This year I pretty much knew I wouldn't be able to see anywhere near as many films, but that didn't stop me from seeing what I could.
Thursday night my folks and I Q'd for Particle Fever, which was a very enjoyable film. The subject matter was, of course, way over my head, but the film did a pretty good job of bringing it down to "my level". I loved the question: how can you make a film that is truly about finding a number (the weight of the Higgs boson)? To me, this was also symbolic of the LHC itself... how can you place all your bets on this one machine with a sole purpose of finding out this number, and which there is no guarantee it will work? And I loved it when one of the subjects compared the media attention of the first experiment with the LHC to Edison inventing the lightbulb: if there were all this same media hype and all these people watching his 2,000+ failed inventions, would we have the lightbulb today?
Friday we went to see Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart. It was not on my "must-watch" list, but I know that I shouldn't let that deter me (after the first year where the films on my must-watch list turned out to be my least favorite films of the fest, I don't hedge my bets on the descriptions of the films). So, I was very surprised at how much I liked this film. Pame Smart's trial was within my lifetime, but it was not the kind of thing my family watched, so I knew very little going into this film. And what I thought was so great about the film is how it really wasn't about that particular trial and what happened to this one person. Rather, it was about how the media shapes our perceptions of the world, of people, of events. And the film itself was fascinatingly self-aware of it's role as part of that shaping mechanism. The director even spoke about that after the film... how his job is to craft this compelling story, building tension with certain filmmaker tricks, that editing in general is a crafting of the story, and perhaps the point of the film is not whether or not Pamela Smart is guilty, but whether our legal system and the media are separated enough for us to get it right. It got me really thinking about that and how fundamentally great it is to see a film that is not only pointing that out but practically exploiting it before your very eyes. Beautifully crafted and interesting film, however, I wouldn't completely disagree with the Variety review that suggested the film beats its premise to a pulp.
Saturday I saw E-Team, another great film. I wasn't sure how this film would affect me because human rights is a big deal in my book. I knew this film had the potential to make me really angry, distressed, or just flat-out horrified (I can't handle another Burma VJ, I just can't do it), but thankfully E-Team did all of those things but at a lower level. I was particularly stunned by main subject, Anna, who seems to resonate some sort of anti-fear. "Fiery" does not really begin to describe her well enough. I felt like this film presented hope in the form of these covert-ops people, a hope that is potentially strong enough to overcome the dire situations where governments/dictators are attacking their own people.
And then I saw Tim's Vermeer. I was most excited to see this film (how could I not be... I was an art major, an admirer of Vermeer and other Dutch "painters of light", and further, the subject of this film - Tim - invented the machine that gave me such a headache at my last job). So, yeah, I missed the Q&A of E-Team to get into this film (part of me wishes I hadn't). Tim's Vermeer was certainly a good film. I thought the invention and the reveal of how Vermeer "might" have painted was really cool and the fact that Tim stuck with the project was certainly a lesson in what it takes to finish a project, however, parts of it dragged a bit and it certainly wasn't as exciting as the other three films I saw. (Plus, the subject said something that totally confirmed how I feel about his inventions... he said he invents until something works and then basically calls it done. That totally explains why I could continually be frustrated by the Tricaster product that worked until it broke and then there were no solutions. I prefer engineers who continue to perfect a product and take pride in making all of their inventions as perfect as possible. So, I guess my opinion is tainted.)
So, which was my favorite? I don't think I can pick one. I enjoyed them all, but none stands way above the others. I guess I picked well this year, no?
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