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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Sayles, Jarmusch and Lynch -- along with the Coen brothers, who made their debut in 1984 with the neo-noir thriller "Blood Simple" -- would inspire the next generation of indie auteurs, among them Spike Lee, Steven Soderbergh and Richard Linklater. In 1989, Soderbergh's "sex, lies and videotape" was purchased at the Sundance Film Festival by a little company called Miramax Films after a fierce bidding war. Two years later "Slacker," Linklater's deceptively sophisticated day-in-the-life of Austin eccentrics, became a cultural touchstone, introducing not just a name for a generation but the low-fi aesthetic, shambling structure and nonprofessional acting -- all indie hallmarks.

If "sex, lies" and "Slacker" started indies down the generic road they're now on, the $100 million baby "Pulp Fiction" put them into the fast lane, headed straight to the movie industry's cash register of a heart. With the commensurate growth of such indie imprimaturs as Sundance and Miramax, and with Hollywood increasingly embracing the form's stylistic tics (not to mention low budgets), the term "indie" gradually lost its meaning, becoming a marketing tool as much as an artistic statement. Suddenly, it seemed multiplexes were inundated with "Pulp Fiction" rip-offs, and every other issue of "Entertainment Weekly" featured a story about a filmmaker who funded his cinematic Cinderella on his mom's Visa card. "Slacker" begat "Clerks" which begat "Swingers" and dozens more, right up to the current "mumblecore" wave started by Andrew Bujalski's "Funny Ha Ha."

Recent annals are full of such cinematic family trees. "Little Miss Sunshine," about a troubled family taking a road trip so their 7-year-old daughter can participate in a youth beauty pageant, bore more than a passing resemblance to "The Daytrippers," Greg Mottola's charming comedy a decade earlier about a bickering family trapped in a car in New York. With its portrayal of troubled family dynamics, teenage disaffection and suburban banality, "Little Miss Sunshine" also bore whiffs of "Thumbsucker," "Donnie Darko," "Flirting With Disaster" and Todd Solondz's oft-imitated "Welcome to the Dollhouse." (Other movies with debts to Solondz include "Pieces of April," "Margot at the Wedding" and now "Rachel Getting Married," ad infinitum, amen.)

Or take the recent film "Baghead," by Jay and Mark Duplass. The modern-day horror comedy owed a clear debt to the 1999 do-it-yourself game-changer film "The Blair Witch Project," which with its faux amateur cast and garden-hose camera work breathed life into a mock-doc form that's been polished to comic perfection by Christopher Guest -- whose own movies hark back to such classics as the 1967 pseudo-verite satire "David Holzman's Diary."

Then there's the compulsive ante-upping of filmmakers who revert to the perennial indie trope of Shocking the Viewer. In 1972, John Waters shocked even his midnight-movie audiences when he directed Divine to eat dog excrement in "Pink Flamingos." Such movies as "Kids," "The Brown Bunny" and "Shortbus" (not to mention this year's "Choke") have engaged in an escalating arms race of graphic sexuality and taboo themes. The most controversial film at Sundance last year was "Hounddog," featuring the then-12-year-old child star Dakota Fanning in a brutal rape scene.

Can indies be saved? Yes, but only as long as the question is framed differently. It's time to stop talking about budgets, "edge" and filmmakers' come-from-behind biographies -- indeed, maybe the word "indie" itself should be banished -- and instead rediscover values like intelligence, emotional truth, moral heft and restraint, which will endure long after indie-chic signifiers and smug hermeticism have worn themselves out.

By that standard, it's clear that new visions and voices are still emerging by way of the traditional route of financial resourcefulness and out-of-nowhere success. Such recent releases as "The Station Agent," "Old Joy," "The Savages," "Half Nelson" and "Lars and the Real Girl" prove that in the hands of assured, un-self-conscious filmmakers, even standard indie fare -- alienation, troubled families, drug addiction, sex toys -- can result in something that feels compelling and new. (Note: It doesn't hurt to have a Ryan Gosling or a Patricia Clarkson as your star.)

Some of the best films of this year have been indies, in the most classical sense of the word. "Frozen River," "Chop Shop" and "The Visitor" (by "The Station Agent's" Tom McCarthy) each tells a well-crafted story about characters we haven't seen before, in spontaneous, unstudied ease. Another bright spot on the horizon is "Wellness," by Jake Mahaffy, which has barely been seen on the festival circuit but turns heads wherever it's played. Mahaffy's unsettling, finely observed drama about a traveling salesman in Pennsylvania suggests the possibility for a new cinematic genre: post-industrial American neorealism.

Or consider the standouts at this year's Toronto International Film Festival: The searing Iraq war drama "The Hurt Locker," by Kathryn Bigelow, Rod Lurie's political thriller "Nothing but the Truth," Soderbergh's epic "Che" and "Sugar," by "Half Nelson" husband-wife team Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, were all made outside big studios ("Sugar" was made at HBO). One of the most fascinating films at the festival was Barry Jenkins's "Medicine for Melancholy." The quietly funny romance, about an African American couple in San Francisco, could be accused of succumbing to fatal indie-ism if it didn't so cleverly upend assumptions about race and the segregation of pop culture.

In financing, lineage and vision, these movies are as independent as they come. But none of them looks or sounds or acts like "Little Miss Juno Dynamite." Instead, they look and sound and act exactly the way they should. They don't concern themselves with being cutting-edge or groundbreaking; rather, as Chekhov exhorted, they simply care about "what flows freely from the heart." Devoid of mannerisms, gimmicks or look-at-me gestures, they do the truly radical thing. They tell their stories simply and well. Move over, indie: Old-school classicism may be making its own comeback.