My Favorite Films of 2014 (not from 2014)

The past year found me viewing a smaller number of films in comparison to years past in an attempt to catch up on some of the most acclaimed works to be released in 2014 (and I still haven't completely caught up on everything yet). Nevertheless, looking back on what I had seen, I realized that everything had, for better or worse, left an indelible impression on me. It was the strange sort of year where I saw a Lars von Trier movie that I liked and absolutely detested something created by Louis C.K. Of all the exceptional movies I saw, the following ten were the ones that I adored above all others. Some were haunting, humorous, and heartbreaking, yet they were all exceptional in their subversion of cinematic tropes to create unforgettable masterworks that invigorated my imagination.

10. The King and the Mockingbird

I must confess that I had seen a good portion of The King and the Mockingbird (or better known in its native country as Le Roi et l'oiseau) years ago on the internet, primarily the first twenty minutes or so. Only now when the film was finally given a theatrical release in the United States did I have the opportunity to see the entirety of this legendary film, and in many respects I'm glad I waited. It's a gorgeous film whose painterly aesthetic enables it with a storybook atmosphere much in the same way Takahata Isao utilized Japanese brushwork in this year's excellent The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. By employing a retro design, The King and the Mockingbird becomes timeless. The story, very loosely based off of a fable by Hans Christian Anderson, tells of the strabismal sovereign of Tachycardia (cough, cough) who detests his subjects as much as they do him, though he reserves the strongest barb of loathing for himself. The only source of tenderness within the bitter King Charles III + V = VIII + VIII = XVI (yes, that's really his full title) is a portrait of a fey shepherdess in his secret apartment that he pines for. By night, while the king slumbers, the ornate artworks come to life and the shepherdess expresses her love for the chimney sweep in the adjacent portrait. The two escape and are aided by the titular and titillating mockingbird while His Majesty is disposed of by his painted and optically superior doppelgänger who promptly orders the palace guard to hunt down the eloping lovers. Any animation buff has doubtless heard of the protracted production history of The King and the Mockingbird which took place over the course of three decades and was surpassed for the longest production of a film by Richard Williams' The Thief and the Cobbler. The ultimate result is a wholly strange yet beguiling masterpiece of French animation. It is simple enough for children to understand yet imbued with enough knowing subtext by animator Paul Grimault and co-writer Jacques Prévert (who is perhaps most famous for writing the French classic Children of Paradise) that adults may appreciate the sly social commentary on tyranny, freedom, and technology. But the greatest appeal of this fairy tale is its lyricism and earnest adoration for life. As opposed to so many animated films today, The King and the Mockingbird doesn't barrel from plot point to plot point but rather luxuriates in the world it creates as well as the small moments of beauty permeating it. What The King and the Mockingbird strives to convey is the glory of imagination, the vivacity of movement, and the joy of creation rather than destruction. In these regards, isn't that what animation, and by extension cinema, is for?

9. Shoot the Piano Player

The film begins like this: a man runs through the streets at night as he is pursued by a sinister car. He cuts corners, lunges down alleys, rushes along a sidewalk, and then does the inexplicable; he stops to chat with a person walking their dog. They have an amiable, if innocuous, discussion, exchange pleasantries, and after bidding each other farewell the man resumes his run. This anarchic attitude immediately establishes the tone for Francois Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player (Tirez sur le pianiste), one of the most playful deconstructions of genre to emerge out of the Nouvelle Vague. François Truffaut once said that he strove to "make a film where all the scenes would please [him]", and this confident disposal off conventions and audience expectations led to a mixed response from critics and poor box office that ultimately frightened Truffaut off from experimenting as boldly ever again. It's a pity, because the story of Charlie the pianist is a dazzlingly gleeful journey that sashays from comedy to tragedy in the space of mere moments. Charlie has distanced himself from his prior persona as Edouard Saroyan the revered musician following a tragic incident. Now he occupies a nondescript existence as the titular employee of a seedy bar, yet he draws the attention of an attractive waitress named Lena as well as two gangsters who are looking for his brothers (one of whom is the chased man at the film's start). While inspired by B pictures by Samuel Fuller as well as crime movies, Shoot the Piano Player satirizes these genres as much as it pays homage to them. There is a scene where the film screeches to a halt to partake in a nonsense song about a raspberry. The antagonistic gangsters, more akin to their successors in Pulp Fiction in their lackadaisical demeanor than their predecessors, freely converse about the appeal of wearing women's clothing. As for Charlie Kohler himself, he is a far cry from the brooding masculine image of the American antihero. If anything, his passivity renders him an inept, as well as impotent, protagonist that takes little to no accountability for events either directly or indirectly influenced by his actions. What Truffaut explores with Shoot the Piano Player is a new world on the cusp of breaking away from the old one and the enervated entertainer who cannot accommodate it but is forced to accept it as an implacable and, for him, tragic reality.

