Risking my life is not something I usually associate with a film festival. Long lines, showbiz talk, cell phones, and turbulence are usually as bad as it gets. But as my Chevy rental bottomed out again on a narrow slippery shale pass 10,000 feet up in the Colorado mountains, with my cursed Mapquest directions clenched sweatily in one hand, I was comforted only with memories of surviving a similar adventure in Mexico’s Copper Canyons and the knowledge that the Telluride Film Festival is, as dubbed by The Guardian, the most exclusive film festival of them all.
In The Guardian‘s case, using “exclusive” as a descriptor was a deliberate choice. All feature films shown at the festival are at the very least North American premieres, which include new restorations of old classics. There’s always at least one great silent film, presented by archivist Paolo Cherchi-Usai (Anthony Asquith’s A Cottage on Dartmoor). Occasionally films pop up that are premiered secretly on a “just between you and me” basis, announced only at midnight the day before the screening (Scorsese’s new Dylan documentary No Direction Home). Theoretically, for a feature film to be selected at all, the filmmaker must agree to attend the festival, though notable exceptions are made. This year, Hou Hsiao-Hsien was not in attendance because he rarely comes to the U.S. and Ang Lee was in Venice for Brokeback Mountain‘s simultaneous screening there. This often gives the audience a chance to ask the filmmakers questions after their screenings, which usually take place in very intimate theaters. Considering the directors both attending and giving Telluride their premiere this year included Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Neil Jordan, Michael Haneke and Andy Garcia, this is no mean feat. There were only forty film programs over the four day weekend, not including seminars and conversations, compared to large scale international film festivals which often show two to three hundred films.
Programming at Telluride is taken very seriously. This is essential since all the films showing are only announced when you get there, and by then it’s too late to turn back. Because the festival falls fairly soon after Cannes and the programming staff has such a good relationship with international filmmakers, many of that venerable festival’s standout entries have their U.S. premiere at Telluride. This makes Telluride a Cannes heavy festival, but in a world where the best films tend to play there, I imagine this is unavoidable. Festival co-directors Bill Pence and Tom Luddy do screen possible entrants all year round and, though their own film knowledge is monumental, they also draw on the advice of passionate veteran curators and eclectic guest directors. They have a close relationship with several of the more independent-friendly studios like Warner Independent and Sony Classics, so audiences are sure to be the first to see some larger scale U.S. features.
As studios become more outlandishly paranoid about the proliferation of cell phone sized video cameras, the festival’s ability to continue showing home grown features such as Brokeback Mountain and Capote seems harder and harder to maintain. The day may come very quickly when the organizers have to decide between herding their audience through an actual security checkpoint and just giving the films a miss.
Telluride’s advisory council reads like a who’s who of arts luminaries including such greats as Werner Herzog, Laurie Anderson, Peter Bogdanovich, Errol Morris and Salman Rushdie. There is an implicit guarantee that, while everything might not be to your taste, you can trust in the quality and sincerity of the program.
It is also exclusive in the sense that it’s not easy to attend. For those of us not privileged with flexible bank accounts or generous employers it can be expensive and impractical. The most economical option is to fly in to Albuquerque or Denver and then drive for seven hours to reach the small mining town of Telluride, nestled as it is in the epic San Juan Mountains of Southwestern Colorado. Passes sell out well in advance with the most common level costing $650. Many of the free events seat pass holders first. Individual tickets start at $20 and most accommodations books out well in advance.
There are certainly some advantages to Telluride’s exclusivity. You would have to have a heart made of stone to not appreciate the beauty of the landscape between Albuquerque and Telluride. I stand firmly behind a festival that forces its audience, before a single screening has occurred, to watch the majestic show of the Southwest unfold. The other major advantage of exclusivity is, and I’d like to capitalize this, exactly the opposite of what it seems it will be; the Telluride Film Festival is purposefully unpretentious. This particularly hit home watching a giggling cast of characters in one of the free picnic seminars in the park – William H. Macy, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Liev Schreiber, Helena Bonham-Carter and Aaron Eckhart. How, you may ask, can a large group of undeniably famous actors talking about their art be unpretentious? If you take away paparazzi and the red carpet, stars are just ordinary people. When they’re in a picnic in a park, not being glamorized, it’s easier for them to loosen up. The Telluride press office does not court the press; they do not give out press passes or announce guests in advance. Also, all press applications must be accompanied by a letter of assignment.
