Arts and Genes: Sundance 2014

This was my fifth visit to the Sundance Film Festival. It was celebrating its 30^th anniversary this year. Unlike previous trips, I did not volunteer and therefore did not return with another Kenneth Cole coat. This year the coat was a lovely pale blue! It was much prettier than the bright red and iridescent orange coats I do have.

As always we stayed with our gracious hosts, Terry and Anne Marie Horner in their home in Park Meadows. The weather was most cooperative and warmer than in NJ the whole week. There was no snow; the sky was bright blue and clear, and the temperature climbed into the high 30’s and low 40’s each afternoon.

During the week I saw the usual mixture of documentaries and feature films. Most were quite good. The best movie of the week without question won the Jury Prize and the Audience Award in the American Dramatic Competition. It was called “Whiplash” and featured J.K. Simmons as the music teacher, Paul Reiser as the father, and a young man as the student drummer at a very prestigious school in NYC. It was absolutely a must see! The story and performances were excellent.

The World Dramatic winner was “To Kill a Man” and was made in Chile. It was very good and based on a true story. Again the performances and script were excellent.

Among the non-winners was a film from Ethiopia called “Difret” that dealt with the abuse of young girls in the traditional culture and a modern female lawyer who defended the girl accused of murdering her abuser. The cast was excellent and the story very moving and well done. It’s hard to know if this will play very much in the USA but if it plays in an art theater, go to see it. Another lovely film was done in Britain with a Chinese and English cast. It was called “Lilting” and deals with the relationship between a Chinese woman who lived in Britain for 25 years but never learned the language or adapted to her new home. Her son dies suddenly and she is left alone. Her son’s boyfriend tries to help her but she did not know her son was gay and never liked the “friend.” It was just a lovely film.

“Cold in July” starred Michael C. Hall, Sam Shepard, and Don Johnson (from Miami Vice). The three were wonderful in an old fashion murder of an intruder story with an unusual revenge twist! “Hits” is a comedy set in upstate NY that is fun and far out. It’s about a guy trying to “fight city hall.” “Hello, White People” is another comedy about a small group of black students in a predominantly white university. The most amazing bit from this movie is that colleges in the US have “black” themed parties in which white students show up costumed as stereotypical black Americans.

Another, intelligent and well-done film was “I Origins.” The movie deals with science, science fiction, and religious beliefs. It is the kind of movie that will hold your thoughts for months. “The Girl from Nagasaki” is an attempt to be an art film based on “Madame Butterfly.” The combination of story, dance, and some music was too long and did not deal with one of the basic concepts of the original—the fact that Butterfly is willing to give up her child to the Pinkertons for the possibility of a better life for the boy.

The documentaries included “Happiness” about the coming of electricity and TV to Bhutan (long and not really successful) and “Return to Homs” which covers the citizens of Homs, a middle class town of about 200,000 in Syria who rebelled against the government after the army bombed the citizens. By the end of the bombing, Homs resembled Berlin in 1945—total devastation! The last documentary I saw was called “The E-Team.” This small group of people (5-6) works for an international human rights organization that investigates governmental violations. They were in Kosovo and found the massacre of thousands of civilians. They realized that a report in 3 to 6 months would do nothing to help so they immediately published their findings. The American government intervened and the Serbian dictator was tried as a war criminal as a result of their reporting. The film covers their work in Libya and Syria and was a very good film.