I Love Top 10 Lists.
Jul 17 '04
The Bottom Line Here's what I liked most this past year, expressed, well, somewhat less briefly than Epinions would've liked, but what can ya do... (includes mild spoilers)
The traditional party line on best-of-the-year movie lists is that they don’t really matter very much. The making of lists by moviegoers, particularly the nonprofessional critics of the world, is seen mostly as a ceremonial endeavor, wrapping up a year’s worth of cinema in an easy-to-swallow dose. Personally, I’m not so quick to dismiss list-making as a pseudoscientific art to be treasured by a certain stripe of passionate moviegoer. When two people who love cinema run into each other, one will, fairly early in the conversation, ask “so, have you seen anything good lately?” A key factor in our decisions about which movies to see tends to be word-of-mouth, in particular when a film doesn’t have a big marketing push behind it, and friends become familiar with each other’s tastes. As Rob Gordon says in HIGH FIDELITY, “it’s about what you like, not what you are like.”
Which brings me to the inevitable follow-up question, “why did you wait until July to make the 2003 list?” The answer falls somewhere between “I made it in July last year” and “my computer was down for a month so I couldn’t post it sooner.” I should also explain that this spring I made the decision to list movies on my site by their international release date rather than their American one, so on the off chance you actually visit my site (the link’s in my profile- be my guest) the list below will not match my 2003 list in the site. That’s because I’ve decided to stick with American release dates here, and if I wanted to wait to see the majority of significant 2003 international releases it’d be at least another year before I wrote this essay.
****
Looking over this list, I notice two main themes that running through the films I’ve included. The first is a key issue in our post-9/11 world- the need for, and possibility of, revenge. Many of this year’s best films dealt with how people respond to earth-shaking events in their lives. In Quentin Tarantino’s KiLL BiLL: vol. 1, The Bride says, “When fortune smiles on something as violent and ugly as revenge, it seems proof like no other, that not only God exists, you're doing his will.” Such thoughts are tantalizing but also problematic, and Tarantino, to his credit, doesn’t make the issue that black and white (this spring’s second volume muddies the waters even more).
The flip side to this ideology can be found in Gaspar Noé’s IRREVERSIBLE, the brutal and bleak story of a man seeking revenge on the man who raped his girlfriend and put her in a coma. The film is told in reverse, with the consequences being shown prior to the actions that caused them, turning an exploitative plotline into something trickier by robbing us of the usual payoffs. As the characters ascend from the depths of agony by moving backwards in time, the events yet to come cast shadows over happier scenes in their lives, and we weep for their future because they cannot.
The box office success of 2002’s BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE opened up the market for documentaries, and the best new documentary I saw in 2003 was José Padilha’s BUS 174. The film documents a bus hijacking in Rio de Janeiro by former street kid Sandro do Nascimiento, and the film traces his life back to his childhood as he grew up in a world of poverty and violence, witnessed the massacre of many of his friends at the hands of the police, and eventually landed in a prison filled of almost unspeakable squalor. Sandro hijacked the bus as revenge against the system he believed did him wrong, and Padilha builds to a hypnotic climax that vividly utilizes news footage from the hijacking, and slows the action to a crawl, the better to illustrate what went wrong that day.
The two other films on this list that deal with revenge focus on men who are, for one reason or another, unwilling to take revenge on those who some (themselves included) might think deserve it. In Alan Rudolph’s THE SECRET LIVES OF DENTISTS, Campbell Scott discovers that his wife (played by Hope Davis) is having an affair, and spends most of the film wrestling with the idea of doing something about it. Denis Leary also stars as a patient of Scott’s whose philosophy on having dental work done is “not until it hurts,” and this is the way of thinking Scott himself applies to his relationship with his wife. Also holding him back from action are the needs of their three young daughters, whose lives won’t get put on hold to accommodate their parents’ marital difficulties.
The final revenge-related film I’ve included here is LE FILS [THE SON], by the Dardenne brothers. The film stars the great actor Olivier Gourmet as Olivier, a carpentry teacher at a school for troubled kids, who takes in Francis, a new student. In the course of the film we discover (though not before it makes sense to discover it) that Olivier’s young son was murdered years ago by the Francis, and while most people would reasonably expect Olivier to take revenge, his behavior is unexpected. The film never pauses to explain or justify Olivier’s actions, but a key scene in understanding him provided one of the simplest and most moving moments of 2003- when Francis, at the end of the school day, cleans himself off with an air hose in a way similar to Olivier.
****
The second major theme of this list is key to the other five films listed below: collaboration. Many films throughout the years have focused on a single protagonist struggling to reach an end, but a number of 2003’s best films dealt with the ways in which people work together to attain even greater goals. The most popular example of this could be found in the biggest blockbuster of last year, Peter Jackson’s final installment in the LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, THE RETURN OF THE KING. The fellowship was separated at the end of the first film, yet their bond remains strong and every one of them acts in the interest of destroying the One Ring. Great battles are fought to unite kingdoms and destroy the forces of evil, but the film’s most affecting scene finds the ever-loyal Sam hoisting the exhausted Frodo on his back in order to help him finish what he started.
