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Cinema, 2011

Written by . Posted on December 28, 2011. Filed under Best of the Year, Lists. Tagged , , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments.

In a considerable turnaround from my top 10 last year, in which I placed only 3 American films (none placed in the top 5, plus one of them was directed by a Brit), my 2011 list is dominated by American films. Many of the giants of American cinema contributed great works, namely Scorsese, Malick, Reichardt, Fincher, Eastwood, and Mann (Spielberg’s good-but-not-great films make his presence the least impressive but he at least bears mentioning)—If James Gray had a film this year, 2011 would have virtually provided a cross-section of the contemporary American cinema. Also present on my list is the wholly original voice of Alex Ross Perry—his style is a difficult one to articulate, which is exactly what makes it so exciting.

This isn’t to point out that the rest of the world had an off year—far from it—but, perhaps, in what was such a pivotal year for the medium and its growing pains (and pleasures), America provided the most interesting forum for observing cinema’s changes, as some auteurs embrace digital technology and 3D, while others resist it—in one symbolic example, Spielberg went on a tech-binge with Tintin while maintaining his celluloid conservatism with War Horse. There are such polarizations evident even just within my top 10: Hugo represents the most enthusiastic embrace of 3D, Soderbergh continues to explore the digital medium with Contagion, while Reichardt shot Meek’s Cutoff on film in the abandoned ratio of 1.33 : 1 and Perry shot The Color Wheel in 16mm black and white. The wonderful thing is that both directions are providing beautiful works of art, as emerging technologies inspire filmmaking with either its presence or its deliberate absence.

The best films of the year–

1. Hugo (USA), Martin Scorsese

In what, by my count, is Martin Scorsese’s 12th masterpiece, he manages to take cinema to new heights while keeping the work as grounded and as personal as anything he has done before. As always with Scorsese, the beauty of the film is found in its form, and Hugo in particular is notable for its exploration of cinema’s present capabilities, while making a case for its transcendent properties. It’s as impressive a film about the artistic and historical lineage of movies as Godard’s Histoire(s) du Cinéma. Click for further reading…

2. The Tree of Life (USA), Terrence Malick

One of the most exhausted subjects in movies this year is Terrence Malick’s Palme d’Or winning masterpiece, and, I suppose, for good reason—It brings in a gargantuan spiritual context through which we view what is one of the smaller stories on this top ten, that of a single death and a man who must come to grips with it. Misguided critics rushed to simplify and label what is ultimately impossible to do either to. The Tree of Life is an exploration of consciousness, certainly not an exploration of God and/or religion, that like all of Malick’s films is far more invested in the emotional possibilities of cinema rather than the intellectual. The result is less of a concrete work of philosophy than a profound experience guided by feelings and memories. Click for further reading…

3. This is Not a Film (Iran), Jafar Panahi & Mojtaba Mirtahasebi

As significant as any other film this year insofar as defining the properties of digital cinema, Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film proves that the 21st century offers unparalleled creative freedom to all potential artists (namely: everybody). Being under house arrest and prohibited from directing doesn’t keep Panahi from making a small, touching masterpiece with surprisingly emotional moments, including a stunning closing sequence shot on an iPhone, where Panahi’s imprisonment is at once tragically articulated and miraculously transcended.

4. Meek’s Cutoff (USA), Kelly Reichardt

Kelly Reichardt is an amazing filmmaker, and each of her films is better than the last. Meek’s Cutoff is certainly more ambiguous than Wendy & Lucy was, but don’t mistake its sparseness for vagueness—this is disciplined austerity that overwhelms the viewer with the film’s inescapable desolation. There is just enough here to qualify the film as a revisionist western (one cowboy, one Indian, one gun, the desert), and is probably the best and only necessary one since Unforgiven. The film’s closing images are among the most memorable this year, as a distinctly female moral agency guides the characters into an uncertain future. Click for further reading…

5. L’Apollonide (Souvenirs de la maison close) (France), Bertrand Bonello

I’m using the French title as the English one was recently changed from House of Tolerance to House of Pleasures, so perhaps it’s best to go with the original. This is arguably the most beautifully composed film on this list, as Bonello gives the viewer a vivid impression of a Parisian brothel and its inhabitants in every frame, only to depart it for the modern world in a shocking epilogue. The film affords one a sense of the strength, love, grief, pain and solidarity of these women, whose beauty is at odds with the ugly world that surrounds them.

