Gross Behaviour - by Leonard Klady

The Eye of the Navel 2003

Not long ago inveterate grumbler Richard Schickel mentioned that his publication, Time, had done away with top 10 lists last year and that suited him fine. However, to his surprise, the online version of the magazine contacted him a couple of weeks back about providing a list and it was back to business as usual. "Why does it have to be 10," he railed?

Well, it doesn't have to be a minion and last year I found it quite liberating to cite just eight. A year later, I'm not wincing too much about the 2002 selections. There are a couple of titles that probably would be relegated to a close but no cigar status and a couple more that would take their place. But The Fast Runner, About Schmidt, Time Out, Talk to Her and Far from Heaven still resonate for me.

A writer friend who has an Oscar on his mantle generally asks about this time of year: Has it ever been this bad? Personally, I think it's simply too close to call. The films that represent all that Hollywood can do with money and talent range from the disappointing to the mildly pleasurable … and that's being truly diplomatic. There are pleasures to be found in Seabiscuit, Master and Commander and Pirates of the Caribbean but I find myself stopping shy of being swept completely away by their stories. In terms of studio product, there probably wasn't a more diverting and enjoyable 90 minutes than The School of Rock - objectively a wholly fungible entertainment that just might join the ranks of Animal House, Arthur and Back to School as movies to watch when you need a guaranteed laugh.

As for off-Hollywood fare and films from abroad, the simplest thing to say is that if they somehow manage to wedge their way into commercial release, they likely have assets beyond the ka-ching of the cash register.

All best lists are intrinsically temporal but keeping it tight and unsentimental improves the likelihood one won't experience remorse at a later date. So, let us commence randomly.

Winged Migration. A film that changed my life. To my horror this chronicle of the flight patterns of birds wasn't on my 2002 list and that has a lot more to do with release schedules than its myriad qualities. I first saw it early in 2002 in a version slightly longer than released in the United States. It's a thoroughly unique movie and all attempts to describe what's literally on the screen render something close to the banal. Yes, it's ethnographic but the decision to keep narration and titles to a bare minimum and tell the story via montage creates a poetic and emotional experience. To subsequently learn the filming schedule occurred erratically over three years all over the world with dozens of cameramen takes nothing away from the enjoyment. As to its life altering aspects, I bought a bird feeder after seeing the film and have been religiously stocking it ever since.

The Secret Lives of Dentists. It's good to see Alan Rudolph in top form and working from someone else's script. The subject is infidelity or, to be more precise, the fear and prospect of infidelity and the film addresses it with a candor and maturity one doesn't find in the likes of Unfaithful. Campbell Scott and Hope Davis portray a couple that also happens to co-habit professionally as dentists. They have a home and family that is outwardly secure and to be envied. But all that changes when Scott happens to spy his wife in an affectionate embrace that may or may not be innocent. The film is about perception and Craig Lucas' script underlines that by introducing a fantasized character who's a sort of malevolent Jimminy Cricket pushing the husband's most vulnerable areas.

Thirteen. First, there's the potency of the material. The film is an unsparing portrait of a mother-daughter relationship and the pressures placed on the family when it virtually adopts the girl's best friend and worst influence. A first film by production designer Catherine Hardwicke, it was conceived and written with teenager Nikki Reed who plays the wilder, unsupervised teen. What gives the material a special edge is an in-your-face shooting style that's become the hallmark of cinema verite documentaries. It's further enhanced by the decision to employ a digital camera for a quality of immediacy that allows us to suspend any notion that the likes of Holly Hunter and Deborah Unger are acting out parts.

In This World. Winner of the Berlin Golden Bear, this is another instance where going the digital route provided a realism and intimacy that's difficult to attain using more conventional filmmaking tools. British filmmaker Michael Winterbottom employed a gun and run style to tell the story of two Afghani boys making the trek from a Pakastani refugee camp to London where a relative resides. It is a harrowing journey in which the boundaries of realism and fiction are blurred to a point where one can no longer see the artifice. The film is unique and heart wrenching in the manner of a journalistic expose without the strings and vistas of a Hollywood melodrama.

