By Angus Chisholm

People act funny around celebrities. I mean, really funny. And when I say funny it’s really just a polite way of saying they turn into fawning, blathering idiots or snap-happy sycophants.
At the end of almost every screening at the Sundance Film Festival, there’s a Q&A session between the audience and some of the people involved in the making of the film, typically the director, some of the cast and the producers. You might think these yield some interesting discussions and back and forth but you’d be wrong. Rest assured, Sundance is not the place to go for constructive criticism.
Sundance is the place to go for 10 days of non-stop film screenings in the driving snow of Park City, Utah – normally a ski-resort town that turns into a small outpost for filmmakers from around the world to take in and show off the latest and not-so-greatest in independent cinema to the media and film fans (and, of course, prospective buyers). It’s also one of the world’s most accessible major film festivals, which is how people like me can be privy to it all. You can buy your tickets in advance, or you can go the cheaper way and show up early at each screening and join the wait list. These tickets on the day cost a mere $15.

The day before the festival proper started, shopkeepers along the town’s steep Main Street could be seen cleaning their windows and clearing snow, presumably preparing for the arrival of the town’s guests. One of the shops along Main Street – an unassuming thoroughfare mostly filled with tourist-trap art galleries – advertised itself as a ’boutique for cats and dogs’ which seemed like a distinctly Hollywood touch. Main Street’s nightlife takes on a distinctly tacky hue during Sundance as well, with overpriced everything and mediocre DJs de rigueur. Indeed, if it weren’t for the movies and the skiing, Park City during Sundance would get old fast.
To get to the movies, one first has to fight through the festival’s dreadful marketing for 2010 which is all over their literature. An excerpt: ‘This is the fight against the establishment of the expected. This is the rebirth of the battle for brave new ideas. This is Sundance, reminded’. I mean, what the hell were they thinking? You couldn’t even get a student election campaign to run with that sort of rhetoric.
There was also an opening night party to contend with, which I thought would be an excellent opportunity for some people-watching and I was not disappointed. No celebrities naturally (no actor is going to wait 40 minutes to be served at an open bar) but there was a variety of behind-the-scenes people from the less-hyped films, husband hunters, hangers-on and people like me who just happened to have a ticket to the party.
On the way to the party I spoke to one of the festival volunteers at the bus stop. Sundance employs a coterie of volunteers every year to keep things ticking along, whether they give guidance at the bus stops or look after the logistics at the theatres. This one in particular, a musician, told me that his manager had advised him to come to Sundance to do some networking, and he thought that while he was there he might as well volunteer. An amusing example of opportunism, I thought, but not entirely unreasonable. It’s the sort of place where you never know who you can meet or get talking to. The film industry, which can often seem like an impenetrable behemoth, lays itself partially bare to the 40,000 people that pass through Park City during Sundance. For an outsider that has to be one of the most fascinating and appealing aspects of the festival. A lot of the bullshit is stripped away and what you’re left with is filmmakers who just like to see and talk about movies.
Sundance gets a lot of flak for its films being overtly ‘indie’ and the first film I saw fit that bill pretty well. Hesher features darling of the indie cinema scene Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the eponymous eccentric metalhead drifter who attaches himself to an unfortunate kid, TJ (Devon Brochu), who’s suffered a family tragedy. TJ is trying to save a beaten-up car from an impound lot, the significance of which is not fully understood until later, and neither his deadbeat dad (Rainn Wilson) nor his elderly grandmother (Piper Laurie) can help. Meanwhile, he develops an infatuation with Natalie Portman and all the while Hesher makes his life as uncomfortable for him as possible. It’s a decent film and ought to do reasonable business on the back of the cast. The writing is sometimes sharp but the direction is slightly muddled and the whole concept of Hesher as a character is a bit one-note. It all drags on more than it should, but is uniformly well-acted.
Before the screening, Spencer Susser, the film’s director, takes the stage and, slightly awed by the 1,300 crowd at the Eccles theatre, informs us all that he just finished the film less than 48 hours ago. It was reassuring to discover that that there are some constants in filmmaking, whether one is working on a small student video assignment or a film driven by Hollywood stars and debuting at a major film festival.
The second film, Please Give, also has a certain indie feel about it but in that different, low key, shot-in-New York sort of way. Nicole Holofcener’s fourth feature film has much in common with her first three: witty dialogue and well-defined, multidimensional female characters (played by Catherine Keener, Rebecca Hall and Amanda Peet). It’s about a couple (Keener and Oliver Platt) who run a furniture store in Manhattan. The woman sates her liberal guilt by giving generously to beggars on the street, much to the disgust of her teenage daughter. Meanwhile the couple wait for their next-door neighbour, an elderly grandmother of two women (Hall and Peet), to die so that they can renovate and expand their apartment. Never riotously funny but completely comfortable with its own pace, it’s a film that lives in its own bubble of unobjectionable goodness even if it doesn’t particularly stick in the memory.
That sounds like I’m damning it with faint praise but Please Give is the sort of movie one comes to appreciate just a little bit more when they see a well-intentioned but flawed work like John Wells’ The Company Men, which deals with the post-GFC adversity endured by many American families in the form of job loss. It’s a fall from grace tale as Ben Affleck’s initially cocky and unappealing main character has his life fall apart when he’s made redundant and can’t find another job as quickly as he’d like. It’s rounded out by a superb supporting cast featuring Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper and Maria Bello, but in spite of their best efforts the film itself is flabby, lacking in urgency and in need of a re-edit. There’s a lack of spark in the drama, all the tension leads you to believe that something incendiary is going to happen but it never really does and the film, which could have been something more powerful, is worse for it.
The following day I saw one of the most buzzed about films going into the festival, HOWL, a film about Allen Ginsberg’s poem of the same name. It’s a unique film, apparently very faithful to real life – based on evidence from interviews and (amusingly old-fashioned) court transcripts dating from the obscenity trial in which the poem was scrutinised (for its lurid depictions of sex and drug use). The film itself can roughly be divided into three parts: The trial, interviews with Ginsberg as played by the ever-studious James Franco, and the poem itself, which is read by Franco as Ginsberg and set to animation. It’s here where the film’s creative flourishes take place.The animation itself is a bit hit-and-miss but, the film as a whole – which feels like a documentary at heart and is directed by Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, two renowned documentary filmmakers – is a fascinating snapshot of that period of the poet’s life and the poem itself.
HOWL was followed by Night Catches Us, a slow-building drama set in a black neighbourhood in Philadelphia in the late 70s. Marcus (Anthony Mackie) returns home after a self-imposed exile, where he remains unpopular as he’s perceived as a snitch by the locals. There he reunites with his old friend Patricia (Kerry Washington), a lawyer with a daughter who also looks out for troubled teenager and Black Panther Jimmy (Amari Cheatom). We learn that Marcus and Patricia have a complicated history, which catches up with them. The plot takes a while to get where it’s going but as it builds it becomes gradually more interesting and builds to a satisfying conclusion.
As an examination of suburban crime and its consequences, Night Catches Us falls some way short of the standard set by the outstanding Australian film Animal Kingdom. After his mother dies, Josh (James Frecheville) moves in with his slightly eccentric relatives who all happen to be tied up in Melbourne’s criminal subculture. Their family is provoked by the actions of the police, which set off a chain of events with ultimately devastating consequences. Josh has the information to put certain members of his family to justice, such as the vile Pope (Ben Mendelsohn). Detective Leckie (Guy Pearce) tries to earn Josh’s trust and all the while the family matriarch (Jackie Weaver) grows suspicious and conspiratorial. It’s a tightly plotted, well detailed and suspenseful crime drama that’s beautifully shot and superbly realised by director David Michôd (who also co-wrote Hesher), making his feature debut and laying down a marker as a huge talent to watch. The film sees Australian release on April 29, and you’re guaranteed to hear a lot more about it in the coming weeks.

