My intention with was not to argue against the existence of year-end Top Ten lists, but instead to suggest ways they can be improved. It was apparently accepted in this spirit, and I'm extremely gratified by the attention my humble blog post received and the responses it garnered.
Many people countered with defenses of the practice of year-end listmaking, and perhaps the best example of this is Jim begins by saying that he doesn't disagree at all with my list of reservations, and in turn I must say that I don't disagree at all with his list called "What Can Be Good About Ten Best Lists.
"
I like lists; I like making them, and I like reading them. Originally it was my intention to compose two lists following my own suggestions. I was going to make one now at the end of the calendar year, and one more on Oscar night--living as I do in a minor media market, to see even a semblance of "all" of the year's films (so far I've only seen 89 of the 311 on ).
In preparation for this project I was even more attentive than usual to reading everyone else's lists for inspiration. In the process, I kept coming up against a type of list that I positively don't like: lists of the year's worst films.
All of my complaints about Top Ten Best Films list apply here (only more so) with one fatal addition: no one even sees the year's worst films.
Films that are really, truly "bad" don't find distribution, even if they're lucky enough to make it as far as the festival circuit.
I know I'm being terribly literal, and I also know that many of the defenses for Best Films list apply to Worst Films list. I draw the line here because I don't believe in "bad" films.
And this is a perfect opportunity to finally segue into a brief discussion about a blog posts I've been thinking about for months: Mr. Dreher writes:
This also leads to critics placing far too much value on novelty. I'll never forget how staggered I was to watch an audience filled with most of the major film critics in North America giving a film festival standing ovation to that sicko Todd Solondz' film "Happiness," which, among other things, featured a grown man's attempt to drug and anally rape a child played for comedy.
(I seem to recall that some reviews later appreciatively noted the skill with which the director manipulated the viewer into rooting for the rapist to succeed.) Were these critics perverse? Maybe.
But I think that reaction can be explained mostly by the fact that the director showed them something they hadn't seen before, and did so cleverly.
I agree, film critics do place a high value on novelty. But where he argues "too much," I say instead "not enough.
" It is not the job of a film critic (in my humble opinion, of course, and this is the only time I'll actually say that) to assess a film as "good" or "bad." This is an impossibly subjective judgment, one that requires an immense amount of space for examples, discussion of standards, and placement not only in the history of film and film criticism but in the history of art and art criticism. (Note: I suspect that I'm taking a side in an age-old debate, and you'll have to forgive me for not properly situating this argument in that historical context.
)
To assess even one film as "good" or "bad" requires a book's worth of argument, and multiple volumes at that. Which doesn't change the fact that this is the tacit goal most professional film critics have for both their reviews and their year-end lists.
To an extent I believe in accepting this as it is.
It's interesting and worthwhile to suss out the standards implicit in critic's body of work, in every list, and we all do this subconsciously when we decide that we do or don't like a critic. That's an evaluation based on, A) our understanding of said critic's standards and, B) how much we agree or disagree with those standards (and possibly, C) our evaluation of how consistently said critic adheres to his or her apparent standards).
But my favorite criticism, and the kind of criticism that I'd like to write, dispenses with this foolhardy mission entirely.
It's not concerned with evaluating films as "good" or "bad," as "successes" or "failures." Instead, it's a descriptive, analytical criticism. This kind of film criticism concerns itself with exploring What is this film?
and How does it work? One of my favorite contributions to (I know: I'm not supposed to have favorites. But here we are.
.. ) was because he's describing precisely this philosophy.
When he says "every film is a masterpiece" he's exactly right: every film is a masterpiece. It is perfect, because it is. This is also the spirit of the Deleuze quote that is now this blog's subtitle: "The cinema is always as perfect as it can be.
"
Describing and analyzing a film is work enough for any one review or article, evaluation is a waste of time. "Good" and "bad" are irrelevant: what's important is what the film is, what is is. To this kind of critic "good" films are not more valuable than "bad" films; instead, primary emphasis is placed on interesting.
And because new/different is interesting, new/different films are especially worthy of attention.
* * *
My favorite part of Paul Schrader's "Canon Fodder" article in the September-October 2006 issue of Film Comment (which started out as the introduction to a book-length consideration of "good" films) is his discussion of the "Morality" criterion, because he allows for both good and bad moral "resonance." As Schrader says:
It makes sense that great films have great moral resonance.
