Big movies, big messages, big moment
Distinguished event becomes launchpad for Oscar hopefuls and social relevance.
NEW YORK CITY — Whether it’s “Her,” “Life of Pi” or “Bridge of Spies,” the New York Film Festival has lately become a world-premiere launchpad for some of the fall’s biggest movies.
This year those ambitions will return as a number of hopefuls make their debuts. But like so much in contemporary Hollywood, the 2016 festival also comes with another element: a social charge.
Beginning with its opening-night screening on Friday of Ava DuVernay’s racethemed prison documentary “13th” and winding down two weeks later with Ang Lee’s class-minded military drama “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” the festival will showcase some of cinema’s current heroes exploring titanic of-the-moment issues.
“There’s a distinction to draw between artistic urgency and national urgency,” said Kent Jones, the director of NYFF. “‘Billy Lynn’ and ‘13th’ have artistic urgency, and that’s the reason they’re here. But they also urgently connect to the moment.”
Long-running film festivals have recently sought to find a balance between their age-old local missions and an environment that has grown more global, social media-friendly and awardsobsessed. But few have sat at this fault line like New York.
With only about 25 auteur-minded films in its main selection, the Lincoln Center event has a curatorial emphasis that has helped it operate outside both the Hollywood and news zeitgeists. Movies are chosen by a committee of four or five critic-academics; galas are well-heeled affairs for the upscale New York arts world.
But in recent years the festival has also plugged in to wider realms. NYFF now has an internal mandate that it include at least two world premieres of major films. This year the number is double that.
In addition to “13th” and “Billy Lynn,” the gathering will also feature as its centerpiece director Mike Mills’ ode to the ladies of his life, “20th Century Women” and the awards ambitions it carries for star Annette Bening and costars Elle Fanning and Greta Gerwig.
And NYFF will officially close with James Gra’s “The Lost City of Z,” an adaptation of David Grann’s book
about the 20th century British explorer Percy Fawcett and the literal and metaphoric attempts to track him down.
Though the movie won’t open until next year, it contains a number of Hollywood story lines. The 1980s-born stars Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson, for instance, are each looking for a new dramatic street-cred. “Z” is also the first of several films propelled into life by Brad Pitt — he is a producer through his Plan B banner — since the A-lister’s split with Angelina Jolie.
But it’s “13th” and “Billy Lynn” that bring the globalnews intrigue.
The DuVernay piece marks the first time the festival is opening with a documentary. Programmers eschewed high-profile awards contenders to make a statement of sorts with the films, which Netflix debuts next month.
“13th” establishes events as diverse as the release of the 1915 “Birth of a Nation,” the migration north and west of Bible Belt blacks, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan’s “war on drugs” and Bill Clinton’s 1994 passage of a major crime bill as the complex antecedents to the current climate of mass incarceration and prison profiteering.
Featuring an array of experts and startling numbers — the U.S. contains 5% of the world’s population but 15% of its prisoners — “13th” looks at how black and Latino men have been oppressed by the system, in the process making a case for a new kind of slavery. (The title is a reference to Lincoln’s abolitionist amendment.)
As one talking head says, “The objective reality is that virtually no one who is white understands the challenge of being black in America.” That expert is Newt Gingrich.
Jones said he thought the idea of putting “13th” in the opening slot — which “Captain Phillips,” “Life of Pi” and “Gone Girl” all recently occupied — made a statement .
“Ava has made a film that’s a red-hot historical synthesis,” he said. “People will talk about it as a movie. But they’ll also talk about it as a subject.”
Meanwhile, “Billy Lynn,” adapted from Ben Fountain’s novel, contrasts the pageantry that attends veterans at home with the PTSD of their experience overseas. Starring Joe Alwyn, Vin Diesel and Kristen Stewart, “Billy” hopes to make a splash in the Oscar race when it opens in November.
Maybe more important, it aims to bring the war home in a new way cinematically. “Billy Lynn” will screen in the hyper-real style of 4K 3-D, 120 frames per second.
The format is so new that the festival had to move its screening out of its august Alice Tully Hall to a nearby multiplex to accommodate it. A Sony spokeswoman cited a technology that gives audiences “something they’ve never seen before.”
Lee, who previously experimented with 3-D in “Pi,” was moved to make it this way to jump-start a dialogue about war.
NYFF occupies a rare place in the Hollywood firmament. Partly that’s a result of timing, coming after the Venice-Telluride-Toronto trinity. But it’s also a function of selectivity.
“The scrutiny is different in N.Y.; the spotlight is hotter,” said veteran awards consultant Tony Angellotti. “If you survive and prosper, you’re taken very seriously very quickly. It’s instant credibility.” And if you don’t? “Well, instant death is a possibility too,” he said.
There are examples of each.
“Captain Phillips,” “Lincoln,” “Hugo” and Lee’s own “Pi” all became best-picture nominees and box-office hits off their NYFF debuts. “Birdman” made its official North American premiere at the festival and rode a strong screening to the Oscar podium.
On the other hand, two big 2015 gambles — Robert Zemeckis’ “The Walk” and Danny Boyle’s “Steve Jobs” — sputtered and quickly faded from view not long after their NYFF world premieres.
Also looking to get a boost are movies that debuted elsewhere but can benefit from the imprimatur, and press, of an NYFF screening: Barry Jenkins’ coming-of-ager “Moonlight,” Kenneth Lonergan’s man-adrift story “Manchester By the Sea” and Maren Ade’s family/ globalism serio-comedy “Toni Erdmann,” among others.
Documentaries are also on the docket, with the world premiere of “Best Worst Thing That Ever Could Have Happened,” about a Stephen Sondheim flop, joining the likes of Raoul Peck’s James Baldwin-infused commentary (and Toronto audience winner) “I Am Not Your Negro” and Sam Pollard’s musicand civil rights quest “Two Trains Runnin’.”
Also featured will be tributes to Kristen Stewart (three NYFF movies) and Adam Driver (one). Such appearances can solidify an Oscar candidacy, as one did for Cate Blanchett in 2013.
Or they could dash those hopes in a New York minute.