Evolving Sundance retains its independents
It's Sundance time, and the films are uneasy.
So is the event itself. Nineteen years after the first Sundance Film Festival rose from the ashes of the tiny US Film Festival based in Salt Lake City, Robert Redford's little shindig in the Utah mountains has turned into the grand carnival of American independent film (whatever that means nowadays). With Park City getting supersized by the 2002 Olympics and with everyone from Britney to Bennifer clogging the streets of the 2003 fest, the question of whether Sundance has become too big and too co-opted seems ever more on point.
This year's 10-day festival kicks off tomorrow, a week after the appearance in bookstores of Peter Biskind's "Down and Dirty Pictures: Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film," a historical overview that is anything but kind. (Sample quote: "Judged by one of its original, loftier goals, an institute to help outsiders, Sundance has failed.") The fact that Redford himself appears for the first time in a movie screening at his festival -- director Pieter Jan Brugge's work-in-progress "The Clearing" -- can be read as a token of Sundance's new Hollywood muscle.
And yet. There are more foreign films on hand this year than ever before, and despite premieres of such mainstream studio fare as "The Butterfly Effect" -- featuring Ashton Kutcher playing hopscotch with his past -- Sundance continues to be mostly about the singular vision of the lone filmmaker. You'd hardly expect the big hits of last year's festival ("American Splendor," "The Station Agent," "Capturing the Friedmans") to be greenlit by the suits in Los Angeles. Similarly, the 32 films entered in this year's dramatic and documentary competitions are overwhelmingly the work of first-timers, fueled by little more than passion, talent, credit cards, and luck.
When the 2004 lineup was announced, festival director Geoff Gilmore was quoted as saying that many of the movies reflected a new post-9/11 anxiety. Reached by phone, he takes pains to backpedal. "I don't want to be reductive or say there's a narrative intent to address what 9/11 was about," Gilmore says. "There are things you sense when you watch a range of films: A greater sense of questioning one's place in the world, less of a sense of self-assurance. `The Machinist,' `Trauma,' `November' -- these are films that to me thematically explore the kind of ill-at-ease sensibility that you saw in early '50s films -- although with a very different political climate."
"The Machinist," debuting Jan. 18 as part of the festival's "Premieres" section, features Christian Bale as a man undergoing an existential breakdown and is directed by Brad Anderson ("Next Stop, Wonderland"). Marc Evans's "Trauma" stars Colin Firth as a man questioning reality after a car crash. The digitally filmed "November" features Courteney Cox as a woman undone by a convenience store robbery.
Those are major stars undergoing major dysfunction, so maybe Gilmore is on to something. Sundance is a place where wild cards flourish, though, and where the buzz tends to rise up around the least expected films. All a festival-goer can do is roll the dice, buy the tickets, and hope the gamble pays off. Here are 10 that sound promising, but as always with Sundance, the proof is in the seeing.
"Baadasssss!" -- Mario Van Peebles plays his father, filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles, trying to get the 1971 underground film "Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song" off the ground. The original film will have a revival screening.
"Eulogy" -- Michael Clancy's tale of a fractured family coming together for Grandpa's funeral has a classic Sundance fab/oddball cast: Hank Azaria, Zooey Deschanel, Glenn Headly, Famke Janssen, Piper Laurie, Kelly Preston, Ray Romano, Rip Torn, and Debra Winger.
Double that for Eric Weber's "Second Best," a New Jersey slice of life that features Jennifer Tilly, Joe Pantoliano, Bronson Pinchot, Paulina Porizkova, and -- are you ready? -- Patricia Hearst.
"Zatoichi" -- Cult Japanese director-star Takeshi Kitano offers a revisionist take on the classic samurai series about a blind swordsman. Take that, Tarantino.
"Maria Full of Grace" -- Joshua Marston's film follows a 17-year-old Colombian girl (Catalina Sandino Moreno) transporting heroin from South America to the United States.
"Heir to an Execution" -- Ivy Meeropol's documentary is a personal reassessment of her grandparents, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were executed for espionage in 1953.
"September Tapes" -- A reality-meets-fiction mockumentary about director Christian Johnson's personal hunt for Osama bin Laden, this sounds like the most genre-scrambling movie in the whole festival.
"Dogville" -- Lars Von Trier's latest cinematic insult or work of genius (take your pick) drove them nuts in Cannes. Now's our chance to see Nicole Kidman, Paul Bettany, Lauren Bacall, James Caan, and Chloe Sevigny get all Dogmatic.
"The Big Durian" -- Another entry in the "is it real or is it fictional?" sweepstakes, Amir Muhammad's semi-documentary probes a 1987 shooting that caused panic in the streets of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Finally, another intriguing cast peps up Brian Donnelly's "Saved!" -- Macaulay Culkin, Jena Malone, Mandy Moore, Patrick "Almost Famous" Fugit, and Heather Matarazzo. As for the plot, three words -- bible camp comedy -- say it all.
Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com.
