The past year was a long one as far as the movies were concerned. While studios lamented the continuing decline of box-office revenues, almost no one talked about how the movies actually ended up getting better. So while the blockbusters largely tanked (with the exception of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the new Harry Potter, and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith) the only clear winner in the summer bonanza was a little documentary about cute birds (March of the Penguins).
As a result, this list could easily be twice as long with the films that I thought were worthy of praise, and one could almost easily exchange one position on the list for another. However, some films did seem a little more significant than others, due to the way they opened up a traditional view of the world, geopolitics, or even genre.
- The Constant Gardener – Following up his sublimely rendered social study of his native Brazil in his magnificent City of God (2003), Fernando Mereilles turns his eye to Africa and creates a haunting film about love, loss, and conspiracy. Here, the romance between a reserved British diplomat (Ralph Fiennes) and a vivacious idealist (Rachel Weisz) serves as a pretense to examine the collusion of government and free-enterprise sources that wreak havoc on the troubled continent.
The film is not only topical (having been released in the year of Live 8), but heartbreaking as well. Here, the issue of poverty in Africa is illuminated simply by its depiction-as the actors interact with the population there, they validate the issues of poverty but also the humanity of the subjects that they portray, making it impossible to view the West’s responsibility objectively. In addition to the film’s content, The Constant Gardener features as poignant and riveting a love story as anything portrayed in recent memory.
- Crash – While some have criticized this film for being overly didactic, it features some of the most powerfully affecting scenes in any movie that I saw this year. Crash boasts not only some great performances from people you expect to act well (Don Cheadle is the obvious example here), but also by those you don’t expect anything from at all (Sandra Bullock).
Crash also uses the metaphor of car accidents to demonstrate that the only way that people in contemporary society are forced to deal with each other is when their little cells (i.e. their vehicles) actually collide. One need only think of the recent events of Hurricane Katrina and post-9/11 society to see the validity of director/screenwriter Paul Haggis’ point here. At the same time, the film tackles both the problem of racism within society and also how these impressions are very much grounded in the realities of the everyday.
Haggis does an incredible job for a first-time director, generating great performances from equally compelling material, and creating a memorable work that not only hones in on the key problems facing our society, but hopeful ways of tackling them as well.
- Goodnight and Good Luck – George Clooney’s second film is a tight recollection of the conflict between journalist Edward R. Murrow and Red-baiting senator Joseph McCarthy. Here, director Clooney uses his ample experience in television to demonstrate in real time what the conflict entailed and how it played out at the offices of CBS News.
The interaction with an extremely important episode from the American past acts as an important parable in the ongoing question of media accountability. That Murrow serves as an example of someone willing to sacrifice his reputation for a noble cause is an important lesson and something sorely lacking in contemporary times.
Clooney also plays a supporting role to a riveting performance by David Straitharn (who has always been an incredible actor, but really sinks his teeth into this meaty role) and interacts with actual footage of McCarthy when arguing with the historical figure. The film is thus an extremely interesting hybrid of actual footage and re-creation, and raises vital questions by bringing the past into the present. Along the way, this trim, straightforward film makes the most of its beautiful cinematography, and takes the time to present several great renditions of jazz standards along the way.
- A History of Violence – There’s just something about this film that’s impossible to put your finger on, but Toronto’s own David Cronenberg continues his recent streak of brilliant work with this compact, brutal story about a small-town café owner whose past comes back to haunt him in a myriad of violent ways.
Cronenberg demystifies the glamourous aura of both the sex and violence we expect to see in the movies by lingering just a little too long on graphic images, so that our gaze is caught past the point of enjoyment. Viggo Mortenson does a remarkable job as he subtly shifts from a man who embodies the innocence of rural Americana to a ruthless killer and back again.
While Cronenberg has always been an amazing filmmaker, his earlier work now affects the mainstream in significant ways. Here, by way of the film’s subject matter and cinematography (not a single shot is wasted-everything fits perfectly within its simple narrative framework), he’s shown that his influence will continue to be indelible.
- Brokeback Mountain – This is the film that finally reflects how the mainstream actually feels about the issue of homosexuality. By changing the parameters of the argument, and actually bringing love into the equation, this film does for homosexuality what Million Dollar Baby presumably did for euthanasia.
