Sunday, 21 January 2001

SUNDANCE: DAY THREE

It occurred to me that I started Day One and Day Two’s columns with sexual references or puns. Funny. I don’t engage in a lot of formality when writing this column, so stuff like that happens. But as Editor-in-Chief at roughcut.com and as a film critic and as an industry analyst and as a guy with friends, enemies, and disinterested parties all around, one suddenly is faced with concerns about such things. What I wrote on Day One... that it’s really about the love of movies...becomes all too easy to forget, even for the preacher.

It’s a whole new perspective on Sundance for me. And no doubt, it is my least favorite one so far. Ten days, 18 hours a day, five films a day...that’s tiring. But that’s the joy of this. Having your publicist arguing with another publicist over when or if talent is going to arrive... that’s no fun. Missing movies to do promotional events... not fun. Hanging out with creative people like the team from Donnie Darko is a lot of fun... even if teasing Jena Malone about her smoking the next day seemed to piss her off more than amuse her. But you fight to get the table that you reserved two weeks ago and you wait 20 minutes after everyone’s left to pay the check and you run back to the house to help edit the next day’s edition of your paper instead of going to another movie or a party or whatever... not the fun part. Not the joy.

I take great happiness from the exhaustion of film festivals. Even if you are seeing bad movies, there is a glorious payoff to the effort. I’m here this year, with a team of 14 people over the run of the festival, to build the roughcut brand. And suddenly I realize that I love the doing, not the results. I love the spirit of the movies, not the story about the sales. I love the people, not who the people are. As I have brought people into the roughcut fold, all I’ve wanted is to build a crew that could have the thrill, even exhausted, that I get from being immersed in the movies. Yet this year, I’ve turned a pleasure cruise into a Naval career.

We have seven more days to turn this film fest into a love fest. And try for that we shall.

Meanwhile, I got in one whole movie on Saturday. It was In the Bedroom, from director/co-writer Todd Field. I was drawn to the film by the cast, which seemed to have too many actors with good taste to be bad. But the description in the Sundance Film Guide left me somewhat cold.

It’s a funny thing. I am a real stickler about critics who give away plots when writing about a movie. I hate it. It always seems to me that the critic is taking it upon himself or herself to deprive the reader of the fresh, clean experience of the film that is so much the joy of seeing a picture early. Ironically, Geoffrey Gilmore’s Sundance Film Guide piece on In the Bedroom takes special care not to give any of the story away. Unfortunately, as a reader, you really get no idea on just what kind of ride Field and his actors are taking you. In the film guide, you get the title, In the Bedroom, combined with a photo of Tom Wilkinson in bed, lying next to a sleeping Sissy Spacek and looking wistfully at the ceiling. Combine that with Gilmore’s restraint, and this film seems like some suburban dramedy of manners with an unfaithful (or a wannabe unfaithful) husband pondering life.

But how do you describe the depth of the film without giving too much away?

I’ll do this as gently as possible. In the Bedroom is a simple, painful story about love and loss and the depths to which both can drive people. In the Bedroom offers two of the most compelling performances you will ever see by Tom Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek and adds on strong turns by the entire cast, especially Marisa Tomei and Nick Stahl. In the Bedroom draws as real a picture as I have ever seen on screen of how we treat one another when put to the test. Now, don’t tell me later that I suggested it was fun. It isn’t. But in a Sundance year where death and suffering are in great abundance, this film stands out for me.

One last word of gossip. I’d bet big on Miramax acquiring The Bui Brothers’s Green Dragon. See you tomorrow. Hopefully in more joyful spirits.