No Boundaries

thesixtyone

All good things must come to an end, such is the case with this year’s Sundance Film Festival. I need to get back to doing other things. So it is with only a little further ado that I say goodbye to this year’s fest.

I had wanted to spend some time on: The Company Men, Wasteland and Freedom Riders (all good), and 3 Backyards (incomprehensible). Hopefully, I’ll get to them later in the year. On a kind note, my personal experience this time around was just absolutely fantastic. They have a new festival director and this may have been the cause, or it might have been a change in the general tone of film, or maybe I’m just getting better at the flick-picking. Almost all of the films I saw this year, documentary and dramatic, were hopeful and forward-looking, rather than the now slightly out-of-vogue 60-minutes style of nasty finger pointing. My wise mother has told me that America was that way (people looking for a cure rather than a cause) during the depression as well.

It began with an unfortunate mix of the first festival weekend (this is always a little crazy), a national snowboarding championship event, and a succession of the first real blizzards of the season. Things got funky.  Then everything opened up.  I’m enjoying Sundance much more now that the economy has slid and the hype (foregoing word should be capitalized, placed in a 30-point font and colored fluorescent pink) has died way-way down. All but one of the films I saw was either entirely sold out or close to it.

I started off with the tweet-seminar which was of greater value than I first gave it credit for, having allowed the concepts to sink in.  I also attended a “3D in film” workshop, which was excellent. It was kind of funny to watch many of the extraordinarily-attractive streaming out of the room when the filmmakers on the dais began discussing physics at length. We are entering an era where funny glasses will be necessary at almost every movie. That isn’t good. Avatar has established a direction, and everyone is going to be following it for a while. Avatar is only a meager beginning to something better and rather awesome when you think about it.

This is the first go-round where I can say that I didn’t see a bad film. A couple of the highlights included: being introduced to the audience (in the re-screening of the classic film Metropolitan) as the person who was sitting in the seat of Roger Ebert when the film was first screened in the early 90′s. Beforehand the director asked me to stand on cue. Everyone turned around, smiling, and then looked confused, thinking: “that isn’t Roger Ebert”.

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Crime is punishment. Fear is the most of it. You can’t run but you can hide.

The only options are to leave that way of life.  Which, for socioeconomic reasons, can’t be done.  Or to build a shell around one’s self.  To become a zombie-like creature only capable of the most base emotions.  With this comes a myriad of coping strategies, addictions to the most base stimuli, complete isolation from everything. And almost everything outside the shell is fear. These are the makings of a criminal sociopath and the root story underlying a lot of good films.

Yesterday I saw Animal Kingdom, the first feature-length film of Australian David Michod.  WOW.  In the Q&A he said: “I just love American crime movies.”  This one is very good.  Perhaps one of the best of that genre and all done with a fraction of the budget. Not only does it completely enthrall, surprise, and shake-up our neat and tidy little worlds (if only for a couple of hours), it offers a believable glimpse into the makings of that unfortunate personae.

My experience with the World Cinema Competition films has not been particularly good.  I’m drawn to the Palestinian and other middle-eastern flicks which are quite common at Sundance.  They are largely invisible in the United States outside of the festival, so if you want to see them, it is good to see a bundle here in Park City.  But this year I found myself worn out with the topic and let “just what sounds interesting” be my guide. I’m glad I did.  Animal Kingdom is perverse in an awe-inspiring way.

With elements of Casino, Reservoir Dogs, The Usual Suspects and Mystic River, Michod does an enormous amount with an ensemble cast including two first-time actors.  The lower budget of the film relative to it’s American counterparts is apparent but not fatal. Insight into the criminal mind is clear and makes one wonder what Michod did for a living before the movie business.

It is always good to see Joel Edgerton, one of my favorite Australian actors. Keep an eye open for both Michod and Jacki Weaver, a theater actress, who plays the matriarch of this ultimate version of the dysfunctional brood.  She’s just creepy magic!