Sundance Review #3

This will be my third and final review of films at Sundance. I cannot believe how fast this week has gone. I finally took a nap this afternoon from 2-4 and it was heavenly. My only regret about his week is that I didn’t have more time to do so in the middle of the week. To say that my only regret is that I didn’t sleep enough tells you that this trip has been an absolute blast. I’m thoroughly convinced about the power of storytelling to shape how we think about our own lives, the lives of everyone around us and our entire culture. Stories are the foundation of ministry, and movies are the most popular forms of modern day parables. One of our professors earlier in the week said, “Parables are an affliction to the comfortable, and a comfort to the afflicted.” That pretty much sums up my experience at Sundance.

The Green Prince was the only documentary at Sundance that really fell short of my expectations. It’s an incredible story about the relationship between a secret service agent from the Israeli Shin Bet and his undercover Islamic, Palestinian operative. It’s basically the story of a spy and his handler who come from two completely opposite sides of the conflict in Israel. The spy, also known as the Green Prince, is the son of the leader of the terrorist/activist group called Hamas. He goes to work for the Shin Bet once he realizes that Hamas is not all that it says it stands for and begins suicide bombing many different parts of the Middle East. Eventually the Israeli agent is fired for getting too close to the Green Prince and breaking protocol, so they both end up leaving their original mission of bringing down Hamas. The Green Prince came to America and actually converted to Christianity while the Shin Bet officer became a lawyer. It’s an amazing story, but all the documentary showed was just close ups of the character’s faces while they told the story. There was no action or movement or comedic relief, it was monotone the whole time. It was as if the teacher from Ferris Bueller’s day off told you the story.  This was the only film I would say was “bad” at Sundance.

Son of God is the new Mark Burnett film about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I don’t have much to say about it because it’s just a compilation of the 4 Gospels. I liked what they did with it, even the some of the freedom they took with the film. It opens with John on the island of Patmos looking back on his days with Jesus and how Jesus was there all along throughout history. They did a good job of making Jesus a little tougher than he’s been before, but I would have still liked a bit more fired in his eyes. They did opt to go with a stunningly handsome Jesus (if I may say so myself), which is always slightly off-putting to me because it feels like typical Hollywood. Otherwise, it’s relatively flawless in executing 2 hour, entertaining depiction of the complete life of Jesus. Obviously some stories are missing, but I believe it will be a great tool to start conversations throughout the world with people who aren’t familiar with the details of Jesus’ whole life.

Rudderless this was the last film I saw and my favorite of the festival! It will probably become one of my all time favorite movies, especially as an acoustic guitar playing, singer-songwriter who just got into doing open mic nights.

(WARNING! SPOILERS TO FOLLOW- and this film will be in theatres this year sometime)

The story is about a man named Sam who is a suave businessman who is distant from his wife and son. One day, Sam’s son Josh tragically dies in a school shooting. Sam starts drinking heavily and ends up losing his job and moving into a boat on a lake to escape the community filled with memories of his son. One day Sam’s wife drops off a box of Josh’s stuff, including a guitar and a bunch of CD’s that his son recorded of the songs he wrote. Sam begins learning his dead son’s songs and eventually starts performing them at a local bar’s open mic night where he catches the attention of a squirrely young man named Quentin who dreams of being a musician.  Quentin falls in love with the Sam’s songs and stalks him to his boat to repeatedly beg him to collaborate with him. Eventually he wears Sam down and they start performing together. Quentin slowly starts integrating other local musicians into their group and they form a band called “Rudderless”.

Their band becomes a huge local success and they start headlining at the bar they frequented. Sam’s boldness helps Quentin conquer his stage fright while Quentin’s passion to play more and more helps Sam get to know the son he never had via his songs.

