His Name is Ray: Eight months in the life of a Toronto street person is a gruelling second-hand experience
By Jim Slotek
Rating: B-plus
Panhandlers are an urban fact of life, and most passersby have learned to look past them with a thousand-yard stare.
When you see the same ones repeatedly, you may exchange pleasantries and even ask their name. Over the years, in front of, say, your neighbourhood liquor store, some become familiar. And then one day, they’re gone, replaced by someone else - usually not a good sign.
The title panhandler works his corner in Michael Del Monte’s documentary His Name is Ray.
Filmmaker Michael Del Monte (Transformer) went way past that when he became curious about his daily drive past the same rough-looking panhandler. He got to know the homeless Ray, who more or less “owned” a traffic-light corner of Toronto’s Lakeshore Blvd.
Curiosity intensified, and Del Monte single-handedly filmed Ray’s daily life for eight months. The result, the documentary His Name is Ray is a difficult watch, one that gives you a sense of what the fortysomething had gone through to “look like 80,” as described by relatives and old friends from his P.E.I. home. (He’d been a member of the Coast Guard there, with kids and a life).
Del Monte does a good job playing fly-on-the-wall, catching Ray when he’s coherent and relatively articulate, as well as when his words are a slurred tumble. Ray’s poison is alcohol and heroin, though anything will do in a pinch. By the end of the movie, he’s discovered fentanyl, which suggests his own imminent disappearance.
(Here’s one of the few times I’m happy to play spoiler. A living, breathing Ray is scheduled to join Del Monte on May 27 for a live, virtual Q&A, at the end of the movie’s month-long run on Hot Docs’ Digital HDTR Cinema.)
PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN
Whether you have some understanding of it, or you’ve kept a deliberate distance between your own life and that endured by the underclass on the streets, His Name is Ray is a fascinating look at the survival-driven community of the homeless. People hug and call each other “brother.” But these same friends could just as easily rob you in your sleep (as happens).
There is what amounts to a plot in His Name is Ray as $700 owed to a drug dealer “goes missing.” Ray divides his time between trying to avoid the guy, and phoning him and cajoling him for a break.
Mostly, however, there’s a one-day-is-like-the-next feel, with the day’s errand-list consisting of panhandling enough money for a score, scoring, and finding a place to sleep, often a tent in one of the city’s ravines and underpasses.
And there is exactly one feel-good moment, when a kind-hearted boater at a nearby marina gives the displaced Maritimer Ray a sail around Toronto harbour. It is the closest thing to non-intoxicated happiness we see on his face for the entire movie, conjuring thoughts of the sea and, fleetingly, a desire to get back his old life.
It’s obviously not that easy, but it will be interesting to see what became of him when Ray has his online coming out party in May.
His Name is Ray. Directed by Michael Del Monte. World premiere Thursday April 22 to May 27 on DIGITAL HDTR CINEMA. The Hot Docs at Home service provides virtual access to its films for a $4.99 a month membership.