Gary Dretzka
Leonard Klady
David Poland
Doug Pratt
Ray Pride

January 5, 2006

Passive or Active Tense,
and Other Conundrums:
The Best Films of 2005
by Robert Koehler

The lists below are divided into three sections: those that were released/screened in Los Angeles, those that were released elsewhere in the US; those that were released/screened in the world, but not released in the US. Because of the complex patterns in which films are commercially released, as well as shown in festivals and in cinematheques and institutions, I’ve found that there’s no fairer way of noting and listing the films one sees throughout the year. It also serves as a reminder of the vast number of fine films that annually premiere, but which aren’t released in the US.

LOS ANGELES

1. CACHE (Michael Haneke, Austria/France)
2. THE WORLD (Jia Zhang-ke, China)
3. A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE (David Cronenberg, US)
4. KINGS AND QUEEN (Arnaud Desplechin, France)
5. THE HOLY GIRL (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina)
6. LA COMMUNE (PARIS 1871) (Peter Watkins, France, 2000)
7. TROPICAL MALADY (Apitchatpong Weerasethakul, Thailand)
8. POETRY AND TRUTH (Peter Kubelka, Austria)
9. FUNNY HA HA (Andrew Bujalski, US)
10. HEAD-ON (Fatih Akin, Germany)

Special Mention: 2046; 9 Songs; The Beat My Heart Skipped; Broken Flowers; Brothers; Down to the Bone; George Romero’s Land Of The Dead; Good Night, and Good Luck; Grizzly Man; Happy Here and Now; Head-On; It’s All Gone, Pete Tong; Junebug; Keane; Last Days; The Libertine; Look At Me; Machuca; Match Point; Me and You and Everyone We Know; My Summer of Love; The New World; Nine Lives; Paradise Now; The President’s Last Bang; Purple Butterfly; The Squid and The Whale; A Talking Picture; Turtles Can Fly

THE US

1.THE INTRUDER (Claire Denis, France)
2. (tie) THE POWER OF NIGHTMARES (Adam Curtis, UK)
THE CENTURY OF SELF (Adam Curtis, UK)
4. GOOD MORNING, NIGHT (Marco Bellochio, Italy)
5. FAR SIDE OF THE MOON (Robert Lepage, Canada)
6. CAFÉ LUMIERE (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Japan-Taiwan)
7. THE WEEPING MEADOW (Theo Angelopoulos, Greece)
8. MY MOTHER’S SMILE (Marco Bellochio, Italy)
9. (tie) SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE and TAKE 2 ½ (William Greaves, US, 1968-2004)

THE WORLD

1. THREE TIMES (Hou Hsiao-hsien, Taiwan)
2. ROMA (Adolfo Aristarain, Argentina)
3. LES AMANTS REGULAIRES (Philippe Garrel, France)
4. THE SKY TURNS (Mercedes Alvarez, Spain)
5. LITTLE SKY (Maria Victoria Menis, Argentina)
6. SHANGHAI DREAMS (Wang Xiaoshuai, China)
7. PRINCESS RACCOON (Suzuki Seijun, Japan)
8. SINGING BEHIND SCREENS (Ermanno Olmi, Italy/UK/France)
9. OTRA VUELTA (Santiago Palavecino, Argentina)
10. A TRAVERS LA FORET (Jean Paul Civeyrac, France)

Special Mention: 4; Almost Brothers; Avanim; Angel; Be With Me; Before the Flood; Bitter Dream; Cavite; Changing Destiny; Cinema, Aspirin and Vultures; Citizen Dog; The Goodtimeskid; The Lost Domain; Mario’s War; Mary; One Night; Parapalos; Pilgrimage; Portrait of a Lady Far Away; Radiant; Sangre; Someone Else’s Happiness; Sunflower; This Charming Girl; Trona; Tropic of Cancer; Una de Dos; Unknown White Male; Vento di Terra

THE REAL STRUGGLE FOR THE AUDIENCE: SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS

Like so much else that thinks of itself as writing about film, the most misdirected stream of commentary in 2005 was devoted to the supposed collapse of the moviegoing audience, layered with various helpings of sturm und drang about where “they” have all gone. I was struck at not just how this trendy topic utterly missed the problem, but that missing the problem -- or failing to notice -- characterizes so much film writing and what passes for reviewing right now. Never mind that the collapse was something of a myth (after much chest-beating in the early months of the year, a bizarre reversal of perception set in the latter months); a decline in the audience had been going on for so many decades now that there are few alive who even remember when moviegoing meant going to the movies, on average, three to five times a week. The collapse, as it were, was already codified history.

