The 51st Telluride Film Festival offered stimulating choices

The 51st Telluride Film Festival presented an impressive, eclectic group of films, as always. Most of the fifteen I watched over this past Labor Day weekend divided into three main topics: tragic historical and contemporary events, iconic individuals, and an array of remarkable, unique characters. In that first category, archival footage was often integrated seamlessly into dramatized, suspenseful content.

Derived from the past or drawn from the present, standouts in that category include the following. Current and critically important, directors Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault’s “Zurawski v Texas” documents Texas’ restrictive anti-abortion law that denies an abortion even to save a woman’s life. Through straightforward reporting, court case footage, and interviews with pregnant women at risk of death, the inhumane law is personalized with courageous lawyer Molly Duane at the helm. At the post-screening discussion, Executive producers Hillary and Chelsea Clinton spoke passionately about their support of women’s right to their own decisions.

Also addressing a critical ongoing issue, through first-person interviews and discussion, directors Bonni Cohen and Jon Shenk’s “In Waves and War” surveys the struggles of distinguished Afghanistan veterans, men more than four times as likely to commit suicide as to die in their wartime service. Hope resides in all but miraculous healing through psychoactive medicine that is, however, only available in Mexico.  

Lodged in historical trauma, director Tim Fehlbaum’s “September 5” dramatizes the 1972 Munich Olympics terrorist killing of Israeli athletes and coaches entirely from the vantage point of the ABC Sports control room. One-time St. Louisan and Washington University graduate Peter Sarsgaard plays ABC executive producer Roone Arledge in a suspenseful unfolding of the tragic Black September attack. Over fifty years later, the painful shock and intense horror of this extremism has not diminished.

Recounting equally appalling events, director ReMell Ross’s “Nickel Boys” adapts Colson Whitehead’s 2019 novel that revealed the brutality of the historic Dozier School after unmarked graves were found at the Nickel Academy. Investigation uncovered repulsive treatment at this Florida reform site for over one hundred years. The film focuses the life-sustaining friendship between teenagers Elwood Curtis and Jack Turner. Cross-cutting between the 1960s and 2010s, Ross chooses first-person, subjective camera for the first third of the film, segueing to more conventional technique in the last half. Highlighting the resilience of both young men, “Nickel Boys” burrows deep into the emotional and physical pain the school’s sadistic, merciless treatment caused.  

Such discriminatory behavior dominates director/star Embeth Davidtz “Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight.” Adapted by Davidtz from Alexandra Fuller’s memoir, set in 1980 Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), brutal apartheid reigns. Told entirely from eight-year-old Bobo’s point-of-view, her parents and older sister fight to hold on to their farm despite clearly inhumane apartheid. Through another family, here a husband, wife, and two teenage daughters, Iranian writer/director Mohammad Rasoulof’s “The Seed of the Scared Fig” metaphorically addresses the Iranian crackdown on women who refuse to wear the hijab. Footage of actual political protests confirm the indictment of the authoritarian regime, as does the father Iman’s role as an investigator who will sign death warrants. Rasoulof has endured three prison sentences and is forbidden to work in Iran where authorities have sentenced him to a prison term of eight years. The film is an absorbing microcosm of the devastation intolerance causes—personally and professionally.

By contrast, in Edward Berger’s “Conclave,” Roman Catholic cardinals convene to choose a new Pope, a formidable task given the political intrigue and jockeying for power. Sequestered for the duration of the election the twists and turns keep revealing depths of deceitful, cunning machinations. Ralph Fiennes, Stanley Tucci, and John Lithgow hold center stage in dynamic performances.

Other films cast their spotlight on noted individuals, a few using nonfiction and others engaging an individual in a fictionalized interpretation. Unique among them, and immensely entertaining, is Morgan Neville’s animated “Piece by Piece” made entirely with LEGO tiles. Chronologically traces musician Pharrell Williams’ life in the Virginia Beach housing project through his music and producing career, it brings his world to dazzling life. He reports feeling he didn’t ever fit in despite his monumental artistic achievements for himself and other musicians. If Williams’ “Happy” is not sufficient enticement, he wrote five original songs for “Piece by Piece,” lifting the film into the stratosphere of unique entertainment.

Also featuring one famous person, Chilean director Pablo Larraín’s “Maria” finds Maria Callas wondering if she can reignite her career in her last days. Wandering around Paris, confronting a reporter’s questions, and interacting with her devoted housemaid and her long-time butler, Maria comes to vivid life through the performance of Angelina Jolie. At the post film discussion, Jolie said she had the best job in the world as she studied opera for six months, blending her voice with Callas’ in the tantalizing moments from Callas’ enchanting opera roles. Multiple award-winning cinematographer Ed Lachman interprets this world through sumptuous details: golden hues, compositions mimicking a proscenium viewpoint as his camera inches in on her world. As Larraín said, “The music is and defines the film.”

There were also fine comedies, though even they resonated with weighty subtexts. For example, writer/director and star of “A Real Pain,” Jesse Eisenberg as David and cousin Benji (Kieran Culkin) visit Poland after their grandmother’s death to find her original home. The cousins’ ying/yang personalities prompt laughter throughout their travels that reverentially include their visit to a Polish cemetery and a concentration camp as they reconsider their and their grandmother’s Jewish lives. Also facing grief, in “The Friend,” Iris (Naomi Watts) must contend with her mentor’s (Bill Murray) wish that she adopt his Great Dane Apollo, though her New York apartment rules forbid dogs. Directors Scott McGehee and David Siegel leaven a serious reconsideration of one’s career and personal life, plus coping with death, through the antics and irresistible gaze of Great Dane Bing who plays Apollo.

Similarly director Malcolm Washington’s adaptation of August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” adds humor to an incisive and insightful commentary on racism, family, and friendship. Friendship also buoys Indian nurses in Mumbai as they face serious challenges in director Payal Kapadia’s “All We Imagine as Light.” Nurse Prabha has not seen her arranged marriage husband, residing in Germany, for two years. Prabha’s friend Anu hides a discreet romance with Muslim Shiaz while another friend, Parvaty, is forced from her low-rent apartment by gentrification. The women’s casual interaction probes the depths of economically difficult life in Mumbai.

Also facing personal threats, Mexican drug kingpin Manitas Del Monte decides to transition from male to female in French director Jacques Audiard’ “Emilia Pérez.” A musical and a triumph of great performances by Zoe Saldana, Selena Gomez, and Karla Sofía Gascón, the film blends humor, suspense, violence, and fabulous dancing. Not the last of the sessions I attended but among the best, recipient of the Silver Medallion, Thelma Schoonmaker described experiences over her editing of twenty-two films for Martin Scorsese. Schoonmaker introduced three clips (one each from “Raging Bull,” “Goodfellas,” and “Killers of the Flower Moon”), showed selected scenes, and then gave an in-depth analysis of the editing in each, thereby providing a master class accentuating brilliant technical decision making. The Telluride Film Festival’s superb assembly of diverse films gave me a thorough immersion in arresting images and provocative insights. As these films open over the next months, I’ll analyze each in depth as I also look forward to screening all of them again.