More Adds Up to Less at Sundance Festival

PARK CITY, Utah — “There is a place,” posters for the new Sundance Channel promise, “where the spirit of the Sundance Film Festival comes to your home.” To participants in this year’s festival, however, that blithe assurance sounds almost like a threat. What? The festival in my house? There couldn’t possibly be room.

For if there is a theme to Sundance 1997, it’s more of everything you can think of. Except, perhaps, more of what everyone wants most, which is exciting films, especially in the dramatic competition. For instance, there are:

* More crowds. Drawn by the festival’s reputation and a building boom fueled in turn by the upcoming winter Olympics, an avalanche of ticket-less individuals came to town. The crush at the various theaters is so New York-subway-thick that fire marshals have shown up, and fruitless waits of two hours and more for tickets have become commonplace.

* More counterfeit tickets. So many, apparently, that ticket-takers are all equipped with bar-code readers and Park City police are sometimes seen at the doors.

* More black wool hats given out as souvenirs. Though not as outre as the nails passed around to advertise “Sick,” the documentary on masochistic performance artist Bob Flanagan, at least three films have distributed that utilitarian headgear. And that doesn’t count the black ear band given out by the Sundance Channel, which has made a deal with Starbucks to host festival viewing parties across the country, just about guaranteeing that the event will be even more crowded next year.

One thing that everyone agrees on is that the 1997 festival so far has been an off one, with no films in or out of the competition causing anywhere near the excitement “Shine,” “Welcome to the Dollhouse” or “Big Night” did last year. Even the first film to be picked up out of the festival, “The House of Yes,” created more of a stir because of the rumored$1.9 million Miramax paid for it than for what’s on the screen.

This lack is especially noticeable in the dramatic competition, so stuffed with morose films about disaffected and out-of-sorts young people trying to make sense of their rootless lives that some observers have taken to calling this “the kiddie festival.” A good dose of the “Brady Bunch” would be awfully welcome right about now.

The most accomplished film in the dramatic competition so far is “The Myth of Fingerprints,” the writing-directing debut of Bart Freundlich, who demonstrates a welcome thoughtfulness and the ability to intertwine emotional complexity and humor.

A character-driven ensemble piece (Blythe Danner, James LeGros, Julianne Moore and Roy Scheider are the biggest names), “Fingerprints” takes place during a Thanksgiving weekend as four grown children bring their pasts and their romantic entanglements to a reunion with their parents. Confidently made and wise about relationships, it’s one of the few films here with people real enough to make audiences care about their fates.

Also of interest in the dramatic competition have been “The Delta,” due to the intimate, cinema verite style of writer-director Ira Sachs, and “Hurricane,” notable for the impressive performance by Brendan Sexton III (the surly boyfriend in “Welcome to the Dollhouse”) as a what-else-but troubled young person.

Noticeable for its slick commercial feel, lively score and the shrewdness of casting Larenz Tate and Nia Long in the leads is “Love Jones.” An overly familiar love story set in the vibrant, little-seen milieu of educated, sophisticated black professionals, “Love Jones” is slight but glamorous romantic fun.

And then there is “In the Company of Men.” Made with complete fidelity to the vision of writer-director Neil LaBute, this is the story of a pair of hostile chauvinists, seething with resentment toward women, who hatch a cynical scheme to make a victim out of the most vulnerable female they can find. “Men’s” perverse portrayal of misogyny is as distasteful as it is accurate, and the result is, as the director probably intended, a cold and brittle piece of work.

On the documentary side of the competition, a nice alternative to the intensity of “Sick” and “Licensed to Kill” (Arthur Dong’s look at violent homophobia), is “Riding the Rails,” which portrays Depression-era teenage hobos crisscrossing America looking for work and adventure--a phenomenon depicted in William Wellman’s 1933 drama “Wild Boys of the Road.”

Filmmakers Michael Uys and Lexy Lovell placed an ad in Modern Maturity asking for reminiscences and got a staggering 3,000 replies. Interviews with 10 veterans of the rails, now in their 70s and 80s, are intercut with vintage documentary footage and enhanced by a great soundtrack featuring Woody Guthrie, Jimmie Rodgers, Doc Watson and Elizabeth Cotton. The result is not only fascinating social history, it’s poignant and evocative on an emotional level as well.

*

The only documentary among the premieres, “Fast, Cheap and Out of Control,” was also excellent. Directed by the gifted Errol Morris (“The Thin Blue Line”), this original film by an original mind is really four interconnected mini-docs, looking at the lives and thoughts of a topiary gardener, a lion-tamer, a mole-rat photographer and a robot scientist. A masterful synthesizer, Morris (helped by cinematographer Robert Richardson) sees connections no one else could imagine and illuminates them dazzlingly.

The one film at the festival that captivated everyone lucky enough to see it was also a documentary, though one tucked away in the world cinema section. “East Side Story,” filled with “Scenes Never Before Witnessed by Western Man!,” is an eye-popping look at an overlooked phenomenon, musicals made behind the Iron Curtain.

Starting with Stalin’s love for the genre (he saw “Volga, Volga,” his favorite, more than 100 times) and going through East German teen musicals like “Hot Summer,” this smart and lively film showcases exotic production numbers with tractors and lyrics like “We sing the song of the coal press.” And, lest we forget, “East Side Story” closes with a thank-you to Karl Marx, “without whom none of this would have been necessary.”