8. After Life

If you could take one memory with you when you die that would act as your own personal heaven, what would it be? This tantalizing theoretical query forms the foundation of Koreeda Hirokazu's remarkable After Life, a 1998 drama that blurs the demarcation between fiction and veracity. Initially conceived as a documentary primarily consisting of interview subjects, the film chronicles a week for a team consigned with the task of welcoming newly departed souls into a state of purgatory and charging them with naming their most cherished memories in three days time. Once they have done so, the team will manifest these memories by committing them to celluloid. They screen the short films they create on the final day, and the souls disappear, now fully engulfed within their memories. On this particular week, one of the counselors, Takashi, meets a client who struggles so mightily to summon a happy memory that he must review his entire life through videotapes to scrounge up anything. Takashi is unhappy with him and requests a transfer, though his reasoning is revealed only gradually to be deeply personal. It's this patient narrative drive that characterizes the films of Koreeda, and the process of discovery through observation perfectly suits the thematic concerns and visual aesthetic of After Life. Several of the souls asked about their happiest moments are shot in straight-on medium close-up with the interviewees addressing the camera, and in fact many of these sequences where shot without a script. This verisimilitude lends an immediacy to the film even during the clearly structured sequences that, while not necessarily manipulating the audience into believing they're watching a documentary, convey an emotional truth. What constitutes the legacy we create for others as much as for ourselves? Is it wrong to craft one's time on this planet around a falsity for the sake of garnering absolution? After Life raises these questions, then leaves its audience to dwell upon them while reinforcing the significance of the cinematic apparatus for preservation and personal representation. It is reflexive, poignant, and ultimately inspiring.

7. In Bruges

 

Violence is so ingrained within the human psyche that the existing iconography of barbarism has become commonplace within visual representation, particularly in the Western world. What lingers longest in the mind, however, is not primarily how cruel the violent act is but what it's implications are, the consequences it bears for those it affects. Playwright and filmmaker Martin McDonagh is one of the living artists whose very best work understands this core tenet of humanity, and In Bruges is one of his finest accomplishments. A sort of cinematic elaboration of The Dumb Waiter, the film follows two hit men named Ray (the rookie) and Ken (the seasoned professional) as they hide out in the small town of Bruges ("It's in Belgium", Ray helpfully informs us) as they await instructions from their boss Harry Waters following a botched job. Ken is enamored with the rustic vista, but Ray's impertinence ends up getting them involved with a beautiful production assistant who peddles drugs in her spare time as well as a dwarf actor who harbors some seriously questionable ideas regarding race. But Ken is charged by Harry to kill Ray as punishment for the horrible mistake that exiled them to Bruges in the first place, and Ray himself is overcome with immense guilt over his unspeakable transgression. While the film bears many superficial similarities with the aforementioned Harold Pinter play, McDonagh's film reveals itself to be pulsating with sorrow and fear. In actuality, In Bruges is the comedic equivalent of Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, a resemblance that is invoked by the film-within-a-film, yet this not simply a pastiche of the horror classic. Bruges is portrayed much in the same way as Venice is as a cold, barren cityscape whose streets paved with cobblestones are more foreboding than charming. The characters are trapped both by their environment and by a portent specter of doom that  is inescapable. All of this culminates in a final bloody act that... well, to say any further would be to spoil both films. Ultimately, McDonagh's great talent lies in pinpointing the humanity within the obscene and grotesque, and In Bruges is an uncommonly intelligent thriller with fantastic performances from the three leads that just happens to feature Colin Farrell karate-chopping a stoned dwarf.

