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Sundance in Memphis: Brothers and Sisters

The Sparks Brothers

There’s a lot of remarkable things about Sundance 2021, but it will be remembered as a year of great music-related documentaries. After the shattering Summer of Soul opened the virtual end of the festival, next up was The Sparks Brothers. Director Edgar Wright made his name with snappy comedies like Sean of the Dead and the almost-musical car chase picture Baby Driver. For his first documentary, he tackled “your favorite band’s favorite band.” Sparks are the brothers Ron and Russel Mael, who are not, in fact, British, but from California. Wright makes clearing up that misconception his first order of business as he plunges into the fascinating, convoluted history of the group.

After being inspired by the British Invasion, the Mael brothers broke into the business as Halfnelson. From their first recording session in 1967, where they created a song called “Computer Girl”, the duo staked out a wry, witty outsider sound. Over the next five decades, they declined to dumb it down or repeat themselves, even when that meant alienating fans who might have just discovered them. Their work veered from Floyd-esque prog rock to the shimmering, Georgio Moroder pop of 1979’s “The Number One Song In Heaven”, which defined the New Wave synth-pop sound that would dominate the airwaves of the 1980s, and still resonates strongly today.

Wright has plenty of material to work with. Sparks made numerous television appearances over the years, including a triumphant breakout on England’s Top of the Pops and near-annual confrontations with a baffled Dick Clark on American Bandstand. (“Which one is the oldest?” Clark asked the brothers. “You are,” replied Ron.) His interviews with the brothers, still stunningly charismatic as they enter their 70s, make clear that the frequent stylistic shifts were not merely done to chase the latest trend, but were just how Ron and Russel’s collective mind works. They couldn’t keep doing the same thing over and over again if they wanted to—and at times during their epic, up-and-down career, it probably would have been better if they had shown some consistency. Even their failed projects, such as the years they spent collaborating with Tim Burton trying to create an animated musical based on a Japanese manga, were ahead of their time.

Wright is a superb filmmaker who brings his restless mind to the documentary, creating a film that is just as vibrant as his fiction work. His fanboy enthusiasm for Sparks shines, and as he devotes running time to the testimonies of fans, he shows he’s not alone. The 2-hour-plus running time seemed long at first glance, but there’s so much story, character, and style on display that it whizzes by. While it lacks the gut-punch emotionalism of Summer of Soul, The Sparks Brothers is a load of fun.

Ailey

Next, we decamped the drive-in for another documentary that proved engrossing. To most people, Alvin Ailey is a brand that is synonymous with modern dance. The American Dance Theater that bears his name in New York is considered the pinnacle of the form. But as director Jamila Wignot’s film reveals, the legend was also a human being. Ailey grew up as the only child of a single mother in Jim Crow-era Texas, where the problems of his Blackness were compounded by his obvious homosexuality. He gravitated towards dance in school, but it wasn’t until a liberating trip to Los Angeles that he found his calling and gave himself permission to pursue it.

A pitfall that docs like Ailey often fall into is assuming the audience knows too much about the famous person they’re profiling. You might know Ailey was famous, but his personal trials and tribulations don’t mean much unless you can understand his talent. If you’ve never seen Ailey himself dance before, the early filmed performances of dance pieces like “Revelations” will be a…well, a revelation.

After establishing his artistic bonafides and the legacy of the groundbreaking dance theater he founded, Wignot turns to Ailey’s personal life. Consumed with dance, he appeared to many around him as a cipher. As one dancer reveals, the world didn’t want to know who Ailey was. They only wanted the legend. The dancer loved by everyone was intensely lonely, having only one boyfriend of note who ultimately walked out on him in the midst of a house party and never returned. Ailey is a more conventional film than The Brothers Sparks, but Wignot’s transparent style is ideal for this story of sacrificing all for art.

Twins Ani and Alessandra Mesa star in the neo-noir thriller Superior.

After two docs, we returned home to cap the night with Superior. Director Erin Vassilopoulos previously collaborated on a short film of the same name with twin sister actresses Alessandra and Ani Mesa. The feature version sees the sisters reunited after six years of separation. Vivian (Ani Mesa) stayed in their small town and married straitlaced Michael (Jake Hoffman). Meanwhile, Marion (Alessandra Mesa) learned to play guitar, joined a band, and is touring the world. She returns to her hometown after trying to leave her abusive husband Robert (Pico Alexander). Apart, the twins had assumed their own identities. Once reunited, they start to look and act alike again, even as one sister tries to uncover the secrets the other is keeping.

Once again, the David Lynch influence is strong with Superior. This time, instead of the psychedelic inner explorations of Twin Peaks: The Return, whose influence is all over the narrative competition field, Vassilopoulos channels the queasy sexual charge of Lost Highway. The Mesa sisters are mesmerizing as they take an identity-swapping Persona turn on neo-noir.

Miya Cech stars as Sammy in Marvelous & The Black Hole

Tonight, the final night of Sundance screenings at the Malco Summer Drive-In kicks off with Marvelous & the Black Hole, by Adventure Time and Steven Universe writer Kate Tsang. Newcomer Miya Cech stars as Sammy, a troubled young girl who meets an unlikely mentor in the magician Margot, played by Rhea Perlman.

Larry Krasner in Philly D.A.

The final film of Sundance’s first foray into Memphis is documentary Philly D.A., directors Ted Passon and Yoni Brook’s story of civil rights attorney Larry Krasner’s 2017 run for district attorney of the city he sued more than 75 times.

To buy tickets for the final night of Sundance in Memphis, go to the Indie Memphis website.

