The A.V. Club At Sundance, Day 5

by Nathan Rabin
January 25th, 2006
It’s one of the truisms of the first-time Sundance experience that the moment you finally start to feel like you know your way around is also the moment you’re slated to head back to civilian life and leave the trench warfare of free Stella Artois, tacky promotional knick-knacks, and promiscuously distributed business cards behind. That was certainly my experience, for after a highly regrettable breakfast of huevos rancheros and lukewarm refried beans and a surprisingly exciting two-and-a-half hour documentary on my boy Ralph Nader I left the still-in-progress Sundance Film Festival and headed back home to Chicago. So, having officially lost my film festival virginity during a side-trip to Tijuana to a hooker with a heart of gold played by Shelly Long—no wait that’s Tom Cruise in Losin’ It—I thought it might be a good time to look back and see if I accomplished the goals I set for myself at the start of the trip. They were, in case you forgot or weren’t pay attention:

1. To uncover the soul of American independent film.
2. To party with Ralph Nader
3. To ask Robert Redford why he's so handsome
4. To subsist solely on a diet of complimentary cocktails and appetizers
5. To see as many films as possible.
6. To tune out the guy behind me who keeps describing his film as "John Cassavetes directing Bergman's Scenes From A Marriage.

Hoo boy, I’ll give the enigma o’ 1 the ol’ college try in next week’s big cumulative upcoming Sundance thinkpiece (watch for it!) but it looks like I pretty much belly-flopped on 2, 3, and 4. I did quite well on 5 and 6. Then again those were little easier than my first two goals. But I can conclusively say that I saw as many films as I could and that they totally included the following:

Who Needs Sleep?

Unrepentant old lefty Haskell Wexler appeals to the striking Wobbly in everyone with this muddled muckraking documentary decrying the perilous working conditions of crew people in American movies. But feisty octogenarian Wexler’s lovable Uncle Haskell/doddering poor-man’s-Michael Moore routine can’t help but seem a little suspect considering his own son released a film depicting papa as history’s greatest monster (excluding Jimmy Carter of course), an arrogant bully who left him with several lifetimes worth of psychological scars.

Actually Who Needs Sleep? isn’t terribly dissimilar from Mark “Why did dad care more about the plight of migrant farm workers than my little league game?” Wexler’s oedipally charged, queasily personal Tell Them Who You Are. Both are unbecomingly narcissistic, annoyingly self-aggrandizing documentaries about filmmakers with mawkish, drippingly sentimental tributes to Haskell’s dear friend and Mark’s beloved father figure, legendary cinematographer Conrad L. Hall (heaven knows Haskell apparently wasn’t much of a father or father figure to Mark). And in both films the director’s constant presence onscreen proves far more annoying than amusing. It’s hard to argue with Haskell Wexler’s oft-repeated contention that constant over-work and dangerously long hours are imperiling the health and safety of crew members and damaging the quality of their work but it’s doubtful Who Needs Sleep?’s clumsy filmmaking and ham-fisted sloganeering will do much to aid his noble cause. Also, for a film from a two-time Academy Award-winning cinematographer it should be noted that Who Needs Sleep? looks like shit.

Half Nelson

It’s tempting, if fundamentally dishonest, to refer to the moody, intense drama Half Nelson as Mr. Holland’s Opus or Dead Poet’s Society on crack. And though Half Nelson is yet another tale of an idealistic teacher striving to make a difference in the lives of his students the central roles are reversed, with a tough, responsible, concerned eighth-grade student trying to prevent her crack-smoking, increasingly out of control teacher from destroying himself. In yet another fine performance embodying a powerful contradiction The Believer’s Ryan Gosling stars as an self-destructive educator who might just imbue his students with a passion for history and a rich understanding of its dialectical struggles if he can just lay off the crack pipe for a while.

Shareeka Epps gives a tough, refreshingly unsentimental performance—‘mature without being precocious—as a latchkey kid torn between outwardly appealing but highly sketchy father figures: Gosling and Anthony Mackie, a charming, incongruously paternalistic drug dealer and family friend eager to recruit Epps into working for him. For much of its duration Half Nelson is a smart, accomplished dual character study distinguished by terrific performances and an assured tone. It’s only when Gosling’s earnest classroom monologues start to become embarrassing jags of crazy coke talk and the steep downward spiral begins that the film starts to feel heavy-handed and overly dramatic.

Small Town Gay Bar

Visually and technically this documentary is indistinguishable from the kind of fare you’d find at the average student film and video competitions but not even shitty digital video can extinguish the sweetness of Malcolm Ingram’s winning documentary about rural gay bars. Even at a skimpy 81 minutes this feels a little padded but it conveys its central message—that small town gay bars function as invaluable oases of acceptance and community for gays in otherwise hostile if not overtly dangerous environments—with humor and sensitivity. The controversy and attention generated by Brokeback Mountain certainly can’t hurt Gay Bar’s commercial chances, nor can the enthusiastic and very vocal support of executive producer Kevin Smith, who was at the Sundance promoting the film. (Smith previously employed director Ingram in the no-doubt hazardous and labor-intensive role of “[Jason] Mewes Wrangler” on Jay And Silent Bob Strikes Back.

An Unreasonable Man

If Ralph Nader, the ultimate overgrown, over-achieving Eagle Scout/civics geek, had died in 1999 after being struck by an exploding Pinto or consuming tainted meat he’d go down as easily one of the most admired and respected Americans of the 20th century. But Nader’s disastrous 2000 and 2004 Presidential campaigns perhaps irreparably damaged his reputation as a righteous crusader, transforming him in the minds of many leftists from a revered icon to a deluded, self-defeating megalomaniac. The shockingly entertaining, overwhelmingly positive 150-minute Nader documentary An Unreasonable Man has its work cut out for it in rehabilitating Nader’s tarnished image. And if the film doesn’t quite wash away the sins of 2000 it at least helps place Nader’s Quixotic presidential campaign in a more understandable, reasonable context, in the process offering a thumbnail history of the New Deal/Great Society left’s slide into impotence and obsolescence.

Henriette Martel and Steve Skrovan’s briskly paced exploration of Nader’s life and times plausibly argues that we are living in a world shaped in no small part by Nader’s tireless campaigns, a world where food is safer, dangerous consumer goods are less plentiful, and airbags are everywhere. Surprisingly funny and moving and loaded with riveting pop-culture ephemera—like clips of Nader hosting Saturday Night Live and gabbing on the Mike Douglas Show alongside the supportive likes of John Lennon and Yoko Ono—An Unreasonable Man’s tendency towards hero worship is thankfully undercut by the vitriolic commentary of Nader-haters Todd Gitlin and Eric Alterman. It’s a measure of the film’s depth, skill, and complexity that Nader’s 2000 presidential campaign comes off as at once heroic and tragic, noble and bitterly self-defeating (in every sense.) An Unreasonable Man is a thoughtful and persuasive exploration of what it means to be a responsible citizen of the world and whether it’s most productive to rage against the machine or enact substantive change within the system, two themes at the heart of the 2006 Sundance Film Festival as well.