What is less noticed, since the press pays little attention to such matters, is the drop-off in audience for cinematheques, clubs, archival screenings, museum screenings and other cinephile campfires. Everywhere I turned in 2005, programmers, archivists and presenters of so-called “specialty” film series and programs were remarking on a steady drip-drip-drip of attendance. This may have been so in certain venues, although it must also be said that I haven’t seen such crowds as I saw at festival after festival during the year, and at some centers of radical cinema, such as REDCAT in Los Angeles, there were some nights when another body couldn’t be squeezed into the room. (At a single screening of Peter Watkins’ massive, multi-hour masterwork La Commune (Paris 1871), I witnessed not only a near sell-out, but an audience that hung in there with Watkins’ remaking of Parisian 19th century history for well over five hours.) And yet, everywhere around the world—not just in the DVD-saturated U.S.—cinemas devoted to alternatives to the commercial mainstream were reporting back that the audience wasn’t showing up like it used to.

Yet even this under-reported story still misses the point, and it’s this: A passivity is overtaking filmgoing everywhere, and it must be stopped. I mean by this a thinking that expects only a film world that exists in advertising and promotion, and assumes the non-existence of any world beyond advertising. The passive syndrome in moviegoing is a perfect feedback loop: The advertising advances knowledge of only a certain number of films to the audience, and the audience in turn expects only those films. Colleagues have mentioned that some readers actually resent being informed about worthy films that unfortunately lack advertising, but this resentment is grounded in a roundelay of behavior that has been so easily and fluidly conditioned that it becomes invisible, subconscious. It goes without saying that one form of conditioning can be replaced by another: The conditioning that some moviegoers now know all too well, to religiously check daily screening schedules and opening dates, to monitor when a Kings and Queen is opening and how soon it’ll be closing, since too many great films (and many on my lists above) opened and closed in a single week. In 2005, two-week runs felt like a hit in the making.

Passivity extends most thoroughly to critics, many of who take only what comes to them. This means in a basic way that the only films they see are in distribution; any films beyond the scope or ability or interest of distributors are off their chart. Like the conditioned audience member, unwittingly duped by advertising, these critics are conditioned to see only what’s advertised, and by not writing about anything else, their readers assume that nothing else exists.

This syndrome persists in pop music, where a vast underground of work is always going on, usually out of the earshot of music critics and labels and listeners, but supported by adventurous fans. (It used to exist in the art world, but no more.) But the passive strain is starting to hurt the cinema in too many ways that call for some kind of horn to be sounded. When critics who see, maybe, 100 films a year (200 in a good year, almost all American), are cast by the electronic media as the legitimate observers whose opinion counts, it debases the whole meaning of opinion. If film writers who have virtually no regular contact with world cinema become the only voices allowed to be heard, nothing will kill film culture sooner. The passive audience will only be reinforced in their beliefs, and not even the myth of “choice” in chain videostores—where the old idea that you can be your own programmer has grown quaint indeed—will be suggested.

There are counterforces. Go to www.mastersofcinema.com for a way to experience DVD and cinephilia, or to www.rouge.com.au for very possibly the most exciting web-only magazine that exists for any art form. Journals like Cinema Scope, Film Comment and Cineaste seem to be stronger than ever --- maybe because those of us who contribute to them feel like there’s war in the air (and we don’t mean Iraq). Cahiers du Cinema is back publishing some monthly pages in English, fostering some kind of new exchange. Los Angeles has more alternative venues for actual, butt-in-seat movie watching than at any point since the heyday of Douglas Edwards and Theatre Vanguard. While some festivals (Rotterdam) may be experiencing an unsure phase of where to go next, others (Pusan, Palm Springs, Guadalajara) are improving with his edition. Discussion groups on the web are flourishing, fostering genuine communities, if not quite the cine clubs of yore. Papers like the New York Times, The Voice, The LA Weekly and The Chicago Reader have never had better film writing than right now, and this is because the critics writing there have their collective antennae out, trained on the world. And once you are, either as a critic or (critical) audience, you are innately active. The monitoring of the battle against a passive cinema must be a paramount concern for all of us determined to see that film culture is more than an exotic plant in the far corner of the room.