EDINBURGH: ‘Get Low,’ ‘Restrepo,’ ‘Vacation!’

My third day in the ‘Burgh (shut up, I have legitimately heard people call it that) wasn’t as film-heavy as the previous one: social commitments and a certain football match between Slovenia and some other country got in the way. Under these circumstances, three screenings — taken together, as disparate a cross-section of the U.S. indie scene as one could ask for — felt like an entirely honorable commitment, particularly when the first (and worst) of them rewarded me with the still-smarting black eye I mentioned yesterday.

Chalk it up, however unfairly, as a further gripe I have with a would-be Oscar vehicle for Robert Duvall that has been pestering the festival circuit since last fall.

“GET LOW” (**)

Oscar-winning short director Aaron Schneider’s feature debut is the kind of prestige production that has critics reaching for adjectives like “handsome” (or, at a push, “elegant”) in the absence of any more compelling emotional connection to the material. If anything, however, the ample visual burnishment on display (it’s no surprise to learn Schneider began his career as an acclaimed cinematographer) only ends up smothering a decidedly minor-key narrative: a folksy slab of mini-Americana that Horton Foote might have penned in a particularly mannered mood, and then binned for lack of consequence.

It’s easy to see why many have been impressed by Robert Duvall’s performance as Felix Bush, a crusty Tennessee hermit drawn back into society by unresolved concerns over his own mortality — it calls on him to be alternately terse and teary, but Duvall and scriptwriters Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell skimp on the connecting tissue between these emotional poles. His climactic confessional monologue at his own pre-emptive funeral party, the preparation of which provides the scant storytelling thrust, never feels like more than a calculated thespian set piece; the tears, as a result, remain stubbornly on one side of the screen.

Duvall’s is arguably the least interesting performance on offer here: there’s more curiosity and concealment in Lucas Black’s turn as the junior mortician hesitantly attending to the old geezer’s wishes, while Bill Murray and Sissy Spacek (in a role ultimately stymied by an ill-thought subplot) locate occasional tart notes in the homily-heavy dialogue. The contributions most generously showcased, however, remain David Boyd’s studied, Conrad Hall-styled lensing and Geoffrey Kirkland’s woodsy Depression-era production design — not the elements you want to be thinking about while matters of life and death are being discussed, however phonily.

“RESTREPO” (***1/2)

“Get Low” may or may not be the subject of lingering Oscar speculation, but if I were to wish such talk upon any film I’ve seen at the fest, it’d be Sebastian Junger and Tim Hetherington’s staggering non-fiction portrait of the American recruits stationed at the titular outpost in Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley.

A richly deserving winner of the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance earlier this year, the film astonishes by its very existence. If one weren’t so swiftly invested in the tenuous fate of the men in question, one would be scratching one’s head over how Junger and Hetherington (a noted war journalist and photographer, respectively) managed to work their camera into such high-temperature scenes of conflict and invasion, lives of soldiers and civilians literally passing before our eyes in the process.

The filmmakers’ mettle and persistence (they spent 15 months embedded with the platoon) has paid off with as vivid and empathetic a depiction of life on the front as a camera can feasibly capture, one that avoids passing judgment on the individuals’ occasionally discomfiting actions; pro- or anti-war stances fade into irrelevance as uncertain day-to-day survival becomes the prime narrative motor.

Whether by accident or design, Junger and Hetherington have happened upon a highly alert and engaging collection of human subjects; no less illuminating than the sweaty-palmed battle footage are the scenes of the men at rest (or as close as they’re allowed to get to that), their idle horseplay betraying a more profound sense of brotherhood than many an ennobling Hollywood war picture. Handily the year’s standout American doc thus far, and alongside “The Hurt Locker” (with which it’d make a valuable double feature), a new standard-bearer for cinematic essays on the war on terror.

“VACATION!” (***)

“Modern Love is Automatic,” the icily erotic and quite fantastically titled sophomore feature from 20-something indie climber Zach Clark, was among my favorite discoveries of last year’s Edinburgh fest, so I didn’t even need the ringing endorsement of one Chad Hartigan to eagerly anticipate the director’s latest. And certainly, in its punchy, poptastic first half, “Vacation!” earns its exclamation mark.

Continuing the previous film’s nastily precise examination of fractious sisterhood — this time via the more immediate narrative hook of an all-girl beach getaway — Clark deftly sketches the goofy interplay and subtly emerging tensions between four longtime friends (a tight ensemble including the two stars of “Automatic,” Melodie Sisk and Maggie Ross) with less in common than they dare admit to each other.

When the film takes a sharp left turn towards the tragic, however, Clark’s immaculate control over the proceedings slips slightly: many scenes take on a rhythmically samey quality, as the female protagonists prove less compelling individually than as a unit. If it’s not quite the emphatic leap forward from “Modern Love is Automatic” this viewer had hoped for (a churlish complaint, given that matching it already represents a high bar cleared), “Vacation!” at least shares all the considerable virtues of its predecessor — from a killer new-wave soundtrack to a thoroughly grown-up understanding of female sexuality that couldn’t be more welcome in the summer of “Sex and the City 2.”