Last of the best of last year

Resuming my tardy quest for the best films of 2018, I start with Xavier Beauvois’ The Guardians (MC-81, AMZ), a film I would have been happy to program in support of a Millet or Pissarro exhibition at the Clark, for its portrait of rural labor in pre-industrial France.  The film cycles through the years of World War I, as the women take over the title role of maintaining a family farm, while all the capable men are away at the front.  And what women they are!  Nathalie Baye is the matriarch (I’ve admired her since she played the script girl in Truffaut’s Day for Night) and her daughter in reel as well as real life is Laura Smet (they did an excellent episode of Call My Agent together), but the revelation is Iris Bry, who had her career in library science derailed when she was recruited to play the role of the luminous red-haired orphan who is reluctantly hired as help on the farm, much to the benefit of both agriculture and cinema.  Painterly is the inevitable description of the film, and for some it may seem like watching paint dry, but for me it was rich and involving, worthy of comparison to one of my all-time favorite films, Tree of Wooden Clogs.

What does it all mean?  Hard to say, but Burning (MC-90, NFX) makes the question fascinating, and has the patience not to offer an answer.  Until a divisive ending, that is, which separates those who find Chang-dong Lee’s film great, from those who find it only very good indeed.  I was not aware of the source material, a Murakami story out of Faulkner, and was not familiar with the actors, and did not know what I was in for, with this high-rated film.  But I loved it for much of its somewhat-excessive length, just taking in the observant empathy of the Korean writer-director of Secret Sunshine and Poetry, sociologically as well as psychologically acute.  A captivating young woman, sensual and spiritual; a would-be writer consigned to working his family farm; a mysterious Porsche-driving tech entrepreneur.  These three people connect in a way that is anything but a conventional triangle.  Who is leading whom on?  To what end?  Sit tight, and watch. 

You won’t find Juliet, Naked (MC-67, Hulu) on any “Best of 2018” lists, not even mine, but I really enjoyed it.  It’s not easy to find a rom-com that doesn’t insult your intelligence, so this adaptation of a Nick Hornby novel stands out, most particularly for the performances of Rose Byrne, Ethan Hawke and Chris O’Dowd.  If you enjoyed High Fidelity and/or About a Boy, this is definitely worth a look.  O’Dowd is the fanatical mega-fan of the vanished singer-songwriter played by Hawke; Byrne is disenchanted with her long-time partner and his obsession, but happens into an epistolary relationship with the elusive hero.  Jesse Peretz directs in workmanlike fashion, but many hands make for a script of literate froth, and the three stars are at their most appealing and convincing, which is delightful.

On the other hand, I found Robert Redford’s swan song in The Old Man and the Gun (MC-80, HBO) to be pretty disappointing all round.  I’m no fan of writer/director David Lowery, whose work I generally find oblique and empty.  I didn’t object to the “way we were” retrospect on Redford’s career, and welcomed the presence of Sissy Spacek, and even Casey Affleck, but never felt there was anything interesting going on here, either emotionally or visually.

That was the first DVD I’d watched in almost a year, having gone exclusively to streaming, but I happened upon it at the local library, and also few other films that haven’t reached any of my streaming channels yet.  I thought that The Favourite (MC-90, HBO) might figure among my favorites, but no way!  There is much to admire in the film, but director Yorgos Lanthimos will never be on my wavelength; his sensibility seems antithetical to mine, with his general misanthropy and disdain for historical accuracy, along with tendencies that go beyond quirky to downright annoying, such as use of fish-eye lenses and deliberately aggravating music.  Still, Olivia Colman has been justly praised for her portrayal of sickly Queen Anne, Rachel Weisz is quasi-regal as the Duchess of Marlborough, and though miscast, Emma Stone has moments as the ambitious young woman who supplants the Duchess as the Queen’s favorite.  Turning the political struggle into a lesbian triangle (and inferior to Gentleman Jack at that), and dotting the screenplay with anachronistic language and actions, detracts from the overall excellence of the production design.  Having just returned from those haunts, I was prepared to love a film that begins with the Queen giving the Duchess the present of Blenheim Palace, and then has parliamentary scenes shot in the Convocation House and Divinity School of Oxford’s Bodleian Library, but in the end the film neither moved nor tickled me.

On the other hand, I had few expectations for First Man (MC-86, HBO), but was won over by Ryan Gosling’s subdued portrayal of astronaut Neil Armstrong, and I always admire Claire Foy, who plays his wife.  Director Damien Chazelle follows up La La Land with another impressive technical achievement, which still seems somewhat superfluous after The Right Stuff and Apollo 13, not to mention Gravity.  The film does put you convincingly in the driver’s seat of Gemini and Apollo capsules, and recapitulates the history of the space program with an array of familiar faces in supporting roles, and impeccable special effects.  But still, the only scene that truly grabbed me was a kitchen-table encounter the night before the moon mission, when Armstrong is forced by his wife to have a (farewell?) talk with his two young sons.  As a whole, the film is watchable, but not unmissable.

The last and least likely “Best Picture” nominee was Bohemian Rhapsody (MC-49, HBO), which I watched in spite of the reviews, and was not sorry to do so.  I’m nothing like a fan of Freddie Mercury, though I have a passing acquaintance with some of Queen’s ear-worms, but the novelty made this standardized music biopic more interesting than I expected.  Rami Malek creates much of the interest, onstage and backstage, suggesting the performer’s magnetism.  But overall, acting and production values were good, even if the whole thing was more predictable than penetrating.  So the film’s climax did lead me to YouTube for footage of actual Live Aid concert, to confirm how closely the movie recreates the event, which in turn made me realize that a good documentary might have been more satisfying.  (I think, in particular, of docs on Leonard Cohen and Tom Petty that drew me much deeper into their music than I’d been before.)

