With the 2021 Sundance Film Festival—which all happened in the digital realm—now complete, V.F. chief critic Richard Lawson and deputy editor Katey Rich take a look back at the highs and lows of a pandemic-era festival.
Richard Lawson: Another year, another Sundance. Though this year’s festival was unlike any other. The continuing pandemic meant that Sundance, like Toronto and other festivals before it, had to go virtual, with premieres and other events (and even parties) experienced from home. Which, like so much else these days, was a bit of a letdown, even though the festival managed it all very smoothly.
Screenings were easy to access and, with the hallowed Sundance tradition of waiting in long lines rendered moot, there was more time to watch films. Hats off to the Sundance staff for organizing such a seamless virtual festival in a relatively short amount of time.
Sundance was unavoidably hampered in other ways, though, chiefly in having to pick from a much slimmer stable of films than usual. Production was seriously curtailed in 2020, meaning fewer films were ready to go by Sundance selection time. Among the films that were wrapped and ready, their producers and filmmakers would have to be willing to debut their hard work in a streaming format, losing out on the cheering crowds and networking mixers that Sundance entrants usually enjoy—and might be treated to again next year, if COVID is wrestled into submission.
So the selection was smaller, a bit more minor key. Which could, in some ways, be healing, like a return to the simple, less flashy days of yore. But it also meant, more myopically and perhaps cynically, that Sundance’s usual air of brash and buzzy excitement was much harder to feel.
The loudest clamor arrived on opening night, with the premiere of Sian Heder’s CODA, a warm and crowd-pleasing story of a teenage girl who is the only hearing member of her family. The film is a lovely showcase for a trio of deaf actors—Daniel Durant, Marlee Matlin, and Troy Kotsur—and a glowing arrival announcement for star Emilia Jones, who gets to show off her singing chops in addition to her acting. The movie won the top prize on Tuesday night, among other awards, after selling for a staggering $25 million to AppleTV+—a sales record for the festival. In CODA’s immediate aftermath, Sundance felt as splashy as ever.
I was less bowled over by the film itself than others were, though. It is certainly a pleasant and poignant movie, but its very conventional plotting gives it the feel of made-for-TV young adult fiction. Had the film been, say, a Disney+ original, it would stand out as a surprisingly rich and textured offering among more sentimental, less nuanced fare. But as a competitor in an international festival meant to honor bold new cinematic visions, CODA looks awfully slight. I worry the film can’t possibly measure up to its enormous hype once it’s available to the public.
One small film that did really register for me was Mass, a talky and immersive drama from writer-director Fran Kranz, an actor making his filmmaking debut. It’s a wrenching look at two sets of parents trying to reconcile with one another, years after a school shooting. One couple—played by the always terrific Martha Plimpton and a profile redefining Jason Isaacs—lost a son in the horror. The other two parents—reliable theater mainstay Reed Birney and recent Emmy winner Ann Dowd—lost theirs as well. He was also the shooter. The movie is mostly just these four people talking in a room, raging and pleading for some kind of understanding of what happened and how. It’s wrenching stuff, but subtly and thoughtfully staged and written by Kranz. There’s no melodrama, and no big political speechifying—everything feels grippingly human. It’s an odd thing to say about a movie, maybe, but Mass made me miss going to the theater. The film provides almost that same intimate thrill, of closely watching great actors as they tear into a meaty script together.
I was also quite taken by Jonas Poher Rasmussen’s shattering but hopeful documentary Flee, in which a man recounts his childhood flight from Afghanistan as a refugee. To preserve its narrator’s anonymity, his name has been changed and all interview footage has been animated, rotoscoping mixed with more traditional animation as he tells his harrowing story. That remove from purest reality is somehow not alienating at all. Rather, it invites us in more deeply, connecting us to young Amin’s plight just as we would dive into a storybook.