(THIS IS WHERE THE SPOILER HAPPENS)

As Rudderless becomes a local sensation, they get invited to play at a huge festival in town. The morning that they are to perform, Josh’s old girlfriend confronts the band and tells them the truth about where their songs came from. It turns out that Sam’s son was the school shooter who shot 6 college students before ending his own life. Quentin feels betrayed and cancels their appearance at the festival. The dissolution of their band finally forces Sam to confront his feelings about his son and allow himself to grieve properly. Sam then reaches out to Quentin and encourages him to keep going and stop hiding his talents and passions just because he feels betrayed by Sam. Quentin had sold his guitars to a local music shop and Sam found them and returned them to Quentin, but with a twist. Sam bought Quentin his dream guitar that he would visit often throughout the film, and with this peace offering, Quentin starts up the band again and begins playing his own original music.

The movie ends with Sam returning to the open mic night he started at and performs the last song his son ever wrote, but never finished. Sam opens by telling everyone who he is, who his son was, and how the song came to be. In a beautiful finale, Sam plays his son’s last song about finding hope and love in a very broken world and finally stops hiding from who he truly is.

I’m telling you, this soundtrack will be amazing whenever it comes out. They were beautiful anthems filled with symbolic and often comedic imagery. Every time Sam and the band played a new song that his son had written the audience was filled with smiles and sniffles, as we knew where the material really came from. While there is an awful tragedy at the heart of this story, it is ultimately about overcoming the darkest parts of who we are in order to pursue our greatest passions.

Sundance Review #2

I’m not quite sure how to lead into this second review of 4 more incredible films. I’m also not sure if I’m more emotionally fatigued than I am physically fatigued at this point. From long days, to late nights, to early mornings and lots of walking in freezing cold weather I am drained yet energized simultaneously. I was hoping for some pivotal life experience when I got here and Sundance has not disappointed. A few of the films I watched in the past two days will probably stick with me forever and continually shape, or rather inform, the way I look at the world as a theologian artist. So let’s get into it.

Infinitely Polar Bear is a movie starring Mark Ruffalo as a man named Cameron who is a manic-depressive, bi-polar father who is tasked with taking care of his 2 young daughters while his wife goes away to earn her MBA. The movie takes place during the 60’s where stay-at-home dads are completely out of the norm and women rarely take the role of the breadwinner in the family. Mark’s wife, played by Zoe Saldana, is black, which makes for even more social headaches to navigate during a time when civil rights were a constant issue.

While there is quite a bit of family drama, I found the overall story to be wonderfully heart-warming. Cameron is a father who is totally obsessed with his two little girls despite their resentment of him and all the awkwardness he brings into their lives due to his complete lack of social skills. The film depicts the complexities of children and their parents who don’t always see eye-to-eye through many adversities yet maintain a beautifully loving relationship. While Cameron occasionally has explosive behaviors and poor reactions to his medication, he constantly redeems himself by making delicious meals for the kids and all their friends, taking them on boat rides, letting them make forts all throughout their apartment, and even staying up all night to sew a flamenco dress for his youngest daughter’s school performance.

Ultimately, Cameron and his wife end up separating due to their life’s different directions, but his wife realizes how much better off her daughters are with Cameron because “he’s always around” as his daughters said. Cameron thought this was a bad thing, as he is a lonely man who loves his daughters so much that he always hovers around them, but his wife knows that’s the kind of parent they need and that’s not the kind of mother she will be if the kids live with her while she works 12 hour days in the business world of New York City.

I loved the portrayal of a non-traditionally dysfunctional father who is overbearing and controlling, to one who loves his daughters so much that it breaks social norms for the good. While this type of dysfunction father still causes a great deal of tension, he is still a father figure who can be admired for his determination to provide for and love his daughters no matter how badly his mental illnesses plagues him. Essentially it is this undaunted love of his daughters brings healing to his life and the lives of his daughters.

The Internet’s Own Boy is a documentary about Aaron Schwartz, who was a boy-genius and Internet activist fighting for fair access to online materials and combated unethical copyright laws. Aaron fought corrupt laws like PIPA and SOPA (look them up if you’re really curious) and eventually won the fight in congress thanks to his social media skills and intense love of online data. His biggest stand was against JSTOR, which is an online academic journal catalog that you have to pay to access. People who are in college often have free access to these journals because their schools pay a fee to unlock the journals for their students. Aaron saw this as unethical because he believe all knowledge should be free in order to provide citizens with as much information as possible to improve the world. Aaron got caught hacking the JSTOR website at MIT and was eventually prosecuted by the Federal Government. The FBI put multiple felony charges against Aaron in order to make him an example to all “hackers” threatening the government, which is a larger and larger problem these days. Aaron had battled with depression so fiercely that when he was faced with possibly going to jail for 35 years he couldn’t take it. Aaron committed suicide on January 11, 2013.

