Victória Guerra in Cosmos
Let’s start with the ten best of the year, as I submitted to RogerEbert.com. In preferential order, I will admit. The stuff I reviewed is linked to; the stuff I didn’t is commented on, mostly.
1) Cosmos (Andrzej Zulawzki)
Not reviewed by me, although I did do the booklet essay for the Kino Lorber home video release. Which I obviously recommend that you buy. But as I do not want to be withholding, here is an excerpt from my essay, which I very much thank R. Emmett Sweeney:
[W]hile [Witold] Gombrowicz [the Polish literary giant from whose novel this film was adapted] was among other things one of the great modernists of 20th century culture, his Cosmos, for all of its sardonic tone and mode of reader address, concerns itself with realism in a relatively realistic fashion. But Zulawski’s film is a mechanically constructed dream of the novel that could be taking this very passage from the novel as a provocation: “I wasn’t present. Isn’t it true (I thought), that one is almost never present, or rather never fully present, and that’s because we have only a half-hearted, chaotic and slipshod, disgraceful and vile relationship with our surroundings; and, what’s more, people who take part in social games, in an excursion for example (I figured) are not even ten percent present.” Because the dynamism of the film, the spectacularly alert quality of André Szankowski’s camera, the exhilarating forward (and occasionally backward) motion of Julia Gregory’s editing, the lush/syrupy music score by Andrzej Korzynski (which truly sounds like something you’d hear in a 1990s romantic comedy from Hong Kong) and the bravura work by the entire cast, with Sabine Azéma’s manic-to-the-point-of-paralysis Madame Woytis arguably first among equals, creates an absolutely committed relationship to the film’s surroundings, characters and to the quintessential Zulawski themes it finds embedded in Gombrowicz’s work. Although there is no sex scene in the film, and Witold’s object of desire, Lena (the exceptional Victória Guerra), is only seen nude fleetingly, through a window—neither circumstance being particularly common in Zulawski’s oeuvre—the movie is steeped in eroticism, and the mouth-obsession and particularly the lipstick play near the end hark back to past Zulawski imagery (see “The Italian” smearing lipstick on her own mother’s mouth in Szamanka). But even as he calls forth his obsessions (there is a doppelgänger for one of the characters in the last quarter of the film), evokes those of Gombrowicz, and pushes them forward with inexorable mastery, he also pokes holes in their ostensible ontology, reveling in revealing their contrivance. A creature believed dead is seen once again haunting a staircase. The movie’s happy ending plays out several times, in different ways, with Witold [the lead character, named for the author of the source material[ content to be by himself, or with Witold coming to terms with having gotten what he wanted. And so it goes, right into he movie’s dryly exuberant gag reel, playing out over the film’s final credits. […] Cosmos is finally a dream of, yes, cosmic comedy. The funniest film Zulawski ever made, and a key to the humor in his past films…
2) Silence (Martin Scorsese)
Did not review, and am kind of glad, because I’d still be working on the damn notice even now and torturing myself. Some salient points: 1) The style that Scorsese forged for this film is astonishing. There’s the self-evident affinity to Last Temptation, of course. But he also incorporates lessons learned from all three of Schrader’s transcendental style bosses, and from Tarkovsky, and Powell as well. But I say “incorporates lessons learned” rather than citing echoes of these filmmakers, because there really aren’t any as such. It doesn’t quote. It stays devotionally grounded in its story and unique mood. 2) Andrew Garfield does take a little getting used to, but once you understand that his character really is, his incredible resilience aside, also in some ways kind of callow, the performance completely comes together. 3) I wonder if they might have had an easier time getting this made had they offered the pitch “It’s Bridge on the River Kwai, only with priests.” But seriously: one of the most moving and thoughtful American pictures of the last fifty years. The only reason the Zulawski is above it is in honor of that director’s swan song and stuff.
3) Paterson (Jim Jarmusch)
4) Toni Erdmann (Maren Ade)
I found this appealing and funny and major not only for the father-daughter stuff but also for Ade’s really dead-on portrayal of gender dynamics in multi-national corporate horror settings. So. I was having lunch the other day with some old friends, one of whom mentioned he missed the blog, and observing that he enjoyed it much in the past, except when I ragged on other critics. I agreed with him and said that ragging on other critics was a sign of emotional immaturity that I was still contending with on a certain level, but was making good progress with. So I’m not going to unload here on the critic who compared this to Patch Adams, or the anti-intellectual clever-clever tendency among certain film writers to try to take down a good picture by inventing an affinity between it and a bad picture. I’m really not going to. In the meantime, see this, it’s good, and nothing like Patch Adams.
5) The Love Witch (Anna Biller)
6) Moonlight (Barry Jenkins)
I find it heartening that a movie so poetic and unhurried is getting an audience, and the awards consideration I’m normally unmoved by.
7) The Fits (Anna Rose Holmer), written about at Venice for Ebert
8) Things to Come (Mia Hanson-Løve)
Hanson-Løve has yet to do wrong in my book. Her writing is both delicate and fiercely direct in its point of view, and her direction has both grace and tension, sometimes contained in the same shot. Her study of an academic—Isabelle Huppert, impeccable again—facing a number of life upheavals as she wades out of middle age and into old is a marvelous depiction of how someone stays in the world even as that world seems intent on leaving her behind.
9) Hail, Caesar! (Joel and Ethan Coen)
10) Evolution (Lucile Hadžihalilović) tied with Baden Baden (Rachel Lang) (Baden Baden obviously counts as an eleventh film on the list entire, but as it’s TIED, it won’t RANK as an eleventh film. Keep this in mind as we go down the list, which ends at 49, even though fifty are contained. Thanks for your patience.)
And here’s another ten, in no particular order:
11) Cemetery of Splendour (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
12) Everybody Wants Some!! (Richard Linklater)
Among other things, one of the best-edited American films of the year, moving with a relaxed but purposeful gait, like a batter who’s hit it out of the park rounds third base to come home. (I know some might want me to talk about jocks, about how awful and unwoke they are, and about how this movie obscures the fact that they are all rapists. I am not going to talk about that.)
