Ahoy, squirts! Quint here... Now we're talking... we're getting a bit of a windfall of Sundance reports now on films that I know I'm curious about, like 9 SONGS (below) and BRICK (in another report posted today). I've seen LAYER CAKE and agree wholeheartedly with Opie, here. It's an amazingly entertaining movie and a damn good film to boot. Opie also talks about a doc called SYMBIC-somethingorother and for anybody who has ever attended a film festival anywhere... they've had an experience like Opie did with this film... Anyway, thanks to Opie for finding the time to send in his thoughts... word of advice, though... lose the fishing pole and quit whistling so damn much! They'll catch you!!! Enjoy!
Greetings from Park City, everyone. I'm reporting from what is my fourth Sundance Film Festival, and things are looking up. Last year it was virtually impossible to get into any screeings, even by wait-listing, but this year things seem to be running smoother.
It is for this reason that, midway through Day Two, I already have four films to comment on. Due to time constraints at the Internet cafe here on Main Street, I am giving you write-ups of the first three.
I have made a very concerted effort to keep these reviews free of both spoilers and profanity, however the section that discusses "9 Songs" is rather graphic and filthy, so use your discretion, and please don't read it if you're under 18. So, without further ado:
LAYER CAKE
My friends and I caught this film's U.S. Premiere on our first try, and I'm glad we did. What a great way to kick-start the festival!
Daniel Craig heads up a great ensemble cast as the film's nameless hero. He's a mid-level drug dealer, and as the story begins, he's scratched out quite a good living and is just a few thousand short of getting out of the business and going straight, when his boss hands him two assignments almost simultaneaously: Locate and rescue the kidnapped daughter of the boss's close friend, and help to move a shipment of a million hits of ecstasy, recently stolen by an unstable crook who is now in over his head. His cool demeanor, and his cunning business sense serve as enormous assets in this world, until the circumstances begin to unravel, the bodies pile up, and our hero is forced to make quick, devastating choices in order to make set up alliances and betrayals, in a game that could ultimately get hm killed.
The film's director, Michael Vaughn, previously produced Lock, Stock... and Snatch, and revealed in the Q+A afterwards that Guy Ritchie was originally going to direct this film, but pulled out. Therefore, it would be easy to draw parallels to those two films when describing Layer Cake. But the truth is, this film is not as zany as those previous Ritchie films; It's a vicious, biting crime drama. There are still moments of humor, but it's in the form of glib dialogue. This film is more intense dramatically, and while it does deal with a vast array of colorful gangland characters, it has a driving current of brutality that never allows you to get comfortable in your seat.
Not that it's not tempting. This is a visually rich film, with every shot well-composed, and inventive camera work that accents its eclectic score. In fact, the POV-style photography of one particularly vicious ass-beating (and there are a few) was ugly enough to provoke a chorus of gasps from the audience.
The violence in this film bursts out of nowhere, and does so often. It's shocking, horrifying, and ultimately makes the hero's predicament all the more real, and the consequences more dire, especially as it rumbles to it's shocker of a denoument, one that knocked every audience member on its ass.
SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE 2 1/2
Every year, I end up walking out of at least one screening at Sundance. Back home in the OC, I never walk out, no matter how bad. But at Sundance, time is key. There is so much going on here ona minute-by-minute basis, that if a movie doesn't grab me after an hour, I'm outta there. This year, the "long-awaited sequel to SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE 1," (according to the poster in the lobby) is the one (and only one, so far) that I just couldn't take. And let me tell you, when you're seated next to the editor of the film, you have to really hate it to gather up the courage to walk out right on front of him. But as Dee Snider once screamed, I just wasn't gonna take it any more.
Here's the scoop, since I will bet any amount of money that you will never see this movie: Boiled down to its essence, the film is a bad documentary, depicting the creation of a bad movie with bad actors. We watch as as these actors rehearse and shoot a scene of the most atrocious dialogue (this portion ws shot in 1968), and watch as the crew readies itself for each shot. Interspersed with this tedium is an even more obnoxious section of the film in which the crew turns the cameras and mics on themselves, and begin to pontificate on the nature of the scene, human nature, the nature of acting, and art, and just how amazing and revolutionary what they're doing is. These scenes reminded me of what it's like to pass out at a party that's in full swing, and wake up a few hours later on the couch: You are stuck in a room with a dozen or so losers, who are chain-smoking and having long-winded self-important conversations that they themselves don't understand. In that situation, you don't attempt to follow the conversation for very long. You start to panic and wonder where your ride home went.
