Film Comment Review

o ed e lhul rutlstehti:oCa hy oiDc eeFS achel RosenTRTyFBfJ llFeeibntasDc ad nnaw dl i vWeyDW efestivalsShadows he same blustery day that visitors made their way toPark City for the opening of this year’s festival, Geor g eBush was sworn into office. This concurrence raisedTthe question of what Sundance’s often liberal, social-issue-oriented documentary competition would have to offer sosoon after the left’s activist, agitprop filmmaking failed to swaythe electorate. While the competition included the usual run from the hiplye n t e rtaining to the historically important—with a few stops alongthe way for the triumph of the human spirit—the documentariesthat focused on current issues forwent the high dudgeon andslapdash stylings of the election’s political offerings in favor of as i m p l e r, more personal, if no less pointed approach. Most werebuilt around vivid human subjects who convincingly conveyedtheir perspectives through emotional details.Eugene Jar e c k i ’s , a pointed examination of thecosts of American militarization, took the competition’s juryprize. The film uses a rich, panoramic approach to take on them i l i t a ry-industrial complex, the alienation of the U.S. publicf rom foreign policy, and the exploitation of the countr y ’s conceptof freedom and patriotism, interweaving commentary from thelikes of Gore Vidal and John McCain with ...