13) High Rise (Ben Wheatley)
14) Elle (Paul Verhoeven)
I did not see this so much as a “rape movie” than an ultramodern career-woman picture in which the situations the protagonist had to contend with were turned up to eleven in the dicey department. In other words, a Paul Verhoeven picture. Young filmmakers who go “too far” are sometimes credited with audacity; Verhoeven has nursed his own filmmaking character into a not-unreflective-perversity. He and Isabelle Huppert find near-perfect partners in crime with each other.
15) Creepy (Kiroshi Kurosawa)
The second-best Kurosawa returns to horror with an initially convoluted-seeming tale that turns out to be as simple, and grim, as death. The surreal touches are genuinely unnerving and the ending is one of the most satisfying, in a movie-movie way, I’ve experienced in quite some time.
16) Sully (Clint Eastwood)
Eastwood’s man-at-work tale is one of the most terse and convincing of his late late works.
17) No Home Movie (Chantal Akerman)
Of course Akerman’s movie about the illness and death of her mother, and her subsequent deeply felt absence, hit me hard in 2015, a few months after I lost my own mom. And then we lost Chantal Akerman.
18) Love And Friendship (Whit Stillman)
Stillman’s first period film (I know, I know; Last Days of Disco was set in the past, but this one goes back centuries, not a couple decades) is his most antic and laugh-out-loud funny.
19) The Childhood of a Leader (Brady Corbet)
I was, for multiple reasons, skeptical of this. The fact that Scott Walker (the real Scott Walker, not the undead politician who’s been soiling his name) deigned to do the score raised my eyebrow in a good way, and the movie itself is a very well-calibrated, often galvanic, psycho-political trip that turns out, unfortunately, to be Relevant To Our World Today. Brady Corbet done good.
20) April and the Extraordinary World (Franck Ekinci, Christian Desmares)
Fifteen more, in little particular order:
21) The Other Side (Roberto Minervini)
22) Kate Plays Christine (Robert Greene)
Kate Lynn Shiel is the co-author here, and even if you do not agree entirely with the implications of her conclusion, this film about representation, death, and feminism, is mightily provocative.
23) 11 Minutes (Jerzy Skolimowski)
I’ve seen this capital-N-Nihilist formal tour-de-force described as the worst movie of some year or other (I actually saw it in Venice in 2015, while its practically nonexistent American debut was this year), but it sure is not.
24) Bleak Street (Arturo Ripstein)
25) Paths of the Soul (Zhang Yang)Times
26) Kaili Blues (Gan Bi)
Beautiful, mysterious, lyrical, somehow relaxing in spite of its sadness and implications of dread.
27) Weiner-Dog (Todd Solondz)
I can’t believe Solondz is still teaching after this!
28) Indignation (James Schamus)
29) Miss Hokusai (Keiichi Hara)
30) Always Shine (Sophia Takal)
31) The Wailing (Na Hong-jin) Times
32) Kubo and the Two Strings (Travis Knight) Times
33) 13th (Ava DuVernay)
Should be seen by every citizen of the United States at the very least.
34) My Golden Days (Arnaud Desplechin)
Not entirely impeccable, but as sharp and moving a portrait of the irrational splendors of young love as I’ve seen in a long time.
35) The Mermaid (Stephen Chow)Times
And finally, Honorable Mentions:
36) La La Land (Damien Chazelle)
It worked on me, particularly the Emma Stone stuff. But as someone else once said about another director, Chazelle’s signature talent is in making the difficult look difficult.
37) Bleed for This (Ben Younger) Times
38) American Honey (Andrea Arnold)
I admired this picture for a number of things, including Arnold’s disinclination to sentimentalize her protagonist. And then in the final fifth she goes and sentimentalizes her protagonist. Oh well.
39) Nocturnal Animals (Tom Ford) Ebert
40) Florence Foster Jenkins (Stephen Frears)
Pretty delightful with not enough depth as it wants. Definitely made me want to take back things I used to say about Hugh Grant’s range—he’s quite remarkable here.
41) Homeland: Iraq Year Zero (Abbas Fahdel)
42) The Nice Guys (Shane Black)
A diverting entertainment, funny and just sleazy enough. Kind of a waste of Matt Bomer though.
43) DePalma (Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow)
I’m still uncertain as to whether “Holy mackerel!” is really Mr. De Palma’s exclamation of choice, or whether he willed it to be for the purposes of this informative exploration of his better work.
44) Joshy (Jeff Baena)
45) Hell or High Water (David Mackenzie)
Tense, atmospheric thriller that could have done with maybe twelve fewer shots of roadside signs with foreclosure messages or bankruptcy law firms’ numbers on them.
46) Mountains May Depart (Jia Zhangke)
His least edgy feature, but not without rewards
Stuff that was amazing but wasn’t made in 2015/16:
47) Belladonna of Sadness (Elichi Yamamoto)
48) Private Property (Leslie Stevens)
49) Only Yesterday (Isao Takahata)
Not seen in time for anything:
Fences
Jackie
O.J. Made In America
Train to Busan
The Witch
Midnight Special
Cameraperson
The BFG
Loving
I, Daniel Blake
In conclusion I should like to add that, yes, there are more documentaries here than are customary for me and my lists and my sensibility, and this is an I think salutary side result of my working with The New York Times and getting assigned more documentaries. This hasn’t quite realigned my personal views of the utility of cinema but it’s certainly opened me up a little.
