Best Films of 2018, and other films

No Comments

• Andy says:

  December 21, 2018 at 7:46 pm

  Dung-stained gauze? Did you see Suspirira with bad digit­al pro­jec­tion? I did, so I went and saw it else­where the next day, and the pic­ture was ravishing.
  I loved it. Frankly I’m stunned at how many crit­ics missed the point of what they saw as ran­dom, point­less (“dead-end,” in Manohla Dargis’s words) ref­er­ences to vari­ous aspects of German life in 1977. By that time the word “volk” and its con­nota­tions had become uncom­fort­ably loaded after it had passed through Hitler’s hands, just as pride in being German had. The reclam­a­tion in the film of the company’s dance piece “Volk” from the Nazi era (a piece that was appar­ently and defi­antly lack­ing in Nazi ideo­logy or aes­thet­ics, as though the true his­tor­ic German soul was at heart inno­cent of what Hitler had wrought from it—an appro­ri­ate sort of deni­al, as the “old guard” of dance teach­ers is analag­ous to the older post­war soci­ety of Germans hold­ing them­selves apart from com­pli­city in what came before) occurs at the same time (in the film) as the struggle for the begin­ning of the reclam­a­tion of the German “volk” from their guilt for the Nazi peri­od, which can only be instig­ated by the young­er generation–the ter­ror­ist activ­it­ies fol­lowed through­out the film are about renew­ing this German iden­tity by for­cing the older gen­er­a­tion to face its crimes and account for them…no mat­ter the sense­less blood involved. While that is hap­pen­ing out­side the com­pany, inside, a young­er gen­er­a­tion, Sarah ini­ti­ates its own bloody purge. If Madame Blanc says at one point that dan­cing can nev­er again be beau­ti­ful or cheer­ful (this, accord­ing to a men­tion in the New York Times, as a con­tra­ven­tion of Goebbels’ aes­thet­ic dir­ect­ive), Sarah says at the end, approv­ingly, that the dan­cing she sees among the rampant blood­shed she has just triggered is beautiful–an optim­ist­ic allow­ance, cuing the pos­sib­il­ity of the bloody rebirth of the German soul, which may be allowed to move past guilt now that an account­ing has star­ted to be made (just as Baader-Meinhoff want their exec­ut­ive to be held respons­ible for his crimes, a sim­il­ar account­ing and set­tling of scores has just occurred in the com­pany, with those who had voted against Blanc earli­er in the film). With soci­ety now begin­ning to accept the neces­sary “guilt and shame” she exempts Klemperer from, the “volk” may at some point be reclaimed, German pride may be reclaimed, “beauty” allowed to creep out from the gloom of the film’s tableau once more–no longer any more tain­ted with facist under­pin­nings than the word “volk.” And the fact that she rep­res­ents what would seem to be nearly ancient evil while treat­ing Klemperer so kindly, while not coin­cid­ent­ally echo­ing the ter­ror­ist­s’s pos­it­ive soci­et­al change achieved in a nev­er­the­less evil man­ner, is fit­ting. How much evil can a new start, can inno­cence, ever be free of? Madame Blanc her­self speaks of the oppos­ing forces of balance–an arrow, as she says about a dance move (in a piece she says sym­bol­izes rebirth) shot into the sky, feels an equal weight pulling it back down. Sarah’s con­tra­dic­tions are the begin­ning of such a bal­ance reachieved. How free of evil after all were the Germans before Hitler, is man­kind ever, when it is so read­ily sub­sumed by it? Just as the dan­cers are taught by the old guard that they must be vessels–to serve the cho­reo­graph­er, to give them­selves over to her dic­tates, and, if they are so lucky, to serve as a ves­sel for the Mother–the people of Germany had allowed them­selves to be ves­sels for the dic­tates of the Motherland, and it is this that Sarah rejects and rises above, as Germany finally will. This is not all just a ran­dom mélange of period-contemporary ref­er­ences thrown in for the semb­lance of mean­ing, any more than the Holocaust is sep­ar­ate (per Brody) from these con­cerns, like anoth­er car­rot thrown into the stew. It’s a fairly cohes­ive struc­ture of mean­ing, to the point that for me it rose above sub­text and became the primary point of what is incid­ent­ally a great hor­ror film–ravishingly tex­tured, unset­tling, and deli­ciously audacious.

