For fans of independent films, now might be the time to feel vindicated. The transition from the realm of indie to the studio system isn’t a new concept by any means, but in the last several years cutting one’s teeth on the festival circuit has become very lucrative for some directors. Gareth Edwards went from making the low-budget Monsters in 2010 to helming the Godzilla reboot 4 years later (and in doing so went from a 6-figure budget to a 9-figure one); Marc Webb leapt from the twee (500) Days of Summer to taking over Sony’s Spider-Man reboot The Amazing Spider-Man; James Gunn went from R-rated genre fare to handling Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy; Rian Johnson, who already made a big leap from Brick to Looper, launched into the stratosphere when he was picked to direct the 8^th episode of Star Wars; and most recently, Safety Not Guaranteed’s Colin Trevorrow followed up his début with none other than Jurassic World. The glamour of Hollywood is merging with the not so glamorous world of DIY filmmaking, and it’s clearly working out for both the directors and the studios.

It’s natural to wonder how the influx of relatively new directors from festivals like Sundance or SXSW might change the blandness of Hollywood tentpoles, but it might be better to start asking about the other side of this equation. What does this mean for independent films, and will it change the way we perceive indies? Independent films don’t have an industry as vast or profitable as the studios, which means that the indie “system” is much more malleable and, therefore, easier to change.

And it’s evident that, despite the financial success of films like Jurassic World and Godzilla, artistic success is hard to find in this new trend. The boundaries between mainstream and independent have been slowly merging together, but the entire idea of indie has been about separating from the mainstream, and providing an alternative to films designed by committee. What’s happening now is a slow, disparaging shift in what indie means, and an increase in power and control for Hollywood. Indie directors aren’t infiltrating the system; they’re being devoured by it.

Jurassic World and Godzilla

That hasn’t always been the case. The early ’90s saw the success stories of Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez and Kevin Smith. For those three filmmakers, their situation was the ideal. Rather than adapt themselves to the status quo, they were able to apply their distinct styles on a bigger scale. But the film industry is a different beast today. Tarantino, Rodriguez and Smith directed their own original stories and didn’t work with a massive budget. Today, directors are getting scooped up to take over other people’s properties, and the budgets go well past 100 million. It’s nice to think that a certain filmmaker’s unique or irreverent style might successfully port over to the sequel/prequel/reboot/adaptation/etc. blockbuster, but it’s not likely. Investors would be insane to hand over that amount of cash to someone who’s only worked with a small fraction of that money.

All someone has to do is watch what’s been released so far to see how much these director’s distinct qualities from their earlier work(s) have been drowned out by the wants and needs of those truly running the show. Watch Godzilla, or James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and it’s like playing a game of “Where’s Waldo?” with directorial trademarks. Gunn may have been able to cast Michael Rooker in a supporting role—a part that could have gone to anyone and no one would have blinked—but Guardians follows a very clear, familiar and formulaic path, one that also helped Marvel continue building the overall story for their massively successful franchise. It didn’t come as a huge surprise when rumours started that Edgar Wright, one of the best genre filmmakers working today, bailed on Ant-Man because Marvel wanted a Marvel movie, not an Edgar Wright movie.

So this brings me back to the first question I asked: What does this mean for independent films? What this new trend has done is turn film festivals like Sundance and SXSW—places designed to celebrate and promote distinct, independent voices—into training grounds for the next studio workman (with extra emphasis on man, as Jessica Ritchey points out). Now, indie features act as showreels or auditions, with people speculating over which directors will get hurled into the maw of the next big-budget property. And by putting the emphasis on this, it pushes the truly independent American filmmakers working today—the Andrew Bujalskis, the Josephine Deckers, the Rick Alversons, the Alex Ross Perrys, the Sean Bakers, the Nathan Silvers, and the Matthew Porterfields, to name a few—even further into the fringe. People look at the trajectories of people like Trevorrow, Edwards, Johnson, Webb, Gunn and others as a sign of indie taking over the mainstream, but it’s more like the mainstream assimilating the indie universe. The pockets of Hollywood studios may be getting bigger, but the opportunity for discovering and supporting groundbreaking new talents appears to be getting smaller with every year.

The famous real estate idiom about the three most important factors in determining the value of a property, aptly applies to Josephine Decker’s experimental feature debut: “location, location, location.” Take “feature” with a pinch of salt, however, because Butter on the Latch is twice removed from any other feature you’ll see all year (except, maybe, Decker’s second narrative film released this year, Thou Wast Mild and Lovely, which we’ve recently reviewed here). Decker’s background in performance art is felt throughout Butter; to the point that the two central characters’ movements feel as choreographed as their dialogue is improvised. But it’s not the movements or the narrative that keep the viewer engaged through-out this performance piece; it’s the woods where it’s shot, specifically a forest in Mendocino County, California, that seems to be the point of inspiration for everything else.

Sarah (Sarah Small) lives in New York, and after waking up half-naked in some ramshackle warehouse on the lower side of Manhattan, decides to visit her old friend Isolde (Isolde Chae-Lawrence), who’s at a Balkan folk music camp in Mendocino, getting over a break-up. The two re-unite and leisurely converse over Slivovitz (a Balkan plum brandy, originating from Serbia), and make-up; Isolde recounts her adventures with a mysterious masseuse from the East Village called Victor, Sarah remembers a Bulgarian folk song she heard, about a dragon entwined in a woman’s hair and whisking her away. It’s romantic and frightening all at once, but compelling enough to start having an influence on Sarah’s dreams. The friendship is abruptly strained with tension when Sarah’s gaze falls on a banjo-playing crooner called Steph (Charlie Hewson). Sarah and Steph grow closer, Isolde’s capriciousness grows stranger, music and nature work in harmony to distort the lines of fiction and reality.