Also: Fuck Manchester by the Sea. Okay, maybe not fuck it, but it’s not even among my honorables for several reasons. First is its unbelievably clumsy use of Ellington’s “Beginning to See the Light” in the we-need-a-montage scene. Another is…well, maybe saying “uncinematic” is not fair, but you know as well as I do that the only reason Kenneth Lonergan directs his films is to keep his precious words intact. And third, the more I am asked to acknowledge the “tragedy” of a self-centered alcoholic who is offered an opportunity to be of genuine service to others, and instead opts to go back to his self-imposed sty of self pity, the less inclined I am to see it as tragedy, and more inclined I am to see it as defensive indulgence. So there. Also, there’s the way the film neatly sidesteps issues of both moral and legal responsibility, the better to let the viewer experience all that emotion. My friend A.O. Scott raised some eyebrows in his Times review when he said it would be a mistake to deny that the movie had a racial dimension but it certainly does. I myself was reminded of the Lou Whitney song “Thirty Days in the Workhouse,” the chorus of which goes “I got thirty days in the workhouse/now don’t you shed no tears/’cause if I’d been a black man/they’d have given me thirty years.” As Jerry Lee Lewis likes to say, think about it.
you’ll come around on THE NEON DEMON someday
Surprised you forgot to include Passengers, as I know it’s clearly your favorite film of the year.
Plus, I can’t believe you snubbed Melancholia for yet another year, Glenn. It’s almost as if it’s an annual tradition with you. Also, why do you hate A Tribe Called Quest?
Hi-yo! I’ll let myself out now, after noting that this is, as usual, a fantastic list. You’ve always got my favorite end-of-the year thang. Glad you included the documentary note at the end, as it was surprising me as I read.
I typed “Toni Erdmann” and “Patch Adams” into Google and got hits from a number of different reviews. I agree with you that the films are nothing alike, so, uh, yeah, odd.
I’m pleased that I wasn’t the only one to think of SILENCE as a major work. As an agnostic I found much of it extremely compelling. It raises so many questions about the world in a very profound and relentlessly self-interrogating way.
I thought I might see GREEN ROOM on this list. Worth it just for the scene where something very, very bad happens to Anton Yelchin’s arm, which almost made me dive behind my couch. (Since my couch is flush up against the wall, this would have been some achievement.)
I’m not a huge fan of Manchester by the Sea but I find Scott’s racializing the story pretty unnecessary and in at least one case I’d say Scott’s reading was probably wilfully duplicitous, or at least provably wrong. I refer to this excerpt from Scott’s review:
“Cast out of this working man’s paradise, Lee is also exiled from the prerogatives of whiteness. He lives in a basement room, earning minimum wage, answering to an African-American boss and accepting a tip from a black tenant whose toilet he has cleaned and repaired. He doesn’t complain, but it is also clear that he has chosen these conditions as a form of self-abasement, as punishment for his sins.”
So, Scott is obviously slanting this section of the film to imply the subtext here is that a large part of Lee’s “punishment” is his subservience to blacks. What he conspicuously leaves out is the long scene in which Lee overhears that black (female) tenant telling her friend over the phone how attracted she is to Lee, and how easy it would be for him to be with her if it was what he wanted. The subtext in the subsequent scene in which the tenant tips him was, pretty obviously, “Why isn’t Lee asking this young woman out?” not “What indignity, Lee having to accept a tip from a BLACK person.” The scene serves the purpose of showing that Lee has decided to cut himself off from others, and there is absolutely no evidence besides the actors’ skin colours that the scene serves the double purpose Scott is projecting onto it. In fact, the only part from this stretch of the film that is really unambiguously about the indignity Lee suffers in his job is the scene where Lee is inappropriately blamed and chastised by a WHITE tenant.
Now, if I, a working class idiot who doesn’t live in New York or work for the New York Times, understand that this is what the scene was doing, then surely Scott would understand this, too. I can’t shake the suspicion that Scott gets a certain amount of cred from his (I would assume mostly white) liberal NY friends for taking stances like this on films that are not in any perceivable way about race at all. It’s ironic and annoying for a prodigiously compensated New York Times film critic to complain that the fictional working class characters in a more-or-less truthful movie aren’t poor enough, and it’s taking pretend-outrage to the extreme to complain that a fictional white character is getting better treatment from the fictional policemen than would a hypothetical fictional black character. And this excerpt from Scott’s review is just beyond the pale:
“In 21st-century American cinema […] the Bay State is where the myths of post-ethnic ‑class white identity have been forged. Nonwhite characters are as scarce as fully articulated r’s, and the uncomfortable racial history that has existed […] is easily ignored. There is no legacy of slavery or Jim Crow, and therefore an aura of innocence can be maintained amid the dysfunction and sentimentality and clannishness.”
The implication being that ANY fondness or nostalgia for ANY white culture is suspect, that the “innocence” of ANY white characters is not to be believed, and that there is some conscious or subconscious motivation by filmmakers to preserve and celebrate white “clannishness” (!!!) by setting their films in Boston/New England. Like, reducing EVERY subject and EVERY movie to the actors’ and characters’ races can be pretty racist too, but I think Scott only cares that everyone understands how evolved and virtuous he is. Anyway, I’m a huge fan, Mr. Kenny, but I’m surprised to see you endorsing this pointless and self-serving exploitation of identity politics. (PS. Not an Alt-Right sympathizer. Canadian liberal.)
@Andrew
“I can’t shake the suspicion that Scott gets a certain amount of cred from his (I would assume mostly white) liberal NY friends for taking stances like this on films that are not in any perceivable way about race at all.”
I’m sure there are *some* film critics who approach things that way. But I suspect it’s quite minimal. I suspect there are far more critics who let their perception of their audience/brand influence how they approach such topics.
But I’ve read and enjoyed Tony Scott for many years, and he REALLY doesn’t strike me as the type. He’s written plenty that goes directly against your suspicion. Given all that, I think the clear explanation is simply that you two just disagree on your reading of the film. It’s generally a bad idea to introduce motives into disagreement with a critic, and a specifically bad idea here.
Pretty terrific list. I’d put LOVE & FRIENDSHIP up way higher, and I wish you’d included some animated films (e.g. The Red Turtle, Miss Hokusai, My Life as a Zucchini and Kubo & the Two Strings). Love your inclusion of Skolimowski’s 11 MINUTES, which the Onion AV Club clearly didn’t “get”.
whoops! you did include a number of animated films. I stand corrected.
