FFWD Weekly
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Television by FFWD Staff Rats A film by Jacques Holender Starring David Hemblen, Torri Higgison, and David Fox Saturday, July 29 Showcase (Channel 32) It’s interesting that in the history of film, a seemingly boring and haplessly benign subject such as bureaucracy has been given such insidious and sinister treatment. Films such as Kurosawa’s Ikiru (cancerous pencil pushers), Terry Gilliam’s Brazil (an Orwellian mind-fuck in which a man is literally consumed by piranha-like paperwork) and the de facto soul-sucking morals of Cold War classics, like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, have provided us with some of the most memorably creepy moments in cinema. It’s all the more fitting, then, when a Canadian filmmaker enters the Kafkaesque fray, given the alternately symbiotic/parasitic relationship between artists and the various institutions which they depend upon for funding in this country. This is precisely the theme of Jacques Holender’s black comedy, Rats, which is ostensibly the story of a documentary filmmaker who descends into madness while trying to make a feature about everyone’s favourite disease-ridden rodent. While the infestation of rats in the seemingly sterile home of the film’s protagonist, Richard (David Hemblen), may or may not be imagined, to Holender the vermin are all too real. "I did run into some conflict with the (National) Film Board," says the African-born director from his Toronto home. "I wasn’t really implying, I was blatantly pointing fingers. There is an intrinsic paradox working with an organization that hires because they feel that your vision is somewhat original and at the very same time it’s that originality that seems to be a problem. It rocks the status quo. The film board is in a little bit of trouble right now because they don’t know who to satisfy. I think they’re straying from their original mandate to support filmmakers that push boundaries. "I had a co-producer at the film board who was completely behind it and he even had trouble pushing it through. The (NFB) isn’t even acknowledged in the credits, because they didn’t want to be, even though they own it." Holender, an acclaimed documentarian in his own right (Musicians in Exile, Kodo, Juju Music), goes on to say that he finds much of the fault for the headaches in homegrown cinema lies largely with a fundamentally Canadian dilemma: that is, whether to focus purely on cultural identity, or to pursue commercial viability in the world-wide marketplace. He states that while it may not always create the best outcome, at least in the States the bottom line is always money, a distinct parameter that lets you know exactly where you stand. Up north, however, the debate over Canadian content versus commerce can simply be, well, maddening. "One thing that drives any independent filmmaker quite crazy is financing – putting the production together. On this I ran into quite a few corridors I thought I was never going to get out off," he says, revealing that Rats was originally intended as a documentary. "That’s why I put together a comedy about a guy with the reflection on financing in Canada as just one of the things that puts him over the edge." So, while the switch to drama does present obvious limitations in Rats’ small-market filmmaking approach in both technology (the High Definition Video format of Rats with its less than subtle wash of direct light comes across at times like a community cable production) and the available talent pool (welcome to the CTV school of acting – lesson one: to feign insanity simply scrunch up your nose and go googly-eyed), Holender insists that a low budget can enhance the creative pay-off. "As a filmmaker the whole challenge is to maintain that original idea, that original concept, knowing full well that there is going to be quite a translation along the way," he says. "I think that’s part of the mystery – that’s what keeps me going."

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