The Sundance Shuffle (Patreon)

The promise of Sundance is a powerful thing.

The festival is synonymous with the artistic possibility of American film. It gave voice to 1980’s outsider art like Jim Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Fiction, the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple, and we can thank River’s Edge for partly giving us the punk slacker god that is Keanu Reeves. But it was really the early 90’s that helped usher in the 90’s independent boom with classic breakout hits like Soderbergh’s Sex, Lies and Videotape and Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. At the same time it was also giving voice to vibrant, ahead of their time films like Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust or milestone documentaries like Paris Is Burning. Even after the indie boom, it was still the place to discover new popular talent, like with Christopher Nolan with Memento or Karyn Kusama’s Girlfight.  Even as the festival has become so corporatized in modern day (often just a launching pad for films that already have distribution), you still get incendiary, confrontational masterpieces like Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You. No matter how different all these films are, the idea behind all of them is to strike a chord. As lofty as it sounds, they’re genuinely meant to be discovered and sent off into the greater world, all to fulfill the promise of art itself. And we remember so many of these films not just because they are great in and of themselves, but because they still resonate with us meaningfully.

But every year, there are many festival films that are forgotten.

I don’t say this without empathy. Some of it is just a numbers game and there are only so many films that can break through in a given year. But some of it is the fact that a lot of selections just don’t have the same connective power with audiences (which I also don’t say without empathy. Making a compelling film is really, really hard). But as every year goes on I feel like I see the same troubling cycles again and again. Because, even among those that are well-liked, it’s the same kinds of films that fail to connect post festival. And they often seem to have the same set of problems. As always, the big question is “why?” Why do some films break through? Why do others fail to do so? What gives rise to the differences between? Why does this “Sundance Shuffle” go on like this perpetuity? As always, the answers are complex and have to do with the ecosystem of festivals, and even movies on the whole. But they center around two things: the approach… and the audience.

The Artistic Approach - One of the unfortunate central beliefs of many artistically-minded filmmakers is that popular movies work by convention. It’s the idea that studio fare tends to work off the same, tired stock tropes and thus, overt focus on things like clarity, plot, and character arcs isn’t as important to their artistic pursuit (some believe it can even be a barrier). As such, there’s often a lot of talk about artists preferring to work off instinct. It’s about feelings. Inclinations. Drives. Intuition. And often they are trying to defy convention all in the loving pursuit of “the new.” But like most conventional wisdom about film, this is all a half truth. For one, festival films have their own tropes and I love that Sundance is self-aware enough to poke fun at their line-up with fun charts like this.

But more, it’s a misunderstanding of two fronts. The truth is that most popcorn movies fail not because they adhered to convention, but because they were just trying to work off of charm and / or overwhelming the audience with whiz-bang noise. Instead, it is the very attention to the things like drama, characterization, plot, and theme that actually turn those popcorn films into absolute blasts. Even among MCU entries, it’s precisely what separates films like Iron Man 2 from a best picture-worthy entry like Black Panther. And at the very same time, it’s an artistically-inclined arst having a coherent understanding of drama, characterization, plot, and theme that actually makes independent festival films shine, too. They’re just dressing that competency up in more abstract or daring skin, often just engaging in more adventurous topics.

For instance, one of the completely misguided popular refrains is that David Lynch is just throwing crazy shit at the wall. I know that he loves to play coy with his cryptic interview style, but remember, this RISD guy with an academic background. And his films are often filled with pitch-perfect symbology. You look at work like Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive and there are very, very, VERY clear ideas being presented. And like all good works of semiotics, the ideas add up to a coherent take of what the film is really about. Even when it comes to seemingly pedestrian things like execution of plot, Lynch is exactly the kind of artist who knows how to zag against the convention’s zig, often to find the funny or terrifying form of execution. I mean, there’s a reason that in the end I can write 12,000 word essays on the technique and symbolism of his best work. They are just chock full of resonant intentionality.

But by comparison? There are so many times I’ll see something at a festival, possibly even something inspired by Lynch’s work, but instead its aims are completely vague and meaningless. Because the second you start trying to do the same semiotic math that upholds Lynch, these ones falls apart. Often it’s like they’re just merely bringing up or hinting themes while failing to engage them dramatically or evolving them into a coherent take. This happens all… the… time (and as a quick aside: note that I really don’t like singling problematic independent movies by name because it feels cruel. They’re not films with big studio resources and my summaries of the problems of their approach should be enough). But it’s not just about thematic coherency, one of the other big common problems has to do with an artist's larger apprehension with their movie’s identity.

