Wednesday, 6 September 2000

And so it ends. As though by some sort of divine design, the first real rain of the festival came as the festival crowd rolled out of town.

By my count, between Friday night and Monday night, there were 23 new films presented as part of the Telluride festival. There were also some very interesting shorts programs and visions of indigenous Australia and other visions unveiled and great revival programs like William Wyler's Hell's Heroes and Budd Boetticher's Seven Men From Now and tributes to Elmore Leonard and Stellan Skarsgård and Im Kwon Taek and Norman Lloyd.

But you probably want to know about the movies that may turn up at a theater near you. So, let's take a look. I'll "*" the movies that I saw.

Seven of the films led to surprisingly muted responses. Now, perhaps I was just in the wrong lines at the wrong times. I did hear a comment here and a comment there about these films. But not a lot of raw enthusiasm. And buzz is not necessarily a reflection of quality. Also, it may not be completely coincidental that I did not see any of these seven. But here they are, the Silent Seven:

About Bunuel
Better Than Sex
Boesman and Lena
Faithless
Kippur
One Day in September
Yi Yi (A One and a Two)

Less lucky were two films that got universally--or near universally--panned. Both got a lot of attention for reasons that would not end up stemming. One offered the biggest movie star at the festival, in front of and behind the camera. The other, well, I'm standing in line and a woman, seemingly from left field, offers up, "Gretchen Mol has perfect breasts." Huh? "Gretchen Mol. Her breasts are perfect." But what did you think of her movie? "Oh, it was…" And sure enough, every single time Mol's movie entered a conversation, the movie was mocked and her breasts were honored, among all sexes and ages. The Disenfranchised Duo:

*Chinese Coffee
Forever Mine

There were four movies that caused a lot of talk. some positive and some negative. The Fickle Foursome:

*The King Is Alive
*Chopper
Dinner Rush
*Our Lady of the Assassins

I saw three of the four and liked all three. For me, The King Is Alive was the strongest of the group. But what unites all but Dinner Rush is a deep and abiding darkness. The King Is Alive has people losing their mind and their emotional privacy when stuck in the deadly desert. Chopper is about a murderous, but charming criminal. And Our Lady of the Assassins is a profoundly disturbing tale of a man and his young lover in a world where bloody, quick death is the norm. All three made people uneasy. And Dinner Rush. Well, the impression I got was that people either went along for the ride or not.

And now, the ten films that seemed, from my perspective, to get the most positive buzz at the festival. I'm going to break it into two groups, the Top Five and the Second Five, primarily because I think that trying to rate anything more than the top five is probably unfair and requires too much hair splitting. So first, in alphabetical order, the Second Five:

Aberdeen--This is the film that went along with the Stellan Skarsgård tribute. It's a new Norwegian drama that apparently highlights Skarsgård's incredible ability to bring empathy to his characters even when they aren't the most loveable guys.

*Chunhyang--A wonderful fable told masterfully and oddly enough, though it was in Korean, one of the most traditionally "Hollywood" movies of the festival, in that it had a traditional attitude and a happy ending.

Innocence--Paul Cox's tale of lovers reuniting after decades apart seemed to be have fans in every line I was in. But it never played the Max, the festival's largest venue. In fact, in four showings, the seat count was 735 or just 35 more than any one showing at the Max.

*Jazz--Ken Burns' brilliant documentary. Trying to show almost 19 hours of a documentary was no mean feat. And most of the showings were after 11p.m., running to as late as 4 a.m. However, challenged by Burns' daughter Lilly to see every single hour with the reward of the entire set on DVD and the entire 27 CD music collection being put together, eight people managed to see every minute, which included one stretch where the late-night screening of Episodes 8 and 9, ending at 3 a.m. was followed by a 9 a.m. screening of Episode 10. Those who saw the movies would certainly put them in the Top Five, but not enough eyeballs got a look to add to the big buzz.

*The Widow of Saint Pierre--The latest from the great Patrice Leconte got almost universally positve word of mouth, but also suffered the dreaded, "But it wasn't quite as good as The Girl on the Bridge" syndrome. And I can understand that, as I was amongst those who said it. It's not easy to top last year's top buzz movie at the festival, which combined brilliant filmmaking, daring romantic notions and the thrill of surprise.

And now, the Top Five Buzz Films in inverse order. Please note that with the exception of the top title, the buzz count was almost beyond differentiation. But, not guts, not silly, overly specific analysis, right? And away we go:

5. *Shadow of the Vampire--Willem Dafoe is truly spectacular in this role, surprising audiences with his comic skills and his physicality. Which is not to say that John Malkovich isn't a hoot and that this isn't one of the best film lover's movies of the year.

4. *Time of Drunken Horses--The Kurdish entry that won the Camera d'Or won hearts all over Telluride. Both painful and beautiful to watch, the film was, in some circles, the true find of the festival.

3. *Quills--Perhaps the most seen film of the festival, except perhaps the #1 buzz film, with 2200 available seats over 4 shows. Quills may be the film that Telluride can dine out on for a while. Besides being very popular and well received, the film was supported at the festival by a group of almost a dozen people, meaning that festival goers could find someone from the movie team to chat with on the streets at almost any time during the weekend.

2. The Endurance--Surprise, surprise. It seemed like everyone who saw this documentary just couldn't stop talking about it. Nor could they accurately explain what it was really all about. The film is over 80 years in the making, not suffering Hollywood development hell, but a process that started in 1914, when The Endurance, a ship trying to cross Antarctica, was abandoned by its crew. The ship's cinematographer (???) photographed the ship's fate as well as the group's 850-mile journey to find help. Can you imagine what the film is like? I can't. Yet, every person who saw it seems to have told me that it was a true "must see." And I missed it. Damn. I have a feeling we'll be hearing a lot about this one.

1. *Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon--I guess you saw this one coming. The word came from Cannes months ago. And nothing that happened at Telluride suggested that it was a bunch of critics indulging themselves. Ang Lee's masterpiece embraces traditionalism, the history of film, feminism, romance, honor and some kick-ass action. The mixture of high and low are reminds me, for some reason, of the classic song, "Crazy Rhythm," which includes the lyric, "When a high brow meets a low brow, cruising along Broadway. Says the high brow to the low brow, 'Ain't it a shame.' Who is to blame?" Ang Lee and company are to blame and Telluride went crazy for this film. Now the ball is in Sony Pictures Classics' court and we'll see whether the company can tale advantage of a movie that has, despite being in a foreign language, the opportunity to outgross both The 6th Day and Charlie's Angels for the parent company. Perhaps after Telluride, they now know just what they have on their hands.

Okay. so that's it. I'm still a little too close to the event to have a lot of perspective, other than to say that I'm sad it's over. In the next column, I'll take a look at what's coming up over the next 11 days at the Toronto festival.

Until then…

E ME: What are you most looking forward to?

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