I just don't see the aesthetic value of setting one moral resonance against another. Leni Riefenstahl's Nazi documentary Triumph of the Will is arguably the quintessential motion picture, the fulcrum of the century of cinema, combing film's ability to document with its propensity for narrative, illustrating the new medium's emancipation of female artists, emblematizing the Marxist mix of art and aesthetics--of course, it's a work of moral resonance. Good or bad resonance?
Most everyone would agree that it's evil, but that's beside the point. The point is that no work that fails to strike moral chords can be canonical.
For this reason, the most glaring omission from Schrader's list (if it's not, in fact, ) is D.
W. Griffith's . It meets all of his criteria, and it's one of the most resonantly evil films ever made.
J. Hoberman says in another Film Comment article, his "Bad Movies" from the July, 1980 issue, in one of my favorite-ever film criticism quotes:
God's Stepchildren, the imitation Imitation of Life, which epitomizes Micheaux's complex, contradictory mixture of self-hatred and remorse, forms an essential triptych with The Birth of a Nation and The Searchers. They are the three richest, most harrowing delineations of American social psychology to be found on celluloid.
(Micheaux is one of my favorite filmmakers and is one of my favorite films.)
Just as films that are resonantly good or evil have equal claims to greatness, so too do films that are "good" or "bad" have equal claims to "bestness." So what I object to about Worst Films lists, then, isn't that they exist: it's that they're segregated from the Best Films.
Last year I prepared . When I look at it now I notice one glaring omission: where is ? I've spent as much time thinking about all of the things I don't like about Rent this year as I have thinking about all of the things I do like about , , or .
I'm as likely to write about Rent as I am about any of those films, and as such it is as deserving as any of them of inclusion on any list of the year's "Best" films. Because that's what "Best" means to me: most interesting to think about, to talk about, to write about.
* * *
Of course, assessment is impossible to avoid--I think of films in terms of "good" and "bad" as much as anyone does.
But I prefer, as much as possible, for this to be the implicit element in my writing. Still, these are convenient terms to use for examples. In any given year, there will be three kinds of "Best" films: Best Good Films, Best Bad Films, and Best Films Somewhere In Between.
is an example of the first sort, for reasons . For examples of the second (Best Bad Films) and third (Best Films Somewhere In Between) I'll take a moment to discuss (a 2005 film by most any standard, but one that I've been wanting to write about) and .
Flightplan:
Since I'm mere moments away from going on too long about Invincible, I'll focus on just one scene in Flightplan.
The film's premise (um...
"spoilers" ahead, I guess) is that Kyle Pratt's (Jodie Foster's) daughter Julia (Marlene Lawston) goes missing on a flight across the Atlantic. The problem is that no one remembers seeing the child board the plan, so Kyle, whose husband recently died in a possible suicide (she's transporting his coffin home), is perceived as being crazily distraught.
The child, of course, was hidden elsewhere in the plane by terrorists who also killed Kyle's husband.
The scene I'm interested takes place near the end of the film. In a moment straight out of Habeas Corpus, 's film-within-the-film, Kyle carries Julia to a waiting car:
As she stands there, the Arab gentleman named Obaid (Michael Irby) she earlier accused of abducting her daughter (straight-up racial profiling) steps forward to hand her her suitcase:
They exchange a long, meaningful look:
And then part without a word. I take this to mean that her conduct towards him was understandable and alright in the face of the emotional duress she was under.
In other words, it's a fantasy ending to a film rife with 9/11 imagery in which the Arab world forgives the West for its xenophobia: after all, we've all been through an awful lot. Inexcusable, but fantastically interesting in a mainstream Hollywood film.
Invincible:
Invincible is a trickier case.
First of all, it deals with two of my favorite themes: professional sports (and American football in particular) and work. The former theme attracts me because professional sports have largely taken the place of film in the American public discourse. Where once Americans went to the movies on the weekend, now they sit in front of the television and watch football.
The viewing pattern is even largely the same: people make sure they tune in on time for the game or two (double feature) that really interests them, and they catch portions of the games before and after. And watching football is still often a public activity. And ESPN and Sports Illustrated have largely taken the place of movie star fan mags (Tony Romo is this year's hottest ingenue).
