Films of the Decade - Part II

In the first installment in our quest for the best films of the decade (click here for Part I), we spanned the globe from New York City to the Middle East, to pre-World War I English countryside, to present-day Paris, with Clive Owen and Julia Roberts globetrotting to most points between…including Cleveland.

This week, our attentions shift mostly away from the English language to a range of films exploring many of the more common themes found throughout the history of cinema, yet abrasively defying conventional cinematic narrative structure.

As always, comments are encouraged and will be taken into consideration upon tallying the results.

Tropical Malady - Apichatpong Weerasethakul
2004, Thailand, France, Germany, Italy

For those of us who have braved the humbling waters standing behind a movie camera know the feeling all too well when faced with a viewing experience such as that of Tropical Malady. I imagine it must be what countless opponents have felt staring across the net at Roger Federer the last several tennis seasons: Dude’s just got too much game.

Watching Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s soulful fourth feature left me with the feeling of having witnessed something special – in cinematic terms. The film revolves around the attraction and gentle courtship between a soldier and a farm boy as they while away their time together before we are suddenly, and abruptly, transported to the second part of the film where the soldier now stalks an elusive and dangerous tiger through the dense forest.

Like the best cinema, Tropical Malady can be viewed many different ways with many different contexts. I witnessed the same tale retold twice, once in the first part, and again in the second. The best film about desire, human desire, this decade.

An Amazing Couple – Lucas Belvaux
2002, France, Belgium

When trilogies are made, or attempted may be a better word, the middle, funny one is normally seen as filler, by viewers and critics alike (although oddly, it is usually the most enjoyable). Think Three Colors for a fairly recent example. When Lucas Belvaux released his trilogy in the early aughts, something happened…while all three films are exactingly made to suit their respective genre, it was the funny one, An Amazing Couple, that stood out to most upon initial release.

Middle-aged Alain (played to neurotic perfection by François Morel), has to go in for a routine operation. Convinced this will mark the end of his life, he slowly begins to crack, allowing psychosomatic symptoms to overtake his daily life. Confused by his erratic behavior, his wife begins to suspect he is having an affair, and seeks the help of a friend’s cop-hubby to trail him. Simple enough, only Alain, discovering the police officer lurking around, begins to suspect his wife of the same infidelity.

A comedy of errors is a hard trick to pull off, particularly when it is sandwiched between two heavier films that exchange characters and scenes (the supporting players in one of the trilogy become the leads in the next, and vice versa). An Amazing Couple feels like a Germi film from the 60s, and like those films it holds its absurdities to the same high cinematic standard we have come to expect from our dramas. Complete commitment becomes the order of the day.

Gomorrah - Matteo Garrone
2008, Italy

Italy has a long tradition with gritty realism. In that vein comes last year’s 2nd place finisher at Cannes: Gomorrah, an in-depth look at the crime families of Naples and the surrounding region.

Told through interwoven stories, Gomarrah’s appeal is its authenticity (Director Matteo Garrone apparently spent time with real mob families in preparation). Like Rome: Open City, and Umberto D before it, Gomorrah finds its subject matter in the streets rather than the studio back lot; this time, with the horrifying conclusion of how intertwined the mafia is in every aspect of southern Italian life.

Kings & Queen – Arnaud Desplechin
2004, France

Two of France’s best actors, Emmanuelle Devos and Mathieu Amalric, take Arnaud Desplechin’s awkward, and very long, film from the deluge of countless 21st Century cinema psycho-babbles’ to the edges of endearing and hopeful.

The sometimes intertwining, but separate stories of Nora and Ismaël, former lovers who face very different life altering events that lead them back to one another after years apart, do something most avoid: face emotion head-on. I can’t recall a film that used jump cuts despite its actors onscreen suffering (most films use jump cuts due to the under-performance of its talent).

Worth a look for nothing else if only the advise Ismaël imparts to Nora’s young son Elias in the last scene, which contains truths most of us won’t face up to our entire lives.

Synecdoche, New York – Charlie Kaufman
2008, USA

I began this week’s entry by stating that most of films listed would be foreign (i.e. not of the English language), and though Synecdoche, New York is entirely American in production, to many it felt as though subtitles were needed to understand what was going on.

In truth, I would have found them useful as well, however, I am a sucker for the audacious (the reason I like von Trier as well), and they don’t get more audacious than a defeated theatre director using grant money to recreate his entire New York-centric universe in a never-ending cavernous warehouse, involving hundreds of cast and crew, in the selfish and often pretentious attempt to understand life, love and existence.

Kaufman’s debut has all the elements his earlier films had, minus the direction from an outside source to veer, or channel, his philosophy into cinematic vision. Normally a detriment, however in this instance, I feel this film is better off for it. A film with this premise requires Kaufman unedited as we observe Philip Seymour Hoffman’s painstaking evolution from A to Z with stops at all the numbers somehow stuck randomly in between the letters.