It began in gloom, ends in triumph
This year’s films in direct opposition to new U.S. president
PARK CITY, UTAH— The 2017 Sundance Film Festival began in almost a state of siege on Jan. 19, the last full day of Barack Obama’s reign as U.S. president.
Sundance founder Robert Redford spoke of how he sensed a fearful mood from many people that “the darkness is closing in around them” due to incoming President Donald Trump’s plans to roll back liberal advances of all kinds, from health care to climate agreements.
And it was obvious that Trump, a man who tweets scorn against Meryl Streep, Broadway’s Hamilton cast and Saturday Night Live, would be no friend of the arts.
This year’s Sundance film offerings often seemed in direct opposition to Trump, beginning with the opening night gala An Inconvenient Sequel.
In it, former U.S. vice-president Al Gore — following up the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth — demonstrated with startling and unassailable scientific evidence how the human-caused global warming that Trump refuses to address is rapidly making the planet uninhabitable through increasing drought, floods, hurricanes and other climatic challenges.
Mother Nature seemed determined to underline this by dumping more snow on Park City than I’ve seen in nearly 20 years of attending Sundance.
But there’s nothing like a great movie to pull you out of a funk, and Sundance delivered more than a few of them.
You could feel the gloom lifting last Sunday night at the Eccles Theatre, when Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino introduced the world premiere of his lyrical new film Call Me by Your Name. It’s an ode to life’s many pleasures, set in his sunny homeland. Guadagnino offered it as a balm to the senses: “I hope that some countryside in Italy will make you forget (Trump’s) inauguration.”
It worked, and so did many other films. Call Me by Your Name is one of the 10 films I most enjoyed at Sundance 2017, which concludes this weekend. I’ve listed them here in alphabetical order — expect to hear a wearisome amount of hype about some of them in the months to come.
I’m also including a couple of disappointments, plus one fantastic Canadian film I saw from Sundance’s crosstown rival, the Slamdance Film Festival:
78/52 (directed by Alexandre O. Philippe): The shower murder in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 horror Psycho is likely second only to the Zapruder film as the most-scrutinized piece of celluloid, forever changing movies with its taboobreaking voyeurism and nihilistic violence. Stare through the peephole with hardcore film geeks — directors, editors, scholars and actors — at terror that can’t be scrubbed away.
Beatriz at Dinner (Miguel Arteta): Nothing bad could happen if you put a smug Trump-like corporate robber baron (John Lithgow) together with an Earth-loving immigrant caregiver (Salma Hayek) at a dinner party, right? Wrong! Director Arteta and screenwriter Mike White ( Chuck & Buck) reunite for a whip-smart dramedy of social embarrassment that speaks to polarized times.
The Big Sick (Michael Showalter): A rom-com of both heart and brain about a couple tested by illness and clashing cultures, starring Kumail Nanjiani and Zoe Kazan. Nanjiani co-wrote it with Emily V. Gordon, basing it in part on their real experiences as a couple. Hilarious and heartbreaking, the film also serves as a raised digit to Trump’s xenophobic vision.
Call Me by Your Name ( Luca Guadagnino): Summer idylls (and idols) in a young man’s sexual awakening in the Italian Riviera of 1983. Visiting scholar Oliver (Armie Hammer), in his late 20s, is staying at the family abode of 17-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet). A relationship begins, very slowly, allowing viewers to drink in the intoxicating sights, sounds and moods of this exquisite film.
AGhost Story (David Lowery): Even phantoms get the blues. Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara live in a house haunted by a restless and roaming spirit, illustrating the passage of time, plus memory and loss, in the most unusual and possibly the saddest spook tale you’ll ever see. It’s what you’d expect from genre-busting writer/director Lowery ( Ain’t Them Bodies Saints).
Mudbound ( Dee Rees): Multiple narratives keep outcomes in doubt for this sprawling 1940s Deep South tale. Adapted from an acclaimed novel, it tracks parallel but not equal lives of rural neighbours: the McAllans (Carey Mulligan, Jason Clarke and Garrett Hedlund), and the Jacksons (Rob Morgan, Mary J. Blige and Jason Mitchell). The film takes its time, but there’s a huge payoff.
Novitiate (Maggie Betts): An aspiring nun (Margaret Qualley) negotiates the rigours of a cloistered life during the early 1960s. The carefully calibrated drama shifts between lives caught up in doubt, illicit romance and the sweeping liberalism of the Roman Catholic Church’s Vatican II reforms. Melissa Leo makes a supporting role seem like a leading one, as the controlling Reverend Mother.
Rumble ( Catherine Bainbridge/ Alfonso Maiorana): Subtitled The Indians Who Rocked the World, this is an ear-opening doc revealing how musicians with aboriginal roots — among them guitar greats like Jimi Hendrix, The Band’s Robbie Robertson, Link Wray, Charley Patton, to say nothing of singers like Rita Coolidge and Buffy Sainte-Marie — made a massive impact on popular music.
Trophy (Shaul Schwartz/Christina Clusiau): A real Catch-22: to prevent extinction, you’ve got to kill a lot of animals. This doc exposes the big money and dubious ethics in breeding the “Big Five” African animals — lion, elephant, leopard, rhinoceros, Cape buffalo — so that bloodthirsty hunters can bag a kill. This “if it pays, it stays” logic preserves animal species but it shrivels human souls.
Wind River (Taylor Sheridan): Extreme cold meets the deep freeze of bureaucracy and cross-cultural hostilities as a rookie FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen) and a veteran hunter (Jeremy Renner) investigate a teen girl’s murder on a remote Wyoming Indian reservation. Sicario screenwriter Sheridan, also the pen behind Oscar-nominated Hell or High Water, makes his auspicious directorial debut.
Two disappointments: Something is lost in the shift from Daniel Clowes’ graphic novel to Craig Johnson’s big screen with Wilson, in which Woody Harrelson plays an annoying misanthrope all too well. And the stage-to-screen leap for Michael Almereyda’s Marjorie Prime, in which hologram creations ape dead relations, never convinces or engages, despite the best efforts of Jon Hamm, Geena Davis, Lois Smith and Tim Robbins.
Agreat Canuck Slamdance: There were several good Canadian features at Slamdance 2017, but the best was Joyce Wong’s Wexford Plaza, which draws its title from the Scarborough strip mall where it was filmed. It tells a tangled love story from the points of view of the two main actors: Reid Asselstine’s security guard Betty and Darrel Gamotin’s bartender Danny. So well put together, it’s hard to believe this is Wong’s first feature. Peter Howell is the Star’s movie critic. His column usually runs Fridays.