Petey,
Well, I admit that I only “suspect” what I’m putting forth re: his motivation. Although I’m confident enough to say that I would bet my next paycheque that I’m right, given how prevalent this trend appears to be with liberal film critics. Anyway, it’s Scott’s projection of identity politics onto this specific film that I’m mostly objecting to. But have you seen “Manchester by the Sea”? If so, do you remember the scene with the black tenant? If so, what’s your opinion on the legitimacy of Scott’s take on that section of the film? My opinion is that it’s literally indefensible, given the what actually happens in the scenes to which he refers.
“But have you seen “Manchester by the Sea”? If so, do you remember the scene with the black tenant?”
OK. Do you see where you are going wrong here yet? You are asking me if I agree with your reading of the scene. If I do, then you will take it as confirmation of your suspicion of Tony Scott’s *motives* for reading the scene differently than we do.
As it happens, I have not seen the film, as I have minimal interest in it for reasons that Glenn touches upon. But even if we agreed in our readings, it would indicate absolutely nothing about Scott’s *motivation*. It would just show we had a different reading than he did.
Again, if you want to make assertions about a critic’s motivation for a certain reading, you need to be familiar enough with the critic’s work to see some kind of pattern. In this case, I’m familiar enough with Tony Scott’s work to disagree with you. Similarly, while I was an enormous fan of Roger Ebert’s work, I was quite familiar with his great distaste for very powerful films with nihilistic messages. He had some kind of personal motivation to pan those films, something he would very rarely explicitly touch upon. For me, when I’d see a 0 or half star rating from him for a film where he seemed to have such objections, I would read the review as RAVE, and make sure I went out to see it, as I have little problem with highly effective films with nihilistic messages. But yet again, that only comes from knowing the critic’s body of work.
In this case, you are conflating Tony Scott’s reading and motivation with a stereotype of generic “liberal film critics”, rather than his own actual body of work, which strikes me as deeply spurious reasoning.
A great list as usual…until you hit upon Manchester By The Sea. I found your comments to be fairly different from my perspective on the film, and somewhat unfair to the film itself.
“well, maybe saying “uncinematic” is not fair, but you know as well as I do that the only reason Kenneth Lonergan directs his films is to keep his precious words intact.”
It’s disappointing to hear you lob such a lazy (and unfounded – unless you know something personal about KL that we don’t) critique of the film. Particularly because you so eloquently dispensed with the “uncinematic” canard in a post about A Dangerous Method. From that piece:
“It seems as if every time a film is adapted from a stage play it gives unimaginative and unobservant critics an opportunity to not look at what’s actually in front of them and to reflexively condemn the resultant work as being “closed off” or “closed in” or “not cinematic.”
and, after noting the scene’s blocking and framing:
“At this point I could be coy and say “If that isn’t visual storytelling, I don’t know what is,” but screw it, that is visual storytelling, and the critic who can’t see it is not a critic I’m inclined to trust. Please note that I said “can’t see it,” not “isn’t impressed/moved by it” or “doesn’t admire it.” I can’t tell another person what to think or how to feel about a film or a sequence in a film. But I can ask a person to look at what’s in front of him or her before he or she presumes to assess it.”
I don’t mean to suggest that Lonergan is as formally adept as Cronenberg, but what you wrote is snide and dismissive, a lazy swipe at the film just because it didn’t connect with you. Which is exactly what you defended A Dangerous Method against in that previous piece.
In answer to Wilson, no, I don’t have any anecdotal dirt on “Kenny” Lonergan, but if you really want to talk craft we can go over the egregious jumps across the 180 line in the hospital scenes, which are not nearly as purposeful as the violations of John Ford or Yasujiro Ozu but rather suggest an indolence bordering on arrogance. Once I get some kind of screener of the movie, I’ll try to make the time to do a shot by shot.
As for the ongoing controversy relative to A.O. Scott’s review and my citation of it, I think my friend’s read on the business with the African-American woman IS an arguable stretch, but not one you need to be Plastic Man to make. I’m from a working-class background, I’ve got “people” in Boston and Greenfield, and as Jake La Motta says in “Raging Bull,” “I heard things.” And that’s all I’m gonna say about that, except that to call Mr. Scott “prodigiously compensated” is also a bit of a stretch. As a colleague I’ll say “well compensated” is right, and it’s as he (and I) should be, because we both work our asses off.
I look forward to reading any shot-by-shot piece further explicating your thoughts.
“except that to call Mr. Scott “prodigiously compensated” is also a bit of a stretch. As a colleague I’ll say “well compensated” is right, and it’s as he (and I) should be, because we both work our asses off.”
Hmmm… But think of a home health care aide, working her (Black Caribbean) ass off cleaning bed pans. And she’s getting paid 12 bucks an hour if she’s lucky. Doesn’t even pay the doctors, boi.
I now question your “working-class background” cred, Glenn, and think your *motivation* for expressing such sentiments is purely to appeal to your white liberal NY friends.
(Very slightly more seriously, given my utter lack of interest in Manchester By The Sea even before its release, and reinforced the reaction by critics I tend to trust upon its release, I think it’s gotta be an absolute lock for Best Picture Oscar® based on past experience.)
Dear Glenn, long time no comment. I am so happy to see that we share a high opinion of The Love Witch. I believe its gorgeous retro visuals are making it hard for some to see how wonderfully, authentically original and weird it is. I can’t wait to see what Biller does next. Things to Come was so good that I wanted to watch it again as soon as the screener finished, and I hardly ever have the impulse. I loved Love and Friendship and Hell or High Water (my top 2 of the year) more than you did but we both had some regard for them, hooray; ditto La La Land, which one of my closest friends hate-hate-HATED. For me, Moonlight had the devastating emotional impact that Manchester promised, but did not deliver.
I have been trying to go easy on MBTS on social media, because it’s a movie that speaks to a lot of people about grief in their own life; we both know how that goes. And my favorite scene in the movie was one that brought home how something mundane – like being unable to get the goddamn chicken packages to stay in the freezer – can trigger an onslaught of crushing pain. Since I’m not likely to write a real essay on it, I’ll leave a few thoughts about your thoughts here. One, I agree, it seems obvious to me that Lonergan has trouble slimming things down, otherwise we would have just one lousy-garage-band scene, and one teenage coitus interruptus, instead of two of each. Two, the 180-rule violation in the hospital also puzzled the shit out of me. It’s a big visual statement and didn’t seem rooted in what was actually going on.
