There’s a lost generation of independent films relegated to a shrouded landscape of undeserved oblivion, so hats off to the critics Nick Pinkerton and Nic Rapold for bringing one of them, “Rhythm Thief,” back tonight to BAM Cinématek, along with its director, Matthew Harrison, to discuss the film.
The generation in question came along in the nineteen-nineties, when Hollywood gave itself a shot of energy with a new group of independent filmmakers, including Spike Lee, Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino, Gus Van Sant, Richard Linklater, Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Sofia Coppola, David Fincher, and Todd Haynes. Others, however, didn’t gain a foothold in the business. Even such a prime filmmaker as Whit Stillman didn’t make a new film for more than a decade, and others had trouble continuing, or had trouble getting their new work released, and the excellent movies with which they began fell by the wayside, too.
Such superbly original films as Wendell B. Harris, Jr.,’s “Chameleon Street” and Rob Tregenza’s “Talking to Strangers” didn’t help their makers launch directorial careers. After his exquisite début film, “Judy Berlin,” it took Eric Mendelsohn (full disclosure, a lifelong friend) more than a decade to follow up with the similarly lovely “3 Backyards.” The case of Hal Hartley is a little different: he has been busy but under the radar, and is reportedly making a new film, “Ned Rifle,” starring Aubrey Plaza and Parker Posey. But there are many more films and filmmakers to bring back. The reinvigoration of Matthew McConaughey’s reputation shouldn’t obscure his work in Jill Sprecher’s 2001 feature, “Thirteen Conversations About One Thing,” which followed her first feature, “Clockwatchers.” (That one featured Posey.) Julie Dash made “Daughters of the Dust”—and nothing in the past decade. Another friend, Eran Palatnik, made a surprisingly elaborate and intricate steampunk thriller, “The Rook,” starring Martin Donovan, and nothing more.
In some cases, the same “early work” syndrome occurs in the cinema as in the other arts: a first novel shines with a voice that’s, by definition, new, but sometimes that voice—a tone, a range of themes, a moral perspective—is more significant than the style or the approach to the art form. That’s certainly not the case with some of these directors (especially Harris and Tregenza), whose ideas about the cinema are as distinctive as their subjects. But it’s worth considering what distinguishes the independent films of that era from those films that came to the fore in the past decade. The short answer is: production and performance (again, with a few signal exceptions). The paradox of independent filmmaking is that it often replicates, on a low budget and a small scale, the commercial mainstream’s production process and approach to acting. On the one hand, that’s why many independent filmmakers of that time turned out to be Hollywood-ready when things worked out right. On the other, that’s why, for some, it was tough to come up with a cinematic Plan B when they didn’t.
I saw “Rhythm Thief” in a private screening, before it opened, and immediately admired Harrison’s tender but subtle comic inventiveness, his sense of place, and his hard-nosed practical vitality—the authentic tough-mindedness and feel for the desperately high stakes of just getting by. His follow-up, “Kicked in the Head” (which I haven’t seen), featured such notables as James Woods and Linda Fiorentino. It was executive-produced by Martin Scorsese—and received a vehement pan in the Times, and that may play a big part in its fall into obscurity (it also had an unenthusiastic capsule review in this magazine).
The rapidity in getting word out and the diversity of trenchant critical voices may be the biggest difference between independent film then and now. The current releases of such films as “It Felt Like Love,” “Soft in the Head,” and “Marvin Seth and Stanley“—and this is just one random cross-section of a given moment—suggest the artistic vigor of independent filmmaking today. Many movies that might have languished unacknowledged are now getting recognition—and, with Hollywood sticking mainly to franchise movies, everyone is now an independent.
The great ongoing movie discussion embraces an ever wider range of films and filmmakers, but the possibility of making a living from filmmaking remains as elusive as ever. What the effect of this difficulty has on the artistic destiny of today’s young luminaries—whether ultimately every generation is destined to be lost—remains to be seen. One of the justifications for the practice of criticism is to recognize and to pass along the flame. It’s also an example of programming as a crucial aspect of criticism—something worth noting while the centenary celebration of Henri Langlois, the founder of France’s Cinémathèque, is in full swing.
Photograph by Kino Lorber.
