Movies Features

PREVIEW: Sundance focuses on America's dark times

By Andy Goldberg Jan 19, 2012, 9:51 GMT

Robert De Niro appears in the film Red Lights, he plays a blind psychic who returns after a 30-year disappearance with a strange tale to tell. © Charles Norfleet / PR Photos

Los Angeles - Sundance, the United States' premier independent film festival, was set to open Thursday with a line-up of films focused squarely on the dark times plaguing the ailing superpower.

While independent films have long bucked the happy ending philosophy that is a staple Hollywood formula, this year's line-up of films is exceptionally dark and gritty, the festival's founder, Robert Redford, said.

'We show stories of what people in America are really dealing with and really living with against a consequence of having a government that's let them down,' Redford said. 'People can come and say, 'God, at least we're seeing how people are really living in America and what they're up against.'

While it's hard to convey just how dark this year's film palette is, The New York Times ran an analysis of the Sundance Film Festival's lineup of 100 films.

'At least eight fall squarely into the category of 'America is broken.''wrote the newspaper, which counted four films focusing on corporate greed, 25 that look at 30-somethings whose lives are unravelling and at least 14 on moral decay. These include The Comedy, a tale of spoiled hipsters described by director of programming Trevor Goth as 'a camouflaged assault on contemporary culture' and 'a carefully rendered cautionary fable for the autumn of America.'

The gloomy focus has been further refined by the speed and relative ease of filmmaking afforded by digital technologies.

'If ever there was a crucial time for a hard, honest look at our country, it's now,' Redford told the Times. 'It's no secret that we're at the bottom of a very dark barrel, and the speed with which films can now be made is greatly helping artists to do just that.'

But it won't be all doom and gloom. With 117 films, including 91 world premiers, there's plenty of opportunity for indie cinema to show it also knows have to have fun.

From entertaining romps like 2 Days in Paris, starring Chris Rock, and the teen romantic comedy For The First Time, the festival is packed with movies to make moviegoers think and smile. Many of these films also include top-notch Hollywood talent taking huge salary cuts to appear in more edgy fare than the usual studio fodder.

In The Arbitrage, Richard Gere stars as a hedge fund magnate at the centre of an economic meltdown while Bradley Cooper plays a novelist who passes off a lost manuscript as his own.

Robert De Niro will also feature. In the film Red Lights, he plays a blind psychic who returns after a 30-year disappearance with a strange tale to tell. Kirstin Dunst and Isla Fisher star in a raunchy female-friends comedy Bachelorette while Seth Rogen features in a comedy about friends who launch a phone sex line to stave off homelessness.

Many of the festival's documentaries take an altogether different look at these perilous economic times, casting a critical gaze on almost every national ailment: from the decline of manufacturing in Detropia to the dysfunctional health-care system in Escape Fire. There are films on hunger (Finding North), the victims of the drug wars (The House I Live In) and the collapse of the economy (The Queen of Versailles).

'It's no secret that obviously these are tough times economically not only in our country but in the world,' Redford said. 'The documentaries, so much can be learned from them.'