You’ve probably heard a lot of talk about “elevated” genre movies and there’s a reason that term is so heated. Because often it reeks of someone looking down at the genre for the aforementioned beliefs that they are “conventional.” But Get Out is a traditional horror film through and through. What makes it a great horror film is that it’s using that genre language to simply get at complex ideas. By comparison, when people try to “elevate” genre into art fare, they essentially neuter the effectiveness of their own work, because often it means they are trying to put a vaguely Malickian beauty or inscrutable vagueness over the very thing that should be trying to hit us in the gut. To wit, there’s a reason Lynch’s work is so fucking unnerving and its because he’ll turn into traditional horror language at a moment’s notice (we all remember what’s by the dumpster). But between the vague thematic work and desire to elevate genre, you’ll notice that at the center of both is this kind of distancing.

That’s because the big thing is that both approaches are effectively trying to “hide” the fact that they don’t really know how to be clear or really even execute on convention in the first place. Which is why this hiding also tends to come out in the storytelling methods through and through.

Often this involves a film hiding its damn conceit as much as possible, sometimes half way through the film or even to the end. They spend so much time just trying to peak your curiosity with the same repetitive teasing. It’s like every time the character will get close to establishing the conceit, they’ll run away in a huff. And when the character is asked or confronted, they’ll defend and deny, always delaying the crucial information (usually the same excuses). In “normal” popcorn narratives, we’ll readily decry this as plot-blocking or mystery boxing. But in independent film? It’s like it all becomes more ammo for the vague-en-ing of the story. And when the movie finally gets to the conceit you often think “okay, at least the movie can finally start now,” but the first teasing problem is usually indicative of the fact that they don’t know how to produce good conflict going forward. Which is why it hits the same looping problems of repetitive stand-offs where characters have to slink back, never evolving or changing the status of the conflicts, as it all slowly trudges to the finale.

But when they get to the end? Yay! Finally we have the first real scene of conflict! And unsurprisingly these are usually the best and most interesting scenes in the given films, but to me they are also proof positive that the filmmaker came up with a neat conceit and ONE interesting thing to happen as a result of it (maybe), but had no idea how to tell the story around it. So they just delay the crucial story information and ending as long as possible. And honestly? That same hiding is often why a lot of these endings are often filled with “it’s up to you” vagueness and total ambivalence… Now, what I just described may sound like an exaggeration, but once you notice the pattern, you see this film, like, ten times a high-brow festival. And it's way, way more common in the films that didn’t make it into the festivals in the first place (of which there are thousands).

But you hopefully noticed the important thing: within studio and independent fare alike, it’s a symptom of the same issues of storytelling. If you were going to be crass, you could just call it “not knowing what you’re doing.” But hey, I love some unhinged films where people clearly have no idea what they’re doing. Besides, storytelling is a really hard process, so I’ll say it’s just not having the story there yet. And these problems actually remind me a lot of moments where you are running a D&D session and a player identifies a story turn / reveal way early and your immediate instinct is to go: “uh, we can’t get there yet cause… reasons.” Yeah, it’s EXACTLY the same thing. The story itself is begging for it because that’s where the conflict already is. And it’s the reason you have to let them just play it forward. I know I’ve talked about this so many times with the Abrams-verse and delay-heavy steaming shows, but that gets to the next essential question of “why do these kinds of films tend to get in and even (initially) seem to succeed in a festival environment?

What makes it somehow even easier to hide?

The Amiable Audience - First, let’s be clear. The people who program festivals are saints. These people watch hundreds, if not over a thousands of films a year. Sounds like heaven, no? The problem is that a lot of this watching is not the casual, fun scenario like when you or I sit down to enjoy a popular movie that is up to certain professional standards. Often they’re combing through endless submissions of… well… middling to bad quality. And watching a bad movie can be so, so painful. The kind of experience where minutes feel like eons. It is not fun. Which is exactly why finding the good ones can feel like a dang balm. And there are so many programmers who are responsible for not only finding diamonds in the rough, but fostering the work of vital artists we have now come to love. Again, they are saints. And they are incredibly necessary to the ecosystem of moviedom.

But the important thing to remember is that most members of selection committees and / or festival audiences is that they are not engineers of movies, but connoisseurs of movies. This is an important difference. Because it’s not their job to sit around and diagnose story problems or even really evaluate quality in the way that we do. A connoisseur is someone who is often on a quest to find the kinds of films that feel different and vivid and strange and unlike so many other things you’ve seen before. It is the pursuit of “the new.” Which not only leads to the kind of films that tend to defy convention over upholding it, but often a lot of conversations about a film’s general vibe. To be clear, talking about vibe is not a problem in and of itself. It’s a crucial part of connecting to a film because you are talking about feeling, atmosphere, and surface-level signifiers that attract you. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with liking a film purely because of its vibe. It’s just that it’s often a vague sentiment and deeply personal feeling, especially with connoisseurs who have incredibly wild and accepting taste. This is where the rubber meets the road with a given festival film. Because then we start having real conversations about function and evaluation, especially when we have to start betting on what is going to break out of the festival and what isn’t. And there are frequent signifiers of issues.

