“Thirteen” and “Fantastic Fungi” show what the Port Townsend Film Festival has to offer

By Kirk Boxleitner

The 25th Port Townsend Film Festival's lineup includes two films that both premiered several years ago. I'm reviewing them both in advance to give readers a little taste of what to expect from this year's lineup. The directors of those films – Catherine Hardwicke and Louie Schwartzberg – are guests of honor at the festival, which runs Thursday, September 19 through Sunday, September 22.

Hardwicke co-wrote the screenplay for the film Thirteen (2003) with Nikki Reed, who was only 14 at the time but was making her acting debut as one of the female leads in the 100-minute R-rated film, alongside Evan Rachel Wood and Holly Hunter. Following the release of Thirteen at the Sundance Film Festival, Hardwicke won the award for Best Dramatic Director – one of many awards for which she, the film and its actors were either nominated or received.

This success undoubtedly contributed to her being chosen to direct Stephenie Meyer's bestselling vampire novel Twilight. Hardwicke's film adaptation, released in 2008, was a huge commercial success.

Hollywood has long acknowledged how much more problematic today's teenagers have become since 1955's “For They Know Not What They're Doing.” But “Thirteen” overcomes its sometimes over-the-top theatrics thanks to the painfully real performances of Wood, Hunter and Reed, as well as the lived-in authenticity of Reed and Hardwicke's script, all made possible by Hardwicke's naturalistic direction.

As it turns out, what's “wrong with today's kids” in “Thirteen” is due to the problems and inadequacies of the adults who bear the burden of raising those children in a modern media and consumer culture that seems almost cruelly designed to exacerbate the wildest and most self-destructive impulses of an already turbulent adolescence.

The film sympathizes with Hunter's plight as an overworked, divorced mother who dropped out of high school and works at home as a hairdresser to support her two teenagers, her on-off boyfriend, and a fellow single mother who occasionally stays over with her own young daughter.

And although the film does not judge Hunter’s suitability as a mother – even as she worries about staying sober – It is acknowledged that her daughter's lack of education and questionable relationships have not exactly provided stability in her family life.

Schwartzberg's 2019 documentary “Fantastic Fungi” summarizes in 81 minutes the turbulent history of biological evolution, its impact on the environment and human uses of mushrooms – from medicine to cooking – while also addressing their sociopolitical and spiritual implications.

Using not only an emotive, Gaia-theory-based celebrity narration from Brie Larson, but also a visually stunning abundance of time-lapse cinematography and CGI, the film effectively tells the epochal history of the planet's fungi, largely through the biography of mycologist Paul Stamets.

Stamets traded in the evangelical religious traditions he grew up with for spreading the beneficial effects of mushrooms, a mission he and Schwartzberg continued during the COVID outbreak by hosting a virtual “Fungi Day” event across various social media outlets one day before Earth Day 2020.

Schwartzberg cites Stamets and other experts in the field of fungi to attest to the persistent scientific ambiguity surrounding these organisms. After all, not only do fungi exist in a strangely nebulous state, somewhere between plants and animals, but we have yet to discover all the ways in which they function as life forms and how they might benefit both us and the entire ecosystem.

Stamets tells how a psychedelic episode helped him overcome his lifelong stutter and how his elderly mother experienced remission from terminal breast cancer after taking medication based on turkey tail mushrooms.

In addition to touting the organisms' ability to break down environmental pollutants like petroleum and alleviate mental illnesses like depression and anxiety, “Fantastic Fungi” also questions what constitutes sentient communication by examining how underground networks of fungi enable entire forests of trees to connect and respond to each other's needs.

Although mushrooms are stigmatized in Western culture as harbingers of decay, Fantastic Fungi happily points out that decay is not just the unsightly consequences of death, but a vital restoration of nutrients and other substances necessary for the renewal of life.

“Thirteen” will be shown in the auditorium of the American Legion Marvin G. Shields Memorial Post 26, 209 Monroe St. in downtown Port Townsend, while “Fantastic Fungi” will be shown outdoors on Taylor Street, four blocks southwest of Water Street. Both screenings begin at 7:30 p.m., followed by an opportunity to meet the filmmakers on Saturday, Sept. 21.