Monday, January 31, 2005

Top 10 Films of 2004

Top 10 Films of 2004
Phillip Greenlief

Rather than my usual introductory remarks on how the preceding year was a bad one for moviegoers, I’ll initiate our 2004 discussion with a few questions:

Is it foolish to write about film after wading through the calamity-filled trough of 2004?
Why spend time thinking about movies when so much was at stake on our recent presidential election? With all the films out there dedicated to providing a balanced array of information on the White House, the Military, U.S. Intelligence, or the Media, was anyone inspired to think or act differently? Is it more and more difficult to tell the difference between the natural disasters imagined in cinemascope and those dominating the 6 o’clock news? Has the fog of war shepherded America into a blind submission that keeps us from comprehending that our bullying operations in Iraq has more to do with Halliburton’s $63M revenue in 2004 than amassing a harbinger of liberty in that war-torn nation? How many of the 100,000+ Iraqi citizens that have perished were innocent civilians? Is gas cheaper? Was it worth it? In what ways do we abstract the death toll of U.S. Troops (1,330 and counting) so that we can avoid shedding tears over the senselessness of it all? What now? Do we desire our own personal Kill Bill revenge fantasies with George W Bush, Mel Gibson, or your local child molester kneeling before a fleet of flying daggers? Was Christ passionate? Should news agencies like the Fox Network display disclaimers that their #1 priority is to serve the Almighty Right Wing rather than presenting the facts? How are our film-going experiences altered by the opening statement based on real events? Should we believe organizations like Families First when they tell us that SpongeBob Squarepants (the film, the TV show, and his entire wet and wooly undersea world) promotes homosexuality and should therefore be taken off the air? Are there weapons of mass destruction camouflaged in the video games that flank the lobbies of your local theaters? Have our suburban neighborhoods merged seamlessly with multiplex convenience and amenities? Have your mayor’s urban renewal policies sentenced the disadvantaged to populate the parameters of Dogville? Has anyone seen Spiderman lately?

With the blurring of real and imagined realities approaching at an ever-accelerated race for your attention, the documentary film seems to have attained a temporary parking pass at the intersection of independent and mainstream cinema. Several movies that sought to supply the voting populace with a wider range of political perspectives were worth the price of admission. Out of a much longer list of worthy documentaries that would, for brevity’s sake, be reduced to Fahrenheit 911, The Control Room, and Uncovered (The Truth About the War in Iraq), only The Corporation and The Fog of War knocked the ball out of the proverbial park.

Movies outside the documentary field seem to be nervously flirting with social commentary, as if not covering current-affairs this year was suddenly not an option. New-family dramas like Thirteen read like a mature after-school special designed to reveal the peril our youth suffer under the raging glare of consumer media and the highly efficient systems of peer pressure that accompany those taunting images. Spanglish presented evidence that even loose cannons like Adam Sandler consider the unsung Mexican labor force in California a marketable plot device, while A Day without a Mexican hoisted a more sober reading of this condition to the screen but fell flat in its delivery. Will Rogers famous quip “I only know what I read in the newspapers” strikes a particularly ironic tone when trying to cite the difference between the events leading to Stephen Glass’ dismissal from the The New Republic and Billy Ray’s limp feature, Shattered Glass.

Outside the annals of Hollywood new works like Jean-Luc Goddard’s Notre Musique and Ingmar Bergman’s Saraband were released in 2004, received admiration from the press and awards at the festivals, but have yet to arrive in American cinemas. Distribution for Goddard’s films has deflated over the past decade (along with the quality of some of his work). His 5-hour documentary, Histoire du Cinema (2003), sure to be one of his highlights of the past decade, has yet to screen in American cinemas but was released on DVD in the U.S. by the ECM recording label (known mainly for releasing contemporary flavored Euro-jazz and a few select 20th century composers). The release is out of many viewers’ price range at $179.95 and many video stores have refrained from placing it on their shelves. (There are times when the tenets of capitalism bear an uncanny resemblance to censorship…)

Bergman’s Saraband will play the usual independent cinema haunts in 2005 and from all the emerging praise (for the power of the script, groundbreaking digital photography and top drawer performances from Liv Ullman and Erland Josephson), it seems mandatory viewing for anyone interested in learning why the great Swedish director chose to break silence and give us a final installment of his earlier serialized work Scenes from a Marriage**. Bergman retired from cinema with his unparalleled autobiographical swan song Fanny and Alexander* (1982), although he has been writing and directing for the Royal Swedish Theater.

*Fanny & Alexander was recently released by The Criterion Collection on DVD in both its 3- ½ hour theatrical release and the 5-hour format created for Swedish Television, a version never before seen in the U.S.
**Criterion has also released Scenes from a Marriage in similar duel-version format.