And football games largely constitute shared texts, which movies don't anymore (Which is what I think ). Etc.
(Incidentally, Peet, it's the end of this particular role of film that's being mourned when most people mourn )
My interest in portrayals of work on film is largely attributable to the fact that I'm a 25 year-old without a career and a former activist struggling with the question of how I can be of service to society.
I'm trying to balance "the pursuit of happiness" with a desire to help my fellow man, if you will.
Invincible is mostly typical of the inspirational sports genre, but there are just enough ways in which it's different to keep me coming back to it. First, there's the film's interesting concept of "realistic.
" It begins with a sepia-toned montage tribute to the working people of Philadelphia set to the tune of Jim Croce's "I Got a Name":
(I am dismayed to discover that I don't have a screengrab from said beginning)
What's interesting is that much of the film shares this same sepia-tone. Exteriors:
And interiors:
Meanwhile, game sequences are given the same otherworldly look as the battle scenes in (I assume through the same manipulation of the camera's shutter speed), a look that invokes video games (as my mother pointed out). In fact, there are only two kinds of scenes that look at all "realistic.
" First, there are scenes that take place during football practice:
And in the locker room:
And second, there are the scenes involving Dick Vermeil (Greg Kinnear):
Vermeil is decidedly secondary to our protagonist Vince Papale (Mark Wahlberg), so why is the former more "real"? Why is practice more "real" than the game? Or are video games more real than real life?
What does it all mean? I don't know, but I wonder if it doesn't cast the really conventional elements of the film in a new light. This happens elsewhere.
A scene in which Papale is identified as "somebody you can build a team around" is almost immediately followed by this wonderful moment:
In which Vermeil threatens to fire Papale if he doesn't start playing better. For every scene that identifies the Eagles as an essential part of Philadelphia's community life ("winning isn't everything"), there's another scene that identifies victory/success as an essential part of that mission ("winning is everything?").
Meanwhile, there's an interesting use of iconography, such as this extreme long shot (respectful?) of Tom Landry walking onto the field in the season opener:
And this familiar image:
Which you might recognize from the poster of :
Throw in an eye-opening opening shot (too complicated to reproduce here), a few individual scenes I like that I'll probably come back to later, and the interesting use of game film of the play that ends the film in the end credits:
In a way that cannot help but call attention to the ways the filmmakers embellished upon Papale's story for dramatic effect, and you have a film that might not add up to "good," but that definitely adds up to "interesting."
* * *
I was going to conclude this post with a Best list for 2006 that follows from what I've been discussing here, but I'm afraid I'm just too damn tired.
So that will follow mañana. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to get me to the tavern. Good night!
It's that time of year again. Virtually every day between now and the second week of January there will be a at , full of articles comprised of frivolous short paragraphs describing a small assortment of films that have no relationship to one another outside of their placement side-by-side in this soon-to-be-forgotten, halfhearted stab at contemporary canon construction.At least we have to look forward to...
It's not the idea of lists, or even of year-end Top Ten lists that I object to: it's the almost invariably wasted opportunity that they represent. My major complaints fall into three main categories:
1) Lack of Honesty
For a year-end Top Ten list to be definitive, the list maker must have seen every single film released during that year. No one can see every single film released during a given year.
For a list to have any significance to me, therefore, I need to have some idea what films the list maker has seen and what films he or she hasn't. When was the last time you saw a Top Ten list in which the critic devoted sufficient space to this complicated, extremely relevant question?
2) Lack of Perspective
Too many critics take it for granted that these lists have an obvious and worthwhile function, and too many simply presume that they're intrinsically interesting.
The end of the year is a fine time to look back on the previous twelve months. To explore and to suss out the meaning of trends and connections between films that one has dimly suspected for some time. To extrapolate from the past what might happen in the future.
It's also a fine time to take stock of oneself as a critic. To ask questions: How have I changed, specifically as a critic, during these past twelve months?
The interest and the function of a list depends entirely on what the author decides to do with it and how well he or she explains that decision.
This requires perspective: an awareness of what such a project can reasonably accomplish and what its significance in the larger film world is. It requires, for instance, a discussion of the films from the previous year that the critic saw in relation to the films that he or she missed. It definitely requires a discussion, as opposed to merely descriptions.
