I was lucky enough to spend the past 6 days in Park City, Utah while attending the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Long story short, it was unforgettable. Hopping around snowy Park City from theater to theater, waiting in lines for extended periods of time, and managing to function on 3-4 hours of sleep daily might not sound like a blast, but I couldn't have had more fun. I can't imagine another environment in America where film is appreciated and talked about with such collective enthusiasm & excitement. Everyone, including the filmmakers, actors and writers whose work the festival consists of, is on the same page; everyone is cramming into the same buses and everyone is waiting in the same long lines. I would recommend the festival to any fan of film in a heartbeat - there's nothing like it. (Check out my iPhone YouTube page for some videos taken during the fest!)
Of the bajillion films showcased at Sundance, I caught 10 features, 2 documentaries, and 13 shorts. If it weren't for non-guaranteed wait-list ticket lines draining valuable time out of each day, I might have managed to double my film intake. Regardless, I saw some fantastic films. Here are my thoughts on those worth mentioning:
Louis C.K.: Hilarious
It would be wonderful if this stand-up "concert" film could arrive in theaters, if only to simulate the live audience experience when this screened at its premier. Prior to this film, my perception of Louis C.K. was as a smart comic mind (as stated in my Eric Rohmer post, he's written and collaborated with Chris Rock for a number of years) who was a better writer than he was a performer. His HBO show Lucky Louie was canceled in its infancy, and outside his small but solid role in NBC's Parks & Recreation, I didn't know him from much else. He didn't seem like the type of stand up that would knock me out. Well, I was wrong and Louis C.K. is now one of my favorite comedians. Prior to the film, his problem seemed to be that he looked and sounded too normal. What was his angle? Where was his Romano / Seinfeld / Rock / Lopez-esque ethnic background that seemed to brand each successful stand up comedian? He was just an average, slightly overweight white guy - arguably the hardest position in American comedy to define. What this doc highlights is that THIS is EXACTLY what defines him: the anger and self-loathing that come with being white, comfortable, and jaded in America today. Brilliant & hysterical, his show had the theater crying.
Life 2.0
Daddy Longlegs
Daddy Longlegs is one of those films that are hard to pinpoint just what it is that makes you keep chewing on it days after you see it. It's a small film shot on grainy 16mm film which tells the story of a divorced father who isn't exactly the shining example of parenthood. In one sequence, neither he nor his girlfriend can be up in time to watch the kids, so he breaks up a sleeping pill & feeds it to them in an attempt to add hours of sleep to their morning. The kids don't wake up. They freak out, call a doctor, and when informed that they have to wait out the children's coma-like sleep, he continues on his day. While this main character is seemingly unlikable, conniving, and a despicable parent, what makes judging his character challenging is that he clearly loves his kids despite his questionable actions. The young filmmakers Josh & Benny Safdie described their film as a jumble of memories of their father, who while not perfect, was a man of compassion. At the screening they passed out posters that they themselves designed, along with postcard-sized reprints of an actual photo taken during a wind tornado of sheets of paper - a sequence from their lives recreated in the film. D.I.Y. filmmaking at its best & most inspiring.
Cyrus
You may not yet know of the directing duo the Duplass Brothers, but you will. Their previous two films, The Puffy Chair and Baghead, are two of the coolest & most unique examples of how digital filmmaking is changing the way stories are told in movies. The two loosely map out their films within a genre - The Puffy Chair is a road movie, Baghead works within the most obvious of horror conventions, and Cyrus is, on the surface, a romantic comedy - but by allowing their actors the freedom to improvise heavily, capturing the action in documentary-like handheld (racking up hours and hours of digital tape in the process), they create some of the most realistic, genre bending and uniquely unfolding stories that are being told today. Cyrus is their first studio film (Fox Searchlight), and with it comes bigger talent - John C. Reilly, Jonah Hill and Marisa Tomei. It's fascinating to see these three in such a realistic, low-budget-feeling story, and they all thrive wonderfully. Reilly is a recently divorced fuck-up until he meets Marisa Tomei. Everything is well and grand until he encounters her needy, live-at-home son, Jonah Hill, who shares a strangely close bond with his mother. What's more is that Hill's character appears disarmingly mature. Reilly now has to juggle entering their lives while dealing with Hill's increasingly hostile and clever attempts to thwart the relationship and keep his mom all to himself. Not only is the film fucking hilarious, it's one of the most realistic and truest movies you will ever see any of these actors in. Cyrus was one of my favorite films at the fest. (View the trailer for Cyrus here.)
