American Independent Cinema - Essay Example

By the time John Sayles directed his first feature film, Return of the Secaucus 7, he was already a well-regarded script doctor as well as an who had been nominated for a National Book Award -- this latter accomplishment coming for his second novel titled Union Dues. This brief but significant resume, as it turns out, was indicative of the kind of filmmaker John Sayles became, both in this first film and in his long and storied career. He is a writer first, and tells stories of dense personal histories played out against the backgrounds of social, economic, and tribal environments. His films are literary in the sense that they are unerringly sympathetic to the emotional contexts and real-world environments of the diverse communities he has explored. He has built his body of work not on action and special effects, but on life’s details and the responses of his characters to the world around them. To put it more succinctly, as Ryan writes in a critical analysis of the filmmaker and his work, Sayles “takes pleasure in telling a good story” (p. 9). Despite the fact that he has met with great critical success in the world of independent film, where such storytelling can succeed because it is aimed at an audience that is interested in quiet, powerful expressions of human interest in exactly the kinds of context that Sayles has made his own, Sayles has never really achieved extensive commercial success – nor has he, more surprisingly, been the subject of much summary critical assessment of his model independent film career. Bould writes that Sayles is “the pre-eminent American filmmaker of the last thirty years, at least in the sense that his films are about America, its people, landscapes, histories, and language” and claims that he is “considered by many the godfather of contemporary American independent cinema” – but he points out that Sayles has not received the volume of critical analysis in academic writing that his work deserves (p. 1). In this brief essay, the work of John Sayles will be summarized, with a critical look at his most important films – focusing especially on his seminal work, Lone Star – in order to show why he has become among the most important of all independent American filmmakers. When the Return of the Secaucus 7 was first viewed by critics, in 1979, he was hailed as a fresh young talent for his story about a group of friends that came together for a weekend in New England as they approached mature adulthood and their early 30s. These friends, a group of former 60s radicals, were attempting to come to terms with their former lives, relationships, political ideologies, and an approaching maturity. Sayles made the film for a mere $60,000. Having little formal experience and training as a director, but relying instead on his storytelling ability, Sayles made the film with an ensemble cast of largely unknown actor and used simple, naturalistic techniques to keep the story moving along. In an essay by Armstrong, Sayles is quoted as follows, in describing his technique for making the low-budget film interesting: I knew I wouldn’t have enough time for camera movement or a whole lot of action…I had a whole bunch of people and made it like Nashville where you can always cut away to another little sub-plot, and it seems to be moving even though the shots are static. Having placed his work aesthetically, therefore, within the company of directors like Robert Altman, who made Nashville, Sayles made a debut movie that would inform other later independent directors such as Lawrence Kasdan, who made the more commercially successful film The Big Chill, which dealt with some of the same themes in similar ways. Like those directors, Sayles builds stories piece by piece, like a work of fiction, sometimes allowing the camera to remain fixed on a given scene and using dialogue and excellent acting to great effect. It is this aesthetic approach, perhaps more than any other, that characterizes a John Sayles’ film. He turned the economics of his production into a plus, using spare camera work in a way that emphasized story (Bould, p. 52). In this technique, he is distinguished from other (later) independent filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, Charlie Kaufman, and Spike Jonze, who developed “quirkiness” of technique – either through unorthodox timelines or imaginative camera work – as a cinematic art. He is thereby regarded as a filmmaker of “broad human canvases” who “never allows the camera to become a character” (Armstrong). Having begun his career with a film about politics, relationships, and self-discovery, Sayles went to work on a succession of films that explored a variety of communities and themes that furthered his consideration of the human experience. Each successive film was quiet in its way, but had great impact on the development of independent film history, as described by Armstrong in his excellent essay on Sayles’ work. His 1982 film Lianna explored sexuality and lesbianism in a way that foreshadowed, for example, The Color Purple. His 1984 film The Brother from Another Planet considered the effects of drugs and violence in the African American community in a way that was suggestive of the revival of Blaxploitation films that came later with Spike Lee and others. Later films also told familiar tales that impacted the industry with their sociopolitical messages. Matewan in 1987 and City of Hope in 1991 dealt with the juxtaposition of labor and industry and the effects that commercial development and capital have on common working families. Eight Men Out, in 1988, weighed the 1919 Black Sox baseball scandal and portrayed America’s obsession with sports in a way that showed how individual integrity can fall prey to temptation. Passion Fish considered the effects of physical handicaps and multiculturalism on small town people. Each of these films and others explored the ways that people reacted to the realities they faced in everyday life and quietly suggested that the individual can overcome his circumstances even as the world bears down upon him. In both style and technique, therefore, Sayles’ oeuvre has both borrowed from and informed the independent film experiments in what Armstrong calls “polyphonic” storytelling – thereby placing Sayles at the center of the independent filmmaking world with directors like Altman, and Paul Thomas Anderson (Armstrong). In his own words – detailed in an interview with Philip Wuntch in 1995 – Sayles argued that “community – or the lack of it – is very important.” As a storyteller and filmmaker Sayles has attempted to address what he sees as the American approach to this problem: Americans have a sense of restlessness. We’re nomadic. Very few of us live where our ancestors lived. But we find our sense of community in other things – sports-car racing, the Dallas Cowboys, belonging to a religious group, being members of an elite economic circle. But it’s a created community, not a natural one. In this sense, Sayles’ films have almost the feel of a sociological approach, but a naturalistic one in intent. He directs moves like Jack London (perhaps) wrote fiction, in a way that takes one into the story and allows one to live in another’s skin. By doing so, Sayles ultimately offers insights into both personal choice and independent filmmaking as a developed product. In order to see this more clearly it is helpful to review perhaps his best known work. Lone Star, released in 1996, is generally considered to be Sayles’ masterpiece. Often included among lists detailing the greatest independent films, this story tells the story of a sheriff of a small border town in Texas who is attempting to come to grips with the legacy of his idolized father (a former sheriff) even as he investigates a murder that he believes may have been committed by him. The story deals with race relations, love and romance, familial obligation, personal integrity, and other powerful personal and social forces within the context of a heated social melting pot. It also deals in a sublimated way with the relationship of independent film to its cultural ancestors. The acting in the film is excellent (and highlights the career development of such stars as Matthew McConaughey and Chris Cooper), but the film’s most powerful draw is in the way that the story comes together – “cinching” as Ryan puts it – the characters into a course of action that forces them to come to terms with mythologized legends of Texas and local culture, other races, their own personal prejudices, and preconceived notions of American homogeneity. The small town sheriff searches to find the killer of a brutal sheriff that his father served under, and as he discovers the details of the long-forgotten time, he must deal with his own rebellion against his father. No one in the town wants to talk about the past, and the racial and economic conflicts that lie just under the surface of the present serve only to exacerbate his search. His one source of comfort is a Mexican-American female teacher whom he was forbidden to see as a youth because – he believed—his father was a racist tyrant. He eventually comes to find that the teacher is his sister, a love child the father had with one of the town’s maternal Mexican powerbrokers. In this shocking discovery, he realizes that his father was attempting not to hurt him but to protect. The film also suggests in this development that any supposed eventual marriage between Anglo and Mexican culture is not only impossible, but perhaps unavoidably doomed – that societies remain separated for good reasons. Here are reasons that boys should rebel against their fathers, even if the fathers are trying to look out for them, and there are reasons that cultures should be wary of each other, even if they want to come together. This push-pull suggests that film ought to remain independent and cultures should remain authentic. Here, as in his other films, Sayles simply tells the story with observant eyes, and allows the psychological and sociological import of the events to build to their shattering conclusions. However, as in his other films, he suggests way out through overcoming circumstances. In the final scene in which the Sheriff and his sister-lover are sitting on the hood of his car at an abandoned drive-in theatre, Sayles gives the character a piece of dialogue that stresses the importance of always starting over, from scratch, in order to be true to oneself. His direction of the camera pulls back to show the blank screen of the drive-in (as well as the empty lot) in a way that is suggestive for the “characters” in real life as the “story” of their filmed lives ends (Ryan, p. 231). They can move forward and make their own choices. However, Sayles also seems to say filmmakers get to decide what is important to them, what they will choose to value, how they will choose to live. Like their subjects, they must choose to face risk if they are to find true love. The work of John Sayles, as shown in this very brief review is indicative of a body of work that has much to say about the American experience as well as cinematic process and technique. Some directors who have made independent films have gone on to work in big budget movies as soon as they make their names. Sayles, on the other hand, as indicated in the last shots of Lone Star, has remained true to his isolated and independent roots. He has indicated an interest along the way in making money to survive (Lyman), but his primary interest has been and continues to be in making films that appeal to him. He has made films which allow him to explore stories that he finds interesting. He has done so in a way that continues to draw small crowds, but loyal followings. As such he is one of the most important independent film directors and an excellent chronicler of the American experience. References Armstrong, R. (1999). “Great Directors: John Sayles” Senses of Cinema, Issue 31, [online] http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2004/great-directors/sayles/ [Accessed August 12, 2011]. Bould, M. (2009). The Cinema of John Sayles: Lone Star (Brighton, UK: Wallflower Press). Lyman, R. (1983) “Sayles Talk,” in Diane Carson (Ed.) John Syles: Interviews (University of Mississippi Press). Ryan, J. (1998). John Sayles, Filmmaker: A Critical Study of the Independent Writer-Director 9Jefferson, NC: McFarlan & Company). Wuntch, P. (1995). “Seeking a Sense of Community,” in Diane Carson (Ed.) John Syles: Interviews (University of Mississippi Press). Read More