December 26, 2002

The Eye of the Navel

Okay, enough already. The film critic’s contract clearly states that sometime prior to December 31 each year, one must do a column about the best films of the year (worst list optional). I started to do that last week and wrote myself out of it. It’s not an excuse, but somewhere in the dark recesses I thought perhaps I might see something worthy in the dying gasps of 2002.

And just to procrastinate a second longer, every time I approach this exercise I recall the words of Andrew Sarris who’s been beating himself up for years about excluding Vertigo and Touch of Evil back in 1958. I’m almost positive I did not see 10 films for the ages last year and, rest assured, will not begin to attempt to rank the pictures that moved me. The choices are random based on memory, currency and a refresher list.

Atanarjuat – The Fast Runner. Technically, I first saw the film in 2001 but it didn’t premiere in the U.S. until February. This is probably the best largely unseen film of the year because of the on-going financial straights of its distributor. It won the Camera d’or in Cannes and was named the best Canadian film in 2001. Filmed in the former Baffin Island, it’s a classic Inuit tale of hot emotions in a cold climate. It’s raw, ethnographic and totally compelling. Beautifully shot on DV, the film takes its time, eschewing the conventions of mainstream filmmaking. The result is disarming; one cannot imagine it being produced without the assistance of some government program that, in truth, was a sop rather than a conviction about art and life.

About Schmidt. It’s hard to imagine what director Alexander Payne and co-screenwriter Jim Taylor were thinking when they decided to adapt Louis Begley’s novel about a WASP Manhattan lawyer at the point of his retirement. An essence of the book remains but now Schmidt, as brilliantly embodied by Jack Nicholson, is departing an Omaha insurance company. The film is many things - tragic, ironic, rife with pathos. But finally its strength comes from its ability to speak to an audience and touch them for what they recognize in themselves and others that is Schmidt. He’s a brave face for all his flaws with an innate ability not to see what’s plainly in front of him.

Solaris. Here’s a sure candidate for reappraisal even though the film received mostly four-star reviews. I’m not sure what I expected but the prospect of Steven Soderbergh adapting the contemplative novel by Stanislaw Lem that had been made into an excellent movie 30 years ago by Andrei Tarkovsky didn’t feel like a good idea. Skepticism aside, the filmmaking did make a contemplative film in which many failed to comprehend the repressed emotion which builds to a devastating conclusion. It’s about love and loss and pain and coupled with Confessions of a Dangerous Mind testament to the fact that George Clooney is both a star and a very good actor.

Time Out (L’Emploi du temps). Writer-director Laurent Canet apparently drew his story from a real life incident. On the surface it’s the saga of a businessman who’s downsized and pretends to have a job or job prospects to his family. Pain seems to be a recurring sensation of this list. Time Out is about observation. It doesn’t raise its voice in anger or frustration and the central performance in which the eyes tell all will haunt me for the rest of my life.

Read My Lips. Those quirky thrillers Americans used to make with alacrity are alive and well and living in France. The raison d’etre of the scheme is fine but the unusual relationship between a deaf woman and the ex-con she hires at a large business is really the pulp of the fiction. It’s funny, touching and keeps you guessing. Almost as good and certainly as much fun is another Gallic import Alias Betty.

Ice Age. For myself this was the most satisfying animated film last year, a simple tale of survival with unlikely animal friends with an unprepossessing moral thread. Unlike most computer animated fare, I liked the look and appreciated that the script tried to layer in a brash, unconventional and even hip attitude. Visually it may not carry the weight of Spirited Away but much as I liked the Japanese import, it suffered from a conventional English dub and pedestrian translation.

Far from Heaven. Though much was made of this film’s visual homage to Douglas Sirk’s 1950s melodramas, it never felt like more than a touchstone to something more emotionally powerful. Let’s face it, the people who made this film only know the era second hand and use their sense of that time as a way into an essentially modern story. Race and sexuality are central but truly it’s about hypocrisy of all manner.

Talk to Her (Hable con Ella). Pedro Almodovar’s most sublime movie. It’s foolhardy to attempt to describe the plot save for the fact that it requires several leaps of faith. But it works. He is a filmmaker that truly goes his own way and has created characters whose truth and humanity overcomes, shall we say, outrageous behavior. Well, at the very least he puts a human face on subject matter that would otherwise force us to look away.

Okay, I’ll kind of stop at eight. Yesterday, I might have been grumpy and settled on six. There are certainly other films worth a mention and perhaps tomorrow, a la Sarris, I’ll rue their exclusion.

Mostly Martha was probably the most fun I had at the movies last year. Funny, warm, a great soundtrack, romantic and lots of food. It’s a combination I find hard to resist. There wasn’t a lot of fun to be had or guilty pleasures to extol in 2002. About a Boy, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, 24 Hour Party People and, especially, Chicago were enjoyable romps with something on their mind that don’t require caveats.

I wanted to be blown away by an American indie and the closest I got to that feeling was Kissing Jessica Stein, a surprising lesbian romantic comedy that deftly avoided a political agenda without reducing its substance to pabulum. There’s also much to praise in Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, Lovely and Amazing, Tully and Personal Velocity.

And a few other almosts: the second half of The Pianist, Narc, Ararat, Changing Lanes, Morvern Callar and Antwone Fisher.

Rabbit-Proof Fence. It is possible to have second thoughts without sleeping on it and I’m bumping the list to nine. I’m not going to struggle with the symmetry of book ending the list with films about indigenous people in former British colonies. This film is an amazing story that represents how difficult it is to tie down the human spirit and put everything into ticky tacky. It’s a masterful work of simplicity that builds in emotional power in surprising ways.

Now, the hall of shame in many ways has more options. I will limit my selection to films that had the money and talent and squandered it. Again, in no particular order, Windtalkers, The Four Feathers, Signs, Blood Work, We Were Soldiers, The Truth About Charlie, The Sweetest Thing, 25^th Hour and The Gangs of New York.

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