You’d think I would have become numb to this by now, but I find myself frustrated for yet another week that our multiplexes are filled with rehashed IP and the Blumhouse horror movie of the week, and can’t deign to toss one measly screen to a movie that was quietly one of the very best of this year’s Sundance Film Festival. It will, at least, start playing at the Salina Art Center on September 13th, and yes, I do recommend making the trip.
The movie is called Good One, and it’s deceptively simple: One weekend, 17-year-old Sam and her father go on a camping trip with her father’s longtime friend. They all know each other well, which we can tell both by the ease with which they interact and by how they kind of snipe at each other for no good reason. And we just spend time with them as they hike through the gorgeous scenery of the Catskills, with the moss on the trees and the trickling water, as they talk, remember, tell stories, joke, and show us who they are as people. Sam’s father has remarried and has a small child, his friend is recently divorced and has strong divorced-man energy, and the way each person talks and behaves is so well observed by director and writer India Donaldson that we don’t just feel like we know these people, we do know these people.
And then there’s a pretty unfortunate development, and I admit that I’d been having such a wonderful time with these characters that, in the moment, I wished it simply hadn’t happened. But then, I realized Sam probably wished far more that it hadn’t happened. There’s no way I was more disappointed than she was. And more than that, the signs were there—if we’d been paying close attention, we’d have noticed a word choice here or there by Sam’s father that, upon reflection, makes it wildly apparent that what happens was always a possibility. I’m not sure our parents are all destined to disappoint us, but people will, and often without thinking much about it.
Good One plays at the Salina Art Center September 13th – 18th.
