brooms."
"And it's not terribly well known, but we did win Passchendaele. ...
Partly, I wanted to choose that battle because the win is so ambivalent.
There's something very paradoxical about the First World War. It's kind
of amorphous - yes, it was a victory, but of what kind?"
The battle of Passchendaele is known for its heavy casualties and a
puni****ng rain that turned the battlefield into a thick muddy swamp. On
Oct. 26, 1917, the Canadian Corps began a series of attacks that, some
two weeks later, succeeded in taking the village of Passchendaele.
But the cost of gaining eight kilometres was tremendous, with 16,000
Canadian casualties among some 310,000 Allied dead.
Gross's film focuses on the intimate details of war, exploring what it
does to family and love. He plays Sgt. Michael Dunne, a Canadian soldier
who falls in love with Sarah, a nurse played by Caroline Dhavernas,
while recovering in a Calgary hospital. Dunne returns to the battlefield
when Sarah's asthmatic brother David (played by Joe Dinicol of "Train
48") decides to join the fight, with Dunne feeling compelled to protect
the boy from the horrors of war. They soon find themselves at the epic
battle of Passchendaele.
Dhavernas says she was intrigued by Sarah's broken spirit and the
relation****p her character forges with an injured soldier.
"Throughout these atrocities and wars, what remains, for these two
characters, is that they will make it because they are in love," says
Dhavernas, also set to appear in the upcoming HBO series "Pacific,"
about the Second World War.
"They'll be able to save themselves because they have each other and
because I think love does lift you higher like that when you're in times
of trouble, and it's the only way sometimes to make it through."
The climactic battle scene was shot at an aboriginal reserve about 20
minutes outside of Calgary. Enormous rain towers transformed into the
land into a swampy battlefield, flooded by tanks of water from the
frigid Elbow River. The ordeal proved to be the most difficult of
Gross's career.
"We were constantly reinventing and refining ways of thawing our hands
really quickly or moving people into warmer tents," Gross says of the
October shoot.
"The first night we shot in the rain we sent 20 people off to the
Rockyview Hospital with early signs of early-stage hypothermia. So it
was terrible, and knock on wood and thank God nobody got hurt and I'm
not really sure how we managed that."
Pulling together money to fund the $20-million production was another
challenge. A decade of canvassing from public and private investors
finally garnered enough to launch the project, with Gross saying he was
pleasantly surprised by how receptive individual donors were to
sup****ting the film.
"For a film of that kind of ambition, it's still extremely low budget,"
Gross adds. "If this were a U.S. studio picture they wouldn't really
contemplate it for anything less than $100 million."
The initial stake came from the Alberta government, which contributed
$5.5 million from its centennial fund in 2005. More money came from
Telefilm Canada and various media companies. Gross turned to the private
sector for the rest.
"And there's a truism that is actually true - rich people did not get
rich by giving their money away," he says, laughing.
"So it took years of flying back and forth across the country, having
dinners with billionaires, but in the end what was really encouraging
and slightly surprising is there's an enormous amount of interest out
there in the private sector for what we do in this business."
Given the size of the Canadian market, Gross says he knows he won't make
that money back at the box office. Recouping those investments will have
to come from wider distribution, which he will be pursuing at the
Toronto festival.
But already, Gross has partnered with the Dominion Institute to create a
study guide for schools. Eventually, "Passchendaele" will be made
available to high schools across the country so that the story of
Canadian valour lives on, he says.
"Passchendaele" opens in theatres Oct. 17.
--
-- Reality is not enough; we need nonsense, too. Drifting into a world
of fantasy is not an escape from reality but a significant education
about the nature of life. And reality is not an escape from nonsense.
Our education goes on everywhere. - Edmund Miller
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