Bill Stamets

For his first feature and documentary debut, Jeff Spitz directs a deeply appealing and wisely edited portrait of eight American kids from eight very different American families who strive to spell better than any other kid in the country. Free of a patriotic agenda or be-all-you-can-be uplift, this enterprising shot-on-video film marvels at the goofy, manic, dreamy, traumatic planet occupied by bright eighth-graders. Along the way "Spellbound" captures the diversity of first-generation immigrant families: Angela's Mexico-born father says he never learned English since the cattle he tends don't speak it, while Neil's Indian dad hired tutors to coach him on the French, German and Spanish roots of words. Spitz follows his exemplary misfits as they converge at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Washington, D.C. to compete in the 1999 National Spelling Bee. He could care less about the educational rationale and the mechanics of the competition: via jumpcuts editor Yana Gorsaka condenses endless dings of the judges' bells and misspellers' crestfallen exits into witty montages. Other streams of close-ups show off the elastic Shakespearean expressiveness of 14-year-old faces in the throes of wild guesses, abject panic, and unbridled jubilation as they pronounce a string of letters for really useless words. 97m.

"Spellbound" opens Friday at the Landmark Century.

(2003-05-14)

Also by Bill Stamets

Tip of the Week
One artist's encounter with another artist--filmmaker Thomas Riedelsheimer observing sculptor Andy Goldsworthy-- allows a wondrous witnessing of art-making.
(2003-03-12)

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