What Indie Movies Do to Me

After my first viewing at The Sundance Film Festival last Thursday, I’ve come to realize what Indie movies truly do to me. They make me feel like a puppet. Like a stuffed doll in which they can take hold of me and make me laugh, cry, scream whenever they wanted me to. I sincerely had no idea this was possible.

I went to the Michigan Theater to view the showing of The East, an “eco-thriller” about a an agent named Sarah (Brit Marling,) whose job took her undercover to expose an anarchist group called The East. Their mission was to perform “jams” that attempted to expose large corporations who have silently abused people with their products. The group wanted to give an eye for an eye by treating the corporations with a dose of their own medicine, no pun intended. Overall I liked the movie, It was nothing that I’ve ever seen before, and I liked that because I feel like we see some of the same stale story lines in the theaters. The movie did leave me feeling a little emotionally disconnected near the end, I didn’t quite feel like I knew who the characters really were or their personal motives given the story.  However, what this indie film did to me, going back to the point of this post, was make me feel completely confused about life, not that I wasn’t already confused of course. It exposed me to a realm of society that I knew existed, but I still didn’t quite understand.

I love independent films though. They thrive on getting a reaction from their audience, opposed to simply entertaining them, and that’s brave. I guess you could say I’m a romantic, reality-driven indie movie lover, but then again all indie movies have that aspect somewhere within them. They are so raw, awkward, and real, and regardless of how unwillingly I am to succumb to the grasp of the independent films I watch, I will forever love the what they do to me.