{"id":15888,"date":"2021-02-05T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-05T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=15888"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:17:09","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:17:09","slug":"crooked-marquees-sundance-film-festival-2021-diary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/crooked-marquees-sundance-film-festival-2021-diary\/","title":{"rendered":"Crooked Marquee’s Sundance Film Festival 2021 Diary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It\u2019s still nothing like the real thing, but virtual film-festival going really seemed to find its footing with this year\u2019s Sundance Film Festival, which managed to combine a (fairly) seamless online viewing experience \u2013 hurray for the AppleTV app! \u2013 with carefully executed in-person events at drive-ins around the country. It felt like Sundance was actually happening<\/em>, in a way that it didn\u2019t always with the fall\u2019s prestige fests; here\u2019s hoping that now that we\u2019ve perfected these things, we won\u2019t have to do too many more of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you missed them \u2013 and if so, shame on you \u2013 Bill Bria did a handful of stand-alone reviews of big Sundance titles, while our old pal Eric D. Snider sent over a pair of dispatches. You can read all of those here<\/a>, and I put together some thoughts on a few more films I was lucky enough to check out:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the true pleasures of film festival-going is the realization, as you\u2019re watching a movie, that you\u2019re also watching the birth of a star. That happens in El Planeta<\/em><\/strong>, and the star is Amalia Ulman, a visual artist making her feature directorial debut; she also writes and directs this story of a young woman and her mother, trying to bluff their way through impending poverty in contemporary Spain. The mother is played by her real mother, Ale, so there\u2019s a hint of Tiny Furniture<\/em> here, as well as  a Jarmusch flavor to the bone dry humor and striking, black-and-white cinematography. But those influences synthesize into a truly original voice \u2013 Ulman has a wonderful, deadpan way of putting a scene together, and she\u2019s a terrific actor besides (her comic timing is sharp as a tack). As with the most pointed comedies, there\u2019s a layer of pain just underneath, and how casually she unfurls it (and how well it lands) marks her as a filmmaker with real gifts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Clifton Collins Jr., on the other hand, is an actor who has always seemed on the brink of stardom (he\u2019s appeared in everything from Capote <\/em>to Traffic<\/em> to Star Trek<\/em>), but has never quite closed the gap; perhaps we just no longer live an age where an old-school character actor can also play leads (as Gene Hackman or Robert Duvall could). But he gets a rare leading role in Jockey<\/em><\/strong>, as an aging racing jockey who meets a young rider (Mois\u00e9s Arias) who claims to be his son. You know where all of this is heading \u2013 he\u2019ll reject him at first, then take him under his wing, and eventually they\u2019ll face off on the track \u2013 but co-writer\/director Clint Bentley knows it too, and moseys into that climax almost apologetically. (The execution of the sequence is brilliantly anti<\/em>climactic.) What matters here is the authenticity of this world (we really get into the grit and grime of this work) and of Collins\u2019s performance, so grounded and lived-in, taking advantage of the warmth that\u2019s always lurked under even his most dangerous characters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I Was a Simple Man<\/em><\/strong> is a film that seems to be one, specific, beautiful thing, and then keeps reinventing itself in astonishing ways. Focusing on the final days of a dying old Hawaiian man (Steve Iwamoto), it first appears a meditation on aging and regret, working in a modest, observational style, with images of starling simplicity and style. And then the mysticism creeps in, as writer\/director Christopher Makoto Yogi folds elegiacally into the past, and explores the difficulties of reckoning that time with the present. And the past is always more complicated than we\u2019d like to think. It\u2019s a gorgeous piece of work, filled with moments of quiet profundity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jane Schoenbrun\u2019s We\u2019re All Going to the World\u2019s Fair<\/em><\/strong> is a risky experiment of a movie, in which a teenage girl takes \u201cthe World\u2019s Fair challenge,\u201d hyped as \u201cthe internet\u2019s scariest online horror game,\u201d and finds herself going a little bit out of her mind. Much of the picture is from the POV of a laptop cam, but it\u2019s still, somehow, strangely involving \u2013 a portraiture of online solitude and self-destruction, powered by Schoenbrun\u2019s gift for creating dark moods, and the stellar leading work by Anna Cobb. Cobb crafts a raw and tricky performance, as the picture blurs the lines between fantasy, reality, persona and performance, and if the picture doesn\u2019t quite pull itself together in the end, the effort and ambition are laudable nevertheless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m just out here because I wanna f*ck,\u201d Bella Cherry (Sofia Kappel) announces early in Ninja Thyberg\u2019s porn world expos\u00e9 Pleasure<\/em><\/strong>, and you almost believe her. \u201cOut here\u201d is, of course, California; Bella has just arrived from