At the end of the film they showed another young prodigy who at the age of 14 began reading medical journals the he found for free from the JSTOR website. He became fascinated with curing cancer, and sent off his ideas about testing for pancreatic cancer to Johns Hopkins Medical Center. Eventually his testing method was found to be revolutionary and he is currently working with oncologists to further his method of testing for pancreatic cancer, which has such a high mortality rate because we find it so late. All this to say, this is one great example of what Aaron was fighting for and hopefully brings meaning to his life.

Calvary rocked my world. I still find myself a little haunted by the film. It had a Hitchcock-like feel to it that maintained an eerie feeling of unease throughout the entire film, even when the dialogue was caused eruptions of laughter. The film opens with a shot of the main character Father James taking confession from an anonymous man who says that he was raped by a priest every other day for 5 years from the time he was 7. He provides graphic details and ends by saying that he is going to kill Father James in a week. His reasoning is that Father James is a perfectly good man who has done nothing wrong, therefore it will attain greater attention as a statement against the Catholic Church’s failure to care for the innocent.

Father James takes this threat seriously and begins trying to make amends with his daughter, whom he abandoned, as well as resolve the many outstanding conflicts within his small Irish community. His town is rife with affairs, prostitution, corruption, drunkards, outspoken atheists, inept clergy, and an overwhelming amount of bitterness. Father James does his best to intervene in the lives of his community, but the story serves to show how you can’t really help people who don’t want to help themselves. He realizes the best thing anyone can do is forgive. This is most emphatic during his reconciliation with his daughter whom he abandoned when his wife died. Her death lead to Father James’ pursuit of joining the Catholic Church and his daughter’s attempted suicide. Their renewed relationship is the one bright light in the film.

The story gets bleaker as the week goes on as Father James’ church is burned down and his dog is violently killed. I know this all sounds exhaustingly depressing, but the witty dialogue and shear irony of many of the character’s situations creates a morbid sense of comedy throughout the film.  At the climax of the story, Father James is about to leave his small town and flee from the murderer who is to kill him the next day. He encounters a young woman who lost her husband in a freak car accident, and her profound determination not to abandon her faith spurs him on to return to his home and face the killer.  Father James meets his killer on the beach, who ends up being one of the main characters seen throughout the film who seemed relatively kind and passive. Just when you think the killer might change his mind and let go of his bitterness caused by years of sexual abuse within the church, he shoots Father James in the head and leaves him laying on the beach in a Christ-like pose. The movie ends in silence as we see Father James’ daughter visiting the killer in prison. As she cries and begins to speak, the movie ends.

This was the first film I saw when no one clapped as the movie ended. I was speechless and just sat with my hands folded. Father James was such a loved, endearing character that everyone began to hope for his survival. However, the writer wanted to tell a different story; A story of sacrifice that led to the hardest thing any of us is ever called to do, and that is to forgive those who have hurt us the most. When that moment comes and we are face to face with someone who has fractured our soul so painfully, what will we do?

The Overnighters is the movie I have taken the longest time to write about. It blew me away and left me with tons of questions. It’s a documentary about a Lutheran church in Williston, North Dakota where the oil boom happened several years ago. People flocked to this small town in hopes of a better life and a better job to provide for their families. Thousands of men packed up their cars and moved to Williston without anywhere to live and the city was left with a dilemma about how to deal with them. (Watch or read The Grapes of Wrath and you’ve basically got an understanding of this story). The controversy arose when Pastor Jay began letting men stay the night in his church and in his parking lot, and even in his own home, until they could get on their feet. Many of the congregation hated this as it turned their beloved church and community into a homeless shelter of sorts.