In other words, instead of simply being the story of debauched cowboys, the film shows the effects of their choices over time, and how their love affects the rest of their lives. It also offers a powerful dissection of the violence of male culture, and reveals explicitly the process of de-mythologizing the American West.
Director Ang Lee recovers his touch after his disastrous Hulk and combines remarkable imagery of the frontier (okay, Alberta) with great performances, particularly from the previously monosyllabic Heath Ledger.
- The Squid and the Whale –
Noah Baumbach’s return to form (since his sublime directorial debut with 1995’s Kicking and Screaming) presents the semi-auto-biographical tale of divorce, tennis, and growing up in 80s Brooklyn. His latest is much like Wes Anderson’s works (Baumbach co-wrote The Life Aquatic), but without all the distracting stuff that disengages the viewer from the story.
Not here, as Baumbach’s film has a great big teenaged heart in the form of Jesse Eisenberg (last seen in Roger Dodger), whose bitter journey through his parents’ split is the motivation for his acting out. Laura Linney and Jeff Daniels also barely contain their flaws and their fury as his divorcing parents (Daniels in particular is the very portrait of pomposity). Following his failed writer’s flawed logic, this film is certainly “the filet” of this year’s crop.
- 2046 – While many said that Wong-Kar Wai’s latest film (and follow-up to his immaculately rendered In the Mood For Love) was rife with problems and looked as if it would never be finished, the result of this fragmented series of love stories is a beautifully conceived film about love and loss and the seemingly impenetrable boundary between the two.
The futuristic epic features incredible performances from China’s most beautiful actresses (you really can’t ask for more beyond Gong Li, Faye Wong, Ziyi Zhang, and Maggie Cheung), and Tony Leong reprises his role as the heartbroken bachelor who missed his chance to fulfill his love and must endlessly replay this loss within the present day (Hong Kong of 1962) and the science fiction stories that he writes to express that void.
Because of its fragmented nature and its movement between eras, Wong Kar-Wai once again establishes himself as one of the world’s finest auteurs.
- The World – An amusement park in Beijing that has all the earth’s landmarks in their miniature form serves as a metaphor for this rumination of China’s emergence in the global landscape. The hyper-commercialization of the country looms in the background of this tale of youth who face a bleak and uncertain future.
Communication is also strained and a life of imagination is represented in brilliant animated sequences where one of the main characters uses her cellphone. Heartbreakingly evocative, The World manages to capture the distinct spirit of the pivotal moment that China finds itself in on the world stage while also pointing towards the continuing struggle that the country faces as it finds itself caught between the old and the new.
- Jarhead – It seemed that nobody liked this movie (judging by the reviews), and judging from the film’s box-office take, nobody went to see it, either. While many argued that this Gulf War drama wasn’t ‘political’ enough, wasn’t violent enough, or that Sam Mendes wasn’t the director to tell this story, I think it is one of the best war movies in years (outside of Three Kings). The way Mendes tells the story, he shows that it’s more important to depict the alienation and isolation of the individual soldiers than it is to make them stand for something.
What Jarhead offers is a representation of a war that we had largely disowned and forgotten about, and that was over in a blink of an eye. The film portrays the mundane and insane details of an excessively male culture whose participants have nothing to do but become even more male and more excessive. In this sense, the film is a stark reminder of what Americans are asking when they send their young overseas-not to mention the mental and physical trials they face there.
- Munich – Following the logic of the rest of this list, Steven Spielberg’s latest has the distinction (along with Syriana) of saying the most unpleasant things about one of the most pivotal topics of our time. By placing the Middle East conflict within a historical perspective, Spielberg nobly attempts to elevate the dispute into some sort of cinematic debate.
Rather than expressing the redemptive logic that usually follows any discussion of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Spielberg and screenwriter Tony Kushner wisely address some of the peripheral issues that fuel the fire (including the role of terrorism in the nation-building process, and international spy agencies’ part in funding these organizations), and reveal that the struggle is not as simple as the occupation of one country by another, but rather also involves the rest of the world’s responsibility and collusion in perpetuating the ongoing standoff.
The film, then, is a long-awaited moderate statement that lays blame at the feet of all, and having addressed the problems, offers hope of a solution through the very representation of those issues.
Colin Tait is the Varsity’s former film critic, currently doing a Masters in film at UBC. He’s kind enough to occasionally check in with his old stomping grounds, so we gave him a fancy-sounding title to encourage him to keep contributing (but we know he misses us as much as we miss him).
