At the 32nd Telluride Film Festival, there was sold out-and there was sold out.
As with previous installments, the fest sold all its $325 and $650 passes before any movie ever flickered. Certainly that’s one measure of Telluride’s draw. But there is an even more persuasive sign of programming success: movie theaters filling up hours in advance of a screening.
Even with a new-and-improved way of distributing pass holders a seat for Chuck Jones’ Cinema, chits for writer-director Hany Abu-Assad’s “Paradise Now,” about two Palestinian men who are called for a suicide bombing mission to Tel Aviv, were gone hours in advance of the Sunday afternoon screening.
“Americans do want to deal with the topic,”
Telluride stalwart and famed theater director Peter Sellars told the packed house before the film began. He went on to laud not just the ambition and courage of Abu-Assad, but also the film’s American distributor, Warner Independent Pictures ( “March of the Penguins”). “This film is the historical breakthrough we’ve been waiting for,” he said.
It’s possible that Sellars was overselling. Discovery is one of Telluride’s finest pleasures, one you don’t want to deny audiences. After the glowing introduction, Abu-Assad tried to dial down expectations. “Thank you for the kind words,” he said sweetly. “I think you exaggerate a little.”
Sellars was right about one thing: “Paradise Now” takes on an incendiary topic with “profound sincerity” and unwavering compassion.
There was no shortage of the volatile and timely. Michael Haneke’s “Caché” (“Hidden”) wrestled with debt – both national and personal – in France’s relationship with Algeria. “Edmond” – David Mamet adapting Mamet – played rough with racism in the story about a businessman (William H. Macy) who leaves his life and seeks the company of hookers and a pimp. (“We are all racists,” said director Stuart Gordon. “We try to hide our racism from each other and from ourselves. But we secretly know it’s alive and well within us.”)
Even Neil Jordan’s buoyant “Breakfast on Pluto,” based on Patrick McCabe’s novel about a transvestite living in Dublin and London in the 1970s, didn’t shy away from images of ideologically motivated mayhem.
After a morning hike, Jordan (“The Crying Game”) sat down in the New Sheridan’s lobby to talk about his latest feature. Cillian Murphy (“28 Days Later,” “Red Eye”) gives an incandescent turn as Patrick Brady, the film’s protagonist.
“He survives a world as horrible as the world is now, one as fractious, violent, inhuman,” Jordan said of his indelible hero. “He kind of turns it into his own personal fairy tale.”
Few film festivals are as condensed and intense as Telluride. Yet there were moments when the programming worked against its own best achievements. In the span of a few hours Friday, you could see Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain” and Bennett Miller’s “Capote.”
Each served more than enough food for thought about American culture and its clashes for a day. Seeing them both felt like binge eating, with not a lot of time for digesting.
Granted, there’s a dream- state value to this sort of unabated consumption. Echoes can be heard, darker moods gleaned. (Doubtless fueled, at least this year, by CNN reports from the Gulf Coast.) Themes start to emerge.
In addition to the motif of political violence, a range of movies had gay content. “Capote,” “Brokeback Mountain,” and “Breakfast on Pluto” (to name three high-profile films you’ll be able to see by year’s end) suggest how different that subject is being treated these days. In fact, not one of those films can be tagged a “gay movie.”
“For me it doesn’t matter if he’s gay or a transvestite,” said Jordan about his film’s vivacious hero. “What matters is that he’s someone who insists on maintaining his innocence. Someone who through that insistence puts his world and his family back together again.”
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-820-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com
