Documentaries best of the fest

Now that this year's Sundance is completed, what can we make of it? Was it a landmark year? Did it measure up to last year's, which, for me, was one of the best of the 26 years I've been coming? Or did it fall short?

Although, out of the 60 or 70 films I saw, there were undoubtedly a handful that ought to stay with me for a while, at least, I'm nevertheless afraid I'd have to say that it was not, unfortunately, a standout year. There were so many similarities among the dramatic films — from sex-and-drug-hungry teenagers to sleazy trailer-trash dodging the police, all of them inevitably spouting the f-word as if there were no other adjective available in their limited vocabulary.

The documentaries were, by and large, another matter.

One film, above all, made such a stunning impression on me that I had to immediately go see it again when it played the next day. It was the unforgettable "Man on Wire" from France, which, on the festival's final day, not only played again, but played twice since it rightfully happened to win the audience vote as well as the grand jury's vote as the best World Cinema Documentary.

Everything about this memorable film was right: the subject (a tightrope-walker from Paris deciding to fulfill his dream of walking/dancing on a wire on the world's two tallest buildings, New York City's then newly built Twin Towers); the cinematography; the wonderful interviews with all concerned; the suspense of how the juggler/acrobat and his accomplices would actually manage, against all odds, to pull off such a forbidden and illegal trick, and finally the inspired choice of music used throughout the film — above all the selection of Satie's "Gymnopedies" as we watch Philippe Petit finally accomplish his jaw-dropping feat just before the police discover him.

For this film alone, I'll always remember Sundance 2008.

But there were others — all, by and large, documentaries as well. First, the gripping film "Stranded," also from France, remembering and re-enacting the 1972 crash in the snow-covered Andes mountains of a plane carrying a Uruguayan rugby team. Lost for 2 1/2 months, the 16 survivors of the original 45 passengers were only able to stay alive by eating the bodies of their close friends and even relatives. As gruesome as it sounds, it actually becomes a touching and even spiritual thing in this remarkable documentary.