The Many Sad Fates of Mr. Toledano
“Mr. Toledano, as he prefers to be known, is perhaps the most self-absorbed person I've ever met. Is that a bad thing? No, in his case, he wears it every well.”
So says a friend and colleague of Phil Toledano, a pretty famous photographer who does indeed prefer to be known as Mr. Toledano. Perhaps it’s his proper British background, or the fact that inside photography circles he’s known as a “big idea” man, constructing elaborate pieces merging camera, props and photo illustration to produce arrest magazine covers and the like.
Either way, he obviously thinks a lot of himself… or at least, a lot about himself.
“The Many Sad Fates of Mr. Toledano” is Joshua Seftel’s documentary chronicling a three-year project by Phil – take that, Mr. stuffed shirt! – in which he visually contemplates possible future outcomes for himself. He employs a special effects makeup artist and photo crew to make him look like a much older version of himself as he might be.
The key is that all of these self-iterations are tragic, depressingly humdrum or outright frightening. We see Phil as obese, homeless, bald, drunk, diseased, decrepit, dying or even dead. The imagery is, to say the least, arresting.
As you might guess Phil’s wife, Carla Serrano, is not terribly thrilled with this project. Immersing yourself in your fears, she says, seems to just perpetuate them. She is especially put off by the fact that in all of these future visions of himself, his wife and young daughter are not included.
His problems began when his mother passed away and his father came under his care, suffering from dementia. His dad’s long decline, along with his sister’s childhood death long ago, have left Phil with a morose fixation on how his life could turn out – for bad, or worse.
Seftel’s film is well-crafted and photographed, as Phil goes through his various transformations. And they are elaborate – in one he stages himself as a business executive being arrested by federal agents. Or he hires a nurse to wheel him around in a wheelchair, dressed as an ancient, unseeing figure. He also visits psychics and fortune tellers to get an additional glimpse into what could be.
I think most observers will find Phil to be neurotic, in a charming way but somewhat pathetic. But Seftel simply documents without judging, so we’re left to make our own conclusions.
It’s unhelpful to be too obsessed with what will happen to you, just as lingering on the past eats away at the present. But I will admit that if I contemplated a future in which I hadn’t seen “The Many Sad Fates of Mr. Toledano,” it seems a wee bit less interesting.