John Hartl's "10 best" of SIFF 2008

Not too long ago, it was possible to see all the entries in the Seattle International Film Festival. The very first festival, cobbled together in 1976, was held in one theater, it wasn't unusually long, and it was relatively inexpensive to attend.

This year's festival, which ended yesterday at several theaters, including the Cinerama, Benaroya Hall and SIFF's Seattle Center flagship house, SIFF Cinema, was the longest in the country. It's also getting pricer, but then so is everything.With so much to choose from, you're now almost required to create your own festival within the festival. If your list of favorites is markedly different from everyone else's, that's partly because you may not have seen the same films.

If you attended the Secret Festival, if you caught only the documentaries or midnight movies or the films that have no distributors, you saw a group of pictures that most likely wasn't duplicated by anyone else.

With that qualification in mind, here are my personal 10 best (in alphabetical order):

"Boy A" (directed by John Crowley). Rehabilitation is rarely addressed in the movies; perhaps it's not so easy to dramatize or demonstrate the process. This raw, tragic British drama stars Peter Mullan (vigorous as ever) as a committed case worker and Andrew Garfield (a real find) as the boy he tries to rescue from a grotesquely public past.

"The Edge of Heaven" (Fatih Akin). A magical Turkish-German drama about a gentle literature professor who's searching for a stranger while trying to find a way to forgive his brutish father. The open ending, which deliberately doesn't quite connect the dots in the coincidence-driven story, is genius.

"Elegy" (Isabel Coixet). Presented as part of the festival's excellent Ben Kingsley tribute, this adaptation of Philip Roth's novella, "The Dying Animal," is a marvelous vehicle for Kingsley, who plays an aging professor who doesn't know how vulnerable he's become. Penélope Cruz and Patricia Clarkson are the women who gradually bring him to his senses.

"Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson" (Alex Gibney). The Oscar-winning director of "Taxi to the Dark Side" scores another triumph with this account of the Rolling Stone journalist's politically explosive commentary. Gibney's account of Thompson's involvement in George McGovern's 1972 presidential campaign is especially memorable.

"The Last Mistress" (Catherine Breillat). Best-known for modern and experimental explorations of eroticism, Breillat seems completely comfortable with adapting this more traditional 19th-century period piece about beautiful people doing ugly things. Newcomer Fu'ad Ait Aattou smoothly captures the contradictions in the central character.

"Letting Go of God" (Julia Sweeney). In a followup to her 1998 monologue, "God Said 'HA!,'" Sweeney goes on a spiritual quest that begins with a couple of Mormon missionaries and covers astrology, Buddhism, Scientology, Joseph Campbell, Deepak Chopra, Karen Armstrong and a re-examination of the Bible. It lasts for two hours and 10 minutes, and none of it seems expendable.

"Man on Wire" (James Marsh). The construction of the World Trade Center was nearly finished in August 1974, when tightrope walker Philippe Petit successfully (and illegally) walked on a cable between the Twin Towers. Witty, stylish, suspenseful and vertigo-inducing, this documentary skillfully avoids mention of 9/11; the images, particularly of Petit sharing the sky with an airplane, will make you shudder anyway.

"Saturn in Opposition" (Ferzan Ozpetek). The talented Turkish-Italian director of "Steam" and "Facing Windows," Ozpetek again demonstrates an uncanny ability to suggest states of mind and empathize with them. In this story of an extended family facing twin catastrophes, he makes us feel the enduring strength of relationships that are not always based on blood.

"Sita Sings the Blues" (Nina Paley). A delightful original, this enchanting musical uses animation, improv comedy and torch songs ("Mean to Me" has never seemed so essential) to tell two stories at the same time. One is a modern narrative about a woman whose marriage can't survive her husband's trip to India. The other is about Sita, an ancient goddess who gets dumped and sings with the voice of a 1920s jazz vocalist.

"Stranded: I've Come from a Plane that Crashed on the Mountains" (Gonzalo Arijon). Previous fictionalizations seem puny compared to this magnificent documentary about the 1972 Andes plane crash that took the lives of several Uruguayan rugby players. The director was able to talk to all the survivors, and their tales of endurance are scary, detailed and sometimes inspiring.

A second 10: "American Teen," "The Bluetooth Virgin," "Brick Lane," "Call Me Troy," "Cherry Blossoms — Hanami," "Em," "The Great Buck Howard," "Jolene," "The Secret of the Grain," "Trouble the Water."

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com