Of all the things I look for when compiling a top ten list of my favorite films in a given year, a specific unifying theme is not always one of them. I never took notice of one in the three years I have been publishing these lists, yet as I reviewed what I saw in 2013 and what I gravitated the most towards, I began to realize there was a correlation between each of my favorite films. That correlation, that odd similarity, was anxiety. The films on this list belong to a wide range of genres: wacky comedy, tragic romance, classic western, contemporary satire. Yet, to one degree or another, they all featured an impending sense of dread, some tension that either trapped their characters or drove them into seemingly insurmountable circumstances. There are of course a bevy of other reasons why I loved each of these films, yet I found it a curious, if slightly amusing, commonality that may say just as much about my taste in film as it does about the films themselves. Yet I'm here to analyze movies, not myself, so without further ado here are my ten favorite films I saw in the past year:
10. The Age of Innocence
There's something to be said about the power of language. Besides some of the obvious advantages, like communicating our thoughts in a clearer fashion than if we were mere animals grunting our assent or disapproval, it also has the potential for great harm or self-preservation. The careful selection of a specific set of words can both convey what our intentions are while simultaneously masking any of our ulterior motives. To be precise, what is left unsaid can leave as much of an impact as what
is said. This may seem blatantly obvious when stated in such direct terms, yet few films have portrayed this distinct trait of human nature as effectively and as purely in terms of visual expression as Martin Scorsese's
The Age of Innocence. Based upon the 1920 novel of the same name by Edith Wharton, the film concerns itself with the upper echelons of 19th Century New York society. Our protagonist, Newland Archer, is a successful lawyer who is engaged to the lovely May Welland. Their relationship is amiable, if ultimately insubstantial, and both are perfectly comfortable with the notion of marriage. Yet May's cousin, Ellen Olenska, returns to New York after a tenure in Europe. Her marriage to Count Olenski, who never appears in either novel or film, is recounted as a cruel and unhappy one, yet her family fears of the scandal and disgrace that would result from a divorce, so Archer's services as an attorney are called upon in an effort to persuade Ellen to remain legally married to her husband. Yet of course, Archer and Olenska find themselves being drawn to each other, and needless to say complications arise. This plot had the potential for pure melodrama, and there are melodramatic elements present here, yet what surprised me the most about Scorsese's film, besides his immaculate attention to period detail and lush visual eloquence (he's clearly channeling Luchino Visconti's films like
Senso or
Il Gattopardo), is how tempered the emotions at the core of this story really are. There is a great yearning shared amongst some characters, and there is great cruelty enacted upon others, yet these are all carefully guarded by the strict adherence towards the unspoken codes of conduct of the society these people inhabit. Daniel Day-Lewis plays Archer, and it's intriguing to see an actor so accustomed to playing characters who bring their emotions to the surface play a man who represses his feelings with a sort of refined desperation. Michelle Pfeiffer also brings a temerity and natural sensuality to the role of Ellen, yet it's Winona Ryder as May who might have the most difficult performance in the film. She is required to be a seemingly naive waif who only gradually reveals herself to be capable of both great care for her betrothed and a quietly unsettling capacity for subtle manipulation. She is never painted as a villain, however, and that's what makes
The Age of Innocence a truly remarkable film. It's a portrait of human beings that maintain certain niceties because it is what's expected of them and because they convince themselves that these rules are more impermeable and more worthwhile than trivialities such as human desires. Their great folly and the film's tragedy is how wrong they are.
