TIFF Report: For Your Consideration

Three actors learn their respective performances in the film "Home for Purim," a drama set in the mid-1940s American South, are generating award-season buzz. Marilyn Hack [O’Hara] and Victor Allen Miller [Shearer] are actors restless in obscurity who get caught up in Oscar™ fever when a spy report from the set appears on the ‘world wide interweb’ touting Hack’s performance as Oscar™ worthy. Soon Miller is caught up in his own buzz and young actress Kelly Webb [Posey] joins the fray. Hopes are dashed and realized when the nominations are finally announced.

This will be the funniest movie everyone will see this year. For Your Consideration departs from Guest’s traditional mockumentary format but I do consider this the most accessible Christopher Guest film to date. The decision to divert from the mockumentary approach should free it from the art house theatre circuit and help it open up for a broader viewing audience. Pound for pound and minute by minute you will laugh yourself into hysterics. It was over before I knew it and it left me wanting more.

Guest’s rat pack is sublime to watch. Perfect as always, everyone in the cast has their moment. Jane Lynch and Fred Willard as the entertainment magazine TV hosts nail it down to the falsehood, poses and Willard’s Faux Hawk is an amazing feat in hair engineering. Bab Balaban and Mike McKean portray the film’s screenwriters, uneasy with change and struggling to keep the film’s essence and identity. Jennifer Coolidge plays the heiress to a baby diaper cleaning company turned film producer that really doesn’t have a clue and doesn’t like being filmed from behind. John Michael Higgins plays a pitch perfect role as the movie’s publicist. And For Your Consideration’s writers, Eugene Levy and Christopher Guest, play an inept talent agent and the director of “Home for Purim”. Introducing what would hopefully be a constant member of the troupe from here on out is Ricky Gervais who joined the cast as another of the films producers. His comedic approach and talent are a perfect fit for Guest and his projects.

And all the while I couldn’t help but wonder if there was another message to this film hidden beneath the layers of jokes and laughter. That it may be that the desire to be loved and appreciated, that validation comes from the approval of others and not one’s self. I couldn’t help but wonder if the equation to the question is Attention = Love. If no one knows who I am anymore does that mean that I am not loved? So, is that a risk of the acting profession? Do you come to rely on the love and accolades of others so much that you forget how to love yourself? Or would you lose sight of yourself and your true being just to gain the attention and affection of others around you? O’Hara’s parting line in Consideration, and I will have to paraphrase, “I am comfortable in my own skin”, when clearly she hasn’t been lest she wouldn’t have undergone such a dramatic change since the buzz reached her ears. We see how far her Marilyn Hack, and Harry Shearer’s Victor Allen Miller go- the depths they’re willing to bow down to- just to keep in the limelight. But then perhaps this is not a layer to the film that Guest intentioned but it would be interesting to know if has anything to say about this interpretation, if at some point this crossed his mind as well, and how he feels about it.

For Your Consideration opens in theatres in November. If you didn’t catch it at TIFF find it in November. Highly Recommended.