Film Comment's 50 best films of the decade
From
septimus_millenicom@q.com@21:1/5 to
All on Sun Jan 24 12:39:30 2021
I was asked about the Film Comment 50 best films of the decade list.
I haven't followed FC for years but took a look. On the positive
side, _The Tree of Life_, two Lee Chang-Dong films, and _Moonlight_
are on it. Nothing of von Trier or Hanake made it, suggesting the
Cinema of Humiliation is officially out of favor. Good riddance!
Ditto for the "Romanian New Wave," a forgotten flavor of the day
with no staying power. _Toni Erdmann_ and _A Separation_ are good
stories if not cinematic masterpieces, _The Turin Horse_ isn't Bela
Tarr's best but is unforgettable for its unrelenting pessimism and
its cinematography.
The negative, needless to say, outweighs the positive. Claire Denis
is not represented; her _High Life_ is one of the best of the decade
and of her career, and both a homage and a humanistic correction to
Kubrick's _2001 A Space Odyssey_. It is unmistakably one of the
decade's major films. Instead we have a heavy dose of self-referential
Agnes Varda and overly academic Chantal Akerman. There are so many
amazing films by younger female directors in the last decades (those
by Cate Shortland, Kathryn Bigelow, Melanie Laurent, Anne Fontaine,
Nicole Garcia led the way, even if Garcia is "young" only in directing
age), and this list remains fixated on the two old guards. The only
other women are Agnes Hranitzky, Kelly Reichardt (more unwatchable
with each passing film), Lucretia Martel (much more on that later),
and three others tacked on at the end of the list. That seems
really peculiar, not to mention of questionable taste.
I find _Holy Motors_ overrated; I much prefer _Pola X__. _Elle_ is
praised for the complex family interactions outside its rape story,
but Jacquot's _Keep it Quiet_ (with a few of the same actors) does
that better. _Phoenix_ isn't as nearly as bad as Christian Petzold's
other films -- Nina Hoss is allowed to act a little -- but surely
there are 50 better films than that one-note tedious minor work? I
saw half of one PT Anderson film and 30 minutes of _Boyhood_, before
being bored out of my skull and quit. _First Reform_ was just trite,
I can't believe it is mentioned in the same breath as the Bresson
films. The steep decline of Paul Schrader continues. _Under the
Skin_ is an outright fraud. I was not dumb enough to be tricked into
enduring another contrived Jia Zhangke provocation.
By far the worst choice is Martel's _Zama_ at number 1. Martel was
anointed "great director" in the cinematic dark age of the 2000s,
when the art-house critics and film festival curators conspired to
enforce a stifling cinematic dogma. Thou shalt use long takes,
static camera, unprofessional actors, no non-diegetic music; the
subject matter is unimportant as long as it is dealt with in the
most shallow way and is vaguely left-leaning. A generation of
filmmakers diligently churned out unwatchable concessions to the
grader and all but destroyed art-house cinema. _Zama_ is among
the very worst remnant of this madness. There is a key scene
where one character exits the frame and bounces right back in,
like obsolete Atari video games in the 80s. Competent film making
would have moved the camera to follow him. How does the vague
anti-colonial, feminist themes get served by the rigid formalism
calling attention to itself? Does form serve content? No and
no. Ergo -- this is objectively lousy film-making. I gave up
on this after 30 minutes. But of course if checking boxes on
the critics' formalism list constitutes good filmmaking, you
make it to #1, I guess.
There has to be *some* agreement among critics. Art house cinema
is a community; if all is dissonance the readers would be lost.
But you can't all blindly follow some Peter Piper down the
path to suicide either. Naming the wildly unpopular _Zama_
the top film of the decade isn't just being irresponsible, hubris,
and of bad taste, although it is all those things too. It is
sheer professional incompetence on the part of the FC critics.
------------------------------------------------------------
"Film Comment" has ceased production due to COVID. I am not
surprised or overly saddened. I followed it avidly for 10 years,
was increasingly disillusioned for 15 (coinciding with Gavin
Smith's reign), and stopped reading for the last 5. Among its
greatest sin was to whitewash Kieslowski, Bolshevik style, out
of cinematic history. If you do that, don't complain if history
returns the favor and forget you.
I can easily name a better best of decade list over Film Comment's.
I suspect almost anyone can. Only the top 12 or so are in sequence.
One film per auteur, except for Terrence Malick and Jessica
Chastain; the decade belonged to them.
1. _The Tree of Life_, Terrence Malick (starring Chastain)
2. _To the Wonder_, Terrence Malick
3. _Knight of Cups_, Terrence Malick
4. _Lore_, Cate Shortland
5. _High Life_, Claire Denis
6. _Zero Dark Thirty_, Kathryn Bigelow (starring Chastain)
7. _You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet_, Alain Resnais
8. _Burning_ Lee Chang-Dong
9. _In the Name of My Daughter_, Andre Techine
10. _Agora_, Alenjendro Amenobar
11. _Plonger_, Melanie Laurent
12. _Return to Montauk_, Schlondorff
13. _In Safe Hands_, Jeanne Herry
14. _Byzantium_, Jordan
15. _Ned Rifle_, Hartley
16. _Miss Sloane_, Madden (starring Chastain)
17. _Violette_, Martin Provost
18. _Farewell, My Queen_, Jacquot
19. _Everything Would be Fine_, Wenders
20. _Miss Julie_, Ullmann (Starring Chastain)
21. _Deep Blue Sea_, Davies
22. _Going Away_, Nicole Garcia
23. _Poetry_, Lee Chang-Dong
24. _Another Silence_, Amigorena
25. _Memoir of War_, Finkiel
26. _Hannah Arendt_, von Trotta
27. _Moonlight_, Jenkins
28. _Cold War_, Pawlikowsk
29. _Tony Erdmann_, Ade
30. _Damsels in Distress_, Stillman
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)