So it was sadly our Last Day at Sundance last week and
I’m finally writing this Blog a few days after the event. I’ve gone from snowy Park City to sunny Miami
Beach for the weekend and finally on to a bitterly cold London: the excitement
of the Festival now seems like a lifetime away.
It was totally unmissable and I’m still on a high from all that I got to
see. Well, from most of it. I thought we had seen more than previous
years but now that I tally my schedule up I see that I saw 15 narratives and 12
Documentaries and a few Shorts over my seven viewing days (Viv beat that
score, but Kareem somehow managed less
…. hmmm). BUT at least we all went
out with a bang by catching two of the very best movies of the week in our last
few hours.
'ROOM 237' is a wonderfully absurd film that is a must for every
serious cineaste. According to this winsome documentary there are lots of
people out there who see hidden messages in every single scene throughout
Stanley Kubrick’s classic movie ‘The Shining’. For the past 30 years since it was
released a whole sub-culture of fans have been ruminating their own theories which have been
greatly fueled by You-tube and the Internet. Some are convinced that Kubrick
made the movie about the Holocaust and The Final Solution, whilst others
pointing out all the tribal-themed items in the Hotel in the movie say it is
definitely alluding to the genocide of
American Indians. And then there is even a small cult who see evidence that
Kubrick was actually confessing that he helped NASA fake the Apollo Moon
landings.
This truly delightful documentary doesn’t just repeat
many of these wacky suppositions but it creatively tries to prove them by often using
clips from other Kubrick movies with some very hilarious results. Some of the reasoning that these theories
propose actually resonates and you actually find yourself concurring with them,
but others are far too silly for words and you realize that there are some
people out there who have far too much time on the hands.
Kubrick was undoubtedly a genius and all his work
attracts a wealth of criticism and endless volumes of in-depth analysis. Whether its justifiable is not really that
relevant here as even when it is
downright daft it makes for compulsive viewing in Room 237.
American viewers often struggle understanding even the
most straight forward English accents so I’m not sure how on earth they are going to
cope with 'SHADOW DANCER' a narrative about the ‘troubles‘ in Northern Ireland
where most of the characters speak with thick Ulster brogues. This new movie also seemed an odd choice for director James
Marsh who picked up an Oscar in 2009 for 'Man On A Wire' (which he followed with
the chimp movie 'Project Nim'.
Set in 1990s Belfast, Colette McVeigh an active member
of the IRA becomes an informant for MI5 in order to protect her son's welfare. Her whole family is very involved in terrorist
activities and when the authorities ambush one of their operations they suspect
a traitor in their midst and Colette senses she is in real danger. But in this fast-paced well-written thriller
there is a rather inspired twist in the plot which sets this above most movies
in this genre.
Clive Owen stars as a British Secret Service Agent,
and UK based American Gillian Anderson is his boss, and luckily for us they don’t
have to attempt accents. Andrea
Riseborough rather stunningly plays Colette, so luckily for her there is life
after starring in Madonna’s heavily panned 'W/E'.
We get lunch today ( yippee) as our next movie is not until
5.30 pm so we catch the bus and head out to Main Street. The snow has started again and its very cold
but we are getting really sad about having to leave the next day. Me, I would do anything to stay and be in pictures ….
even a Western!
'BEASTS OF
THE SOUTHERN WILD' had been getting a
lot of buzz here so thankfully they scheduled an extra P + I Screening so
we joined a packed and excited line of die-hard film professionals to see if it
lived up to the hype of the circuit.
Set against the backdrop of Hurricane Katrina this is
a gritty story about a father and daughter. Hushpuppy, an intrepid six-year-old
girl, lives with her father, Wink, in "the Bathtub," a southern Delta
community at the edge of the world. Wink's tough love prepares her for the
unraveling of the universe; for a time when he's no longer there to protect
her. When Wink contracts a mysterious illness, nature flies out of
whack-temperatures rise, and the ice caps melt, unleashing an army of
prehistoric creatures called aurochs. With the waters rising, the aurochs
coming, and Wink's health fading, Hushpuppy goes in search of her lost mother.
It is a magical realist tale and is stunning visually
and also extremely tender and touching especially with the scenes between
father and daughter ….(she is played by an amazing wide-eyed sensational 6yr
old called Quvenzhabe Wallis). It is also quite unlike anything I have ever
seen before.
Manohla Dargis in 'The NY Times' went as far as
declaring it not just the standout of this year’s Sundance, but one of the best
movies to play there in the past two decades.
I’m not qualified to know if that is true, but I will say that it is
unquestionably one of the best movies what we saw this week. I will also confess that it never even
surfaced on our radar until others started talking it up so enthusiastically,
and I will also own up to the fact that that I’m not sure exactly what this
allegory completely means and I really need another viewing to think it through further
Drained and deep in thought we make a dash to the
Redstone Theater for a Public Screening of 'Marina Abramovic: The Artist Is
Present' a feature length
documentary on the celebrated Performance Artist as as she prepared for her
major retrospective as Museum Of Modern Art in N.Y. in 2010.
It is a major event for any
living artist to be given a retrospective such as this and for Abramovic its
essentially a chance to finally answer the question that has prevailed her
whole body of work over the past four decades ‘is this art?’
It’s confession time for me (again) as I had not come across Ms Abramovic before but I was totally bowled
over with this very intimate look as she started to prepare for her MOMA
installation. As well as getting some
young artists to re-enact her ‘historical pieces’, she had decided to create
this new one where she sits motionless and silent on a chair for six days a
week for three months. Opposite her was another chair where MOMA visitors can sit down quietly in front
of her individually and she focuses all her attention upon them. She is intent on exploring the physical
endurance and limitations of the human body.
The reactions of all the
‘sitters’ was simply astounding and in this beautifully filmed documentary you share their sense of discovery as the camera reveals the intensity of the
moment.
Asides from the MOMA show the documentary included an appreciation of some of Ms. Abramovic’s career to date and of the way that her highly
emotional work is intrinsically involved in her life. She is not only one of
the most important artists of our time, but also a very warm and wonderful person
too. I am so so smitten.
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| Time to drag Kareem away..... |
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| And I get to put this hat away again.... |
