When the decade went to the Movies

Instead of tackling the best-of 2009 list, I thought about a few good movies that will probably mark this decade more than others. A best-of 2009 list is easier to defend because there aren't too many to choose from, but I still haven't seen a few I'd like to before I do this. So, the best movies of the decade list is cursory, thinly defended and mostly off-the-top-of-the-head. One important factor, perhaps, is that the list is somewhat auteur-heavy. If filmmaker X has done 5 absolutely brilliant movies this decade, I will try to find a 'most representative work' and just put that on the list. It is quite possible that another film by the same person deserves to be on the list, over some other movies on the list. It is also, I understand, hardly to my credit that even after watching sundry obscure or underground sub-cultural and other reactionary movies I can only name movies that most have seen and definitely heard of. The order is arbitrary, they're all 'like, the best movie ever!duh'.. Reactions to this list will inevitably tell you more about yourself than your shoelaces can.

1) Fa yeung nin wa (In the Mood for Love, 2000)
dir. Wong Kar-wai

I doubt if Wong Kar Wai was 'discovered' after this movie. 'Happy Together' had already won the Best Director Prize at Cannes (in '97) and he was picked up by Asian slick-flick-freak Q. Tarantino the year before for the distribution of 'Chungking Express' in North America. All of this gives you a certain idea of how Wong Kar Wai made his early movies (except for 'Days of Being Wild'). Fast cameras chasing suspicious women wearing new-wave wigs and sunglasses, mildly violent, quirky love stories and lush images soaked in neon lights. 'In the Mood for Love' was a more meditative movie. It stopped to listen and peek at windows, crept up slowly in smoky diners, and hung around like a lurid rumour about adultery. The frames were not merely lit but set ablaze by Christopher Doyle. The stuffy sets, lingering slo-mo, the Nat King Cole interludes went on to create in most of us a nostalgia for things we never knew about.

2) Le fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain (2001)
dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet

How can one forget the greatest source of the flashy French New-Wave dramas? Hollywood melodrama, of course! In some ways, Amelie is not unlike 'In the Mood for Love' in terms of the way they are mounted and cross-referenced. Douglas Sirk's melodramas loom large over both of them, including Sirk's fantastically painted frames. Amelie resurrects the deadpan narrator from the early Godard (a great admirer of Sirk) movies and convinces us that he's still the funniest narrator in film history. The manners, the gentility of dix-huitieme Montmartrians, the discreet quirks of the bourgeoise and you will still persist in calling this a disgusting indulgence in upper-class feel-good? You must be a ninoquicampoixpoop.

3) Battle Royale (2000)
dir. Kinji Fukasaku
Surely, a separate list needs to be made that will take account of all the fantastic movies made in the far-east this decade. Although a few of them have taken a route I cannot bear to follow on account of a weak stomach (Takashi Miike), some of them have also fallen slightly below their explosive potential as displayed in the 90s, especially Takeshi Kitano. But Beat Kitano is present and kicking as the most insane bad-ass teacher with a chink of gold in his heart in Fukasaku's amazing video-game take on the Lord of the Flies experiment.

4) Oldboy (2003)
dir. Chan-wook Park

I'm giving the impression that all great movies from Korea-Japan this decade were violent blood and gore spectacles that were ripped-off or remade in various capacities by Eli Roth, Sanjay Gupta and co. It's probably true, although in my defense I can direct you to equally wonderful films like those by Kim-ki Duk. But can you really say for sure that a gem like '3-Iron' had no violence in its heart? Oldboy is not just a bloodfest but a fantastic revenge drama that borrows as much from the best Greek tragedies as Bruce Lee movies. Chan-wook Park has done some excellent movies this decade (except for 'Sympathy for Lady Vengeance') and I'd recommend all of them to anyone.

Digression: Since I've already added too many Asian movies (excluding the sub-continent, which will appear shortly) I'm in a slight quandary. There are too many good movies from Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Thailand to ignore. I will just mention a few.
Kim-ki Duk's 'Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter... and Spring'(2003).
Tsai-ming Liang's 'What Time is it There?' (2001). Wihtout doubt one of the most interesting directors in world cinema today, although he can be difficult (like A. Weerasethakul) in some of his lesser works. 'The Wayward Cloud' (2005), especially, is not a good example of his movies and I was quite violently divided when I saw it for the first time. But after picking up themes he follows from his earlier movies (with the same protagonist) I see him as a very cynical, but meaningful reader of the Antoine Doinel character in contemporary cinema.
Pen-ek Ratanaruang's 'Last Life in the Universe' (2003). A bit in the Takeshi Kitano category, but if it's well done with the sunny side down it can hardly be a drawback, can it?

5) Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others, 2006)
dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

This movie shares a premise that is frighteningly similar to Michael Haneke's 'Cache'. If the idea of surveillance is a throw-back to the repressive regimes of the past, what role does it play today in functioning democracies? German cinema has often been an antidote to the supposed fluff of the French movies. Not without some truth. This decade saw some excellent movies (does the decade have eyes?) from Germany including 'The Edukators', 'Head-On', 'Goodbye Lenin', 'Sophie Scholl: The Last Days', 'The Baader Meinhof Complex' and 'The White Ribbon'. They are all grim departures from 'Run Lola Run' and try to make sense of important issues that haunt Germany today and engage directly with questions of ideology and its distribution among the peoples of the state.

6) Gegen die Wand (Head-on, 2004)
dir. Fatih Akin

One of the major directors in the world today. It is safe to say that he hit it big with this movie (although his earlier movies are worth a dekko). An explosive, energetic look at a new generation of Turkish people struggling to establish their identities in Germany, the film manages a scarily perfect coup by extracting fantastic performances from the leads (especially Birol Unel), great music and immaculate writing and direction.
Nuri Bilge Ceylan's 'Distant' came as a slight disappointment when I watched it after this, mainly because his themes can be reduced to easy readings of morality in Dostoyevski's world, but then he grew on me and I admired his wonderfully shot 'Three Monkeys' as well. I mention Ceylan because he is a nice and quiet contrast to Fatih Akin's aggressive Turkish soul-searching in 'Head-on'. The difference, obviously, being that Akin himself was born in Germany and Ceylan is all-Turkish.

7)Hable con ella (Talk to Her, 2002)
dir. Pedro Almodovar

In conventional Almodovar fanspeak, everybody loves 'All about my Mother' and finds 'Bad Education' "quite interesting". 'Talk to Her' is either appreciated to the heavens or drilled into the ground for its horrible politics. I love how Almodovar's trajectory has shaped since his earlier fluffy Howard-Hawks-quick-exchange, bizarre comedies (until Antonio Banderas moved on to Hollywood) to a very mature exploration of the most important words in a Theorist's vocabulary: sexuality, the body, Woman, inter-textuality, identity and Buxomism in Penelope Cruz. This movie is about as politically disrespectful as 'Tie me up! Tie me Down!' was accused of being, but a steady audience of his oeuvre will discover greater things, things even Jacques Cousteau had not dreamed of hitting up against. Pedro Almodovar's films are as densely connected to other films as Tarantino's are. The difference, in my opinion, being that Almodovar uses them for greater emotional thrust and dramatic potential than Tarantino (visible again in his new movie 'Broken Embraces').

8) Das weisse Band - Eine deutsche Kindergeschichte (The White Ribbon, 2009)
dir. Michael Haneke

I find it difficult to select a representative Michael Haneke movie. His movies are quite explicitly linked in terms of themes, even 'The Piano Teacher' which may look very different from his other movies at first. I found 'Cache' and 'The Piano Teacher' to be among the best films I have ever seen but I also think that 'The White Ribbon' has managed to contain elements from both the movies above and managed also to keep a similar dramatic edge as in those movies. There is no doubt that he is, for me, among the great directors of the world today and I would've included both 'The Piano Teacher and 'Cache' in the list if I wasn't trying to restrict it to one per director.

9) Coffee and Cigarettes (2003)
dir. Jim Jarmusch

I've had a hard time defending this film. But I've never seen people saying bad things about films like 'My Dinner with Andre'. I love both the movies. Not because they are revolutionary anti-movies or somesuch. 'Coffee and Cigarettes' is my idea of a very good Sunday afternoon watch. It is intelligent, quirky, but not painfully so, does not assert or deny anything either and is pretty much contented with small sketchy je ne sais quoi half-stories that leave us wondering about the characters. It represents a different kind of nostalgia. A nostalgia for grand movies of the past with a perfectly linear, epic storyline that captures us for 3 hours and then goes with the wind. Since these stories don't happen anymore, how do we tell our small insignificant narratives at all? Short stories are temporary, but heady: like coffee and cigarettes.

10) No Country for Old Men (2007)
dir. Joel Coen and Ethan Coen

The best Coen brothers movies are still, unfortunately, in the 90s. I haven't seen 'A Serious Man' yet, but 'No Country for Old Men' was the Coens at their best and a bit more. What could otherwise have been another perfect decade was somewhat ruined by duds like 'Intolerable Cruelty' and 'The Ladykillers'. It started off well with the brilliant 'Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?' and 'The Man who wasn't there' and they made an impact with that amazing Paris Je t'aime short as well. But then, admit it, these aren't Fargos or Barton Finks.

11) Synecdoche, New York (2008)
dir. Charlie Kaufman

There should be a very good reason why I have selected this over the other Charlie Kaufman-vehicle ('Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind'). I should know that. There are brilliant movies that are made to reflect on how movies are made. Being Charlie Kaufman, however, is knowing how to take a step ahead. This movie is not just about a theatre director (Caden Cotard, played by Philip S. Hoffman) trying to make that big ambitious magnum opus, but a dreamy Kaufman take on how this magnum opus becomes his life as he grows old in surprising leaps, the sets get as big as life, his body disintegrates and the play is barely off the ground. His big sets are a stark opposition to his wife's minuscule paintings and there are visual clues all over the place. It's a movie puzzle that is, I thought, much more relevant and profound than 'Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'.