6. The Long Day Closes

The coming-of-age subgenre  is immensely tricky to pull off. The difference between nostalgia and sentimentality is a tenuous one, and when done wrong can result in insufferable indulgence. Then you have a film like Terence Davies' The Long Day Closes which can be categorized as a coming-of-age story yet is nearly indescribable in how it presents the crucial turning point from youth to adolescence. It's a movie where what happens isn't as important in the sense that it builds to a climactic moment (as in, say, Steven Soderbergh's King of the Hill) but rather that it is meant to craft an impressionistic portrait of a very specific time in the development of a young man. That young man, named Bud, is living with his mother in Liverpool circa the 1950s. Bud's father is absent, and it is never clearly established what has happened to him, though any explanation would be perfunctory. Bud fosters his love of the cinema by constantly attending the smoke-filled movie theater, and his captive attention of moving pictures is compounded by his vivid dreams, whether they be of a grandiose mercantile ship in the middle of a class period or of an unseen man (perhaps the ghost of his father) grabbing his face in a horrid nightmare. In his waking state, Bud attends school and pals around with few friends, yet he is a quiet, introspective lad that doesn't mind having moments to himself. But as he reaches the early stages of puberty, Bud discovers his burgeoning homosexuality, which severely clashes with his catholic upbringing  and he ultimately experiences s a loneliness never felt before. What sounds like the makings of a treacly sermon on childhood and sexual discrimination within society couldn't be further from what we get here. Based loosely off of his own experiences growing up, Davies focuses on particular moments of sight and sound that not only constitute Bud's youth but signify the early indicators of his inevitable transition into manhood. Bud develops an awareness of sexual mores when his brother discreetly motions for him to leave while his girlfriend chats with the boy. A Christmas celebration is associated with not only caroling but narration from The Magnificent Ambersons. There is a famous shot of a carpet that lasts for nearly two minutes and made Gillian Anderson weep. We even open upon a rainy street while the 20th Century Fox theme and Nat King Cole's "Stardust" usher us into the world. It's nearly impossible to fully communicate what Davies achieves here through words, but if there's one demonstrative example of the poetry of The Long Day Closes, it is the montage set to the Debbie Reynolds standard "Tammy". Here, in full, Davies expresses his intent to capture a formative moment in his lifetime while expressing an innate understanding of the inexorable march of time as well as a tacit acknowledgment of the pervasive presence of social institutions within our daily routines. It is a snapshot in flux, a flash of beauty that lingers long after it has disappeared, and it's one of the most elegiac, sensitive, and unique films I have ever seen. Much like after seeing Richard Linklater's Boyhood, I felt a little older and wiser for having seen it.

5. A Woman Under the Influence

American Independent Cinema wouldn't be what it is today without John Cassavetes. In a career that spanned nearly three decades, Cassavetes was one of the most prolific filmmakers of the second half of the 20th Century while memorably appearing in front of the camera in classics like The Dirty Dozen and Rosemary's Baby. Cassavetes used his camera to focus on profoundly troubled people who, in spite of themselves as much as others, desperately sought happiness. A Woman Under the Influence may be his greatest achievement and forty years after it's release it hasn't lost one iota of its power. Mabel and Nick Longhetti are a married couple whose dynamic proves to be dysfunctional, to say the least. In the opening sequence, Nick calls home to report that he'll be late from his construction work and out of loneliness and anger Mabel ambles into the night and has a sexual encounter with a total stranger. The next morning, the man offers to make her some coffee, but Mabel is bewildered. "You're Nick, and I'm Mabel!", she exclaims, and if it wasn't clear before it becomes painfully so now that something is not quite right with Mabel. While her mental illness is relatively harmless to her children and her husband's co-workers, Mabel's ailment nevertheless creates uncomfortable situations for everyone within her periphery. After a catastrophic play date their kids have with a friend from school, Nick and his mother decide to have Mabel hospitalized for six months. During her tenure in an asylum, it is gradually revealed that not only is Nick less capable of caring for his children than his wife but that he may have a psychosis of his own. The film was originally conceived as a play for Cassavetes' wife Gena Rowlands but only turned into a movie when Rowlands felt it would have been both physically and emotionally exhausting performing the material every single night, and she's right. A Woman Under the Influence is one of the most uncomfortable films I've ever sat through, and I mean that as the highest praise. It's two and a half hours long, but Cassavetes takes advantage of the length to fully immerse you within the micro-universe of this troubled family. Mabel desperately tries to conform to what she believes is the ideal housewife, and Gena Rowlands makes her a tragic figure without sugarcoating her manic tendencies. Peter Falk has perhaps an even trickier role as Nick, for his madness is far less noticeable than Mabel's yet it becomes so clear by the end that it's baffling how we could have missed it in the first place. Both of these characters love each other, but they cannot sustain a calm equilibrium before another eruption occurs. We don't condone all of what they do, but we do empathize with and grieve for them. As a portrait of a family in crisis, A Woman Under the Influence is of the highest caliber. As a critique of gender relations and the treatment of mental illness within American society, it remains more relevant and troubling than ever.

