Sundance 2024: “Power”, “Tendaberry”

Our coverage of Sundance continues with a look at American society at both the macro and micro levels. Read below for our reviews on Power and Tendaberry.

Power

The history of policing in America receives a blunt, scathing overview in Yance Ford’s Power. Inspired by the death of George Floyd in 2020 by police brutality, Power combines the usual elements for many documentaries (on-the-ground footage, archival footage, talking head interviews, etc.) into an overstuffed onslaught of information. Power’s basic thesis is that modern policing’s roots in enforcing White hegemony in the absence of slavery has made the United States increasingly closer to a Fascist state in everything but name. It is a weighty argument that the film makes convincingly and brusquely. The film sags under not so much its length (under 90 minutes) but rather for its ambition to encapsulate a topic as complicated as policing in America. (A film with a similar intent, O.J.: Made in America, took nearly eight hours to provide the context to truly understand the significance of that trial.) 

Ford sprinkles in his own narration in a purported attempt to get his audience to engage with his film thoughtfully. But this intent is contradicted by his tendency to spell out his message, often effectively but definitely not subtly. Ford does make some clever decisions in his presentation, however. For instance, while Power features many scenes of injustice and excessive use of force by the police, it also smartly refrains from showing most of the violent outcomes of that force, most notably in the arrest of George Floyd. This decision makes his audience focus less on the violence and more on the perpetrators and their abuse of power. Power is a freight train of a film that will either leave you overwhelmed with information if you know little about the origins of policing or weary if you already have a deep familiarity with this topic. 

Tendaberry

While less sweeping than Power, Tendaberry provides a more intimate, but no less incisive look into American life. Dakota (Kota Johan) and Yuri (Yuri Pleskun) are a young couple living on the fringes of society, yet they are happy just to be with each other. However, Yuri moves back to Ukraine in order to take care of his ailing father. Soon, Russia will invade Ukraine, and Yuri and Dakota will lose touch. The film follows Dakota as she struggles with her minimum wage job and trying to get ahead with her music career. 

Tendaberry comes from the song ‘New York Tendaberry’ by New York native Laura Nyro. Director Haley Elizabeth Anderson chose this title to express how she felt about New York – how it can seem tough on the outside but was actually tender on the inside. To this effect, Anderson intersperses archival footage of New York City and Coney Island in particular with Dakota’s story (shot mostly with a handheld camera) to ground it in a very specific reality, one that is beautiful in its realness. Tendaberry doesn’t have an obvious dramatic arc, and that is for the better because it avoids wallowing in misery or employing a voyeuristic view of poverty. Much of the drama is personal and intimate, which serves to analyze just how much people are the products of their environment for both better and worse. While you can feel the vast frustration of struggles such as getting scammed by a fake landlord as Dakota does, you can also celebrate how beautiful the city can be at both dawn and dusk. In this very specific story, Tendaberry is able to touch on issues as big as the pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and poverty while still telling a very humane tale, which only makes the themes and struggles in this film more universal.