You know you
have a good partner when for your 30th birthday she
surprises you with a trip to the Sundance Film Festival. The
festival (of course started by Redford and company in the
late 70s) is one of the Meccas of film in the United States
and the thought of going has always crossed my mind but
never stuck. I was happy, keen even, to read over the
various reports from my favorite outlets and imagine what
that sort of existence it would be to gorge myself on film
while frolicking in the snow. Three days after my 30th
birthday though, Alex (the partner) and I (and soon, as
another surprise, my parents) would be knee deep in
sub-freezing levels and undiscovered cinema.
You can’t do everything at Sundance. You think you can. You
think you can look at the schedule and see some way that
every single film you want to experience can fit in to your
schedule. You think you can work the free buses and the wait
list lines or find a ticket from some nice shmuck but you
can’t. Sundance is a workout if you’re in it to see as many
films as possible and you’ll be tired and I promise you that
schlepping your way to Redstone 8 from The Egyptian just
doesn’t seem worth it after awhile. None the less I did a
lot, almost all I could in just under four days.
The experience of Sundance is just that, an experience to be
had, and I want to focus on the films, so here’s a brief
rundown of what I saw and what you should see.
Noah's Sundance Recap
DAY 1
Teddy Bear, d.
Mads Matthiesen
Three things that might bias my review of Mads Matthiesen’s
Teddy Bear:
1. My first film at my first Sundance ever. To say I was
tingling with exciting would be an understatement. To say it
could’ve been the worst film of all time and I probably
would’ve happily sat through it, eyes aglitter.
2. The tickets were free. Yup, some fellow just handed me
over a couple of tickets as I was nervously bobbing in the
wait list line and then disappeared in to the bathroom.
3. It had been a long day of airports and I think at this
point anything not involving uncomfortable seats and Broom
Hilda looking flight attendants would’ve been a two thumbs
up experience for me.
That said, I loved Teddy Bear. Kim Kold plays Dennis,
a former body builder (a giant of a man) so shy around the
opposite sex that he resorts to traveling to Thailand to try
and bag himself a wife. Mad Matthiesen directed the film
based on his short Dennis and he does so with a
strikingly gentle hand. Dennis is an exceptionally nice
fellow hemmed in by a domineering mother and the
aforementioned awkwardness, all wrapped up in two hundred
plus pounds of tightly knit muscle. He’s an exceptional
visual in himself and Matthiesen wraps him in soft focus and
floating camera work. Teddy Bear is a film about one
surprising individual opening himself up to the world
outside of body building. The moments in Bangkok, especially
with Toi (Lamaiporn Houggard) are the best in the film -
lush and imbued with a sort of gentle romance you just don’t
see so much any more. As a whole it’s a touching film, small
and intimate and pointed inward in just the way I thought a
Sundance film should be.
DAY 2
New Frontier Shorts, d. Various
The second film in the avant-garde leaning New Frontier
Shorts was possibly the worst thing I’ve ever seen. The
Search For The Monkey King featured a crumpled piece of
tin foil spinning in a blinding assault of red, green, blue
and white lights. Half the theater left, my girlfriend
included. The biggest reaction I heard at the entire
festival was the crowd first cheering when the film
seemingly ended and then erupting in shocked laughter as the
film roared back to life.
And it was my parents first film of the festival. I really
thought it might ruin them.
As for the rest of the films, there was a surprisingly
somber bent to the whole affair, each film a reflection on
the current state of our world, none of them painting an
upbeat picture whatsoever. All three were beautifully shot
and beautifully composed with the third short, The
Collectors - a stop frame animated picture about a
family colonizing a paralyzed corpse - leaving the greatest
impression. Short programs are tough sells and every one
always offers “the worst film” someone has ever seen, but
they also always offer challenging filmmaking you might
never see. As the senior programmer who introduced the short
program said, “this is a chance to see films that will never
screen ever again.” And 45 minutes of strobe lit aluminum
foil is just one such consequence of taking the risk, but
I’ll say this, my family and I talked more about Search
For The Monkey King than any other film we saw. It’s
awfulness making that much of an impression.
