Dir Mirjam von Arx

For the Wilson family, every little girl gets to be a princess for a day. But it comes at horrifying cost. The patriarch of the family, Randy Wilson, founded the American custom of purity balls: ceremonies where daughters dress up in gowns and promise their fathers that they will remain virgins until marriage. The film focuses on Randy and his oldest unmarried daughter Jordan (22 years old).

The film is predictably disturbing, not because the family has hidden secrets or are hypocritical monsters, but because they really do embody their own twisted Christian ideals. The mood in the Wilson home is suffocating. Von Arx described the feeling of filming the Wilsons as “claustrophobic” and it is comes across in the movie. Their entire existence is wrapped up in gender norms that are so restrictive being a woman is a full time job for the Wilson ladies. Jordan waits to meet her husband while she teaches other young ladies to embody grace and manners at workshops she organizes. And every goddamn (sorry, I mean gosh darn) thing the family does is marked by some strange ceremony they invented for the occasion, always preceded by exhausting beauty prep.

Von Arx sometimes seems to reach a little when stating the political importance of the Wilsons, but their story is no doubt important when you consider how many people in America are either just like the Wilsons or aspire to be. Perhaps most shocking of all is how sympathetically the family is represented in the movie. They are constantly reaffirming how much they love each other and they are principled, even if their principles are grotesque to most liberal-minded audiences. The audience was obviously at once horrified and drawn in by the Wilsons. Despite a pointed and often mocking Q&A discussion of the documentary, when Von Arx announced that after the film wrapped Jordan did indeed marry the man of her dreams, the crowd cheered.

If you missed Virgin Tales at VIFF, a shorter cut will air on CBC television on October 20 on the Passionate Eye.

The writer Malcolm Gladwell tells us that to achieve mastery, we need to put in 10 000 hours of dedicated work toward a craft or specialty.The concept is a new spin on an old idea: practice makes perfect. Richard Williams puts in more than his 10 000 hours, but the film Persistence of Vision begs the question of whether or not it was all worth it.

Williams, the Oscar-winning animation director of Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, spent thirty years obsessing over a film that he never finished. He alienated family, friends and animators pursuing a project that a studio eventually swept away from under him when he was unable to bring his vision together on deadline.

As it is becoming increasingly popular to ascribe to the Gladwell-ian manner of thinking, it is surprising to find a documentary that serves as a cautionary tale against creative obsession. Making its world premiere at VIFF, this film has all the makings of an engrossing documentary but falls a little flat in production. Still, Williams’ story tells us something about what it takes to be a genius and why it might not be all it is cracked up to be.

Thirty years allows enough time for things to go wrong in myriad ways: an investor embezzles funds; a master animator dies; Disney steals characters and images. There is something to be said for letting your work go and Williams’ problem is probably more ego than persistence. He constantly wants to tweak elements that are already finished, yet he fails to finish basic parts of the project like story boarding.

Schreck does not quite do Williams’ story justice; the documentary is hastily done, and since Williams refused to cooperate there is only archival footage of him in the film. There is a certain lack of insight into what drove his genius. However, the animation is beautiful and it was interesting to see not only Williams, but a team of animators so driven, only to see it all fade away. It is well worth checking out the documentary and definitely worth looking at the various recuts from the unfinished project The Cobbler and the Thief.

Persistence of Vision
Dir. Kevin Shreck
10:45AM, October 12
Pacific Cinematheque (1181 Howe)
Details