[SPOILERS HERE!!! Courtesy warning, do not read further if you care about spoilers]
But I’ve also wanted to ask about the responsibility issue. Is it the fact that Lee was drunk when he left the fire unscreened what makes you see him as culpable? I had major problems with Affleck’s character (as written) and performance, but I see Lee as not so much criminal so much as tragically unlucky. I do think that’s how Lonergan sees him too, otherwise he would not have Michelle Williams abjectly apologizing in that one “big” scene.
[END SPOILERS]
Anyway, it’s always a pleasure to read and think about your year-end lists, Mr. Kenny.
A typically great and diverse list. Was Anomalisa omitted because it was released in the States in 2015?
Thanks for the list- and your love of film this year- I know that it is your job, but you do it well and are appreciated
Some comments:
(1) I really did like GIRLHOOD, which I wouldn’t have seen if you hadn’t put it in your top 10 last year.
(2) Four years ago you forgot to include THE DEEP BLUE SEA. This year there’s no SUNSET SONG. I preferred THE DEEP BLUE SEA, but I thought SUNSET SONG was good.
(3) I had a much higher opinion of KNIGHT OF CUPS than you did. Looking back at the review, I think the comparison with Rod Stewart is a subtle way of begging the question. After all Stewart was clearly squandering his talent for money. Clearly Malick wasn’t doing that. The main criticism critics made was that Malick wasn’t doing anything new. I don’t think that’s true (the narrative is much more complex than in his previous movies) and even if it was true, it wouldn’t necessarily be as damning as one might think, since many great directors return to well developed themes. Returning to your review I don’t agree that Bale’s character is an example of male privilege. Relationships fail for many reasons, and I don’t think we can assume the cause is Bale’s selfishness. (And as for the dig at “The Pilgrim’s Progress,” well clearly it’s not to everyone’s taste. But Vanity Fair, as a metaphor, abides.)
(4) Nor did I have a high opinion of HAIL CAESAR! One problem is that although gay panic is a theme throughout the movie, Channing Tatum’s character is both a Communist agent and the star of a flagrantly gay pastiche of ANCHORS AWEIGH. Why? It’s certainly not the director’s fault, since he is both married and has knocked up Scarlett Johannson’s character.
I had already forgotten that I put Hail, Caesar! down at the bottom of the barrel with the Coen brothers’ remake of The Ladykillers as their least funny comedy. It had a couple of great musical numbers and a hilarious scene of Francis McDormand getting strangled by film. I’m baffled as to why the critics loved it. A comedy that doesn’t raise even a chuckle for the first twenty minutes and also has to resort to voice over like Blade Runner to explain what’s going on, is running on empty.
Didn’t see many movies this year but thoroughly enjoyed ‘The Nice Guys’, not least on account of Russell Crowe’s middle-age metamorphosis into John Goodman.
Count me as another regular reader who can’t fathom your response to Manchester by the Sea. There’s so much shit being projected that you’re basically not even talking about the movie any more.
A racial dimension? This coming from the guy who picked The Descendants as the best movie of its year? What does race have to do with the movie and why is it the movie’s responsibility? And why is it being held responsible for its supposed strategic elisions when at the same time you’re so readily willing to let Everybody Wants Some!! off the hook for its own?
And to look at a story about a broken human being and just see a story about a self-centered alcoholic is to frankly deny one of the chief functions of drama, not to mention cast doubt on some of the greatest works of fiction written over the last 100 years. While you’re at it, why not take Moonlight to task for being yet another story about a drug-dealing hoodlum?
And don’t get me started on “uncinematic.” Good grief. That’s a word that people use when they can’t find real words to explain why they were bored by something.
Well *actually*, Cliff, he put The Descendants third that year. And.…Margaret was seventh!
http://somecamerunning.typepad.com/some_came_running/2011/12/years-best.html
I’ve yet to see Manchester despite being primed to love it since the Sundance hosannas showered in. On reflection, part of my excitement at that time was in seeing that Lonergan had even survived the punishing saga of the previous decade to make another film and receive those ovations. But maybe the stage is his rightful home after all.
As for Scott’s argument, I saw a tweet from one respected critic suggesting that the body of the review was from an initial festival viewing, and the last couple of paragraphs were shoehorned in following the election. That’s as much arrant speculation as a lot of this comment thread, but it read that way to the person in question. All I know is that we seem to have reached a point in some progressive film conversations where instant demerits are assessed according to the relative whiteness of the cast. Or, as in certain reactions to Scorsese’s film, a “savior” narrative is imposed and railed against, when the film may in fact be subverting that very notion.
I know Glenn isn’t doing any of these things here, but his coming around to this view on Manchester did somehow elicit from me a rueful sigh in the wake of the above. More happily, I second Partisan’s endorsement of Sunset Song. And I believe Glenn has seen and admired Davies’ next film, A Quiet Passion, which looms as a potential highlight of 2017. So to one and all, may the new year somehow begin to make better what this one has wrought.
Well, *actually*, Chris L., Glenn commented to say he found Scott’s read “IS an arguable stretch”, which I think is best interpreted to say it was NOT Glenn’s initial reading, but that he didn’t find Scott’s read to be absurd.
Given that I haven’t seen the film, my only real point in this entire aspect of the thread has been that I think it’s kinda important to not question a critic’s motivations for a particular reading, unless you see some kind of pattern in that critic’s body of work that leads you there. On political topics specifically, it’s some weird place the Twitter outrage machine has brought many of us to.
I don’t see the kind of pattern you discuss in Scott’s work, so it seems incredibly odd to me to ascribe that kind of motivation to him for his reading, whether his reading accords with yours or not. Now if a specific clickbait Salon-esque critic has a pattern of such readings, then fine. Go wild with ascribing political motivations to their readings. But it seems as if we are eager to such motivations to critics without such a pattern, rather than just saying, “I think X’s reading is wrong here.” Folks can vehemently disagree with a good critic’s read quite easily without insisting upon an invalid motivation behind the critic’s read.