Once safely over the pass, the first thing I encountered in Telluride was a traffic jam. Telluride is a Main Street kind of a town; attendees fall into calling the principal thoroughfare “Main St,” even though its real name is Colorado Avenue. After the traffic jam, I passed underneath the film festival’s banner which reads, simply, “Show”. Once you’ve passed under that banner you are in the all encompassing world of the film festival. For once, hype, glitz and the business of show business are left at the gate. In this respect it is the atmospheric opposite of Sundance, and no one is vying to be or find the next big thing. Directors and film stars wander the streets in jeans, line up for ice cream and if you want to talk to them, even if you’re a reporter (and the only reporters there are celluloid drooling critics), you just start talking. GreenCine’s Jonathan Marlow and I approached French filmmaker Eugene Green at the festival’s closing Labor Day picnic and invited him back to our log cabin, just across the road, for an interview. On the way over he commented on the lack of press and how much he had enjoyed talking to audience members in the street after his screenings. Comfortably ensconced in our rocking chair Mr. Green chatted with us for over two hours.
All but one of the main venues set within walking distance of each other. The other is named after past festival aficionado Chuck Jones and is merely a free gondola ride away (and yes, it does have a Pismo Beach). A small park that plays host to high caliber free seminars such as the actors’ panel mentioned above, and free evening screenings. It’s worth noting that all short film programs are also free, a great incentive for audiences. All outdoor events (and queues) are subject to mountain weather, which tends to be ornery.
The program this year included tributes to the Criterion Collection and Janus Films, Mickey Rooney, Charlotte Rampling and the Dardenne brothers (fresh from their recent win at Cannes). There were also special free presentations from Laurie Anderson, Peter Bogdanovich and conversations in the park with Peter Sellars, Don DeLillo, Leonard Maltin, the Dardennes and others. DeLillo, this year’s Guest Director, also chose to present a series of films from the 1970s: Wanda, Spirit of the Beehive and The Passenger.
Beyond the program, people come to Telluride for the atmosphere and company. Everyone I spoke to had been making the pilgrimage for years, ten or twenty being the rule rather than the exception. And unlike some other Grande dames of the film festival circuit, the Directors always call for criticism from employees, townsfolk and attendees, bent on making every year an improvement on the last.
Considering the length of the festival, the highlights were many. Though not all of them were cinematic genius, several films did stand out.
Eugene Green Retrospective
Like most people outside of France (and probably many in France, too), before arriving in Telluride I had never heard of Eugene Green, which makes this not-at-all premature retrospective of his work all the more satisfying. There is no way of seeing any of Eugene Green’s three features and single short in America, even at film festivals or cinematheques (with rare exceptions). They are certainly unavailable on DVD, which is no reflection on Green’s unique talent. His latest film, Les Ponts des Arts played in the U.S. at the Cleveland International Film Festival. Born in 1947, Green has spent the largest part of his adult life directing Baroque theater in Paris, going against the sectarian establishment by trying to stage plays in their original framework. He brings the same thematic sensibility to his films.
Instead of making them elaborate and forbidding, they are above all intimate, simple and contemporary. The art scene in Paris of the 1970s was obviously a large part of Green’s life, and in Les Ponts des Arts it is populated by the arrogant absurdity of the artistic elite and the stubborn stupidity of academia. A drifting, vaguely unhappy university student (Adrien Michaux, looking quite like the young Jean-Pierre Leaud) and a talented Baroque singer (Natacha Regnier) need each other, even fall in love, without ever meeting. In all his films, Green tries to pare down the language so that each line is either honestly meaningful or hilariously absurd. Bresson is obviously a big influence, and many scenes end with a still shot of a candelit foot, or a room that still holds the energy of the characters even though they have left the frame. In the past people have dismissed Green’s films as being pretentious, but to the contrary Olivier Gourmet’s squealing rendition of Racine’s Phaedre is pure send-up, and the audience, an incredibly diverse bunch, happily loved the retrospective. It was very gratifying for Green, who had been told that Americans would not like his films, to be greeted warmly after the screenings by women who still had tear marks on their faces.