9. Synecdoche, New York
Human ambition is... wait, let me start over. Ambition itself, that persistent quality indigenous to humans, drives us to do the impossible. Yet it must be more than ambition for ambition's sake, musn't it? Why is it that so many feel the need to attain the unattainable? Is it for ego? A testament of our existence for future generations to reference? Or perhaps a desire for connecting with our fellow human beings on a level that transcends the ordinary to encompass the universal? These are a few of the questions Charlie Kaufman's mulled over in his labyrinthine brain for his entire career, and they all coalesce into his divisive directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York. Caden Cotard (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is a theatre director whose intense neurosis make him emotionally difficult to engage in as well as prone to physical maladies. His only notable contribution to the theater is directing a revival of Death of a Salesman, and feels both inadequacy when compared to his artist wife Adele Lack (Catherine Keener) as well as resentment towards her. She acknowledges the emotional gap between them and promises reconciliation once she and their daughter return from a vacation to Germany. They never come back, but Caden's chance to make the impact he's always striven for finally arrives when he inadvertently receives a MacArthur Fellowship. He commits himself to creating a truly great play, something that will capture the Human Condition... though that seems like a glib description. Caden's obsession with death will also be the play. Yet he'll focus on the paradox of how universal yet precisely distinct each human life truly is. Yet he'll also focus on the notion of how our lives are like roles in some cosmic play that.... well, whatever his focus may be, it constantly expands and morphs, and all the while he lives what could barely be called a life with empty relationships with one of his actresses (Michelle Williams) and his secretary (Samantha Morton), while simultaneously making futile attempts to re-connect with his estranged daughter (several scenes in this latter story arc are either painfully sad, horrific, or permeated with bizarre dark humor, sometimes all at once). As noted earlier, Synecdoche, New York polarized both critics and audiences who argued that it was either a brilliant masterpiece or an indulgent folly. Personally, I think the film is a little of both. It's not my favorite piece from Kaufman, and it's whimsical flourishes sport some spotty metaphors (the eternally flammable house the secretary lives in is a little forced), yet I feel, through all of the Fellini-esque set pieces and Freudian layers of psychoanalytical jargon, that Kaufman does touch upon some very painful truths about being human. In Caden's quest to conquer life (re: death), he learns too late that there is no way to fully grasp the absolute enormity of life. As homo sapiens, we condense our experiences, categorize the important events in our lives, assign transparent roles to the multitude of people we know. Our lives are messy, unsatisfying, and confusing. And in the end, it's often quite disappointing how tiny they really are, how our grand stories barely account for a paragraph of a page in a chapter of the epic story of Everything. Yet here we are, and our stories unfold all the same.
8. To Be or Not to Be (1942)
Comedy and suspense have one very crucial commonality, and that is timing. Both require consummate attention to detail and precise pacing, yet even with the abundance of great comedic thrillers that exist out there, I feel as if these two styles haven't been combined as much as they could be. Certainly they've been rarely utilized to as great effect as in Ernst Lubitsch's
To Be or Not to Be, a sharp and buoyant classic that manages to retain some of it's razor-sharp wit seventy years after it's release in the midst of World War II. The film focuses on a troupe of actors in Poland, led by Prima Donna leading man Joseph Tura (Jack Benny) and his co-star/wife Maria (Carole Lombard, who infamously died in a plane crash before the film's premiere). Their lives are very quickly impacted by Hitler's conquest of the continent, and soon they're embroiled in a plot that involves the very stature of a Freedom Fighter group being compromised by a duplicitous professor, as well as a romantic triangle between the Turas and a dashing officer in the rebel group. This sounds like the basis for a potentially insensitive, exploitative movie, and indeed Lubisch's film did offend several critics upon initial release. However, the movie does work because of the brilliant balancing act Lubitsch and his talented cast and crew perform by juggling laughs and tension. Early in the film we see the devastation of Warsaw and the despair that encapsulates the people of Poland, and while the film unloads it's joke at a rapid pace, they're underscored by the very real danger of Nazism. What most critics misunderstood when they first saw
To Be or Not to Be is that while it was meant to mock the Nazis, it certainly wasn't meant to belittle the threat they imposed upon the Free World. Yet, as is often the case, the most efficient way of confronting evil is to diminish it's power with laughter. That, above all, is what makes
To Be or Not to Be not only a great film but one of those rarities: a dark comedy with a passionate humanity.
7. Seconds
As the counterculture of the 1960s coursed into the mainstream, Hollywood struggled to connect with an alienated American audience with enormous flops that catered to a generation on it's way out the door. By 1967, they had finally struck a nerve by capturing some of the national attitude with such classics as
Bonnie and Clyde and
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Yet
Seconds, the eerie thriller by John Frankenheimer, not only accomplished this feat but also seemed to anticipate the feeling of bitter resignation and ultimate distrust that took hold of the American people in the 1970s. The film tells a cautionary tale of Arthur Hamilton, a successful if unsatisfied upper-class family man who yearns for a fresh beginning, and indeed finds one in the form of a mysterious Company that forces him into signing a contract with them as much as it persuades him on his own terms. With a little plastic surgery here, and some forged documents there, Arthur Hamilton is no more and Antiochus "Tony" Wilson is borne into the world, a handsome and successful painter who will live in a luxurious house by the ocean. Wilson is initially thrilled with his new life, and indeed finds romance with an exotic blonde by the name of Nora. Yet there is still something insidious about this new life, and Wilson begins to suspect that he may not be as free as he think he'd be or to do as he'd please.
