AIFF 2009 - Thoughts on Reviewing the Movies - Son of the Sunshine

What in the world do I think I'm doing here reviewing movies?  And what's the purpose of a review?  And why should anyone pay any attention to what you say?

I think about these questions every time I write something that includes any sort of judgment.  I try to couch things in terms of my perspective rather than Godlike judgments, recognizing that different people have different criteria for a good movie.  So I try to be as objective as I can, citing aspects of a movie that cause me to make any general statements.  But there are lots of factors that go into writing about films at a festival.

For one thing, festival movies are NOT usually Hollywood movies.  Those follow more closely formulas for what is likely to sell.  They have a plot lines and structures and topics that have proven to sell well in the past.  When they do venture onto new ground, it is very incrementally.

Festival movies are often made because the filmmaker wanted to make that movie.  They are often very low budget (we learned Saturday night that Bomber was made for about $30,000 - with any future profits divided among the cast and crew.)  And the best try out some different formula or film language that challenges the audience.  Last year's feature wnner, "Streetsweeper" got panned by some because there was no discernible plot - beyond some man comes out of the sea in the early dawn, finds his streetsweeper cart, puts on his clothes, and then sweeps his way across the city of Newcastle, Australia.  Neil Mansfield, the director, was making a film using a different concept of film than many are used to.

It was exactly the kind of movie I come to a festival for.  In my review last year, I offered some alternative ways to think about the movie.  The first was to think about it like a visual  concert, where there is no verbal content, just the music and the images.

The ADN reviewer this year had trouble with Son of the Sunshine.

I found it all very long, slow and -- aside from one scene in which Sonny carries his mother out of the hospital and deposits her in a situation that may help her get her act together (I'm skeptical) -- possessed of no obvious story.

No obvious story.  Why does it have to have an obvious story?  Does Joyce's Ulysses have an obvious story?  There are other film languages than Hollywood formulas.  An essay by Harley Hahn helps us think about abstract art:

Abstract paintings are different. They have designs, shapes or colors that do not look like specific physical objects. As such, abstract paintings are a lot harder to understand than representational paintings. Indeed, when you look at an abstract painting, you often have no idea what it is you are actually seeing. Let's see if we can make sense out of this. . .

A second type of abstract painting, sometimes referred to as "pure" abstract art, is even more obtuse. Such paintings do not reflect any form of conventional reality: all you see are shapes, colors, lines, patterns, and so on. Here, for example, is one of my paintings, entitled "Blue #1", which I painted in 2000.

As you can see, nothing in this painting is recognizable. There are no people, fruit or even water lilies.

When you look at such art, it is natural to wonder why anyone would bother to create such paintings in the first place. What could the artist possibly have in mind?

Films at film festivals get to push beyond the normal conventions and into new forms, cinematic equivalents to non-representational art.   Let's go back to one of Hahn's sentences:

"[A]bstract paintings are a lot harder to understand than representational paintings"

Movies like Streetsweeper and, in a milder way, Son of the Sunshine are a lot harder to understand.  They don't walk us through a story the way most movies do.  They're about something other than a typical narrative plot. Son of the Sunshine for me was more about feelings than about story.  It was about someone's life -  not so much about events organized into a story but about events organized around conveying what things felt like.

The film centered around Sonny. I felt like I could see the world from his point of view.  The other characters were more problematic, but that's probably how they looked to Sonny.  But that's how I see it.

Movies like this involve the audience more.  You can't just passively view it, you have to work.  It encourages the audience to discuss it afterward, to participate in determining the meaning of the film. And in those discussions, we reveal things about ourselves and how we see the world.  Others get insights into how we think.  And we get to know the others better.  And we may even get to know ourselves better.

Is it good to have the movie ambiguous?  Doesn't that mean that the director failed to get his message across?  I guess that depends on what the director's intent was.  Was the movie intended to get a specific message across?   Perhaps it was simply the filmmaker's personal activity that he now allows others to watch. Perhaps it was intended to make us think. 

That said very few people have written books like Ulysses that worked, and just putting random shots together into a film doesn't make it a good film.  Ryan Ward, in the brief video conversation below says, "The story is the story, and the story holds up..." so maybe I'm reading way too much into this.  Ryan Ward was the writer, the director, and the lead actor.  Perhaps having a different director and/or writer might have led to more discussion on the set about aspects of the film  and Ward would have had to think out and explain his vision more and those discussions would have resulted in a 'better' movie. Who knows?

And so if you have a movie that is 'in a different cinematic language' how do you know if it is good or if the filmmaker is just playing a joke on the audience?  (I suspect someone has a whole blog dedicated to the study of what is good as this one is loosely dedicated to how we know things.)

There is no absolute way to determine if a movie is good because 'good' is a subjective determination.  Some people like asparagus and other people hate it.  The same is true with movies.  But just as we can discuss qualities of asparagus - health aspects, texture, color, taste - we can discuss qualities of a movie.  And as we become more knowledgeable about movies in general, we learn to see nuances that we hadn't seen before.  Salmon fishers see immediately the difference between reds, silvers, kings, etc.  The average person can't see those differences without careful inspection. 

It's the same with films.  One gains an understanding of the different film conventions by seeing lots of films, discussing them with experts, and reading different knowledgeable reviewers.  One may have to watch a movie several times to pick up details that were missed.  Knowing something about the filmmakers themselves helps us, just as knowing that Picasso could paint a beautiful representational portrait if he chose, and that he didn't paint abstracts because it was all he could do.  It might also help to let go of worrying about whether someone is able to fool you.   When someone does make a joke, it can be a very good joke. My favorite film joke, De Düva (The Dove), is itself a brilliant little film. But you have to have seen at least one Bergman film to really appreciate it.

Son of the Sunshine plays again today, Friday, Dec. 11 at 5:30pm at the Bear Tooth, so you can judge for yourself. 

Here's a short video of Son of the Sunshine writer, director, and lead actor Ryan Ward in the Bear Tooth lobby right after his Q&A following the showing of the film  The Q&A is much longer but was in a very dark theater - you can only see shapes - I wasn't sure I even wanted to post it.  But after writing all this, I think that it's fair that you listen to what he has to say.