4. Macbeth

The greatest film adaptations of William Shakespeare have all accomplished the feat of creating a singularly cinematic experience while maintaining fidelity towards the original words of the Bard. But for every Laurence Olivier or  Kenneth Branagh, auteurs who speak Shakespeare like a second language, there's a filmmaker like Roman Polanski who, while not a connoisseur of the material, offers a distinct reinvention of a once thought unassailable text. Case in point: his 1971 film of Macbeth, co-adapted with British playwright Kenneth Tynan. Along with Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood, it is the supreme retelling of the rise and fall of the mad Thane of Cawdor crowned King of Scotland. What differentiates Polanski's version from what came before? For starters, the leads are played by young people rather than a traditionally older couple. While a controversial creative decision, I think it's a bold and rather ingenious gamble that pays off in dividends. By beginning as enterprising, youthful schemers, the story charts the moral disintegration of both Macbeth and Lady Macbeth (played brilliantly by Jon Finch and Francesca Annis, respectively) into weary, paranoid, and morose monarchs more effectively than ever before that they seem to waste away before our very eyes. The second noticeable difference is the depiction of graphic violence. While not necessarily more gruesome than anything seen on a typical episode of Game of Thrones, this is easily the most bloody version of Macbeth that's ever been presented. The murder of King Duncan and, particularly, the massacre of the Macduff family are appropriately clumsy and blunt, contrasting powerfully with the poetry of the written word. Speaking of which, most of the revered soliloquies from the play are spoken in voice-over. The resultant effect is one that preserves some of the most powerful monologues Shakespeare ever wrote while never impeding upon the cinematic illusion of realism Polanski sustains, and some of the most famous sequences from the play are strengthened by the expansive advantages of film (the moving forest of Birnam Wood in particular becomes a tremendous sight of awe and fear). With these primary ingredients, Macbeth is a shocking, nightmarish and wholly unique interpretation of the classic tale of greed and ambition that posits man not as inherently evil but as always possessing the capacity for evil deeds, a trait that the slightly altered and far darker ending suggests will endure through the ages, long after the tyrannical Macbeth has been beheaded.

3. The Innocents

When we think of the modern ghost story, we have to give our dues to Henry James' 1898 novella The Turn of the Screw. As influential as it is open to scholarly interpretation, the story of a governess who tends to two very precocious children in a secluded mansion that may or may not be haunted has been adapted several times to theater, television, and film with varying degrees of success. The best, and a seminal horror work in its own right, is Jack Clayton's 1961 film The Innocents. In the opening minutes, you know you're watching a highly unusual supernatural tale, one that relies not on shocks or loud noises to frighten its audience but rather an eerie sense of dread and unease.

The governess, named Miss Giddens here and portrayed expertly by Deborah Kerr, is charged by an insouciant aristocrat to look after his niece and nephew in his country estate of Bly. Giddens takes immediately to the children, but begins to question the housekeeper Mrs. Grose about her predecessor and the mysterious and ghoulish man she sees stalking the grounds. It is here she begins to doubt the presumed purity of her charges, particularly of the young boy Miles. The genius of James' original story is the ambiguity of whether there really are ghosts terrorizing the governess or if they are an extension of her own psychosis, and it's a testament to the direction and script (adapted primarily by none other than Truman Capote) that this uncertainty is preserved. What Clayton and especially Capote elaborate upon is the sexual subtext of the novella. There's a distinct possibility that the children were exposed to the sexual escapades of Giddens' predecessor, Miss Jessel, and of the sinister man Quint while they were still alive, if not worse. In a particularly famous and still unnerving scene, Miss Giddens is kissed on the lips by Miles, and she recoils... but with the faintest expression of pleasure in her eyes. Later, as Miss Giddens walks the halls in the night, the sound of laughter and intercourse pound in her ears. Have the ghosts soiled the innocence of these children, or are they an extension of Miss Giddens' own repressed sexuality? We never fully know, but what we are given is a riveting work that is as beautiful as it is disturbing, thanks in large part to the deep focus cinematography by Freddie Francis, and the remarkably modern score by Georges Auric that opts for quiet terror where a lesser score would succumb to bombast. What makes The Innocents so powerful and lasting is not solely the imagery of gothic decay that adumbrated the cliches of ghost movies, but the very palpable ideas involving human frailty and evil. Think upon the final shot of the film and ponder if, perhaps, whether in her head or real, Miss Giddens ultimately becomes the thing she fears most?

