Not Coming to a Theater Near You | 2005 in review
by Ian Johnston
How do we determine the “best films” of the year? Any list restricted to commercial releases (as is often the case with these end-of-the-year lists) hardly seems adequate, let alone reflective of the best moments of my own film-viewing experience in 2005. Those moments have come from a number of different sources: general releases, film festival screenings, special retrospectives, and DVD releases. (TV doesn’t play much of a role where I am.) So, I have chosen a list that reflects that. First, one film-viewing highlight of the year; then, two separate lists of the ten films that formed the best film experiences of the year, divided into five each of new/newish and older films; and finally a note on my favourite DVDs.
Of the new films, I haven’t seen either Caché or A History of Violence (and knowing my own taste and Ang Lee’s past record, I doubt that Brokeback Mountain would make the cut for me). And it’s worth noting that I haven’t included, in spite of the mastery of cinematic form, either Tsai Ming-liang’s The Wayward Cloud, a minor and slightly dissatisfying work; or Hou Hsiao-hsien’s Three Times, a far more seriously flawed film (and such a contrast with last year’s Café Lumière, an absolute masterpiece!).
My film experience of the year:
Heimat II Die Zweite Heimat, Edgar Reitz, Germany, 1993
This 13-film, 25-hour sequel to 1982’s 11-part Heimat, rather than being a direct continuation of the original, takes up the figure of Herman Simon, protagonist of the ninth episode of the original. That episode always seemed rather out of character with the tone of the rest of Heimat, more obviously autobiographical and suddenly antagonistic towards Heimat’s rural Hunsrück setting. The English title Heimat II misses the significance of the German title: literally “The Second Heimat/Homeland”, underlying how its youthful characters in the artistic (musical/literary/film) milieu of sixties Munich are creating their own “homeland”, in distinction from that of their parents’ generation, which they so thoroughly reject and abandon. The strengths of Heimat II lie in the richness of the world it portrays, the novelistic breadth and depth allowed by the time Reitz has to explore his characters; and in the fine cinematic sensibility, the tonal qualities Reitz can get from his switching between black-and-white and colour film, whether for reasons of theme, emotion, symbolic weight, the expression of physical sensation, or aesthetic effect.
The five best new films:
1 Last Days Gus Van Sant, USA, 2005
Van Sant’s reinvention of himself as the preeminent American filmmaker of the day continues with this, his third offering, so to speak, in the spirit of Béla Tarr. Last Days has even less of a narrative than Gerry or Elephant, but is a stunning cinematic experience. Van Sant’s camera tracks and glides, probes forwards and backwards, stops in quiet contemplation, as it tries to approach the shambling, mumbling, impenetrable Blake. It’s a narrative which repeatedly loops back on itself, offers no answers, but it achieves its own moment of epiphany, at one with the lightness of the film, as we watch Blake’s spirit leave his body and climb up and out of the frame.
2 L’Enfant Jean-Pierre & Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France, 2005
The less sympathetic complain that the Dardennes are simply repeating themselves here; but to my mind, even if we’re now familiar with the déclassé urban world they portray, L’Enfant is a superb addition to an oeuvre which counts as among the very best in contemporary cinema. There are subtle variations on the Dardennes’ customary aesthetics: the camerawork, while still in the forceful hand-held realist mode they’ve made their own, is ratcheted-down, less intense and intrusive than in Le Fils; and the integrity and humanism of the Dardennes’ approach towards their characters and their subject matter are paramount.
3 The Death of Mr. Lazarescu Cristi Pulu, Romania, 2005
This is a film that takes its time in exploring character and situation – two-and-a-half hours to detail how an elderly alcoholic, critically ill, is shunted in one long night from one hospital to another. But the effect is absolutely gripping, and proof of the virtues of duration, how the right length in a film can cement in a total absorption on the part of the audience in the world of the film.