This problem was manageable until the local paper got wind that the Pastor was harboring sex offenders. The community was outraged, but the Pastor defended this as the man who was staying with him and his wife and three kids was guilty of having sex with his 16-year-old girlfriend when he was 18. Jay saw this man as worthy of a second chance and only truly guilty of making a stupid, typical teenager decision.

Sadly the “Overnighters” program gets shut down because the church doesn’t have proper fire codes in place (like overhead sprinklers). Jay is heartbroken and all seems to be lost as he closes up his program. Then the last 5 minutes of the film happens.

Jay is sitting down with his wife to tell her they need to go somewhere to have a difficult decision. In an unexpected turn of events, it comes out right then and there that he had an affair. He had several affairs. He had several, homosexual affairs. It was jaw dropping to say the least. The movie ends on this note and I was pissed off because I felt like I had been tricked into watching a movie with two completely separate story lines, one of which had no resolve or details. Thankfully, we had the filmmakers and Pastor Jay come to our class to answer questions. They also spoke after the film ended at Sundance and Jay surprisingly still maintains his faith and is still married to his wife. It was incredible to hear him basically preaching to an audience at Sundance about how God has a plan for your life and that even your brokenness can become part of His plan for you. It was surreal to hear someone speak about Jesus to a huge crowd of secular filmmakers. While I was completely opposed to the documentary’s director, I loved the fact that Jay’s story could be used to share Christ with people who would never dare go to church, watch a Christian film, or read the Bible. It was the highlight of my trip so far and an experience I’ll share with people for the rest of my life.

Sundance Review #1

I've been in Utah for 3 days and I'm just now able sit down and write out my many thoughts about all that I've seen. That's pretty much the best description about how fast this week moves. I saw 2 short films on Monday night, 4 full length films (2 documentaries, 2 features), and one film this morning. So far all of them have been entertaining, enlightening, and challenging to my current perspective on life, culture, and spirituality.

"White Earth" was the first thing I saw when I got here. It was a short film/documentary about the life of families living in North Dakota. The main focus is on the lifestyle of families who are supported by men who spend all their time working in oil fields. The director interviewed a young boy who spends all his days in a motor home playing video games, watching TV, and wandering around the streets of ND. Another perspective is from that of a woman and her young daughter trying to make ends meet while the father is constantly away working in the oil fields as well. The goal of the film was to show the hardships and sacrifices families have made in order to "provide" for their families. Everyone lives in cheap, run down motor homes in the icy tundra that is ND. The bleak nature of the oil towns heavily reflects the desperate and degrading nature of healthy families in the US. Both of the families shown in the film uprooted their lives in search of any kind of employment they could find with the hopes of giving their children a better life. However, the irony of their actions is that their families are going unprovided for when it comes to the true essentials of quality time and loving interactions between children and parents. I definitely felt so thankful for the city I grew up in, a warm place to sleep, and all the opportunities I could ever hope for in the way of education and basic resources like food and clothing.

"The Big House" was a short film about a boy in Yemen who is looking for a place to be free and playful. He ends up breaking into a high profile politicians house so he can run around, stack sofa cushions to climb, jump on the bed and many other playful activities. The boy says at the end that he finally has a "place to breath." It seemed to parallel the story of kids having no place to be kids seen in "White Earth" and having to grow up way too fast due to the hardships of their hometowns. It was a great short story about how all kids have an innate sense of joy, playfulness, and curiosity that must be enabled to grow in healthy environments free of continuous, traumatizing hardships that kill the beauty of their innocence.

