Wilby Wonderful

Customer Reviews:

• Wonderful, indeed.: You know, I really love finding stuff like this. From the mind of the tragically underrated but extremely talented Canadian filmmaker Daniel MacIvor comes "Wilby Wonderful", a quirky offbeat tale of love, redemption, and other random things. Basically it's a day in the life of the residents of Wilby, a small and tightly-knit island community. There's not really a main plot on the whole, but rather several smaller plots that sort of intertwine and fit together nicely.
  
  The story follows a variety of colorful characters, including a depressed gay man who continually attempts suicide; a teenage girl (played perfectly by the ever-amazing Ellen Page) who is struggling to maintain relationships with her promiscuous alcoholic mother and her jerk boyfriend, who is pressuring her into having sex; a high-strung real-estate agent (Sandra Oh) whose fierce dedication to her work is putting a serious strain on her marriage; a handyman (played by an unfortunately unknown actor named Callum Keith Rennie) who oddly seems to offer solace to everyone he meets, and many others.
  
  The characters all face their own conflicts, which all escalate as the day progresses, and each plot thickens as their paths cross. With a movie like this, the challenge is keeping everything focused and organized, and MacIvor does an excellent job of this. The performances are great across the board, and the story is filled with genuine emotion and just a bit of dark humor to balance things out. It may sound a bit bleak and depressing by my description, but this is ultimately a feel-good movie that never feels sappy or contrived. It also manages to be quirky and unique, but still pretty realistic. You sort of get the feeling that these kinds of things probably really do go on in small towns all over the world, that sort of struggle to maintain a balance between the conflict of the individual and the comaraderie of the community.
  
  Finally, the cinematography is excellent as well. It has this sort of simplistic, pastoral feel that's perfectly conducive to the mood, and the location (somewhere in Nova Scotia, I think?) is really beautiful. I really like the music too. There's at least a couple of songs in here for which I really need to find the artist.
  
  Anyway, this is just a really great movie, one that I could watch over and over and never get tired of. I really wish MacIvor would make more movies, because I really dig his style. He did one before this called "Marion Bridge" (which also stars Ellen Page, and the woman who played her mother in this one), which is also really good. I definitely need more.
• You don't have to live on an island to be insular, but it helps: This quiet film perfectly captured for me the essence of living in a small community where people still care about who your parents were and what you did in high school long after the glory of prom night has passed, and where political corruption can be truly small and petty and yet still ruin people's lives. It's a surprisingly sweet film considering the dark nature of the central plot. An excellent ensemble cast practicing some fine, tightly controlled acting, makes it enjoyable to watch as events in the small town pass through a possible crisis. I'm just happy I don't have to live somewhere like that (ever again.)
• A Microcosm of Deftly Drawn Characters...and Life: A day in the life on Wilby Island, off Nova Scotia, may not sound like a resource for rich storytelling, but in the gifted hands of writer/director Daniel MacIvor and inordinately talented Canadian cast WILBY WONDERFUL penetrates more dark secrets, exposes more astray lives, and addresses more human frailties than almost all of the competition. This is independent filmmaking at its finest, with all of the emphasis on quality and little concern for the big budget special effects that mire so many films today.
  
  On the little island, divided between islanders and mainlanders 'visiting', lives an array of lonely people. We are introduced to a 'cause celebre' that happened on the beach (though the facts are hazy) and investigating the scandal are police officers Buddy French (Paul Gross) and his somewhat loose cannon Stan (portrayed by MacIvor himself). Buddy's wife Carol (Sandra Oh) is a very busy real estate person, assisted by her doofus secretary Deena (Kathryn MacLellan), out to sell a home to the town mayor (Maury Chaykin) and family (Susannah Hoffman and Marcella Grimaux), and while Carol is fretting over details, her meandering husband Buddy is secreting an affair with island returnee wannabe cafe owner Sandra Anderson (Rebecca Jenkins), whose libidinous past negatively influences her young daughter Emily (Ellen Page) in her new physical tryst with young Taylor (Caleb Langille). And while each of these stories unfolds, the town gossip Irene (Mary Ellen MacLean) keeps her evil eye on the soon-to-be-made apparent scandal that video store owner Dan Jarvis (James Allodi), who spends the entire movie attempting variations on suicide, and town painter Duck MacDonald (Callum Keith Rennie) are to be outed as being gay. It is the strange interplay of each of these lonely, needy characters that brings brilliant focus to the tiny bit of reality that is actually heartfelt.
  
