PARK CITY, UTAH — I don’t think it’s any accident that the films embraced by audiences at this year’s 2008 Sundance Film Festival weren’t the usual quirky comedies and dysfunctional relationship dramas, but rather those formerly humble vessels known as documentaries.
At a time when people are feeling lied to — election season plus an unpopular war will do that — truth-telling has an undeniable appeal.
But it’s more than that.
A new wave of directors, inspired by the ones who did so much to push the bar forward in the 1990s, have brought Hollywood production values, powerful real-life storytelling and crowd-pleasing features — like, oh, humor — to what was once a reliable and even predictable video form.
It was not that long ago that documentaries aimed at either the head or the heart. But the films that got Sundance filmgoers talking this month did both. Just as Michael Moore, Errol Morris and the makers of “Hoop Dreams” pushed their audiences to demand more of nonfiction film, the same will be said of documentaries like the ones I saw this week.
Here now, my five favorites from Sundance 2008’s documentary competition. Many will be on TV this year, and on DVD, and some will undoubtedly make their way to the True/False Film Fest in Columbia, Mo., next month.
“Bigger, Stronger, Faster*”
Director Christopher Bell has been obsessed by muscle-bound athletes and bodybuilders his whole life. His two brothers went even further, pumping steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs into their bodies in hopes of looking like their heroes, men with names like Arnold and Hulk who preached physical fitness and vitamin-taking but kept their steroid use quiet.
Bell wondered: Why is American society so hard on steroid users when it condones cheating and shortcut-taking in so many other parts of life? It could’ve been an interesting little investigative piece. Instead, the first-time filmmaker turned the camera on his own family and the result is a brutally honest look at a culture desperate to get ahead at any cost — and just as desperate to look like they won fair and square.
With its blistering pace, clever use of old video footage (for instance, to demonstrate how Governor Schwarzenegger has quietly distanced himself from his onetime openness about taking ‘roids) and totally relatable characters, “Bigger, Stronger, Faster*” will have you talking both about the Bell family and America’s drug denial long after the lights go up. You might say it’s a traditional documentary … on steroids!
“The Order of Myths”
In 2007 Margaret Brown (above) returned to her native Mobile, Ala., to record the city’s dual Mardi Gras celebrations, one for its African American community and one for its white community. With the help of participants on both sides, Brown paints a portrait of an institution seemingly stuck in the Stone Age — yet perpetuated by people, white and black, who are of the best of institutions.
It’s a surprisingly moving film about how people feel bound to the past, even against their better judgment, and how, with a little openness (and a filmmaker’s prodding, perhaps), people and their institutions can change without destroying the memories that give us comfort.
“The Linguists”
Two ethnographers run around the world making tapes of people speaking so-called “endangered languages.” Sound like homework? It’s not, for these two geniuses have an adventurous streak, and the two cameras follow them as they travel the globe, getting people to speak in obscure tongues (some with as few as one practicing speake) to their microphones and cameras. Funny, enlightening and ultimately uplifting, “The Linguists” demonstrates how the act of recording a dying language can, ironically, bring it back to life.
“Recycle”
Jordanian filmmaker Mahmoud al Massad grew up in Zarqa, as did the late leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq — and this lowly cardboard recycler that is the subject of this engrossing film that rewards the patient viewer. Want to know where the al Zarqawis of the world are coming from? They are intelligent people with few economic prospects — just this very conservative Muslim who allows al Massad to track his every move. If you need constant stimulation or dislike subtitles, “Recycle” is not your film. But I am still thinking about it days after I’ve seen it, a sign that al Massad and his film have made their mark.
“Trouble the Water”
Two weeks before Hurricane Katrina, Kimberly Rivers Roberts bought a camcorder. You would never imagine her amateur footage would be the heart and soul of such a powerful documentary as “Trouble the Water.” But because it is such a complete document — one part Exodus, one part Odyssey — as Roberts and her husband venture out of Louisiana with little more than the shirts on their backs, and because Roberts discovers new strength and abilities in the weeks after Katrina, “Trouble the Water” is much more than just a disaster film. It’s a film about personal recovery that many in New Orleans are still waiting to see in their neighborhoods.
(Note: On Saturday, the Sundance Festival named “Trouble the Water” winner of its Grand Jury Prize: Documentary.)
... AND FIVE MORE TO WATCH
“Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?” Morgan Spurlock, whose “Super Size Me” marked his Sundance debut four years ago, returns with a good-natured, lively but ultimately serious-minded documentary about the al-Qaeda mastermind who used to be public enemy No. 1 but became old news the minute the U.S. invaded Iraq.
“Nerakhoon (The Betrayal)” This epic tale was filmed over 23 years, as a Laotian family chased out of their native land grappled with their new life in the United States and some of the almost unimaginable curveballs it threw at them. Sets a new standard for documentaries in high definition.
“I.O.U.S.A.” From the team that made “Wordplay,” this highly accessible film about America’s debt crunch and how we got there should be screened in every high school civics class in the country.
“Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired.” The most talked-about film at Sundance 2008 was this documentary that challenges everything we thought we knew about the 30-year-old morals case that led the director of “Rosemary’s Baby” to flee the U.S.
“Be Like Others.” In Iran, homosexuality is punishable by death — but men surgically becoming women, and vice versa, is sanctioned under Islam. This unsettling film follows several young people who undergo the procedure.
KC filmmakers at iTunes
Two short films featured at Sundance have Kansas Citians in their credits. And you can download them for yourself at the iTunes Store, “Sundance 2008” section. “The History of America,” from the KC-based art collective MK12, is a very funny psychedelic parody that pits cowboys and astronauts against each other in a battle for global domination. In “The Execution of Solomon Harris,” chaos ensures when Old Sparky fails to kill a condemned man. Kansas Citian Trey Hock was casting director.
TRUE/FALSE
Many of Sundance’s top documentaries will be shown at the annual True/False Film Fest, held Feb. 28 -Mar. 2 in Columbia. For details, see truefalse.org.