When I hear people see a festival movie and say something like “it was really interesting,” it’s usually a quiet death knell. Because it takes a lot more than a film being a curio to break out. It takes a strong visceral reaction. It takes fascination. It takes passion. Most of all, it takes resonance. And that’s where thematic cohesion really, truly matters. You need the “what it's saying” to really mean something to the audience member. Please, I’m not saying it has to be didactic, I’m saying it has to emotionally connect in a very clear way, where they’ll think about it for time afterward. And this is where all the aforementioned “hiding” factors in. Because where so many truly great art films deal with abstraction coherently, you’ll also see so many other films be afraid to be direct with metaphor. And it always costs in the long run. Particularly when it comes to the festival audiences giving credence to the vague curios, I always have to ask: “are you actually doing theme math on this?” Again, it’s okay to like vague movies. But the “can you write the big semiotic essay on what it’s trying to say” tends to lead to a 1:1 on the festival movies that become must sees and the movies that tend to only stay within the festival circuit.

Under the Skin is a completely abstract metaphor, but it’s brilliant and broke out. And to put the dynamic within the context of the filmmaker we’ve been citing, there’s a reason that Lynch’s Inland Empire never connected the way his other films have. It’s not the length, it’s the coherence. Believe me, I’ve tried writing an essay on that film so many times and it never adds up in a way that really resonates. And for festival audiences, it’s about more than the sentiment of how those films hit us differently.. because understanding how to discern between the two is the way to understand the ecosystem at large. And I say all this even though the other inescapable truth is that a lot of festival movers and shakers don’t really care too much about overall function, given that the larger question is: “can I sell this?” Yeah, it’s great if the film’s great. But if it’s got two good stars, or if it feels of the moment topically, or if it can sell immediately overseas? Then you have a decent reason to make a bet on it. I know this. But I swear, the better bet always comes when you can pick the films that aren’t hiding.

Still, I understand this is an incredibly flexible conversation. We’re just a bunch of nerds talking about what we like or what we don’t like. And we’re all just making relative arguments (and this one is mine). I also don’t want to imply that I don’t love gonzo unhinged movies that don’t function one iota. All this is just a purely diagnostic conversation. It’s probably the closest the film world comes to NBA Draft talk, where someone can be like “they’re an athletic 7 footer!” and my immediate thought is like, yeah but can they play basketball? Within the festival world, it’s all about making good picks. It’s trying to find great voices that will thrive in any scenario (like Ryan Coogler, who I remember was accused by some connoisseurs of being “too on the nose” with Fruitvale Station and now we can see the scoreboard on his career). But it’s also why we can collectively get a better sense of why some works fall through the cracks or why others sometimes succeed upwards. I mean, a lot of people can go “that new director doesn’t know what they’re doing” but everyone catching up often comes with time. I mean, some of us were going nuts over Tom Hooper gonzo approach to cinematography and blindly aping Kubrick shots, but it took CATS for the world to see it, too (but not incidentally, it’s my favorite thing he’s ever done precisely because there’s no way to hide the unhinged quality).

And as part of this organic conversation, I accept that the dance of The Sundance Shuffle will go on. Even now, I’m writing this because I’ve spent the last few weeks going in and out of a bunch of the 2022 selections and there’s been some real hiding movies that got me to write this very essay, but also some fun little bright spots. And of course, the gems. I know it’s technically a 2021 Cannes import, but yes, The Worst Person In the World is tremendous. And it’s breaking out because underneath the daring surface level elements (that are really just some very fun scenes), it’s achingly humane, thoughtful, and constructed with a pitch-perfect understanding of… you guessed it! Drama, character, plot, and theme (there’s even one classic film I’d compare it to, but it would spoil it). There isn’t a moment where it's hiding its story, but instead evolving its grand-yet-intimate story constantly. To me, it’s the kind of film that completely upholds the promise of Sundance and should rightly be championed. Because in the end, it’s all a part of the miracle that ANY movie is good. Because making movies is so damn hard. But even when trying to defy convention and search for “the new,” we still understand that upholding the heart of storytelling is always the way through.

And we’re the ones who are luckier for it.

<3HULK