Hellion is a story about a man named Hollis who is trying to raise two boys on his own near Galveston, Texas. One boy is in his teens and the other is around 10. The guys recently lost their mother in an unexplained accident of some kind. The movie chooses not to focus on the specifics of her death and rather how the family tries to cope with it. The father turns to rebuilding their dream house that was destroyed in a hurricane and drinking, while the oldest boy Jacob turns to pursuing his dream of being a motocross champion. The youngest boy seems relatively unharmed due to his age and maintains a joyful attitude throughout the film. Eventually, Hollis' neglect of his two boys (whom he loves very much) catches the attention of a social worker who gives custody of the youngest son to  Hollis' sister-in-law. Hollis and Jacob soon begin fighting for custody of the last part of their family and chaos ensues. Ultimately, it is a story of battling grief and depression in order to avoid losing sight of what is still around and of true value. The story lagged a bit but there were amazing performances by the whole cast to make up for it. It reminded me of the storyline in "White Earth" as it focuses on fathers who truly love and want to support their families, but don't realize that their absence is harming their families more than anything else ever could.

Little Hope Was Arson is an amazing documentary about two boys in East Texas who burned down 10 churches in the span of a month or so. It is an amazing story about a community of faith's challenge to protect their churches while simultaneous struggling to love and forgive the boys who did it. Basically, two boys Jason and Daniel, had grown up in the church in East Texas but both encountered hardships in their late teens that caused them to abandon their faith. Jason's mom was a crack addict yet was raised by his grandparents who took him to church constantly. He was devoted to the church until he had a terrible break up his senior year of high school that led him to suffer from depression and he eventually got mixed up in the wrong crowd in college, which led him to a life filled with drug abuse. Daniel frequented the church growing up as well until his beloved mother unexpectedly suffered from a stroke and after 2 days of praying, sadly passed away. This broke his whole family and eventually his father tried to commit suicide. Daniel and his sister saw him hanging from a tree and Daniel lifted him up to take pressure off his neck while his sister cut the rope.  They saved their father's life but Daniel was shaken to the core. He got into drugs as well and in their early 20's Jason and Daniel (who were childhood best friends) began burning churches in order to shake up the community and faith they resented.
Eventually they were caught through a series of incredible (seemingly divine) circumstances and at the trial they were both sentenced to multiple life sentences. I was most touched by the fact that church leaders stood up at the trial and asked for forgiveness for failing to help the boys and for failing to be a healthy community of support for them when they needed it most. Also, the best twist came at the end when Daniel's father, whom he helped save from his attempted suicide, ended up becoming a follower of Christ and goes to prison to see his son and ends up taking Daniel through a prayer to accept Jesus into his life. It was truly an unforgettable story about faith, forgiveness, community, grace, and love. Oh and the youth pastor who had Daniel and Jason in his Sunday school class ended up feeling so convicted that he quit his job (feeling as though he had been "slapped in the face by his own pride and hypocrisy) in order to become a truck driver sharing the Gospel and his testimony in as many places across the country as possible. This is the reason I love film and appreciate the power of storytelling above all else when it comes to evangelism. "To deny how hard it is to forgive, is to deny how amazing grace is." -Theo Love, Director of Little Hope Was Arson

Hits is a ridiculous satire of pop culture today. It focuses on a father and daughter both seeking attention in different ways. The anal, activist father is trying to get his city council to be more vigilant about fixing things like potholes in his street and stop signs at intersections, and his wild outburst at town hall meetings become a viral success on youtube thanks to a group of New York city hipsters who find Mr. Stuben's struggle against City Council a direct parallel to fighting Hitler's regime in WWII. David Cross (Tobias from Arrested Development) wrote and directed it and he is shameless in his mockery of "hipster activist" culture that takes vigilant stands against all sorts of social injustices all while trying to make vegan friendly baby clothing and organic, homemade cardboard boxes from home. It's over the top in its depiction of hipster slang, wardrobe, and overall cultural attitude but often hilarious as well. While Mr. Stuben is fighting for social justice and slowly becoming a bigger and bigger internet success, his 19 year old daughter is obsess with becoming famous at any cost. She believes she is a fantastic singer when she is actually horrible tone-deaf. She believes she is going to get on to the Voice, become a pop-sensation, and eventually reach her life-long dream of getting on to Ellen. Eventually, she becomes so desperate that she has sex with a lowlife, amateur musician so that he will record her demo to send into the Voice. He ends up making a sex-tape out of it and that is actually what rockets her to her dream of success, which she fights at first but then when she gets an invite to be on Ellen, feels completely fulfilled. Overall, I felt the movie made a humorous critique of how desperate our culture is for attention. We often feel like we are unheard and unfulfilled, as if we have no purpose in life, so we seek to fight for some cause (any cause, even getting potholes fixed) in order to have purpose, identity, and attention. The daughter was the perfect depiction of how my generation feels entitled to fame no matter how little talent we may have. With the advancement of technology, all it takes is one ridiculous youtube clip or sex tape to attain the highest levels of fame. The greatest irony comes at the end when all the diverse groups of hipsters attend a city hall meeting to document their support for Mr. Stuben and he actually ends up going on a tirade against the "jews in Hollywood" and our "N****r president Obama" complete with an analogy about how Barak means "lightening" and in the Bible it says "Satan came down like lightening (Barak)". Ultimately, the befuddled group of hipster activists looks foolish cheering for a man who completely hates everything they stand for and is an accurate representation of how misinformed/misguided our society actually is these days.

