(Sasha Calle and Lio Mehiel in Alessandra Lacorazza’s prize-winning In the Summers. At the bottom, The last film I saw in this year’s festival, the terrific Tendaberry, an excellent first feature by Haley Elizabeth Anderson. Photos courtesy of the Sundance Film festival.)
PARK CITY, Utah—
Today is my birthday. On a previous birthday, four years ago, I was at the top of the mountains in Park City, Utah, at the Sundance Film festival.
It was a Friday afternoon, beautiful, radiant, aglow. Some friends and colleagues helped me celebrate with drinks at the Yarrow Bar, the closest approximation the festival has to a literary salon, or hang out for writers, critics and journalists.
The topic of Cannes came up, with the necessary long-form plans and early strategies for the festival. My friend cautioned, prophetically as it turned out, about the growing threat of the coronavirus, as a wrecker of long-range plans.
That March, covering a basketball game, just as I was about to interview a forward who scored a game-high 34 points, my phone vibrated with the announcement the NBA was indefinitely suspending its season.
Life changed forever that night. I don’t have to tell you what happened next. Out of the all profound and transformative changes to the world I inhabit, art house and independent film culture has been the most irrevocably altered.
Two days before my birthday, I was knocked out by Never Rarely Sometimes Always, the superb third feature of Eliza Hittman. The movie opened in theaters that March, and sank, virtually disappearing from public consciousness.
As it turned out, that iteration of Sundance that concluded on my birthday weekend four years ago was the last of its kind. The next two versions were remote only—the planned return to an in-person festival two years ago scrubbed at the 11th hour.
A physical festival returned last year in a somewhat compromised hybrid format, with in-person screenings, and an online viewing option.
The films, I found, were on the whole excellent and very much worth seeking out—the fact that so many interesting, formally complex and intricate works were continuing to get made, financed and distributed against the profound economic disruption of the pandemic-era was nothing short of astonishing.
Here’s the rub.
The Sundance experience—with its electric and propulsive energy, the sense of thrill and discovery, the palpable necessity of living in yourself—was largely gone.
My favorite times of the festival were before the advent of digital communications and smartphones. The way information passed, about a movie, a party, a director to watch, was astonishing in its speed and shapeThe mood was subdued, off-rhythm, the crowds physically present, numerically diminished, unmistakably emotionally detached.
Only one public screening, the world premiere of Flora and Son, the Dublin-set musical by the Irish director John Carney, captured the particular manic tone, sensation and thrill of the best Sundance premieres. The Eccles, the largest theater, was packed; the energy and emotion was something to behold, replicating the exuberance and joy of Carney’s extraordinary Once, which detonated at the festival in 2007.
In his remarks before the film, Carney talked at length about his memories of his elusive, beautiful and mesmerizing film, shot in 17 days for about $150,000, and how it changed his life and career, and that of his two lead actors, the musicians and songwriters Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová. Once is not repeatable; you can only capture that spontaneity, verve and openness the first time out. The new film was funny, loose-limbed, engaging and beautifully made. Apple bought the film for a lot of money.
The moment inside the theater was exhilarating, a return to the womb time capsule I was all too happy to float in and get lost. That euphoria did not last twenty-four hours. The next night, at the Eccles, I caught Ira Sachs’ Passages, a great film, maybe his best. This time, the theater was maybe ten to 12 percent filled.
Sachs bravely conducted a post-screening discussion, and I never felt so empathy with a director (full-disclosure, I know a little bit personally, and one I have interviewed a couple of times). Like Carney, the festival made his reputation, from his lyrical and achingly beautiful debut, The Delta (1996) to his autobiographically-inflected second feature, Forty Shades of Blue (2005), that captured the festival’s grand jury prize.
Sundance still existed, but it almost felt like the old tree in the forest parable—if the films shown after the opening weekend play to seemingly empty theaters, what does it say about the festival?
I have just returned from the 40th version of the festival.
Like last year, I missed the opening weekend, arriving on the morning of Monday, January 22. I saw a fair number of films, and ran into friends and acquaintances, or people I know from the festival circuit. The iconic Main Street remains an eerie ghost town, largely depopulated by movie lovers and cinephiles.
The festival is confronted by a peculiar and nasty Hobson’s choice. Neither possibility is terribly inviting, given the likely alternatives are either death by the guillotine or firing squad. In my view, the only way the festival retains its legitimacy and importance is by becoming an exclusively in-person event.
The vast revenue streams generated from the online festival is seemingly the only thing keeping the festival operational in light of the traditional collapse of funding sources, of corporate, media and cultural philanthropy and private donors.
In other words, the festival needs the online revenue to survive even as it has subverted and sabotaged the actual product.
There’s no elixir or easy path forward (there’s no putting the genie back in this bottle). I understand, on multiple levels, why so many friends and colleagues have stopped coming to the festival. The price-gouging is simply unacceptable, and out of control—from the cost of flights and housing, to basic food necessities. (If you’re going to spend more than $2,500 per person, why not just go to Cannes or Venice)
My first festival was 1992, notoriously the debut of Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. There was a preternatural ease and looseness to the festival that has also vanished. I remember that first year just walking up to Spaulding Gray, and just asking him on the spot if he had time for an interview.
He gave me almost an hour of his time. The next night, he was the host of the awards program, and was about as spellbinding a public figure as imaginable.
That halcyon day has passed. The awards were presented on the final Friday morning. Here are the major prizes.
U.S. Dramatic Competition: In the Summers
U.S. Documentary Competition: Porcelain War
World Cinema Dramatic Competition: Sujo
World Cinema Documentary Competition: A New Kind of Wilderness
Next Innovator Award: Little Death
Directing, U.S. Dramatic: Alessandra Lacorazza, In The Summers
Directing, U.S. Documentary: Julian Brave NoiseCat and Emily Kassie, Sugarcane
Directing, World Cinema Dramatic: Raha Amirfazli and Alireza Ghasemi, In the Land Of Brothers
Directing, World Cinema Documentary: Benjamin Ree, Ibelin
Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award: U.S. Dramatic: Jesse Eisenberg, A Real Pain
Jonathan Oppenheim Editing Award, U.S. Documentary: Carla Gutiérrez, Frida
Audience Awards
Festival Favorite Award: Daughters
U.S. Dramatic Competition: Didi
U.S. Documentary Competition: Daughters
World Cinema Dramatic Competition: Girls Will Be Girls
World Cinema Documentary Competition: Ibelin
Next: Kneecap
I’ll have more to say about the films I saw in the coming days. I thought I’d end with this. As part of the 40th anniversary, the press office invited critics and journalists to submit a personal ballot of their 10 favorite films that played the festival.
I restricted my choices to films I actually saw at the festival. In a couple of instances, like Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb, I removed from consideration because I saw them at earlier festivals, like Toronto.
Here was my ballot.
Hoop Dreams, Steve James, Frederick Marx, Peter Gilbert
Boyhood, Richard Linklater
Once, John Carney
Safe, Todd Haynes
Ruby in Paradise, Victor Nunez
You Can Count on Me, Kenneth Lonergan
Le garcu, Maurice Pialat
Fruitvale, Ryan Coogler
Winter's Bone, Debra Granik
All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, Raven Jackson
Those were the days.