In the Dark Reviews

The 25th annual Port Townsend Film Festival runs from Sept. 19 through Sept. 22. Because its lineup includes two films that premiered several years ago, I'm reviewing them beforehand to give readers a taste of what they might expect from this year's lineup, regardless of whether they're able to attend.

First-time director Catherine Hardwicke co-wrote the screenplay for what would become 2003's "Thirteen" with Nikki Reed, who was 14 years old, and would make her acting debut as one of the 100-minute R-rated film's female leads, alongside Evan Rachel Wood and Holly Hunter.

After the release of "Thirteen" at the Sundance Film Festival, Hardwicke won its dramatic directing award - one of many awards she, the film and its actors won or received nominations for - before she directed the commercially successful 2008 film adaptation of Stephenie Meyer's best-selling vampire novel "Twilight."

Hollywood has long drawn from the well of how much more troubled contemporary teens have supposedly become, since at least as early as 1955's "Rebel Without a Cause." But "Thirteen" overcomes its own occasionally histrionics, thanks to performances by Wood, Hunter and Reed that feel painfully real, as well as the lived-in authenticity of Reed and Hardwicke's screenplay, all facilitated by Hardwicke's naturalistic direction.

As it turns out, "what's wrong with the kids today" in "Thirteen" comes down to the struggles and shortcomings of the adults saddled with raising those children in a media and consumer culture that seems cruelly calculated to exacerbate the most savage and self-destructive impulses of adolescence.

The film empathizes with Hunter's plight as an overworked divorced mother, a high school dropout who works as a hairdresser in her home to support her two teens, plus her on-and-off boyfriend and a fellow single mom, who occasionally overnights with a little girl of her own.

Even though the film doesn't judge Hunter's fitness as a mother, even as she stresses out over staying sober from alcohol, it does acknowledge that her own lack of education and questionable relationships have not left her daughter with a surfeit of stability in her homelife.

Director Louie Schwartzberg's 2019 documentary "Fantastic Fungi" packs into 81 minutes a whirlwind history of the biological evolution, environmental contributions and human uses of fungi, from the medicinal to the culinary, while addressing its sociopolitical and spiritual effects.

Schwartzberg employs not only a touchy-feely Gaia theory-themed celebrity narration by Brie Larson, but also a dazzling abundance of time-lapse cinematography and CGI, to tell the epoch-spanning tale of the planet's fungi with mycologist Paul Stamets.

Stamets started his business, Fungi Perfecti, in Mason County in 1980. The company is now based in Olympia.

Stamets traded the evangelical religious traditions he was raised with for evangelizing the benefits of mushrooms, which he and Schwartzberg carried on through the onset of COVID with the virtual "Fungi Day" event, one day before Earth Day in 2020, via various social media.

Schwartzberg employs Stamets and other experts in the field of fungi to attest to the organisms' resilient scientific ambiguity. Fungi exist in a nebulous state, somewhere between plants and animals, and we have yet to discover all the ways in which they function as life forms and how they might help us and our ecosystem.

Stamets recounts how a psychedelic episode allowed him to end a severe stutter, and how his elderly mother went into remission from Stage 4 breast cancer after taking medication derived from "turkey tail" mushrooms.

"Fantastic Fungi" touts the organisms' ability to break down environmental pollutants such as petroleum and alleviate mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety. It also questions what constitutes sentient communication by exploring how underground networks of fungi enable forests of trees to connect and respond to each other's needs.

Although fungi have acquired a stigma in Western culture, since they act as agents of decay, "Fantastic Fungi" joyfully points out that such decay is not merely the messy aftermath of death, but also provides the vital restoration of nutrients and other materials needed for life's renewal.

"Thirteen" will play in the Marvin G. Shields Memorial Post 26 hall of the American Legion, on 209 Monroe St. in downtown Port Townsend. "Fantastic Fungi" will be shown outdoors on Taylor Street. Both shows start at 7:30 p.m., followed by opportunities to meet the filmmakers Sept. 21.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
[email protected]