It’s always an experience to see a movie in a packed theatre in America – in a festival or otherwise – because they react to what’s on screen in a way that we simply don’t. Without wanting to give anything away, Animal Kingdom elicited some interesting reactions. The buzz for the movie among the audience afterwards was some of the most positive I’d heard during the whole festival.
The buzz for the film after Animal Kingdom, though, was decidedly more mixed. The Extra Man is based on a novel by Jonathan Ames (creative force behind the amusing HBO series Bored To Death) and directed by Shari Springer Berman and Rober Pulcini who are best known for cult favourite American Splendour. It’s about a young man, Louis (Paul Dano), who is fired from his job as a teacher at a university and decides to move to Manhattan and start over. He rents an apartment with a bizarre older man and former college professor, Henry Harrison (Kevin Kline, hilarious) who has a distinctly conservative outlook. which is unfortunate as our protagonist has a slight proclivity towards transvestism. Until that particular fetish becomes apparent though, Harrison takes Louis under his wing, mentoring him in his ways.
One thing is clear from the movie and that is that Ames is brilliantly gifted at writing eccentricities for characters. Often he writes little details that for a small film like this can yield so many unique comedic flourishes that help it stand out. I enjoyed it, but the mixed reception was along the lines of ‘not my sort of humour’. If you enjoy Bored To Death, or possess a quirky yet smart sense of humour, then this may be for you.