3) Lack of Creativity
I suppose that it's possible to construct a Top Ten that would satisfy me structured around a list of films numbered from 1-10 that devotes one or two sentences to each movie, with a paragraph-long introduction and conclusion. Possible, but certainly not likely--at any rate, there are better ways. A good list might include scenes from films or lines of dialogue.
It can include upcoming films, old films, ideas for films. Buildings. Political scandals.
People. Why not? If you've explained your goals adequately it can include anything.
At the very least it can include nine films, or eleven. It can include re-releases, short films, and television episodes/seasons/series.
Or.
Or the critic can accept all of the limitations of the Top Ten list and simply scribble down ten films and be done with it. Let the readers do the leg work, right? My editor wants a list?
Here you go: a list. Because any list of films is interesting, just not necessarily fraught with any particular meaning.
In the Lars von Trier's placed third.
This did not mean that Dogville was the year's third best film. It did not mean that it was the year's third most important, talked about, or divisive film. All that it meant was that Dogville finished third in the Village Voice's year-end poll.
But by finishing third in this poll Dogville set off a round of discussion about itself, Lars von Trier, the Voice poll, year-end polls in general, and the movies that was important, talked about, and divisive.
What am I saying? I'm suggesting that we don't need to do away with year-end polls entirely, but that we need to either think more about them or give them less space.
That we need to strive to make them relevant and to articulate why we think we've succeeded, or that we need to treat them like coffee table books: as conversation starters, and nothing more.
* * *
Now after all of that, and in complete seriousness, I'm going to plug a Best Of 2006 poll! Film blogger .
He says:
Seeing as all the magazines, newspapers, websites will conduct a poll of their critics favourite films of 2006 I thought that I might do something similar but poll the film blogging community, those to visit and those who edit film related blogs.
What qualifies?
Any film realeased theatrically or commercially during 2006.
Films shown at film festivals in 2005/04 that then were released in 2006 would qualify.
Please exclude
Re-releases, such as 'L' Armée des ombres' (Army in the Shadows) as I'm trying to understand which of the new films that came out are seen as the better ones. Although I fully appreciate that often a re-released film from Jean-Pierre Melville will be a lot better than the mainstream fare.
If you saw a new film at a film festival this year but it hasn't been released yet then please exclude that.
I say: Why not? But I also say: Let's think about this first, shall we?
Be reasonable about it? This poll, in and of itself, will signify nothing. The results themselves will not indicate which are the best films of the year, nor will they indicate which movies were the "favorites of the blogosphere.
" But a discussion about the results might indicate those things.
So go vote! Plug Richard's poll on your site!
I am, because it's fun. But for Cinema's sake say something in the comments section about what you've voted for and why. Ponder!
Discuss! Debate! Or toss off your list and immediately forget about it: let everyone else do the interpretive work for you.
Anything in between is just a waste of your time.
* * *
Today I unexpectedly found myself reading . Interesting stuff!
How well do you really know the good ol' ? Oh, and dig :
(Just to be clear: I did not make this graph, I merely reformatted it to fit on this blog. .
)
As you may or may not know I presently work in the Circulation Department at the University of Pittsburgh's main library, Hillman Library (on August 21 I start a new job down the street at the University's Information Sciences Library). The vast majority of my work week is spent at a computer in an office environment, but twice a day for an hour at a time and one night a week for a five-hour shift I'm stuck manning the Circulation Desk.
Especially during the summer this is easily the worst part of the job. It's precisely the wrong combination of boring and busy: if I devote myself entirely to "customer relations" concerns I'll fall asleep, but if I try to do something intellectually demanding (like reply to the comments on this here blog) the regular interruptions will drive me crazy.
So I've learned to find things to do that are time-consuming, but not too cerebral.
A close study would probably reveal that the majority of my "links" posts were written on Wednesday nights, for instance.
One of my favorite games is to compose a response to the . Between picking ten films (they change every night!
), seeing who else voted for my picks, and navigating the lists of others the hours usually just fall away. And it's even a practical exercise--in 2012 or 2022 when Sight Sound comes calling I'll be ready!
