The Docs of Sundance 2008: Veterans Return and AMERICAN TEEN Leads the Way (Part 3)

Festival coverage sponsored by IndiePix.

This year's Sundance Film Festival was marked by new films by a who's-who of Sundance nonfiction veterans from this decade: the aforementioned sophomore effort from Morgan Spurlock, along with new films from Nanette Burstein (last at Sundance with 2002's THE KID STAYS IN THE PICTURE), Edet Belzberg (2001's CHILDREN UNDERGROUND), Patrick Creadon (2006's WORDPLAY), Alex Gibney (2005's ENRON: THE SMARTEST GUYS IN THE ROOM) and Stacy Peralta (2001's DOGTOWN AND Z-BOYS and 2004's RIDING GIANTS).  Of these, all but Peralta and Spurlock were in competition, with Burstein garnering the jury prize for the directing as well as the distributor prize, as AMERICAN TEEN was the subject of a fierce bidding war between a number of suitors.

What happens to AMERICAN TEEN, once Paramount Vantage releases it in theaters later this year, is anyone's guess.  But it my estimation, the reaction - both from public and from critics - to AMERICAN TEEN will say a great deal about where we stand in nonfiction circa 2008.

Burstein spent a year immersed in Warsaw, Indiana, gaining the trust of a group of high school seniors.  What she has created was often referred to as a "real-life John Hughes film" and indeed, Burstein, in casting her film, created a PRETTY IN PINK-like dynamic.  There's the moody, artistic girl (who even comes complete with a Duckie-like sidekick who clearly seems madly in love with her) who ends up dating the popular prom king, who may or may not have the guts to stand up to his friends and stick it out with her.  Add to that the popular, often vindictive girl; the basketball-playing jock; and the awkward loner and you understand the BREAKFAST CLUB comparisons.

The film also was compared to high concept reality TV fare like MTV's "The Hills", which makes the film's acquisition by Viacom family member Vantage particularly intriguing.  It also raised questions over audience - just who is going to turn out for AMERICAN TEEN in theaters?  Will the traditional art house/documentary audience be interested in a teen movie even if it is a high profile Sundance film from a known director?  Will PV attempt to bypass the fickle documentary crowd and target (a perhaps even more fickle) high school and college students looking to see their reflection?  David Poland has already weighed in - "a terrific little movie... but not very commercial".

There's another issue and that is the question of critical response to the constructed elements in the film, most visible during a series of phone calls, text messages and emails where the camera is always on both sides of the exchange.  It is clear that many, if not most (if not all) of these have been staged or re-created for the camera - clear not because it's indicated by the film but because it's a physical impossibility for the camera to have been present for all of these communications.

Regular readers of this blog know that I have no problem whatsoever with construction (hell, I'm practically the team caption, or at least the founder of the construction pep squad), but not so our friends in the critical press.  Already, Glenn Kenny has weighed in (see my previous post on construction at this year's festival), as has Variety's Dennis Harvey, who, in citing the film's "credibility issues" wrote:

"It's early yet, but Nanette Burstein's ultra-slick "American Teen" just may win the "Frat House" award this year for a documentary so highly worked, so packed with high dramatic incidents among classic character types that a skeptical viewer may well wonder just how freely direction and editing sculpted real life into something more like ... well, 'The Real World.'"

More in this vein from the Hollywood Reporter's James Greenberg:

"One wonders if events are ever the same when the camera watches them. Intimate scenes, like when Gordy's father explains to him that either he excels on the basketball court and gets a college scholarship or else he's going into the Army, seem more staged than spontaneous....You may have a good time, but you'll hate yourself in the morning."

Meanwhile, Cinematical's James Rocchi takes note as well, but reaches a different conclusion:

"(W)hile documentary purists while wail and gnash their teeth over the artistic enhancements Burstein provides -- computer-animated sequences where the kids articulate their hopes, their fears, their worries and more -- and the generally stylized look of the film, neither damage the seriousness and scope of Burstein's film."