• Glenn Kenny says:

  December 21, 2018 at 8:09 pm

  Appreciate the care and thought and the con­sid­er­a­tion in post­ing this com­ment. That said…
  1) On the appear­ance of the movie: That’s how it looked when I saw it, in Venice, which pre­sum­ably did a tech check before screen­ing. As I think you prob­ably have inferred, I’m not going to spend money to double-check.
  2) Okay, sure…they said “Volk,” too. I don’t want to go for a dis­respect­ful joan Didion-esque “Oh wow” here, but I’m not per­suaded that this fact indic­ates the film­makers really thought things through, or actu­ally have any con­cern what­so­ever for the themes they’re play­ing with so glibly. To me this film is the work of conviction-free artist­ic and mor­al dilet­tantes, and there’s very likely no way you will con­vince me oth­er­wise. I used to know a guy, a mil­it­ant athe­ist with a bit of a screw loose, who used to say that to speak to him of God, you might as well talk in Klingon. That’s where I’m at as far as this ver­sion of “Suspiria” is concerned.

• Andy says:

  December 21, 2018 at 11:23 pm

  Definitely did not mean to imply you should rewatch a film you did­n’t like for no real reas­on. I was happy to see it again, obvi­ously. And while I’m not sure what (a pos­sible ref­er­ence to some­thing?) “they said ‘Volk’ too” means–that it was just a word thrown around with no deep­er point (clearly I part ways on this point as well)?–I appre­ci­ate your hear­ing me out through such a long bit of explic­a­tion. Did my level best to con­vince, so I am entirely sat­is­fied if I did not. (The only thing I for­got to include is that for me the pro­logue shows the return of beauty to soci­ety that Sarah seems to be cuing in the cli­max.) You may be right that they just threw things togeth­er without thought and I hap­pen to have assembled it in a sat­is­fact­or­ily cohes­ive way–that would be irrel­ev­ant for me in my enjoy­ment of the piece as stan­dalone art, unless I bore the makers some dis­dain or grudge, and I don’t. (No implic­a­tions here either.)
  This was actu­ally a good example of why I rarely go to movies anymore–smaller art theat­ers that show arti­er or for­eign fare have unac­cept­ably janky digit­al projection…I have to watch for inter­est­ing things to show up a few times a year at the few mul­ti­plexes that have more state of the art setups, assum­ing it’s not going to be (argh) let­ter­boxed. Don’t know where Venice stands, but it felt like I was strain­ing to make out an image through the murk at the smal­ler theat­er as well.
  That’s okay, I have oth­er things I should prob­ably be doing with my life, but it’s also like part of me died with celluloid…

• Andy says:

  December 21, 2018 at 11:27 pm

  Oh, I’m an idi­ot. Inferred, not implied. Got it.

• Andy again says:

  December 21, 2018 at 11:46 pm

  (Also, if I may over­stay my wel­come, let me say: I do prefer that a piece of art only muse on or around themes rather than lay out a pre­de­ter­mined road map or mes­sage, and that when this is done well a struc­ture of mean­ing can always be found. I hon­estly don’t get what con­vic­tions or mor­als the film appears to be lack­ing in for so many, but I would rather that than ye old Western Union, not that I assume that is what you are say­ing you would prefer.)

