You hear the word “independent” so much at the Sundance Film Festival that you begin to wonder what it means.
Just as “alternative” became the blanket term for almost any new guitar rock, “independent” now covers anything from a $60,000 experimental film to a multimillion-dollar crowd pleaser starring A-list actors — just as long as it wasn’t initially financed by one of the major Hollywood studios.
“The word doesn’t have a meaning,” griped Vincent Gallo, director and star of the low-budget drama “Buffalo 66,” which debuted at Sundance. “I don’t get it. And I don’t think people should applaud films just because they don’t pay fair salaries.”
Gallo noted that character-driven movies currently labeled independent would have been considered mainstream in the pre-blockbuster era, and his point is well taken. At the same time the movies shown at the just-completed Sundance festival, the premier showcase for American independent film, offered world views that diverge dramatically from what you normally can catch in the multiplexes.
I saw about 30 of the 103 films that played at this year’s 10-day festival, and they were most striking in the diversity of characters and cultures portrayed. At the same time, Sundance tried to lighten up this year, offering less angst and more humor. Young filmmakers actually trying to entertain audiences is a more novel concept than you might expect, although these romantic comedies innovated less than they aped earlier styles.
The same could be said for other festival entries. David Mamet’s “The Spanish Prisoner” pleased audiences while reminding them of Hitchcock and his own “House of Games.” Saul Rubinek’s fluid “Jerry and Tom,” based on a play by ex-Chicagoan Rick Cleveland, evoked Mamet and Harold Pinter in its deadpan depiction of Chicago hit men.
The future masters of cinema may yet emerge from Sundance ’98. In the meantime, we can content ourselves with the sounds of so many new, articulate voices.
Cinematic melting pot
Hollywood has a way of blanding out the differences between people, creating universal types presumably to appeal to the broadest audiences. This year’s Sundance films didn’t shy away from portraying specific cultures, ethnicities and characters’ struggles to maintain their identities.
In “Slam,” the deserving winner of the festival’s Grand Jury Prize for dramatic film, Ray (Saul Williams) is a black poet jailed for marijuana possession. His words are his weapons against rival gangs and a system that would bring him down, yet he still must confront his own responsibility in having broken the law.
This fictional movie, directed by white documentarian Marc Levin and to be distributed by Trimark, is culturally distinctive, yet the largely white festival audiences cheered after the rousing poetry performances. The scene in which Ray and a fellow prisoner trade free-style verses between their cells is must-see viewing for anyone who dismisses the artistry in rap.
Chris Eyre’s “Smoke Signals,” winner of the dramatic Audience Award and Filmmakers Trophy, is being touted as the first commercial film written, directed, produced by and starring Native Americans; Miramax will release it later in the year. About a young man who leaves his reservation to retrieve his estranged father’s remains, the movie is confident enough to poke fun at aspects of American Indian (the movie’s term) culture without diminishing the obstacles presented by white America.
Other competition films looked at the immigrant experience: Emanuele Crialese’s bittersweet romantic comedy “Once We Were Strangers” follows an Italian illegal alien’s romance with a New York woman and an assimilated Indian man’s arranged marriage to a bride imported from home; Jimmy Smallhorne’s “2by4” tells of a sexually confused Irish construction worker in the Bronx.
Tommy O’Haver’s “Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss” is notable in its matter-of-factness as a gay romantic comedy. Instead of trotting out the stereotypical drag queens and swishy gestures common to Hollywood fare, this enjoyable movie presents likable, big-hearted characters, including the lead lovelorn gay photographer (Sean P. Hayes), and assumes you’ll be as non-judgmental as they are.
Likewise, writer-director-star Chris Cherot intertwines romantic and humorous elements with an unselfconscious charm in “Hav Plenty,” an autobiographical love comedy about a group of young African-American professionals on the East Coast. “Hav Plenty” featured a new ending since Miramax picked it up at last September’s Toronto International Film Festival: something about a distributor buying the Cherot character’s movie and forcing him to tack on a new ending. Hmmm.
Boaz Yakin’s “A Price Above Rubies” offers a more critical view of a subculture, New York City’s Hasidic community. Renee Zellweger (“Jerry Maguire”) plays a young mother who resists the orthodoxy of her scholar husband; she’s strong and sympathetic, and other cast members (Allen Payne, Christopher Eccleston, Julianna Margulies) also impress.
But Yakin (“Fresh”) sees so much repression in this world that he makes his lead character’s choices too easy; Orthodox Jewry must have held some attraction for her at some point.
You’re allowed to laugh
In general, 1998’s Sundance Film Festival was more upbeat than last year’s model. The relative lack of bleak, earnest coming-of-age tales was welcome. At the same time, the festival demonstrated that comedy can be tough going for young filmmakers.