Seconds is the sort of film that plays best as a midnight movie you might find switching through the channels in the darkest recesses of a late night. It's use of fish-eye lens, wide-angle closeups, and accentuated production design give certain sequences a fever-dream quality that easily morphs into a hazy nightmare. The performances are uniformly excellent, with super-stud Rock Hudson showing surprising depth and range as Wilson, and barring one party sequence that may run just a tad long the storytelling remains concise and effective. This all culminates in an unforgettable punchline of an ending that is on par with some of the bleakest endings of any
Twilight Zone episode, a darkly dire denouement that's equally devastating. Despite it's 60s trappings,
Seconds is a prescient critique of the notion that you truly can start over in America regardless of your origins. What the film suggests is that, in America, individuality can be retained so long as you conform to certain expectations of society, and any deviation is inevitably corrected. That doesn't seem too far from reality, and that's what makes
Seconds a truly disturbing film.
6. Dog Day Afternoon
What can you learn in a day about a person? About a group of people? About how they view each other? These are the underlying questions of Sidney Lumet's classic heist film
Dog Day Afternoon, except to label it as a crime movie would be a disservice to what Lumet is really trying to get at. The film, based loosely on true events, recounts the robbery of a bank in Brooklyn by three small-time crooks on one hot summer day in 1972. Sonny (Al Pacino, in a truly stupendous performance), the ringleader, assures his partner Sal (the great John Cazale) that they will be in and out of the bank within a matter of minutes, but things gradually start going wrong. The third man, Stevie, immediately loses his nerve and flees the scene. The amount of money remaining in the bank is far smaller than either of the other two anticipated. Then one of the bank tellers needs to use the restroom. One thing leads to another before Sonny receives a phone call from the business across the street, and he turns to see a horde of cops staring right back at him. The bank is held by the two men for several hours, all while demands are made by the robbers and a crowd of curious onlookers congregate to bear witness to the unfolding spectacle.
Dog Day Afternoon was a huge hit on release, and it's endured as a staple of 1970s American Cinema. Even if you've never seen it, you've probably seen Pacino's screaming chants of "Attica! Attica!" to the roaring approval of the crowd outside of the bank. Yet why Sonny robs the bank in the first place I will leave for you to discover yourself. The film has made an unmistakable impact on modern heist films, most notably Spike Lee's
Inside Man. Yet where that film stumbled in attempting to preach awkwardly on social issues in a post-9/11 America,
Dog Day Afternoon retains it's potency and power by simply incorporating truths of American society in the time it was made. Is there a point to be made once all is said and done in this film about the establishment in America, or the power of the media, or how the injustice of many is a constant undercurrent in our country, regardless of era? Perhaps, and perhaps not. Lumet doesn't try to give an easy answer or attempt to proselytize. He wants to capture a snapshot of how the world was then, and by doing so he illuminates why this botched robbery still matters now.
5. Yoyo
Every once in a while, a film that hasn't seen the light of day for years, often decades, is unearthed to great acclaim by the viewing public. One of the most recent examples in North America would be the brief yet brilliant filmography of Pierre Étaix, a heretofore unseen talent in French Cinema whose gift for comedy rivals Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and his fellow Frenchman Jacques Tati. Of his films, my favorite so far is his 1965 masterpiece
Yoyo, and it truly is a remarkable re-discovery. Yoyo, a bored and doleful billionaire (played by Étaix), goes about his day with a strict regiment. He has servants all over his magnificent mansion open each and every door for him with a tinny squeak that reminded me a little of the sighing doors in
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. He walks his dog by driving his car in the grand circle that is his front lawn. He also has the occasional seductive entertainment stay over (there is a shot of a woman slowly unzipping her leather boot that would make Tarantino blush). Yet above all, he yearns for a woman whose picture he keeps in his frame, a picture which he makes certain he has enough time in the day to cast a baleful glance towards. One day, the circus arrives, and indeed the woman of his dreams is a part of the troupe, only she is accompanied by the son he never knew he had, also named Yoyo. They reunite, and after the economic crash of the end of the decade they travel the country in a makeshift wagon. It is important to note that, save for certain sound effects, dialogue is almost completely absent in the first part of this film, which in turn replicates the effect of a silent film. Yet as time goes on, dialogue plays a more important role in the plot, and we focus on the adult Yoyo jr. (Étaix, again) attempt to regain his family's fortune. I can't even begin to describe the number of jokes in this film, nor exactly how Étaix pulls them off. He often utilizes optical illusions to build up the jokes, and they work consistently to uproarious effect in the silent portion of the film. Even with dialogue in the latter portions the film's jokes don't let up, and Étaix shows his skill for comic timing in one sequence after another. Yet what makes
Yoyo a great film is it's gentle yet surprisingly affecting tale of redemption and loss. It rarely stoops to sentimentality, yet I was taken aback at how much of an impact the climax of the film had on me. It's a comic farce about the fleeting nature of human lives and relationships in the face of time, and it's this effortless combination that makes
Yoyo a masterpiece. I can't recommend this film enough, and now that it's been given a new lease on life I implore you to seek it out and watch it. You'll thank me when you do.