Petey, I believe it was Andrew (along with those in the Twitter thread I mentioned, which I acknowledged was sheer conjecture) who more explicitly asserted motivations, patterns, and so forth w/r/t A.O. Scott. I’ve been a fan of his since he joined the Times, loved his co-hosting on At the Movies, and have his book on my Amazon wish list. No ill will or axe to grind there, even if the odd review now and then (like Shutter Island and, yes, Margaret) indeed conflicted with my experience of the work.
If there was a point to my comment, maybe it was just that it’s been that kind of year – with many film lovers taking shots and subtweets at each other by way of working out larger frustrations we mostly share.
This, by the way, is the Twitter exchange I meant:
https://twitter.com/unbuttonmyeyes/status/803407575991648257
Chris L., all fair enough. (With the exception that Andrew didn’t seem to be asserting patterns in Scott personally, but patterns in a generic grouping of “liberal film critics” that he somehow just tossed Scott into indiscriminately.)
But I don’t think we disagree fundamentally. And it’s worth noting that in the twit thread you sent me to, I find Violet Lucca’s assertion absurd, unless she knows something to somehow support it. That’s the PRECISE form of motivation assignation I most strongly object to. (Disclaimer: I’m not familiar with Violet Lucca work, she may well be otherwise wonderful, and teh twits often force folks into a shorthand that isn’t fully intellectual defensible.)
As to your stated point, sure! I just wish that we all stuck to taking shots and subtweets without questioning motivations, unless we’ve got a good reason to do so beyond mere strong disagreement on how a particular scene plays.
“Well *actually*, Cliff, he put The Descendants third that year. And.…Margaret was seventh!”
***
Heh. I’d say third place is still a strong enough endorsement to make my point, but fair enough. I should have double checked my work.
And Margaret doesn’t really enter into it, as far as I’m concerned. I’m not suggesting that Glenn has it out for Lonergan, after all, just that his objections to Manchester by the Sea are spurious and/or poorly expressed. To my mind, it seems like he’s jumping through hoops to make it appear as though his distaste for the film is intellectual rather than instinctual.
MILD “MANCHESTER BY THE SEA” SPOILERS
I didn’t absolutely love “Manchester”, but my feelings w/r/t Lee not wanting to take guardianship of the kid were simply that he felt completely dead inside, and thought his other siblings would be better role models, and provide a more structured, healthy environment.
I also thought the generally morose tone of the film was offset fairly well by a fair amount of unexpected dry humour.
But it’s not a movie I’m all that inclined to go to bat for, particularly given how few films I’ve seen in 2016, relative to previous years.
Oh gosh.
The way I figure it, if I begin a paragraph by stating “Fuck ‘Manchester by the Sea,’ ” maybe I figure it’s understood that what’s coming next is not going to be wholly rational. I probably shouldn’t have even brought it up, and I don’t like being pushed into this particular corner, but fuck it: Yeah, as an alcoholic in recovery this movie pissed me off the more I thought about it. So forgive me my jumping through hoops, Cliff, and may God be with you. But I’m not going to genuflect at the moral cowardice that Lonergan gives a tacit pass to, for reasons that I’m sure satisfy him. As for whether or not I’m being disingenuous, well, this is a blog. I literally AM doing this out of spite, because with the exception of a tip now and then from a generous reader (thanks and you know who you are), it doesn’t pay.
(IncidentallyI just got a text from my brother saying he saw “Manchester” and observing, “As Dad said, ‘Very Irish’.” Which made me laugh.)
First of all, give me a break about Glenn’s “uncinematic” being lazy. If you could watch those hospital scenes, any scene in the movie involving a car and a person in it, or about half of the rest of the movie and not feel that Lonergan’s camera placement, cutting, and blocking were a joke, I don’t know what to say. The only reason the second half of the movie is even watchable is that he’s left with essentially two characters (plus those very necessary scenes between the kid and his girlfriends, the climactic Affleck-Williams blowup shot like a lover’s quarrel in Annie Hall, etc.) and he’s much less puzzled about how to shoot two people than he is about shooting groups. Movies this incompetently shot, cut, and as Glenn alludes to, scored, are really rare.
Re: race and Boston, Scott may well have a point, I’m inclined to think he does although he hasn’t worked his point out very well, but mostly I’d just like to declare a moratorium on Boston movies unless they’re made by people who have something to really say about the place (so not the case here). Is it really necessary to put out movie after movie where capable actors are distracted from their performances by attempting to imitate that accent? Why is it that no one in a Boston movie ever has a light accent? When a Bostonian’s friend gets their head bashed in in a bar fight and they have to send the friend’s surrogate kid out of the house, do they really screech “I sent him out to get some BUHHHHHH-gahs”? All that accent seems to dominate over scene-specific modulations of line readings. Why do Boston movies even need Boston accents at all? I recently watched THE LAST HURRAH and thought it was the worst Ford I’d ever encountered, which is to say, a perfectly good movie that never is on the verge of blossoming into a masterpiece, but one sensible choice he makes is not having Spencer Tracy or Basil Rathbone or Jeffrey Hunter attempt Boston accents, while having the bit players do a kind of vague American Irish. Of course, that movie doesn’t ever announce it’s set in Boston (people who live in a place have a way of not repetitively stating where they are like they do in MANCHESTER), but it absolutely and clearly is, whereas in this movie, I don’t think I’d have any idea where it was set if not for the accents and the kid shouting ” aren’t you going back to BAHSTON/Quincey” at Affleck every 5 minutes. And I guess I’d know from all those misjudged God’s eye shots of the boat where you can’t even see anyone’s faces and that cutesy flashback dialogue early in the movie about shahks that we were somewhere coastal.