The President’s Last Bang
We in the U.S. know a lot less about South Korean politics than we really should, considering our previous engagement with the country and its close proximity to a member of the so-called Axis of Evil. The President’s Last Bang recreates the events surrounding long-time dictator Park Chung-hee’s assassination in 1979 by his chief of intelligence, during one of his more pathetic forced evening soirées. On the evening in question the President was entertaining (or being entertained by) his top bodyguard, several high level officials, a young escort (from his favorite brothel) and an attractive Japanese enka singer. And when the president asked you over, you didn’t say no. The film has been compared to Dr. Strangelove by more than one critic, which is bound to leave the audience disappointed in what is, at its heart, a serious and meticulous recreation. There are extremely funny moments, thanks mostly to the bumbling incompetence of all players involved. The head of the Army is refused admittance to his own headquarters by an ignorant guardsman who doesn’t recognize him, then has trouble finding a single loaded weapon. After the bloody dining room assassination the girls are left in a bedroom and completely forgotten.
Director Im Sang-Soo was at pains to point out that he did not play anything purely for laughs; these people were naturally and unavoidably absurd. The events were reconstructed using court records of the time. The film also provides some interesting insights into the importance of the previous Japanese occupation, and he role of petty physical sadism between men that seems to be a part of Korean institutional relationships. This film has been extremely controversial in South Korea. Im Sang-soo was ordered by the Seoul Central Court to remove four minutes worth of documentary footage from the beginning and end of the film, leaving long black spaces. The footage in question was of anti-government demonstrations and Park Chung-hee’s funeral and was removed because the court was worried it would imply too heavily that the events depicted in the film are real. There may have been some political pressure as Park’s daughter currently heads the centre-right opposition party in South Korea and the film itself is seen as a comment on contemporary politics both there and in the United States. Unlike decisions taken by a ratings board, the court’s decision is internationally binding. So while South Korea no longer sanctions censorship, it is illegal to screen the uncut version of The President’s Last Bang anywhere in the world.
Capote and Brokeback Mountain
The first two films that I saw at Telluride were Brokeback Mountain and Capote, back to back. Together, they are enough to make the conservative right stand up and shout, “Liberal bias! Hollywood is going to Hell!” Admittedly, these two aren’t coming out of Hollywood proper, but they will likely both find their way to the multiplex. Though Brokeback Mountain was arguably the most popular film of the festival for audiences (it also just won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival), Capote is much more important and well crafted. Brokeback Mountain hangs a horribly predictable plot on the back of Heath Ledger’s absolutely stunning performance. There are times in the film that the editor must have looked at Ang Lee and said, “Really? Are you sure?” I’m thinking particularly of the scenes directly after the two characters’ first sexual encounter. Heath Ledger’s Ennis rides off to find a rotting carcass waiting for him, and then we cut straight to Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jack determinedly washing his clothes (out, damn spot!). I had hoped that we had all moved beyond falling for such obvious symbolism.
Capote, on the other hand, has an outstanding lead performance which served an interesting story. A magazine editor once told me that she didn’t think she could really be a writer because all writers are egoists. This was particularly true of Truman Capote, who was by turns witty, painfully empathetic, and removedly self interested. Capote follows the author of In Cold Blood as he befriends killer Perry Smith, trying to humanize him while at the same time, after several years, wanting him to die for closure’s sake. What started off as an article for New Yorker magazine became the book that established “literary journalism” as a non-fiction style. It’s easy to forget, now, how important that book was in calling on journalists to shade human characters, even murderers, rather than simply drawing them in black and white terms. Director, Bennett Miller draws us in to the contradictions that exist within his real-life characters Truman Capote, Harper Lee and Perry Smith, but once we’re there he nudges us on to remember that journalists, especially today, need to keep in mind the subjective complexities of their own subjects.