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.