Film award wrap-up for 2022

Now that the Oscars have been handed out, I return to finish my survey of 2022’s award-worthy films (see here for my comments on the most-celebrated Everything Everywhere All at Once and other notables).
 
Given the people involved, I was highly disposed toward Women Talking (MC-79, AMZ).  Sarah Polley is one of my favorite active directors (Away from Her, Stories We Tell) and with this film she took the screenwriting Oscar for adapting Miriam Toews’ novel of the same name.  Jessie Buckley and Claire Foy are two actresses I will always watch, and here are even exceeded by Rooney Mara.  The inestimable Frances McDormand produces and contributes a cameo.  Ben Whishaw honorably represents the lone male in the cast, a sympathetic school teacher taking minutes, as the oppressed and illiterate women of an isolated religious community respond to the depredations of the dominant males. They gather to decide whether to leave en masse or stay and fight for liberation.  This deeply wrenching but beautifully made film, based on an extreme and even freakish case, pairs nicely with She Said as an indictment of the malign power of male sexual violence against women.  The film’s constrained circumstance and colorless palette reflect the women’s lives, but so does the subdued beauty and poise of the portrayals.
 
Jerzy Skolimowski’s EO (MC-85, CC) is a beautifully-rendered donkey’s-eye-view of the world, wild with magic and mystery, intimate with fur and flesh, visually dazzling and emotionally resonant.  Part lovely nature documentary, part grim fable of animals in a human world, this film may not satisfy every taste, but I definitely vibrated to its wavelength.  Criterion offers the streaming premiere, and a retrospective of Skolimowski films.  (I was not re-engaged by Deep End, though it was oh-so-1968.)
 
Argentina 1985 (MC-78, AMZ) garnered a number of awards and nominations, and it was a history lesson that I appreciated (especially now that the U.S. itself is under threat of an authoritarian coup), as an elected government puts on public trial the leaders of the military junta that had ruled with an iron fist over the previous decade, with thousands tortured and “disappeared.”  Ricardo Darin is excellent as the real-life reluctant prosecutor, who is hung out to dry professionally, and has to rely on a young law professor and a bunch of students to build the case by interviewing hundreds of witnesses, and selecting the most compelling to offer courtroom testimony.  Santiago Mitre’s film is an effective legal drama, with a wider frame of reference than whodunit? - a modern-day Judgment at Nuremburg in holding the powerful to account.
 
Worlds away from what I would typically watch, I gave Top Gun: Maverick (MC-78, AMZ) a chance based on award nominations and top ten selections.  Wow, what a piece of crap!  It lacks any of the things that lure me to films, except the pleasure of laughing at its formulaic predictability, strictly by the numbers.  A routine Tom Cruise vehicle, written by committee, souped up to Mach 10, though supported by a decent cast and competent direction.  More effective as a video game simulation than as any sort of human drama.  Like the Reagan-era original, it’s one big recruiting ad for the Air Force, without a shred of political context or any unexpected turns of character.  This film seemed especially egregious to me after having recently watched Twelve O’Clock High, a 1948 film that was less jingoistic and infinitely more realistic and truthful about the stresses of aerial bombing runs.
 
Decision to Leave (MC-84, Mubi) is one of those films that demands a second viewing, but nonetheless is dazzling at first look, prismatic shards of narrative pieced together in an artfully-composed mosaic.  Chan-Wook Park’s romantic thriller could be construed as Basic Instinct meets Vertigo, but is very much his own thing.  In fact, it’s pretty hard to construe at all for much of its length, but it’s a virtuoso performance all round, from acting to cinematography to editing to settings to turnabouts of plot and character.  An insomniac Korean detective develops an obsession with a beautiful Chinese woman who’s suspected of murdering her Korean husband.  And the story spins off from that, in whirlpools of mystery and deception, into which the viewer feels compelled to dive and lose all sense of direction.  I may have more to say on second look, but I was certainly led into this film more deeply than I expected.  (Could have used Pachinko's innovation of subtitling in different colors for different languages.)
 
No Bears (MC-92, CC) is intelligent, layered, and filled with humanity, as expected of the great Iranian director Jafar Panahi, who has spent more than a decade in prison or under house arrest, banned from making films or leaving Iran, but nonetheless making four internationally-acclaimed films.  Like his son’s similarly excellent Hit the Road (reviewed here), this was filmed at the highly-fraught Turkish border, where people-smuggling is a major business.  Of necessity, the father continues to star in his own films, in a blend of person and persona.  Here he is directing a film, by laptop through a remote and inconstant connection, set in a town just over the uncrossable border.  Two storylines interweave: the film within the film depicting a couple of Iranian exiles trying to make their way to Europe; and Panahi’s encounters with the folk of a small nearby village where he is hiding out, part ethnographic study, part self-satire.  To appreciate this film it helps to have familiarity with the interrelated world of Iranian neorealism, where films and directors are in conversation with each other, and also helps if you’re patient with uncertainty and open to different ways of being and seeing.  It may seem random as it proceeds, but all fits together in the end.

 

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris (MC-70, AMZ) is a film I never would have watched without the presence of Lesley Manville, and she is predictably great in a so-so movie, about an English house cleaner and widow who dreams of owning a Dior gown.  It’s a silly 1950s fantasy, as preposterous as Mary Poppins, but Ms. Manville somehow grounds it in psychological reality.  A flimsy contrivance, but not badly made overall, with the oddity of Isabelle Huppert playing essentially the role that Manville herself played in Phantom Thread, plus a sly allusion to her role as Princess Margaret in The Crown, two more substantial productions.

You’re kidding me, right?  The Fabelmans (MC-84, dvd) is one of the best films of the year?  What a sad year 2022 must have been in film.  The novelty here was Steven Spielberg telling his own story in more direct form than he’s been telling in films from E.T. on.  But in terms of introspection, he’s no Truffaut or Bergman, and he’s mining no great material here in writing his own touched-up script, instead of oh, say Lincoln’s.  Spielberg has made some pretty great films, but also some real stinkers, based on the material he’s working with.  He’s a technician, not a visionary.  Or to see it through his eyes, more like his electrical engineer father (Paul Dano) than his ethereal artistic mother (Michelle Williams, in one of her least natural performances).  But instead of looking through the lens of personal insight, he sees his life through the lens of Hollywood movies before his, looking for a smooth surface rather than hidden depth.  Instead of increasing authenticity, he relies even more than usual on phony sentiment.  Though a lot of people see it differently, I kind of resent Spielberg taking up two and a half hours of my time with his movie-fed, movie-fied memories.  I’d be gentler if the film were an hour shorter, tighter, and/or more profound.
 
In compiling my lists of the best films and the best television of 2022, I couldn’t help but notice a disparity in my enthusiasm.  I couldn’t contain my TV list to ten, while struggling to find ten new films I was really excited about.  But I can offer my provisional best of the year list, in reference to Metacritic’s tabulation of hundreds of critics’ top ten lists, yielding an overall Top 30.  In my list, I append the general Metacritic rating for reference to their informative annual ranking.  I’m still tracking down a number of films as they arrive on streaming channels, and will continue to add reviews to this compilation. 
 
These are the leaders in the clubhouse, so to speak, with some likely competitors still unseen:  Tár (92), Happening (86), Women Talking (79), Everything Everywhere All at One (81), Hit the Road (90), No Bears (92), EO (85), The Banshees of Inisherin (87).  Still to be seen, expected to make list: Aftersun (95), The Quiet Girl (89), One Fine Morning (85).