Let the glorious idiosyncrasies begin!
New York magazine’s David Edelstein throws down the gauntlet, or something. (in alphabetical order):
The Adventures of Tintin
Beginners
Melancholy and madcap, Mike Mills’s inventive weave of past and present ushers you into the mind of its hero (a superb Ewan McGregor) as he agonizes over his emotional inheritance. As the dad who comes out of the closet at 75, Christopher Plummer is light and lithe, buoyed by his new life among the boys.
Coriolanus
Ralph Fiennes stars and directs from John Logan’s canny script. Not definitive, but taut, brutal, and unsettling—Shakespeare’s surly warrior by way of The Hurt Locker.
The Descendants
Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life
Hell and Back Again
Into the Abyss
Werner Herzog’s second documentary of the year earns its comparison to In Cold Blood, depicting a sick, tragic ecosystem of senseless crime and uncomprehending capital punishment. In Texas, natch.
Margin Call
The view from the one percent, a lacerating business melodrama in which the bad guys win. With Kevin Spacey’s best performance in years and stellar work by Jeremy Irons, Zachary Quinto, Paul Bettany, Stanley Tucci, and even Demi Moore.
Mysteries of Lisbon
Raúl Ruiz’s final film (he died two weeks after its U.S. release) is a Dickensian epic with a dash of magic realism. You study it like a series of paintings—then realize, with a gasp, that it has hold of you like a fever dream.
War Horse
Steven Spielberg’s World War I epic, which follows a horse from rural England to the bloody battlefields of Europe, is sometimes cornball and too self-consciously mythic, but his complex humanism—his view of men at their worst and best—shines through. It’s grim yet thrilling.
“it’s not an ecosystem you can embrace…”
I don’t think there is anyone that would embrace it – just understand/sympathise with it.
Mental and physical health is all we have, he’s addressing his personal problems cathartically through film.
I’m glad there are filmmakers out there that can capture inner emotions on film and are not afraid to expose themselves to the world.
I can understand if you didn’t like it, but specifically singling it out as being nihilist and therefore unworthy is missing the point.
Joseph: The cynical explanation is that it’s a cheap way to give documentary-like immediacy and also allows him to get in the actors’ faces if need be. He did this to great (horrible) effect in Antichrist. The more generous explanation is that allows the actors a certain amount of freedom to go where their feelings lead them and his camera is loose enough to follow. (He controls the action by putting them in the foulest and most vulnerable moods possible.) Jonathan Demme took that approach in Rachel Getting Married to the extent that he had a couple of cameras and set up a wedding and shot for hours as if it were a doc but there is a world of difference between Demme’s humanism and von Trier’s nihilism. I know there are people (especially on the film festival circuit) who regard that humanism with as much disdain as I regard von Trier’s nihilism. Different strokes… or in the case of von Trier cat-o’-nine-tail lashes.
For what it’s worth, I think Margin Call would make for a great double feature — comparing and contrasting the attitudes of different decades — with Robert Wise’s Executive Suite (1954).
David, perhaps you can answer this question: what is the appeal/purpose of the shaky-zoomy hand-held camera that von Trier so loves? I took my mother and a friend to see Melancholia and all three of us hated the film, starting with that photographic device — mom had to cover her eyes because she almost threw up, my friend got a headache and I found it very alienating, taking me AWAY from the story and OUT of the film. Except for the first 10 minutes and the last 2 minutes, the movie was just a blur to me.
Thank you, Dareh. Triumph is a lazy comparison, you are right. Obviously I am conflicted or would not have presented my choices as I did. The better question is indeed whether von Trier earns his nihilism. He gives us a world in which marriage is portrayed as a farce, the nuclear family as radioactive, and capitalism a force for evil. If you’ll pardon my lit lingo, the world has become an objective correlative for von Trier’s poisoned inner life and his depression (given planetary form) a means of annihilating it. It’s not an ecosystem I can embrace, although I recognize its power and gave the film a very strong review. I’m in the frigging ads, for crying out loud.
@ David Edelstein
I agree that we should reckon with a film’s ideas, but your example of Triumph of the Will does not see like an apt comparison. That film is justifying political ideals that destroyed people. Melancholia is Trier visualizing something many people deal with daily and have no control over it. It may have narratively been about the world ending, which could be seen as a problematic narrative with how he presented it. Yet, it was more the end of the world representing Trier’s own depression, which is very much a topic and feeling that deserves and has been given an artistic treatment. For me, it is the difference between the mass and the personal, or rather the state and the individual. A film’s politics may undermine declaring it the best film of the year because it is saying something that may validate something deplorable (like Triumph or, for me, Trier’s last film, Antichrist). A film should not be discounted because it deals with emotions and experience that are difficult, troubling, or nihilistic.
However, if you left off Melancholia because you did not think it earned this nihilism, then that is a valid critical point. Though that raises the question of why even add that comment at the end?
