Seeing Sundance

Dad and I crammed in seven films during our time at Sundance, which is impressive considering that we watched movies on only three of the seven days. Getting tickets turned out to be a pretty complicated business. We registered months ahead of time so that we would randomly be assigned a half-hour slot during which to buy advance tickets online. In the weeks preceding our time slots, Dad and I agonized over the schedule and ranked films we wanted to see for each day, first individually and then together. Because my work schedule is more flexible than his, I signed on to the Sundance website at my appointed time and then at Dad's a day later. I was allowed ten tickets per time slot, but I ended up buying just eight (two for four films) during my slot and then two (for one film) during Dad's; virtually everything we wanted to see was already sold out to people who paid for premium packages and therefore got to buy their tickets earlier.

Precious tickets

For people who didn't have advance tickets, it was possible to get them by entering into a wait list line. Two hours before the movie was schedule to start, a volunteer (there were 1,600 volunteers!) would hand out a number to everyone in the wait list line. Then, half an hour before the movie, the wait listers would line up again in numerical order while the people with advance tickets entered the theater. Fifteen minutes before the show started, even those with advance tickets were no longer able to go in if they weren't there already and people in the wait list would be sold tickets for the empty seats left. There were usually 20 to 30 per film. Sounds complicated, but that's before you know that people enter the wait list line well before the two-hour mark and just hang out there to get prime positions in the line. Dad and I arrived for a film called Meek's Crossing or Meek's Pass or something like that 2 1/2 hours early and counted 70 people in the wait list line ahead of us. We left before the numbers were even handed out. (We heard later that it wasn't that great, so we weren't too disappointed.)

We were able to get tickets through the wait list for two films and from a group that had tickets they had bought but weren't going to use for another.

Shorts V - The fifth of all the shorts groupings, this was the first thing we saw. It started at 11:30 P.M., and after a day of hard skiing, Dad and I were pretty tired. I was riveted by most of the six or seven in the series, while Dad snoozed (quietly, thank heaven) through parts of each short in the seat behind me. These were the first short films I'd really seen, and, like short stories, I found I really liked them. They didn't have the breadth of a full-feature film and so the purpose of each was very concentrated and the details used became even more important.

To Hell and Back Again - This was a documentary about a veteran of the Afghan war. The film started in Afghanistan, and after establishing who the soldier was, it followed him home to North Carolina where he slowly recuperated from a catastrophic hip injury with the aid of physical therapists whose advice he ignored, lots of pain medication, and his wife who found she didn't know who her husband was anymore. Throughout his recovery, there were flashbacks to the war, which the director captured as he followed the unit through the countryside for seven months. It was heart-wrenching and very well done.

Incendies - Meaning "Scorched" in French, this movie was about a brother and sister, twins, whose mother's final wish, as stated in her will, was for them to find their father and brother. The mother was from Lebanon before she moved to Montreal, and so first the sister, then the brother travel to Lebanon as they search. Their story is interspersed with scenes from the mother's life when she was young and living in Lebanon during the war. It was very well done, and we learned as we sat down to watch it that it had been nominated for an Oscar just hours before. It was Dad's favorite, and mine too, until I saw Circumstance (see below).

The Sound of my Voice - Angela noted a religious theme in the movies selected for this year's festival, and this film, about a cult, fit into that category. It starts off with a couple who joins a cult for the purpose of secretly making a documentary about it, but the man gets sucked into it while the woman is totally turned off. It was a fascinating movie, and the actress who plays the leader was fantastic. Best of all, it ended with a totally unforseen twist that left me thinking about it for days afterward.

We Were Here - This was another documentary about the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco during the '80s and 90's. The director experienced it firsthand, and he interviewed several other gay men who had survived it and one female nurse who took care of the plague's victims. It was an interesting movie for someone who didn't know much about the time period, although Dad didn't fit that description. For me, it was strange to think about a time when AIDS, which seems so obvious to us now, was a total mystery and people kept getting inexplicably sick. The panel afterwards was particularly moving as they discussed their experiences making the film.

The Mill and the Cross - Hands down, this was our least favorite. I really liked the director's idea in principle, but in practice it was very difficult to watch and I was quite relieved when it was over. The director focused on Bruegel, a Flemish painter who lived in the 1500's. One of his most famous paintings is called "Procession to Calvary," and it shows Christ carrying his cross toward the hill where he will later die. This much is a typical theme, but Bruegel stands out because of his devotion to the inclusion every day life surrounding extraordinary subjects. The painting has at least 100 other people in it, going about the affairs that would have kept townspeople busy in those days.

Procession to Calvary

The director of The Mill and the Cross decided to show how the lives of the other people in the painting would have looked. Cool concept, but it was painful to watch. Because the medium of inspiration for him was a painting, a silent art form, there was virtually no dialogue for just about the whole movie (no background music either). I've never been in such a quiet theater. The story didn't follow an easily recognizable plot, and it was tough to keep my eyes open. However, from there we went straight to:



Circumstance - My favorite of the series. The story takes place in Iran and follows two teenage girls as they grow up and experiment with all sorts of things that are forbidden by the Morality Police. They are best friends, but one is born into a privileged family and the other is not, so when they get in trouble for the same crime, their circumstances dictate very different outcomes for each of them. The film was beautifully shot, and the panel afterward featured the director and most of the central actors and it was fascinating. Although the story takes place in Iran, the crew was not able to shoot it there for fear of being thrown in jail because of the themes in it. They settled for shooting in Beirut instead, and it was really interesting hearing their accounts of making the movie as young Iranian-Americans with mostly traditional, conservative parents from the old country.

As a result of making the movie, the director and one of the actresses, who still have a lot of family in Iran, are no longer welcome in the country. The director said that the movie will certainly not be shown in theaters because of censorship issues, but she hopes lots of bootleg copies will circulate the country. Writing, directing, and acting in this movie were very brave acts of defiance, and I found myself really admiring the cast and crew who were involved.