It’s apparent that the dust clouds of Sept 11, 2001 have settled on Tinseltown. Relics of the disaster, good and bad, seem to be popping up in films everywhere-it really seemed like every second film in 2006 had a post-9/11 slant, innuendo or plot arc. It’s art imitating life at its most marketable level, and it has reached a saturation point that can easily induce post-9/11 fatigue (I’m already sick of mentioning it).
Even escapist popcorn-friendly franchises-where such gravitas would normally be taboo-could not escape making references to the events and the new social climate of war and security that followed.
So, as terror got real, James Bond had to follow suit in his latest adventure, Casino Royale. Abandoning the megalomaniac villain with destructive lunar-lasers, 007 instead chased (sans the invisible car, thank God) an international money launderer who, surprise, surprise, funds terrorism.
Superman returned from a five-year hiatus this past summer (convenient timing, no?) to repair a world gone to shit in his absence. Accordingly, his first feat is thwarting an aerial disaster, as he halts a plane from slamming into Metropolis.
Entire genres even shifted to make room for current sentiments. The suburban drama now highlights post-9/11 paranoia (Little Children) as one of society’s ills. And in comedy, a faux-Kazakh journalist named Borat poked fun at America’s ignorance and arrogance.
In fact, while assembling the following list of the ten finest films from last year, it became obvious that each one makes at least a passing reference or has some parallel allegory to our current geopolitical state of affairs.
- The Queen (Dir. Stephen Frears)
Helen Mirren amuses us with a lifelike portrait of this figurehead. A recounting of the turbulent public relations war between Tony Blair and Queen Elizabeth following the tragic death of Princess Diana, The Queen is a film about a leader who is dutifully out of touch with her subjects and their celebrity-infatuated culture. The film boasts superb acting from the ensemble cast, headed by Mirren and Michael Sheen, who both give life to Peter Morgan’s witty and observant screenplay.
- Half Nelson (Dir. Ryan Fleck)
Ryan Fleck’s debut feature takes on popular student-teacher feel-good fodder and injects it with a harsh dose of reality. Dan Dunne (played by Canadian darling Ryan Gosling) is the pivotal mentor, but he is afflicted with an addiction to crack and booze. His ideals gave out to cold disillusionment long ago, and as hard as he may try to say the right thing, everything seems to come out wrong. Not since 2001’s The Believer has Gosling had the opportunity to show his excellence as an actor in the way that he does here. Half Nelson is carried by the intensity of its lead performance-in which Gosling imbues his character with presence that fills the screen, and inspires real hope for awards-season glory. The brilliant soundtrack scored by Toronto indie-darlings Broken Social Scene doesn’t hurt either.
- Fateless (Dir. Lajos Koltai)
A Holocaust film that delves deeper into the soul of the individual than any previous treatments of the subject, Lajos Koltai’s Fateless zooms in on the emotional and mental state of a carefree Jewish teen. Gyuri (Marcell Nagy) is forced to wear the yellow Star of David by the Nazis, but is indifferent to what is happening around him. However, his psyche is eventually worn down by the cruelty of a system that wants to engineer the destruction of an entire civilization. An exquisitely photographed film, Fateless utilizes a colour palette of golden hues that eventually bleeds to become as dry and lifeless as its main character.
- Caché (Dir. Michael Haneke)
An upper-crust Parisian couple is being stalked by someone who is leaving footage of their house on their doorstep. Daniel Autiel plays Georges, a television host who seems to have more to hide than whomever turned the bionic eye on his family. A taut psychological thriller with a reverberating political allegory under the surface, Caché was the most brilliantly difficult film to like last year, because it puts you in an unending state of discomfort. Austrian director Michael Haneke toys with you from his opening shot (which isn’t what it seems), in a cryptic film with a mysterious anti-hero who refuses to seek the truth.
- The Departed
(Dir. Martin Scorsese)
Two moles-one cop, one criminal, and sometimes vice versa-go head to head in a battle of wits and bullets, with a big pile o’bodies stacking up along the way. It’s a remake of a Hong Kong action thriller (Infernal Affairs), set in Boston instead of Scorsese’s usual New York tip. Packing in an intimidating and able ensemble cast, a stinger of a screenplay from William Monahan, and the razor-sharp scissorwork of his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker, Scorsese moulds this mole hunt into one of the most pulsating cops-and-criminals sagas since Michael Mann’s Heat.