4. The Conversation
How does a voyeur feel about eternal observation? To put it more precisely, how does somebody who conducts the surveillance of anybody keep any semblance of professionalism? I suppose it would have to be the self-imposed severance of one's personal feelings when it came to their work, and I have equal measures of admiration and unease about the efficiency of these people. Perhaps that's why I felt such a pity for Harry Caul (Gene Hackman), the protagonist of Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation. He's smart enough to craft such high-tech yet discrete equipment to spy on people, yet he's not smart enough to know that he hasn't the stomach for this job. What drew him to this line of work? Coppola never gives an explanation, but Caul doesn't strike me as someone who's proud of their work. Perhaps he was at one point, but he's certainly not anymore, not since a couple he was assigned to put under surveillance ended up dead. His Catholic guilt weighs heavily on him, and it fills him with unease now that he's been monitoring another couple for a shady company. Why do they need to be spied on? That's not his business to know. In fact, the less he knows, the better. Yet he feels compelled to uncover the truth, not for the sake of some moral crusade but to assuage his fears. "I'm not afraid of death!", he tells the woman he's been watching in a dream sequence. "But I am afraid of murder." This preceding description certainly doesn't sound like your typical thriller, and The Conversation isn't a thriller in the way something like Enemy of the State was (perhaps Hackman's character in that film is Caul in another life, angrier and more bent on vengeance than personal salvation). That isn't to say the film doesn't have it's share of unbearable tension, including one of the finest jump scares I've ever seen in a film (you won't see it coming). What makes The Conversation a unique film is it's sparse portrait of a man haunted by people and events far out of his control. Maybe that desire for control, that sense of order of events that can be replayed, pored over, and obsessed upon, is what drew Harry Caul to spy on people. Despite his prowess, he's still not cut out for this type of expertise. What a shame he doesn't realize this until it's far too late for him and his immortal soul.
3. Once Upon a Time in the West
"Even the hero gets a bullet in the chest..."
-Dire Straits, "Once Upon a Time in the West"
The West is so ingrained in our cultural id that it's very history been
mythologized, deconstructed, revised, and mythologized once more out of that
new revision. Perhaps that's why Westerns, regardless of what decade they are
released, remain popular. They say so much about our views on masculinity, our fragility
in the unforgiving natural world, our proclivity towards brutal violence, and
the secretly sought promise of a new beginning in an uncultivated land. Of the
many Western films made over the last century, very few have captured the grand
majesty, the otherworldly fabric, of the West than Sergio Leone's
Once
Upon a Time in the West. The plot must be told in who it contends with.
A man who plays the harmonica is seeking revenge. A woman is looking for
restitution after her family is slaughtered by a hired goon. That hired goon is
looking for a way to impose his dominance over all things, not just people. And
a drunken outlaw merely looks for a place to rest before going on the move once
more. These characters are both distinctly human yet archetypal of the mythology of the West, and they are all entwined in a plot concerning the railroad and a small town,
and their lives are defined by violent confrontations, often with each other, against the backdrop of the vast and developing land that became America.
If I were to describe the story of Leone's masterpiece in more detail,
I'd be failing to convey some of what makes his film so remarkable. It's not that the story he
tells isn't a good one. On the contrary, it's because of his command of
atmosphere that lends the story more pathos, more mystery, and more grandiosity
than the material might have warranted in the hands of a lesser filmmaker. Leone
crafts, with a deliberate pacing that allows you to take in every living,
breathing detail, a vision of the West that both once was and has never
existed, familiar and completely unrecognizable. By
the time he made this film, Leone was finished making Westerns, and in many
respects
Once Upon a Time in the West is a farewell to the genre that
brought him international attention. Yet it is not nostalgic of a bygone era,
but rather embracing the fortunes progress brings, or rather the potential it
has for the persecuted and the mistreated. He mourns for those who must
disappear along with our constantly changing ways of life (save for the cruel
who exploit others and hinder progress). The wicked will perish, the virtuous
will endure, and all things must pass, either in a violent burst or a gradual
fade into obsolescence. Yet some semblance of these qualities, good and bad, persist in our
world, and they will remain immortal. So shall this film.