4 L’Esquive Abdellatif Kechiche, France, 2003
On the surface, a realist study of teenagers in a French immigrant satellite-town, which quickly turns into something a lot more complex and intricate. Kechiche takes the core of his narrative – the eighteenth-century Marivaux play that a group of teenagers are rehearsing – and uses it to structure his film, spinning off a contemporary parallel and using it to address issues of class, race, gender, education, and, above all, language.
5 The World Shijie, Jia Zhangke, China, 2004
This might not operate at the same level as Unknown Pleasures or Platform (one of the great masterpieces of recent years), but it still remains one of the most striking films of the year. I’m not so taken with the text-messaging animation, and the ending – however much it’s based on reality – is flawed (too sudden, overdetermined, lacking the space given to both audience and characters that the endings of Jia’s earlier films have), but this is a devastating portrait of how China’s economic progress, its buying into globalization, is failing so many of its citizens. The film’s world theme-park setting offers a brilliantly simple and effective metaphor, all overlaid by Jia’s superb mastery of the long-take aesthetic.
And also: Nobody Knows (Kore-eda Hirozaku, Japan, 2004); Japón (Carlos Reygadas, Mexico, 2002); Or (Karen Yedaya, Israel, 2000); Somersault (Cate Shortland, Australia, 2004); Yes (Sally Potter, UK, 2004); Kings And Queen (Rois et Reine, Arnaud Desplechin, France, 2004); The Tracker (Rolf de Heer, Australia, 2002); Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, USA, 2004); Sideways (Alexander Payne, USA, 2004); Taurus (Alexander Sokurov, Russia, 2000)
The five best old films (seen for the first time):
1 Procès de Jeanne D’Arc Robert Bresson, France, 1962
Bresson’s genius stripped to 62 minutes of visual and aural essentials: the eye at the keyhole, feet in a doorway, Jeanne’s upturned hand as she lies sick from poisoning, the stunning tracking shot of Jeanne’s feet as she runs across the cobblestones to the stake, the doves on the roof, the charred stake… A masterpiece.
2 Devi Satyajit Ray, India, 1960
Ray’s name doesn’t seem to be invoked or even remembered nowadays as much it ought. This is Ray at his best, a rich, shifting, complex study in the limitations and extreme dangers of religious orthodoxy, which while adopting a progressive, modern approach to the topic, never completely loses a sense of ambiguity about the issues at stake.
3 Au Hasard Balthazar Robert Bresson, France, 1966
A girl, a donkey, boys on motorcycles: this might be Bresson’s greatest, most perfectly realised masterpiece. A materialist concentration on the mundane realities of the world culminates in an epiphany of heightened religious spirituality.
4 Van Gogh Maurice Pialat, France, 1991
Pialat characteristically refuses to deal in the clichés of the Life of the Artist that even Minnelli or Robert Altman, when tackling Van Gogh, have been unable to avoid. There are no signs here of Vincent the madman – although we do have Vincent the angry Pialat-substitute. This is a work of great artistic beauty, not for any attempt at reproducing the look of Van Gogh’s art (unlike other artists’ biopics, Pialat never does this) but for its breathtaking sense of adventure and risktaking, for its refusal to follow the accepted rules (where to place ellipses, how long to run scenes) of filmmaking.
5 The Second Circle Alexander Sokurov, Russia, 1990
This pre-dates the series of films (most prominently, Mother and Son and The Russian Ark) that have made Sokurov’s international reputation and proves to be one of his greatest films. This story of a son who returns to a decaying city to bury his father, in mesmerizing black-and-white, is a slow, mysterious exploration of a soul in pain, one that’s half comic and half despairing.
And also: Juste avant la nuit (Claude Chabrol, France, 1971); Kanal (Andrzej Wayda, Poland, 1957); Bitter Victory (Nicholas Ray, USA, 1957); Story of Women (Une affaire de femmes, Claude Chabrol, 1988); Little Caesar (Mervyn LeRoy, USA, 1930); Jeanne Dielman, 23 Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (Chantal Akerman, Belgium/France, 1976)
DVDs:
A list of the five DVD titles that have meant the most to me – not necessarily for the requisite multitude of extras, commentaries etc; sometimes the importance can lie simply in a film finally existing on DVD.