Telluride: Wrap up

This year's guest curator Slavoj Zizek -- described by a festival goer as monstrously self-centered and by a festival director as "the greatest living philosopher" -- provided a slate of movies that blew the minds of absolutely no one. Perhaps I'm applying my experience to everyone else's. But whatever. Let's not indulge the lesser aspects of the fest. Here are the five things I liked about the 35th Telluride Film Festival, in order from less to more.

5. Slumdog Millionaire. Met by ovations and cheering. It is the ultimate feel-good film, made by erstwhile feel-baddie Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later). An Indian boy goes the distance on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" His success on the game show is rooted in seemingly random experiences in his childhood. It's a kinetic, Dickensian adventure movie, flashing backward and forward but never losing its firm, steady grip on a contrived-yet-compelling story. This should be a hit.

4. The Last Command, a 1928 silent film featuring a live original score by the Alloy Orchestra. Emil Jannings won the first-ever Oscar for best actor for his larger-than-life performance as a mutinied Russian general who ends up playing a background soldier in a Hollywood war film. One of the title cards says (and I'm paraphrasing): "From the backwash of a crumbled nation comes another extra who is hungry for a bite of Hollywood." It's all very savvy and self-reflexive, even though studios themselves hadn't been around that long. Did I mention the live accompaniment rocked? The Alloy resurrects ancient movies one by one.

3. Kristin Scott Thomas in I've Loved You So Long. A tricky role, a home-run performance. It's all internal here. KST plays a woman fresh off a 15-year jail sentence. And boy, she does not want to talk about it. But the ways in which she keeps herself walled off and then lets in a little light...well, it's elegance and control and precise execution.

2. Jean Simmons. I knew next to nothing about this British actress going in to her tribute, but felt enlightened and grateful (and heretofore ignorant) coming out. Simmons got her big break as a teenaged Estella in David Lean's Great Expectations and deserves to be 100 times more famous than she is today. Maybe her looks were too much like Vivien Leigh's or her voice too much like Audrey Hepburn's, but Simmons' past stardom didn't evolve into sacred legend. It's tempting to define her by the men she has played against -- Burt Lancaster in Elmer Gantry, Paul Newman in Until They Sail, Marlon Brando in Desiree and Guys & Dolls, Laurence Olivier in Hamlet, Kirk Douglas in Spartacus, Dick Van Dyke in Divorce American Style, Gregory Peck in The Big Country, Cary Grant and Robert Mitchum in The Grass Is Greener -- for who can match this list and still be as unfamous as she? But Simmons, with the aura of a child and the snap of a python, holds her own against each. The festival showed a medley of clips, but the most arresting was from The Happy Ending, in which she plays a bored housewife. Couldn't find a clip of it on the YouTubes, so here are some from Guys & Dolls (1955), Until They Sail (1957) and, to shake it up, Star Trek: The Next Generation.



1. Prodigal Sons. If you see it under the right circumstances, this one could be life-changing. The film's greatness comes not from the craftsmanship (it was shot and edited cheaply, as if on a whim), but from the content. Director Kimberly Reed has so, so much to work with here. She hit documentary gold. The film's site has no word on future screenings. Hopefully it'll arrive at a theater near you sometime before the world ends.

Telluride: Day 3

TELLURIDE, Colo. -- The documentary Prodigal Sons is the only new film I've seen here that the Telluride Film Festival deserves. There is so much I want to tell you about it, but there are two "secrets" revealed during the movie and you should experience the shock/delight yourself. Suffice to say it is a documentary about family and the search for (or flight from) one's self. Sounds very broad, yes, but the context in which this search is conducted is truly amazing. If you want to read all about the film, do so here. Knowing some background won't sabotage the film's effectiveness, but it's still nice to go into a movie without knowing where it's taking you. And this one takes you to some pretty remarkable places.

The Telluride experience magnified the film. The doc ended, I was exhilirated, and then the emcee pointed out that the entire featured family is sitting in the audience not two rows behind me. Having just seen their lives laid bare onscreen, it was a special privilege to see and thank them in person.

As far as I can tell, Prodigal Sons has no distribution. But given the exuberant reaction here, it will no doubt continue to play at festivals to packed houses. If you get a chance to see it, drop everything and make it happen. I wish there was a way they could stream the doc online for a small fee. Everyone should see this movie.

There are other things to talk about, but I haven't the time. The festival ends in a couple hours. I'll be posting later about Jean Simmons, Mary Pickford, Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command and Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire (surely the fiction crowd-pleaser of the fest).

Also, I served popcorn to Greg Kinnear and Salman Rushdie. Also, I am tired.

Telluride: Day 2

TELLURIDE, Colo. -- Before the world premiere of his movie Everlasting Moments at 8:30 a.m. yesterday, director Jan Troell said, "I would never voluntarily come to a film at this time. Not even my own. Try to stay awake." I did.

Everlasting Moments. Epic domestic drama from Sweden with a grounded lead performance by Maria Heiskanen, who looks and sounds like a working-class Ingrid Bergman. Spans 10 years. A quietly moving fable about seeking the perfection of life through a camera's viewfinder. How we forge everlasting moments of goodness in a fleeting second from life's boredom, unpleasantries and unfairness.

Critic and filmmaker Richard Schickel -- red-faced, purple-shirted, tweed-jacketed -- received the silver medallion of the festival at the Sheridan Opera House. Watching Schickel, who is lively but old, makes me think that the age of the esteemed critic-historian is ending. Schickel and Ebert might be the last of the breed. What is it being replaced by? Perhaps film appreciation has been institutionalized by academia, and it will live on, for better or worse, there.

Schickel: "I have had young people come up to me and say 'I've never seen a black-and-white movie and I'm like, 'Are you out of your fucking mind? It's not something to be proud of.'"

Schickel's documentary on Warner Bros., You Must Remember This, will play on PBS soon.

Happy-Go-Lucky. By Mike Leigh. How happy people make us miserable. How we make our own luck. Winning performance by Sally Hawkins as the most joyful woman alive. Great cameo by Karina Fernandez as a flamenco teacher perhaps too invested in her art. Q&A after. Leigh is slight, stooped, suspendered, bearded. Small. "For me, filmmaking is all about discovering what the film is."

Philanthropy. A dark Romanian comedy that looks and feels like Scorsese's After Hours. By turns funny and boring. From 2001.

Seen: Laura Linney, defacto mayor of Telluride during the festival, conferring with friend over the program. I also served Mike Leigh a bottle of water. Michael O'Keefe ("Noonan!"), the bad guy in American Violet.

Crowd-pleasers: Danny Boyle's Slumdog Millionaire, which got a rousing ovation last night. Also, the documentary Prodigal Sons is the most-loved show at Telluride (and it doesn't even have an IMDb page). Also, Fincher didn't show up to host or introduce his director's cut of Zodiac. Bitch.

Everyone is mumbling about the lacklusterness of this year's slate of new movies. The vintage offerings are top-knotch, though I probably won't be able to make any of them. They are showing Troell's The Emigrants and The New Land back to back tomorrow. And the Alloy Orchestra is providing a live, original score for The Last Command (with Emil Jannings).

Drizzly and overcast today. I'm off to catch the gondola to the tribute to Jean Simmons.