THB #311: Sundance Top 10

(one more Sundance wrap to come, with 25 more titles)

My experience of the first wave of Sundance movies was, unusually, much stronger in the “narratives,” than the documentaries. The rest of the ride was much more like my traditional Sundance - all festivals, really - experience, with documentaries being a bit more focused and therefore being the stronger set of films.

The two forms are really different kinds of experiences, especially at a festival. The goals are, normally, different. But when veteran director/provocator Sebastian Silva offers Rotting in the Sun, there is, for me at least, a documentary element. I don’t know if this is a caricature of male gay life, at a certain age, or if it is accurate. On the other hand, Kokomo City and The Stroll, which are very stylized docs, are unequivocal about what we experience when watching those two remarkable films about transvestite and transsexual women who have been sex workers… which are, by the way, made by first-time directors (with the support, in The Stroll, of a more experience co-director).

There were a number of big themes at Sundance this year. There was a heavy female influence on the films, with many films focusing on young women trying to figure out how they fit into their worlds. There were also a bunch of older women, either being celebrated, celebrating or demanding safe space for the generation of women coming behind them,

It’s interesting. As I look through the list of films I saw, there is no question about the political leanings of the festival. But I found a lot less stridency this year and a lot more just showing and being inside of whatever issue that might be labelled as “woke” by people who want to label everything.

For me, the best films just told the story… didn’t have to repeat it or beat you over the head with it or lecture us, as an audience. These filmmakers, in general, chose to challenge the audience, not educate us from what they feel is “above.”

(Note: I covered Cat Person, Fair Play, and Victim/Suspect in this piece and Cassandro, Invisible Beauty, Magazine Dreams, The Pod Generation, Sometimes I Think About Dying, The Disappearance of Shere Hite, Fair Play (again), Little Richard: I Am Everything, It’s Only Life After All, Kim’s Video, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields, birth/rebirth, and Run Rabbit Run in this piece.)

My Personal Top 10 for the fest is… in alphabetical order…

Bernal and the real Cassandro at Sundance

Cassandro - A big entertainment and intimate portrait of a young gay man in a well-defined homophobic culture figuring out how to make his dreams come true. Gael Garcia-Bernal is perfect in the role, though it sure doesn’t seem like he will from the start. The “happy surprise” level rises as the movie progresses.

Hmmm… decades later, the Super Bowl promos reflect Bethann Hardison

Invisible Beauty - A somewhat conventional piece of doc filmmaking, but with a power source at its center, its subject, Bethann Hardison. At first, it seems to be a bit of a hagiography, taking its time to really get to how she became all the things that famous people call her early on, the film does a beautiful job bringing us closer and closer so that we really understand how she earned the accolades… and how much she was needed in the role she created for herself.

Kokomo City - Who knew? The film announces itself as brash and daring from the opening scene, in which a woman tells a story from her life. The filmmaker understands the subject so well that there is never an objectification of its subjects in a storyline that threatens to dissolve into objectification and caricature at anuy moment… never falls into the trap.

Magazine Dreams - This film was probably the biggest attention-getter at Sundance this year - except maybe the Kavanaugh doc, which was a late entry, shown only once on location - both because of the rising stardom of Jonathan Majors and the brouhaha over open-captioning that caused a jury walk-out at the premiere. (Don’t get me started on the bad title.) There is love and hate around the film… I am on the love side. Majors is Brando-level magnetic. Undeniable. Now, this was true in Devotion as well, which was not a very well made movie. I don’t know what Elijah Bynum will make of his big opportunities that come from this film. Yes, it is somewhere derivative. But for me, it was a pretty fresh take on this Taxi Driver-esque material. It’s more about becoming that other films have been. Imagine a spin-off of Silence of the Lambs telling the tale of how Jame Gumb became what he already is in the film. And Majors… holy merde. He is about to be Marvel-driven for a few years. Managing where he is at the end of that experience is going to be so important. I so hope he is about to maintain an even strain.