6. Contagion (USA), Steven Soderbergh

Soderbergh’s response to The Social Network is as avant-garde as Hollywood cinema gets, outside of Michael Mann that is. Contagion is a complexly woven tapestry of locations and characters masterfully crafted as an anti-narrative (no filmmaker is as interested in how to tell a story while as simultaneously disinterested in the story itself) work more extreme than Fincher may be willing to get. Click for further reading…

7. Cave of Forgotten Dreams (USA, Germany, France), Werner Herzog

Herzog’s recent documentaries have just about all ranged from great to perfect, often times with immensely moving insights into individuals and therefore the human condition, but Cave of Forgotten Dreams is his film most explicitly about art, its inherent existence in the human spirit, and its ability to overcome our alienation from distant times and people. Although, as typical in Herzog’s work, he also casts some doubt on our ability to truly know anything, but it is in the glimpse of some truth we may find something to quell our universal loneliness. Click for further reading…

8. Life Without Principle (Hong Kong), Johnnie To

Johnnie To is one of the most exciting filmmakers working today, consistently making original, fun, thoughtfully crafted work. Usually his films fall under the umbrella of the action genre, but with two of his best, 2008′s Sparrow, and Life Without Principle, he manages to fulfill very little of action criteria while still maintaining all of the associated feeling. Fast-paced but with minimal violence, the film finds its action beats in the falling numbers during the recent stock market crash and may even be the best film about the economic crisis, using the inherent tragic irony (but for comic effect) of capitalism as the guiding force of the film.

9. The Color Wheel (USA), Alex Ross Perry

Laugh out loud funny, and thoroughly strange—in a good way—Alex Ross Perry’s The Color Wheel is exactly the type of movie American comedy needs. Apatow has the mainstream covered with his moral, serio-comedies, but Perry shows that it’s up to the young to reinvent the wheel, so to speak. The 16mm grainy look makes for an off-putting juxtaposition with the very “new” feel of Perry’s wicked dialogue. The interaction between form and content is very different, but comparable to Jerry Lewis, who always provides multiple layers of discomfort through performance, “narrative?”, and form to achieve his effect. Perry’s quick yet distant delivery figures him as a postmodern Woody Allen, and even just with this film has me confident he has more potential than Allen ever did.

10. Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (Turkey), Nuri Bilge Ceylan

My favourite of Ceylan’s films, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia is a hypnotically slow-paced and altogether compelling dissection of the institutions of Turkish society, as examined in the course of a night and day in a murder investigation. There’s something clinical in Ceylan’s approach, but it’s this sort of methodical style that crystallizes its points as the cracks in each character reveal the shortcomings of the systems they represent.

Honourable mentions–

The most obvious special mention is to highlight the progression of the 3D film, which found itself legitimized over the course of the year, as disparate auteurs took their turn at working with the format. The best examples grace the top 10 (Hugo, Cave of Forgotten Dreams), but other films deserve distinction, like Takashi Miike’s Harakiri, and even if they’re not among the years best films, the following at least utilized the capabilities of 3D in an interesting way: Spielberg’s The Adventures of Tintin and to a much lesser extent Michel Gondry’s The Green Hornet and Wim Wenders’ Pina.

Another group of work, rather than a single film, that defines 2011 are the myriad videos online offering first person POVs of protests and struggles with oppression, and specifically the Occupy movement, in which the subversive qualities of the medium undermine the perpetuated hegemony of the media. Complacency and indifference are the common enemies of cinema and humanity, and in footage from real people in real situations, hope fights on behalf of both.