2. Barton Fink
There's no adequate way of beginning to describe
Barton Fink, one of the most bizarre films by the Coen Brothers in a filmography consisting of bizarre entries. What is the film really about? I could tell you a summary of the story: in the midst of the Great Depression, successful New York playwright Barton Fink (John Tuturro) secures a job as screenwriter for a major Hollywood studio. He lives in a hotel for the duration of his stay in Tinseltown, and he meets a slew of interesting characters, including a washed-up drunkard writer (John Mahoney), his eternally patient secretary (Judy Davis) who may be the true author of his works, the ebullient yet dangerous studio executive (Michael Lerner, in an Oscar-nominated role) who's hired him, and his next door neighbor Charlie (John Goodman), a salesman who wants to give Barton as much help as possible. Yet it is still difficult to pinpoint exactly what
Barton Fink is about, though there is far more that happens in the film that I would not dare to divulge in here. Is it a satire of America as seen through the film industry? A comedic horror film about the writing process gone horribly awry? A Bildungsroman where the protagonist's change becomes irrelevant, even discouraged, in the face of a changing world? Critics have pored over exactly what the Coens were attempting to get at since the film swept the Cannes Film Festival in 1991, just six months before I was born. The Coens themselves, while claiming that there is some significance to certain motifs, do not wish to prescribe any singular reading to the film. As for myself, what do I think it's about? Maybe what I think isn't really the point. Perhaps the point isn't to ask these questions but to soak in the palpable dread the Coens craft with the darkest of comic gestures. I responded to the surprises the film had in store for me and reveled in the way the Coens shifted tones with ease and confidence, as if their unpredictable fable had it's conclusion predetermined from the first frame. Whatever the case may be,
Barton Fink is the kind of film that will be argued over for years, and I'm certainly not the one to give a definitive answer that solves the puzzle. But I will savor the genius of the storytelling, the electrifying performances, and the haunting humor that pervades this enigmatic movie for repeat viewings to come.
1. After Hours
By it's first half-hour, I knew After Hours was going to be my cup of tea. By it's first hour, I knew it was one of the funniest films I had ever seen. And by the end, I knew I had seen one of the best films by it's director, Martin Scorsese. Yet the moment where I knew this film would become one of my favorite films of all time came near the end, after all of the comic mayhem and mishaps that were visited upon Paul, the unfortunate word processor who made the mistake of going on a date with a girl he'd just met earlier that night, came to an abrupt halt. Paul isn't a saint by any means: he's a bit crabby, a little impatient, and not always graceful when attempting to gain sympathy from strangers. But at the end of the day, or night in this case, he's just some poor schmuck who's had a run of absolutely terrible luck. And near the end of this darkly comic parable, he finds refuge in an isolated bar, puts Peggy Lee on the jukebox, and lets her rendition of "Is That All There Is?" help him find the words to explain just what the fuck has happened to him to a lovely woman he sees sitting alone. As they dance, and as he murmurs with a hoarse voice to this doubtlessly befuddled woman, he quietly, almost pleadingly, ends his monologue with five simple words; "I just want to live." This is the emotional coup de grace of Scorsese's tale, the moment the film had been building up to for almost ninety minutes. That simple respite from the chaotic forces outside, that simple gesture of the necessity to have a positive connection with another human being when it seems as if everyone else is out to do you in, not only perfectly works with Scorsese's film. It moved me in a way I'm not certain that I'm either willing or able to articulate. This comedy, made by a man as a sort of diversion between projects, ended up enthralling me from start to finish in it's comic invention and hyper-kinetic filmmaking. But it's this scene that convinced me I had watched something truly special, something that I would value for as long as I valued watching movies. Perhaps it's because I saw it at the right time in my life, or even the right time of day. Perhaps I will see it again years from now and softly smile at that part, remembering how much it unexpectedly moved me that hot Summer day when I watched it with my brother, knowing that it just won't have the same impact it had on me the first time I laid eyes on it. But I doubt that very much. Not when the rest of the film is still After Hours, my favorite film I saw in 2013.