Speaking of dialogue, if you’re going to invent teenage slang like “basement business,” maybe make it sound like something a teenager has ever said. Or if you want a dumb scene in your movie about a guy negotiating funeral expenses in front of the dead man’s son, just tell the son and his extraneous girlfriend character to look pained instead of needlessly underlining the point by giving the girlfriend lines about the situation that no one in her position would ever be rude enough to say, like “that’s where his head is at in a time like this?”. It’s a movie, Lonergan, things can be expressed non-verbally (which doesn’t necessarily mean musically-operatically, or with super-slow-motion). I feel like a lot of the pitfalls in this thing could be avoided by simply watching movies and copying what capable directors do with the medium.
(Spoiler)
Re: moral responsibility, yeah, not only was he drunk and probably high on cocaine (“Theah was cocaine,” he passively says – and the police never ask if he was on it!), which just as a general matter seems a bad idea when at home with one’s small children, not only was he going out to get drunker, but he says he remembered he might have left the screen off but didn’t turn around because he had beer to get or it was cold or something. Re: legal responsibility, I was fairly shocked he hadn’t spent time for manslaughter. And a little worried that “it’s not a crime to forget to put the screen on” is the message that people without central heating will take from this movie.
As another fan of MANCHESTER, and Lonergan, I was also surprised at Glenn’s reaction, his obvious hyperbole aside. I don’t think the Ellington cut was clumsy – odd, but part of Lonergan’s overall project in this film, which I take to be the juxtaposition of the horrendously tragic with the banal and the comedic. Lonergan’s choice of music is spotty, as is his visual sensibility, but in a way I find interestingly idiosyncratic, and certainly deeply felt. At the very least, imputing arrogance and/or indifference, as some have done here, seems unsupportable and unfair.
As for uncinematic – again, I completely disagree. Whatever infelicities might be present, there are other scenes that are staged and filmed with uncanny power – I’m thinking in particular of the scenes involving physical violence, such as *SPOILER WARNING* his interrogation and subsequent suicide attempt in the police station, and the two bar fights.
And I share in Farran’s admiration for the freezer/breakdown scene – best thing in the movie; simultaneously deeply moving and hilarious in a way I’ve seen few other writer/directors accomplish. And this effect is not incidental to the way it’s filmed. For that alone, this movie is one of my faves of the year.
Perhaps most confusing, and worth teasing out, is the question of ethical/legal and moral responsibility. As to the first; I had no trouble at all believing that Lee would walk. Upon reflection, sure, he could’ve been charged, but a) that would entail a completely different movie, and b) that’s no more plausible than what was presented in the film. But the moral dimension is, I would say, the source of Lee’s struggle, and thus the entire foundation of the film’s drama. How is any of this being “sidestepped?” I’m genuinely puzzled. His deep moral anguish, and the way it becomes entangled in the hopelessly inadequate banalities of ethical and legal responsibilities, is fundamental to Lonergan’s perspective. And it is very much an active struggle, even until the end. It’s far from a perfect film, but its accomplishments are significant enough to compensate for any flaws, even to render those flaws interesting rather than destructive, IMO.
Great list!
That said, Green Room would be especially worthy of your time.
I have since cooled from my initial reaction to reading Scott’s review and I guess I regret reading into Scott’s motives so much, although I don’t think referring to him as a liberal film critic is unfair. And if one wants to criticize someone for motive-guessing, I think Scott’s review would be a good place to start:
“Mr. Lonergan is too astute about the textures of American life to assume that the racial and class identities of his characters are incidental or without larger significance.”
Now, it’s unclear if Scott is saying that Lonergan is consciously not assuming this, or if, being so astute, Lonergan *should not* (like, in principle) assume such. What is clear from this statement and the paragraph that follows is that Scott is (awkwardly, in my opinion) laying the foundation for why the interpretation he then puts forth has anything to do with the actual movie in question which, in opinion, it does not.
Again I have to return to the scene with the “black tenant” (played by the actress Quincy Tyler Bernstine). It’s clear because of what actually occurs in this scene that it at least bears the subtext I suggest in my earlier comment: that we are put in suspense as to why Lee doesn’t ask the tenant out. So let me ask: if this subtext is there, then wouldn’t that contradict the subtext which Scott is (in my opinion) projecting: that Lee’s dignity as a white person is being affronted by his subservience to a black person? Are we supposed to both wonder why Lee is passing on this romantic opportunity AND feel that he is being humiliated because the potential romantic partner is black? If someone would like to suggest that there is in fact this much going on within the scene, can they point to anything that’s actually ONSCREEN (besides skin colour) to support this interpretation?
I respect your life experience, Glenn, but I think you’d have to do more critical work to connect it with the actual film. I would like to know what Bernstine would think about the idea that she’s essentially being used as a prop because of her race, to demean the standing of her white scene-partner. And I’d like to know what Kimberly Steward, the female black producer who (according to Matt Damon) jumpstarted the project, would think if she knew her movie were using a black actress in such a reductive and flat-out racist manner… But the reality, I think, is that the only person using Bernstine as a prop because of her race is A.O. Scott, and for no purpose that I can see besides flaunting is own moral depth. And that’s what made me mad.
Anyway, no need for anyone to respond to me, just thought I’d squeeze a few more thoughts out.
Glenn – Thanks for the list. I read your reviews on Ebert.com and elsewhere religiously, and I’m always interested in your perspective.
“And third, the more I am asked to acknowledge the “tragedy” of a self-centered alcoholic who is offered an opportunity to be of genuine service to others, and instead opts to go back to his self-imposed sty of self pity, the less inclined I am to see it as tragedy, and more inclined I am to see it as defensive indulgence.”
Lee is clearly guilty of many things, but never once did I include self pity among them. In my view, a self-pitying person wouldn’t have gone back and stuck around to tend to matters. Lee did, albeit grudgingly and in a limited way. The way he has lived and ultimately decides to continue to live may be self-imposed, but I see it as more of a kind of limited penance. He is offered a degree of absolution by his ex-wife, but he can’t except it. And I don’t think it is for reasons of self pity that he can’t. It seems to me that Lee isn’t able to forgive himself for what he has done, and he certainly doesn’t believe that he deserves forgiveness from someone who has arguably suffered more severely than he has. He lives as he does because he doesn’t believe he deserves anything better because of what he’s done.