Brian Skeet’s “The Misadventures of Margaret” and Don Roos’ “The Opposite of Sex” both begin promisingly as raunchier versions of the old screwball comedies. But great comedies must build in momentum, and these meander: the Parker Posey character’s marital problems in “Margaret” wear thin, and Christina Ricci’s wicked, sluttish 16-year-old in “The Opposite of Sex” mysteriously gives way to a dull subplot involving her serene gay brother (Martin Donovan) and his irritating female friend (Lisa Kudrow).
More successful, albeit in a minor key, is Brad Anderson’s “Next Stop, Wonderland,” which stars Hope Davis as a melancholy nurse reluctantly returning to Boston’s dating scene. Miramax paid a festival-tops $6 million for “Next Stop” and the first rights to Anderson’s upcoming projects, but inflated expectations won’t do justice to this well-executed, modest comedy on a familiar subject.
In a sense, “Next Stop, Wonderland” is emblematic of Sundance ’98. Those looking to be blown away by the next “Shine” or “Reservoir Dogs” were disappointed (as they were last year), but those seeking entertainment got their share.
The up-and-comers
The most striking debut came from Darren Aronofsky, who won the dramatic Best Director prize — and a $1 million-plus distribution deal with Live Entertainment — for “Pi,” a black-and-white nightmare about a mathematician who risks insanity while trying to solve a cosmic problem. The movie is more jarring to the senses and the mind than the emotions, but it boasts such flair and style that Aronofsky’s follow-up will be eagerly awaited.
Gallo also demonstrates an individual sensibility in his directoral debut “Buffalo 66,” in which he stars as an alienated ex-con who forces a young woman (Ricci in another wayward role) to pose as his wife while he seeks revenge on the Buffalo Bills kicker who missed a Super Bowl-winning field goal. This grimy character study features one of the festival’s few surprising, satisfying endings.
Timothy Hutton’s debut behind the camera, “Digging to China,” is more troublesome. The well-intentioned Hutton presents some nice images, but this story about a headstrong rural girl (Evan Rachel Wood) who befriends a retarded man (an unconvincing Kevin Bacon) is fatally treacly.
The superior child-adult bonding story is “Central Station,” which Brazilian filmmaker Walter Salles developed at the Sundance Institute. The movie, about a Rio de Janeiro boy whose mother is killed and who tries to find his father with the help of a sometimes-creepy spinster, has its sentimental moments a la “Kolya,” but it’s beautifully shot and features a strong spiritual strain.
Also not pushing the envelope but doing the job well: Nick Hurran’s “Girls’ Night,” an effective weepie featuring stand-out performances by Brenda Blethyn as an English worker who wins a bingo jackppot and is diagnosed with cancer, and Julie Walters as her prickly sister-in-law; and Bill Condon’s “Gods and Monsters,” which depicts the complex relationship between aging gay “Frankenstein” director James Whale (Ian McKellen) and his young heterosexual gardener (Brendan Fraser).
Reel life
When feature film directors are at the top of their game, they’re usually making movies for studios. But the top documentary filmmakers are still designated in the independent world, so two-time Oscar winner Barbara Kopple’s “Wild Man Blues” made its debut at Sundance.
This entertaining movie chronicles Woody Allen’s recent jazz-band tour through Europe, and Allen fans should be amused by his stream of neuroses and companion (and now wife) Soon-Yi Previn’s role as, oddly enough, a steadying maternal figure. The contrast between the uptight, off-stage Allen and the clarinet-blowing performer is striking, though as tour films go, this one provides less insight than D.A. Pennebaker’s Bob Dylan documentary, “Don’t Look Back.”
Penelope Spheeris returns from her more faceless studio work (“The Little Rascals,” “The Beverly Hillbillies”) with “The Decline of Western Civilization, Part III.” The first two “Declines” focused on Los Angeles’ punk and metal music scenes, but this one depicts a group of young punk fans abused as children and living on the streets as sad alcoholic druggies. Though repetitive at times, “Decline” is a more powerful, convincing portrait of ruined youth than, say, “Kids.”
Despite the category’s heavy hitters, which also included “Civil War” creator Ken Burns’ “Frank Lloyd Wright” (with Lynn Novick), the top Sundance documentary Grand Jury Prize was shared by relative newcomers: Liz Garbus’ and Jonathan Stack’s “The Farm,” which profiles five inmates at a maximum security prison, and Todd Phillips’ and Andrew Gurland’s “Frat House,” which follows the filmmakers’ undercover adventures with fraternity hazing.
The big difference
Although some distinctions between Hollywood and independent become blurred at Sundance — Tom DiCillo’s new comedy, “The Real Blonde,” bore a Paramount logo — Ally Sheedy knows the difference. After establishing herself as a bright young star in “WarGames” and “The Breakfast Club,” Sheedy’s Hollywood career fizzled.
But at Sundance she received raves for her performance as a heroin-snorting lesbian photographer in Lisa Cholodenko’s bleak “High Art,” and she said the movie and festival reminded her that she’s not the only one more interested in acting and art than the box office.
“It’s like I found my people here,” Sheedy enthused at the closing-night party. “I didn’t even want to come to this festival. It’s been kind of transformational. I thought I was alone, but I’m not.”
