Beyond the Multiplex

Dec. 14, 2006 | We're a week or so away from the bewildering deluge of films -- good, bad or indifferent, but all with grand ambitions -- that will come raining down upon us in the last 10 days of the year. Two dark-horse award candidates do surface this week: a sober, straightforward drama about Iraq veterans coming home to irreparably altered lives, starring Samuel L. Jackson in a memorable performance; and a tender, melancholy two-hander for Tim Robbins and Sarah Polley, set on an oil rig in the North Sea.

Surveying the immediate past and immediate future of the indie-film landscape, I arrive at an apparent paradox. It's ending up as no better than a middling year for independent cinema, and surprise hits like "Little Miss Sunshine" or "An Inconvenient Truth" may make the picture look brighter, both aesthetically and economically, than it really is. At the same time, award season this year looks wide open to movies big and small, and audiences seem hungrier for unconventional material than most intellectual gloomster film-critic types are ready to admit.

If prestige Hollywood spectacles such as Paul Greengrass' "United 93" and Clint Eastwood's "Letters From Iwo Jima" look, right now, like leading Oscar contenders, so do Stephen Frears' "The Queen" and Todd Field's "Little Children." Nobody would be surprised to see a foreign-language film -- maybe Pedro Almodóvar's "Volver," Guillermo del Toro's "Pan's Labyrinth" or the German secret-police drama "The Lives of Others" (which won't be released until February) nominated in one or more major categories. I'm sure I'll get several more opportunities to refer to the director of that last film, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who must possess the most delicious name in world cinema right now. Start dropping it on your friends: "So, what do you make of Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck? The real thing, or just pretentious Eurotrash?"

Meanwhile, David Lynch's self-distribution of "Inland Empire," probably the most difficult film of his entire career, got off to a rousing start last weekend, grossing $38,000 at just two theaters, in New York and Boston. I know, that doesn't even buy one severed head for Mel Gibson. But releasing a film is a question of scale, and if Lynch and his partners can get results like that at a handful of art houses, they could actually make their murky and disturbing three-hour movie profitable. (Lynch's "Mulholland Drive," by contrast, was distributed too widely in too many markets, and actually lost money at the box office, despite generating tons of ink and energizing a universe of hardcore fans.)

Of course there have been disappointments. Despite a massive publicity push, Richard Linkater's ambitious farrago "Fast Food Nation" sank almost without a trace. "Half Nelson" and "Shortbus," two pictures much adored by critics that will turn up on lots of 10-best lists, generated modest art-house audiences but nothing more. Kelly Reichardt's "Old Joy," one of the year's best-reviewed films, won't even gross $200,000. As always, there were good films released this year -- "The Aura," "Flannel Pajamas," "Lunacy," "Requiem" -- that for various reasons almost nobody went to see. They must await the redemptive promise of life eternal on DVD.

It's a ruthless business, like life itself, and as we cast a cold eye at the casualty list we also look forward. I'll have more to say about the list of upcoming premieres at Sundance in due course (I'll be there, shivering among the stars), but by this time next month we'll be talking about the films set to become 2007's hits and flops. Here's the early, early line: Watch out for Gregg Araki's stoner epic "Smiley Face," Justin Lin's Bruce Lee mockumentary "Finishing the Game," Steve Buscemi's cryptic thriller "Interview," Craig Brewer's erotic Southern Gothic "Black Snake Moan" and Mike White's bittersweet comedy "The Year of the Dog." On with the show.

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