Free Solo (MC-83, Hulu) was certainly a worthy Oscar winner for documentary feature.  I expected spectacular and vertiginous cinematography of mountain-climbing in Yosemite, but was surprised by the depth and intimacy of character portrayal in this film.  Free solo climber Alex Honnold granted the filmmakers access not just to his exploits but to his psyche.  No film could really explain why he does what he does, ascending sheer walls of stone like El Capitan, alone without any ropes or other margin for error, but this one digs deeper and climbs higher than I could have imagined.  With nary a misstep, thankfully.  Alex may be nuts, but you have to appreciate the majesty of his quest, and the quirky approachability of his personality.  I took the film as a direct rebuttal to myrecent essay propounding a “philosophy of radical ease.”  Alex is rad for sure, but his whole life is a flight from the easy approach to existence.

This time around it wasn’t a scandal when the latest Frederick Wiseman film wasn’t nominated for the Best Documentary Oscar.  Monrovia, Indiana (MC-77, PBS) is middling Wiseman, not in his top 10, or even top 25 probably, but that still makes it one of the most interesting films of the year.  Candidly, his films can be boring to watch – in this case, a high school teacher lecturing his indifferent students on the school’s legacy of basketball supremacy, a Masonic ritual, a Lions Club meeting about donating a bench to the public library, a town council meeting on fire hydrants, old men at the diner discussing their ailments, hairdressing, pizzamaking, tattooing, not to mention the everyday business of taking cows and pigs and corn to market – but through selection, sequencing, and duration, the scenes become indelible, so that connections and meanings emerge in reflection after viewing.  Even settings that seem ripe for incisive commentary or satire – a gun shop, an auction of farm equipment, a sad street fair, a wedding, a funeral – are presented in extended deadpan.  The choice of subject matter after the 2016 election suggests that we will be examining the mindset of Trump-Pence voters, and indeed we are, but their names are never mentioned.  Cumulatively fascinating on its own, this film grows more complicated and expressive in juxtaposition to all of Wiseman’s other films.  Seen in comparison to Belfast, Maine or In Jackson Heights, for example, it takes on added dimension in an overall survey of the institutions of modern American life.

Sally Potter’s The Party (MC-73, Hulu) is a black & white chamber piece for seven woodwinds, excellent instrumentalists all:  Kristin Scott Thomas, Patricia Clarkson, Timothy Spall, Cillian Murphy, Bruno Ganz, Cherry Jones, and Emily Mortimer.  KST is not just hostess of the party, but a leader of the British opposition party, just named Shadow Minister of Health, I gather.  The guests are a mix of political operatives and intellectuals, ostensibly friends but very prickly ones, with one wild card in the mix and the missing eighth guest becoming the crux of the matter.  With a stagey mix of melodrama and brittle comedy, the film covers some ground and uncovers some backstory, but at 71 minutes does not overstay its welcome.

For me Widows (MC-84, HBO) was an afterthought, in more ways than one.  Steve McQueen follows his award-winning 12 Years a Slave with this heist film, meant to be crowd-pleasing but thought-provoking, but falling between two stools.  I am less than thrilled with the thriller genre, and this film’s feminist and political overtones do not overcome my lack of interest, despite star power and filmmaking facility.  Viola Davis leads a group of four struggling women, finding a way to make it on their own.  Liam Neeson is her criminal husband, who disappears with the other husbands, one of many well-portrayed bad men, on both sides of the law.  So the women are forced to make a final score on their own, to get out of the hole their men have dug for them.  The result is more serious than it needs to be, but thereby less convincing than it ought to be, more defeated by genre than elevated above it.

Speaking of genre films that manage to achieve some cultural cachet, I was finally inclined to give the cross-cultural rom-com Crazy Rich Asians (MC-74, HBO) a chance, and I didn’t dislike it as much as I probably should have, “lifestyles of the rich and famous” blah-blah-blah.  But the actors were appealing, the Singapore travelogue was spectacular, the direction nimble and the writing not an embarrassment.  Beyond fulfilling the time-honored (and –dishonored) demands of the genre, the mostly-English-language film is an effective showcase for a disparate group of Asian actors and actresses.

Once I give Roma a second look, and maybe track down a few additional highly-acclaimed titles, I’ll recap my favorites of 2018, but The Hate U Give (MC-81, HBO) will make my best-of list, and I’m happy to close out this post with a strong recommendation.  Adapted from a bestselling YA novel with an intelligent script, and effective direction from George Tillman Jr., plus a standout supporting cast, this film is centered by the transcendent performance of Amandla Stenberg in the lead role.  She’s a 16-year-old living a divided, code-shifting life, coming from a rough neighborhood but attending an overwhelmingly white prep school.  The film starts off as a biracial, bicultural teen romance, but soon expands into a serious portrayal of the roots and reasons of the Black Lives Matter movement.  It could have gone wrong in so many ways, but threads the needle of an entertainment with a serious purpose, without pandering or special pleading.  And Ms. Stenberg is a lovely revelation – we can expect great things from her.