For me, for always and forever, The 2010 Sundance Film Festival will be remembered as the year of Blue Valentine. It is, without question, the best film that I have ever seen at Sundance, a sumptuous and painfully real movie that, beat by beat, moment by moment, takes real risks on behalf of deep feeling and true emotion, risks that constantly broke my heart and brought me into direct confrontation with myself. Derek Cianfrance, who directed the film by letting his actors cut loose in the best possible ways, is a major talent and his seemingly involuntary decision to not make this movie at any other point over the last ten years is proof that sometimes, fate provides discretion on behalf of the artist. While it is possible that another pair of actors may have been able to pull off this movie, I can’t imagine who they would be or how it might have worked out.
Ryan Gosling’s Dean is a showcase for the actor’s gift for expressing the finest details of inarticulate masculinity, but it is Michelle Williams who proves herself one of the great actors of the day; utterly believable both as a college heartbreaker and as an exhausted mother and wife struggling with her need for a flicker of ambition and stability, Williams is transcendent. Watching the pair fall in and out of love is a shattering experience, and one that worked for me on every level. In an era of undercooked improvisation and a lack of cinematic ambition among so many low-budget films, Blue Valentine soars into the realm of films like A Woman Under The Influence and A nous amours, films that shock you into a true understanding of what the cinema can really do when the stars align.
Derek Cianfrance’s Blue Valentine
Who hasn’t stood broken hearted, in the arms of the one you love, desperately aware that it’s all over? I am not sure what the festival’s Narrative Jury deliberations were like, but I can almost smell the cynicism from here; how this film wasn’t somehow recognized as a major achievement at the festival is utterly beyond me. I had plenty of conversations with younger, otherwise thoughtful friends and colleagues who dismissed the film for one reason or another (“The more I think about it, the more I’m souring on it,” one told me), but I look at that reaction as a sort of optimistic line in the sand; one day, maybe not long from now, maybe years down the road, you’re going to be staring down the end of a relationship, suddenly and shockingly aware that every word, every gesture, every action is inadequate to repair the damage of every previous word, gesture and action. You’ll open your mouth to say something, to provide yourself some closure, and maybe you’ll remember this; the movie was real all along. It’s just that your experience of love wasn’t.
Which is not to say there weren’t quite a few engaging, even fun films at the festival this year. I really enjoyed many of the narrative features I saw, from The Kids Are Alright (which is a film that finally allows queer couples the same privilege that is allowed so many heterosexual couples in movies; to be assholes) to a movie like The Extra Man, which was a light and sweet adaptation of the Jonathan Ames’ kinky piss-take of a novel about a poor old gadfly who spends his nights chasing the fortunes of rich old ladies and his days grooming a pretentious young cross-dresser the tricks of the trade. The light touch of these films was countered by the thrilling formalism of I Am Love, which stood alongside Blue Valentine as one of the true revelations of my time at the festival.
Tilda Swinton, who has become one of the those actors where you simply type her name and you instantly convey everything about her you would hope to convey (she’s that great), plays Emma Recchi, the wife of a wealthy Milanese industrialist. Emma falls in love with her son’s friend, a young chef named Antonio, and the shit eventually hits the fan (as it must). While the film is ostensibly about their extra-marital affair and its impact on the family, it is really the story of a personal transformation, of Emma’s move away from the luxurious and cold excess of wealth and toward sensual happiness and personal pleasure. The director Luca Guadagnino swings for something between Visconti and Antonioni, and in that regard, the film has the look and texture of something, well, for lack of a better phrase, old school. But all of those big ideas about movies are used to the film’s advantage, typified by Guadagnino’s use of a brilliant score by the American composer John Adams. Adams’ music adds a layer of complexity to the proceedings, and it literally transforms the movie’s climax from a simple, inevitable conclusion into a heart-stopping thrill that leaves you breathless. I am a real fan of Adams’ work and was happily surprised by the liberal use of his score in this film; I really think it, along with the gorgeous cinematography, gives the film a real sense of intention and a formal grandeur that is so often absent at Sundance.