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Film/TV Film/TV/Etc. Blog

Sundance in Memphis: The Potter-Lynch Generation

Mayday

On day 4 of Sundance, patterns are beginning to emerge. It’s probably perilous to declare any kind of new trend from a limited sample of moves. Maybe it’s just the films I decided to watch, which are similar. But nevertheless, there are common elements visible on the drive-in and virtual screens.

Take Karen Cinorre’s Mayday. Ana (Grace Van Patten) is a cater waiter working a wedding with her musician boyfriend. When the venue’s electrical systems start shorting out, she is sent downstairs to trip the circuit breaker. Her boss follows her, and assaults her in the freezer next to the ice sculpture. In a dissociative state, she goes to the industrial kitchen and feels called by the oven. She turns on the gas and sticks her head inside, but instead of dying, she falls into an alternate reality. She wakes up on an unfamiliar beach where she meets Marsha (the excellent Mia Goth) and a male pilot who has also washed up lost. Marsha rescues Ana, and as they’re driving away on her motorcycle, the pilot is killed by an unseen sniper.

Ana is adopted by Marsha’s group of women guerrillas, based in a mini submarine, who are embroiled in a vaguely defined war pitting women in against men. The guerrillas are like sirens from Greek myth, attracting men to their deaths on the rocks by sending out fake distress calls. At first, Ana is okay with the new arrangement, and discovers her own excellent eyesight makes her a deadly sniper. But eventually, she starts to question this weird limbo existence and plots ways to return to the real world with the help of a friendly female mechanic (Juliette Lewis).

Carlson Young in The Blazing World

A character escaping their trauma by going into a fantasy world, and who must then decide whether or not it’s worth it to return to the real world, is also the basic plot of writer/director/actor Carlson Young’s The Blazing World. In this case, the situation is more prosaic: Margaret (played by Young) has to return to her parent’s ostentatious mansion to help them move out. She is haunted by the memory of seeing her sister drown in the pool when they were kids, an event which was both caused by and exacerbated her parents’ toxic relationship. Margaret’s inner struggle manifests as increasingly florid, candy-color hallucinations.

Are we seeing the work of a generation of young filmmakers raised on Harry Potter-damaged YA fantasy who discovered David Lynch in film school? When I write that, it kind of sounds derogatory. But the influence of Lynch’s psychotropic epic Twin Peaks: The Return is everywhere at Sundance this year, and I for one am here for it. Indie social realism is all fine and good. The cheap price point of such productions means that we will never have a shortage of that aesthetic. But in the world of 2021, the desktop computer-based digital video technology that has enabled the digital indie revolution since the turn of the century has advanced considerably. Where it used to take up all the available computing power to just render the video and edit shots together, now apps such as Adobe After Effects are available in any homemade editing suite. Now we’re seeing an explosion of visual creativity as a result.

The problem with both Mayday and The Blazing World is in the writing. Both choose style over substance in a way that cannot be excused merely by the film’s budget limitations. But hey, if we’re going to continue to watch movies about the problems of privileged white people (some things never change in the film world), at least it looks cool.

In the Earth

The outlier among my day 4 Sundance viewing was In the Earth. English filmmaker Ben Wheatley is one of millions of people who spent the pandemic year of 2020 working on a new art project. The difference with Wheatley is that he managed to make an entire feature film and get it in Sundance. Wheatley, who previously directed both the chilly J.G. Ballard adaptation High-Rise and the gonzo gun-fu thriller Free Fire, seems liberated by both the speed with which he worked and the total lack of regard for creating marketable material that comes when you’re staring disaster in the face and thinking, “What have I even been doing with my life?”

There’s a world-destroying pandemic on, and two scientists (Joel Fry and Ellora Torchia) are summoned to a rural retreat to pursue their projects, which might save humanity. Instead, they find themselves the subjects of a pair of researchers (Hayley Squires and Reece Shearsmith) who have gone full Captain Kurtz in the woods. They think they have identified an alien intelligence here on Earth which is behind the pagan legends of demons who live in the English countryside, and they are using magic mushrooms, flashing lights, and sounds to try to communicate with it.

In the Earth combines folk horror elements with real-life anxiety, seasoned with a strong dash of John Carpenter’s Prince of Darkness. The climax is the kind of intricate, psychedelic trip that can only come from being cooped up by yourself for months with only your editing bay to keep you company. I personally loved this minor miracle of a movie, but my recommendation comes with one big caveat. There’s a strobe light warning at the beginning of the film, and I said to my sensitive wife “Hey, how much can there be? A shot or two?” Well, there’s a lot more than a shot or two. If you’re epileptic, or just have a problem with strobe light effects and quick edits, you should sit this one out. Otherwise, when this one surfaces — as I’m sure it will — horror fans will be treated to one of the most innovative films of the past decade.

Ailey

Monday night at the Malco Summer Drive-In, two films not about the problems of rich White people. The first is Ailey, a documentary by Jamila Wignot about the life of modern dance pioneer Alvin Ailey, which just sold to a distributor hours ahead of its premiere.

Then at 9 p.m., Judas and Black Messiah, director Shaka King’s biopic of Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Chicago Black Panther Party who was hounded, and perhaps ultimately killed, by the FBI’s COINTELPRO operation. The cast is stacked with first-rate talent, led by Black Panther’s Daniel Kaluuya and Sorry to Bother You’s Lakeith Stanfield.

Sundance in Memphis: The Potter-Lynch Generation

Tickets to Sundance films at the drive-in are available at the Indie Memphis website.