TELLURIDE — There were no jury awards or audience prizes bestowed when the 41st Telluride Film Festival concluded Monday evening. Such is the wont of the oft-glorious, cinema-ardent beast that is the Telluride Film Festival. No prizes. No film-buying market. No paparazzi.
There were stars. Reese Witherspoon made a welcome return to drama with “Wild.” The rather hunky Channing Tatum might have seemed a fish out of water at the rarefied pilgrimage — until, that is, he opened his mouth and proved extremely thoughtful. Gov. John Hickenlooper made a cameo appearance Saturday. In town for a fundraiser, the governor dropped in on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences party.
And newbie film director Jon Stewart proved he could pack ’em in with his debut biographical drama, “Rosewater,” starring Gael García Bernal.
“In my 13 years as a volunteer, I’ve never seen a line like this,” said a badge-checking veteran outside the Galaxy Theatre screening.
“Rosewater” recounts the story of Iranian-born, Brit journalist Maziar Bahari, who was arrested in Iran in 2009, imprisoned and tortured by a man known simply as Rosewater.
Earlier in the year the mammoth Toronto International Film Festival (which opened Sept. 4) laid down the law to filmmakers. If they wanted to screen during TIFF’s whirlwind opening weekend, they could not premiere elsewhere.
While not exactly insider baseball, these machinations likely have more meaning for festival programmers, industry types and film press than to the typical filmgoer.
And the jury will remain out on whether Telluride’s streak as the launchpad for the best picture Oscar winner will come to an end this award season because of TIFF’s stern advisory.
Even so, the film most praised by attendees in lines and on the 12-minute gondola ride between the town of Telluride and Mountain Village was “The Imitation Game,” directed by Morten Tyldum. It is an award contender to be sure.
More than a few have likened the story of Alan Turing’s code-breaking work in World War II to 2010’s Oscar winner “The King’s Speech.” And there are similarities: It’s a classy English period drama rife with deeply humane themes. It has the considerable push of Harvey Weinstein and the Weinstein Company. Most vividly and vitally, in Benedict Cumberbatch, the film has a performance of tremendous breadth and anguish.
A little less certain in the fledgling best picture race but far more astounding a cinematic feat was Alejandro González Iñárritu’s dark comedy “Birdman.”
Michael Keaton boldly soars and brilliantly plummets as Riggan Thomson, a movie star pigeon-holed by his super-hero role. In hopes of breaking out, he decides to mount an ill-fated adaptation of a Raymond Carver story collection.
There were a number of films boasting performances that will stoke award season talk.
“Boasting” might be too extravagant a word for the nuanced utterly focused turns of Steve Carell, Tatum, Mark Ruffalo in Bennett Miller’s “Foxcatcher”; Michael Shannon and Andrew Garfield in Ramin Bahrani’s “99 Homes”; Timothy Spall’s Cannes-winning turn in Mike Leigh’s “Turner”; Marion Cotillard in Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardenne’s economic drama “Two Days, One Night.”
Witherspoon delivers a beautifully steadfast performance as Cheryl Strayed, author of the bestselling memoir “Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.”
During a dinner hosted by the film’s distributor, Fox Searchlight, the author said she’d gotten used to people saying it must be “wild” to watch her story — one so intimate — unfold on screen.
Strayed was not the only fest guest to liken witnessing the making of a film as well as its big-screen premiere of her story to an out-of-body experience.
“It’s very strange,” said Bahari , the subject of “Rosewater.” “But as a journalist, you’re used to putting distance between you and the subject. It’s like watching an out-of-body experience on a CCTV monitor. And you know it usually happens to dead people — that they make films about them. So this is nicer. At least I’m not dead yet.”
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567, lkennedy@denverpost.com or twitter.com/bylisakennedy