10 Favorite Films of 2004
1) Dogville
2) The Corporation
3) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
4) The Fog of War
5) Bad Education
6) Father and Son
7) Hero
8) Kill Bill
9) Open Water
10) Maria Full of Grace


1) Dogville
Lars Von Trier’s newest film flowers like a Pandora’s Box of morality plays set in the good ole’ U.S. of A. Nicole Kidman leads an excellent ensemble through an introduction and 9 episodes that examine how society (and the artist) exploits the poor and disenfranchised. The film had difficulties securing its release (originally slated for August 2003) and was postponed four times until it appeared in theaters on limited distribution in March 2004.

The complex script, great performances and the excellent use of a confined “open” space invites repeated viewings to unravel a myriad of metaphors – all probing an America that once prided itself on hospitality and an eagerness to reach out to those in need. Civic justice, xenophobia, revenge, and the question of goodness underline what may have been the most artistically successful film of the year. Dogville is the first of a proposed trilogy by Von Trier, all intended to examine the American socio-political landscape.

2) The Corporation
2004 produced a bumper crop of lefty documentaries, all seemingly pointed at the target of The Bush Administration, the bloody quagmire we Americans have produced in Iraq, and the misuse of power by American corporations. Out of all the documentaries that tried to encourage Americans to think differently about the current course of business as usual, The Corporation stood alone in its unique construction, the clarity of ideas expressed, and the solutions it posited with sober optimism.

The Corporation was created by producer Mark Achbar, director/editor Jennifer Abbott, and writer Joel Bakan. Jennifer Abbot’s direction and editing in particular tilt the applause meter throughout. The filmmakers begin with an outline of how corporations were first formed to conduct business while representing a corpus – a “body” of individuals with similar commercial objectives. The film then questions whether or not corporations should be held accountable to follow the same ethical and moral principles that the law holds its individual citizens.

Following the DSM-4 personality diagnostic test that psychologists use to evaluate psychopathic behavior, the filmmakers chart the parallels between corporate behavior and that of a psychopath. Activities such as callous disregard for the feelings of others, incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, reckless disregard for the safety of others, deceitfulness: repeated lying or conning others for profit, or failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors, top the list of unacceptable activities. Based on the evidence presented in the film, the “average” psychopath is a better behaved citizen than the body of our corporate institutions.

Rather than relentlessly painting the world of corporate behavior as a nightmarish landscape of destruction, The Corporation capitulates by proposing ways that the postmodern corpus can move toward a sustainable future in the next few decades to come – a silver lining only possible if the populace holds these manufacturing giants to operate with respect to the laws that govern all of us.

3) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Charlie Kaufman plucks a resonant heartstring with this clever inquiry into memory and its ability to shape love and an individual’s identity. Tom Wilkinson plays an inventor who has developed a tool to erase memories. Kristen Dunst stars as Berringer’s reason for needing such a machine and the remaining fumblers assigned to administer this mad cure are realized just awkwardly enough by Elijah Wood and Mark Ruffalo.

Jim Carey and Kate Winslet occupy the principal characters doomed to delve into their memory/dreamtime, where a fantastic voyage through the ups and downs of their challenged love affair leads them to believe they have more to lose than gain by scrubbing each other out of their remembered experience. The imaginative sequences where the lovers struggle to keep their memories from literally melting off the screen lives comfortably in the reality-challenged world of Charlie Kaufman’s fecund imagination.

Jim Carey, who ordinarily upsets the applecart of performance dynamics, reduces the size of his character to something in the realm of subtlety – a task he seems rarely able to achieve. He is more Buster Keaton than Charlie Chaplin in Eternal Sunshine, and he admirably carries the film along with a nice performance from Kate Winslet, who is equally irresistible and annoying while coursing a darkening maze of emotional entanglement in search of daylight.

4) The Fog of War
This film was originally released to critics in 2003, and judges awarded it an Oscar at last year’s Academy Award ceremonies. The film was not released in America until 2004 however, and although the Hollywood machinery was primed to praise it, the powers that be were not ready to distribute it until 2004. Errol Morris accepted his award and thanked the academy for “FINALLY recognizing my work”.

The Fog of War happens to be a great film, despite Morris’ lack of humility, the absurdity of The Academy, and Philip Glass’ overwrought score. Its principal subject is Robert McNamara, one time Secretary of Defense under Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. The Fog of War charts McNamara’s participation in the military from the 1940’s through his resignation from his position of Secretary of Defense in the midst of the Vietnam War, with a sidebar that discusses McNamara’s stint at the Ford Motor Company throughout most of the 1950’s. The movie charts several lessons that the filmmaker and its subject wish to impart in order to better understand what McNamara calls “The Fog of War” – an experience that occurs in the context of war that blinds its participants from the truth. In typical Morris fashion, the audience is left to decide just how much truth McNamara reveals in this fascinating look at how governments perceive, plan and execute the difficult matter of war maneuvers. Despite where you may reside on the subject of McNamara’s honesty, The Fog of War offers an important perspective on a particularly difficult period in America’s recent past and sheds valuable light on the values and decisions that have shaped our current involvement in Iraq.