12) The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)
dir. Wes Anderson

Wes Anderson is good.

13) Memento (2000)
dir. Christopher Nolan

Nice:eciN.

14) Shortbus (2006)
dir. John Cameron Mitchell

Actually, now that I think about it, 'Hedwig and the Angry Inch' is a much better movie. But I'll keep 'Shortbus' here because it allowed me to cook-up my own art theory term: 'Splotch Expressionism'.

15) Elephant (2003)
dir. Gus Van Sant

'Paranoid Park' was somewhat similar and 'Milk' was epic. 'Gerry' was about... Anyway, since I am somewhat of a sucker for style, I loved the way Van Sant (the same weirdo who re-made a terrible 'Psycho') handled the approach to the movie.

16) El laberinto del fauno (Pan's Labyrinth, 2006)
dir. Guillermo del Toro

The fantasy genre was given a brilliant thrust by Del Toro this decade. I watched 'The Devil's Backbone' after watching Pan's Labyrinth and was glad to find similar themes beginning to appear in that movie. There is some unwritten rule that allows fantasy movies to acknowledge the dark world inside fantasyland but never give it a complete reign of bloodfest and orgy. Okay, that's not how it goes in Pan, but the violence is definitely more shocking than You-know-who's chalky face that looks like a salamander's behind.

17)Punch-Drunk Love (2002)
dir. Paul Thomas Anderson

This film is obviously no match to 'There Will be Blood' (for the decade). But it's kinda cute. And I love it when a director like PTA- after handling movies with winding, roundelay narratives- delivers such a fantastically made simple nothing-to-it story straight up.

18) Herbert (2006)
dir. Suman Mukhopadhyay

Am I basically saying that this movie deserves to be called one of the best Indian films of the last decade, even over more obvious candidates like Fool n' Final, Main Prem ki Deewani Hoon, Aamdani Atthanni, kharcha rupaiyya and Mujhse Dosti Karoge? I suppose so. I hate the fact that I haven't seen outstanding movies from other places in India. The ones I have seen aren't that good, so it's best if I accept my limitation here and go with what I know more about. Although Rituparno Ghosh would have been a good choice, with Shubho Mahurat or Dosar, I still yearn for some of the old Utsab and Unishe April moments from the 90s. It doesn't help that he is also coming up with plain bad movies now and then. Instead, Suman Mukhopadhyay's film took me by surprise and opened up awesome possibilities in Bengali movies. The wonderful use of old north Calcutta neighbourhoods, the disturbance of the late 60s and the shamanism help narrate a wonderful story with an epic imagination that is quite rare in smaller cinemas ('regional cinema'). I think this sounds quite blurb-y, in fact.


19) Cidade de Deus (City of God, 2002)
dir. Fernando Mereilles

'The Constant Gardener' was good, 'Blindness' was okay (although I didn't understand most of the harsh attacks- it seemed like a good adaptation of a difficult novel). But this movie was different.

20) Le scaphandre et le papillon (The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, 2007)
dir. Julian Schnabel

Painters taking to movie-making should always be an exciting event. Remember Kurosawa was a painter and Satyajit Ray was a great graphic-artist. But then again, M.F Husain has made movies that are very difficult to take seriously. Schnabel's movies are achievements in filmmaking. They are always pushing boundaries, but none as much as this wonderful masterpiece that, and I need to whisper this, opens up new vistas in the medium of movies. A visual delight from beginning to end, I cannot think of a lot of movies that have such emotional depth coupled with cinematic inventiveness.

21) Monsoon Wedding (2001)
dir. Mira Nair

One of the most delightfully observed films ever made, Monsoon Wedding is the great Indian film of the decade I had most fun watching. The characters were memorable and it ran across all the familiar genres that we've grown up watching- the melodrama and the musical. Yes, that's all Bollywood offered us in terms of cultural capital. If the acting was not slightly off in 'The Namesake' (apart from Irrfan Khan) I would have put that on the list and made a stand for the normally third-rate category of Indian crossover films.


22) Lost in Translation (2003)
dir. Sofia Coppola

I think we're back full circle to 'In the mood for Love'.

Other very good movies: Mulholland Drive, Du Levande, The Squid and the Whale, Les invasions barbares, Dil Chahta Hai, Le conseguenze dell'amore, The Departed, Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, Inglourious Basterds (maybe if I re-visit the list later...), A History of Violence, Dancer in the Dark, 4 Months, 3 weeks, 2 days, Lars and the Real Girl, Black Friday, Kaminey, Dosar, Three Times (Hou Hsiao-hsien), The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Kill Bill- the 2 volumes, De battre mon coeur s'est arrêté, Intimacy (dir. Patrice Chereau), The Hours.