Sundance - Day Three

Finally, movies.

I saw three of them today. Tried to see four, but it didn't work out. But what I got a taste of was good. Some of it close to great.

The weakest of the trio was Not One Less, from the great Chinese director Zhang Yimou. The story is a simple one. A young woman, desperate for money, takes on the responsibility of being a teacher to the local children when their normal teacher must take a month off. Of course, it takes a while for her to have any interest in the children other than being paid. She is told that the class has been losing children recently and that if she can have as many children in her class when she is done teaching as she does when she started (thus, Not One Less), she will get a 20 percent bonus in her pay for the month. And so, when the class clown disappears and she finds that he has gone home to find a job to help pay off his family's debt, her desperate effort to bring him back may be quite selfish. But by the movie's end, she and the children have learned more important lessons than financial. If you think I've ruined the story by telling you most of it, you must not be a fan of Chinese cinema, where the journey, not the story, is the movie.

Why didn't I like this movie better? Because essentially I was getting the same note played in my ear over and over and over again. I got it. No doubt, Zhang Yimou felt this story deeply and the scroll at the end explaining that a million Chinese children a year give up school for financial reasons explains a lot. But unfortunately, that didn't keep the experience from being a really well-made Asian Afterschool Special for me.

Between Not One Less and the next film, I dropped by the not-quite-open offices of Slamdance up at Treasure Mountain. And I was quickly reminded about what is so different and so magical about the biggest of the spin-off fests. It's still a mom & pop op. Open their catalogue and you get home phone numbers and addresses for the filmmakers. At Sundance, if you get the name of the publicist and the direct line to the agent at CAA, you're getting intimate. In fact, I was so inspired by the visit that we're going to publish a secondary version of the daily coverage just for Slamdance, headed by Rod Hewitt, who wrote yesterday's "Special Edition" piece, Rough Altars. So, keep an eye out for some of that as the week goes along.

The next film was a great shock. I am not a fan of The Sex Pistols. My insight into the group extends to Sid & Nancy, Sid Vicious' version of "My Way" and the graphic design of the Never Mind The Bollocks album. I didn't know who directed the film, so I won't get into why I wouldn't have been encouraged by knowing who he was before seeing the film. But when I sat down and saw The Filth And The Fury, I became a fan of an era that I missed, an attitude I never much respected and a very, very excited moviegoer. The documentary, directed by Julien Temple, is as good as anything that Errol Morris has done. Not nearly as serious, but every bit as intense and stimulating and provocative. If it were a 1999 release, I would probably put this right at the top of my list of the great documentaries. (And keep in mind how much I liked American Movie, Mr. Death and Buena Vista Social Club.) The film did for me what few docs do...it turned my perceptions upside down.

And it wasn't because Temple hid any of the flaws of the group or even shied away from the remarkable lack of musical talent possessed by The Sex Pistols' most famous members, Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious. Temple just pushes the whole thing right to the edge. For instance, every interview with still-living band members is done in silhouette. That may read to you like a gimmick, but it not only keeps us from musing on how they've all aged, it gives a crispness to their words that might otherwise be lost to visual distractions. And Temple's use of other films, especially Olivier's Richard III (I can hear Larry spinning from here) is absolutely perfect. Really inventive, smart stuff. I expected a good "South Bank Show" or something like that -and they have gone experimental at times - but The Filth And The Fury reached a level that was beyond the great British documentary series. Best of all, it was entertaining from start to finish. You've never seen a documentary with the energy of this one. The only time it got a little slow was when the band became successful and a little boring in reality. But don't worry, Nancy Spungen assures that things will get interesting again. The scene of her and Sid being interviewed in bed is an all-time classic.

A couple of hours with the Sex Pistols will get you hungry, if you can get over the needles and vomit, so off to Main Street I go. One of the real indicators that Sundance is a little sluggish this year is the ease with which one can walk into almost any restaurant on Main Street and get a table at 9 pm, following the pre-paid, month-in-advance-reservation, 7 or 8 pm crowd. Last year, you had no shot at the very same restaurants. As a result, I've eaten a bit too well. Thanks, Ted. Also, the experience of having a car here at the festival is remarkably different from living on the bus circuit. And not all for the better. There was always something great about getting on the bus and striking up a conversation or eight about what people had seen and how they liked the various films. The conversations take place, but they tend to be with people you are at least acquainted with as you wander in and out of places at the last minute, assured that your car will get you there so quickly that you don't need to add 20 minutes of time-killing to each trip to the theater.

The third film was an 11 pm press screening of Keith Gordon's Waking The Dead. No, it isn't a sequel to Bringing Out The Dead. Actually, it's a literary cousin to Scott Spencer's Endless Love, which all but buried Brooke Shields' movie career oh so many years ago. So, given the pedigree, my friends in the media have all been saying, "The buzz is good because it's Gordon, but it's probably going to suck!" And as so often happens, all my friends in the media were wrong. There are all kinds of things that I can tell you (just by looking at it) that Keith Gordon got wrong. Janet McTeer is wasted. Paul Hipp starts out in glory and ends up dissolving as a character. In fact, almost everyone who isn't the male or the female lead suffers in this film from being underdeveloped. But those male and female leads, Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly are sensational, as are their characters. Gordon and these two actors let you in on the kind of true intimacy that we all remember feeling in the best of our relationships. Details, details, details. The way he strokes her hair. The was she can't listen to him yammer on about the mundane because she really needs to feel him right now. The pain of loss. The inability to think when love overwhelms your senses. Just beautifully realized. I'm a soft touch when it comes to shedding tears in movies. I know, humiliating, but true. And I didn't ever feel like shedding them here, probably because every time the intimacy got unbearable, one of the other people in their lives turns up and is so un-dimensional that the fire inside gets extinguished. That is my primary complaint. But unless you absolutely abhor the sight of a man pining away for his true love, do see this movie for Billy Crudup...for the sense of almost tangible love... and for enough insight to make the flaws (as in, "how can all the close-ups be so good and all the wide shots be so worthless?) well worth overlooking.

Tomorrow, I have four movies on my "To See" list, including Joe Gould's Secret and American Psycho. If tomorrow was as good for movies as today, I will be a very, very happy man.

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E ME: Just do it.