Film Florilège 2003
[For an extensive explanation of my system for dividing my year-end best-of lists into two groups, go here.]
[And for that other group, 2003’s best video screenings, go here.]
Already we come to the end of another year, and one in which this writer finally got his act together, launched his own Web site, and started seeing more movies than ever. You’d therefore think, with my stepped-up frequency patronizing theaters, that I’d’ve had no problem coming up with a Top Ten List for 2003. No such luck: as Christmas day rolled around, I reviewed my notes only to find that eight films had thus far qualified as unqualified perfection. Was this simply a lackluster year, or had the holiday season brought along a few more masterpieces that I’d still needed to see?
Luckily the latter was the case: a quick trip to the multiplex, whereupon a couple of late releases succeeded in rocking my world, solved all my problems, and you now have before you the most definitive compilation to date of a calendar year’s most exemplary creations. (For best-of lists dating back to 1996, feel free to go here.)
One brief observation on what this list most glaringly lacks: I confess to a mild lack of interest in the non-fiction film scene these days, and my timing could not be worse, as professional critics have praised documentary after documentary throughout 2003, from Capturing the Friedmans to Bowling for Columbine to Spellbound to Domestic Violence to To Be and To Have to Bus 174. I did manage to fall in love with one documentary, The Cockettes (as noted below), but I otherwise egregiously neglected to explore one aspect of the film scene that as of late seems to be enjoying a renaissance of sorts. Here’s hoping that I devote 2004 to catching up and giving praise where it’s probably due.
You’ll note that I have opted not to list 2003’s Top Ten in any preferential order. Rather than name one film the best of them all, and then agonize over which film should be #4, #7, et cetera, I’ve chosen to arrange them simply in the order seen chronologically during the year. You may interpret this to mean that all are equally stupendous, and each for their own unique reasons.
[And if I’d previously published a review about any of these films on Cinemadox, I’ll simply be quoting from that earlier review and providing a link.]
8 Women (2002, France, dir. François Ozon)
Catherine Deneuve. Isabelle Huppert. Emmanuelle Béart. Fanny Ardant. Virginie Ledoyen. Danielle Darrieux. Ludivine Sagnier. Firmine Richard. I defy any other nation to come up with a more alluring ensemble. 2003’s first chef d’oeuvre was a classic murder mystery à la Agatha Christie redux, with all the implausible elements intact; everyone’s suspicious, everyone’s got a secret, everyone has dirt on someone, everyone has a surprise revelation. But there’s more: everyone also has a song to sing – each in a different popular style – and neither that indulgence, nor the patently melodramatic story structure, detracts from what is essentially a metacinematic celebration of the movies’ more soap-operatic elements. Almodóvar would swoon – and not least over Ardant’s mouth, everyone’s unique wardrobe, and the overall sense of visual extravagance. There’s no way a film called “8 Men” could be half as beguiling.
The Cockettes (2002, USA, dirs. Billy Weber & David Weissman)
Hippie acid drag queens! Complete sexual anarchy! If you’ve never heard of these amorously polymorphic thespians who put on little more than half-baked summer-camp musical productions (with titles like “Gone With the Showboat to Oklahoma” or set in the far East and spoken in a fake Mandarin Chinese – try being more politically incorrect than that) that somehow acquired a sizeable following in San Francisco of the late sixties and early seventies, then you’re in for an education. Weber and Weissman culled together a surprising amount of extant film footage of these amateur shows and added interviews with surviving members of that troupe, and it becomes clear that the Cockettes weren’t an excuse to parade on the stage, but a lifestyle unto itself. Life-as-art was never so colorfully practiced, or as publicly captivating: from their counterculture heyday (one memorable quote: “I personally have never performed off drugs”) to their disastrous off-Broadway debut on the opposite coast (“Will success spoil mediocrity?”) to their all-too-predictable decimation from AIDS, the ultimate effect makes your own life feel like a total dud. Nor does one’s brain easily wrap around how these folks paid the bills and fed themselves and stayed beyond marginal poverty through it all – perhaps their greatest achievement.