Tonight, alas, I finished too early so I've gone to Plan B: blogging my list.
Ladies and gentlemen, for your pleasure and mine, my contribution to Sight Sound's Top Ten poll were the voting to close right...
NOW:
1. Bob le Flambeur (Melville)
2. Early Summer (Ozu)
3.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (Leone)
4. Groundhog Day (Ramis)
5. La Jetée (Marker)
6.
The Last Wave (Weir)
7. The Passion of Joan of Arc (Dreyer)
8. Playtime (Tati)
9.
The Red Shoes (Powell/Pressburger)
10. The Searchers (Ford)
Tonight's first agonizing omission: Pasolini's The Gospel According to Saint Matthew. Other near-misses include: Masculine, Feminine; Jules et Jim; and The Wizard of Oz.
And I'm invariably disappointed by my inability to like any individual Preston Sturges film quite enough to warrant inclusion (Palm Beach Story is damn close). "Flaming Globes of Sigmund!"
NOTE: I have the day off today and there's nothing much on TCM, so this may well be the first of many posts...
In the wee, small hours of this morning I sat bolt upright in bed, cast about desperately for a notebook, and madly scribbled down.
..
1.
Watching, experiencing the film
In which initial impressions are formed. Often the judgment is predominantly emotional. A typical viewer might progress no further than this first stage.
2. Re-evaluating the film
In which initial impressions are first challenged and then either discarded or reinforced. The judgment here is much more rational, as each part of the film (writing, editing, cinematography) is considered for its individual merits.
The first stage in which the film is broken down.
3. Discovering the film
In which the more subtle, nuanced subtexts and themes of the film are uncovered.
It's only here that the film can fairly become a proper "text". While there's nothing precluding the viewer from progressing this far with a film that he or she doesn't like, it's unusual that so much effort would be expended on such a text. This is often the stage in which a film becomes a favorite film.
4. Rejecting the film (counter-arguments)
In which the viewer confronts the film's problems. This would be where we (I) really begin to deal with the racist elements of The Searchers or the very literal (clichéd?
) symbolism of The Last Wave. Once we reconcile ourselves with these "flaws" they become part and parcel of the film's brilliance, and thus in a way strengths.
5.
Memorizing the film
In which we become so familiar with the film that we can work with it even when it isn't in front of us. At this stage it's unlikely that any additional major revelations are forthcoming from the film itself.
6.
Internalizing the film
In which we are so intimately familiar with the film that we don't really watch it any more. The circle closes, and the film is once again a predominantly emotional (as opposed to rational, intellectual) experience.
This was, I expect, subconsciously inspired by a blog post called .
No, it is you good people of , you who I ask to please lend me your ears.
Yes, it is halfway through 2006. But what does that really mean to us?
As we all know, studios rush their prestige pics into theaters in New York and Los Angeles just before the end of the year so that these films are eligible for the Academy Awards. This means that the diligent moviegoers in these two cities can, theoretically, see most of the year's "important" films during that same calendar year.
It will still be weeks or months, however, before the rest of us can see them (and even then only if we're lucky).
So let us abandon the tyranny of the Gregorian calendar and embrace with open arms a new system, one of our very own. Ladies and gentlemen, I propose that we adopt a Movie Year calendar.
The Movie Year calendar begins and ends on Oscar Night, an occasion no more or less meaningless than New Year's Eve, but just as valid an excuse to indulge in merrymaking, decadence, and excess.
Unlike a year that begins and ends on January 1, this date has significance for the Flyover Country cinephile, for studios do try to release their prestige pics before Oscar night to capitalize on Awards Season publicity. Last year during the two months between the Gregorian and the Movie New Years I saw three of the films that eventually landed on my (The New World, Caché, and my favorite of the year Head-On), as well as many others that merited consideration (Brokeback Mountain, Match Point, and The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada amongst others).
True, this system is still imperfect--even by these reckonings I'd have missed The Best of Youth last year.
And I just don't know what you poor souls in Fayetteville are to do. But it is an improvement.
So, join with me friends, Romans, and countrymen!
The blue bloods in those grand cinematic (coastal) capital city-states might look down their noses at we "hix," but let them beware lest we "nix" their "stix pix" and put them all on the bread line! They have the might, but we are the masses!
