The Sundance Film Festival has grown into one of the finest showcases of non-fiction filmmaking in the world, and this year’s program, which featured an array of films from high profile filmmakers at the top of their game, might have been the best the festival has ever had. It was a staggeringly good program; I walked out of almost every movie I saw feeling as though it was in contention as one of my personal favorites of the festival. Then, as the festival went on, I realized how unnecessary my own desire for a hierarchy actually was. Each of the films I saw had something to say; every one of them felt an important contribution to the conversation. What’s more impressive is that they felt stylistically unique, each bearing the distinguishing mark of its maker(s).
And yet, a few days removed from the madness of Park City, the movie I can’t quite get out of my head wasn’t even at the festival. Up the hill on Main St., in a small ballroom in the Treasure Mountain Inn, I caught Slamdance’s premiere of Steven Soderbergh’s deeply moving elegy for the late actor/monologist Spalding Gray, And Everything Is Going Fine. Soderbergh has made something both lovely and remarkable; using footage of Gray talking about himself (a simple choice really; Gray was always the subject of his own work) and placing his story in chronological order, Soderbergh allows Gray to narrate his own life story across time and space, from his early years in Rhode Island to the days before his untimely death. The effect is haunting; listening to a sex-and-death obsessed Gray discuss his mother’s suicide, watching his physical deterioration after a tragic car accident in Ireland, seeing his artistry in the prime of his creative career, you get a true sense of the man and therefore a true sense of loss at his death. It is Gray’s final act that hovers like a specter over the film, illuminating each and every moment with a horrifying sense of premonition, but Soderbergh makes the wise choice to end the film without directly referencing Gray’s death, instead allowing its absence to resonate and rhyme with the film’s final cut to black; in that brief and terrible moment, the film knocked the wind out of me.
Spalding Gray
Back down the hill and inside the Holiday Village Theaters, Sundance held sway. Again, what comes directly to mind? Has to be Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s 12th And Delaware, a horrifying exposé of the tactics and deceptions that take place between two competitive organizations—a women’s reproductive health care clinic that provides abortion services and, directly across the street, a Catholic counseling service that seeks to get pregnant women thinking about seeing their pregnancy through by any means necessary. While I won’t take the counselors to task for their beliefs (they’re entitled to them), their tactics are pretty despicable and range from making false promises of money and support for poor families who believe they can’t afford another child through offering sonograms to pregnant women and then falsifying the length of the pregnancy, allowing women to believe they are not as far along as they really are in the hopes that they will take time to think about their choice (and miss their eligibility for abortion in the first trimester).
The film takes place in Florida, which has been ground zero in the abortion debate in recent years; from the murder of abortion providers to the constant picketing of reproductive care clinics, the history of the abortion battle in Florida weighs heavily on the film’s story, and the potential for violence hovers over the proceedings like a storm cloud. Ewing and Grady do an excellent job of refusing to pass judgment, allowing for an honest presentation of the tensions and dynamics between a fully resourced Catholic opposition and an abortion clinic essentially under siege. No matter where you fall on the spectrum on the issue of a woman’s right to choose, 12th And Delaware provides a deep, provocative insight into the terms of the battle as it exists today.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Catfish took a truly engaging turn from hilarious expose of internet identity to the pain and anguish of real life. I don’t want to say too much about the movie (whoever ruins the surprises within the film is a true jerk), but the greatest compliment I can pay the film is the humanism on display among the film’s protagonists; faced with a tough choice between maintaining the light, funny tone and acknowledging the sadness at the core of the joke, Ariel Schulman, Henry Joost and Yaniv Schulman make very good decisions, allowing the real story (and real life) to emerge from the ashes of their expectations.
In terms of real life, the experience does not get more compelling than the way it is presented in Lixin Fan’s Last Train Home, a brilliant portrait of a Chinese family enduring a trip from their jobs in the city to their home town in the countryside. Of course, they decide to head back during Chinese New Year, the one time each year when they and 135 million of their fellow citizens make the trip home; as public transportation is stretched to its utter limits (the film’s staggering opening tracking shot shows tens of thousands of people pressing to get onto a train platform), so too is the family; each struggles to maintain their connection to the other, to tradition and to their roles in the familial hierarchy. To say that things don’t go well is an understatement; we see the family fracture before our eyes, the modernity of the present day Chinese experience deeply at odds with the social and cultural expectations that have served the society for generations. Fan, who shot Yung Chang’s amazing Up The Yangtze, uses his eye for emotional detail to not only juxtapose the scale of human feeling against the massive crush of humanity, but also succeeds in creating empathy in the most heart-wrenching of moments.
Lixin Fan’s Last Train Home
As a study of cultural change, Secrets Of The Tribe stands alone; the story of depravity, egotism and nefarious behavior among the academic elites who dominate the field of Cultural Anthropology, the film is a brilliant tonic to the unbearable cult of the expert. Three scholars, two American and one French, compete to define the meaning and lessons of the Ya̧nomamö people of Venezuela and Brazil. An indigenous people who encountered little contact with the outside world until the 20th century, the Ya̧nomamö were seen as an example of a pristine indigenous culture that could be studied as some sort of baseline for the development of modern societies. As the anthropologists flooded in, they began to compromise the Ya̧nomamö society in uniquely cruel ways, including introducing sexual abuse of children, infectious disease and personal sexual desire between subject and scientist. Secrets Of The Tribe effectively dismantles the credibility of the entire field of Anthropology, exposing the self-interest and devastation wrought by the vainglorious attempts to ascribe meaning to the lives of others. As the film ended, I was reminded of why I so often loathe and distrust the academy; my own belief in the power of art and artists depends upon the acknowledgment of a deep subjectivity. If only the sciences and the faithful could follow suit.
Amir Bar-Lev’s The Tillman Story was another revelation. I had followed the manufacturing of a jingoistic triumphalism of Pat Tillman’s move from the NFL into active military service, and I had always honestly assumed that Tillman’s choice was another example of the parallels drawn so often between the worlds of sport and the military. Look at any modern football game for trite comparisons between the game and the language of combat; the games always feature salutes to the men and women in the armed services, flyovers from stealth bombers, etc. I have always sat back and taken it all in, wondering when the NFL will honor our those who sacrifice everyday in America’s classrooms, or the brave men and women who work in the civil service. The Tillman Story stood my preconceptions on their head, showing Tillman and, most impressively, his family as thoughtful and real, existing well outside of the stereotype I brought into the theater with me. That the government lied to the Tillmans after using Pat’s death to create a heroic narrative is not surprising, but what was surprising is the determination of the Tillman family to just be themselves, to search for the truth and to abide no bullshit from anyone. While I wish Lev’s film had taken the NFL to task for its participation in the grand charade of glorifying Tillman’s choice and loss (especially for exploiting his reasoning for military service, reasoning he wanted kept a secret, by placing them on the Jumbotron at an Arizona Cardinals home football game), the film inspired a new-found and deep respect for the man himself, for his family, for his decision to serve and a palpable sense of outrage for his loss.
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…
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