PARK CITY, Utah — After more than 200 films, myriad dinners, invite-only parties and other events, America’s most resonant film festival closes today.
Ten days ago, the Sundance Film Festival’s founder, Robert Redford, and its director, John Cooper, welcomed journalists at the opening news conference.
“This represents a return to our roots,” said Redford more than a few times. Everywhere one gazed, there was language about rebooting, reinvigorating, re . . . well, you get the picture. The tagline on the film program was “A Guide to Cinematic Rebellion.” Midway through the festival, the “re” words started to sound humorous.
Luckily, there were plenty of, er, rewards to be had and lessons to be learned at “Sundance Twenty Ten.”
First and foremost, a good movie remains a beautiful thing
As muted as the festival seemed at times, there were a number of very good and a few great films. There was Colorado native son Derek Cianfrance’s moody portrait of a touching courtship and a waning marriage, “Blue Valentine,” starring Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams. And Debra Granik’s Ozark drama, “Winter’s Bone,” with a breakout performance by Jennifer Lawrence as a young woman trying to locate her father. He’s out on bail, looks to have jumped it and has put their hardscrabble home up as bond.
In “Waiting for Superman,” Oscar-winning documentary director Davis Guggenheim traveled even more dispiriting territory with his smart, deeply moving film about the disaster of public education.
War — and its bitter offspring — are indeed hell
Two of the finest documentaries took different approaches to U.S. involvement in Afghanistan. Journalist Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington’s “Restrepo” is a raw, rare look at combat in one of the most dangerous war zones. The title comes from an outpost erected in the Korengal Valley to honor a fallen soldier. Amir Bar-Lev’s “The Tillman Story” plunges us into the death and exploitation of Pat Tillman, the NFL defensive end who joined the Army after 9/11 and was killed in April 2004.
The importance of being dogged
“I wrote this thing in 1999,” says writer-director Tanya Hamilton, sitting in the back of the McCarthey Gallery on Main Street, of her observant, accomplished debut, “Night Catches Us.” It was one of the films in the Dramatic Competition (for American indies). Anthony Mackie of “The Hurt Locker” stars as a former Black Panther who returns home to Philly. His old compatriots believe he was a snitch. Kerry Washington plays a friend and community lawyer who knows otherwise.
Hamilton is a product of the Sundance Institute (which Redford takes pains to remind people is the true articulation of the indie spirit).
Hamilton brought her script to Sundance Institute’s Screenwriters Lab and, later, its Directors Lab. Hamilton thought 11 years sounded like a long time. But earlier that day, she’d been on a panel about collaboration with a director who’d started working on his feature in 1998. “I didn’t feel so alone,” she said.
So who was Mr. 1998?
Meet Derek Cianfrance: The writer-director of the gorgeously wrought romantic drama “Blue Valentine.”
“Every film has its own crazy stubborn journey to being made,” said the filmmaker, wearing a retro brown- and- yellow Broncos knit cap. He grew up in Lakewood and studied film at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “I’m thankful it took 12 years because I’ve had live experience. I’ve been able to sit with this idea and meditate on it.”
The pleasures of being earnest
A thought crystallized while I was watching John Wells’ timely drama, “The Company Men,” about the repercussions of corporate downsizing on three men. They’re the cofounder of a shipbuilding company (Tommy Lee Jones); his friend and longtime employee who went from welder to exec over the span of 30 years (Chris Cooper); and a cocky marketing whiz (Ben Affleck).
For all the hoopla about celebs pouring into Park City, what’s actually exciting is the sincerity those actors bring to roles with bite. Indies grant performers a chance at the richest material, from Bill Murray and Robert Duvall in “Get Low” to James Franco playing poet Allen Ginsberg in “Howl” to Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning making great noise in the Joan Jett-Cherie Currie romp ‘n’ roll “The Runaways.”
Snow muffles buzz
Or so it seemed. A slushy, slippery, chilly Main Street didn’t hold nearly as much allure as it had in previous, drier years. At a dinner for Rodrigo Garcia’s adoption melodrama, “Mother & Child,” Kerry Washington ditched the bad blazers her character wears for more elegant couture. Bill Murray hobbled to the Eccles stage, wearing a fedora and leaning on a crutch. An old knee injury, someone said. Maybe the lust for star sightings was tempered by the documentary “Smash His Camera,” about self-titled “paparazzi superstar” Ron Galella.
There are always the ones that got away
Two films we kick ourselves about missing: “Catfish,” Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s much buzzed-about documentary about a New York City photographer who strikes up a friendship with an 8-year-old, then a romantic cyber-relationship with her older sister; and Lisa Cholodenko’s “The Kids Are All Right,” starring Julianne Moore and Annette Bening as a couple whose daughter is headed to college.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com; also on blogs.denverpostcom/ madmoviegoer
