MOVIES
For my number one I chose Certified Copy, by the great Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami. It tells of a middle-aged English author played by William Shimell, in Italy to promote a book saying that copies are really just as good as the original, since what matters is the perception of the work by the viewer. He meets a woman played by Juliette Binoche who challenges his ideas very aggressively. As the day goes on, walking together through a village, they start to play a game of pretend that they are married or have been married. Or is it a game? The dynamics of pairing this fierce woman with this rather dry intellectual, intertwined with the subtle themes of falsehood and copies, is strangely moving. Certified Copy cleverly and quite beautifully explores the gray area between truth and illusion, reality and fantasy. It's a perfect little jewel of a film.
My number two is The Tree of Life, Terrence Malick's lyrical meditation on faith. He composes a film like music, with the individual shots, often very brief, flowing after one another like notes in a symphony. Here a family in Texas in the 50s becomes a microcosm of the primal drama. In one stupendous sequence, Malick takes us from the birth of the universe itself to the emergence of life, as a way of contrasting the immensity of creation with the feeble human ideas about god. The rest of the film focuses on the eldest son, whose struggle with his father parallels the fall from paradise. This is Malick's most personal film, a kind of summing up of all his concerns, and it is intensely beautiful and rich.
My number three is Melancholia, in which Danish director Lars von Trier combines the themes of severe depression and world apocalypse. Kirsten Dunst plays a chronically depressed newlywed who is unable to keep up the façade of being normal at her wedding reception, causing a debacle of which her family members are the reluctant witnesses. The second half focuses on her sister Claire, played by Charlotte Gainsbourg, and a kind of sci-fi allegory in which a previously unknown planet is heading for a possible collision with earth. Surprisingly, it is the "crazy" depressed sister who has the strength to face the end, while her in-laws' conventional optimistic way of coping crumble. As always with von Trier, the experience is raw, difficult and messy, but it's also profound and forceful in a way that even the usual well-made film can't even touch.
Number four is Martha Marcy May Marlene, the first feature from director Sean Durkin, about a young woman who has escaped from a seductive and abusive cult to take refuge with her sister. Past and present merge in a dream-like tapestry and we gradually realize that Martha has been traumatized to the point of being split off from her former self. The intensely felt threat of being engulfed by the power of a group, and the furtive mistrust of everything, including one's own mind, makes for a greater sense of horror than any monster or slasher film could hope to achieve.
I've posted my entire top 10 below, and I wish you all a great movie-going 2012.
1. Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami).
2. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick).
3. Melancholia (Lars von Trier).
4. Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sean Durkin).
5. Project Nim (James Marsh).
6. Le Havre (Aki Kaurismäki).
7. Meek's Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt).
8. The Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975
(Göran Olsson).
9. Monogamy (Dana Adam Shapiro).
10. The Time That Remains (Elia Suleiman).
© Copyright 2012, KXCI
