BLOGGING SUNDANCE: Icebox Mardi Gras

The festival transitioned into a fully functioning phenomenon on Friday, as non-stop screenings and events morphed Park City into a gyrating, restless landscape; the buses were crowded with filmgoers and filled with endless chatter about the hottest titles around town. As darkness settled in, the small strip of shops, bars and even the occasional theater (shocking!) that comprise the hub of Main Street became a hotbed for nighttime activity. If not for the afterparties celebrating the handful of movie premieres, one might confuse the scene for a winter Mardi Gras. And for some people, that's exactly what it is.

For those of us here to see the movies, however, the day begins bright and early. Screenings run all day and overlap each other, so the only way to really stay on top of things is hustling from place to place and hoping that your eyes don't rot. My Friday schedule opened with a 9 a.m. showing of a Russian movie called The Island. The movie feels a lot longer than its running time. The plot is ponderous and somewhat inconsequential, but luscious cinematography makes it worth the experience. The story, such as it is, follows a lonely priest who lives his life bearing the guilt of a traumatic experience during WWII, when Nazis forced him to shoot his colleague. That central conflict is established during the first few minutes, and then the film can't figure out where it should go, and eventually just gives up. But hey, it's a Russian movie that looks wholly different from anything in currently available American theaters, and if it gets any distribution here, I'm sure it'll be small. Put this one down as solid fodder for cocktail conversation.  

Due to prior commitments, I was unable to make the midday press screening of The Savages, and I'm still beating myself up for it. The dark comedy stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney as brother and sister, and rumor has it that it's hot. I was at the Yarrow, across the street from the Holiday Inn (where it was shown). Various people who had attended the movie drifted by, and they all echoed the same sentiment. So why hasn't Sundance scheduled more screenings for the press? 

I demand quality!  Now if only I knew where to find it. It certainly wasn't lingering in Yarrow Theater 1 at 1:30 p.m. yesterday, when I settled for the muddled Japanese oddity Bugmaster. The room was barely full, which tells you that most of the press did their research on this one. It follows a traveling shaman, who arrives at a small village where most of the residents have gone partially deaf. The shaman, called a "Bugmaster" because he channels life force or something, diagnoses the problem with ease: Fantastical insects have infested the village, and settled in the inflected individuals' ears—and the litter critters devour sound. Uh, yeah. So it has some nifty visuals when the bugs themselves show up, but ultimately the film dives into its own annoyingly dense mythology. Boo!

Exiting the theater, I overheard a conversation between two other people equally displeased with the last couple hours. "I can't believe I haven't seen any good films during the festival," said one. "Really?" said the other. "I've seen four." Well, don't rub it in, pal. Myself, I desperately required a pick-me-up. A few hours later I found it, at the premiere of David Gordon Green's wonderful new film Snow Angels. I wasn't supposed to see the movie until today, since tickets to premieres are only available to press if the screening isn't sold out. Instead, I prepared myself for the red carpet routine, where reporters fight their way to the frontlines and chat with talent en route to the theater. This turned to be a fairly unsuccessful operation, especially since I hadn't seen the movie and lost confidence in my ability to pretend that I had. The movie's title doesn't exactly imply its content, so I wasn't ready to play the guessing game.

Good thing, too, because I was expecting some sort of off-beat romantic comedy, and Snow Angels is something far more brutal and complicated than that. After I managed to slip inside (lurking around outside the place and making puppy dog eyes really does make a difference sometimes), I was immediately caught off guard by the movie's originality and depth (read more about the Q&A with Green and some of the actors from the film in my account [HERE]). Green, who adapted the screenplay from a novel by Stewart O'Nan, follows several couples of varying ages in a small Philadelphia suburb. Their lives interlock, and so do their conflicts. Here goes: Sam Rockwell plays a bearded alcoholic anxious to spend time with his toddler and repair his failed marriage to a waitress named Annie (Kate Beckinsale), who seems more content chatting it up with her co-worker and former source of babysitter employment; an angst-filled high school student named Arthur (Michael Angarano), who copes with the divorce of his own parents and finds a refuge from loneliness when romantically pursued by affable classmate Lily (Olivia Thirlby). Oh, and Annie's fucking the husband of  her best friend (Amy Sedaris). Phew.