• Andrew Del Monte says:

  December 22, 2018 at 1:19 am

  I think Andy’s break­down of the mean­ing of Suspiria is inter­est­ing and con­vin­cing enough, but it also kind of gets at what made the movie such a down­er exper­i­ence: instead of talk­ing about the scares, we’re hav­ing long dis­cus­sions about com­plic­ated them­at­ics, which may or may not be rel­ev­ant or mean­ing­ful, but cer­tainly don’t enhance the thrill factor what­so­ever. This was the least scary major hor­ror movie I’ve seen… per­haps ever? On a prac­tic­al storytelling level it’s just mind-bogglingly bad. In lieu of a spec­tac­u­lar open­ing ala the ori­gin­al we have a long expos­it­ory scene where CGM explains everything we need to know is hap­pen­ing at the dance stu­dio, and then the situ­ation does­n’t change much for over 2 hours (!!). The only pos­it­ive takeaway for me was that Jessica Harper is still a beau­ti­ful and mov­ing act­ress. Let’s see her in more films.
  I’d be inter­ested in hear­ing your thoughts on author­ship re: The Other Side of the Wind. I remem­ber on the Slate Culture Gabfest Dana Stevens raised some doubts about wheth­er it could even be called “an Orson Welles movie.” It is such an anom­al­ous situ­ation so it would be inter­est­ing to hear someone hash out the ques­tions in an in-depth way. Anyway my take is that most dir­ect­ors don’t edit their films, and OW edited almost half of this one (appar­ently), not to men­tion shot 100% of it, so I don’t see why we can­’t con­sider it “his” movie, with the obvi­ous aster­isk that there are prob­ably things he would have done dif­fer­ently giv­en that he was­n’t alive when it was finished.

• lazarus says:

  December 22, 2018 at 6:26 am

  Andrew: I’m not sure what makes “Wind” less of a Welles film than Ambersons, The Stranger, Touch of Evil, Lady From Shangai, all of which were hacked apart by their respect­ive stu­di­os and wer­en’t Welles-approved cuts. In none of those cases did the ori­gin­al ver­sions sur­vive. At least this new film was com­pleted by his friends and col­lab­or­at­ors who were inter­ested in what he might have wanted and attemp­ted to fol­low his wishes instead of bat­tling against them.
  Glenn: We have a lot of the same titles on our respect­ive top 20s or so (and not just the usu­al sus­pects), and I wanted to thank you for being the one to alert me to Skate Kitchen, which I abso­lutely loved. And it’s nice to see someone else on the pos­it­ive side of the Madeline’s Madeline divide.
  But with all due respect, you might want to seek pro­fes­sion­al help for the unyield­ing Clint Eastwood stan­ning. Frank Borzage is spin­ning in his grave from that association.

• George says:

  December 22, 2018 at 5:18 pm

  I did­n’t see “The 15:17 to Paris” (the first Eastwood movie I’ve delib­er­ately skipped in more than 30 years), but “The Mule” is excel­lent. Grateful to Clint for provid­ing an altern­at­ive to the CGI over­load at the multiplex.
  And I missed the “Suspiria” remake/reimaginig/whatever, so I can­’t get into that debate. The new ver­sion was only show­ing at the loc­al art house, while I saw the ’77 ori­gin­al at a drive-in … in rur­al Tennessee, no less.
  Glenn: You’ve the first crit­ic I’ve come across who did­n’t hail “Eighth Grade” as a masterpiece.

• Redbeard says:

  December 22, 2018 at 6:29 pm

  That settles it, I’m watch­ing ZAMA tonight. Wish I could’ve seen it in a theat­er. Martel’s HEADLESS WOMAN got under my skin, espe­cially Maria Onetto’s freaked-out eyes behind that serene-smile mask. Bravo. I can­’t think of any oth­er lead per­form­ance where the act­or had to register polar oppos­ite expres­sions on their face for most of the movie.