Next up, the experimental films of Ben Rivers, of which I saw three this year—although the best of these was technically released last year (Slow Action)—they represent the emergence of a major auteur. Inspired by Herzog’s Fata Morgana, Slow Action adopts the concept of applying seemingly unrelated narration to images in order to create a narrative somewhere in between the two. Sack Barrow is a stunning short that takes place in an aging factory in London, in its last month of operation. Rivers’ first feature, Two Years at Sea, is not quite as successful, but does not hinder my excitement for the greatness we can expect to see from him.

Between Zodiac, The Social Network, and now The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, David Fincher has reinvented himself and become a major Hollywood auteur. His latest isn’t his best, but it remains an entirely fascinating subversion of traditional narrative form. Click here for further reading…

To be a tad more inclusive, a quick list of more great films from 2011: Terri (Azazel Jacobs), J. Edgar (Clint Eastwood), Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols), The Day He Arrives (Hong Sangsoo), The Kid with a Bike (The Dardenne Bros.), Road to Nowhere (Monte Hellman), Almayer’s Folly (Chantal Akerman), Bridesmaids (Paul Feig), The pilot episode of Luck (Michael Mann)

The best performances of the year–

John C. Reilly, Terri

Michael Shannon & Jessica Chastain, Take Shelter

Joslyn Jensen, Without

Gary Oldman, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Alex Ross Perry, The Color Wheel

Seth Rogen, The Green Hornet

Cécile de France, The Kid with a Bike

Elle Fanning, Super 8

The ensemble cast of Hugo

The ensemble cast of Bridesmaids

The best musical scores–

Cliff Martinez, Contagion

Howard Shore, Hugo

Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Best needle-drops: Drive, The Tree of Life, L’Apollonide (Souvenirs de la maison close)

Moments/things–

Michael Stuhlbarg’s infectious, bearded grin in Hugo

Chastain floating like a leaf in The Tree of Life

When Panahi catches himself laughing—and abruptly, sorrowfully, stops—at the irony of him accidentally directing his friend in This is Not a Film

Sex in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Jensen singing “Lollipop” in Without

THE chase sequence in The Adventures of Tintin

The B&W train station footage in episode 12 (“Niece”) of Louie season 2

Television, briefly–

Treme, Louie and Luck

 

Werner Herzog and the Proto-Cinema

Written by . Posted on May 17, 2011. Filed under Essays, Reviews. Tagged , , , . 1 Comment.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams, perhaps the first great 3D film, comes from an auteur whose filmography itself could metaphorically be described as a cave of forgotten dreams. His films are forgotten dreams made manifest as cinema. They deal with all that that is essential to humanness, and his work has always revolved around the primordial and our relationship with images, making the very scenario of Cave of Forgotten Dreams poetic, and like with all Herzog films, it has a subject in which Herzog finds an “ecstatic truth”, but underlying that are truths about the man himself, revealed almost always incidentally (something Herzog actually denies: “I do not star at my navel”). Other filmmakers were denied the privilege of filming inside the Chauvet cave, including March of the Penguins director Luc Jacquet, but luckily the powers that be were fond of Herzog’s work, and his eccentric contract negotiations certainly helped (he offered to make the film on behalf of those in charge of the cave for one euro). Having been granted permission, Herzog captures, in 3D, the oldest known cave paintings in the world, nearly 40 000 years old in some cases, that don the walls of the cave, which itself is a natural beauty. In doing so, in some ways Herzog’s career comes full circle and the very origins of art and the cinema form the core of the film’s power.

Cave exemplifies Herzog’s marvelous ability to invent images on the spot, with little calculation. The conditions of filming were incredibly restrictive yet for Herzog this is not a severe hindrance but a moderate challenge, a cinematic test that maybe only he could pass. He even talked his way into starting a day early, and built his own 3D rig to do so. Herzog’s late documentaries could be easily pigeon-holed as “minor” when the narratives of something like Fitzcarraldo dwarf the scale of the more modest seeming Cave but they are anything but, and in specific Cave is notable as not just major but in the context of the auteur’s illustrious oeuvre represents a probing into the very essence of Herzog’s life’s work and even the existential nature of working. The permanence of the cave paintings (which, perhaps, in the grand scheme of things are actually transient) symbolically defines the worth of articulating one’s inner self, or in this case “dreams”, which even when seemingly forgotten, have continued to exist, suspended in beautiful perfection with time as patient witness. There is something profound at the core of this film, which could be said for many-a-herzog-film, but moreover it feels as though Cave of Forgotten Dreams is an apex, a manifesto.