The First Time,
d. Jonathan Kasdan
I had no intention of seeing this film. I was standing in
some lobby with my parents trying to figure out what to do
with their luggage when a woman just walked right up and
gave it me (or sold it to me for 15 dollars - if you’re
paying attention to details). And that’s sort of the magic
of Sundance, if you let yourself be taken, you’re subject to
the wiles of random filmdom and it’s absolutely awesome.
The First Time isn’t a movie I’d ever have seen in a
theater. Possibly one that I’d have avoided based on it’s
more teenage tendencies. But guess what? Thanks to the magic
of Sundance I saw a film that featured some great
performances and that even brought a tear to my sap-heavy
eye. The First Time is Jonathan Kasdan’s second film,
the story of two high schoolers who meet at a party whilst
both in the midst of relationships, and suddenly, realize
they might just be perfect for each other. Sounds boring
huh? It could be, but the cast is great (especially lead
actor Britt Robertson - expect big things out of her) and
Kasdan’s dialogue is pretty sparkly at times. Both helping
to elevate the film out of its more mediocre tendencies. Did
I love it? No. Will I see it again? Probably not. Was I glad
I saw it in a packed theater built in to the back of a
tennis club. You better believe it.
Excision, d.
Ricky Bates Jr.
Our first taste of midnight programming, a supposedly
"campy" horror film playing to a packed house of horror
loving cinephiles. Also, my 60-plus parents second film of
the festival (my girlfriend, the film selector seemingly
putting my parents resolve to the test). All of us
unabashedly loved the film, my girlfriend the most.
Annalynne McCord (she of Beverly Hills 90210 pt. 2)
plays Pauline, a high school senior with some seriously
fucked up mental waves. A float in adolescence with a a bevy
of sick thoughts roiling about her brain, Pauline slowly
devolves from strange girl with fucked up thoughts to really
strange girl with really fucked up thoughts. It’s a wild
ride with Ricky Bates Jr. never pulling the punches on any
moment of gross. The film plays a little like Napoleon
Dynamite meets Carrie meets David Lynch. The
dream sequences are horrifying in the best way, reflecting
the strange and ever-stranger mind of the protagonist (one
involving a self-performed abortion and the aftermath is
particularly horrifying). Don’t let yourself think you know
what’s going to happen in the end. You don’t. But it’s well
worth waiting for. Ricky Bates Jr. spoke after the showing
and he seems like the perfect kind of film-obsessive nerd to
be making this type of particularly gruesome piece. He
approaches it with a sense of sick humor that somehow makes
the events occurring on screen just bearable enough that you
can laugh.
If you were curious my parents, troopers that they are, made
it through both films, smiling all the way.
DAY 3
Love Free Or Die, d. Macky Alston
This was the best film I saw at Sundance. Gene Robinson is
the first, but not only, openly gay bishop and Alston’s film
follows him in the wake of his announcement and in the
moments before the Episcopalian church makes the decision on
whether or not to allow more openly gay bishops. Robinson is
not only a stone-cold charmer, but the sort of warm, loving
personality, you just don’t see anymore. He’s besieged by
oppression on all sides and he manages to just keep pulling
people in to his circle of love. It’s a film that made me a
devout Atheist make me think maybe there was something to
this whole faith thing. Four days later I can’t say that
I’ve suddenly converted, but the message of faith and
spirituality that Gene Robinson not so much preaches, but
lives clings to me. After the showing I actually got to meet
Gene Robinson, even hug the man, and it and the film brought
tears to my eyes. We live amongst a lot of hate right now
and a film like Love Free Or Die does wonders to
think that they’re might be a respite, even an end to that
hate at some time in the future.
This is a must see.
Room 237, d.
Rodney Ascher
Up until the Room 237 screening I’d been almost
professional in my ability to stay awake during films on
limited amount of sleep at the festival. I am notorious for
snoozing during films (don’t judge, David Thomsen,
world-renowned critic, is an admitted cine-narcoleptic as
well) and with the excitement of Sundance had momentarily
become a viewer who could actually see every moment of every
film. I was shocked, relieved even. And then I saw the
midnight screening of Room 237. Not to say this film
is bad in any way whatsoever, it’s just a hard film to
screen on three hours of sleep in the wee hours of the
night.
