Reel unreels

Sundance embraces the odd, but documentaries dominate

Robert Denerstein, Rocky Mountain News

Published January 28, 2006 at midnight

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PARK CITY - If the Sundance Film Festival is any indication, a lot of filmmakers are in a serious mood. The 25th annual program included movies assessing U.S. involvement in Iraq, illegal immigration and the perils of sleep deprivation, an apt but cruel subject at a film festival.

Of course, an ample and unclassifiable helping of weirdness here tempers any atmosphere of sobriety. What to make of an event that hosts the Beastie Boys (stars of a documentary), Al Gore (another documentary), and Ralph Nader (yet another documentary)?

And there was also the whiff of big money when Little Miss Sunshine, a darkly-hued comedy, reportedly sold for more than $10 million, eclipsing the previous record set by Happy, Texas in 1999.

Most observers seemed to think that Sunshine, a slightly demented road movie starring Toni Collette, Greg Kinnear, Steve Carell and the brilliant child actress Abigail Breslin, will succeed in ways that Happy, Texas never did - that is, at the box office.

The movie generates laughs and registered with audiences as an unashamed celebration of losers. And Carell easily makes the transition from a 40-year-old virgin to a suicidal gay college professor who specializes in Proust. Call it career advancement.

In the week I spent at Sundance (the 10-day marathon concludes Sunday) it seems safe to say that the dramatic films didn't measure up to last year's. As the year progresses, don't expect to see Sundance films on the order of Hustle and Flow, The Squid and the Whale and Me and You and Everyone We Know.

In years when dramatic movies meet with critical indifference, the documentaries must carry a heavier load. I concentrated on U.S. involvement in Iraq; I didn't expect to see films that grew rapturous about U.S. policy, but wondered how angry and informed the films would be.

In Iraq in Fragments, one of the most compelling films I saw, director James Longley focuses on the divisions within Iraq, dramatizing the ways in which Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds view themselves. Longley, who spent two years in Iraq, presents a fevered portrait of a country inflamed by religious passions, beset by poverty and ignorance and deeply mistrustful of the U.S. He provides no narration, but tosses us into the Iraqi chaos; his turbulent, unguided tour makes your head spin.

Stylistically conventional and more straightforward, The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends focuses on U.S. veterans who have returned from Iraq with grave physical or psychological damage. Director Patricia Foulkrod's movie (as one-sided as it is enraged) tells a harrowing story of American abuses of Iraqi civilians and of U.S. neglect of its soul-scarred veterans. Veterans recount their agonizing, indigestible wartime experiences.

These days, importance and relevance don't necessarily equate with widespread exposure, at least when it comes to documentaries. Patrick Creadon's breezy Wordplay garnered more favorable reaction than any nonfiction film I saw here. Creadon's look at The New York Times crossword puzzle introduces us to puzzle editor Will Shortz, to the people who create America's most esteemed puzzle and to the people who solve it, some of them in less than 2 minutes. (Yes, I find that extraordinarily depressing, too.)

Kirby Dick's This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which received an NC-17 rating, works hard to expose the hypocrisy of the ratings system employed by the Motion Picture Association of America. Sexual material tends to be treated more harshly than violence. Studio films are given more latitude than indie fare, and the system operates veiled in secrecy. To penetrate the MPAA's inner sanctum, Dick hired private detectives who were able to identify some of the "anonymous" movie raters plying their trade at the MPAA.

Independently speaking

Anymore, I don't know exactly what qualifies as an independent film, but I do know that many of them specialize in unsettling subject matter. If you were looking for a short-term dose of depression, Park City was the place to be.

Stephanie Daley, which stars Tilda Swinton, employs the language of the thriller to look at a teenager who may have been criminally negligent in the death of the fetus she was carrying. The Hawk is Dying, a largely failed attempt to build a movie around a metaphor, includes a scene in which a mentally challenged young man drowns in his waterbed. And how about a comedy called Wristcutters: A Love Story, a tale that unfolds after a young man (Patrick Fugit) slits his wrists and lands in an afterlife that's much like the world he left behind, only worse?

Then there's Jeff Lipsky. I've known Lipsky for years, mostly as a film distributor and source of great tips about what to see at festivals. I can't recall a time when he has steered me wrong.

This year, Lipsky jumped to other side of the fence, directing his second film, a relationship movie called Flannel Pajamas. The Hollywood Reporter compared the film to Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage. That may be a bit much, but it tells you about the thematic terrain Lipsky tries to occupy, and you have to admire a guy who's willing to move from behind the scenes and put himself into the action.

Disappointment, of course, is as big a part of film festivals as discovery. Perhaps my expectations were too high, but the film I'd been most eager to see - Terry Zwigoff's Art School Confidential - fell flat. In this satirical mystery set at a New York art college, Max Minghella plays a budding art student who learns difficult lessons about the collision of art and celebrity. It's a great subject, but the movie can't sustain the interest Zwigoff achieved with his documentary, Crumb, and his feature, Ghost World.

If you're the sort of person who pastes notes on your refrigerator, keep an eye out for Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep, the most inventive movie I saw.

Neil Young fans are sure to be carried away by Neil Young: Heart of Gold, directed by Jonathan Demme, who made Stop Making Sense, widely acknowledged as the best concert film ever.

Shot in Nashville's fabled Ryman Auditorium, the movie features classic Young tunes, but mostly revolves around his Prairie Wind album, which was written and recorded in the two weeks between Young's diagnosis with a brain aneurysm and the procedure that eventually returned him to normal.

Heart of Gold was shot in front of an audience, but both Demme and Young insist that it's not a concert film. It's a performance movie that's supposed to unfold like a dream – and does.

The 'great gathering'

So is Sundance still deserving of the exalted position it occupies in American film culture?

Cranky from seeing four movies a day, I decided to look beyond myself for an answer. On Tuesday night in the packed Eccles Center, director Demme took the stage to introduce his film, also taking time to call Sundance "a great gathering in America."

I initially dismissed Demme's remark as hyperbole, but maybe he was right. Sundance is a "gathering," a bizarre mixture of celebrity and obscurity, a place where commercial and artistic concerns try to coexist. It's also a scene that attracts musicians, celebrity watchers and those who want to absorb a bit of film-biz glamour, even if it's wearing hiking boots.

When I caught up with Demme later, I asked him why he thought Sundance mattered, a question he's well-qualified to answer. Demme began his career with small films such as Handle With Care and Melvin and Howard. He went on to direct major movies such as Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia.

"I know Sundance has turned into a market place and that too many celebrities attend," he said. "But once a year, tons of movie enthusiasts show up with films that they're working on. The goal of getting into Sundance gives them the discipline to get those films finished. I also feel like the sensibilities of the films that come here are, by and large, what I consider to be human. So I think it's a really great event."

OK, Demme premiered his new film here: He's not about to burn the platform that launched it. But there's no arguing with the excitement filmmakers get from Sundance. In introducing his film, comic Bob Goldthwait seemed to prove Demme's point in a mildly twisted way.

"I rapelled nude once off the Oakland Coliseum at a Nirvana concert. I'm more nervous now," said an obviously excited Goldthwait.

That kind of enthusiasm speaks for itself.

Robert Denerstein is the film critic. denersteinb@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5424

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