In no way is the use of 3D a gimmick. The contours and minute details of the cave are made so vivid and real to us, so as to bring us closer to the paintings, and perhaps even to those responsible for creating it. Certain moments in the film reach a level of profundity as we transcend space and time and if only for passing moments, feel close to people who existed over 30 000 years ago, an idea that Herzog puts forth himself, although cautiously. He is never one to put his faith in the scientific or factual, and doubts the validity of the paintings value in understanding the perception of those who made it. This is something he expresses with the films’ postscript, which involves albino alligators. He uses the limited consciousness of the alligators to remind us of our own limitations, insisting that some things will always remain foreign to us, which is not necessarily a bad thing in Herzog’s cinema. This art, and this film which exposes us to it, can bring us in touch with some sort of essence, a primordial sense of being.

Some may argue that Herzog’s mainstream received documentaries like Grizzly Man, and Encounters at the End of the World are the works of an artist whose once sharp edge has dulled, but I fervently contest such claims when Herzog’s exploration of the human being and the natural world has never ceased in its approach and result. Indeed, I even controversially prefer these films to lauded classics like Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Of course, it is trivial to pick a side when something like Aguirre and Encounters at the End of the World are tackled at similar angles by Herzog’s fascination and employment of his idiosyncratic camera, unmatched in physicality other than by Michael Mann. Cave of Forgotten Dreams may not be among his very best, but such a statement would seem silly considering just how many great films he has made.

Herzog has said, in response to being asked what he would do if he knew he had one day to live, that he would begin another film. It is a clever, almost snarky answer, but from Herzog it is deathly sincere, and it is clear why he means it and is even crystallized by his latest: that although making a film is in part self-satisfying articulation, and in another meant to be seen by others, that in a life, like a cave of forgotten dreams, time is the only necessary audience and to continue to create is paramount to being human.

Among the film’s most fascinating insights is the discovery of how those who created the paintings would use torchlight and shadows, in conjunction with the images, as dramatic tools. One bison, as Herzog points out, is painted with 8 legs, to give it a sense of motion. It is what he refers to as a “proto-cinema”, and indeed all the elements are there, which when considering how old these works are in comparison to the cinema, is startling, and moving. Herzog’s compelling narration permeates the film, but it is most powerful when Herzog remains quiet, and we are left with cinema most pure: light, shadow, images.

Images of the Week – Dangerous Game

Written by . Posted on April 1, 2011. Filed under Images of the Week. Tagged , , , , , , . No comments.

From Abel Ferrara’s Dangerous Game, in which Ferrara looks at himself through a lens darkly, and sees Harvey Keitel…

…and Werner Herzog.

The Man Beside the Stage

Written by . Posted on February 23, 2011. Filed under Video. Tagged , , , . 1 Comment.


I’ve seen nearly every film Werner Herzog has made. The exceptions are films that seem to be impossible to see as there are no existing releases or any copies circulating the internet. One of the films that had eluded me until recently was The Transformation of the World Into Music, which although available on the internet, had no english subtitles. Thankfully, a kind fellow pointed out to me that there was a subtitled DVD released in Australia. I promptly ordered it off of Ebay. As I had expected, it is a minor documentary, but certainly worth watching for Herzog diehards such as myself. Also, there are a few moments and a couple scenes that are invaluable. At one point we get to see Herzog directing three young boys for an opera, which is fascinating. We also get to see a glimpse of the opera being staged (and it is as visually spectacular as any of his films!). The best scene in the film is classic Herzog. While an opera is being performed, Herzog finds a man at the side of the stage who is the resident fireman for the Bayreuth Festival. While something grandiose occurs mere feet away, Herzog is far more interested in this one little man. The result is an immensely touching scene that ranks with some of Herzog’s very best. Seeing as how this film will largely go unseen, I thought it a good idea to at least share this one remarkable segment.