5) Bad Education
Pedro Almadovar’s newest feature allows him to exorcise a few of his childhood demons while holding dear the dark satirical tone of vintage Hitchcock. Bad Education closed the 2004 season with a psychological thriller that was submerged in noir overtones and entangled in a structure not dissimilar to the architecture of a Chinese Box. The lively Spanish auteur hit stride in 2000 with All About My Mother and has approached recent films with greater confidence in his actors and the material subject; a thematic concern Almaldovar is most likely to link to the human body or, more particularly, to the human heart. His brazenly sculpted results offer a mature style that recalls some of the great post-war European directors (Melville, Fellini, Bunuel) while remaining grounded in a personally informed and highly charged cinematic universe.

Bad Education is populated with: a writer, a group of children, a director, a few teachers, and a few more actors (all based on autobiographical sources). These fleshy castanets realize a symphony of revenge, blackmail, fictionalization, childhood molestation, libel, and possibly murder – all neatly housed in the chambers of the parochial school and in the various laboratories of cinematic invention. A web of relations between priest, teacher, student, actor and director tangles past and present and accompanies a shedding of emotional scars from dense layers of past tense. Motivation upon motivation abounds as Almaldovar superbly balances his character studies so that no one might go unnoticed or unscathed. Cinematically, Bad Education lives in a neo-Technicolor time-warp. Check it out and see if you don’t recognize echoes of Vertigo and other Hitchcock color classics from the 1950’s. Combine great pulpy fun, edgy gender-bending material, exciting performances, and you’re sure to recognize another fine work by Spain’s ugly-duckling gone mad genius.



6) Father and Son
Alexander Sokurov, the restless poet of New Russian Cinema gives us the companion piece to his 2002 effort Mother and Son and continues his use of the family model as a metaphor for exploring social and personal challenges faced by post-Glasnost Russians. The film presents an dialogue between the children of the Iron Curtain (represented by the father) and the children of Glasnost (represented by the son).

Like Sokurov’s Herculean effort Russian Ark, the narrative moves in unexpected ways and does not follow a chronological sequence; time shifts as it does in a dream – that is to say scenarios develop in a logic that is overtly opaque. The narrative technique in Father & Son is comparable to Andrei Tarkovsky’s collage structure in his cultural memoir Mirror (Zerkalo), which delivers an overview of historical matters rather than the specifics of an individual (for the communal ideal is never far from the Russian consciousness). Father and Son walk that delicate line of revealing the collective through the human foil.

Sokurov’s newest effort will challenge its viewers. Audiences will likely achieve a greater appreciation of the work with repeated screenings. Like the ideal audience for Sokurov’s Russian Ark, viewers most likely to achieve satisfaction would have some interest or knowledge of Russian culture. The more you know, the more there is to appreciate. Similarly, the closer you look when watching a film with the rare depth of Father and Son the more you discover.

7) Hero
More than anything, Xiang Yimou’s Hero is a celebration of moving pictures and epic imagery. Highly saturated color, visual poetry and a cunning warrior who seeks to single-handedly destroy the army that wiped out his village, escorts the viewer on a nearly hallucinogenic action-filled ride through a world of folkloric fantasy. Some of Hero’s expositions echo Kurosawa’s Rashomon, in its attempt to reveal universal truth by presenting the multiple perspectives of diverse characters. But Hero is less concerned with the politics of justice than illustrating the eternal human fascinations with love, loyalty and how to annihilate your enemy as artfully as possible. An especially fine experience on the big screen, Hero is a movie for people who love movies that transport us into alternate realities that captivate our imagination and stir the soul.

8) Kill Bill
Unlike other critical readings of Tarantino’s newest effort, the following observations on Kill Bill focus on the work as a whole, not on the individual parts. Watching the film in its entirety with a short intermission in between seems an optimum way to experience the full breadth of this potent revenge epic. Viewed in this manner, Kill Bill is hard to beat if you are the kind of person that enjoys spending an afternoon mesmerized by the playfully dark, cathartic sequences found in movies like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly; Seven Samurai; or Once Upon a Time in the West.

