Variety’s Todd McCarthy received mixed reviews for his Sundance 2009 wrap-up piece, in which he lumped together the festival’s two biggest narrative hits, Push and An Education, as part of a trend of films espousing values “emblematic” of “the start of the Obama age.” I’m not sure our recently elected president has much to do with the themes of films that no doubt were conceived years before he clinched the nomination (especially these two films, both of which were based on long pre-existing texts), but I did notice that this year’s crop of Sundance titles seemed more interested in reflecting the times than some of their solipsistic Amerindie ancestors. I saw more films at this festival that tried, earnestly or satirically, to grapple with the state of the union’s troubled-but-hopeful psyche, than I’ve seen in any single ten day stretch in my professional life.

Even better, I saw this concern with The State of Things seep into films as disparate as the tacky, raunchy Rachel Dratch/Amy Poehler comedy Spring Breakdown, and Deborah Stratman’s extremely classy, short feature-length experimental documentary feature O’er the Land –– two films which, on paper, couldn’t be more different, and yet are both heavily invested in notions of fin de siècle Americana and the peculiar ways in which Americans take advantage of our bottomless freedom. Dense, sometimes silent, always visually complex, and presented with neither binding narration nor immediately evident narrative, Land is probably the purest cinema experience I had at Sundance this year. I’d like to give Stratman’s film another look before writing about it in more depth, but as I expect it to show up in at least one upcoming festival, I’ll have a shot. Bizarrely, it’s the studio-produced comedy that I may not soon have another chance to consider, or even see.

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