Decker’s film is one of those tough watches that will either frustrate the viewer to the point of not wishing to continue, or completely enchant them. Directed and edited by Decker, shot by Ashley Connor, and playing out as a real-life encounter of two friends called Sarah and Isolde (in its most experimental move, all dialogue is improvised, thus this ‘feature’ doesn’t have a screenplay); the essence of Butter is very much a feminine essence. Decker discovered a fascinating way to connect the dots of folklore, music, and nature, and the result is a drawing of whatever the personification of female psychology would look like. Presumably a female figure covered in a lot of hair (one of the most striking visual motifs in the film). Aesthetically, and on a purely poetic level, Butter on the Latch is as sumptuous and inviting as its wonderful title suggests.

Connor’s cinematography has been singled out as a standout, and it is. Images of caterpillars slithering toward the fringes of focus, the crackling of a fire reflecting off a sleeping face, and strolls through the woods in the middle of the night lit by flashlights, pervade the entire picture with a tenuous sense of mysticism. Decker’s editing, however, should be championed as much as Connor’s cinematography; the influence of Bergman’s Persona and Lynch’s Twin Peaks is most intensely absorbed through the way Decker vigorously cuts and splices Sarah’s dream sequences, and its inebriated final moments. And as much as Bergman and Lynch must have been artistic influences, there’s a disarming sense that the spirit of Roman Polanski’s Repulsion is never too far away.

The trouble many will find with Butter, however, is precisely its disorienting nature, which seems to refuse any sense of narrative out of some experimental, post-modern, principles rather than a storytelling necessity. It’s an alluring piece of work, to be sure, but it seems to revel in confusion rather than attempt to escape it or truly put it to any good, compelling, use. A great example, in fact, of when improvised dialogue may not have been the best artistic choice. Due to this, Butter feels like the work of a student still learning her craft and something that doesn’t quite reach the creative heights it’s stretching toward. But, for someone who’s just begun her very promising directorial career, that’s hardly a big criticism. Decker and Connor truly work wonders to visually capture the magnetism of both feminine allure and feminine malice. Visuals inspired by a psychological location of the psyche as much as the physical location of the woods.

Sounds of aggressive screaming and laughter. A father and daughter chase each other. The daughter holds a decapitated chicken, chasing her father down and smearing its blood on his shirt. They roll around on the ground before the daughter goes back into their farmhouse. The handheld camera moves around the entire time, eventually drifting out of focus as it views the surrounding area. Only the scene doesn’t end at this point, as one might expect. The daughter begins narrating about her hypothetical lover, and the camera stares down a growling dog nearby. It’s a scene that’s bold, unique, vibrant, awkward and unsettling all at once, and a good introduction of what’s to come in Thou Wast Mild and Lovely.

The farmer in the opening is Jeremiah (Robert Longstreet), and his daughter Sarah (Sophie Traub). The two have a bizarre relationship, one with heavy implications of something incestuous, although director/co-writer Josephine Decker never clears up that ambiguity. The lack of answers extends to the third major character in this story; Akin (Joe Swanberg), a new worker on the farm hired for the summer. He removes his wedding ring, hiding the existence of his wife and child from Jeremiah and Sarah, and the reason for his being there might have to do with a past tragedy. Jeremiah, acting as an intimidating, masculine force in opposition to Akin’s meek, quiet composure (something Jeremiah repeatedly brings up as an insult), immediately notices the tan line on Akin’s ring finger. He knows Akin and Sarah are attracted to each other, but he doesn’t seem to mind.

That’s because darkness lingers just under the surface of Thou Wast Mild and Lovely. When all three characters sit down for dinner one night, Jeremiah tells a story about how people have two wolves constantly fighting inside them: one representing good, and one representing evil. Before he can say which wolf ends up winning he gets cut off, the story never finishing. In Decker’s film, malevolence tends to have the upper hand. Decker’s portrayal of her characters’ dark desires is where her talents shine considerably, showcasing a truly distinct voice in modern indie filmmaking. Ashley Connor’s excellent cinematography has the camera roving from one place to another, frequently switching perspectives as well as stylistic techniques (the film’s highlight: a series of flashbacks through the POV of a cow). Editing also plays a major role in creating the unique, dreadful mood. Decker, along with co-editors David Barker and Steven Schardt, edit the film in a way that feels impulsive, tied more to emotions than logic. The style will inevitably earn comparisons to Terrence Malick, except Decker’s lyricism has a fascinating perverseness to it.

While Decker’s skills at showing intangible urges and emotions show great talent, the same can’t be said once tensions rise to the surface. The arrival of Akin’s wife, Drew (Kristin Slaysman), leads to a climax turning the film into something akin to a gothic horror. The shift is a bit of a stumble for the film, with certain characters behaving in ways feeling too drastic and bizarre compared to everything beforehand. It’s a step taken a bit too far in one direction, but that appears to be Decker’s MO. Thou Wast Mild and Lovely isn’t afraid to go further, delving into ideas and choices that can easily repel just as much as it attracts. Some moments are absurd and laughable, while others generate a sublime beauty. It’s a risky mode of filmmaking, but it’s one that delivers truly exciting results.