"Racism is over in America"
the president of an exclusive university states confidently in Dear White
People, "the only people thinking about it are...Mexicans, probably."
Justin Simien's energetic satire is full of sharp dialogue aimed at puncturing
the myth of a post-racial America and starting a real discussion about prejudice,
class and racial identity, and if his rapid-fire approach means he
occasionally misses the target, he also scores a considerable number of direct
hits. The film invites comparison with punchy, provocative energy of Spike Lee's
early work, and while Simien is a stronger writer than director – with some of
his stylistic choices coming off as a little too cute – his script is clearly
the work of an intelligent mind that has a lot to say. The characters are
brought to life by a charismatic young cast and the film builds to an explosive
finale, with a climactic montage of recent photographs showing white Americans
who have worn blackface for parties acting as an instant riposte to anyone who might think it's over the top. Like all good satire, Dear White People
is shocking and outrageous, but only because it so closely reflects reality.
24 - The Babadook (directed by Jennifer Kent)
The Babadook is a horror film about a monster who emerges
from the pages of a children’s book, but that’s not the scariest thing about
it. Jennifer Kent’s stunningly effective debut is about a single mother (Essie
Davis, giving one of the year’s best performances) trying to cope with her
difficult son while sinking deeper into depression and hopelessness, and Kent
understands that this feeling of being lost and trapped in a cycle of despair
is the true horror. The Babadook itself is simply a manifestation of these very
relatable anxieties and this lends a powerful emotional core to this story of a
mother trying to save herself and her son from the encroaching darkness. Even
when the climactic section of the film adheres to more conventional horror
tactics, Kent’s direction is always assured and her film lingers in the
thoughts long after it has ended. You can’t get rid of The Babadook.
The inaccurate English translation of Céline
Sciamma's Bande de filles as Girlhood led some people to make lazy comparisons
with Richard Linklater's Boyhood, but they are very different films. While
Linklater's picture is a more general portrait of growing up, Sciamma's third
film is a specific exploration of growing up as a black teenage girl in an
inner-city environment, and as such it's the kind of film that very few
filmmakers are attempting to make. This is a less perfectly formed picture than Sciamma's marvellous Tomboy, but it is also a more ambitious work and it's a
step forward in terms of the director's visual sense, with the use of colour
and architecture being striking throughout. Sciamma's greatest asset, however,
is the magical touch that she has when working with young, inexperienced
actresses, and that touch is evident here again. Karidja Touré is a wonderful
discovery as the teenager trying to work out who she is, and there's a great
sense of camaraderie among her gang, with Assa Sylla being another standout
performer. I hope we see more of these beautiful and talented young actors,
and I can't wait to see how Sciamma develops further.
The Homesman looks for all the world
like an old-fashioned Western, but Tommy Lee Jones' second feature as a
director quickly takes itself off the beaten path and follows its own wayward
trail. The result is an uneven and sometimes maddening but utterly engrossing
picture that keeps springing surprises, including one narrative leap halfway
through the alters the whole complexion of the film. Jones himself is on
familiar gruff form but he reveals unexpected layers of empathy and emotion as
the film progresses, while Hilary Swank's performance as the spinster
determined to do a job that no man in the town will step forward for is one of
her very best. This is a film about loneliness and madness and the film often seems
to be on the verge of madness itself, with increasingly eccentric scenes and
encounters occurring as the film rambles towards its memorably offbeat final
shot. The Homesman was never a film that was likely to find a wide and
appreciative audience, but I have a feeling that we will look back at this one
in years to come as something of an overlooked classic.
Boldly covering two decades in the
lives of a family in a shade over 90 minutes, Katell Quillévéré doesn't
make things easy for the viewer with her habit of leaping around in time and letting
key moments in the story take place in the ellipses. This tactic can make the
film an infuriating experience at times, particularly in the early stages, but
if you connect with Quillévéré's filmmaking then Suzanne is a spellbinding and devastating
portrait of a family torn apart by a series of bad choices and misfortunes. The
director is confident enough in her storytelling to withhold key information from
the viewer before revealing it later and timing these revelations for maximum
emotional impact, and her judgement in this never wavers. Sara Forestier
handles her demanding central role with great skill, Adèle Haenel is a welcome
presence as her sister, while François Damiens delivers an enormously moving
performance as their father, an ordinary man who simple wants to love and
protect his daughters and whose despair when he fails to do so goes straight to
the heart. Suzanne is a fearless and hugely exciting film from a young director
with a very bright future.
