Telluride is a rare breed among film festivals: a true celebration of international cinema featuring everything from forgotten old gems to the newest works by both world-renowned and promising amateur directors.
Founded in 1974 by Tom Luddy and Dartmouth's own Bill Pence, the event -- "like Cannes died and went to heaven," Roger Ebert once mused -- has always focused on bringing more idiosyncratic works to the attention of the filmmaking world. Over the past 32 years, the festival has attracted movie icons, auteurs and critics alike to the eponymous small Colorado town and has paid tribute to such notables as Francis Ford Coppola, David Lynch and Peter O'Toole.
This is the 20th year that the Hopkins Center is bringing a sampler of Telluride films to Dartmouth. The six films on the 2005 agenda are the moody biopic "Capote," Michael Haneke's enigmatic "Cach," the unusual coming-of-age story "Breakfast on Pluto," the haunting Holocaust film "Fateless," the tale of two Palestinian suicide bombers "Paradise Now" and the William H. Macy vehicle "Edmond."
Telluride gives the Dartmouth community and Upper Valley residents a rare opportunity to see some of fall's most auspicious international offerings months before their release dates. The lineup is indeed impressive, proving a worthy follow-up to last year's selections, which featured some of 2004's best films, including "Finding Neverland" and "Bad Education."
Though densely packed orientation schedules and irregular sleeping patterns preclude many Dartmouth students from making these showings, it is highly recommended that they keep an eye on what will be playing next fall. The following are impressions of two of the first three films shown this week.
"Capote"
Philip Seymour Hoffman deserves -- and will get -- an Oscar nomination for his role as Truman Capote, whose novel, "In Cold Blood," was one of the 20th century's most important non-fiction works. The novel, a haunting and moving portrayal of a convicted murderer, is particularly revered for its tremendous impact as an early work of "literary journalism."
At the heart of the film is Capote's developing relationship with Perry Smith, who is put on death row for ruthlessly killing an entire Kansas farming family, after Capote is sent by the New Yorker to cover the story in 1959. The film follows the trials Capote meets in writing his last and most enduring work and follows his social exploits among New York intellectuals, particularly with his childhood friend (and the literary world's favorite one-hit wonder) Harper Lee, who is played with quiet reserve by the always welcome Catherine Keener.
Hoffman's phenomenal performance is mannered, eccentric, consistent without fail and alternately wise, funny and sad. The last 20 minutes of the film alone should garner him many end-of-the-year awards; it is a portrayal that will stay with you long after the final credits have rolled.
"Breakfast on Pluto"
Here is a film that is as bizarre as its title implies. Cillian Murphy plays Patrick Brady, an abandoned orphan turned runaway transvestite, setting forth on a picaresque journey into 1970s London in search of his love, his freedom and his mother. Along the way, he becomes, among other things, a fledgling rock band groupie, a magician's assistant and a wrongfully accused nightclub bomber. The movie bulges at the sides with tendencies toward excess, piling on side stories that, contrary to the film's intentions, only highlight the thinness of the central plot.
Despite Murphy's astonishing performance, the movie as a whole cannot sustain its 135 minutes. With its episodic and relentlessly meandering narrative structure, the film ultimately feels like the longest movie ever made. Indeed, when Patrick finally does find what he's looking for, one cannot help but wonder why it took him so long.