The Pianist (2002, Poland/UK/France/Germany, dir. Roman Polanski)
Whatever your objections toward Polanski’s personal conduct, it remains irrefutable that he still knows how to crank out superior movies long after he fled Hollywood. His all-too-personal magnum opus bears witness to a topic we’d almost thought cinematically exhausted – yet another tale of Nazi atrocities toward the Jews, but this time through the eyes of a man who, though a survivor, cannot be rightfully called a hero. Polish musician Wladyslaw Szpilman endures the little indignities that encroach upon his community as the Germans assume power, his family perfectly in denial, his neighbors initially accepting their subservience. Polanski’s attention to detail is staggering, and his refusal to dwell on the violence is classier than Spielberg’s earlier take on the genocide. All the while Szpilman is shuttled from one hiding place to another, more lucky than courageous, and that his subsequent memoir (on which the film is based) was banned by the postwar Communist Polish authorities (for inciting nationalism) during his remaining years is the saddest footnote of all. Here’s hoping this utterly seamless and documentary-like adaptation (Polanksi’s hand is virtually invisible throughout – following the dictum that true art effaces its tracks) can make amends if but for a fraction of the injustices to which The Pianist bears witness.
Chicago (2002, USA, dir. Rob Marshall)
This is Hollywood boiled down to its essence: giving us opportunities to look at beautiful people. It’s all about the glamour, the dreams, the sex – it’s wish-fulfillment distilled onto celluloid. How eternal (and quintessentially American) some of the themes are – manipulative lawyers, media whores, the fleeting nature of celebrity, delusions of grandeur – and it’s all a metaphor for showbiz. Renée Zellweger’s marcelled wave, Richard Gere’s underappreciated performance, and Marshall’s brilliant direction (such as Zellweger’s Roxy assembling overheard snippets of conversation into a song) all contribute to the recrudescence of the Hollywood musical – and none will be more cynical or vulgar or sexy as this one.
The Lion King, IMAX format (2002, USA, dirs. Roger Allers & Rob Minkoff)
How Beauty and the Beast got the Oscar® nomination for Best Picture instead befuddles me. The top-grossing film of 1994 received a 70mm release just under a decade later, and it’s still the zenith of Disney’s contemporary animated output. Even if it is a ripoff of the “Kimba, the White Lion” cartoon from the sixties, it’s a darn good one, with Africa never looking so good (or sounding, thanks to Hans Zimmer, Elton John, and Tim Rice). I’m not sure Simba could grow up so strong subsisting solely on a vegetarian diet, but I’m no zoologist; what I do know is how depressing it is to see Jeremy Irons’ career in such a death spiral after his charismatically jaded turn voicing the villainous Scar. (Oh, and did anyone else catch Kung Pow! Enter The Fist’s spoof, with Mufasa announcing “This…is CNN”?)
Divine Intervention (2002, France/Germany/Morocco, dir. Elia Suleiman)
Surprisingly slick for only Suleiman’s second feature, and for a representative of a national cinema whose nation few officially recognize, Intervention approaches the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in much the same way Kusturica addressed his native Yugoslavia’s troubles – with comedy. In such a bleak situation, humor is sometimes the perfect outlet, and even the most obscure scenes end up sufficiently gelogenic. There’s no story per se, unless you count the larger one of Palestine’s bristling under the authorities’ strictures, and Suleiman instead provides a series of visual punchlines and expressionless absurdities that provide perfect commentary that all is not right in the Holy Land. Israel comes across as much prettier than expected, as do the Palestinian ladies, and the soundtrack (blending the Arabesque of various bygone eras and the techno of this one) gets my vote for best of the year. Very sardonic, very technically accomplished, and hopefully one day a document of a long-past dark age in Middle East relations.