In the end, doesn’t he find a way to be of some limited service? Lee seems self-aware enough to know that currently he isn’t able to provide the consistency that his nephew needs, but he finds someone who is, and he looks out for his nephew’s interests in other important ways. It isn’t perfect, but he doesn’t completely withdraw. But he does withdraw, and it’s clear enough to me that it’s for legitimate reasons. Close proximity to a place where you made a horrible mistake and to people who agree and clearly believe you should be in jail is reason enough to not stick around, especially when you more or less agree with them.
Jon–
Thanks for the kind words. Your points are good and persuasively argued. I guess I figure Lee as self-pitying on account of his practice of picking bar fights he can’t win. An indirect form of self-pity, but I think it still applies. But I see why you find me too hard in the character.
“[…] suggest an indolence bordering on arrogance.”
Pathetic.
Care to elaborate, “F?” Didn’t think so.
And as Bryan Ferry said, you can guess the rest.
I finally saw Manchester this past week and wanted desperately to love it but couldn’t. I admired so much of it, including and especially Affleck and Hedges’ performances. But to me Lonergan never justified the use of the flashback structure, and the big reveal that takes place a third of the way through the movie felt cheap, like something out of an ’80s TV movie, and it undercut everything that came after. There were little things that didn’t work for me as well (the overlength, every scene with Gretchen Moll felt like bullshit, and Michelle Williams – who I usually love – gives a performance that screams ACTING). But I could have lived with all of this if I could invest in the emotional through-line of the film, which I ultimately could not.
Well, trying to get back to the original topic of Glenn’s interesting top 50 films list, I’m curious if anyone has any opinions on Manchester by the Sea?
Cosmos was on my radar, but I’d like to thank Glenn for giving me reason to expedite my viewing. It strikes me that there were a number of films this past year about reckoning with certain unknowable perplexities of the universe (Hail, Caesar!, Indignation, Sunset Song, even Jackie), and Cosmos tackles this theme with an almost mathematical obsession. Zulawski understands absurdity as the other side of a coin, as much a part of reality as prim and properness, intermingling the primal with the civilized, trading one construct for another, almost finding its own new language. And, yeah, really goddamned funny. I already miss him.
I’m a bit surprised to see “Sully” on this list. I haven’t seen it myself, but I’ve read that the antagonism between Sully and the NTSB folks is a complete fiction. One can only assume it’s included so as to hew close to Eastwood’s desired libertarian narrative. Maybe it’s not as heavy-handed as I think? The previews sure make it seem so.
Making a bugbear out of (of all things) the NTSB is the same kind of mindset that believes toy manufacturers should be allowed to lace crayons with as much lead as they damn well please. Looking forward to Eastwood’s remake of ‘Apollo 13’ in which a balding, portly IRS employee berates Jack Swigert for not filing his tax return in a timely manner.
So has anyone come across writing on SILENCE that they’d recommend? I’m still sorting out how I feel about it (I found myself with an atheist humanist interpretation that I don’t think is what the director intended), but I’d like to read what smart folks have said.
https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/suffering-on-the-outside-martin-scorsese-s-silence
http://www.villagevoice.com/film/holy-men-holy-losers-scorsese-silence-and-the-mystery-of-faith-9515981
http://www.vox.com/culture/2016/12/21/14005760/silence-review-spoilers-martin-scorsese-andrew-garfield-adam-driver
Really late to the discussion, due to the vagaries of international film distribution, but for what it’s worth… I just saw “Manchester by the sea” today, since it just got released a few days ago in my country. I was really looking forward to it, due to the critical accolades and also because, frankly, I was curious to see why our esteemed host in this blog hated it so much (when this post was first published, I read up to “fuck ‘Manchester by the sea’…” and stopped reading immediately).
I have to say, I came out of the theater disappointed. Great dialogue, great performances, sure, but unlike Glenn, I have no problems at all calling it “uncinematic” (and no, it’s not because it has lot of people talking). The compositions are flat, the editing is jarring (when not resorting to yet another musical montage to indicate the passage of time), the use of Albinoni’s Adagio for the big climatic scene is such a cliché that it takes away all the force of the revelation… and all of this without even talking about the 180 degree rule (which I honestly didn’t notice).
All this said, though, when I read about the racial reading of the movie, all I can say is: WTF?. I can only subscribe 100% to Andrew’s reading of the scene with the black tenant, at the beginning of the thread (as for A.O. Scott’s article, it looked to me like two completely different reviews stitched together; I won’t adscribe any motivations to Scott, but I can only say that it was another motive of WTF for me). I also find hard to agree with the idea that the movie absolves the protagonist of moral responsibility, when the entire movie, for me, is about a man who cannot forgive himself. Watch his surprised reaction at the police station, when he realizes he is going to walk: “is that it? I can go home?” He just can’t believe that he is not going to be punished for what he’s done, and his entire life since then has been about punishing himself (including the bar fights, yes).
To me, that’s the most valuable part of the film: a realistic portrait of a person who has done something unforgivable, and how you live with yourself after that. (Interestingly, it’s pretty much the same theme of “Shutter island”… which also had Michelle Williams as victim).
“I’m still uncertain as to whether “Holy mackerel!” is really Mr. De Palma’s exclamation of choice, or whether he willed it to be for the purposes of this informative exploration of his better work.”
I just re-watched HOLY MACKEREL: THE BRIAN DE PALMA STORY for the first time since the release, and there is No Way In Hell he is not using that exclamation sincerely, and without calculation.
Everything about him in that documentary, everything in his work, and everything else I know about him make it perfectly clear to me that he is not self-conscious in such a way that would have him put on the kind performance you halfway suspect.
That’s just him being him. He doesn’t give a shit, he’s never given a shit, and that’s part of what’s made him such a great filmmaker.
(And he’s so damn correct that he’s Hitchcock’s ONLY disciple.)
I Am Not Your Negro?
I don’t know, are you not?
But seriously, I classify that as a 2017 film. And yes, of course, it’s fantastic.
My apologies. I assumed you followed the same rules as the Academy in this regard. I look forward to reading your thoughts of you choose to publish them.