2. A Hard Day's Night

Fifty years have passed since they landed on North American shores and we still talk about The Beatles in the present tense. Their music is eternal, their place within the cultural lexicon assured. But does the same apply to their films? When you talk about A Hard Day's Night, the answer is "absolutely". One of the most inventive and liberating movie musicals ever made, Richard Lester's chronicle of a day in the life of the Fab Four disposes of the rules for what a musical should look and sound like, and seen half a century after its release seems surprisingly fresher and more anarchic than ever. Yes, the lads sing songs from the album of the same name, but they're not shoehorned in like the songs in an Elvis picture. There's a visual dynamism that accompanies songs like "I Should Have Known Better" or "And I Love Her". While consistently blithe and boisterous, A Hard Day's Night has something substantial to say about entrapment and repression. John, Paul, George, and Ringo are constantly hounded by fans kept at bay by only a train or the limo that drives the band around. They have to show up for rehearsal for a show, do their homework, and follow a barrage of orders from their flustered manager. When they sneak off from the studio into the fresh air, Ringo cries, "We're free!", and the lads barrel into "Can't Buy Me Love", speeding across a field and bouncing over each other like gravity itself can't hold them down. If there's an antagonist, it would be Paul's grandfather who instigates trouble through manipulation and mischief. But even that "little old man" feels cooped up, and his desires aren't that dissimilar from our four heroes. He's a very clean man, he and others reinforce throughout the film. "Well, are ya?", John pointedly asks near the end, and the generational gap between the Baby Boomers and the forebears seems less pronounced than previously thought. Fundamentally, it isn't the music that makes a Hard Day's Night a terrific film, though it certainly helps, and it isn't because the film is giddily hilarious, though it certainly is that. What cements A Hard Day's Night as a canonical work is the way it inadvertently captured the moment before the counterculture took off in the second half of the decade. When the group sings "She Loves You" at the end, the audience is shrieking, ready to break the roofs off the stadium, and with it societal constraints. Those taboos would collapse within a scant few years, and there were The Beatles to embody the hopes and dreams of a generation. That we still can find something to relate to in a film from a bygone era is a testament to their greatness as artists. Their music belongs to all of us, young and old, generation to generation. So does this film.

1. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg

 

Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is one of the most brilliant tricks in cinematic history. It's a brightly hued technicolor French romance that features every line of dialogue sung and whose most famous song was featured in an episode of Futurama. It's also one of the most devastating tragedies ever put to the screen with an uncommonly wise awareness of human fallibility. It sets the stage for an overblown tearjerker and closes the curtain on a brief yet earned moment of melancholy acknowledgment. Allow me to explain; Geneviève and Guy are a young couple passionately in love. Guy works as a mechanic, but he intends to marry Geneviève and provide a stable household for their future family. Her mother is doubtful of the young man's ability to act as breadwinner, but their idyll is shattered when Guy is conscripted into the military to fight in the Algerian War. The two promise to stay true to one another, but matters only become more dire when Geneviève realizes that she's pregnant with Guy's child and despairs of Guy returning to her when his correspondence becomes more infrequent. With her mother's help, the young woman marries a kind and wealthy jeweler. But Guy does indeed return, and... you're doubtless expecting this to turn into an operatic version of The Notebook, which sounds absolutely dreadful. But a keen understanding of human nature belies the artifice and grandiose expressions of emotion, and that makes all the difference. Demy doesn't portray any of his characters as ones we should be clearly rooting for or against, but rather as people we empathize with in spite of their shortcomings. Geneviève's mother is not supportive of the relationship her daughter has with Guy, but because she doesn't believe he'd be stable enough as a patriarch if he ever comes back and not because the script demands her to be antagonistic. When Guy does saunter back into the town of Cherbourg, he's clearly been shaken by his experience and his emotional stability is shrouded in uncertainty. Would he be a good spouse to Geneviève? I doubt it since he needs someone to help care for him and seems rendered incapable, at the moment, to provide for others. And what of the sweet girl Madeleine who cares for Guy's aunt but harbors feelings for Guy himself? When he proposes to her, the woman has the wherewithal to question whether he's using her as a rebound from his last love. Each of these characters have an agenda, something at stake, and all of them yearn for their own happiness. Do they achieve that by the end? The answer is complicated, far more open-ended than one is accustomed to in a cinematic fantasia, and that's what makes The Umbrellas of Cherbourg a singular triumph. It is a torrent of pure feeling that earns every single one of its emotional beats, a kaleidoscopic burst of sound and color that somehow remains strikingly intimate, and an epic that never once loses sight of its achingly human core. All of this culminates in a wise and heartbreaking denouement that recognizes how ephemeral the encounters in our lives are without passing judgment on anyone. The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is unlike any other film ever made, and it's stylistic flourishes and pathos expand the parameters that constitute a motion picture. For that, among other reasons, it is my favorite film I saw in 2014.

Be sure to check out the honorable mentions as well as what made my pick as the worst film I saw in 2014.