Every year the Sundance Film Festival showcases a collection of short films that runs about the time of a feature length film. This year, the program had 7 short films. Each focused on a very different theme and most had experimental aspects to them. The one film that stands out to me was the first one, Come Swim. It’s hard to describe the film other than by saying it’s really surrealist.  There’s not a single, coherent meaning to it like most films or any explanation whatsoever for the events taking place. It’s hard to criticize beyond this, but then again that’s a more general characteristic I’ve noticed in experimental films.

The difficulty in criticizing such films is that most traditional types of criticisms are inapplicable. You can’t say, “oh the acting was terrible” because it may have very well been a critical point that that was the point (think Peter Watkins). Similarly, the complaint “but it’s inconsistent” is also inapplicable. This is perhaps one of the most interesting points where experimental films diverge from others. Even in a film like Star Wars, one can criticize “surely if this were real, Kit Fisto and the other Jedi Knights wouldn’t have been killed off so quickly by Darth Sidious…” However, with experimental films, their inconsistency is perhaps a defining characteristic. And maybe that’s why people don’t like watching them as much.