So far at this still very young Sundance 2010 the mood is jovial and yet reserved. I wasn't here last year, at the peak (we hope) of the economic downturn, for what many observers saw as a throwback to the days when Sundance was still just an intimate industry event and not the media feeding frenzy it became during the last boom cycle for speciality film. However, it's clear that there is less corporate sponsored, swag powered prostitution happening on Main Street. The GenArt party last night was still full of people who weren't sure if they were here for the movies or the skiing or the sponsored alcohol, but generally the town, to borrow a slogan from Sundance's past, is more focused on film than in any of the previous years I've been here as a filmmaker or journo.
So many got stuck in the western storms of the past few days that very little critical consensus has been reached about the festival's earliest titles to screen for the press. There is strong buzz surrounding U.S. Dramatic Competition entry
Hesher by Spencer Susser and Mark Ruffalo's
Sympathy for Delicious. Sebastian Junger and Tim Heatherington's opening nighter doc
Restrepo has already drawn some adamant praise. One trusted source called David Michod's
Animal Kingdom the best World Dramatic Competition entry he's ever seen, this at a festival that, despite its notoriety, is rarely the top choice of emerging foreign filmmakers to world premiere there films.
I haven't yet been here 24 hours and I've already seen several brilliant films, although of the five Sundance 2010 films I've seen so far, four premiered at major European fests last year and have already been or will soon be covered in these pages (Michael Winterbottom and Mat Whitecross' somewhat stilted if still quite relevant take on Naomi Klein's book
The Shock Doctrine, Gaspar Noe's grotesque and visionary
Enter the Void, the Safdie Brothters' somewhat precious but largely terrific sophomore effort
Daddy Longlegs and Jacques Audiard's fine look at the coming of age of a young French muslim criminal in
A Prophet). The other film I caught, Jennifer Arnold's HBO sponsored U.S. Documentary Competition entry
A Small Act, is an elegant and touching if fairly conventional look at how a victimized woman's act of kindness reverberates into a devotion to service on the part of a man who's life she greatly altered without even knowing it. The film details the bond between an elderly Swedish woman of German-Jewish descent who survived the Holocaust and a middle aged Kenyan man dedicated to giving back the gift of learning she bestowed upon him at an early age. Mburu is a UN human rights advocate. Schooled at Harvard, he had his education sponsored by Hilde Back, a woman he had never met, a frail but spirited old woman living in a small Swedish flat. In his native land he's established a fund in Hilde's name to educate some of that countries' most vulnerable young people, but his desire to connect with Hilde, a sort of surrogate mother he's never known, informs the film's arc just as much as malnourished African faces. Look for it on HBO before the year is out.
# posted by Brandon Harris @ 1/23/2010 12:11:00 PM
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