Park City Dispatch. 4.

The Sundance Film Festival appears to be sending a mixed message this year. The festival, made famous for its support of independent American filmmakers, has started every screening with a promotional spot made by animation house JibJab. JibJab's claim to fame consists of a series of political animated shorts. Their frontispieces for the festival reveal a certain cynicism towards independent filmmakers. They begin with the word "Independent" in bold white on a red background, the letters blurring away one by one. The last letters to go spell out the word "inept." In one version a road line painter talks about how he hates working for "the man" and how sick he is of always having to paint straight lines. In order to break away and be himself, he starts painting colorful patterns on the road, stating that independence means freedom to do whatever he wants to do; in the background a car plunges off the road to certain death. Every variation of the JibJab intro leaves off with the main character's desire for freedom causing death through ineptitude, naiveté and carelessness. It doesn't help that a song preaching freedom and independence then plays over a hefty sponsor list. What is Sundance trying to tell us, here?

In stark contrast, the actual shorts screening at Sundance have been the 2005 edition's real highlight. They can fairly easily be divided into two categories - those that seem to be calling cards for future feature film work, and those that succeed purely on their own merits as self-contained stories. Of the former, Wasp, freshly nominated for an Academy Award, is an impressive entry. Many first-time features suffer heavily from poorly directed performances, often exacerbated by bad dialogue. A successful "calling card" film displays the filmmaker's aptitude for making a scene really work. In this respect, Wasp is a standout effort by UK filmmaker Andrea Arnold. It follows a negligent and desperate mother's day with her four children. The seamless realism of the performances and dialogue recall early Michael Winterbottom or Ken Loach. I expect we'll be seeing a very accomplished feature from Arnold in the future. Another competent entry in this genre is Kara Miller's Elephant Palm Tree, about a West African couple in living in London and suffering from a loveless marriage.

Several standout stand-alone shorts, in addition to the previously mentioned (fantastic) Flotsam/Jetsam and The Raftman’s Razor, include Ryan, by far the most talked about short at this year's festival and an Academy Award nominee for Best Animated Short. Here, filmmaker Chris Landreth converses with his longtime inspiration, former animator Ryan Larkin. Larkin made several groundbreaking shorts in the late 60s and early 70s, most notably Walking, before falling into a creative stupor spurred on by drug addiction and alcoholism. 3D animation is used to recreate the scene of the conversation, but Landreth takes advantage of its flexibility to make each character's appearance reflect their mental state. For instance, neither has a fully fleshed out head. In moments of mental suffocation, brightly colored ribbons sprout out of Landreth's skull and wrap his face tightly. When he warns Larkin about his alcohol problem, a neon halo sprouts from the top of his head. The whole effect is visually stunning. It doesn't quite tell us enough about Ryan Larkin, however, which makes it difficult to fully understand the mental problems that generate such moving effects.

On a much more sinister note, Brian Boyce's America's Biggest Dick, already an online hit, is surprisingly creepy. Boyce takes Cheney's 2004 Republican Convention speech and replaces its audio with scenes from Brian De Palma's Scarface. The result is both funny and disturbing. At three minutes, I think you should all watch it right now - especially considering that Boyce is a proud GreenCine subscriber. He's currently working on a collage film using old Ronald Reagan footage. Now that Reagan has passed away, it's definitely time for some healthy demythologizing.

Posted by dwhudson at January 26, 2005 1:23 AM