Sundance Film Festival 2011 – Round Up: Part II

Like Crazy

Winner of this year’s Grand Jury prize for US Dramatic, Drake Doremus’ Like Crazyis a tender study of love. British student Anna (Felicity Jones) meets Jacob (Anton Yelchin) meet in LA as she is finishing her studies. After a romantic gesture from Anna, they start spending time together and fall head over heels in love.

Their feelings grow to the point that Anna can’t bear to leave him for a two and a half month return to England, so she recklessly breaks her visa restrictions and remains with him for the summer. This moment of romantic flippancy causes waves of complications for their future together. As the course of their enforced long-distance relationship unravels, other factors enter the struggle to maintain their commitment – the exasperating time difference, job offers, insecurities and potential love interests.

The colours of the film reflect the strong, giddy emotions – shifting from warm, drunk golden pinks as they ride opposite one another on the tube to the airport, to dull grey as she returns from the airport alone. Like Crazy is energetic and full of brilliant, realistic snatches of dialogue, and recognizable situations, sad, funny and awkward.

Mostly improvised, the actors rehearsed extensively in the aim of creating a reality, rather than a movie set. Doremus wanted to get inside the relationship and their intimacy and familiarity with one another glows through the film. Like Crazy sensitively shows the unfolding of the love affair, and that the cracks that emerge are nobody’s fault.

Another Earth

The debut feature of Mike Cahill, Another Earth is a haunting sci-fi observing the tenuous stability of human existence that could be derailed in a split second. Britt Marling is excellent as Rhoda, a bright young woman with a promising future. Driving to a party she glances up at the blue light of a new planet in the sky, and the momentary distraction causes a catastrophic car crash.

Another Earth follows Rhoda’s rehabilitation out of prison back into society and the discovery of ‘Earth II’, a huge planet identical to ours, constantly bulging over the horizon. Rhoda is a shell of her former self, but takes on employment at the local school as a janitor. Submerged in a deep blue, the film follows her attempts to repent for her mistake. Visiting John, the sole survivor of the car crash, she is unable to confess to her real identity and poses as a cleaner.

Rhoda’s movements are paralleled with the media coverage of Earth II, as attempts at contact are made and conspiracy theories are thrown around (“our memories are implants from Earth II!”) and it becomes possible that Earth II may be populated by mirror images of ourselves. Ignorant of her secret, John and Rhoda draw closer together, but he is devastated when she applies to be part of the first space team to visit Earth II.

The soundtrack is a blend of experimental and classic, with violins, white noise and even the operatic, mournful wail of saw. Brilliantly conceived and written by Cahill and Marling, Another Earth explores the question, what would you say if confronted with yourself?

Corman’s World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel

Opening on the set of Roger Corman’s latest film Dinoshark, the documentary follows the rebellious practice of legendary B-movie filmmaker Roger Corman, who set up his own company ‘New World Pictures’ in the ’70s to live by his own rules. Interviewees and co-workers elucidate Corman’s aesthetic; if there’s a motorbike it should crash into a wall and blow-up, if the cops come – run, and if there’s a monster involved it should kill someone fairly early, and then at regular intervals.

De Niro, Scorsese, Ron Howard and Jack Nicholson are among those interviewed, discussing Corman and the popularity that came from his understanding that audiences needed rebellious cinema. The authority figures were nearly always villains and his films were hits. One his boldest moves was The Intruder a film that exposed the shocking racist violence that was occurring at the time during the height of the integration wars.

The documentary touches upon how Corman lost out in getting credit for Easy Rider; the counterculture classic made three years after Corman’s outlaw biker hit The Wild Angels which also starred Peter Fonda on a Harley – but this leaves the prolific Corman unfazed.

Dotted with trailers of his exploitation hits, Corman’s World is a funny, engaging look at the man who kickstarted so many careers – William Shatner, Jack Nicholson, Pam Grier, Ron Howard, Francis Ford Coppola to name but a few – and the little recognised, but phenomenal influence he has had across the film industry.

The Music Never Stopped

Based on an essay ‘The Last Hippie’ by Dr. Oliver Sacks, The Music Never Stopped is a drama about the rebuilding of damaged family relations and a love letter to ’60s music such as The Grateful,Bob Dylan and Buffalo Springfield.

In 1986 Gabriel Sawyer’s parents Henry and Helen receive a phone call out of the blue, 19 years after he walked out of a furious family row. Gabriel has had an operation to remove a massive tumor growing in head, leaving him severely brain-damaged.

The film pieces together the family’s history through flashbacks, revealing the early father/son relationship. Henry instilled the importance of music in Gabriel, but cracks developed when he grew up and developed his own taste. Henry misunderstands Gabriel’s passion for the revolutionary artists, and his outrage culminates in the fallout.

Post-operation, 35-year-old Gabriel struggles to relate to the outside world and Henry begins to look into links between music and brain function. Henry invites specialist Dr. Bailey to work with his son. Bailey’s experiments have a phenomenal effect. It is overwhelming to see Gabriel’s response as the first chords of one of his old favourite bands rolls out of the record player. Gripped with ecstatic disbelief, he starts pouring with excited facts, completely animated by the music.

Lou Taylor Pucci delivers a powerful, engaging performance as the severe amnesiac, stuck in a loop of history from nearly two decades ago. Music is Gabriel’s language, inspiring Henry to get to grips with his son’s songs. As Henry works with Gabriel to try to recover his cognitive function, the film beats with the power of music; mourning the irretrievable, and the transience of the moment that creates the memory.

Martha Marcy May Marlene

Winner of the Directing Award in the US Dramatic competition, Sean Durkin’s first feature film unravels a dark story of an oppressive religious cult and deep psychological trauma. Having made a narrow escape from a religious cult, Martha (Elizabeth Olsen) is picked up by her sister Lucy (Sarah Paulson and taken to her lakeside retreat in Connecticut, where she is holidaying with her husband, Ted (Hugh Dancey).

The film slips between flashbacks and the present, building up Martha’s descent into a shocking way of life, from the welcoming generosity of the cult, to a tyrannous coercing into a disturbing social system. The cult leader Patrick (John Hawkes) begins by dismissing Martha’s identity – “You look like a Marcy May”. Women are subordinate to men, living as sex slaves. She consumes dodgy concoctions to ‘cleanse herself of the past and toxins’ and submits to passivity, under the deceptive umbrella of ‘freedom’.

These scenes are contrasted with her struggle to adapt to the manners and conduct of Lucy’s world – where it’s not cool to wander into your sister and husband’s bedroom and curl up on their bed while they’re having sex. Martha’s openness marks her out as dangerously vulnerable. Haunted by violent memories and torn by her inability to adjust, she hurtles toward a mental breakdown, living in absolute fear as she anticipates being hunted down.

The way the story flows seamlessly between the past and the present and different relationships evocatively suggests the interchangeability in Martha’s chaotic state of mind, her damaged grasp of boundaries and inability to distinguish between reality and the illusory.

For more information on this year’s Sundance visit sundance.org/festival