One day after being introduced to the work of Mathew Barney
in the most intense way possible – with an all-day screening of his Cremaster
Cycle – I ventured to the London Coliseum for his latest magnum opus. River of
Fundament is a loose adaptation of Norman Mailer’s “unadaptable” novel Ancient
Evenings and over the course of six hours I saw things that I will surely never
forget, even if I might want to. Norman Mailer’s son (playing his own father)
cuts open a dead cow and crawls inside; a naked pregnant woman removes her
glass eyeball and pushes it into the anus of another; a man is tricked into
eating semen-encrusted lettuce; a woman gives birth to a bird, and Maggie
Gyllenhaal squeezes milk from her breasts. I’ve barely scratched the surface of
the scatological depths that this film reaches, but there is a vivid sense of
beauty here too and Barney’s filmmaking eye has come on leaps and bounds since
his last Cremaster film (I’ve yet to see the Björk-starring Drawing Restraint
9). He stages a number of incredibly ambitious and commanding sequences and the sound
design throughout the film is among the best I have ever experienced, fully
involving us in Barney’s universe. River of Fundament is bewildering, overwhelming
and exhausting but it’s also a sensational experience that leaves a deep mark.
Bruno Dumont’s latest offering was made for French
television, but I saw it in one sitting on the big screen and it definitely
stands out as one of the cinematic highlights of the year. This 197-minute tale of
murder in a small French town looks like familiar territory for Dumont – a study
of good and evil with a cast of untrained actors whose faces look like they
have met the business end of a shovel – but there’s also a new sensation here,
with Li’l Quinquin frequently prompting raucous laughter. Led by a unique,
tic-laden performance by Bernard Pruvost as the detective trying to ascertain
who exactly is murdering people and stuffing their bodies inside cows, the film
blends hilarious, non-sequitous comedy, philosophical explorations of morality and burst
of gruesome violence with a degree of success that I never could have imagined him
pulling off. In truth, I never imagined Bruno Dumont having anything as wildly
entertaining as this in his locker, and it is my favourite film of his by some
distance. Li’l Quinquin would have been higher up this list, but it loses
points for planting the world’s most irritatingly catchy song in my head.
18 - Listen Up Philip (directed by Alex Ross Perry)
A brilliant film about narcissistic writers and the women
who see through them. Listen Up Philip expertly skewers the ego of the Great Male
Novelist with Jason Schwartzman perfectly cast performance as an arrogant, caustic
young writer with and Jonathan Pryce on grand form as a Roth/Mailer-ish veteran
who takes him under his wing. Alex Ross Perry’s screenplay is alive with
acerbic dialogue and he doesn’t hold back when pushing us into uncomfortable
encounters with, the gorgeous 16mm cinematography from Sean Price Williams and
Robert Greene’s skilful editing making every scene feel vivid, anxious and
dynamic. Although this appears to be a study of men, Perry’s real masterstroke
is to hand over a chunk of the narrative to the Elisabeth Moss as Philip’s
long-suffering girlfriend, and to follow her as she tries to free herself from
the shackles of this unedifying relationship. Her performance is a masterclass
in expressing conflicting emotions with subtlety. The omniscient voiceover is a
great touch too, helping the film flow beautifully from one awkward encounter
to the next, with almost every scene locating some truth about artists and
their relationships.
16 - The Duke of Burgundy (directed by Peter Strickland)
14 - Mr. Turner (directed by Mike Leigh)
Mr. Turner is probably my favourite Mike Leigh film since
his last biopic, 1999’s Topsy-Turvy. What distinguishes these films is a sense of period detail that feels lived-in rather than studied, and
performances from his regular ensemble that create characters we can imagine living on beyond the scope of the film. By approaching these subjects through his unique methods,
Leigh avoids the clichés of the film biopic, and instead his portrait of
JMW Turner has a bracing sense of humanity and authenticity. Led by a grand,
finely detailed performance by Timothy Spall, the film gives us snapshots of
Turner’s final two decades, when he produced some of his most daring works and
suffered major upheavals in his personal life. As a character study, Mr. Turner
is inquisitive while being respectful of its subject’s essential contradictions
and mysteries, but Leigh is just as interested in the realities of life as a 19th
century working artist as he is in this particular man, and every scene in the
film has some telling detail that makes us feel like we are looking through a
window on the past. The film is also features the most inspired work yet from Leigh's longtime collaborator Dick Pope, whose use of light recalls the painter's own. The sun is God, indeed.
