Austin Dispatch. 1.

What a splendid way to begin the SXSW Film Festival, or at least my own experience of it, since during any given screening there are at least five others going on at the same time. I couldn't be more pleased with or moved by my selections from the varied menu, though, Old Joy and Manhattan, Kansas, two films radically different in tone, in look and feel, yet sharing a mournful pain for what goes lost as time passes and - again, for me, sorry - a reminder that America is a far richer, more complex and mysterious place than the one seen from afar. This almost medicinal "windows on the world" notion we maintain as one of the virtues of cinema can cut both ways.

Old Joy arrived at SXSW with an award from Rotterdam and after a perhaps embarrassed Sundance festival director Geoff Gilmore found himself scrounging for an explanation as to why, since it turned out to be one of the most critically lauded films in Park City, the film was not included in the official competition. I wasn't exactly expecting throngs, but I did anticipate a crowd. Nope. The theater didn't even fill up. Folks, if you're in Austin, Thursday, 2:45 pm. Last chance for who knows how long.

Like an anguished chorus, frustrated liberals hash over what's gone wrong with the country, and more to the point, with themselves on Air America radio as a car rolls through the Pacific Northwest with two estranged friends and a dog, deep into the woods toward a spot where one of the friends, we eventually discover, is hoping an alignment of this place and this time will spark a revival of what they once had. Instead, we find out what the film's title means; instead, what would come off in any context other than this beautifully, humanely rendered journey as a mere platitude - stings.

Manhattan, Kansas is quite a jolt as a chaser. Old Joy's friends speak volumes while barely speaking at all, while Evie Wray, mother of filmmaker Tara Wray, speaks whatever's on her mind, and there's quite a storm going on in there, unpredictable as lightening.

To back up, a year ago, I interviewed Tara while she was still hard at work on the film, had read her story, "A Sometimes Never Mother," so I was especially curious, but I have to admit that at some early point, I was thinking, no, I don't want to be this privy to such private pain. Though undiagnosed, Evie is undoubtedly mentally disturbed and, even the moment she threatened to take both her own and her daughter's life aside, has scarred Tara deeply. Those objections eventually vanished as, one, I realized Tara had no way out for nearly 20 years, and two, as Evie reveals herself to be an alarmingly sympathetic character. You have to keep reminding yourself: Evie's life-embracing eccentricity is delightful on the screen; it's got to have been quite a different experience 24/7 - for a child.

As a testament to the cumulative emotional impact of Manhattan, Kansas, while much of the audience gushed unreservedly in the Q&A that followed, praising Tara's bravery for revealing so much of her own deeply torn feelings - and a running motif throughout is the meta-tug-of-war between her and Evie over what the film is actually "about" - one audience member chastised Tara no less emotionally, telling her that there will a come a time when she will appreciate what love her mother was able to give her. Tara's response: "Fair enough." But this is where she is now. She's got to be the tiniest yet toughest filmmaker I've ever met.

Posted by dwhudson at March 10, 2006 11:38 PM