Sundance.2

I take back what I said yesterday. Sometimes you do see famous people when you go to public screenings of Sundance movies. Last night, for instance, this man was in the audience:

His name is Treat Williams and he, in his younger days, looked something like this:

I'm assuming this look is what made him famous, because heaven knows I couldn't recall anything he'd been in off the top of my head. (Turns out he most recently appeared as James Franco's character's dad in 127 Hours. My cousin plays the woman who, with her family, finds Franco after he makes it out of the canyon, which puts me at two degrees from Treat Williams. Woo!)

THE MOVIE

Last night marked another first for me, in that it was the first Sundance screening I've been to where we actually got to hear from a filmmaker of the movie. The director/writer of The Ledge, Matthew Chapman, introduced the movie and then conducted a Q&A afterward. Hearing from the creative mind behind the film always humanizes the whole experience and made me much more forgiving towards what was an otherwise mediocre picture.

Matthew Chapman

Within the first ten minutes of the movie we see a man, later identified as Gavin (Charlie Hunnam), ascending to the roof of a very tall, very imposing building and perching himself on a ledge. Police Detective "Just Call Me Hollis" (Terrence Howard), who has just learned some disheartening personal news, is tasked with talking Gavin to safety. Hilarity ensues.

I kid, of course. The movie is appropriately somber and also pervasively melodramatic, with a weirdly uneven creepy vibe that was a little off-putting for me. We learn through a sort of flashback-narrative (kudos to Chapman for accomplishing this without any sappy voiceovers) that Gavin, who is single and heterosexual but lives with a gay roommate (Christopher Gorham), has fallen for neighbor Shaina (Liv Tyler), who, happily, is also heterosexual but married to handsome Joe (Patrick Wilson), a Christian fundamentalist nutcase.

The script focuses largely on philosophical issues concerning religious idealogy; at one point, Gavin and Joe sit across a table from each other and debate the existence of God, the necessity of baptism, and the nature of heaven and hell. Such conversations can and should be enlightening and thought-provoking, but Joe is so born-again crazy that it's hard to take his character seriously, while Gavin is really only there to nail Shaina.

And here's where things get a little strange. Joe may be a religious fanatic but he turns out to be pretty astute when it comes to recognizing that his wife just might be falling for another, less intimidating, man. Without being too specific, it's possible that Joe's persistent fundamentalism combined with the jealousy he feels at losing Shaina just maybe, maaaaybe, might have something to do with Gavin being out on that ledge. The director tries, in the final twenty minutes or so, to turn the whole thing into a thrilling nailbiter, complete with a jumping-off-the-ledge countdown, a hostage situation, and a frantic man hunt. Everything falls kind of flat, though, due in part at least to Liv Tyler's vacantly monotone performance (although in fairness the stilted script did her no favors) and an almost complete lack of buildup to the final will-he-or-won't-he moment.

Grade: C

Q&A

Happily, however, we stuck around after the credits and got to hear from a very genteel Matthew Chapman. He hinted at (but didn't dwell on) his budget constraints in making the movie, which affected everything from the shooting location to his camera work to the amount of takes they were able to complete for a scene. A limited budget is no excuse for poor writing, but it does affect the overall effect of the film and could have something to do with its uneven tone. Chapman also discussed how it's best to write what you're interested in, and for him that apparently includes religion and philosophy. His script isn't exactly mindbending, but it's clear that he made a great deal of effort to include ideas that are resonant to him on a personal level. I really enjoyed hearing from him, despite the obsequious and rambling questions asked by the audience members, and felt much more generous towards the movie as a result. Which, I guess, is one of the purposes of Sundance.