As I walked away from a screening of Selma and turned on my
phone, the first thing I saw on Twitter was a photograph of the huge crowds gathered
in New York, marching in protest over the murders of unarmed black men by the
American police. Sometimes it’s hard to divorce a film from the context in
which we see it, and there’s no doubt that the current headlines give Selma an
added emotional force, but even without that factor I would have no hesitation
recommending Ava DuVernay’s film. This riveting drama focuses on the Civil
Rights march led by Martin Luther King, Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, and DuVernay
shows excellent judgement throughout. Her depictions of shockingly violent acts
are blistering, her study of the political machinations behind the march is clear
and astute, and her portrait of King and his inner circle is revealing and
intimate. As King, David Oyelowo gives a commanding and soulful performance
that one can’t help but be inspired by, and as the film marches towards its
rousing finale, it becomes clear that this picture about America in 1965 has
much to teach us as we move into 2015.
“To be frank, I think his world had vanished long before he
ever entered it. But, I will say, he certainly sustained the illusion with a
marvellous grace.” Wes Anderson has always been a director out of step with
contemporary fashion and his latest film is one of his most idiosyncratic, and
his best. Like the Like the cakes made by Mendl's that become central to the
plot, this fast-paced, farcical comedy is a multi-layered aesthetic treat,
crafted with the skill and fastidious attention to detail of an artist in
complete control and working at the apex of his powers. The Grand Budapest Hotel is a
film of contradictions; it feels simultaneously modern and embedded in the
past; it is both polite and profane; frenetic but elegant; hilariously funny, but also deeply sad. The film is a lament for an age
of innocence and civility that is about to be washed away by the arrival of a
fascist regime, and for all of the sparkling comedy The Grand Budapest Hotel
contains, it may actually be Anderson's saddest and most subtly humane work. At
its centre is perhaps Anderson’s greatest creation, the inimitable Monsieur
Gustave H., who is played by Ralph Fiennes with a sense of comic timing and élan
that we have never seen in his work before. It’s a revelatory performance, rife
with the year’s finest deliveries, of which “I've never seen her like that before.
She was shaking like a shitting dog” may be my favourite.
10 - Boyhood (directed by Richard Linklater)
Timbuktu is a film with images and moments that are seared
into my memory. A long shot of a man walking away through water as his victim
tries to stumble to his feet; a group of teenage boys playing with an imaginary
football following a ban on ball games; a child running helplessly towards the
camera with no idea what lies ahead in her future. Abderrahmane Sissako’s
stunning film is a portrait of a village under the control of militant Islamists,
and the director finds a beautiful balance between finding humour in the absurdities
and contradictions of their actions and counting the tragic cost as innocent
villagers fall victim to their rule. There’s a lovely musical interlude in which
a group of musicians gather to sing and play together, but that scene is quickly
followed by their shocking punishment; Sissako’s filmmaking is graced with
moments of poetry but his view of the situation is always clear and
unflinching. This is an eye-opening and unforgettable film of great humanity
and profundity, and following the rise of ISIS Timbuktu feels ever more vital.
A notice appears on screen before The
Tribe begins, warning us that the film we are about to watch is told entirely
through sign language and there will be no subtitles or translation offered to
assist us. That might seem like a daunting proposition but The Tribe quickly
grabbed my attention and didn't let go of my nerves until the brutal ending. It
is the story of an adolescent boy who falls in with a gang of criminals and prostitutes,
and the cast of young deaf actors performs with a fearlessness and
expressiveness that is essential to the film's success. I've rarely been part
of such an attentive audience, as we all kept our eyes glued to the screen to
follow every gesture, action and camera movement – our only means of
understanding the narrative. The Tribe is a masterclass in non-verbal
storytelling and a triumph for first-time director Miroslav Slaboshpitsky, who
shoots the film in long, brilliantly orchestrated takes and possesses a potent
ability to create and sustain tension. That level of tension can sometimes make
The Tribe feel suffocating, and I certainly felt dazed and in need of some
fresh air when it was over, but it is undeniably a very special achievement.
