The Starz Denver Film Festival concluded it's 34th year this last sunday, the end of an exhausting ten days that also marked the end of the latest Denver Arts Week. Some in the community felt that Denver Arts Week would be better off not straddling the same dates as the Film Festival, others recognize it as a perfect tribute to the scene in Denver, albeit skewed towards the cinematic arts. But it might not really matter, the takeaway from both concepts is that there is excellent programming all year round hosted by the Denver Film Society, Landmark Cinemas and a handful of other specialized pockets that aficionados can get their fill from, just as one can within the hyper-robust visual art scene at all moments of the year throughout the Denver community. To celebrate it in a concentrated effort once a year can bring out some of the best, as it did in the case of Bill Amundson's artist talk as well as many of the terrific screenings held by SDFF. Our only issue is the recurring bad-cold that tends to wash out half of the opportunities at hand this time of the year. It happens that way every year......
One thing the festival programmers sure know how to do is secure the films that will be on everyone's hot-sheets at year's end, at least the critical hot-sheets. This might have more to do with the timing of the festival in early November than anything else, many complain that a lot of the "big" films show up right after the festival concludes, making it partially redundant. But there are many other ways to look at the concept of the festival, and two of the best examples came with the closing night film last Saturday night and the next day's Special screening at the King Center. There seemed to be a lot of advance speculation as to the merits and audience readiness for the Michel Hazanavicius' "The Artist," a film that attempts to take the audience back in time to the silent era. While other contemporary filmmakers such as Guy Maddin have been dabbling in this arena in the most creative and engaging ways for years now, seemingly nobody has endeavored to make what could be a "popular" film that hearkens back to that bygone era. Fortunately "The Artist" had the chops to pull it off, in addition to the Weinstein stamp that will undoubtedly pull some weight come Oscar time. I think one would be hard pressed to not fall under the overwhelming charms and spells put forth in this feature; it's certainly not the best film out there, hell I dozed off through most of the last third, but it does a lot and does it well within what most would consider confining boundaries. And even though it will be unleashed to screens around the world very soon, one probably won't find a better venue than the Caulkins Opera House to view it, something no-one including the entire Starz staff, filmmaker and audience would say about the opening night film "Like Crazy." What makes "The Artist" resonate in that environment is simply that it takes us all back to a time and place where going to the theater to see a movie was a thrill, it didn't even need sound to bring an audience in. The screen at Caulkins supports the pictures now-defunct aspect ratio, almost a perfect square, which will seem completely alien to most audiences that watch it in a multiplex (or god forbid on a TV) and certain to lose a lot of it's grandeur there as a result. But at Caulkins it just filled the stage with the most striking black and white imagery, and brought back a playfulness in film that is largely lacking since the early 1920's. Of course not entirely, but that's what it felt like at the festival and that's really what the festival is about. Does this mean that others will start using outdated formats and flourishes in the coming years? Possibly..........I did also find out just yesterday that music CD's are officially out and that cassette tapes are again all the rage, at least amongst hipsters, for reasons entirely baffling to me.
The final day of the festival always holds a few gems, and considering the crowd lined up to get into the matinee screening of Cronenberg's latest "A Dangerous Method," one would think the festival was still going full-tilt. Everyone seemed to be discussing "The Artist" and whether it could really win this year's best picture award, or if that last third really was sleep inducing, or was it just the cold/flu/fatigue at festival's end???? and how much they hate the King Center for festival screenings, etc, etc.....And all of the anticipation seemed worthy of the new Cronenberg, it's definitely a riveting piece for the mind as well as the eye, nothing too fancy here save for the excellent recreation of the period and the strangely subdued, extremely thought-provoking banter amongst rival psychologists Freud and Jung. And if outmoded technology is a recurring theme, all I could think during the film was how sad it is to have lost the hand-written letter, first to email, now facebook, one day to something else. Where did these people get the time to write not just beautifully but long, flowing treatises of philosophical inspiration!! Maybe that's why both "A Dangerous Method" and "The Artist" are so timely, they strike chords in multiple ways that are so far removed from our lives, yet are only one hundred years old. Amazing. And of course, where else but the festival is one going to get to witness this in a crappy theater not meant for screening film but one that supports a large stage with no less than 5 local "Jung" specialists to dissect the film afterwards? That's the icing on the cake!
On a final note, this year is the last in which screenings will be held at the theaters in the Tivoli Center. The festival celebrated that night with screenings of some of the first films ever hosted at those screens at the inception of the festival 34 years ago. No doubt some crying ensued amongst staff and patrons that night, though we had to bow out of that nostalgia ourselves.
