Movies of 2013 Part 6: 40-21

And off we go again...

40) Maria Full of Grace (2004, Joshua Marston)

From one local library acquisition to another. I’d heard vague things about this film when it came out but had generally managed to ignore and evade it. Definitely no regrets about having caught up with it, though. A gritty and somewhat ugly portrayal of the drug trafficking industry between Colombia and the US, it’s told through the lens of a pregnant 17-year-old (Maria) who signs on as a drug mule to raise funds for her family. I won’t pretend this film is particularly surprising: it hits a lot of the beats you would expect such a story to tell, but it tells that story well, and left me with a hollowed-out feeling of the futility of it all. Indeed, I’m not even sure if futility is the breakout message intended, but the intricate redemptive themes just passed me by as this film affected me in other ways.

39) 2046 (2004, Kar Wai Wong)

Wow, more than a hundred films into my write-up, and this is our first look at Wong Kar Wai. Spoiler: there will be more. But then of course there will, because he’s a fucking brilliant filmmaker. This sort of sequel to Wong’s masterpiece In the Mood for Love received more than a few mixed reviews upon its release, leading me stupidly to neglect it for ten years before finally resuming my rightful place in Wong’s corner, cheering on everything he does. While this is definitely a far less straightforward film than its predecessor, it is packed full of stunning imagery and travels sideways and backwards across a narrative trajectory whose emotional rewards are very rich. 2046 finds its way at the bottom of the Wong pile this year because it will need a revisit to fathom completely, but at the same time as I was a bit perplexed by it, I fell instantly in love with its lush, seductive vision of Hong Kong’s future. Oh, and it goes without saying it helps to have Tony Leung as your guide through the journey.

38) No (2012, Pablo Larraín)

Chile! Nanananana, na, na, nana! So goes the incredibly catchy advertising jingle at the core of this film, a song I’ve gotten stuck in my head more than a few times since watching it, in spite of my obviously not knowing the lyrics. This is a wonderfully uplifting South American film about the power of the common people to affect big political change. Uplifting it is, while still paying enough credit to the audience to depict the struggle, the moral dilemmas, and the perspective of the antagonist to our central character. Gael García Bernal is always good value, and he delivers again here as the mercurial advertising whiz-kid in charge of a campaign to oust Pinochet via ballot. This is really likeable filmmaking: cerebral and politically savvy enough, but ultimately non-threatening and easy to absorb. It’s a sign of a certain type of good film when both Bec and I enjoy it. It probably also means there’s a minimum of people’s limbs getting hacked off. Bec, for some reason, loves that stuff.

37) La Règle du Jeu (1939, Jean Renoir)

There was most definitely a strong current flowing against this film when I sat down to watch it. Baffled by the only other Renoir film I’d seen (La Grande Illusion) and even more baffled by its reputation, I wandered with some trepidation into this... and to my delight got a very solid, witty film out of it. Revolving around the melodramatic interactions amongst a group of the social elite during a sojourn at a French chateau, this film bears a thematic resemblance to some of Buñuel’s films that have yet to be discussed (was probably a great influence on them). This is somewhat more conventional storytelling than those latter, however, with a distinct narrative arc filled with misunderstandings, rash acts and their consequences. I won’t pretend this film knocked me for six, but it was very solidly entertaining and a huge amount better than I’d expected going in.

36) Alphaville (1965, Jean-Luc Godard)

So we come to the highest-ranked of Godard’s films and, surprise surprise, it’s a dystopian genre piece. I say ‘surprise surprise’ because I think in a filmography as stylistically distinctive but thematically inscrutable as Godard’s, a nice piece of familiar genre filmmaking is a good way to get me on board. And it’s not like Godard allows the generic conventions to dictate his style here, either: it’s very much in his manner of doing things, and there are some notably discordant elements that make this film unique. Story-wise it’s nothing out of the ordinary, pulling together sci-fi and hard-boiled detective elements in a mystery narrative arc, but the film is definitely most memorable for the sensations it produces. At times it’s uncomfortable (the Alpha60 computer voice is, in a word, excruciating) but at all times intriguing. It just makes me wonder about other unfathomable directors who might have tried their hand at this genre... did Fellini ever do a dystopia?

