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In Radiant City, the new documentary by Gary Burns and journalist Jim Brown, there's something more desperate about suburbs than their housewives. Whether you call it sprawl or growth, the suburbs have been the dominant form of community planning in North America for fifty years. Burns and Brown peer into the windows - and lives - of those who call suburbia home.
The Moss family is one such household. The parents commute to the city for work, while their kids shuffle from school, to gymnastics, to playing among the half-built homes of their new community. Their micromanaged lives are mapped out on the kitchen whiteboard. The Mosses seem split on their suburban experience: Mom loves the safety and big house; Dad is busy starring in local theatre productions; son and daughter feel isolated from their neighbours. The siblings share their own thoughts as they take us on an ironic tour of the neighbourhood.
Suburban communities are examined and criticized by experts like University of Toronto's Mark Kingwell and author James Howard Kunstler. The legacy of the suburbs is traced from the rise of the automobile to the arrival of the "new urbanists," who look to pre-war models for designing future communities.
Yet Radiant City is more than a critical dissertation on the suburbs. Burns lends the movie his witty, satirical edge, crafting a film that's informative, insightful and hilarious. Radiant City is his most direct confrontation yet with the suburban lifestyle and aesthetic; his familiarity with the landscape allows him to capture both its seductive allure and disenchanting realities.
Burns and Brown tease the documentary form in new directions, mirroring the façade of the suburbs in their filmmaking. Cinematographer Patrick McLaughlin provides a vivid backdrop for Burns's humour and Brown's journalism, while Joey Santiago of The Pixies gives the film an added urgency with a grinding rock soundtrack. Like the identical streetscapes of a housing division, Radiant City hides secrets behind its glossy exterior that, once revealed, change not only how we view the 'burbs, but also the movie we've just seen. - Jesse Wente for TIFF
Winner of the Special Jury Prize for Best Documentary at 2006 VIFF "for its innovative narrative strategies to engage, amuse and enlighten about the changing face of the suburbs."
Gary Burns studied drama and fine arts at the University of Calgary before attending Concordia University. His feature directorial debut, The Suburbanators (95), was voted one of the ten best films of 1996 by the Toronto Film Critics Association. He followed that success with Kitchen Party (97), waydowntown (00) and A Problem with Fear (03).
Jim Brown is a writer and broadcaster with over two decades of experience. From 1988 to 1993, he was the publisher and editor of IslandSide Magazine. Since then, Brown has worked primarily in radio and television, hosting The Current, As It Happens, This Morning and The House. Brown currently hosts The Calgary Eyeopener on CBC Radio One. Radiant City (06) is his directorial debut.
At once a documentary on the meaning and impact of suburban life, a portrait of a newly suburbanized family, and a kind of visual space proof of another planet, Radiant City is also funny in a shuddery kind of way. - Geroff Pevere, Toronto Star |