I only saw one 3D film this year, but
given that the film I saw was Goodbye to Language I feel that was enough. I
think this is the only film I've ever seen that must be viewed in three
dimensions, or else there is simply no point in watching it. Other filmmakers
have used 3D as an additional effect for films that can just as easily be
enjoyed in 2D, but Jean-Luc Godard uses it as a tool to let us look at cinema
and the world in a whole new way. While 3D – with a handful of exceptions – has
thus far been the toy of blockbuster filmmakers, Godard's low-fi approach
liberates the technique, creating textures and images that are completely new
and producing one shot in particular that drew gasps from the audience I
watched the film with. How often does cinema show you something you've never seen before?
Goodbye to Language is the work of a director who is still determined
to push the medium into new territory, and the whole film is energised by his
enthusiasm, curiosity and playful disregard for what we understand cinema to be.
As ever with Godard, this is a work dense with ideas and allusions that I
couldn't begin to parse on a single viewing, but it also feels like one of his
most accessible and emotional films, and just the thrill of bearing witness to
what feels like the first real 3D movie is an experience that can't be missed. Jean-Luc
Godard turned 84 this year, but this old dog still has new tricks.
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This is Xavier Dolan’s fifth feature, and this absurdly
gifted young filmmaker just keeps on getting better. Mommy is a dazzling
melodrama about a single mother trying to cope with her increasingly violent
teenage son, and no other picture hit me with as many euphoric highs and
devastating lows. Dolan keeps unashamedly chases big moments throughout, and
while that is likely to be a turn-off for many viewers, I found it to be an utterly
exhilarating emotional ride. Dolan’s chosen visual style for the movie, a 1:1
aspect ratio with a lot of close-ups, can take some getting used to, but he
uses it for a purpose, with the borders of the screen widening when the
characters are on the verge of breaking out of their situation before
compressing again when they find themselves back at square one. I fell in love
with Anne Dorval’s lead performance – a beautifully detailed characterisation
that is both extremely funny and heart-wrenchingly empathetic – and the dream
sequence that Dolan comes up with towards the end of the film is a shattering masterstroke that
elevates the picture to true greatness.
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I love the films of Frederick Wiseman
and I love The National Gallery, so my positive response to his latest film National
Gallery is perhaps unsurprising. Nevertheless, I was still taken aback
by just how great this documentary is, and my only regret is that Wiseman falls
an hour short of last year's 244-minute At Berkeley. Like that
film, National Gallery has a heavy focus on education, and as
he tours the building Wiseman keeps landing on scenes of people sharing their
knowledge of art and trying to inspire listeners with their infectious
enthusiasm. We also gain a privileged look behind the scenes, sitting in on
budget meetings (Wiseman has an uncanny knack for finding riveting discussions)
and watching the gallery's restoration team carrying out painstaking work to
touch up ageing masterpieces, with one of the most revelatory moments in the
film being the admission that every cleaning removes all of those restorations,
meaning they have to be done all over again. You couldn't do that if you didn't
love what you do, and throughout National Gallery we meet people
who really love art – people who love viewing it, love preserving it, and love
sharing it with others. The other thing that Wiseman understands so well is
that people-watching is one of the joys of visiting a gallery, and he creates a
wonderful interplay between the images on the wall and the wide variety of
people who look at them every day. National Gallery is
illuminating, inspiring and entrancing, and in its final minutes it achieves a
state of transcendence that elevates it into the top tier of Wiseman's peerless
body of work.
3 - Winter Sleep (directed by Nuri Bilge Ceylan)
4 - Inherent Vice (directed by Paul Thomas Anderson)
Without a shadow of a doubt the funniest film of 2014,
Inherent Vice is also sweet and strange and sad and mysterious. It’s such a
rich feast of a film I can only imagine it revealing more textures and layers
upon repeated viewings, but one experience has already left me with so much to
savour. Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel hooked me
immediately, with the director displaying a peerless command of tone, generating
a drug-fuelled atmosphere of confusion that draws us in and intoxicates us.
