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Calgary Herald

Canadian filmmaker Jason Buxton's second feature, Sharp Corner, a study in obsession

Article content Soon, another accident happens with similarly tragic results. Rachel demands they move, but Josh becomes obsessed with the two victims claimed by the crashes and increasingly transfixed by the potential that it might happen again. He spends much of his day looking out the panoramic window onto the road and waiting. Article content His private and professional life begins to unravel as he obsesses over saving future victims. Sharp Corner is based on a short story by Canadian author and journalist Russell Wangersky from his 2006 Giller long-listed debut collection, The Hour of Bad Decisions. Initially, Buxton wanted to tackle several stories from the book and weave them together in a structure similar to Paul Thomas Anderson's 1999 episodic drama Magnolia or Robert Altman's 1993 comedy-drama Short Cuts, which was inspired by the short stories of Raymond Carver. Article content 'All of Russell's work really appealed to me, but with that story, in particular, I was looking for something that would talk about obsession,' Buxton says. 'As a writer, I would often become very tunnelled. Even when I put down my writing for the day, I would still be solving problems in my head at dinner and not paying attention to my family. I realized that this short story gave me a really good template to look at obsession and how turning away from one's family can happen and the dangers of that.' Article content Article content Buxton said he walked through bookstores looking for potential CanLit material he could turn into film. It's his first since his acclaimed 2012 debut Blackbird, a drama about a bullied goth teen wrongly accused of plotting a school shooting. Sharp Corner was a long-gestating project for the Nova Scotia-based filmmaker, who began developing it years ago but was delayed by his work on a CBC miniseries that was shelved by COVID-19. Article content He would eventually take a few liberties with Wangersky's work when adapting his story for the screen. Article content 'In the short story, the character doesn't develop a saviour complex, it was something I added,' Buxton plays. 'The way that Ben Foster is at the beginning, that's the character Russell had written. The couple in his story didn't have a child. Those were all inventions that I came up with when I adapted the story into a two-hour movie. It didn't have what we think of as a three-act structure; it was more about the character who became an expert on these accidents that were happening in front of his house, and his wife doesn't understand why he seemed to be fascinated and gain something from these experiences. In fact, the original title I was working under when I had the other stories of Russell's was The Misery of Others. I felt like the character is obsessively drawn to the misery of others. In a way, I thought of it as a character who doesn't have an understanding of his own psyche. He doesn't have a relationship with his interior life and is perhaps cut off emotionally, and so this reawakens something.' Article content Article content Not an easy character to portray. Foster first gained attention as a teen actor in the late 1990s and early aughts in films such as Liberty Heights and Get Over It but has developed into a versatile character actor with acclaimed roles as a ruthless cowboy in 3:10 to Yuma, a troubled Iraq war vetern in The Messenger and a wild bank robber in Hell or High Water. Article content 'He is often cast as the very macho, madman kind of guy and this character starts off as meek,' Buxton says. 'So it wasn't obvious that this would be a role that was right for Ben and also a role that would appeal to him. This character spoke to him in a lot of ways. But, to me, there was no way of knowing that. But I love that he decided to do our movie because I think he brings so much interior life and mystery to the character. I find audiences love watching him and trying to figure out what this guy is all about.'