A final note, you are spot on about melodrama. It is something that I am constantly trying to get my students to understand and you describe really well here.
No gauntlet was meant to be thrown down. I was asked for a ten-best list by my magazine, rather early, and provided one based on what I liked this year. No provocation. I didn’t even intend to be provocative with Melancholia but welcome debate. I agree that the only requirement of an artist is to tell the truth however he or she sees it, but when we endorse movies, are we not supposed to take into account the artist’s worldview? Would you simply put Triumph of the Will atop your own ten best list without reckoning with its ideas? And maybe down deep I don’t think Melancholia, however brilliantly realized, fully earned its nihilism. As for those who invoke Rotten Tomatoes scores, what can I say? That’s not a criterion of value that has any meaning in this context. And melodrama is not a slur. Margin Call is a melodrama and so is Tintin. It was originally just what it sounds like, a drama with the addition of constant music so you could cheer the hero and hiss the villain. Melodrama has become more morally complicated as film genres have evolved but to me the term still means there are clear demarcations between good and evil and a fast, pulpy, but not necessarily vulgar technique. Anyway, sorry to have interrupted the abuse.
^ ^
That’s a major problem with reviewing these days. People automatically equate “melodrama” with “bad” or “over-the-top”. Many of the best films ever made were melodramas: Casablanca, Touch of Evil, Brief Encounter, etc. Even last year’s Black Swan was obviously a melodrama. Simply being a melodrama by genre is descriptive and not critical. Being OVERmelodramatic, on the other hand, can be a problem.
Finally someone admits that the overrated “Margin Call” is melodrama.
Yay for “Coriolanus” and boo for “War Horse.”
^
that’s right. admits Margin Call is overrated by naming it one of the best movies of the year.
edelstein often has gaps in his taste level.
‘gainsbourg: a heroic life’ is a horrid mess of a film. the descendants is highly overrated by so many critics i can’t quite make sense of it. it’s a good film, not great. it often plays like a sitcom, “a very special episode of the descendants’. even more like a sitcom in the fact that i don’t think i laughed once. clooney is very good, but no other character is fleshed out.
finally, ‘war horse’. ugh. i guess i should see it, but it just looks like sappy melodrama.
I miss Peter Rainer who used to review for NY Magazine. I find Edelstein an erratic reviewer.
Well I guess that’s where there gray area between whether or not critic’s lists are a reflection of what they consider the best films of the year or just their personal favorites.
@Scott
True. Guess it depends on one’s definition of “best”. Ebert raved about Shame, but said he wouldn’t sit through it again – it will be interesting to see if he includes it in his “best” list (I’m guessing he might). I haven’t seen it yet, but Tyrannosaur might fall into the same category. Personally, if a film is that well-made and effective, it should get the same kudos as some of the well-made happy pills out there. To acknowledge that something is a masterpiece doesn’t mean you endorse the message or even have to see it again.
Actually I think I understand quite well Steve50. There’s a number of films that I think are really quite the masterpiece but hard to place on a list of my favorites because of how they make me feel. For instance Oliver Stone’s Platoon. (comes to mind right now cause I just saw a Vietnam war play The Things They Carry)
Yay – Tintin – my fave of the year!
Props to Edelstein 😛
Yegods, like Spielberg much?
Have to question a critic who notes that even though a film is a “masterly job” (Melancholia), it’s not on the list because he didn’t like the way it made him feel. That approach explains some other omissions. It’s like saying, “it was perfect in presenting its message, but it gave me cramps, so I left it off the list.”
It’s funny that he excluded Melancholia cause looking through the ratings assigned to the films he picked that seems to be the only with with a 100 on Metacritic, lol.
I strongly agree with Daren on Melancholia! Well put. And besides, I find Melancholia, exactly that, life-affirming.
I agree with you Daren on Melancholia.
That’s weird. Numbering a list and then they’re not supposed to be in order. It’s really negative too for a top ten list. Maybe he hated everything this year and that was the best ten he could scrape together. For example, it’s on the list, but it reads like he doesn’t even like The Descendants or Payne for that matter.
Ryan, you should specify that the list is in alphabetical order.
thanks, denby’s people.
will do.
The only thing I will say about Edelstein’s list is his comment at the end:
“Missing is Melancholia. Lars von Trier has done a masterly job of evoking onscreen his nihilistic worldview. But how can you champion a film that is, in the end, so loathsomely anti-life-affirming?”
I find this comment makes his whole list ridiculous and unnecessary, film is about life, not its affirmation. To only show depression in its recovery and not its consumption is disingenuous and, for me, undermines the whole point of art. For him to say it is either a cheap copout, a pointless flourish, or a dismissal of dark, pessimistic film. Either way, I do not respect him for it. Though I am happy to see Beginners here, what an amazing film.
That’s an impressively eclectic list.