Torture.
Thank the Lord we got out of there with just enough time to get into the wait-list line for....
9 SONGS
Yeah. The one with all the fucking. There, I said it. It's a fuck film. A fuck film that's ABOUT something, yes. The only fuck film I've ever seen with location footage shot in Antarctica.... But it's still a fuck film. All of us in the wait-list line tried to pretend we were there for the craft, to observe a powerful work of independent cinema by a gifted and brilliant director.... But we all knew why we were there. We were there to see a fuck film.
I have since had conversations with my lady companions on this trip, and they have let me know that the female perspective on past relationships is very different, but this film is written and narrated by males, so I'll just present my interpretation of the film's vision with this in mind.
The film is narrated by Matt, an Englishman who studies glaciers in Antarctica. As he does his work in this remote area, surrounded by nothing but differing variations of ice, he begins to reflect on his last relationship, with a woman named Lisa. Like I said, apparently this is only a male point of view, but as he drifts back over the relationship, he doesn't recall the fights. He doesn't recall the candle-lit dinners. He doesn't remember the little inside jokes. He remembers the emotional highs. He remembers the various concerts they saw together. He remembers the feel of her body, the way she seduced him, the smell of her, the sounds of her pleasure.
Basically, what her remembers most vividly is the sex.
And that, in a nutshell, is the film. It's a series of sex scenes, interspersed with live concert performances (by the likes of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and Primal Scream, both of whom I have seen live, and both of whom sounded a lot better than they do here), and little brief moments of minutiae, the preparing of meals, the mutual ingestion of drugs and alcohol, the cuddling and silent bonding, long looks, heavy silennces... And more fucking. A whole lot more fucking.
Every frame of this film is raw, poorly lit, and slightly out of focus. The concerts all suffer from muddy sound and shaky camerawork, and the editing chops events up so sporadically that you can only assume the filmmakers wanted to simulate the fragmentation of memory. Everything unfolds in a dreamlike state, as if it's not real at all, or it happened so long ago, that some of the images have been forgotten.
But some images in this film will never be forgotten. I haven't seen this many walkouts since Gaspar Noe's Irreversible. There is a feast of sex on display here, an abundance of images to make my elders squirm in their seats before vacating them. Actual cunnilingus, fellatio, penetration, light bondage, role-playing, and a very messy male climax.... The experience was like an endurance test, and I played chicken with the rest of the audience. Who could pretend they weren't uncomfortable the longest? I think I beat most of the attendees last night, but to be fair, I have an amazing poker face.
I will always defend a filmmaker's right to place whatever he wants into his films, not to bow to censorship, to be as graphic as possible, and to lean on (or hide behind) the freedom of artistic expression. The problem with 9 Songs, ultimately, is that as graphic and taboo as it is, it's really rather boring. Even at the remarkably short length of 69 minutes (you in the back, stop snickering), it drags on and on, and it falls into a stubbornly predictable rhythm: sex, concert, sex, Antarctica, sex, concert, sex, concert, Antarctica again, etc. etc. No point is to be made here, other than the one I stated above, that men recall primarily the sex when they stroll down memory lane. With no plot to speak of, it doesn't work as entertainment... And with the quick cutting, the dim, out-of-focus photography, and the lack of variety, it's not effective as pornography, either. It just remains an artistic statement, then. A brief, incredibly simple, and ineffective one.
And, years from now, perhaps ironically, all I'll remember about this film.... is the sex. And maybe that's the point.
That does it for Day One. Tomorrow I'll be writing up reviews for ELLIE PARKER, DIRTY LOVE (if I can get in), and THE ARISTOCRATS. Later in the week, I've got Poppy Montgomery in BETWEEN, and Sarsgaard and Campbell Scott in THE DYING GAUL. Later.
-Opie