Sweden, eager to enter the industry, and Thyberg follows her through that process, step by step, getting into the nuts and bolts of a typical shoot and the route to ascension for a would-be ing\u00e9nue like Bella. Unlike many a voyeuristic mainstream movie, Pleasure<\/em> doesn\u2019t pull its punches \u2013 it\u2019s crystal clear about exactly what this industry is, and what they make. Sometimes candid, sometimes funny, and sometimes genuinely disturbing, with a lead performance by newcomer Kappel that\u2019s mind-boggling in its vulnerability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some documentaries manage to create a proximity and intimacy with their subjects that recalls the best fiction, and that\u2019s certainly the case with Parker Hill and Isabel Bethencourt\u2019s Cusp<\/em><\/strong>, which spends roughly a year with three hard-living, hard-drinking teenage girls in small-town Texas. They\u2019re tricky young women, prone to self-destruction but also propelled by exploitation and abuse, and the Hill and Bethencourt take care to view their world with neither delusion nor judgment. It really is like an extended hang-out, and the way they use their access \u2013 and keen eye for astonishing images \u2013 to recreate the traumas, heartbreaks, and momentary joys of high school life is frankly awe-inspiring.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019ve already seen a few documentaries about the pandemic, and likely we\u2019re going to see many, many more. But Nanfu Wang\u2019s In the Same Breath<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong>offers something beyond the expected tick-tock of the spread and indictment of government officials (though there\u2019s plenty of that, and it\u2019s done well). Her primary focus here is on misinformation and propaganda, as befits its focus on the crisis in Wuhan, where state-run television anchors all repeat, word for word, lies like \u201cNo clear evidence shows human-to-human transmission.\u201d That epidemic spread as quickly as the virus to our shores \u2013 nobody but nobody comes out of this thing looking good \u2013 and Wang insightfully pinpoints how \u201cdisasters become propaganda tools,\u201d instead of what they should be: instigators of structural change. Thoughtful, meticulously detailed, and exhaustingly powerful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cWhat does the word \u2018home\u2019 mean to you?\u201d That\u2019s the first question asked in Jonas Poher Rasmussen\u2019s Flee<\/em><\/strong>, and it haunts every minute of the film that follows, telling the story of \u201cAK,\u201d an Afghan refugee, and his escape from his homeland in the time of the Mujahideen. Rasmussen uses animation not only to protect his subject\u2019s identity, but to dramatize his memories (complete with dialogue, actors, and music \u2013 including a winking cue of \u201cTake On Me\u201d). Yet the style, which is striking, never overwhelms or trivializes the harrowing narrative, as he recalls his journey, and those of his family, crossing the border to safety. It\u2019s a powerful exploration of the psychological damage he accrued, in having to change his past to maintain his present, and coming to terms with who he really is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bio-docs are a dime a dozen these days, especially at Sundance, so I can understand why director Jamila Wignot wanted to shake up the formula a bit with the framing device for Ailey<\/em><\/strong>, devoting chunks of screen time to the creation of a new piece for the 60th anniversary of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. But that material isn\u2019t nearly as compelling as the rest of the film, so it becomes more of a distraction than a disruption. That said, the rest of the film is fascinating, unpacking the biography, background, and rise to fame of the groundbreaking choreographer, via interviews with collaborators and breathtaking performance footage. It\u2019s about how the life informed the work, and the complexities of the life itself \u2013 with the angels and demons that drove him, and the mental illness that haunted him, vividly recalled by his colleagues and conveyed by the filmmakers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Summer of Soul (\u2026 or When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised)<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong>is billed as \u201cA Questlove Jawn,\u201d and there aren\u2019t many other examples of drummers-turned-directors, but that background is abundantly clear here \u2013 and not just because it\u2019s a music documentary, telling the story of the Harlem Cultural Festival, a series of concerts in Mt. Morris Park in the summer of 1969 (the same season as Woodstock, 100 miles away). Over 300,000 people attended, but the event was all but forgotten, the extraordinary footage \u2013 of icons like Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, the Staples Singers, and Sly and the Family Stone at the height of their powers \u2013 sat in a basement for 50 years. But Quest doesn\u2019t just lean on that footage; he sets the scene, in terms of the state of the country (and of the Black struggle) that summer, resulting in a mini-history of Black music, and Black culture, at a critical impasse. