Sundance is an overwhelming event, and I heard from some veterans of the festival that this was a somewhat difficult year to encapsulate, despite Robert Redford’s call to watch serious movies for serious times. But most of the best movies I saw at Sundance had a certain joy to them, even when discussing difficult ideas or events, and the very best had a marvelous sense of humor. I haven’t published full reviews of all of these movies yet, though I’ll catch up in coming days, so bookmark this page if you want a guide to the best independent movies that will be coming to theaters this year.

DOCUMENTARIES

Under African Skies: It says a lot about how wonderful I thought the music-making part of this story about Paul Simon’s Graceland, and his return to South Africa decades later, that I’m willing to forgive its less-than-stellar work on the cultural boycott of South Africa. It’s a debate about the responsibility artists owe politics that’s too heavily weighted in one direction. But the video footage of the recording sessions is amazing, as are the interviews with South African musicians about everything from what it was like to have this strange Paul Simon dude show up and want to work with them to what it was like to be able to go to Central Park without a pass.

The Invisible War: There’s nothing particularly stylistically innovative about Kirby Dick’s documentary about the epidemic of rape in the U.S. military. But the movie falls with the force of a sledgehammer, exposing as ineffective and dishonest the brass in the armed forces responsible for keeping women and men safe, and making it clear that an epidemic of sexual assault is hurting both men and women, and driving out of the armed forces exactly the people the Pentagon should most want to keep there.

The Atomic States of America: Based on Kelly McMaster’s memoir of growing up in a town on Long Island polluted by atomic runoff, the movie is the story of an agency captured by powerful interests and backed up by powerful presumptions of authority, and the ordinary citizens who have fought back against the industry they believe is poisoning their communities. I’d have been curious to hear more about how citizens in other countries that are more dependent on atomic energy than we are, but it’s amazing looking into our past romance of the peaceful atom—and thinking about what it means for our uncertain energy future.

Love Free or Die: Bishop Gene Robinson’s story has been told before, and the first openly gay Anglican bishop is hardly a retiring figure. But Macky Alston’s wonderful documentary isn’t just about him. It’s about the difficult process of organizing within the Anglican church, which shut Robinson out of the Lambeth Conference, to make it a more welcoming and affirming institution for the gay people who have kept faith with it. And the movie argues that a gay rights movement without the faith community is leaving power and influence on the table, and risks making gay people choose between love and faith.

The Queen of Versailles: Tons of ink and miles of film have been devoted to chronicling American excess in a recession age. But it’s hard to imagine that anything will do better than this story about David and Jackie Siegel, who built an empire selling time-shares to people who couldn’t afford them and then pushed themselves to the brink of financial ruin by building what would have been the largest house in America. Whether it’s expertly breaking down the housing crisis’ role in the crash or chronicling the horrifying wastefulness of the Siegel’s consumer spending, The Queen of Versailles is funny, biting, and utterly American.

FICTION
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Cliche and uncreative as it may be, Graceland is one of my all-time favorite albums, so I was intrigued by the idea of Paul Simon traveling back to South Africa, reuniting with the musicians he worked with to make the album—and perhaps most importantly, sitting down with Dali Tambo, the founder of Artists Against Apartheid, and really listening to why people were upset that he broke the South African boycott. Under African Skies, the documentary that premiered at Sundance, doesn’t really live up to that last promise. Tambo gets to tell the story and significance of the boycott only in brief statements rather than an extended narrative, and the movie ends with an unqualified pardon for Simon given everything that’s come in years past. But even if we only get half the story I hoped we would from it, Simon still offers a forceful articulation of the idea, which I don’t entirely agree with, that artists should stay entirely separate from governments and movements, even ones they disagree with.

“I saw right then and there that Paul resisted the idea,” of at least notifying the African National Congress he was coming to South Africa, Harry Belafonte recalls of Simon’s reaction when Belafonte made that recommendation.”The power of art was supreme…and to go to any group and bed for right of passage was against his instincts.” Later, in one of the movie’s many celebrity endorsements, Simon says “I thought about writing political songs about the situation, but I’m not actually that good at it,” only for Peter Gabriel to come in to talk about how much more effective Graceland was than his own protest anthem “Biko.” And Simon says he’s resistant to the idea that art should be explicitly put at the service of politics. Politicians, he suggests, tell artists to “come and take the love and respect people have for you and transfer it to this candidate by your support. The artists are always treated as if they worked for the politicians.”

But I think there’s a bit of a false choice here that Under African Skies doesn’t quite acknowledge. Doing the ANC the courtesy of letting them know you’re coming to town isn’t the same thing as accepting approval to come on the condition that you write certain songs or do certain performances, and it wouldn’t have taken away from Simon’s ability to arrange for the Graceland tour to come to Zimbabwe or to sing the then-banned South African national anthem at those shows in a demonstration of racial unity. In the movie, Simon says he was viscerally disturbed by the racism he witnessed while recording in South Africa, including comments by engineers that the inability by black South African musicians to master part of a song was proof of their racial prejudices. Hooking up with anti-apartheid groups could have given Simon some context for what he was dealing with. There is a middle ground between seeking out information about what you’re confronting and how to behave respectfully and compassionately in a new situation, and turning yourself into an artist-for-hire to political parties. History has validated Simon’s approach to promoting the album and the artists involved, including anti-apartheid activist Miriam Makeba and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, who he brought to international prominence. But that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t possible for him to act in a more consultative manner at the time.

All of that aside, Under African Skies is just a fantastic making-of-the-album movie. There’s a ton of video footage available from Simon’s recording sessions in South Africa and of Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s reporting trip to New York (in one of the movie’s most heart-wrenching stories, the members of the group asked Simon where they had to go to get a pass that would permit them to visit Central Park during that journey). It’s amazing to see the music come together, to see the role that dance played in the recording process, and to see Simon’s wonder as he discovers something entirely new. And it’s a gift that so many of the South African artists involved could come back to discuss their memories of the collective creative process. In a particularly terrific moment, Lorne Michaels tells Simon before he and Ladysmith Black Mambazo go on stage to reveal their songs to the world “If it doesn’t work, we’ll just cut it.” What a wonderful thing for music that he was wrong.