This post is free to all subscribers. But if you like what you read and want access to the full Premiere Party experience, consider upgrading.

In 2015, I was in a shuttle van headed toward Park City for my first Sundance. I looked out at the dusty, dry Wasatch mountains and asked the driver, “Where’s all the snow?” I had seen so many photos of the festival over the years, all with glistening white peaks in the background, and was disappointed to find things instead looking like Mars, or the outskirts of Las Vegas. It did snow eventually that year, and in the 11 years since I have been to Sundances when it seemed to never stop snowing. (I remember walking to the premiere of Call Me By Your Name in drifts that were practically waist-deep.) 

It’s fitting, I suppose, in a closing-the-loop kind of way, that this year’s festival, the last to happen in Utah, has looked similarly barren, brown, and cheerless. It’s contributed to the general off-ness of this final Park City circus, a feeling that the festival has actually already ended—the snow moved east, the great indie movies have decamped for Cannes, the journalists I used to pal around with have lost their jobs and disappeared into other careers. A certain warm nostalgia has tinged the air, sure, but it’s been heavily spiked with the bitter sense that we are only walking around in the arid, empty place where something used to be. 

That’s melodramatic, I know, but that has been kind of the prevailing mood here. Maybe things were more cheerful at parties up on Main Street, but I haven’t had the time or energy to go to any of those. (Turns out, covering a film festival for a trade publication is a little more involved than is flaneuring around town for Vanity Fair.) It’s possible there was a whole happy festival happening beside me that I just didn’t notice. But, most people I’ve spoken to here sound at least a little forlorn and defeated; it’s like we were all hoping for something big and profound and final, closure as occasion, and instead found everything smaller and sadder.

Look, the movies have not been good. There have been a few highlights, like Olivia Wilde’s The Invite, the poignant gay Australian horror movie Leviticus, the David Wain comedy Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass, a funny little fable with Olivia Colman called Wicker. (I’ve also heard great things about the Channing Tatum/Gemma Chan drama Josephine, but I’ve yet to see it.) And I’m sure there were lots of great documentaries that I wasn’t able to catch. (The Billie Jean King one was a big hit on Monday night.) But past those scattered titles, yikes. 

The Natalie Portman movie stank, the Charli xcx movie was a tedious disappointment. I swear I am not just listing these movies so I can link to things I wrote here. There really was a dearth of good stuff, and a lot of junk. I don’t feel like I saw some revelatory vision from an emergent filmmaker, or witnessed an actor burst into a new era of their career. (Though, Olivia Wilde kinda did, maybe?) All film festivals have their off years, but this has felt different, less like an anomaly and more like a troubling sign of an industry in slow collapse. 

That’s not just my observation. I’ve heard it all over town over this past almost-week, people wringing their hands as they talk grimly of the vibes in Los Angeles, of how hard it is to get anything made or sold or seen. The American indie industry’s pulse is weak, so much so that this year’s Sundance has mostly felt like a pretty good Tribeca. (That’s a mean joke about how bad Tribeca has always been, since it mostly picks up the leftovers that were rejected by Sundance.) One then wanders around town wondering what any of us are doing here. Is this helping anyone, are any needles moving, does anyone care?

I wouldn’t blame anyone for not caring this year, especially. I’ve experienced many Sundances when news of the outside world has rendered all the stuff here mostly meaningless. From the 2017 inauguration to, well, the death of Kobe Bryant. (I remember walking out of a screening and seeing that latter news on my phone and guiltily thinking to myself, Well there goes any attention that might have been paid to this.) This year the divide between movie premieres and the rest of the world has been especially acute, with Minnesota becoming the flashpoint of something truly frightening. 

There was precious little acknowledgement of that during the on-stage introductions I saw here, which was strange, given how pointed the festival has been in recent years about matters of social justice. (There was, to be fair, a protest march on Main Street.) Maybe it’s too huge and frightening to confront, and pulls too much focus away from the movies and the supposed last-dance merriment we’re all supposed to be enjoying here. 

One of the highlights of my Sundance experience is that I have the fancy badge that gets me into any movie I want with ease. What a privilege! (Please don’t take it away from me!) But one of the lowlights of my Sundance experience is that having the fancy badge means I have to spend a lot of time in line surrounded by rich people who buy that same pass for thousands of dollars. Those silky chickens have seemed particularly restless this year—or, at least, even less aware of the world immediately around them than normal. I have been bumped and jostled and trod on by more rich women in $4,000 parkas than ever before (the plastic surgery has gotten more pronounced, too), as if the lack of zeroes in my bank account has rendered me entirely invisible. 

I wonder if they are being especially pushy and boorish this year because, for many of them, this is the last hurrah. These folks—who own second or third homes in Deer Valley or other towns nearby, who fancy themselves cultured but don’t actually seem to like anything that isn’t the most obvious shit to like here (like The Invite, which I really enjoyed too)—many not follow the festival caravan to Boulder, where the festival is moving next year. And the rich Coloradans who might make up for that loss already go to Telluride, don’t they? (Maybe not. I’m sure the festival has done some planning for how to maintain the crucial rich-patron audience base, but my guess is there will still be some kind of financial hit.) 

There wasn’t much chatter about the festival leaving to be overheard in those agonizing lines, but I think that was really more a subject for last year, when the festival’s presence in Park City still hung in the balance. Now it has been settled, the “Keep Sundance in Utah” pins didn’t work, and all the regulars are just trying to enjoy one last bit of entitled filmgoing before they, I dunno, move on to other expensive hobbies. Maybe they’ll actually grow to like having these eleven days returned to the locals; it will be much easier to get reservations at the town’s many terrible restaurants. 

I don’t mean to kick the festival when it’s down. I do still love coming here, and have enjoyed my time this year even when up at 2 a.m. writing a review of an excruciating movie. It is nice to see people, to feel at least a little excitement about new movies after so many months of talking about Hamnet and Frankenstein and all the rest. There are some good things coming your way this year. There is reason for optimism. 

And anyway, most of my observation has been through pretty jaded, tired eyes. As a heartening contrast, a former editor (and current friend) of mine was here for the first time and she was wide-eyed and excited and palpably, almost infectiously happy to be here. Ditto the young people I saw scurrying to and from screenings like mad, phones clutched in hand as they burned holes in their Letterboxd accounts. And I’m sure plenty of filmmakers had life-changing moments this week, that they stood on a hallowed stage and couldn’t believe where fate and luck and hard work had brought them. If that happened enough times, then perhaps this whole thing was a success.

Maybe I need a reset just as much as the festival does. Perhaps Boulder, a town supposedly infused with the youthful energy of a university (and mellowed by entirely legal substances), will bring back the spark that has sadly, inevitably been fading for me since maybe my second or third year here (when the initial thrill finally wore off, as it always does eventually, sigh). It’s a pretty spoiled thing to complain about Sundance not being as exciting as it used to be, but I don’t think I’m alone in that glum sentiment. And yet, though so much else is crumbling irreparably around us, I have faith—based on nothing but a belief that some good things do have to happen from time to time—in this festival’s restoration. May a new location bring new life—and better food.