The Year of the Downer
Maybe it’s the war in Iraq. Maybe it’s Paris Hilton. Maybe it’s the second wave of the Seventies. Whatever the reason, down was in this year, at least with me. Most of the movies on my top ten are about as bleak as Vilsack’s chances in ‘08.
10. Tsotsi
“What kind of bastard would break a dog’s back?”
Not exactly a downer, but the journey to redemption in this flick is harsh. Breastfeeding-at-gunpoint harsh. In a plot point that became de rigeur in ‘06, a car is jacked with a baby on board. Many other filmmakers would take this opportunity to amp up the treacle as our antihero carjacker is slowly humanized, but writer/director Gavin Hood pulls no punches. The movie earns your respect, frame by beautifully composed frame. Performances are outstanding, and the soundtrack kicks ass. More here.
Note: Earned a Best Foreign Language Film Oscar in ‘06, but wasn’t officially released in the States until last year.
9. Happy Feet
“Yeah, I saw an animal do that once and then they rolled him over and he was dead.”
George Miller surprises me here in much the same way he did with the Babe films (yes, both of them), taking a premise that turned me off in trailer form, and using it to launch into quirky, original territory. From the Moulin Rouge-inspired opening to a genuinely surprising plot turn to the downright gorgeous cinematography (seriously, it’s probably the most beautiful movie I saw in ‘06), the film never stops distinguishing itself from just about every other animated film in a year overcrowded with animated fare (though Cars comes a close second).
8. Why We Fight
“When war becomes that profitable, you’re going to see a lot more of it.”
Perhaps the most depressing notion posited by this doc about how no one listened to Eisenhower’s farewell address is that no matter who’s in charge, Democrat or Republican, war is always profitable and, in some creeping sense, preferred. How much easier is it as a legislator, the film intimates, to vote for conflict when you know it will bring millions of dollars to your constituents? How similar is the Iraq War to scores of conflicts around the world in which the U.S. has had a hand since the end of WWII? How difficult is it to defeat a bill to make more stealth bombers when each state has a contract to build a different part? Say the most left-wing lunatic gets elected in ‘08; what this doc seems to say, and quite compellingly, is that it really won’t make any difference, because that’s no longer where the problem lies. More here.
“My mother told me to be wary of Fauns.”
Perhaps the most depressing movie I have ever seen, and yet, one of the most magical, Pan’s Labyrinth is the masterpiece we suspected Guillermo Del Toro had in him all along (no disrespect to Blade II, which is the shit). Containing images that would make Apocalypto blush, the film nevertheless composes an almost sentimental paean to the imagination of youth in the midst of the most brutal of circumstances, in this case, Franco’s Spain. Sergi López gives an Oscar-worthy (but likely to be ignored) performance as the manifestation of that brutality, the rigid, self-loathing Capitan Vidal, and Ivana Baquero caps what’s been a particularly good year for child performances (Abigail Breslin, Shareeka Epps) as the impulsive Ofelia.
6. Dreamgirls
“You know why I made you the lead? Because your voice has no personality.”
The hype was true. Most of it anyway. Critics saw 20 minutes of this flick at Cannes and started raving. Eddie Murphy was getting Oscar buzz. In May. By the time the film finally came out, the buzz survived and, post-screenings, was only slightly diminished. Yes, the film is essentially a collection of great performances, but the Supremes/Motown allegory still gives them a compelling backbone. And Eddie Murphy earns every bit of that Oscar buzz. Ditto Jennifer Hudson, who single-handedly commands the most applause-inducing scene in recent memory. More here.
“I want you to kill your brother.”
This simple declaration spawns the most shades-of-grey dissertation on violence since, well, A History of Violence and perhaps the most conflicted Western of all time. As I described it when I first saw it, it’s like Unforgiven without all the moral clarity. John Hurt has a compelling turn as a bounty hunter but the real magic here belongs to Ray Winstone who portrays one of the most complex characters I’ve ever seen. More here.
“If our children can live safely for one more day, it would be worth the one more day that we defend this island.”
Speaking of morally ambiguous treatises on violence (funny how those come up during wartime), Eastwood’s second film of the year would have been an awesome idea even if the film itself sucked: A companion piece to Flags of Our Fathers telling the story of Iwo Jima from the Japanese perspective. Fortunately, it did not suck and in fact surpasses its powerful predecessor.
The performances here are all solid and the filmmaking is Eastwood at his most assured. The man knows how to make a point without beating it into the ground. He also knows how to take the disturbing and hold it up to the light from every conceivable angle, refusing to let us settle into any easy opinions about it. One of the most important war films ever made, and a great film by any standard.
3. United 93
“We have to do something, they are not going to land this plane.”
The same unflinching eye director Paul Greengrass brought to Bloody Sunday lays bare the heroism, confusion and horror of 9/11. His camera allows no buffer between you and the people experiencing it. And that final shot will stay with you forever.
2. Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan
“May George Bush drink the blood of every man, woman, and child in Iraq!”
Sacha Baron Cohen exposes our insecurities and prejudices by playing the classic fool. This film has as much in common with Being There as Jackass. It’s no wonder Cohen considers Peter Sellers a major influence. As tense as any other film on this list, but in a completely different way. Your only reassurance that our hero won’t get killed from scene to scene is the fact that Cohen is around to tell the tale.
Blurring the lines between documentary and narrative fiction (and earning a WGA nod for Best Adapted Screenplay in the process) with direction from Humor of the Uncomfortable maestro Larry Charles, Borat also boasts an incredible performance (perhaps the best of the year) from Cohen who manages to create a surprisingly versatile character and then maintain it in what might be termed “extreme improv” situations.
It’s also as scary as any film on this list, with the very real lynch-happy machinations of one man against all gays and the drunken-yet-earnest yearnings of college-educated folk for the return of slavery.
For all the high-minded satire, however, I’d be lying if I said the biggest laughs didn’t come during the naked wrestling scene.
“Very odd, what happens in a world without children’s voices.”
When people talk about “virtuoso filmmaking” they should point to this picture. Alfonso Cuarón sets the bar high in the first thirty minutes with a sequence that announces how ruthless both the plot and the cinematography is going to be. Clive Owen does his best bleak-future-face with a soulful performance that, like the script, never manages to lose its wry sense of humor.
The dystopia the world posits is all the more convincing because it merely tweaks the current circumstance. As in V for Vendetta, Britain is the only civilization left standing, although it’s not very civilized. Immigrants are rounded up and left to wait in cages on the street or brutal refugee camps for deportation. Television ads remind citizens that it’s illegal to buy from or sell to them. Sound familiar? And the inability to walk down the street without knowing if you’ll be blown up or kidnapped isn’t science fiction at all in, oh, say 23 countries already.
Cuarón makes you feel the paranoia of living in a world where nothing is stable while the production design sets the grime-meter to eleven. All the world’s racism, fear and anger of the last few years is somehow pooled here and thrown back at us, often in unbelievably long and masterful tracking shots. It’s almost like someone challenged Cuarón to tell the story in as few edits as possible.
It’s not surprising that human life is held cheaply when it’s in abundance. What this movie shows us is that it can be even cheaper when there’s no more where it came from. And when there’s a chance that all of that will change, it’s suddenly precious again. That may sound cheesy on paper, but Cuarón makes it achingly real.
It may seem from this list that escapism is dead to me, but with sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean, Spider-Man, Shrek, The Bourne Identity, Ocean’s 11, 28 Days Later, The Fantastic Four, Die Hard and Bruce Almighty due this year, I don’t think it’s going anywhere.