If the range of colorful personalities in Snow Angels is sometimes overwhelming—one complaint I heard was that it had "too many characters, but was well-directed and had good performances"— it never abandons the central thematic concerns. Green boldly incorporates a lot of great comedic bits into the movie's first two acts, then spins around with a shocking turn-of-events that left this audience member breathless; it stays on that course all the way up to the ending, which is one helluva downer. But unlike Babel or last year's Crash, which slovenly (if inadvertently) celebrate the facile means of inducing tragedy, Green has stitched together a refreshingly rewarding story that grows compelling specifically because of its emotional weight. I'm two days into the festival and so far it's the best thing that I've seen. (But who knows? Maybe Savages would've changed that.)

Snow Angels is getting its publicity boost from Jeremy Walker and Associates, who were kind enough to give a double bill of depression to complete my evening screenings. Walker himself, a gentle soul who truly has perfected the neglected art of press notes composition, gave me a lift to the next screening, Rory Kennedy's documentary Ghosts of Abu Ghraib. Now there's a movie that earns its right to radiate dark sentiments, and all through its title alone. Kennedy seems to understand how to make a fairly straightforward political documentary, incorporated the expectedtalking heads and found footage, but I was a bit underwhelmed by the overall film, if only because it doesn't bring anything new to the conversation. Sure, anonymous Iraqis who speak of the horrific treatment they received by the misguided and naive American troops who incarcerated them creates a harrowing vibe. The movie's middle section feels similar to a collection of Holocaust memories, and watching the recently deposed prison guards dissect their motivations and mindsets when they were torturing prisoners recalls the behavior of Vietnam veterans who were later accused of raping harmless Koreans.

But Kennedy goes one step farther, and appears to compare Donald Rumsfeld to Hitler. War criminal? Maybe. Genocidal maniac? A bit harsh. To be fair, Kennedy doesn't blatantly draw the comparison, but the movie is book-ended with footage from the infamous Millgram experiment in the Sixties, when participants were forced to interrogate and administer shock treatment to restrained men when they responded incorrectly to trivia questions. The shock was fake, and the restrained men were actors. The main point of the experiment was that almost every unwitting participant continued to administer the treatment, even after expressing trepidation about the safety of their fake victims. Here's the thing: I first watched the collection of this footage in my high school psychology class, and its lessons have been thoroughly extracted, dissected, pontificated and clearly defined. So while it would make sense to launch a discussion of large scale torture with reference to these findings, bracketing the entire film (it comes up again at the very end) with these findings comes across as a cop-out. It avoids saying anything that most of us caught the first time around (even Fahrenheit 9/11, that relic of America's pro-Bush II era, contained some video from Abu Ghraib). I do think the President could have elaborated on the argument that the misbehaving troops at Abu Ghraib were nothing more than a few "bad apples," but by now, somebody should've made some juice.

I sauntered out of Ghost of Abu Ghraib hoping to find something invariably more upbeat and exciting. I found it back on Main Street, watching hordes of drunken partygoers stumble through the cold. "Ugh! I hate Sundance!" belted one inebriated pedestrian, but I doubt he was talking about the movies. Gradually making my way through the crowds in search of respite from the incessant chilliness, I was lucky enough to run into Walker again, who graciously pulled some strings to get me into the Snow Angels afterparty.

For all anybody knew, it could've been a celebration of Van Wilder; the rooms were packed and music overwhelmed the ability to carry on normal conversation. But that the raucousness makes sense; I imagine people needed to party it up after getting punched in the gut with Green's downbeat film (and if they didn't see the film, they probably still need the outlet). The real curiosity was the drink menu, which contained, among other things, a basic vodka-and-cranberry combo creatively dubbed "the Snow Angel." Next thing you know, they'll get Rockwell's booze-guzzling performance to make on air endorsements, and the world will have no shame.

The snow is coming down mercilessly and I've got to run to another screening, so we'll leave it there for now. Next up: An uneven comedy-drama with Steve Buscemi, whose character actually doesn't die; brilliantly hokey horror schlock about a vagina with teeth, and an unsettling theatrical exploration of the Chinese massacre at Nanking. And more! Hold onto your eyeballs.