I'm Here
Spike Jonze is one of my favorite filmmakers and this 25 minute short film about robots falling in love is, I think, my favorite thing he's done. In a way, I'm Here feels like the culmination of everything Jonze does well - inventive, playful visual storytelling with a big ol' sad heart behind it. Have you seen Wall-E? My favorite part of that movie was watching the process of machines falling in love because it's love in it's barest, most elemental form. I'm Here is like Wall-E with characters that appear in their early 20's and actually live on present day earth with humans. The robots don't look stupid or hokey as I was afraid they might, but instead have disernable personalities. Due to the film's seemless interjection of CGI (very similar to the process used in Jonze's Where The Wild Things Are), the robot characters are in a way better actors than any human filling the role could have ever been. I'm Here is Jonze making a simple, melancholy love story that essentially could have been told without robots. But, that's what makes the short fun and fascinating to watch.
Enter The Void
CAUTION! ONLY DIE HARD FILM VIEWERS WILLING TO SUBJECT THEMSELVES TO CINEMATIC ABUSE PROCEED! SERIOUSLY, NO JOKE. Have you seen Irreversible? It's a film by bald-headed french filmmaker Gaspar Noe that is incredible but not for the faint of heart. It is a tough, brutal art film that separates itself from many european 'art films' by not using the slow, static shots for dramatic effect that have become their staple. In contrast, Noe's camera is almost always moving, winding, twisting and breathing; colors are dense and plentiful. He also embraces CGI in some of the most inventive ways of any modern filmmaker. Sounds great! Here's the hard part: Noe is a master of making you feel absolutely horrible. I want to clarify: his films are nothing like the Hostel or Saw torture porn films we in America think of as pushing the bar on what audiences are willing to subject themselves to. You won't see his films playing at the local AMC. On 1/22/10 at 8:30 AM, I saw a screening of Enter The Void and it was without a doubt the most intense & visceral film experience I've ever had. I know, I know, when "visceral" gets thrown around to describe a movie, the intended meaning is vague. I'll put it this way: you know how jarring, surreal, disturbing & metaphysical your most powerful & disorienting dreams can feel? The kinds of dreams where emotion and atmosphere are heightened to your subconcious imagination's max? This is like that. Sound plays a major factor in this effect, creating a paranoid, stomach-turning soundtrack, and, in a few key moments, nerve-stinging jolts of sound to coincide with the more physically-jarring sequences in the film. First-person camera is used through much of the film and the beginning 20 minutes or so are especially clever in placing us inside the head of its drug-influenced main character. The film's opening title sequence is one of the coolest, most electrically-charged mix of music & text that I've ever seen. But its not just craziness; the film is at times profoundly sad, and Noe has no problem sucking you into a strong emotion as a way of muddying the waters of what your feeling. It's an infuriating, exhaustive experience, but its a testament to just how good a filmmaker Gaspar Noe is. Enter The Void is almost impossible to convey, and even harder to recommend, so I'm not even going to try. I will just say that if you think you are up for it, take a chance and check out what I will definitively dub The Most Fucked Up Movie I Have Ever Seen.
Quick Note: infamous graffiti artist Banksy had a documentary at the fest called Exit The Gift Shop which I didn't see but was supposed to be great. As myself & a small group walked down main street at 7am for the Enter The Void screening, few others were walking the street. But the ones that were were talking about the couple of marks that Banksy had left on the city over night. This, an image calling to mind the idea that artists kill what they find beautiful by making it art, was one of them:
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