Ray Pride

Studies show that about five things can hold in short-term memory, and any of them will get kicked to the curb by the sudden and unexpected.

So a few accidentally remembered Sundance moments: Festival programmers claimed in advance they'd been more adventurous, more political in their choices than ever and, ironically, 2007 boasted more sales of more diverse movies than any in memory. Guiding light Robert Redford had other things on his mind in opening remarks, when he dismissed the idea that the festival had become merely a market: "There's been buzz about stuff that's tanked." More notably, he positioned himself as "left-handed." "I'm not a very moderate person. Anyone with a rational mind and a sense of decency is being positioned as a lefty by the extreme right. I believe in the tenets of democracy and when they get pushed, it pisses me off." Redford cited the "truth to power" of presenting the wide range of docs in Park City, Utah from January 18-28, speaking "truth to power in an environment where lying is treated like a political asset." Atrocities were on view in many forms, from the "new" natural environment of the planet shown in Jennifer Baichwal's "Manufactured Landscapes," which follows Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky around the globe, where he composes and speaks thoughtfully on the gorgeous, geometric photography he does of a planet demolished by man by the hour. Rory Kennedy's "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib" traces a chain of blame (and command) upward from court-martialed grunts. Charles Ferguson's "No End in Sight," a prizewinner, provides a damning timeline, including much face time with former Bush Administration officials, about the road that led to the situation in Iraq today, and the unlikelihood of getting out. It's edited with the righteous precision of a brilliant prosecuting attorney. Grand Jury Prize-winning doc "Manda Bala" (Send a Bullet), from Errol Morris protégé Jason Kohn, trades velocity for velocity in a portmanteau portrait of the most corrupt reaches of Saõ Paulo. It takes crazy genius to make a movie so ostentatious, lurid, piercing.

Robinson Devor's "Zoo," a visually sumptuous, imaginatively constructed documentary about strange urges in the state of Washington (and across the Internet) from the writer, director and cinematographer of "Police Beat" was aptly summed up by my Seattle colleague Andy Spletzer: "It's hard to believe, but one of the most beautiful films at Sundance this year will be about a guy who was fucked to death by a horse." (While disturbing, the film is utterly non-explicit.) Other atrocities were not overlooked: Elsewhere in the festival, the world's obliviousness to Darfur is captured in "The Devil Came on Horseback" and Steven Okazaki's "White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki" is unstintingly explicit in capturing the human toll in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. And any number of fiction films went to extreme lengths, many concerned with violence against children but not as concerned with the aptness of esthetic execution: Tommy O'Haver's "An American Crime," which I skipped, features two great actresses in a story of Catherine Keener torturing Ellen Page to death. "Hounddog," Deborah Kampmeier's slab of overcooked Southern gothic, was popularly referred to in the press as "the Dakota Fanning rape movie," and that is likely the words that it will be interred beneath. Andrea Arnold's "Red Road," inspired by a challenge from Lars von Trier, is a taut, Glasgow-set story about a long-unspecified vendetta by a female cop whose job is to man banks of surveillance monitors against a criminal whom she glimpses flickering between cameras: the specificity of rage, disappointment and self-justification is never put into words, only images and actions.

Time for romance: despite it being a bittersweet comedy-tragedy, based on a novel by Stewart O'Nan, David Gordon Green's ("All the Real Girls") "Snow Angels" deepens and broadens his palette, depicting the interlocking infidelities of a small East Coast town with impressive command. (A youthful romance counterpoints the disillusioned grownups; the pair could become any of the failed, failing partners who surround them.) The world falls apart terribly in this small, unspecified town and the landscape swallows many sorrows. Things change but life does not stop: young love, old love, they are as true as the hurts notched across years of acquaintance or relationship. Establishing shots are used as socioeconomic shorthand, and meticulously gathered props and interior design have talismanic weight. An end-credit bonus unlikely to be found in Robert Altman or Cameron Crowe, both of whose work is lightly invoked: there's a tune in the movie entitled "Four Robots Fucking in A Wool Sock."

But, dear reader, I saw "Once" twice. A grand, effortless Irish musical povera (shot in two weeks on HD for 100,000 euros), written and directed by John Carney, who was for several years in the fine band The Frames with star-composer Glen Hansard. Carney works with sophisticated insight about the representation of music on film and also how one walks, talks, lives, breathes, stumbles, fumbles, triumphs, while trying to fashion any form of art. Hansard is the lanky, ginger-bearded "Guy" busking in a Dublin square who meets the "Girl," a younger Czech émigré (Markéta Irglová) with a beguilingly uncertain command of English. Carney introduces the pair [pictured, at a post-show Q&A performance] with a simple shot: we watch Hansard sing his heart out on a deserted night square and now the camera pulls back, revealing Irglová's shoulder. Our POV becomes hers. The heart skips. Layers peel away, their preconceptions of each other (and ours of them) fall away, and Hansard's music, as urgent and lovely as ever, grows in collaboration with someone who's revealed not only to be a classical pianist, but a good lyricist and a fine singer. The Girl is not just a girl; they have talent to share. Let's make music together, all right? Fair play.

(2007-01-30)

Also by Ray Pride

Mister Dominick, tear down this wall!
The intermittent groaning and bleeping along the half city block of mud and dirt on Chicago Avenue from first light to dusk is no mystery--but the view is gone. The spread of land where the Edmar supermarket stood until summer is now hidden from eastern eyes: a greater-than-story-high pale retaining wall, drab, Soviet, up against the McDonald's on the corner, a gray cement barricade, like a barrier against slurry in mining operations
(2007-01-23)

What Goes Unsaid
So I'm telling a friend about "Catch and Release," the bittersweet romantic comedy that's "Erin Brockovich" screenwriter Susannah Grant's debut as a director. She stops me: "Romantic comedy. Jennifer Garner. You liked it. But is it any good?" (A swift punch to a soft spot.) Why do people want to hate romantic comedies?
(2007-01-23)

Tip of the Week
Even if you admire this movie, you will probably hate it as well. Watching "Inland Empire," I loathed about half of the experience
(2007-01-23)

Iraq 'n' Roll
So, a dozen people want to kill Jeremy Piven. That's in Joe Carnahan's "Smokin' Aces," where his character Buddy "Aces" Israel, a sleazy magician and leading luminary in Vegas' entertainment zirconium firmament who's made a compact with the feds after his long-gestating Vegas blood has gone wrong
(2007-01-16)

Tip of the Week
(2007-01-16)

Teenage Wasteland
(2007-01-09)

Tip of the Week
(2007-01-09)

Tip of the Week
(2007-01-02)

Potter's Field
(2007-01-02)

What Screams May Come
(2006-12-22)

Tip of the Week
(2006-12-22)

The Same Sidewalk Twice
(2006-12-22)

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