The magic fades away at Sundance film fest

From left, director Steven Soderbergh of 1989's ''Sex, Lies, and Videotape,'' with actors Laura San Giacomo, Andie MacDowell, and Peter Gallagher at this year's Sundance Film Festival. (Getty Images Photo / Andrew H. Walker)

PARK CITY, Utah - Two decades ago, a young, unknown filmmaker named Steven Soderbergh arrived in this mountain resort town with his first movie under his arm. The 1989 Sundance Film Festival transformed him into an overnight star of the American independent film movement; the critical and financial success of "Sex, Lies, and Videotape" established Sundance as the the white-hot center of the alt-movie universe.

Twenty years later, the festival has cooled to an uncertain ember, reflecting a business model that is slowly but surely dying. Soderbergh arrived at Sundance 2009 with a rough cut of his latest film, "The Girlfriend Experience," which follows an upscale Manhattan call girl as she negotiates a bleak new economic era. Like the film's New York City, the Sundance that Soderbergh returned to was a chastened affair. Night may be falling on the land of "Little Miss Sunshine."

The economy is in tatters, and the indie film numbers aren't adding up. A number of specialty distributors closed shop in 2008, and the big buys of last year's Sundance - "Hamlet 2," "American Teen," "Choke" - proved a bust when they were released at lower altitudes. Park City lodging was down 10 percent during the 2009 festival; the corporations kept their tents and gift bags at home.

While some films sold this year, the action was muted and the figures didn't stagger the sensibilities.

As if mirroring this uncertain landscape, few of the movies at Sundance 2009, which wrapped yesterday, connected with audiences or the zeitgeist. There were films that were well received - the dark "Sin Nombre" and the rollicking "Rudy and Cursi" from Mexico, the blaxploitation goof "Black Dynamite," an inner-city melodrama called "Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire," which won both the Jury and Audience prizes for Dramatic Film when the awards were handed out Saturday night. There were more movies, however, that felt like business as usual, and business isn't what it used to be.

All of which begs the questions: Whither Sundance, and whither the American independent movie? In some senses, the festival returned to its roots this year. Hollywood star vehicles like the Richard Gere police drama "Brooklyn's Finest" and "I Love You Phillip Morris" (Jim Carrey playing a true-life gay con man as if he were Ace Ventura) were derisively received, while offbeat items like "Push" and the truly bizarre "The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle" (man gives birth to fish) prompted excitement and head-scratching. If you were seeking Big, you were disappointed. If you cherished the small, there were rewards.

Still, no film became the film - the one you just had to see at Sundance - even as, ironically, last year's festival was vindicated on Thursday when the 2008 entry "The Visitor" and Grand Jury Prize winner "Frozen River" received acting nominations from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. By far the festival's most galvanizing onscreen moment was the inauguration of President Obama. On Tuesday morning, crowds clustered around TV sets; deals and panels came to a halt, and the screening rooms of Park City were mostly empty. How could mere movies compete with a reality this historically and emotionally resonant?

By contrast, the coming-of-age comedy-drama - a genre pioneered and perfected at this festival - is showing its age, and if you're looking for what ails Sundance, Greg Mottola's "Adventureland" offered dispiriting evidence. Based on the filmmaker's college years and set at a tatty amusement park, the film is amusingly written and has the necessary hip oldies on the soundtrack, yet it says nothing that dozens of previous coming-of-age movies haven't already told us.

At least "An Education," a glossy drama set in 1961 London that won the World Cinema Audience Award for Drama, introduced a new and buzzed-about star in the thoroughly charming person of 23-year-old Carey Mulligan. The British actress also appeared in the death-in-the-family drama "The Greatest", while "You Won't Miss Me," starring Stella Schnabel (daughter of painter/director Julian) and France's "Unmade Beds" spun grittier, less easily resolved, and more satisfying variations on the coming-of-age formula.

And, as usual, the documentaries were superb. Year in and year out, Sundance's nonfiction offerings are richer, truer, and more provocative than the narrative features, and a strong 2009 slate of environmentally minded documentaries like "Crude" (Amazon Basin damage), "The Cove" (dolphin depredation), and "Dirt: The Movie" (what it says) was balanced by other sharp observations. "Afghan Star," an unexpectedly touching look at a war-torn country potentially transformed by an "American Idol"-style TV show, was one of the few Sundance films this year that drew cheers from its audiences - and, on Saturday night, an Audience Award for World Documentary.

Yet the question hung there in the blue Park City skies: How do you sell a movie like "Afghan Star" or "The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle" in a hard new world? The festival's most crowded industry panel was not coincidentally called "The Panic Button," in which seven of the specialty film business's leading lights - including Soderbergh - argued over where it was all going.

Sony Classics copresident Michael Barker insisted that "There are silver linings here," citing "Frozen River" as proof that the process works. Focus Features head James Schamus, taunted by moderator Geoffrey Gilmore as "the fool that bought 'Hamlet 2,' " grinned, took it, and said, "If [the movie] came along this year, I'd do it again."

Yet there was a growing realization not only that the rules have changed but that they may not have been very good rules in the first place.

Everyone agrees that the standard models of indie theatrical distribution and exhibition are broken; everyone at Sundance and in the industry is grappling with how best to replace them.

Some are even sure they have answers. Consultant and panelist Peter Broderick touted a brave new world of "hybrid distribution," controlled directly by the filmmaker that combines website direct sales, video on demand, Internet and TV deals, cellphone distribution - and, yes, a theatrical release when and if necessary. Much of this is already in place, Broderick pointed out, and, in some cases, has proven successful. What look like microprofits to a studio can be extremely macro to an independent director.

The most unsettling thought, though - the real game-changer - is that the movie theater audience may have gone away for good. Said panelist Mark Gill, head of the independent production company the Film Department, "My son doesn't care what format [a movie] comes in. He cares how fast he can get it and if it can come to where he is."

That may be the hardest lesson to take in at the close of Sundance 2009: That everything learned in the past quarter-century means absolutely nothing going forward.

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. For more on movies, go to www.boston.com/movies.com.

Correction: Because of an editing error, a Page One story yesterday about the Sundance Film Festival incorrectly reported that filmmaker Steven Soderbergh served on a panel discussion called "The Panic Button," about selling independent films. Soderbergh was not on the panel.