35) Days of Being Wild (Aa Fei Zing Zyun, 1990, Kar Wai Wong)

So we didn’t have to wait too long for more of Wong Kar Wai to be introduced. It’s also somewhat odd to me that this ranks higher than 2046, because while both have a beautiful, melancholic quality, Days of Being Wild has a real cruel quality to it, at least in terms of its central character. He’s not a heartless type so much as aimless, but his aimlessness takes on a callous quality when dealing with the two women who fall for his wayward charms. This film is interesting from an attachment theory point of view, but as with Wong’s other films, there is a picturesque beauty to every frame. As much as I grew to hate ‘Yuddy’, the main character, the build-up of sweeping melancholy in the scenarios played out by the two female leads is heart-rending and bittersweet. I seem to be playing from the same songbook when I describe Wong’s films, but then his films all seem to follow a similar sort of tune: an inventively harmonious and mellifluent tune.

34) Hana-Bi (1997, Takeshi Kitano)

I’ve had this film in my DVD collection for a long time, and for some reason it just sat there on the shelf. I think at one point I confused it with Wong Kar-Wai’s As Tears Go By and thought I’d already seen it. Regardless, I went in expecting a similarly frenetic gang violence-type movie, and it took a good 40 minutes before I realised this isn’t that type of film at all. At first I was becoming increasingly chagrined that there were so few urban shootouts and car chases, and in all honesty this chagrin didn’t really dissipate until near the end of the film. Then something funny happened. Kitano’s subtle, downbeat direction not only began to grow suddenly on me, but it’s been continuing to grow ever since. This still has much of the aesthetic of a police crime drama, but imbued with an incredible depth of feeling and nuance. It’s a very different film, not only to what you tend to expect, but to other films in general. I’m definitely interested in learning more about Kitano in the future.

33) Where is the Friend's Home? (Khane-ye Doust Kodjast?, 1987, Abbas Kiarostami)

As discussed earlier in relation to Life and Nothing More, this is the first in Kiarostami’s Koker trilogy and the film that frames the narrative of the latter film. This film has a distinctly odd pretext: while doing his nightly homework, a young boy realises he has mistakenly taken home his friend’s work book, without which his friend will be unable to complete the homework and most likely be expelled from school on a third-strike-and-out basis. From that odd premise Kiarostami takes the boy on a journey to the next town to try and locate his friend’s home to return the book. The film is quite obviously unscripted for the most part, and there is a messy quality to it that nevertheless remains grounded. Also, it’s fascinating how suspenseful the film becomes given how simple its premise is, with a burgeoning sense of importance of the boy’s quest. We’re given another fascinating look into rural Iranian civilisation and treated to quite a delightfully ironic denouement.

32) The Fugitive (1993, Andrew Davis)

A big film that I’d never caught up with, this was the final film I watched on the flight home from New York. While it will never be more than a bit of a popcorn thrill ride, it’s about as solid an example as you can get. Harrison Ford is at his best in the good guy-done-wrong routine, and Tommy Lee Jones supports admirably while also providing the moral compass of the film. Kimble is obviously in the moral right, we know that, but Jones’ Agent Gerard is cleverly used to point the question of right and wrong in the right direction when needed. This film is tense, exciting, but also very tightly paced and controlled, so the suspense and drama trickles out at a steady pace. There’s ultimately no great insight into the human condition delivered here, it’s just knockout entertainment. The tension was also heightened for me because the climactic scene was just starting when I was told to pack up my monitor for the descent into Sydney, and I wasn’t sure if I could stick it out. Spoiler alert: I did.

31) Au Hasard Balthazar (1966, Robert Bresson)

As with Max Ophüls, I didn’t manage to follow Filmspotting’s Bresson marathon assiduously, but did manage to catch this pearler. And what a rip-roaring hoot it isn’t. To sum up this film succinctly, it’s basically a study through the eyes of an innocent animal of what complete c***s human beings are by nature. I recognise hints in this film both of Buñuel’s Los Olvidados and Haneke’s Das Weiße Band, dealing with a village community populated largely by simple, well-intentioned people but dominated by selfish folk with a callous disregard for others’ suffering. Bresson’s donkey Balthazar forms an obvious Christ figure here, taking on the suffering of those around him without complaining (well, he’s a donkey). Bresson’s striking shots of the eyes of the donkey reflecting the actions around him are a powerful bit of imagery, and help to make this a work both to lament and reflect on. Not upbeat, but very effective.

