Wednesday, 24 January 2001

SUNDANCE: DAY SIX

Well, that should make everything easier.

"That" is Richard Linklater’s Waking Life, which is a "premiere" at the festival and therefore ineligible for the Grand Jury Award. But look for the film to win the Audience Award, and don’t be surprised if the jury comes up with a special award for the film. Also, I fully expect Waking Life, produced by the Independent Film Channel, to be the first film picked up by Miramax. I’d say that there’s about zero chance that they will let anyone outbid them, even though this is not going to be a big box office movie… but the video will be strong and eternal.

But besides instantly becoming the only true IT movie of Sundance 2001, let me tell you a little about the film itself. It is classic Linklater. It’s a bunch of interesting characters sitting, standing and walking around and rambling out loud with absolute abandon. In this case, the film is one long dream by the central character and so the people float in and out of his psyche… literally. The film is animated in a variation of the rotoscoping form mastered by Ralph Bakshi in the 70’s. (See: American Pop) But Animation Director Bob Sabiston has taken Bakshi a step beyond, animating the frame as a series of images, laid over one another, just as classic animation always has. However, unlike the good old stuff, it’s not just characters moving in front of a still or occasionally animated, but stable, background. In Sabiston’s frame, everything is alive and throbbing.

Also very Linklater is the cast, many of whose members are very recognizable even as animated characters. Watching the film, you are very aware of how wide Linklater’s world has expanded. The dreaming lead is played by newcomer Wiley Wiggins. Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy return to the Linklater fold as on-screen lovers, though it’s not clear whether these are the same characters from Before Sunrise, somehow reunited years later. Adam Goldberg and Nicky Katt turn up, as do Steven Soderbergh and the director himself. Plus, we get the treat of Speed "The Cruise" Levitch’s return to the big screen, as philosophically wacky as ever.

Waking Life is not the greatest movie I’ve ever seen. Like most of Linklater’s movies (forget The Newton Boys), it is a 90 minute (in this case, 97 minutes) conversation with people who are sometimes interesting, sometimes pedantic, sometimes crazy and sometimes even boring. In the Sundance program, Geoff Gilmore compares the film to My Dinner with Andre, which is an interesting, if inaccurate comparison. It seems to me that Linklater’s message in his work comes from the wide diversity of opinion he engages. The difference between the films is kind of like the difference between Ebert & Siskel vs. a full internet chat room.

What makes Waking Life a sure award winner and the buzz film of the Park City year is the anarchic animation, the indie chat sensibility and the dearth of any other films that seem anywhere near as alive in the wake of this movie. See it before Saturday so you’ll know what everyone is talking about.

For the record, there is also strong buzz around The Deep End, Intimacy and Enigma. And wonder of wonders, the press screening of Wet, Hot American Summer… loaded beyond capacity! Perhaps this is because Super Troopers already sold. Or perhaps there is a real sense that light, silly fare is on its way back. Either way, the film has put a scent in the air.

The great disappointment of the day for me was Scout’s Honor, a documentary about gays in scouting that turned out to be as balanced as a seesaw with one kid on board. I was looking for the documentary to give me something to think about, a reason to consider that maybe sexual discrimination, while wrong, had roots in fear or experience or religion or something that might make one consider that the issue isn’t black and white. Of course, in these comments, it’s not even clear yet on which side the documentary lands. The film is 100 percent in favor of allowing gay scouts and gay leadership in the Boy Scouts of America. Most of the footage against that proposition is made up of TV clips or low-level functionaries, who can’t make a single strong argument. And I have to say, fear of homosexuals by "straight" people is wrong, but it is real. There are few things more intimidating to most heterosexual men than a gay man who is attracted to them. There are too many reasons for this to list, but it is real and it is a subject of passion.

I made the argument, years ago, at the Sundance festival where Linklater’s debut, Slacker, premiered, that a documentary does not have to provide strong arguments for both sides. The movie that was controversial at that time was called Blood in the Face and it was a look at Neo-Nazism in America that was criticized for not flagging the fact that the opinions expressed by the Neo-Nazis were repugnant, the old "it will be like a recruiting movie" argument. But that was a different kind of documentary. It took you into a world to which most of us have never been privy. And it let it’s "characters" speak for themselves. Scout’s Honor felt like a long, long sermon, deifying the young crusader at its center. Blech.