Dancing Across Borders Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		3.5

Dancing Across Borders Blu-ray Movie Review

A real life Billy Elliot.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 11, 2010

Billy Elliot was one of the more unexpected hits of the 2000 film year, dealing in a circuitous manner with the epochal political changes that swept the United Kingdom in the 1980s, all in the guise of a story of a talented young boy from a hardscrabble background who wanted to dance ballet. Five years later, Sir Elton John adapted the film into a musical, where it first took the West End by storm and then three years later did similar duty on Broadway, where it in fact help alleviate the lingering stench of death from John’s über-flop, Lestat. Perhaps down the line in 20 or 30 years audiences will be treated to the perhaps more cumbersome title Sokvannara Sar: The Musical. Sar, a Cambodian born young man who is starting to make a name for himself in the world of classical ballet, is a sort of real life Billy Elliot, a kid from the wrong side of the tracks (or in this Cambodian case, perhaps fields) who through a curious combination of extremely good luck and a rather uncommon amount of persistence has started to break into the rigorously structured world of pirouettes and plies. You’ll notice I said “starting to make a name for himself” and “starting to break into,” and that’s both part of the dramatic impetus of Dancing Across Borders as well as one of its problems as a documentary—the story hasn’t just not finished yet, it’s barely begun, and with a lack of narrative cohesion and “arc” (as much as I hate that word), we’re left with an often engaging portrait of a strong willed young man who really hasn’t done much yet professionally. There’s no arguing that his personal journey is fascinating, and on that score, Dancing Across Borders succeeds more substantially.

Sar goes by the nickname Sy, which is not pronounced like “sigh” but rather like the letter “C,” and, to pun horribly, it’s not hard to see what made filmmaker and ballet aficionado Anne Bass fall for Sy and, well, sigh when she first saw him as a youth dancing in the ruins of Cambodia’s iconic Angkor Wat. Sy had received a fair amount of instruction in Cambodian ritual dance, a looser and more ritualistic (in one sense, anyway) discipline than classical ballet. Something about the young man’s grace and fluidity touched Bass deeply and she couldn’t forget about him even after she returned to the United States. That annoying little voice which often spurns the receptive on nudged Bass into trying to help Sar, and she arranged for him to come stateside to begin to learn ballet and hopefully be accepted at Seattle’s vaunted Pacific Northwest Ballet. When you consider that most kids begin studying ballet at the tender age of seven or eight, and that Sar was already in his mid-teens, Bass’ goals seem to be complete lunacy.

And in fact Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Peter Boal took one look at Sy, factored in his inability to not only move “correctly” but his near complete inability to understand a word of English, and said “not yet.” Sar’s journey might have ended there with a quick return flight to Cambodia and a life of poverty and probably heartbreak, but Bass refused to give up and got Sar a private tutelage with Olga Kostritsky, an iconic teacher and head of the boys’ program at the School of American Ballet. Over the course of two years, Kostritsky worked one on one with Sy, helping him to master techniques that can easily take over a decade for the typical student. Along the way, Sy overcame his frustrations and managed to also become fluent in English.

Dancing Across Borders could have benefited from someone other than Bass taking the helm on this project, though one of course can’t deny that Bass’ heartfelt involvement gives this story a very personal edge. The problem here, at least some of the time, is that the film jumps into the story headlong and then fails to really give enough background or context for the viewer to be totally immersed in Sy’s still evolving story. Cambodia’s turbulent political history is pretty much referred to only tangentially, and the socioeconomic stratum of Sy’s family is again only touched on haltingly. More importantly, the perhaps insanely structured world of classical ballet is never fully explained, and in fact when someone like Peter Boal rattles off a long French-laden phrase of various ballet moves Sy wasn’t able to fathom, unfortunately all but the balletic cognoscenti are going to feel, like Sy probably was, completely confused and helpless. A good narrator with a well written script giving the audience context would have helped this project immensely.

What works indisputably in Dancing Across Borders is Sy himself. This is a charming and wonderfully open young man who doesn’t mind baring his soul to Bass’ camera. Though we meet Sy now as a pretty Americanized youth, he’s able to at least partially articulate the struggles he encountered trying to assimilate into life in the United States. Dancing With Borders never really shows that struggle—again, it’s merely talked about—but at least having a few first hand accounts of the trials and tribulations helps to bring Sy’s personal story out in a compelling fashion.

There’s also little question that Sar has a bright future in classical dance, and in fact may be able to forge his own “language” which fuses ballet with traditional Cambodian moves. Dancing Across Borders may in fact turn out to be an important historical document many years down the line. For now, it’s an often engaging but slight look at a fascinating story that is still in a phase that’s too early to have given the film enough narrative sweep. Bass should return to this subject 10 years down the line, almost like Michael Apted did in his celebrated Up series, to revisit Sar and his journey once he’s able to really make a mark for himself in the dance world.

Dancing Across Borders Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Dancing Across Borders leaps onto Blu-ray with an AVC encoded transfer in 1080i and 1.78:1. There are quite a few different source elements utilized throughout this documentary, and as such there isn't really a consistent quality level to the images. Contemporary interview segments look great, with excellent clarity and sharpness and well saturated colors. A lot of the archival footage, which is obviously of the minicam variety, is ragged, soft and at times indecipherable. Some of the performance footage is also culled from news broadcasts and the like and is also similarly soft. However, even some of the contemporary performance footage tends to be on the soft side, with some low contrast resulting from very dim stage lighting at times. It's a mixed bag, to be sure, but there is some beautiful contemporary footage of Cambodia, New York, Seattle and Vail that all look very nice.

Dancing Across Borders Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

It's great that Dancing Across Borders has two lossless audio options available, a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and a DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0, and First Run Features deserves kudos for going the extra aural mile on this first Blu-ray release for the niche label, especially when so many other, larger concerns regularly slack off on the audio side of things and offer only standard Dolby tracks for their documentaries. That said, there really isn't much here for a surround track to exploit. The bulk of this documentary is people talking, and even some of the music sequences feature only a solo piano or, in orchestral cases, pre-records that don't offer the ability for discrete channelization. What's here is very clear (despite some thick accents and the occasional embedded subtitle for those speaking Cambodian), with excellent fidelity and good dynamic range. My favorite part of this soundtrack, as tangential as it is so Sy's story, was the oddly appealing Cambodian version of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" which plays as underscore early in the film.

Dancing Across Borders Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Dancing Across Borders has some interesting extras, though they are all split into separate chapters without any "Play All" option available:

• Performances (1080i; 28:03 total) by Sar, snippets of which are included in the main documentary. The video quality of several of these is pretty ragged, but it's fascinating to see Sar's growth, culminating in a November 2009 performance entitled "Mopey."
• Interviews With Anne Bass (1080i; 19:54 total), though all from the same interview, is split into three subjects, Filmmaking, Cambodia and Ballet.
• Photo Gallery

Dancing Across Borders Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

When Olga Kostritsky closes this piece by stating that meeting Sy was a once in a lifetime opportunity for her, the audience is given some glimmer of the hopes and dreams that are wrapped up in this young man by those who have sought to help him achieve a stellar career in classical ballet. The thing is, there isn't much of a career yet, and this documentary is therefore just a bit like an unanswered question. What is here is an uncommonly interesting look at one young man's unexpected personal journey which just happens to be twirling around the world of classical dance. Sy is a very appealing young man, and that appeal helps Dancing Across Borders to overcome some of its structural limitations. Plus, how many times have you heard "Both Sides Now" sung in Cambodian? Recommended.