Sundance 2007, Day Four
So, Sunday was the last day of the festival. However, that didn't seem to dampen the enthusiasm of the film lovers in Park City. Tickets for showings were still extremely hard to come by for Park City screenings. I originally had tickets for a screening of The Last Dining Table at the Sundance Resort. But, I didn't feel like making the hour long trek out there. So, I traded my tickets for screenings of the Waldo Salt screenwriting award winner, a TBA screening, and The Great World of Sound.
Grace is Gone ended up winning the Waldo Salt award for screenwriting. John Cusack plays a father who can't bring himself to tell his daughters that their mother has died in Iraq. This has to be the one film that has unanimously won over the critics and has generated tons of buzz. The guys over at Filmspotting named Grace is Gone one of their five favorite films of the festival. Unfortunately, an inconsolable baby contributed to my missing this screening. I was seven people away from getting into the screening, but, alas, it wasn't meant to be. Fortunately, Grace is Gone has been picked up for distribution by the Weinsteins and should be in wide release well before the end of the year.
The TBA screening ended up being No End in Sight. A few people waiting in line had their suspicions that Robert Redford lobbied to get this film shown for the TBA showing since he opened the festival with some anti-war sentiment. I guess it would make a fitting bookend. No End in Sight is a documentary by Charles Ferguson about the quagmire that the war in Iraq has become. This is no Fahrenheit 9/11. Charles Ferguson is no Michael Moore. I actually believe what Ferguson has captured on film. I don't believe that he's manipulating the viewer through the use of creative editing and by harassing those he interviews. Rather, he found the highest level government officials–those that were directly responsible for making some of the most important decisions affecting the course of the war. What he found is that they were repeated hamstrung and left to watch helplessly as poor decisions were made, each decision worse than the one before it.
The Great World of Sound was the last screening I caught at Sundance. Unfortunately, I also found it to be the most disappointing one. It's about a guy named Martin, who has mostly good intentions, but gets caught up working as a "producer"/salesman for a sleazy conman that preys on hopes and dreams of aspiring musicians to line his pockets. At first, Martin doesn't realize that they're conning people. He actually thinks that they're going to produce albums for these people. However, he soon figures out that what he's really doing is just separating these people from their money by deceiving them in the worst possible way. He has a bit of a moral crisis, but rather than emerging as the tragic hero, he just ends up being tragic. Maybe I just found the ending too unsatisfying. Maybe I just thought they drew the whole thing out a little too long. I just didn't find it all that satisfying in the end.
Anyway, that was pretty much the end of my Sundance experience for this year. I hope to catch some of the films that I missed at the festival that have been picked up for distribution. Here's looking forward to next year. I wonder what it will be like… This year's Sundance film festival was reported to be a critical disappointment according to some and continued to be plagued by the perception that it embodies the independent spirit less and less every year. There are plenty of articles out there criticizing the increasing commercialism of the festival. While this may be true, it's still one of the best places to see some of the best independent films around.