I'll be posting my own "halfway" Top Five on September 1 when I'm good and ready, and I'll post my year-end Top Ten on Oscar Night.
Join with me! Never again must we feel embarrassed by "late" Top Ten lists. No, let them feel chagrined for being "early!
"
* * *
URGENT REQUEST: Does anyone have an extra pair of shoes, between the sizes of 11 and 13, that I can borrow until next Friday? The sole is peeling off of my own left sneaker and I fear it won't last until I get paid. I'm absolutely, tragically, absurdly serious.
Please help!
"The term comfort food refers to any food or drink to which one habitually turns to for temporary respite, security, or special reward.
The reasons that something becomes a comfort food are diverse but include the food's familiarity, simplicity, and/or pleasant associations."
That's a pretty good definition. My own comfort foods are baked macaroni and cheese (homemade, of course, and based on ) and my mother's Caesar salad, though a homemade fettuccini alfredo (with real cream, parmesean cheese, shallots, broccoli, and tomatoes added just at the end) will do the trick.
This is what I make for myself when I'm feeling frazzled or distraught, when I just want to slow down for a spell.
Comfort food is lovely on its own, but like Voltron it gains power when paired with other "comfort" things. It's best accompanied by comfort beverages (a bottle of red wine or homemade hot chocolate, depending on the specific nature of my discontent), comfortable clothes (blankets, a sweat shirt, track pants), and comfort movies.
Like my comfort foods, my comfort movies are not necessarily from my childhood, but they do carry associations with it. These are colorful, musical films set in a (mostly) benevolent universe in which everything already is all right if you just look at it the right way. These are all of them films about coming home.
So, here it is. My Top Ten list for rainy Sundays and for Friday nights alone, for broke at the end of the month, and for tired after a long day at work. These are the movies that I turn to when I want to cheer myself up, or when I just want to bask in self-pity for awhile.
My comfort movies.
Society, in a Preston Sturges film, is like a Rube Goldberg device: all of our modern bells and whistles don't make life any easier, they just frustrate our simple, uncomplicated desires. Seen through Sturges' lens existence looks delightfully, benignly absurd, and all of my problems appear trivial, fleeting, and usually quite funny!
My favorites are The Palm Beach Story and The Miracle of Morgan's Creek.
There are no bad guys in Paul Weitz' world (although some people have lost their way), and the good cheer that permeates his films can be quite infectious. Of course, it takes more than that to make a good movie.
In Good Company and About a Boy do have their shortcomings, but these are two uncommonly intelligent, perfectly cast romantic comedies. I only wish there were more like them.
Elf is simple, eschewing CGI for forced perspective and stop motion animation.
It's familiar, with a palpable sense of nostalgia reflected in its casting (Ray Harryhausen voices the Polar Bear Cub), soundtrack (I love Zooey Deschanel and Will Ferrell's impromptu duet of "Baby, It's Cold Outside"), and theme. And "pleasant associations"? It's a Christmas movie, set in New York City, starring Will Ferrell!
While all of Ozu's films chronicle the slow turning of the Earth, Early Summer in particular captures the resigned wistfulness I feel when contemplating the passage of time. It's a masterpiece of fatalism. "We shouldn't want too much," says Aya Tamura (Chikage Awashima).
It's a perfect expression of helplessness in the face of eternity because it also suggests the hope inherent in that helplessness: once we let go of our ambition we are free to find happiness in the world around us, in our family and friends.
Hayao Miyazaki has said that he directs each of his films with a particular child in mind, of a particular age. I like his "younger" movies (My Neighbor Totoro), but in a comfort film I'm looking for something a little more substantive.
I went to college, I took philosophy classes; my angst is existential.
Like Ozu, Miyazaki likes to set his films in a changing world. Where Ozu typically focuses on the society in flux, though, Miyazaki sees life through the eyes of a protagonist also struggling with the personal changes of growing up (or getting older).
It's a subtly different perspective: Ozu's films say to me, Look around and enjoy this place now because it won't be here much longer. Miyazaki's films remind me that I won't be here much longer either in the sense that I know myself now.
Both filmmakers ask us to make peace with ourselves and with the world now, and to avoid Luke Skywalker syndrome: "All his life has he looked away to the future, to the horizon.
