Indie Films: Doom and Gloom
As if the independent film industry hasn’t been depressed enough, the fall slate it’s offering seems designed to keep suicide hotlines in business. (“Rabbit Hole,” pictured, with Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart, is just one example.) In the wake of distributor closures (Apparition, Warner Independent, Paramount Vantage), mass layoffs and a public pulled away from the box office by pay-per-view and the Web, the indie world seems caught in a cycle of self-loathing. Despair, self-mutilation, madness, alienation, divorce, child death, Nazi hunting, regret — for months, the local art house theater will be an all-you-can-eat smorgasbord of misery. Where’s this year’s “Little Miss Sunshine“? Or “Juno”? Despite its depictions of child abuse, even “Slumdog Millionaire” was a crowd-pleaser. But as Hollywood moves into the fall, it’s not just the shorter days that are bringing the darkness.