30) Footnote (Hearat Shulayim, 2011, Joseph Cedar)

I’m not sure how many others of the Filmspotting faithful headed out to find this wonderful film after semi-regular guest critic Michael Phillips listed it among his favourite films of 2012, but it is well worth a visit. It tells the story of rival Talmud scholars Eliezer and Uriel, who also happen to be father and son, and the fallout over the announcement that the father will finally get the academic recognition he feels he deserves. At the heart of this film is a thirst for approval, both from Eliezer the father in relation to his peers and from Uriel in relation to his father. But it also strikes me as a wonderfully Jewish film, full of stubborn male egos and family tension. I think many may see this as a bit of an academic slog, but the moral dilemma it presents and the way it heightens the drama also makes it a captivating watch.

29) Jules et Jim (1962, François Truffaut)

It’s been many, many years since I last watched a Truffaut film, and it was most definitely like the return of an old friend. Jules et Jim is essentially a tender love story, but one not about a romance between man and woman but between two male friends, possibly pioneering the concept of bromance. The story spans a number of years as Catherine, the woman at the centre of the love triangle, vacillates between the French Jules and the Austrian Jim while simultaneously vacillating between charmingly impulsive and batshit crazy. I’m not well-versed in history enough to know if there’s a geopolitical subtext to the friendship between Jules & Jim (I mean there’s obviously subtext but I don’t know if there’s an overt analogy), but the story of their relationship is an achingly bittersweet piece of melodrama.

28) Zero Dark Thirty (2012, Kathryn Bigelow)

So I certainly wasn’t part of the bullshit movement that called out this film for ‘glorifying torture’; nor was I part of the similarly bullshit converse movement that called out this film for “suggesting the US tortured people; they would never do such a thing”. I think it’s fairly evident that the US tortured suspects, and I think it’s fair enough to assume that said torture would provide some information that may, at some point down the line and through further investigations, led to discovering the whereabouts of Bin Laden. That’s not what this film is about: its plot is that of a procedural investigative thriller, but the question it asks us is: in the end, was it all worth it? It doesn’t seek to answer that question, it’s not in any way part of the stupid jingoistic movement that pretended that Bin Laden’s death solved anything. It’s a powerfully provocative bit of filmmaking from Kathryn Bigelow, who is a wonderful director. While her ex-husband fiddles with himself in the sandbox of computer animation, she is making serious, grown-up films for adults. And this is her best work.

27) Sansho the Bailiff (Sanshô Dayû, 1954, Kenji Mizoguchi)

We’ve reached the last, and hence top-ranked, of the Mizoguchi films, and funnily enough this was also the first one that I watched. While not centrally about prostitutes, this does feature a prostitute or two, but let’s not focus too heavily on that (we have Mizoguchi to focus too heavily on that for us). This is an epic tale about familial bonds and the resistance they hold in the face of major adversity. Melancholic and strangely beautiful, this film is the best of Mizoguchi’s to my mind because of how seamlessly it weaves its narrative magic. Far less self-conscious than some of the others, it just allows the story to be told and lets us draw our own meaning from it. In truth this is probably also his most conventional film, but it works in every way for me.

26) Take Shelter (2011, Jeff Nichols)

I spent an inordinately large amount of time in 2012 trying to find this film, after it became the darling of critics and alternative cinema goers at the end of 2011, but never managed to grab a copy of it until Jez put it on a hard drive and lent it to me. Although my initial enthusiasm had had time to dissipate, it didn’t take too long for this film to ratchet it up under its own steam. Michael Shannon’s devastating performance is the lynchpin of this film, but Nichols’ sparse, small-town-America aesthetic is also given its best treatment here. It feels like a deceptively simple story, but Nichols and Shannon are able to draw from the premise an immense foreboding doom which strikes at the heart of the everyday dream of domesticity. Jessica Chastain provides the balance, the yardstick of normality on which Shannon’s mental instability can be measured, and the sequence between the two of them in the storm shelter is one that will stick around in my memory for a long time. Absolutely brilliant film.