Never his mind on where he was, what he was doing." My favorite Miyazaki comfort films are Spirited Away and Porco Rosso.
Modern Disney animation almost seems to have grown up on pace with me.
The Little Mermaid, in which a wide-eyed Ariel discovers the wonders of the world, came out in 1989 when I was an impressionable youngster of 8. The irreverent, excessively-referential The Emperor's New Groove was released the same year that I started college and discovered what a long way a little freedom goes. Then finally, in 2002, Disney discovered the perfect balance between modern American animation's irony and the wholesomeness of the studio's past in Lilo Stitch.
Here in one film we have men-in-black and the wonderful scene in which Stitch "destroys San Francisco" and the classic Disney line, "Ohana means family. Family means nobody gets left behind." Now Disney has found a life-partner in Pixar and settled down to become a productive member of society.
Or something like that. Maybe I should follow their lead again? Of course, the college/Emperor's New Groove thing did land me in quite a bit of trouble, and quite a bit of debt.
..
Well, it's the perfect romantic comedy, isn't it?
Chungking Express is about looking for meaning and structure in an arbitrary universe and finding it in the objects that surround us (cans of pineapple, bars of soap) and in the bubblegum pop songs that fill the radio airwaves. In other words it's about bringing Hollywood's dream world to life through sheer force of will. A happy ending is just around every corner, so long as you're willing to re-write the narrative of your life to fit your present circumstances.
The film's delicious sadness lies in its implicit question: is a happy ending really what you want?
I turn to Baz Luhrmann whenever I'm depressed. His characters, all of them, are waiting to be saved, waiting for their happy ending.
His films, on the surface the most energetic and whimsical, are actually the saddest on this list. There is more to that happy ending than just wanting it, believing in it, as all of his characters eventually learn. Luhrmann serves up a potent, distilled version of the romantic dream and reveals it as the insubstantial, nutrition-free spirit that it is--however giddily drunk you might be tonight, tomorrow you'll have nothing more than a hangover and an empty stomach.
But it's oh-so sweet and intoxicating now!
Luhrmann's films are best when I'm feeling sorry for myself. I can get drunk, watch Moulin Rouge!
and William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, cry into my wine, and pass out. And then tomorrow I can get up and start again. The version of La Bohème that was broadcast by the Australian Broadcast Company and released on DVD is quite good too.
2. Playtime (or Mon Oncle)
Jacques Tati sees the modern world as an amusement park ride and his Monsieur Hulot is La Strada's Gelsomina as a comic figure instead of as a tragic one--an innocent drifting along at the whim of Fate. His films reimagine the world as it's seen through the eyes of a child, and it's all wonder and potential.
The penniless, irrepressibly good-natured Hulot is an inspiration to me because he lives a truth that's so easy (far too easy) to forget: the world is much, much too ridiculous to be taken seriously.
In Groundhog Day the ambitious, single-minded ("A major network is interested in me") Phil Connors discovers that all he really wants in life is to love and be loved. Nothing uncommon about that theme.
What sets Groundhog Day apart, though, is that he actually lives out all of his other fantasies. He is in turn powerful, competent and mysterious (donning a Clint Eastwood costume), wealthy, cruel, and seductive.
But in the end he finds happiness in being humble, in delighting in simple things like snow, in reading, and in learning to play the piano.
It's therefore much more convicing (and much more comforting) when he learns to live his life, in his world instead of living in his desires and in his imagined future. And that's what all of these films share in common. They're about just looking around and being happy.
Not trying to be happy. Not hoping to be happy. Just being happy.
No matter how upset I might be, I always know that there's nothing wrong with the world. It doesn't need saving, and neither do I. I love these films, and I love film, because in the movies I can always find a window onto a universe that's quite all right as it is, thank you very much, no matter how much human beings try to screw it all up.
Sometimes I just need to see it on a screen to put this into perspective, into focus.
And so, dear reader, now I stand before you exposed as the hopeless romantic that I am. This post is as much to me as it is to you, a reminder of why I love the movies in the first place.
I'd love to know, what are your comfort films? Where do you turn when life's just a bit too much? What made you fall in love in the cinema in the first place?
We now return to your jaded, faded, and oh-so modern regular programming.
News RSS