Luca Guadagnino’s I Am Love
In the end, like any great feat of overindulgence (and believe me, 30 films in six days is an overindulgence of epic proportions), most of what remains are the bright and pleasurable moments that shaped my experience. While I am sure I am overlooking a million other happy moments of discovery, many of them feel distant now, lost in the crush of films. This is what remains, and so I hope it will suffice in lieu of some “trend spotting” report about the state of cinema (see my previous post here) or some negative judgments about the festival or this or that movie. I can’t be bothered to pose anymore. I love the cinema, wherever and whenever it presents itself, in piles of snow or in converted tennis clubs, I couldn’t care less. Movies? Love. Let’s leave it at that.
all of those plans to write during the festival? sucked away by professional obligations…
I loved Sundance this year. There, I said it. As a programmer, I can only dream of the constant scrutiny and complaining leveled at the festival by the various factions that make up the filmmaking, press, industry and public audiences that swarm Park City, Utah every January. And yet, I am consistently impressed by the hard work that the Sundance staff accomplishes; no film program will perfectly cater to any individual’s tastes, but Sundance always bears fruit if you’re willing to take the time to look.
This year’s festival was no exception; I saw 30 films in Park City, and I really enjoyed about 25 of them, which is a great feat, all things considered. Add to it the intimacy of the parties I was able to attend, the slew of familiar and friendly new faces unveiled from beneath a pile of scarves and hats, the relatively consistent shuttle transportation, and the wicked cold that made sitting in a theater so inviting (and, upon reflection, felt warm compared to the freezing temperatures at home in New York), and I can’t help but think of this year’s festival as a real success.
That said, any time the biggest, most recognized American film festival tries to cast itself as the home of some sort of a rebellion, it is bound to open itself up to unnecessary criticism. The marketing campaign the festival waged to reclaim the independent high ground after a decade of serving (and helping foster the collapse of) the interests of the mini-majors was actually legitimized by most of the films, but the contrast between Sundance’s artistic message and the nature of the coverage of the festival (that is, focused tightly on the sales market and the meaning of the market’s machinations) is a reminder that no matter how hard you try to rebrand it, Sundance is the big dog because of the way in which it embraces its economic function; none of the thousands of filmmakers who submitted to the festival, none of the film buyers who spent thousands of dollars each on passes, none of the press covering the festival did so because they were interested in being a part of a rejection of cinematic commerce. The Sundance dream remains the dream of the big sale and as long as it does, the commercial interests of the independent film community will be intimately tethered to the festival; a more rebellious campaign might have been to sell that reality back to the industry as an honest embrace.
About Half Of The Ticket Holder’s Line For Blue Valentine, January 25, 2010, 7:45 AM, Racquet Club, Park City, UT
For all of the tension that exists between the festival’s self-imagined message and its communal function, everything comes down to the films, created by a wide array of artists with different visions and culled from a massive pile of submissions into a single program. This year’s program was impressive not as a statement against the market, but because it seemed to be advocating for an older idea of the market, one in which independent films were still a powerful force in shaping the national conversation. The 2010 festival felt like a throwback in more ways than one; the narrative films featured several small scale, domestically themed projects that have defined the independent film community for years and the documentary program once again proved to be consistently excellent in its exploration of politics and the social conditions that shape our society. Even at its most populist, Sundance has never been a bellwether of national taste, but more of an idea and snapshot of the state of American independent moviemaking, a home for art whose meaning exists outside of the methods of how the films are distributed and seen.
Unfortunately, the independent film community continues to struggle for answers to the diminishing returns the films are finding at the box office (and in their influence on our idea of the American cinema); the films may be of the same or better quality, but the world keeps changing and the industry is in the midst of a struggle to keep up. Sundance didn’t offer any solutions to these problems, focusing instead on its primary role as discoverer and promoter of new films, but it is the fragmented vision of the future of the business that kept the festival feeling both relevant and, for me, a little nostalgic. Until we have a comprehensive strategy and broad consumer adoption of a meaningful solution for the dozens of Video On Demand/ Internet streaming/ TV device/ Theatrical release problems that confront the independent sector of the industry, solutions that will ultimately be driven by Hollywood’s interests (on how many platforms did Avatar open? One.), the festival world can only do so much in its limited window of opportunity to shape the business. In the meantime, showing great movies will have to do, and while, like any festival, this year’s event had some clunkers (makes you wonder what the thousands of films on the rejection pile look like), there were also plenty of films to love.