Compared with saving the world and ushering in a new kingdom, staging a ballet production may seem like child’s play, but as Robert Altman demonstrates in THE COMPANY, it’s still a formidable task. Using a cast comprised largely of Chicago’s Joffrey Ballet, the film takes on the dance world in typical Altman fashion, examining the lives of those associated with the company, from the apprentice dancers to the artistic director (Malcolm McDowell) who seemingly floats above it all. Some critics have complained that the final production, a garish piece called “Blue Snake,” isn’t worthy of the film’s attention, but I believe that Altman deliberately chose an ambitious but not altogether successful number in order to demonstrate the importance of the process over the end result. Not every show (or, by extension, every film) can be great, but creative people must create, and the show must go on.
Another portrait of collaboration in entertainment is Christopher Guest’s A MIGHTY WIND. Gathering his usual stock company together again and working in his usual “mockumentary” style, he focuses on three folk-music combos as they reunite for a televised concert. One group has been playing together for years, but the other two have split up for different reasons, and the film’s central scenes find the duo Mitch and Mickey reunited after a less-than-peaceable split almost thirty years previous. Despite a great deal of tension between them, the two are able to set aside their differences for the show, singing the lovely song “A Kiss At the End of the Rainbow” and providing one of those great moments where you’d swear you could hear a pin drop in the theatre.
I include a sentimental pick every year, and this year I’ve chosen the Farelly brothers’ STUCK ON YOU, a funny and surprisingly poignant comedy about two conjoined twin brothers. Bob (Matt Damon) and Walt (Greg Kinnear) get along well, but they find their interests increasingly at odds when Walt moves to Hollywood to become an actor. The film is as enjoyable (if not as uproarious) as just about anything the Farellys have done, but they have more on their mind than making us laugh, and the film’s final act packs a real punch. There’s real emotional truth to be found in STUCK ON YOU, not just what it’s like to be a conjoined twin, but more universally what it means to be close to someone, whether it’s a sibling, a significant other, or simply a close friend on whom you’ve come to rely over the years.
And so I’m left only with my favorite film of 2003: Peter Watkins’ incendiary LA COMMUNE [PARIS, 1871]. This film, made in 2000 for French television, shows a group of people re-enacting the brief reign of the Commune in 1870s Paris. We see lower- and middle-class citizens taking to the streets of the city and mounting a revolution, and Watkins uses a fascinatingly anachronistic method to frame the action: he invents a news station and sends two reporters to cover the events and interview the participants (there’s also a station representing the opposing upper-class and national government). Watkins gives the cameras unlimited access, and we see the makeshift government struggle with how to create a ruling body that will remain true to the ideals of the Commune.
The Commune ultimately failed, as most experiments of this sort do, not because of a lack of enthusiasm for it but because it wasn’t able to sustain assaults both from outside (The Army) and within (an increasingly messy bureaucratic infrastructure). Still, Watkins applauds their efforts and their courage to take on the political status quo. Most of the cast is comprised of political activists rather than actors, and the film isn’t peopled with traditionally-written characters as much as people called upon to portray like-minded historical analogues. Watkins draws parallels between the political landscape of Paris in 1871 with the supposedly more placid climate of today, and in one of the film’s most startling moments, a cast member seamlessly segues from a discussion of the politics of the Commune to the contemporary topic of globalization. Such bold fourth-wall-shattering tactics as this one pay off wonderfully, and I’ve never seen a movie quite like LA COMMUNE. My hope is that it will be released on DVD, not simply so that I can see it again, but so any person who cares at all about politics or about cinema can see it as well.
****
Well, that makes ten. Now I guess I should put them in order, because it wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t.
1. La Commune [Paris, 1871]
2. Irreversible
3. The Secret Lives of Dentists
4. Kill Bill: vol. 1
5. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
6. Le Fils [The Son]
7. Bus 174
8. The Company
9. A Mighty Wind
10. Stuck on You
The next 10 (in alphabetical order): All the Real Girls (David Gordon Green); American Splendor (Shari Springer Berman/Robert Pulcini); Capturing the Friedmans (Andrew Jarecki); Finding Nemo (Andrew Stanton); Man on the Train (Patrice Leconte); Master and Commander (Peter Weir); May (Lucky McKee); Mystic River (Clint Eastwood); Shattered Glass (Billy Ray); The Weather Underground (Sam Green/Bill Siegel)
Early contenders for next year's list: Cowards Bend the Knee (Guy Maddin); Dogville (Lars Von Trier); The Five Obstructions (Jorgen Leth/Lars Von Trier); Los Angeles Plays Itself (Thom Andersen)
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
hkoreeda
|
|
Member: Paul Clark
Location: Ohio
Reviews written: 35
Trusted by: 9 members
About Me:
What's the polite term for "unemployed wannabe critic"?
|
|
|
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.