At the Hamptons Film Festival, Joylessness Is a Virtue

Harry Stein surveys the insufferable smugness of it all, and isn't too impressed:

Oh, Dan Rather will be on hand to promote Truth. Michael Moore will also make an appearance. So will British-born actress Emily Blunt, last heard commenting that taking American citizenship was “a terrible mistake.” Even many of the films that have no evident ideological agenda are informed by the joyless left/liberal worldview, where everyone who’s not a victim or an oppressor is too despondent to care either way. These are the ones featuring addiction (Kirsna “will face her family for Thanksgiving because she is sober and she is ready”) and those with protagonists “crippled by the mundanity” of contemporary life who “examine the visceral and isolating experience of grief,” where people grow old in painful isolation. And there’s the one about PTSD: “Disordered by paranoia and anxiety, Vincent obsessively looks for danger in every corner of the seemingly peaceful home.” 

Am I exaggerating? Okay, maybe a little. But, trust me, I searched in vain for a film that promised to be upbeat, possibly even amusing. No luck...

Suggested slogan for the Hamptons fête: "Having a terrible time. Wish you were here ('cuz misery loves company)."