Slam’s victory at Sundance marks a critical move for the art. Poetry’s value is completely tied to its integrity, and in Slam it is the poem that defines the terms. Saul Williams and Sonja Sohn, the star-crossed fiery lovers at the enter of this story, are both seasoned poets in the New York spoken word world, as are fellow members of the ensemble Beau Sia, Bonz Malone, Liza Jesse Peterson, Taylor Mali, and me. (I appear at the end of the movie in my traditional role of host at an actual poetry slam, the mock olympics of the word, which is the most energized grassroots arts movement of the decade.) Washington’s DJ Renegade and New Orleans’s John Sinclair put in cameos. All of the poems you hear are the writings of the poets themselves. Indeed, every word in the movie is the poet's own: this movie was completely improvised.

Imagine wordslingers and verbal assault squads at work and you get a flavor of the heat that the language in Slam contains. We’ve got ourselves a Richter 10 here: the poems that Ray Joshua (Saul Williams) uses to quell a jailhouse gang battle are his own, the passionate struggle of Lauren Bell (Sonja Sohn) to keep her new love from ruining his life are all of the moment.

Call this movie an editor’s nightmare then, because each time a scene was reshot it became a new scene. Slam does not move seamlessly like Hollywood movies -- it lingers, lurches and leaps breathlessly -- more like poetry than film. Levin and crew went for Truth, not Chronology, which sometimes makes for repetitions and odd disjunctions. But the barrage of emotions that this film touches doesn’t “make up for these lapses” -- rather, it puts you in another universe, where film, like literature, works to move you, not to put polish on sheen. The poets in Slam speak a poem through film, they do not sit on a piece of plastic waiting for the pan across a furled eyebrow.

The documentary sensation is undeniable. Levin’s recent work on such TV specials as his Drugs Behind Bars for HBO and The Execution Machine on Texas' death row, his probe beneath the skin of the CIA in America’s Secret Warriors, and the extraordinary journalism of Gang War: Bangin’ in Little Rock, not only give him an edge (believe me: this is the edgiest picture I’ve ever seen), but literally provided the “slammer” beginnings of Slam. While actually shooting a prison documentary, Williams, Sia and Malone were dressed in near-prison garb and entered a real jail as part of the camera crew. Once inside, Levin and his cinematographer, Mark Benjamin, managed to sneak shots for Slam, in many cases getting actual prisoners to take part in the film. The walls of verisimilitude came crashing down: in one absolutely extraordinary sequence, Williams jams on a free-style duet with Bay, a 17 year-old convict, who will find out within a few weeks whether he is behind bars for life -- in real life. The unbelievable pain of this poem tilts the whole film into a zone never before reached: we are exploring the inside of a soul here. This is the Realm of the Poem.

Another new, extra-filmic idea in Slam is the appearance of some beautiful moments where Benjamin’s shimmering eye is matched by of-the-moment tracks by DJ Spooky. You’d call these collages music videos if they weren’t so intellectual in their blend of sound and image -- they are Poems without Words. They don’t move the action of the story, but they do move the action of the poem, of the character’s inner lives.

Toss into the salad an utter lust sex scene where the smoky passion of the leads lashes fire tongues. Simmer with the bitter humor of Liza Jesse Peterson’s Ice Cream poem. Detonate with critic and raconteur Bonz Malone, who knows inside too well, in an amazing performance. And let the phenomenal, insane, over-the-top-racist bitter biting rantings of young poet Beau Sia arc this movie.

This is the recipe for a movie for a new millennium. If Slam is not a great movie, it is only because there has never been a movie like it. The pain of the prisoners, the reality of the poetry, the brilliance in this go-for-broke production is that it just starts with changing your life. Slam is out to change the world.