There are blissfully funny moments scattered throughout, much of them involving
Joaquin Phoenix’s wonderful range of baffled expressions or slapstick
pratfalls, or Josh Brolin’s note-perfect portrayal of a frustrated right-wing cop,
but this is also a love story, with one sequence following two lovers in the
rain being one of the most beautiful and poignant moments that this great
filmmaker has captured. I haven’t fallen so completely for a Paul Thomas
Anderson film like this since Magnolia, and I can’t wait to dive back into
Inherent Vice as soon as possible.
Although it has its roots in short stories by Chekov, Winter
Sleep feels novelistic in its scope and sense of detail. The film is a study of
relationships, responsibilities, pride, good intentions and characters who are
trapped together and forced into petty battles. Much of it consists of long,
discursive conversations, and while the idea of a 196-minute picture driven by
endless talk may sound off-putting, I found the dialogue written by Nuri Bilge
Ceylan and his wife Ebru to be totally fascinating in the way it reveals character
and motivations, and touches on a wide variety of themes. The centrepiece of
the film is an argument between hotelier and self-styled intellectual Aydin (Haluk
Bilginer) and his younger wife Nihal (Melisa Sözen), which is a stunning feat of
needling passive-aggression and is performed with incredible skill and
emotional dexterity by the two actors. Winter Sleep is as visually splendid as
we have come to expect from Ceylan, with interiors bathed in golden light and
the spectacular Anatolian landscape providing a naturally breathtaking space for him to work in, but what really stands out is how the director uses the
vast canvas at his disposal to create such a finely tuned and intimate character study. Winter
Sleep is a staggering achievement.
I must have burst into tears about
half-a-dozen times during The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. Sometimes it was the
devastating Mizoguchi-like emotional impact of the film’s story that got
to me, but often it was simply the sheer heart-stopping beauty of Isao
Takahata’s film. Adapted from an ancient Japanese fable, the film has a
suitably timeless feel thanks to the use of charcoal and watercolour animation,
through which Takahata and his team of animators have produced one of the most
visually ravishing films I have ever seen. The deftness of the brushstrokes and
line drawings makes every frame of the film feel alive, and they conjure
wondrous images that can make your heart swell or shatter into pieces, often
simultaneously. The narrative is blessed with fantastic flights of the imagination but at it score it is a vivid and powerful cautionary tale about the importance of living a life that makes us happy rather than the life we feel we should live, because it's all over so fast. In the same year that Hayao Miyazaki directed his own swansong
with the wonderful The Wind Rises, this picture truly does mark the end of an
era as the final animated feature to emerge from Studio Ghibli. The Tale of the
Princess Kaguya is a stunning way for these great artists to say goodbye, and a
timely reminder of the magic that we risk losing if we let the craft of hand-drawn
animation become only a memory.
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Jonathan Glazer's
extraordinary and singular Under the Skin blends footage shot covertly on the
streets of Glasgow with vivid, nightmarish sights and sounds to create a wholly
original and deeply unsettling experience. It is a film about being an alien in
a human world, or being a woman in a man's world, and Scarlett Johansson's work
as the film's enigmatic protagonist constitutes the year's most imaginative use
of an actor's star quality. She is an alien creature herself on these dark
Glasgow streets, and her the image of men slowly walking towards this beguiling
creature, literally led by their erections, is just one of its myriad potent
and indelible images. Thinking about what happens to these men when they have
become trapped in the alien’s web still give me chills, as does the horrible scene
involving a baby on a windswept beach, but this is a film that also has moments
of humour and tenderness to offset its terrifying implications. Watching a
film like this and seeing a hugely talented filmmaker strive for something genuinely
new is a totally exhilarating experience, and Under the Skin isn’t just a film that
works upon first exposure. Re-watching the film, it only seems richer, stranger,
scarier, more intriguing and more human. It’s an extraordinary work of art and Under the Skin is
a most apt title for such a haunting picture. Once it has seduced you into its
dark world, there is no escaping it.