The final day ended with a disappointment. Animal Collective seem like the sort of band whose hype, refreshingly, doesn’t get to their heads. Perhaps that goes some way to explaining why their career to date has been a mixture of memorable highs and forgettable lows as the band does whatever they feel like, without bowing to outside pressure. And while 2009 was a succession of remarkable highs for them, 2010 starts with the experimental misstep that is their visual album: Oddsac. Directed by buddy Danny Perez and clocking in at just under an hour, the film has been about four years in the making. While it gets off to a promising start with some intriguing visuals and urgent music, it quickly degenerates into something frustratingly impenetrable and in-jokey, the music (made gradually over that four-year period, as band member Dave Portner revealed to me in the Q&A) becomes inconsistent and seldom hits the highs of their recent output. I realise it’s a slack reviewer’s cliché but it’s the sort of movie where you have to be high to get the most enjoyment out of it, with its freaky visuals and schlock-horror inspired costumes and makeup. Perhaps with that in mind it’ll find a cult audience, but if you’re sober it’s pretty forgettable, even if you are a fan.
Thankfully the final day wasn’t an entire dud and it began with one of the funniest films I’ve seen in quite a while, Four Lions. Another movie you’re bound to hear about, Four Lions is about four bumbling, incompetent British Jihadists who plot to blow themselves up in a public place to get their message across. It’s the near perfect blend of satire and farce, slapstick physical comedy and amusing dialogue. The film also – to its great credit – doesn’t cop out on us and follows its suicide-bomber concept through to its logical (half-hilarious, half-sobering) conclusion. On top of that, that it manages to make its characters vaguely sympathetic, despite their idiocy and murderous intent is some achievement. Although I’m not sure everyone will share my enthusiasm for this film simply due to its fairly grim subject matter, which is backed up by a considerable and impressive amount of research by the film’s writer-director and notable British satirist Chris Morris. The cast fearlessly throw themselves at the work and despite the controversy that will inevitably follow this film, it is surely destined to earn a loyal following.
After Four Lions there was a Q&A further down Main Street on the subject of Australia, given that it happened to be Australia Day. The minds behind Animal Kingdom were in attendance as well as some of the people behind Bran Nue Dae which screened at Sundance, including its director Rachel Perkins. The most interesting observation was when Michôd said that he was very pleased that Animal Kingdom opened at Sundance because, to paraphrase, people in Australia are reluctant to see Australian movies unless people overseas see and recommend them. It’s an interesting point that certainly has merit and the buzz for the film from an event like this is going to serve it very well back home. It’s simply an excellent example of the crime genre that happens to be set in Australia, and doesn’t live or die by its innate Australianness. Animal Kingdom won the world cinema jury prize at the festival.

This was a low-key Q&A compared to those that take place after screenings. It’s the before and after processes involving the celebrities where people turn funny. Before a screening, as the actors enter and take their seats, the tourists betray themselves by standing up, whipping their heads in the general direction of the actors and unsheathing their compact cameras and taking photos of the talent.

It’s a display not too physically dissimilar to what one might expect from a mob of meerkats, if they had been exposed to digital technology and opposable thumbs.

Then after the film come the Q&As. Although it’s not so much ‘Question & Answer’ as ‘Rambling, Clumsy Statement of Adoration & Awkward Response’. For some it’s like the spoken-word equivalent of carefully positioning classic literature in your home to make yourself look smart, as they make observations about the themes of the film, don’t actually ask a question, and the director has to engage in some long-winded response which is tantamount to ‘I agree’ about the film that they actually made. Then there are the simply appalling ‘what happened to x character after the movie ended?!’ questions. As my father observed afterward, it’s as if these people have never actually seen a movie before in their lives. A lot of the directors are shy and restrained. You get the sense that for them, talking too much about their movies is like a magician revealing his tricks, which can lead to some disappointingly insubstantial answers.
Thankfully in most cases the end products speak for themselves, which is how it should be. Sundance might get a lot of flak these days from the in-the-know ‘ain’t what it used to be’ crowd, but there’s something beguiling about the heady mix (sometimes quite literally – watch for altitude sickness) of small-town America, hundreds of films and snow sports that make it a worthwhile experience for anyone into movies.
There’s also the business side of things which is fascinating to observe. Every year distributors make lucrative bids for the films showing at Sundance so that they can see a wider audience. Precious’ journey to Academy Award nominations began here. Festival HQ, based in the Park City Marriott hotel, is a hive of business activity and wanky networking. It’s worth sitting in a quiet corner and watching this unfamiliar world pass you by.
But if you see someone famous there, or anywhere in Park City, then please, for your own good, don’t act funny.