Rodney Ascher has put together a film that is entirely about
the conspiracy theories surrounding Stanley Kubrick’s The
Shining. Beyond that esoteric documentary subject,
Ascher uses almost entirely clips from Kubrick movies to
illuminate the words of The Shining theoreticians that he
interviews. It’s a strange, strange movie, with a handful of
intelligent interviewees espousing on The Shining and
it’s supposed meanings. Nazi Germany, American Indians,
Kubrick’s obsession with persuasive techniques - it’s all
here. At times the film can be a little much (the director
beforehand told us that we were about to become the most
Shining-versed cinephiles on the planet) but if you look
past the non-stop Shining breakdown the film becomes
about something entirely different. It’s about the maze of
meanings that is The Shining but more so it’s about
the maze of meaning and how it defines these people who are
so obsessed with it. It’s about film love and film obsession
and honestly with it’s creepy music and choppy editing style
I found it totally disconcerting. A truly odd film about a
truly odd subject. A film about a horror film that becomes
horrific in its own right.
Very, very strange film.
DAY 4
Save The Date, d. Michael Mohan
Sundance is a divided world. On one hand you have serious
cinephiles flowing in to absorb as much as they can. I heard
stories of sixteen or seventeen films seen in a week. And
there’s films for these people - awesome, strange foreign
films that will never be shown in America ever again - and
then there’s films for the rest of the crowds. The crowds
that crush in to Park City hoping for a taste of Little
Miss Sunshine, broad, friendly "indie" films that might
just make it to the Oscars someday. I’d avoided this
subsection of films for the most part at Sundance (not on
purpose, I just wasn’t putting that vibe out and I think the
gods of Sundance steered me clear) until Save The Date,
a film that Alex had purchased in advance with a heart full
of reservation.
Save The Date isn’t a bad film. It’s well written and
well-shot and the actors of pretty and believable for the
most part, it just doesn’t do very much. It’s the story of
two sisters (Alison Brie and Lizzy Caplan) one who’s getting
married, one who’s just ending a long relationship, and all
the things that happen in between. I keep describing it as a
hipster-romance (a lot of skinny jeans and indie-pop in this
one) and coming away from it I just wasn’t that blown away.
I wasn’t angry or mad that I’d seen it, I just wasn’t that
excited. Thinking of my own dreams of programming, I
couldn’t imagine watching this film and thinking, this
should go in Sundance, but maybe that’s what Sundance needs,
a healthy selection of films that appeal to the broader,
thought still indie subset. It just isn’t me.
Half Revolution,
d. Omar Shargawi And Karim el Hakim
Media has become a spectacle of diminishing returns. We’ve
become so involved in the 24-hour news cycle that if a story
isn’t popping with easily digestible content, we move on.
The Arab Spring, the revolution in Egypt, the general and
total altering of the face the Middle East has stalled
because of terrible dictators and the troubles that plague
all revolutions and quite honestly, here in America we’ve
already turned whatever might be next. Half Revolution
(named for the sad truths of the Egyptian revolution) is a
tiny film about a huge subject. A group of friends, Shargawi
and el Hakim (the filmmakers) amongst them, are pulled in to
the revolution in Tahir Square and capture the trials and
tribulations of the first 11 days on film. It’s harrowing.
There’s celebration to start as the square fills and then
monotony as no one knows what to do and then finally abject
terror as the government turns against the protesters. I’ve
heard the film described as an action movie, but I see it
more as a thriller. A group of progressive foreigners
attempting to fight for their country are repelled by the
greater forces at work. Every moment of the film is captured
on shaky handcam and it brings the experience right in to
your gut. I worried for the members of this little group.
When they feared for a friends life, I feared right
alongside them. Half Revolution is a film much like
Love Free Or Die that you need to see. That you need
to bring your friends to, that needs to be played on big
screens so that we as fat-cat Americans can realize that the
news coverage may have faded, the issue still rages on.
And that was Sundance. I spent my last night drinking
whiskey and watching shitty television, thinking about films
and wishing I could come back here next year as a great
participant, and knowing, sadly, that it probably wouldn’t
be the case.
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