Alive Inside has been my favorite thing I've watched so far. It's a documentary about social workers who are trying to get personal music provided for Alzheimer's/Dementia/patients with other mental disorders. What the main guy found was that listening to music from patient's youth helped jog their memory and energy level in ways that no other medication could. It was beautiful to watch people come back to live after deteriorating for years in nursing homes that look more like hospitals than homes. One of the doctors said "All traditional medicine has learned to do is turn the dials. If you have high blood pressure, we turn the dial down with this pill. We haven't done anything to touch the heart and soul of a patient." I was basically in tears the whole movie because it was so beautiful to watch these people who have basically internalized their whole being due to the nature of their medication, environment, and illness become revitalized by the simple power of an iPod. They lit up when they heard tunes like Stand By Me by Ben King, classics from the Beatles, Louis Armstrong, Sinatra, and even some Latin Jazz. One woman who had been confined to a walker began to do the Salsa with her therapist! They could barely remember the names of their families but they could remember all the words to their favorite songs. With those memories brought an aliveness they had been missing for years. It was absolutely beautiful. One neuroscientist noted the parallel between our hearts and music. He said that even 22 days after conception all the cells of our tiny body begin to beat in unison, on that's the formation of our heart. He said "The desire to beat in unison fuels our entire lives." Also, he mentioned that music stimulates several different parts of the brain simultaneously as music is attached to muscle memory, cultural memory, and most importantly emotional memory. One old man said that listening to his favorites from the 40's reminded him of having a girl in his arms. Another old couple rekindled a connection as they both listened to "Can't Keep My Eyes Off of You" and held hands as the husband began to recognize his wife again. I could go on and on but I'm starting to tear up again and I'm in a public place ;) Here are some youtube clips attached below so you can get a taste of it. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKDXuCE7LeQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd5S_hADV30

Whiplash is feature film about a college freshman at a prestigious music conservatory pursuing his passion to become the best drummer ever. His music teacher is ruthless, played by J.K. Simmons, and constantly hurdles profane insults at the boys while even slapping the main character Neiman in the face several times in order to teach him how to properly keep tempo. It was a shocking perspective of how hard musicians are pressed to their limits of near perfection in order to attain greatness in a highly competitive field. Neiman eventually sacrifices just about everything to pursue greatness under Fletcher (the gifted yet abusive music teacher). This movie was amazing at creating tension and depicting the brutal discipline of mastering musical technique. It also held the audience in suspense as the Neiman was constantly put in the spotlight and pressured to perform perfectly or loose his prized position in the best band in the best conservatory in the US. Whiplash is one of those movies that looks at the pursuit of greatness and asks "at what cost...?" I loved it and the music was phenomenal as it's all complex jazz music. I have to say, even some of the teachers insults made me laugh out loud on several occasions. My favorite quote from the movie had to be when Fletcher (an old school jazz musician) says "Starbucks killed jazz." I highly recommend it if it ever makes its way to theaters!

That's it for now! I have about 5 more left so I'll do another post as soon as I get a break from the hustle and bustle on Friday morning. Peace and Love to you all!
-Colt