Separate posts on the Narrative and Documentary films to follow… stay tuned (and I mean it this time)…
Sorry for not posting. I have been seeing 6 films a day and in between meetings and a few small social obligations, I have been scrambling to find time for one meal a day and a few hours of sleep. Lots to talk about, but this schedule is impossible for writing, More when I can…
Today is the day to celebrate the civil rights and think about the state of social injustice. As such, it is, for me, a day to think once again about legal equality for the LGBT community. While most American news outlets will draw the obvious distinctions between Dr. King’s “dream” and the ascendancy of Barack Obama as President of the United States, I can’t help but think of the irony as, now one year into the President’s first term, he continues to sit on his hands while our fellow citizens, neighbors, friends and family in the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgendered community have not been granted equal protection under the law in this country. It’s interesting to me to see so many movements attach themselves to King’s mission—environmentalism, animal rights—without speaking about the only direct correlation in modern American society between the legal conditions that created the Civil Rights movement and the bigotry of the majority in establishing those conditions. The denial of equal rights for the LGBT community is the only social condition where ballot initiatives and civic law is structured to deny basic civil rights to our citizens, and yet here we are again, another Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day and people still draw literal correlations between the color of King’s skin and his mission without thinking about the way in which Civil Rights and the denial of those rights operate today.
I wrote a long essay on this topic back in November of 2008, as voters in another american state lined yo to deny equal marriage rights to their fellow citizens, and since then, things have only gotten worse. My position at the time remains unchanged today; without either the Congress and President passing and signing an equivalent of the Civil Rights Act for LGBT Americans or the country having this case brought before the Supreme Court, where a precedent against legal discrimination can be won, the movement’s broken strategy of fighting for rights state-by-state remains doomed to fail under the weight of popular bigotry. This idea, one that has made sense to me for years, is the subject of a recent New Yorker article by Margaret Talbot, who worries it may be “too soon” to address the Supreme Court because of the conservative bent of so many of the justices. In that article, Ted Olson, the ultra conservative lawyer who is hoping to petition the court in favor of same-sex marriage, evokes Dr. King directly in his defense of his position:
“I have spent a fair amount of time reading Dr. King’s response to people who said, ‘People aren’t ready for this,’ ” he said. “His ‘Letter from a Birmingham Jail,’ one of the more moving documents in history, addresses this. If people are suffering and being hurt by discrimination, and their children and their families are . . . then who are we as lawyers to say, ‘Wait ten years’? ”—Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, January 16, 2010.
“On January 11th, a remarkable legal case opens in a San Francisco courtroom—on its way, it seems almost certain, to the Supreme Court. Perry v. Schwarzenegger challenges the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the California referendum that, in November, 2008, overturned a state Supreme Court decision allowing same-sex couples to marry. Its lead lawyers are unlikely allies: Theodore B. Olson, the former solicitor general under President George W. Bush, and a prominent conservative; and David Boies, the Democratic trial lawyer who was his opposing counsel in Bush v. Gore. The two are mounting an ambitious case that pointedly circumvents the incremental, narrowly crafted legal gambits and the careful state-by-state strategy that leading gay-rights organizations have championed in the fight for marriage equality. The Olson-Boies team hopes for a ruling that will transform the legal and social landscape nationwide, something on the order of Brown v. Board of Education, in 1954, or Loving v. Virginia, the landmark 1967 Supreme Court ruling that invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage.”—Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, January 16, 2010.
For me, leaving social equality up to a popular vote has been a great mistake that has cost the LGBT community civil rights for years now. It is time for the nation to take a stand for equality and, if the Supreme Court cannot properly apply the Constitution to defend the civil rights of LGBT Americans, time for all of us to take to the streets and force the Federal government to do its job and uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I hope you will join me in thinking of and acting for true civil rights in 21st century America. The parallels could not be more clear, and the need for change could not be more urgent.
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