Elephant. Also inspired by headlines, but with a resonance that hits closer to home, Gus Van Sant's Cannes award winner artfully tells of a high school tragedy akin to Columbine. Eschewing the trappings of pop psychology, the film concentrates on setting the scene, the school dynamics and an environment where seeming normalcy masks desires and attitudes that are socially aberrant. It shrewdly maintains that there are no easy answers just difficult questions. The film literally walks the same path again and again though from varying perspectives as if somewhere in the routine a missed clue might be found. Of course, it's a vain quest and those seeking tidy solutions will be angered rather than troubled as the filmmaker must have been.

Whale Rider. The power of myth, past and present, infuses this saga of a young Maori girl. Though set in contemporary New Zealand, the tribal world depicted might easily have existed a half century ago. Pai (Keishi Castle-Hughes) is the descendant of kings and leaders but as a female cannot be heir to the throne. At least that is the attitude of her grandfather, the current chief. However, tradition will not bind her and though she's refused schooling in the ways of her ancestors, she possesses natural gifts and insights that will not be hindered by hide-bound narrowness. There's an old fashioned messianic strain to the yarn that nicely dovetails into more current attitudes of female empowerment and equality. It's a joyous tale, winning and determined and beautifully realized.

The Barbarian Invasions. Another prize-winner at Cannes, Denys Arcand returns to characters from 1986's Decline of the American Empire and specifically Remy (Remy Girard), the puckish satyr. The passage of time finds him with terminal cancer but no less engaged in a tattered home life, enduring friendships and a need to find logic in the irrational. A work of consummate maturity, its pain is sincere, humor honest and view of one's imminent demise life affirming. Arcand is innately a social satirist but without relenting in that department, he's made the sort of humanist ensemble piece that typified the work of Jean Renoir and no one has better described how the rules of the game have changed.

In America. Jim Sheridan makes the cinematic equivalent of bumble bees - aerodynamically they should not fly but no one's bothered to tell them. Like Arcand's movie, death is at its center but ultimately the film is a celebration of life. Loosely based on the filmmaker's arrival and early days as a struggling actor in Manhattan, the tale evolves anecdotally. Triumphs, setbacks and perseverance are the hallmarks of the saga that centers on Johnny, his wife, two young daughters and an artist dying of AIDS that lives in their tenement. It's a wonderful ensemble but Sarah and Emma Bolger are magical as the daughters and there's a rare emotional poignancy when the former sings Desperado at a school event.

Eight seems like an appropriate number of films to cite though I'm sorely tempted to include Girl with a Pearl Earring, an extraordinary examination of the personal and political dynamics of art in the microcosm of Johannes Vermeer's studio in 17th Century Delft. I hesitate only because I'd prefer a little time and objectivity before committing completely. I feel similarly about Peter Pan, a charming, enchanting and clever adaptation of J.M. Barrie's fairy tale.

There were also perhaps a handful of films that seemed just a millimeter away from making the current pantheon and, with time, might seem more resonant and appropriate for inclusion. The films that come to mind include American Splendor, Dirty Pretty Things, Swimming Pool, The Station Agent, The Magdalene Sisters and The Triplets of Belleville. They were all works of skill, compassion and originality and I can fully understand and embrace their inclusion on someone's best of 2003 list. I also should add Ken Loach's Sweet Sixteen, one of his excellent Edinburgh-set tales that almost slipped my mind because of its late arrival in North America. It's an apt companion piece to Thirteen.

Finally, a note on a couple of delights in general and for sometimes quirky reasons. Guy Maddin tussled with ballet in Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary and made a dance film for people not prone to like dance films. Bad Santa had the right alternative attitude toward the holidays and Big Fish pushed my emotional button after laboring through a hopeless shaggy dog of a story. Johnny Hallyday is la roi Elvis Francais and an incredible presence in Man on the Train and Bill Nighy strikes the only true note in Love Actually. And after a dozen roles as decoration, Charlize Theron is the glue of Monster, the story of convicted murder Aileen Wuronos.

This year's hall of shame isn't what it used to be. The number of thoroughly inadequate movies just seems to have grown by leaps and bounds and I personally cannot keep up with the likes of Malibu's Most Wanted, Wrong Turn or DysFunktional Family. Still, I've saved a special place in movie hell for Anything Else, The Life of David Gale, Down with Love, The Missing, Alex & Emma, Legally Blonde 3, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Dumb and Dumberer, Open Range and Matrix Revolutions.