Tarantino gleefully follows the footsteps of many masters. His highly stylized photography and his uncanny ability to use music to drive an extended narrative inherit most successfully from the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone. The Byzantine mechanics of violence and obsession with the poetics of cinematic imagery reveals his fixations with Hong Kong fight classics. Structurally, you can trace his models back to the Wandering Rocks episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses – there is the ability to move back and forth through time by revealing pivot points that link sequences of action. Like all iconoclasts, he devours his passions and exhibits an obsessive need to balance an enormous array of stylistic material and if the film doth possess flaws they reside in a din of stylistic excess. Kill Bill is a long sequence of film about film and it offers a string of killings that surpass the psychotic density of The Big Sleep. It is both prideful and vain in its search to provide a cinematic throne for the 21st Century’s new bloodthirsty woman.

Clocking in at about 4 hours, it is possible that some viewers will find Kill Bill an experience that stays too long at the fair. Having considered that, we courteously warn the public at large that Kill Bill is a film for film addicts by a film addict. But beyond the shock value of all the flashes of carnage and wailing buckets of blood, it could be easily said that Kill Bill carries out the tenets of existentialism with far greater vigor than Sartre’s No Exit or Camus’ The Stranger (and is infinitely funnier). And if 4 hours were not enough, be it know that Tarantino’s films improve with repeated viewings; as the shock value fades with multiple exposure, all the humor and highly-orchestrated points of thematic light appear more clearly in view. Up close, there is no more exhaustive pursuit for revenge in the history of film by a single individual than the journey Uma Thurman travels in Kill Bill. The act of revenge is the ultimate existential responsibility, and our heroine takes great steps to fulfill her duties. She fights her foes to the death for over 3 ½ hours, and leaves an incalculable death count in her wake on a voyage that eventually brings her to a new level of self-discovery – the hitherto hidden knowledge of her own offspring.

9) Open Water
Open Water opens with an unsympathetic couple (played to perfection by Blanchard Ryan and Daniel Travis) arguing about what to pack for their vacation and ends in deep tragedy. Writer/director Chris Kentis handles the understated material with refrain from special effects or sappy nostalgia while tapping into our most primal fear of being preyed upon by the unknown. Shot on digital film and reading all too much like your cousin’s “what we did on our summer vacation” home video, Open Water could be the closest thing the yuppie generation ever gets to its own personal Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

10) Maria Full of Grace
Catalina Moreno Santira’s miraculous performance is only one of the many reasons that make Maria Full of Grace a wholly satisfying film experience. Told from a young woman’s perspective, Joshua Marston’s newest feature is a hypnotic coming of age story about a girl who chooses to escape an impending existential crisis by working as a “mule” for Columbian drug-runners. (A mule ingests heroin or other substances in packets, passes through International Customs and delivers on the other side).

The director’s understated touch re-envisions the noir/pulp theme of wayward girl on the run in ways that free the script and pacing from falling into melodramatic quagmire. Instead, Maria gracefully burrows down into earnest characters whose separate destinies bring about a heartfelt climax without trying to smugly resolve any of the difficult to answer moral questions raised in the somber script.

Re:Discoveries – Local Color

If you’re a film lover, one of the great things about living in the San Francisco Bay Area is the access you have to a myriad of revival houses and film societies. This year, the Castro Theater Movie Palace hosted frameline 28 (The 28th SF International Lesbian & Gay Film Festival), the SF Jewish Film Festival, a week of Godzilla-related flicks (including, for you MF Doom fans, screenings of Monster Zero, Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah, and Ghidrah: The Three-Headed Monster); a rarely-seen selection of noir potboilers; and gorgeous newly re-mastered prints of the Ingmar Bergman masterpieces Fanny & Alexander, Summer with Monika, Smiles of a Summer Night, The Virgin Spring, and Persona. During the summer, re-mastered prints of Jacques Tati’s Playtime, Fellini’s La Dolce Vita, and a troupe of Orson Welles’ classics flashed upon their super-size screen.

In the fall, The Castro hosted a tribute to cinematographer James Wong Howe, whose versatile and influential camerawork gave immediacy to films like The Thin Man, The Rose Tattoo, Prisoner of Zenda, Mark of the Vampire, and Seconds. Finally, and speaking of GREAT documentaries, the Castro screened Hearts and Minds, one of the finest films on (the Vietnam) war ever made (available on Criterion Collection DVD at local video stores).

In addition to the outstanding CineMexico festival, the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley presented a retrospective on Victor Sjostrom (one of the great silent-screen Swedish directors) with live musical accompaniment to his movies and a screening of Ingmar Bergman’s Wild Strawberries, (in which Sjostrom plays the leading role). The PFA presented a few Visconti films that the Castro missed (and vice-versa), and both theaters celebrated with screenings of his masterpiece, The Leopard.