From Indie Chic to Indie, Sheesh

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Indie Movies: The Fresh and the Derivative

Independent films, once examples of a maverick-style approach to cinema, have become increasingly predictable. Here are some of the most original and derivative indie pics from recent years.

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· Obscure pop culture cred? Check and double-check: Nonstop barrage of meta-references, from vintage B-movies and television ("Suspiria," "Thundercats") to beverages and breath mints (Sunny D, Tic Tacs).

The mass audiences that made "Juno" a success no doubt saw it as fresh and new, right down to its painfully stylized dialogue ("Honest to blog"). But anyone who had seen "Heathers," "Ghost World" and "Garden State" before it surely had the feeling they had already answered that particular phone.

Forget whether we've seen these movies before. Is there any reason to watch another one?

American independent films used to be the stuff of the cognoscenti, denizens of film festivals and art houses who laughed knowingly at their inside jokes, appreciated their scratchy production values and applauded their formal daring. It all changed in 1994, when the $8 million "Pulp Fiction" surpassed $100 million at the U.S. box office. Since then, "low budget" films have been steadily churned out by boutique arms of big studios and ambitious young filmmakers looking for a hot Hollywood career.

By the time "Juno" screenwriter Diablo Cody won the Oscar this year, it was painfully clear that the very principles that made indies so attractive in the first place had morphed into tired, cynical mannerisms: Spontaneity became false and studied; intimacy became precious; daring became shock value for its own sake; personal became shallow and solipsistic; and willingness to challenge linear narrative became pretentious and incoherent.

Perhaps the worst offender in copping a derivative indie 'tude is "Napoleon Dynamite." The 2004 film starred a then-unknown Jon Heder as the title character, an awkward, adolescent super-geek with an adenoidal bleat for a voice and a penchant for tetherball. "Napoleon Dynamite," which was another crossover hit, packed in detail after cloyingly "indie" detail: Trapper Keepers, moon boots, a nonstop cavalcade of progressively more eccentric characters, the bleak, featureless backdrop of American exurbia. The film, a self-conscious compendium of "idiosyncratic" stunts and "quirky" set pieces, took indie irony to its cruelest extreme, expressing thinly veiled ridicule and contempt for its subjects and, by extension, its audience.

"Napoleon Dynamite" featured another dreaded de rigueur element in just about every indie film: the wacky senior citizen, in this case a grandmother who races all-terrain vehicles and raises llamas. In "Little Miss Sunshine," the role of choice was a heroin-addicted grandfather, for which Alan Arkin won an Oscar. (The 2006 picture won another Oscar for Best Screenplay and was nominated for two more, including Best Picture.) Since then, no indie film worth its micro-budget hasn't featured some Hollywood veteran "stretching" in an unexpected role, whether it's Ellen Burstyn in Darren Aronofsky's 2000 drug drama "Requiem for a Dream" or 1970s stars Pam Grier and Robert Forster in Tarantino's "Jackie Brown" or -- in this year's Most Unlikely Comeback Triumph -- Mickey Rourke in Aronofsky's upcoming "The Wrestler."

Maybe it was inevitable that films dedicated to fighting cliche would succumb to fatal cliche themselves.

From Charlie Chaplin to John Cassavetes, independent films have been part of American cinema virtually since the medium's inception, often indelibly shaping its growth and grammar. Otto Preminger, for example, helped destroy the censorious Production Code in the 1950s with "The Moon Is Blue" and "The Man With the Golden Arm." Throughout the 1960s and '70s, Cassavetes made rough-looking production values and improvisatory performance acceptable with such films as "Husbands" and "A Woman Under the Influence."

The innovation continued in the 1980s, when the films of John Sayles ("Return of the Secaucus Seven," "Brother From Another Planet") defined the gold standard for thoughtful writing, naturalistic settings and political engagement. With his 1984 breakout film, "Stranger Than Paradise," Jim Jarmusch introduced some of the most enduring trademarks of American indie chic, including the absurdist road trip, grainy black-and-white cinematography, eccentric-looking actors and an overall mood of ironic cool. Jarmusch also introduced the phenomenon of what might be called Indie Face: grim, expressionless and almost always accompanied by an equally affectless speech pattern.

David Lynch, meanwhile, gave indies their love of the surreal and sexually charged. There's a direct line between the dark portrait of suburbia in 1986's "Blue Velvet" and "American Beauty," which 13 years later co-opted cardinal indie themes (sexual taboo, suburban angst, family dysfunction) to become a slightly naughty mainstream smash. (For a hilarious send-up of Lynch's confoundingly insular style, watch Tom DiCillo's 1995 "Living in Oblivion.")