Sundance: Glitz gets low profile as festival goes back to basics
Documentaries were the winners this year with films about Pat Tillman, cane toads, and a cautionary tale about Facebook called 鈥楥atfish.'
Patrick Kimani
Courtesy of HBO
Park City, Utah
Glitz is out, art is in. Not just any old art 鈥 cutting-edge art. This is the clarion call at this year鈥檚 Sundance Film Festival, which kicked off Jan. 21 and wraps this weekend.
Just in case festivalgoers aren鈥檛 getting the message, screenings are routinely preceded by onscreen exhortations to rebel. The word 鈥渂uck鈥 is a mainstay. The festival program guide begins, 鈥淭his is the renewed rebellion. This is the recharged fight against the establishment of the expected. This is the rebirth of the battle for brave new ideas.鈥 In other words, don鈥檛 expect, as in the past, to see Paris Hilton in her parka slinking into a stretch Hummer. It鈥檚 back-to-basics time for the largest, and also the coldest, indie film festival in the world.
One might take the cynical view that the recession, and not a higher calling, has something to do with this scaling-back mentality. But it鈥檚 certainly been true over the years that Sundance, in ski-mecca Park City, Utah, has doubled as a romping ground for the terminally hip. John Cooper, Sundance鈥檚 new director, is looking to end all that.
It was bound to happen anyway. The body count of high-rollers and studio-exec types, for example, is down this year, and so is the consequent star wattage. In the old days, the success of the festival was often judged, to its detriment, by the number of sales it racked up. Now buyers are cautious, and there are fewer of them. Many of the studio 鈥渟pecialty鈥 divisions, which were set up to distribute small-scale offbeat fare, have closed down or been marginalized.
But in the end, Sundance is always about the movies, and, to my eyes, this year鈥檚 lineup 鈥 or at least the 15 feature films I saw out of the more than 100 that were screened 鈥 was about on par with other years: some standouts, some sludge.
The standouts were, as usual, disproportionately documentaries. This makes sense. Documentary filmmakers are often seized by a subject 鈥 they鈥檙e certainly not seized by the prospect of a big payday 鈥 and the passion shows.
Amir Bar-Lev鈥檚 鈥The Tillman Story,鈥 for example, is about Pat Tillman, who gave up a lucrative pro football career to become an Army ranger in 2002 and was subsequently killed in Afghanistan by friendly fire (and not by opposing forces, as originally reported). The US military, attempting to turn Tillman into an action-hero poster boy, initially covered up the circumstances of Tillman鈥檚 death. In large part because of the efforts of his mother, Dannie, the truth came out. Dannie, a diminutive woman with a large-scale presence, attended the postscreening discussion, and she refused, as she also does in the film, to turn her son into a saint. Her position is unwavering: It is enough that he was a human being. Bar-Lev bemoaned the fact that, in today鈥檚 plugged-in world, everything has to be laid bare. The Tillman family, he feels, 鈥渨as not allowed to grieve in private. Pat鈥檚 symbolism was more important than their grief.鈥
Another powerful documentary is Jennifer Arnold鈥檚 鈥淎 Small Act,鈥 which is about Chris Mburu, a poor Kenyan boy who, because his primary and secondary school education was sponsored by an anonymous Swedish woman, became a Harvard-educated human rights lawyer for the United Nations and went on to found his own scholarship fund. The woman, Hilde Beck, now in her 80s, is, it turns out, a Holocaust survivor. When she and Mburu finally meet, we see it on film. We see much else, too. Arnold follows the stories of three Kenyan primary school classmates as they attempt to qualify for scholarships, and their journey is seemingly no less insurmountable than Mburu鈥檚 was. As Arnold said in a postscreening interview, the prospects for poor Kenyan schoolchildren who do not advance academically is bleak: Within two years of dropping out of school, the girls become pregnant. The boys become servants or guards for the wealthy. And so the cycle of impoverishment continues.
I did get to meet Hilde Beck at a dinner reception for documentary filmmakers. For someone who claims to disdain the spotlight, this under-five-foot dynamo was having a high old time. She even invited me to visit her in Sweden. I may take her up on it.
There were other standout documentaries. Leon Gast鈥檚 鈥Smash His Camera鈥 focuses on Ron Galella, the now 78-year-old paparazzo best known for provoking Jackie Onassis into serving him with a restraining order. He also once had his jaw broken by Marlon Brando. Such are the wages of fame. Galella is a charming and disarming camera subject, which is surprising given that he鈥檚 essentially a species of stalker. I asked him after the screening if he preferred to shoot his subjects 鈥 I almost said 鈥渧ictims鈥 鈥 with or without their cooperation. 鈥淲hat I look for is the candid,鈥 he said. I think I detected a half smile.
The title of Alex Gibney鈥檚 鈥Casino Jack and the United States of Money鈥 pretty much says it all. Now jailed Washington superlobbyist Jack Abramoff鈥檚 involvement in everything from native American casinos to Chinese sweatshops is so minutely detailed that, watching this film, I suffered scandal overload. In the wake of Bernie Madoff, Abramoff may seem like old news. But his career, as Gibney makes clear, is a microcosm of what鈥檚 wrong with the way we do political business in America, and this is far from old news.
The most buzzed-about movie at Sundance was probably 鈥Catfish,鈥 a microbudget documentary directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman about Ariel鈥檚 brother Yaniv, a 24-year-old New York photographer who is contacted on MySpace by an 8-year-old Michigan girl who wants permission to paint one of his photos. This leads to a cyber-romance with the girl鈥檚 older sister, but nothing is what it seems in this movie, which is like a cautionary tale for the Facebook generation. It鈥檚 a fascinating film but it has its amoral aspects 鈥 the directors don鈥檛 seem to be entirely aware that they intruded themselves, for the supposed greater good of cinema, into woeful people鈥檚 lives.
Of the dramatic films that I saw, and, like everybody else, I missed a slew of likely contenders, the best was probably Nicole Holofcener鈥檚 鈥Please Give,鈥 a pleasant enough comedy about a married Manhattan couple, played by Catherine Keener and Oliver Platt, who resell estate-sale furniture. I鈥檓 tempted to call this film Woody Allen Lite, except that, for some time now, Allen鈥檚 movies have been pretty Lite, too.
John Wells鈥檚 鈥The Company Men鈥 is the latest in what is clearly a new genre: the layoff movie. Ben Affleck, Chris Cooper, and Tommy Lee Jones star as boardroom casualties in what, at times, resembles a cross between 鈥Up in the Air鈥 (minus the fun parts and the romance) and 鈥Death of a Salesman.鈥 Is this a genre that will catch on with audiences? Maybe only if the downsizing is in 3-D. (My biggest Sundance regret, by the way: Missing 鈥淐ane Toads: The Conquest,鈥 the 3-D sequel to 鈥淐ane Toads: An Unnatural History.鈥)
Kevin Asch鈥檚 鈥Holy Rollers鈥 stars Jesse Eisenberg as a naive Hasid who ends up smuggling Ecstasy between Amsterdam and New York. This is one of those 鈥渋nspired by a true story鈥 movies that never rings true.
And then there is the ever-present roster of good performances in so-so movies. Derek Cianfrance鈥檚 鈥Blue Valentine鈥 has two of our finest young actors, Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, battling it out as a dysfunctional married couple. The chronology of their tribulations is deliberately jumbled, for that arty effect. 鈥淗owl,鈥 the dramatic feature directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, which opened the festival, pivots on the famous Allen Ginsberg poem and stars James Franco, surprisingly well cast, as the young poet. A chunk of the movie is taken up with Ginsberg鈥檚 coffeehouse recitation of 鈥Howl,鈥 but the filmmakers wreck these sequences by inserting animated imaginings over Ginsberg鈥檚 words 鈥 which hold up quite well all on their own, thank you very much.
Floria Sigismondi鈥檚 鈥The Runaways,鈥 about the short-lived 鈥70s girl band, has the usual faults of most movies about the drug-rock scene 鈥 it makes depravity seem boring 鈥 but it proves that (a) Dakota Fanning, as lead singer Cherie Currie, can act, and (b) Kristen Stewart, as Joan Jett (who also performed at Sundance) can be hard-edged as well as 鈥Twilight鈥-蝉辞蹿迟.
As for the so-self-indulgent-it-makes-your-teeth-ache 鈥Hesher,鈥 starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as a stoner loner who insinuates himself into a dysfunctional 鈥 what else? 鈥 family, it validates my strong suspicion that somewhere out there a computer program exists for concocting Sundance movies. Bad Sundance movies. (I鈥檓 suspicious, by the way, of the rousing applause that emanated from one corner of the theater after the 鈥淗esher鈥 screening. Filmmakers and distributors are not above packing the house with partisan cheerers.)
Even good Sundance movies often have a difficult time being seen once the festival ends. Buzz fades; distributors move on. Perhaps the best piece of 鈥渞ebellion鈥 to emerge from this year鈥檚 festival was something called Sundance Selects, in which, on the day of their premi猫re, three features from the lineup were made available on-demand through a branded platform of cable and satellite systems reaching 40 million homes throughout America. Also, eight films traveled to eight arthouse theaters in major cities around the country for a one-night showing on Jan. 28, which included a Q-and-A session with the filmmakers.
The thinking behind all this is clear: At a time when quality independent movies are increasingly homeless, and the coverage of these films increasingly pared back in the mainstream press, film festivals have to take a more activist position.
This is the kind of rebellion I can subscribe to. When I rave about a movie, I want to know that people can see it.