City of God (2002, Brazil, dirs. Kátia Lund & Fernando Meirelles)
A rare example of a movie that doesn’t know when to quit, in a good way – the kinetic camerawork and relentlessly creative editing in each and every scene indicate a group a filmmakers overflowing with ideas, and it’s more than sufficiently representative of its chaotic urban setting. The title refers ironically to a drug-ridden neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro in the early eighties whose gang warfare is well-documented in history; the film’s unique take casts the central figures are former childhood friends who grow up to be monsters – save for one, who aspires to be a photojournalist, and risks his life documenting his former pals’ exploits for the papers. It’s not the most flattering portrait of Brazil, but it’s the most inspired piece of filmmaking to come out of South America in decades, and the soundtrack (an anthology of Brazilian funk and samba) adequately attests to a culture that, despite all the poverty, remains ever vibrant.
Finding Nemo (2003, USA, dirs. Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich)
“…Though Gill insists ‘fish aren’t meant to be in a box – it does things to you,’ this isn’t an anti-aquarium tract, but rather an acknowledgement of the inexact science of child-rearing; it’s like how Dorrie counsels Marlin to lengthen Nemo’s tether in the future, saying ‘you can’t never let anything happen to him – then nothing will ever happen to him’” …
The Barbarian Invasions (2003, Canada/France, dir. Denys Arcand)
Winner of the Best Actress and Screenplay awards at Cannes in 2003, Invasions catches up with the same characters Arcand featured in his 1986 The Decline of the American Empire to find the aging process treating each unequally, not least Rémy Girard’s Rémy, who’s now afflicted with terminal cancer and is realizing all he’s accomplished in his lifetime is a whole lot of womanizing. His now-adult oil-trader son Sébastien (Stéphane, Rousseau, a dead ringer for Guy Pearce) greases plenty of palms to bypass Canada’s thoroughly inadequate health care system and get his father some decent comfort, even as he still resents his father’s always chasing snatch and ignoring his offspring. Stéphane calls Rémy’s old pals to his bedside for encouragement, and they resume bandying about erudite political and social theories and discussing the changing role of sex in their adult lives. Arcand slips in plenty of scathing comments on Québec’s ineffective bureaucracies, the increasing irrelevance of the Catholic Church in that province, and the value of personal initiative in a society that depends perhaps too much on the government to solve all their problems, but what ultimately touches is witnessing how the true joy of getting older lies in the deepening of one’s relationships. The bankruptcy of ideas gives way to the warmth of human bonds, and if my date (who’d never seen a film with subtitles before) teared up, it’s a sure thing you will too.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003, USA/New Zealand, dir. Peter Jackson)
“…Taken as a whole, the Ring’s cycle is quite possibly a cinematic feat that does nothing less than fully realize all the potential of the medium, an artistic landmark without peer, a benchmark before which films for the decades following will fall short. Go see it while you can, for henceforth at the multiplexes you’ll be hearing more than often than not after a given film, ‘well, that was no Lord of the Rings’”…
2003’s Runners-Up
No synopses for these, I’m afraid – but if I’d written a review earlier on Cinemadox, I’ll provide a link!
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002, USA/New Zealand, dir. Peter Jackson)
My Schoolmate (1960, West Germany, dir. Robert Siodmak)
Adaptation (2002, USA, dir. Spike Jonze)
The Quiet American (2002, USA/Australia, dir. Phillip Noyce)
X2: X-Men United (2003, USA, dir. Bryan Singer)
Irreversible (2002, France, dir. Gaspar Noé)
Une Femme Est Une Femme (1961, France/ Italy, dir. Jean-Luc Godard)
Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary (2002, Canada, dir. Guy Maddin)
The Matrix Reloaded (2003, USA, dirs. David R. Ellis, Andy Wachowski, Larry Wachowski, Kimble Rendall)
Morvern Callar (2002, UK/Canada, dir. Lynne Ramsay)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003, USA, dir. Gore Verbinski)
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