25) The Wedding Banquet (Xi Yan, 1993, Ang Lee)

So we move from a devastating film about the breakdown of a family to a beguiling and funny film about a family not really breaking down when it very well could have. What I really enjoyed about this early effort from Ang Lee was how much it kept me guessing. There are so many occasions when I thought I knew where the plot was going and it yanked me in a completely different direction. Aside from its cleverness in this regard, it’s also just a funny and sweet family story about love in the modern world (and yet it’s 20 years old, hmmm...). It was also a very good film for Bec and me to watch together, bringing together the themes of culture clash and familial expectations, and lampooning them all admirably.

24) The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Le Charme Discret de la Bourgeoisie, 1972, Luis Buñuel)

Buñuel hasn’t been discussed for a while, although there were quite a few of his films I caught up with this year (I’d never seen one prior to 2013). I’d like to call this one of his stranger efforts, but I’m almost certain there’s far more intense weirdness still to explore in his filmography. It is, however, just an odd style of filmmaking, a series of episodes in the life of a group of well-to-do socialites who repeatedly meet up for a meal and inevitably don’t end up eating. If that sounds like a weird premise for a movie, I’m glad, because that’s the strangeness of it. What’s even more strange is just how entertaining it becomes, with their interactions being witty and amusing as well as offbeat and somewhat surreal. It’s most definitely a difficult film to fathom, but even without understanding it’s quite easy to be taken along for a charming ride.

23) La Promesse (1996, Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne)

The second of the Dardennes’ films on this list, and another story of young people trying to overcome parental issues and forge meaning for themselves. In this case it’s the story of Igor, a young lad whose father is a con artist scamming money from illegal immigrants. The titular ‘promesse’ (that’s ‘promise’ by the way) forms a powerful moral dilemma for Igor as he has to decide between loyalty to his father and loyalty to his own conscience, plus in the mix is the question about what, ultimately, is the right thing to do. It’s a fascinatingly complex quandary posed by the Dardennes, and it plays out in a deeply absorbing drama. Jérémie Renier and Olivier Gourmet play Igor and his father, respectively, and are both extremely good in their diverse roles in drawing out the two sides of the dilemma.

22) Mississippi Burning (1988, Alan Parker)

This is a film that really surprised me. The plot centres around two FBI agents investigating a disappearance (we know it’s a homicide) in a small Mississippi town during the pre-Civil Rights era. While the plot is tense, exciting stuff with an immense sense of menace, what really surprised me was the unexpected source of some of that menace. Prior to watching this, it had never occurred to me that Stephen Tobolowsky could be a threatening presence. Here he plays the town’s industrial champion whom the two agents suspect of being the local KKK leader, and it’s precisely Tobolowsky’s simple, everyman ordinariness that makes his character such a menace, because his subtle policy of racial hatred is so inconspicuous as to be dangerous. By contrast, the more overtly threatening Michael Rooker seems less perilous because his explicitness betrays an instability and insecurity that will ultimately be his downfall. The threat being well established, the ‘good cop bad cop’ conceit of Hackman and Defoe in the central roles leads to a somewhat conventional but deeply satisfying denouement. I really, really liked this one.

21) The Piano Teacher (La Pianiste, 2001, Michael Haneke)

Falling just outside my top 20 is this sweet, upbeat comedy about the redemptive power of the human spirit. Sorry, my brain just clocked off there for a second, where was I? So seriously, this film is located very firmly in Haneke’s bailiwick of cruel, sadistic stories of human misery, and is by a long way the most difficult film of his that I’ve come across yet (no, I haven’t seen Funny Games). Isabelle Huppert is quite astonishingly good as the standoffish pianist and elite tutor sheltering a dark secret, and there is a striking courage to her performance and the gusto with which she embraces it. I can’t say that this film left me feeling particularly enlightened, and it obviously didn’t leave me feeling happy, but with this much emotional power you can’t really help but respect it.

Now that I've got you on tenterhooks on the precipice of my top 20, it gives me great pleasure to vex you by announcing that in the next post, I'll be taking a step back to count up my bottom 10 films of the year, in an infuriating system of counting down which I think I invented, then Jez stole, so now it looks like I stole it from him.