It will surprise no one if a critical split is looming, which brings me back to my earlier thought that response to AMERICAN TEEN will be a bellwether for nonfiction.  And for those who are prepared to champion the film and its use of construction - as I am and as the Sundance jury clearly was - we should be prepared to stand against another round of critical tsk-tsks. 

Burstein does something marvelous in AMERICAN TEEN, she draws us in with the cliches and stereotypes of high school life that we are all familiar with (cue the John Hughes references).   But through her access - as well as her excellent craftsmanship - Burstein creates a incredibly winning and surprising layered look at high school life, both the new (oh the misguided self-portrait sent by email) and the old (heartbreaks and future plans).  And those animations you've heard so much about?  In a year where every film seemed to have some kind of animated or advanced graphic element, the pieces in AMERICAN TEEN were my favorite, varied and extremely well-rendered.  Burstein pushes the nonfiction genre in exciting ways.  It's a true accomplishment.

While we at least know that AMERICAN TEEN is going to have a major theatrical release, we're still waiting for word on Patrick Creadon's I.O.U.S.A., his well-studied and thorough investigation of America's debt crisis.  This matters because I.O.U.S.A. is the kind of film that is so timely, so immediate in its concerns, that it should air on network television tonight, rather than go through a lengthy festival and theatrical run.

For much of the last year - and particularly at last year's Toronto Film Festival - we've been hearing about Iraq fatigue, how audiences were not interested in turning out for films about the war.  And lately, it seems that Iraq has diminished as a campaign issue as well, replaced by economic concerns.  And as the nation stands on the verge of (or the beginning of) recession, I.O.U.S.A. does an good job of breaking down the complicated issues that surround  America's growing national debt. 

Further, Creadon has fashioned a non-partisan piece without losing the sense of urgency.  In fact, one gets the sense that neither party is treating the debt issue with the appropriate amount of concern.  Nor is the media doing its job.  You'd think that in the midst of their panic over bird flu, questionable terror plots and missing American girls in Aruba, there'd be a moment to mention that America is essentially a subsidiary of China.

Beyond its timely concerns, it's a pleasure to see Creadon's pop culture sensibilities in action, applied here to a more serious, wonky topic.  And as in WORDPLAY - which featured a wonderful cameo by former President Clinton - Creadon gets great material from his interviewees.  This is likely to be the only doc this year to feature heroic supporting turns from Warren Buffet (in full storytelling mode) and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.

If Creadon is the pop documentary equivalent of the New York Times Sunday Magazine (and I think he is), Stacy Peralta is something of a 21st century Joan Didion, a California native exploring his home state's lifestyle culture with a unique pop perspective.

After examining Southern California skateboarders and Northern California surfers, Peralta treads (slightly) inland to look at South Central LA gang life in MADE IN AMERICA.  Ostensibly a history of the Bloods and the Crips, it is also a history of South Central itself, and in that, the film may have its greatest success.  The lengthy (nearly a half hour) intro sets the scene and the history of the community with incredible precision and great style.  Even for someone like me who has lived in Los Angeles for the better part of two decades, the way Peralta uses satellite maps to delineate his locale and the rival gangs' turf is quite illuminating.  Also fascinating is the history of the communities that make up South Central - from the LAPD-enforced line that separate white from black neighborhoods (which the film argues was at least a root cause of the Watts Riots of the late 1960s) to the jazz mecca of Central Avenue in the 1940s.

In fact, I think that, in the end, I wish the film was even more of a history of the neighborhood and concerned itself less with the gang rivalries of the past two decades.  I'm not sure how people who live in regions not affected by gangs might respond to this dominant element of the film, but for me, a lot of the information related to the gangs was treading familiar turf.

Next: The triumphs of Sundance 2008 - THE ORDER OF MYTHS and MAN ON WIRE.