SUNDANCE REVIEW: UTOPIA IN FOUR MOVEMENTS
A Guide to Paradise, From an Esperanto Version of Mao's Little Red Book
Rooftop alum Sam Green
and Dave Cerf's philosophical film essay Utopia in Four Movements--performed with live narration (by Green) and
live music (by more Rooftop alums The Quavers)--swirls brilliantly and casually
through cultural history and detritus, through fantasy and forgotten fact.
There is an ad hoc air to the
piece, highlighted by the fluidity of the montage, constantly recalibrated by
Green's remote control, and elevated by the shifting interplay between the
spoken words and the audience reactions. This breezy style not only keeps the
piece from being an intellectually pretentious harangue: Utopia in Four
Movements is a lot of fun, full
of laughs and wonders.Daringly original, piercingly insightful, the journey of ideas traces links from Sir Thomas More to Fidel Castro, from the nearly-forgotten language of Esperanto to the nearly-abandoned "World's Largest Shopping Mall" in an unheard-of Chinese industrial city (as seen in Green's short film of the same title). The links are sometimes whimsical, sometimes tragic, as Green discusses spectacular utopian failures and odd utopian near-misses. It is perhaps telling that in today's world, some of the few states that claim the mantle of utopia are Cuba and North Korea.
But for all the melancholy and despair of examining our imperfect world, Green's investigations left me (and him) with an unexpected feeling: hopefulness. Instead of proving the futility of grandiose attempts to eradicate suffering and injustice, Utopia in Four Movements illuminates how many magnificent ideas are available to us, and though true paradise may be out of our reach, we can always have a little piece of utopia in our pockets and in our souls. It would be fantastic to bring this project and that feeling to the roof, our own little utopia above the city.
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Film Review
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