- Letters from Iwo Jima
(Dir. Clint Eastwood)
Clint Eastwood’s companion piece to the melodramatic WWII diatribe Flags of Our Fathers is as somber, disciplined, and determined as the Japanese men it dutifully depicts. Swapping the point-of-view to place American soldiers in front of the cross-hairs-with barely a shutter of a glimpse at the flag that caused all the commotion-Eastwood’s daunting approach gets into the heads of the Japanese soldiers on the volcanic black sands of Iwo Jima, who were drastically outnumbered, malnourished, and struggling with dysentery while facing an intimidating U.S. armada. Death was a certainty-no one tells them otherwise-and their only hope is to leave behind a heroic legacy. Eastwood honours their memory in an exquisitely understated story, while reminding us that, regardless of what side we come from, in war, we’re all in the line of fire.
- Children of Men
(Dir. Alfonso Cuaron)
Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men is the bleakest, most depressing vision of the future since Blade Runner. It’s a dystopian nativity story set 20 years in the future, when a fertility crisis has robbed the world of any hope for the next generation. Clive Owen plays Theo, a disgruntled, noir-ish schlub who discovers a young girl named Kee (Claire-Hope Ashity) pregnant-the last glint of hope for humanity on the verge of self-annihilation. A clever adaptation of P.D. James’ sci-fi novel of the same name, Children of Men provides a startling vision of a not-too-distant future, a reminder that today’s issues can lead to annihilation right around the corner.
- Pan’s Labyrinth (Dir. Guillermo del Toro)
It’s like a David Cronenberg Narnia, and is justly touted as director Guillermo del Toro’s masterpiece. A haunting lullaby set against the horrors of Francisco Franco’s Spain, Pan’s Labyrinth is an emotionally sweeping, richly poetic fairytale that contains a powerful allegory of brutal civil war. The film stars Ivana Baquero as the starry-eyed Ofelia, the innocent pawn trapped between the parallel tracks of the magical world below and the cruel fascist reality above. By elegantly weaving wartime drama with child fantasy, the film subverts the conventions of make-believe to visualize how the innocent rely on illusion as a source of hope when all else seems lost.
- Little Children (Dir. Todd Field)
In the Bedroom director Todd Field takes another look between the sheets of suburbia, where notions of “responsibility” and “unhappiness” have become interchangeable, and ideas of “homeland security” and “terrorism” are now bedfellows. It’s the story of two parents, played by the remarkable duo of Kate Winslet and Patrick Wilson, who embark on a clandestine affair, abandoning their parental duties for the fulfillment of more carnal desires. Jarring tonal shifts that push and pull between dark comedy and melodrama, along with a sadistic narrator who attacks the audience’s comfort zone with blunt force, make Little Children one of the most unrelenting, unforgiving, creeps-under-your-skin portraits of contemporary Middle America.
- United 93 (Dir. Paul Greengrass)
The movie that most audiences didn’t want made, saying it would too close, and too soon, is the headliner for a year filled with references and innuendos to the post-9/11 world. United 93 is the only film that had the sincerity to avoid political commentary and simply observe, to commemorate both what was tragic and what was heroic that day. There were so many ways that this film could have gone wrong, many of which were evident in that other 9/11 film, the sappy World Trade Center. However, this flight was piloted by the very capable hands of Bloody Sunday director Paul Greengrass. Smartly avoiding star power and Hollywood gimmickry, Greengrass brought his penchant for cinema verité to the helm of a picture that authentically relives that crucial moment in recent history. While other movies preached about the event after the fact, United 93 challenges us to relive the moment that started it all.
Runners-Up:
Babel, Borat, Casino Royale, Deliver Us From Evil, Dreamgirls, L’Enfant, The Fountain, Manufactured Landscapes, A Prairie Home Companion, The Proposition, The Road to Guantanamo, and Volver.