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Director Edgar Wright brings his signature sense of visual playfulness and winking self-awareness to The Sparks Brothers<\/em><\/strong>, his documentary portrait of the band Sparks, a \u201cglam rock anomaly\u201d with a career spanning five decades. It\u2019s his first documentary film, and he\u2019s having fun with the form, particularly early on, before settling into his story of the evolution of their sound, and the constant push-pull between artistic ambition and the demands of the marketplace. The problem is that his explicit, stated goal is to introduce people to this band, to share them with people who should know them but don\u2019t, yet The Sparks Brothers <\/em>is exhaustive in a way that only a fan documentary can be \u2013 a dense 135 minutes, running through every single album in their discography, it grows more than a little monotonous (\u201cEvery single album you think is going to be the breakthrough album where the world gets wise\u201d). There\u2019s a lot to like here, but it feels more like a first assembly than a finished film.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Name is Pauli Murray<\/em><\/strong> is directed by Julie Cohen and Betsy West, whose last film was RBG<\/em> \u2013 and that\u2019s something to consider, if you\u2019re one of those who found that to be a too-easy soft-focus resistance-powering pabulum. (I\u2019m not one of them, but I get it.) Pauli <\/em>is a better film, no doubt benefiting from its more complicated subject: Murray, a Black non-binary lawyer who was fighting the battles of civil rights and gender equality long before they were fashionable. \u201cAmerica, be what you proclaim yourself to be!\u201d she wrote, and her sharp-edged words power the picture, which details her fascinating history, her early activism, her \u201csense of in-betweenness,\u201d and her struggle to find a place for herself in the Black Power era. Again, Cohen and West aren\u2019t reinventing the wheel here, but this is an important story, told well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rodney Ascher has become a bit of a Sundance fave, debuting his previous features Room 237 <\/em>and The Nightmare<\/em> at the festival, and his latest, A Glitch in the Matrix<\/em><\/strong>, is another penetrating look at popular culture, fringe philosophy, and personal psychology. His subject this time is simulation theory, the idea (first widely posed by Philip K. Dick) that we may all be living in a false reality, a simulation with another \u2013 pretty wild stuff for Dick\u2019s time, but popularized in The Matrix<\/em> and now embraced by a fair assortment of eggheads (and weirdos). As usual, it\u2019s a well-assembled and thoughtful picture, with recurring focal points, clever use of archival materials, and interesting ideas that are about as cleanly organized as possible. The trouble this time is the subjects; most of his talking heads are people you just don\u2019t want to spend this much time with, the kind of guys you\u2019d run into at college parties, talk to for five minutes, and then start looking for the exit. There\u2019s much about this one that works (particularly the inevitably dark turn of its last half-hour), but it\u2019s the least of his features to date.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theo Anthony\u2019s feature debut, Rat Film<\/em>, is a fascinating beast, a bit of documentary sleight of hand that seems to be about one specific thing, and then opens up a whole world. His latest, All Light, Everywhere<\/em><\/strong>, follows a similar roadmap; it travels in an unexpected direction, and goes off on detours that can seem aimless at first. The ostensible topic is body cameras, and how they\u2019re being (incorrectly) applied as a fix-all tool to the woes of contemporary law enforcement \u2013 and Anthony gives that topic its due. But he\u2019s also asking larger questions, about the very act of seeing (\u201cWhen an image speaks, what does it say?\u201d) and how we\u2019re allowing the notion of surveillance, and all of its inherent flaws, to invade our public spaces. It\u2019s a rigorous, thoughtful piece of work, and though all of the pieces don\u2019t quite tie together, they come close enough to warrant your attention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The publication of Misha Defonseca\u2019s memoir in 1997 should have been a triumph, a chance to finally tell the world the story of how she survived the horrors of the Holocaust. Instead, it began a stunning cycle of lawsuits, investigations, revelations, and reversals, each twist wilder than the last. Sam Hobkinson\u2019s documentary telling of the story, Misha and the Wolves<\/em><\/strong>, is put together like a detective thriller, which it is \u2013 a mystery, in which various parties try to determine if this woman was who she said she was, and if not\u2026 well, who was she? The turns are compelling enough to satiate true-crime lovers, but there are real philosophical questions being asked here, of what we want to believe, what we choose to believe, and what we can learn (if anything) when we\u2019re wrong. \"\"\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The first virtual Sundance has drawn to a close, but we’ve got 15 more mini-reviews from this year’s line-up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":15889,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1416],"tags":[1419,1436],"class_list":["post-15888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-festivals","tag-film-fests","tag-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15888","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/531"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15888"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22584,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15888\/revisions\/22584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}