• Andy says:

  December 22, 2018 at 7:36 pm

  As to edit­ing and author­ship in Other Side of the Wind, here are my thoughts from an email after see­ing the movie (leav­ing out my thoughts on the Antonioni-esque por­tion), if that does­n’t count as pre­ten­tiously quot­ing your­self (just being lazy):
  …mostly reminded me of a per­son who is talk­ing loudly and self-consciously in the hopes and assump­tion that everything will be over­heard, because what is being said is so mar­velous. It all felt so staged and artific­al and forced and amateurish–bad, unnat­ur­al line read­ings down to almost a man. Best summed up by the hor­rible shots of the camera-flashing mob repeatedly press­ing for­ward, ill-timed in the edit (inten­tion­ally, one would have to assume) so that you can prac­tic­ally hear the dir­ect­or say action, like a b‑movie where someone is wait­ing on the edge of the frame to sud­denly walk in (look­ing at you, Lady Terminator). I mean, even though that likely was­n’t his edit­ing, you could say that it was all inten­tion­al to match the unap­peal­ing, phony energy and style of the char­ac­ters, but that does­n’t do much for me, cer­tainly does­n’t vault it into some con­tor­tion of mas­ter­piece status…and the thing is vig­or­ously ugly, when it isn’t being exquistitely beautiful.
  I did think it was rather a mar­vel of edting and assembly in terms of the work that must have gone into it. Apart from that one com­plaint I already made, I would take out the Bogdanovich VO at the begin­ning and that’s really it. At least it did­n’t feel pieced togeth­er, it felt like it all had to go togeth­er like that, all though a little too tight and fast per­haps; there is some­thing post-era and overly digital-capability (and the habits it forms) about the relent­less­ness tight­ness of it.

• George says:

  December 22, 2018 at 7:48 pm

  Wish you had included “The Old Man & the Gun.” It’s not very ambi­tious, but I thor­oughly enjoyed it.

• Ed says:

  December 23, 2018 at 12:16 am

  No ‘Won’t You Be My Neighbor?’

• George says:

  December 23, 2018 at 5:36 pm

  Interesting that Redford and Eastwood are likely clos­ing out their act­ing careers play­ing old crim­in­als. “The Mule” and “Old Man & the Gun” would make an inter­est­ing double feature.
  This was a pretty good year for movies.(I liked “Hereditary” and “Windows” more than Glenn did, des­pite their flaws.) The only really bad movies I saw in 2018 were “Mile 22” (one of the worst pieces of dreck I’ve ever seen in a theat­er) and “Ready Player One.”

• George says:

  December 23, 2018 at 6:12 pm

  I meant “Widows,” not “Windows,” of course.

• titch says:

  December 24, 2018 at 2:52 am

  It’s a great list but you for­got Phantom Thread.

• rdmtimp says:

  December 25, 2018 at 11:16 am

  @titch – Phantom Thread was a 2017 release (at least here in the US).
  Or is this a joke that I’m not get­ting (always possible).

• titch says:

  December 26, 2018 at 8:48 am

  Ah – explains why Phantom Thread isn’t there. I won­der what Glenn’s worst movie in 2018 was. He’s plowed through a lot of shit, but these seemed to be in an awful­ness of their own:
  Acts Of Violence
  Father Of The Year
  Future World
  Gotti

• Brian Dauth says:

  January 3, 2019 at 2:16 pm

  Glenn: thanks for a great new key to THE 15:17 FROM PARIS which I liked (I am highly par­tial to Eastwood).
  Re: TOSOTW–the more I have watched it (three times on screen and same on Netflix), the more precise/capacious everything seems–as Andy notes, the dia­logue is aph­or­ist­ic, but then so is the edit­ing and the mise-en-scene. The film strikes me as the third part of a tri­logy begin with CITIZEN KANE, con­tin­ued by OTHELLO and fin­ished with TOSOTW.
  As for THE FAVOURITE, I did not under­stand the appre­ci­ation for women act­ing raunchy in a his­tor­ic­al drama as an advance (and its val­or­iz­a­tion as wit).
  COLD WAR: as bad as the reac­tion­ar­ism was the stale Romanticism—do people really tor­ment them­selves that way and not get over things? Self-destructiveness has nev­er seemed vir­tu­ous to me, but then I have always been more Jose Munoz than Lee Edelman.

• titch says:

  January 7, 2019 at 2:18 am

  Well, waddya know? Gotti is the best So-bad-its-good film for a decade:
  https://www.alternateending.com/2019/01/gotti-2018.html