  MacIvor and friends pull off this strange little black comedy with ease and aplomb and the film is a charmer in every way - from script to cinematography (Rudolf Blahacek) to musical score (Michael Timmins). This is a splendid little movie that deserves a very wide audience. Grady Harp, October 07
  
• Insightful and sweet.: I stumbled upon this film through an Amazon "listmania," and am very glad I did. There are no car chases, gun fights, supermodels and so forth, just regular people making it through their days; which is the most interesting sort of film imaginable. "Wilby" touches on issues like bad attitudes towards gays, how golf course development can wreck beautiful wild spaces, and how we sometimes lose ourselves in our pursuit of some illusory future or romances.
  "Wilby" is about people ending fruitless pursuits, and restoring their integrity.
  Filmed in Nova Scotia, it had beautiful scenery and sounds of nature to work with, and implied that a connection to the land can lead to healing ourselves. Ecopsychology: Restoring the Earth, Healing the Mind
  It can be hard to find such a nice film, a film that a person wouldn't be horrified to know that their children watched.
  The music is quite good as well.
  I'm glad "Film Movement" made "Wilby" available, and I'll be looking for other independent movies that they are trying to bring to a larger audience.
• A superb, highly intelligent film: This is a marvelous "small" film. I don't mean "small" to denote anything perjorative. It is merely that the film tells a small story very close up and personal with a fairly small ensemble cast. I didn't check the closing credits but there may not have been a special effects coordinator. The film tells in subtle fashion the story of the lives of several residents of the Canadian island Wilby. The town looks peaceful enough, but it opening shots reveal a simmering scandal. The names of individuals who meet at a secluded and undeveloped area of the island -- presumably for homosexual encounters and drug use -- are about to be revealed. Not coincidentally we see a man climbing onto the rail of a bridge, presumably to jump into the river below. We later learn that he and another resident of the island were likely to be among the names released.
  
  Very little beyond this happens in the film. We meet people and witness the small but familiar stresses in their lives. A police officer (played by the wonderful Paul Gross) who is tempted to have an affair with a woman he went to high school with who has returned to the island to run a diner. His marriage with a high strung, highly driven realtor (Sandra Oh) is not going well and his wife forces herself to be oblivious to problems they have. The woman who runs the diner desperately wants to be loved and is concerned her young daughter (played by up and comer Ellen Page, who I loved as Kitty Pryde -- my favorite X-Person -- in THE X-MEN 3) will repeat her mistakes. The daughter, on the other hand, thinks she has found love with a young boy and is contemplating losing her virginity to him. The town handyman (played by Callum Keith Rennie, Gross's former costar in DUE SOUTH and one of those delightful, fun loving Cylons on BATTLESTAR GALACTICA) is more or less resigned to his forced outing and is more concerned with reaching out to Dan, his co-conspirator. Dan, on the other hand, seems more determined to end his life.
  
  Thoreau wrote that the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation and that certainly applies to the residents of Wilby. These are not happy people and are generally not admirable people, except perhaps for Duck (Rennie's character) who is not only an apparently kind person but also steps in as a hero in saving the young girl from a sexual assault. But despite all the problems of these decidedly limited souls, the movie ends quite, well, wonderfully.
  
  I liked this movie a great deal. I'll be honest: I think the plethora of 5-star ratings is not quite deserved. To me 5-star ratings should be reserved for unquestionably great films. This is a very, very nice, good, pleasant, unambitious, small film. And there is nothing wrong with that. If you like thoughtful, intelligent films you should definitely see it. If you have attention deficit disorder you should seek out something else entirely.