Searching for a local place to watch quality 'art' films

By Maya Jewell

For me, one of the best movies of the year was David Mamet's delicately woven "The Winslow Boy," starring Rebecca Pigeon (Mamet's wife) and a gorgeously intense Jeremy Northam.

Oh yes, I was in line for "The Phantom Menace" on the night that it opened, with all of the other Star Wars crazies (you know who you are), standing outside Brenden Theatres in the cold, clutching my 14-day, advance-purchase ticket. And we had a blast.

But I also love art films. Until recently, I hadn't thought of the films I enjoyed as "art films." But if you mean quieter films in which the emphasis is on product rather than profit, that defines what I usually look for in a film.

When did quality stop being mainstream? Don't start talking about relativism. I have heard the-every-generation-thinks-the-current-generation's-art-is-trash argument. To be honest, I don't know for sure that the days of the Fondas, Hepburns, Kellys and Grants really were a golden age in film. Or if it just seems so in retrospect.

I do know (and I doubt that I will get any argument here) that if the "Grapes of Wrath" or just about anything by Hitchcock had been released today, Wall Street would have told Hollywood that there is no market for them. If they were made at all, they would have been considered independent, or art films.

Somehow, all of us, from studio execs to audience members, have gotten on this crazy blockbuster merry-go-round and no one seems to know how to get off. Bad film after bad film is being made and watched. Sure, there are some four-star, mass-market films here and there, such as "You've Got Mail," "Notting Hill" and "The Truman Show." But the high points are few, and the lows have reached new depths.

I came to this conclusion long ago and began a treasure hunt of sorts. I started with the old greats (and not-so-greats) and worked my way up. Hence, my interest in art films is fairly recent. The film that started me on that road was "Howard's End," a Merchant-Ivory flick released in 1992.

Maybe you remember. It was nominated for seven Academy awards, including Best Picture, and won an award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Emma Thompson took home an Oscar for Best Actress. The cast included two of the best actors of our century: Vanessa Redgrave and Anthony Hopkins.

"Howard's End" came to Fairfield around Oscar time and I remember being so moved by the performances, the visuals, the words in that film, I was speechless. And I thought, "Oh my, this is the art of cinema. That a passionate director can be driven by an idea and that by means of technology and a gifted band of artists, the power of his vision, undiminished, is relayed to millions of people around the world."

What else had I been missing? I started shopping. Always a Siskel & Ebert junkie, I began using their television show as a kind of wishbook for films I didn't think the Fairfield area would get and began haunting the video store. I've made lots of finds over the past few years and have introduced my friends to a couple that have developed a mini-cult following. I showed Mamet's Hitchcockian "The Spanish Prisoner" to some friends and a certain video store experienced a run on Mamet.

When I rented the comedy, "Cold Comfort Farm," for my friends, 10 minutes into the movie they vowed never to send me to the video store again. A few weeks later, a person I knew lightly "recommended" it to me after watching it on the advice of she-who-banned-me-from-the-video-store.

I must admit that unearthing these movies and introducing them to my circle adds to my enjoyment. But what really impresses me is the film-making itself. The good films are made by those artists who know best how to wield the brush.

Some of my favorite films are directed with a light touch. I don't want every conclusion drawn for me, or every point driven home with a hammer. Give me the shadow sometimes and allow me to discover the substance for myself. Film is not about plot, or characters, or even words. At its greatest, it is about ideas.

The greats explore basic tenets of humanity with which we struggle. Perhaps not in everyday life, but these things are what we know life is really about underneath the grime and elbow grease. Underneath the day-to-day grind, the struggle to make ends meet, to keep our kids in line, the stifling routine between getting up in the morning and going to bed at night. We know that life is about love, honor, happiness, duty, laughter and dreams. Music, theater and literature all remind of us this; cinema can combine the best elements of these.

William Faulkner said it best when he wrote that a writer's privilege (and this can be true of all great artists, filmmakers included), is "to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice . . . the poet's voice need not merely be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail."