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SPECIAL RECOGNITION:
The Decalogue
It would feel strange...calling a 1989 Polish television mini-series my favorite movie of
2000. But it wasn't until this year that these films were shown in U.S. theaters and
arrived on video. So I begin list of Year 2000 favorites by giving this series a
special mention.
Words like "masterpiece" get thrown around a lot.
But when one of the world's most brilliant film directors, Krzysztof Kieslowski (Three
Colors: Blue, The Double Life of Veronique) decided to make ten films, one for each
of the ten commandments, what he achieved has been called the greatest achievement in film
since Citizen Kane. Kieslowski was determined set out to avoid religiosity
and moralizing. Instead, he treated each commandment as a mystery to explore.
Each one of these strange stories follows the life of a
particular tenant in a large apartment building. Their lives wander in different
directions, but occasionally they cross paths with a polite greeting, or perhaps something
more significant. The effect is to show us just how these timeless truths are going
on in the lives of everyone around us at all times; that the world is full of stories that
are as deep as you care to dig.
The Decalogue will keep audiences busy discussing the
commandments, the characters, the central dilemmas, and the sometimes baffling resolutions
for decades to come. I don't like to use these worn out adjectives on movies, but it
is true on the whole that The Decalogue is profound, monumental...a masterpiece.
Nothing released this year comes even close.
And now, my favorite
movies of the year 2000.
Code Unknown -
Click here
for review. (added to this list in 2003)
Yi Yi (A One and
a Two)
It is like
"Magnolia" directed by Kieslowski... a richly observant, patient epic about a
Taiwanese family. A dozen stories weave into and out of each other without unconvincing
melodrama or manipulative tricks. The father, a businessman, will learn something
about second chances. His wife will learn weather a difficult mid-life crisis.
A brother will learn something about honesty and greed. Their teenage
daughter will encounter love for the first time. And a curiosity will awaken in
their young son that will give him eyes to see, and wisdom to humble his elders.
Each one offers troubled confessions at Grandmother's bedside, soul-searching monologues
like prayers. The movie itself requires a serious commitment of time, at three hours
long, but it is well worth it, as rich in insight and poetry as any film the 90s gave us.
Almost Famous
When I think back on the films of 2000, the first thing that
comes to mind is that first quiet conversation between 15-year-old William Miller (Patrick
Fugit) and Penny Lane (Kate Hudson) as they are getting to know one another.
William has left his worrying mother and his home behind, chasing
the rock music that he loves. He's a Huck Finn in the world of rock music, writing
for Rolling Stone. Penny is a groupie, desperate for love and attention, fancying
herself as a muse for the rockers in a band called Stillwater. She quickly connects
with William. At that first meeting, his are eyes wide in awe of her beauty, eager
to follow her and learn all that she knows about the world. Her smile is giddy with
the excitement of life on the road, and all that she wants to share with him. They
both understand the power of music to lift up the spirit, to make the world a grand and
marvelous place.
Together they will learn a lot. William will learn that
Penny's heart belongs to a quiet, troubled rocker named Russell. Penny will learn
that living recklessly has its price. One of them will come to the brink of death.
And Mom (Frances McDormand) will fret about the dangers around her son, hoping
he'll come home.
All of them will make mistakes. All of them will have
moments of insight and glory. And together they will learn learn a lot about
growing up, about responsibility, and about how friendship and compassion are far more
important than fame and fortune.
Cameron Crowe's coming-of-age tale avoids judging his worried
mother, and instead celebrates her love and her concern, even if it is at times unfounded.
At the same time, he laughs at his own folly, his own slow awakening to the truth
that everyone is human, everyone is at times a buffoon...even rock stars. Almost
Famous is all wrapped up in a package of such genuine affection that I left the
theatre all three times feeling something I very rarely feel at the movies... JOY.
Not of This World
(added to this list in 2003)
You Can Count on
Me
What a powerful little movie. How many films have ever
focused so intently and intelligently on a sibling relationship? Sammy is a single
mom, working at a bank, going to church, and trying to keep her life together. Her
son Rudy is full of questions about his absent father, and mom doesn't want to talk about
it. Just then, Terry, Sammy's brother, shows up needing money. Terry is a
drifter, reckless, but full of powerful and sincere feelings. Their reunion is a
difficult and tempestuous time.
Writer/Director Ken Lonergan never casts a judgmental or
sarcastic light on the choices of his characters. His direction is observant,
restrained, never requiring flashy camerawork, manipulative music, or crass humor to make
a point. His script is so delicately crafted that we feel we're looking in on real
people in a real place, struggling with real life.
As Sammy gets mixed up in dangerous liaisons, as Terry determines
to become young Rudy's mentor and teach him the brutal truths of life, and as Rudy tries
to decide who he can trust, Lonergan beautifully choreographs all of them to failure, to
rude awakenings, to admissions of responsibility and guilt, and to forgiveness and perhaps
a brighter future.
Crouching Tiger,
Hidden Dragon
Ang Lee has created something quite
unique, a Star Wars-meets-Sense and Sensibility martial arts
movie. Avoiding gratuitous digital animation, he wows us by choreographing stunts
and fights that are performed by the actors themselves. Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi,
and Chow Yun Fat seem to defy gravity as they soar about the rooftops and the trees, up
walls and through windows, fighting not just for possession of an enchanted sword, but for
a proper balance of freedom and responsibility. Lee has made an action film of rare
depth, patience, and grace. Let's hope it starts a trend.
The Color of Paradise
Majid Majidi's The Color of
Paradise is about a blind boy and his uncommon gift for perceiving beauty in the
world and in the people around him. When he is dismissed from a season of schooling,
he finds he is no longer wanted by his selfish, widowed father. What results is a
story that overwhelms the viewer with beauty, and then with pain. As Mohammed's
grandmother seeks to offer him the unconditional love he so desires, his father strives to
get rid of him so he can remarry without anyone learning about the boy. In the same
vein as Manon of the Spring and Jean de Florette, this is a parable
deceptively simple in its construction, but trembling with significance at so many
levels. In a way, we are all the boy, struggling to make sense of our world and to
connect with God; in other ways we are all the villainous father, striving to get what we
want and trampling others in our path. And the grandmother is as powerful a picture
of God's eagerness to love as any I have seen on the big screen.
Wonder Boys
Michael Douglas gives his greatest
performance as a disheveled professor who gets entangled in the lives of a depressed
student, a young seductress, a sleazy literary agent, and the wife of the college dean.
Unbreakable
While
its ending is unfortunately abrupt, this film contains images that stay with me as vividly
now as when I first saw them, making me grateful that I cannot see into the hearts and
souls of men the way Christ does. Imagine the pain of it. Imagine the
responsibility.
This is a movie that dares to imagine what life
would be like for a real man capable of superhuman feats.
O Brother, Where Art
Thou?
If you don't' get the title, watch Preston Sturgess' 1941
classic "Sullivan's Travels". The Coen Brothers make an optimistic, light,
cheerful film about three escaped convicts who embark on a comic odyssey through the world
of American roots music in the Deep South. The references to Homer provide a plot
outline, guiding George Clooney, John Turturro, and Tim Blake Nelson from one goofy
episode to the next, from one great song to the next. Clooney and Nelson are
especially surprising in a film running over with more of those uniquely empty-headed,
sympathetic, and unforgettable Coen Brothers characters.
Best in Show
Christopher Guest comes up with
another "mockumentary" full of great improvisational humor and memorable
characters. Eugene Levy, Catherine O'Hara, Michael McKean, Parker Posey, and Fred
Willard are just a few of the outrageous dog owners converging on Philadelphia for a dog
show. Even as we root for our favorite dogs to win, we marvel at how beastly and odd
each of these folks can be in their various highs, lows, preoccupations, and obsessions.
More laughs here than in any other film this year.
Beau Travail
Breathtaking, stark cinematography
and powerful quiet performances from the leads make this retelling of Billy Budd a
troubling epic about the power of jealousy.
Pollock
Ed Harris and Marcia Gay Harden
give two of the finest performances of the year in this riveting portrayal of an artist
who needed love and compassion in order to floruish.
The Big Kahuna
Basically a play about three
characters in one room, this intense drama compares and contrasts the lives and methods of
salesmen and evangelical Christians. Danny DeVito gives his greatest performance as a
wearying salesman who tries to teach his partner-in-sales (Kevin Spacey) something about
patience and compassion, then tries to teach the Christian something about character...and
he succeeds. An important work, especially for Christians.
The Emperor's New
Groove
The Emperor's New Groove sacrifices Disney norms of pop music and moralizing,
only to discover a hilarious new fusion of fairy tales Looney Tunes zanyness.
Disney's most unconventional movie in decades. At Chicken Run, I marveled at
the craftsmanship, but at New Groove, I laughed from beginning to end.
Ghost Dog - The Way of
the Samurai
Jim Jarmusch combines gangster
flicks, street gang flicks, hip-hop music, and samurai legends to create a strange,
slow-paced, contemplative, and memorable story. Forrest Whitaker has the role of his
career as a lone defender of peace and justice who lives among pigeons and comes to a
moment where his philosophy and code of honor are put to the test.
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The Terrorist
Reminiscent of the films of
Terrance Malick with its observant, poetic cinematography, this is a small movie with big
ideas. Indian director Santosh Sivan follows the story of a teenage girl who
decides to sacrificeher life as a policitcal assasin. The girl (played with
expressive passion by Ayesha Dharkar) encounters a young man along the way who influences
her decisions and her hardened hatred in a remarkable way. A quiet, intense, and
unforgettable film.
Erin Brockovich
Whether or not you like her taste in revealing outfits, you
have to admit that Erin Brockovich is memorable for more than her costumes. She's a
believably desperate single mom trying to make ends meet for her children, ready to prove
to the world one way or the other that she has a brain and can be valuable in some way to
somebody. In the end, her determination overcomes very realistic and discouraging
obstacles to make the world a better place for herself and her family. What is most
interesting is that she hears the call do something even greater, serving the community
around her. Things get very complicated when this "higher calling" starts
to draw her away from her children. There are some interesting issues at the heart
of this seemingly formula flick, and director Steven Soderbergh gets great performances
from Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, and Aaron Eckhart. Guilt-free, inspiring, and
what do you know... also a box office success!
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X-Men
This may well be the best
movie adapted from a comic book that's yet been made. There's no unnecessary delving into
each character's psyche to make him or her more real. there's just action, action,
action, with solid character development along the way through smart dialogue and vivid
performances. If this becomes a franchise, I hope Bryan Singer returns to the helm.
He showed intelligence and enthusiasm, and it was contagious.
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Chicken Run
A heartfelt work of great artistry in claymation, with biting British humor and great
voice work. Chicken Run tells a fine fable about freedom, with a cast of
unforgettable feathered freaks.
RUNNERS-UP:
Cast Away
Yeah, yeah, Tom Hanks is
impressive to watch. But is it a good movie? Fortunately, yes. It's a
strong, simple story with an arc similar to that Grinch story. Instead of the Whos,
its the natural elements that teach this film's hero a lesson and give him a new heart.
Watching Hanks learn to survive, and learn what is really important in life, has
moments of simple wisdom. It also has special effects and cinematography that are
some of the big screen's most awe-inspiring achievements. Zemeckis is becoming as
effective an entertainer as Spielberg. Unfortunately, his films still stick to the
same simple and incomplete humanist ethic: that there is no higher power to help us, so
it's up to us to help each other and ourselves.
Traffic
Soderbergh's other strong
film this year is an ambitious look at the drug problem in America, presented as a
tapestry of stories from the street drug sellers to the top brass in Washington D.C.
Unfortunately, unlike other multi-plot movies like Magnolia, this one never sinks
deeply enough into its characters or develops original enough stories to make it pack the
punch that it should. There are some cop-outs in the end, but still, the
cinematography and the strong performances make this one well worth visiting more than
once.
High Fidelity
John Cusack is still
the king of unrequited love comedies. In this film, he gives the best and most
ambitious of all his performances, while taking us on a field trip back through his dating
life. Also integral to the film is the rock music of the 80s and 90s, which were
the soundtrack to his life, and the language through which he communicated. Smartly
written, well-acted, and well-balanced between belly laughs and insights, this is a clever
and underappreciated comedy.
Thirteen Days
- for an
impressive portrayal of John and Bobby Kennedy, two brave men forced into a corner of
terrifying political pressures during the Cuban missile crisis.
State and Main
- Call it
Mamet-lite. A frivolous and fun Hollywood-invades-smalltown caper in which a
playwright (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) fights for the integrity fo his work while selfish
jerks like the director (William H. Macy), the cold-hearted producer (David Paymer at his
best), and the stars (Alec Baldwin and Sarah Jessica Parker) revise it to fit their budget
and their egos. The brainy local girl (Rebecca Pidgeon) charms the writer and shows him
the alternative to success...it's called real life. As the playwirght claims of his
play...it's about purity.
The Virgin Suicides - for its
haunting story about boys spying on a family in which five girls are practically
imprisoned by their fearful and legalistic parents.
Hamlet
- for demonstrating how timeless the play actually is, by
setting it present-day U.S. life, where Denmark is a corporation, Hamlet is a slacker who
mopes around video stores, and Dad is a cel-phone-wielding upper-class jerk.
American Movie
- for
humbling me with its portrayal of the focal figure's artistic passion and determination.
Croupier - for the
effortless, efficient storytelling, the poker-face of lead actor Clive Owen, and for the
experience of watching grace offer second, third, and fourth chances to a man who insists
on controlling his own destiny.
Chocolat
- A light,
refreshing, but slightly too-sweet fairy tale about a mother and daughter who bring joy
and chocolate to a rigid, cold, worried little village. Uniformly strong
performances from a cast that includes Juliette Binoche, Lena Olin, Judi Dench, and Johnny
Depp. Lasse Hallström packs this trifle with so much exuberance that it is
delicious while you're there but may leave you with a bit of a headache.
The Lovers on the Bridge
- for
vivid, imaginative cinematography and two wholehearted performances.
Dancer in the Dark
- for
Bjork, who gave one of the finest performances I've ever seen, in spite of being trapped
in a manipulative and overbearingly dark story.
Girlfight - for
Michelle Rodriguez's spirited performance, and for the way it brought heart and realism to
a tired old formula.
Requiem for a Dream
- Darren Aronofsky takes the standard tale of
self-destructive junkies and expands on it, showing how addiction in America comes in many
forms, and junkies of all kinds follow the same kind of path to the same kind of misery.
The style of this film is groundbreaking and engaging, and the performances are intense.
Unfortunately, the story has few surprises, and soon the technical excellence sinks under
the burden of inevitable doom. You'll be impressed, but you'll want to quit a little past
the halfway point.
Billy Elliott - for Jamie
Bell's astonishing performances, the best breakthrough for a young boy onscreen since
Empire of the Sun.
Bread and Tulips - This movie
tries too hard to be graceful and goofy, romantic and realistic, at the same time. But
Licia Maglietta fully inhabits her character, a delightful, endearingly clumsy beauty who
makes the bumpy ride all worthwhile. The addition of Bruno Ganz makes things even richer.
Moments
of Grace and Beauty in the Movies of 2000
Peter Travers of
Rolling Stone lamented that this was the year we lined up happy and enthusiastic for a
pile of commercial garbage, like Nutty Professor 2 and MI:2. He's
right. But, I see something encouraging. Although this year was sorely lacking
in good films (indeed, I had a difficult time finding ten films worthy of high praise,
whereas last year there were more than twenty!), I do think there are some significant
developments this year. And many moments of transcendent beauty as well.
GOOD NEWS FOR REALITY
Gladiator was
the only big-scale, special-effects-laden movie this year to be embraced by both critics
and audiences, and that's impressive, considering there were too many effects-heavy action
films this year to bother noting here. Frankly, I found Gladiator to be
boring and thoroughly disappointing. It relied on the same tired "You
Killed My Kindred, I Now Kill You!" formula that has become an almost annual event.
(Call it "Braveheart Syndrome".) Vengeance is the easiest way to please a
crowd, but the farthest thing from more honorable lessons, like grace, compassion,
forgiveness. Plus, it rushed through what might have been an interesting story...
the journey from general to slave to gladiator...in a few minutes, in order to hurry us
right along to the long, drawn-out action scenes. And those scenes were full of
fairly transparent digital effects and distracting, hyperactive camerawork.
Digital animation is
losing its power to inspire awe. We've come a long way since the T-Rex scared the
daylights out of us in Jurassic Park. Now, we can usually spot digital
animation a mile away. And even if we don't, even if we find out after the fact,
it's no longer a jaw-dropping event. (That the cow that gets hit by the truck in O
Brother Where Art Thou?, it's not real!) It's beginning to feel like a cop-out.
There's digital animation in every commercial these days. What's so special about
it? We want to be amazed by stuff that actually exists. Already, we marvel
at the old Star Wars films, or something like The Dark Crystal, with
reverence, because all of that stuff was handmade. Now, REALITY is becoming
the challenge again.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is shocking because those are REAL PEOPLE
fighting, jumping, and soaring. Sure, they're on cables, but at least we know the
actors were there, actually clashing in mid-air and among the treetops.Even Charlie's
Angels had some authentic thrills, because the girls were performing their own stunts!
The moments that made
movies special for me this year were the result of hard work and the kind of magic that an
animator CAN'T create. Like the glow of Kate Hudson's smile in Almost Famous,
the quiet curiosity of the young photographer in Yi Yi, the choreography of the
action in Crouching Tiger, the intimate and utterly convincing nature of the
relationship between Laura Linney and Mark Ruffalo in You Can Count On Me.
Beyond that, though
movies often, and sometimes inadvertently, achieve something greater. Those
things we can't always control take place. Chemistry. Metaphor. Mystery.
Glimmers of truth, beauty, and meaning. It's something for which a director
can only create an opportunity. The rest is between the audience and the work.
GRACE MOMENTS,
ACCIDENTAL OR OTHERWISE
It was a cinematic year
rich in those moments when a film reached out and whispered to me, reminding me of God's
grace:
Penny Lane (Kate
Hudson), her glimmering hair and generous smile, the face of a guardian angel who dearly
loves young, innocent, wide-eyed William (Patrick Fugit), in Almost Famous. Later,
she danced across an empty, trashed dance floor, finding joy in the music, even all alone.
In this semiautobiographical work, Cameron Crowe's nonjudgmental adoration and care
for his characters, no matter what their prejudice, their narrow perception, their guilt
or their innocence, was deeply moving to me. Especially his portrayal of William's
mother. She could have been portrayed so harshly, but became in the end exemplary in
her persevering love, her acceptance and welcome of others, her long-suffering.
Yi Yi put us
there for so many priceless moments...the confessions at grandmother's bedside, the young
boy's discovery of photography, the discovery of an unlikely friendship between
businessmen while listening to music in the car, the unexpected awakening of a conscience
in the heart of a manipulative young man.
In Ghost Dog: The
Way of the Samurai I was strangely moved by the spooky image of Ghost Dog (Forrest
Whitaker), sitting behind the wheel, gliding through the city at night, his face holding
the angst of the moral responsibilities he has shouldered, the wounds from the violence to
which he has subjected himself. He too was a guardian angel, not unlike those
wandering souls in Wings of Desire, ready to put his life on the line for honor.
Erin Brockovich
(Julia Roberts), driving at night on her crusade for justice, hears her boyfriend on the
cel phone tell her that her baby daughter spoke her first words today... and Erin has
missed it. The moment is not overplayed, but the conflicting joy and anguish on
Erin's face were a wonderful picture of the importance of family time together, or the
rare and precious details that we miss if we become too distracted with other parts of our
life. Whether or not you would have made the same choices Erin made, you cannot deny
the cost of her long working hours.
In Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Jen (Zhang Ziyi) makes a leap into the fog. This act can
be interpreted many ways, but it stirs something deep inside me. She is jumping to
make a wish come true, but she has asked Lo, her lover, to make the wish...which I
interpret to be an act of sacrifice, or generosity, and of love. Elsewhere in the
same film, I am moved by Shu Lien's (Michelle Yeoh) control of her anger, her own
impulses, in order to achieve a greater good. Shu Lien becomes that all-too-rare
breed of hero in the movies...a hero of self-control and restraint as well as action.
Her beloved's own sacrifice in the film has echoes of Christ in it as well...
indeed, a very rich movie.
David Dunne (Bruce
Willis) finds he has the power to recognize the workings of evil in others merely by
touching them, in Unbreakable. In one deeply disturbing moment, he stands
in the middle of a crowded room, people brushing past him in droves, and he is
relentlessly buffeted by shocks and visions of their many and varied evil deeds.
Imagine: this is what Christ felt looking out over Jerusalem, how he feels looking out at
you and me. And yet, he rises up and does something about it... which is precisely
what Bruce Willis must decide to do.
In Wonder Boys,
Professor Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas) refused the temptation of offered sex from a
seductive young college girl. Not only that, he refused it without hesitation,
brushing it off as an immature idea. How long has it been since Hollywood didn't
indulge, at least for a moment, the idea of illicit sex between an attractive man and an
attractive woman? Here's a character who has flashes of rare maturity, even if he
fails miserably in other areas of his life. I found this to be an admirable moment
in a film full of them.
As Wolverine (Hugh
Jackman) and Rogue (Anna Paquin) struggle to come to terms with their strange and unwieldy
powers, in X-Men, a moment of tenderness between them suddenly turns
life-threatening. Their growing concern and care for each other was a surprisingly
profound link in a film of unexpected moral weight, as the despised and rejected learn to
come together and deal with prejudice turned against them.
Ginger the Chicken's
teary-eyed desperation as she watched geese through the skies far above the chicken
penitentiary in Chicken Run was an evocative moment in a film about just how far
people will go to find freedom, just how much we want to transcend our limitations and our
circumstances. It's how I feel when the darkness in the world, or even worse, my own
sins, burden me and make me feel that life is hopeless, meaningless, or futile.
Although the movie ended up being a tribute to human (or in this case, chicken) effort, it
made me think about the need for grace to come from outside, or for grace to penetrate our
world and give us the strength to do what is necessary.
The beautiful little
shepherd's family in Disney's The Emperor's New Groove was something rarely seen
in a Disney film... a complete family, with a pregnant mother. Their simple life,
their enthusiasm about being together--these things weren't played up in the film, but
they got my attention nonetheless.
Ulysses (George
Clooney) falls to his knees when he realizes that his self-reliance has fallen short, and
now he must call on something higher, in O Brother, Where Art Thou? I was
also moved by the power of simple songs that offer hope in the midst of trials, and how
those songs brought people together and delivered our heroes out of distress.
The sermon at the end
of Chocolat was one of the most welcome sentiments I've seen in a film in a long
time. In a church, a religious authority encourages people to remember Christ's
open-door policy for all customers, his unconditional love. And then, looking back
on the way Vianne (Juliette Binoche) has served her community, she has not just been
"tolerant", accepting people and leaving them the way they are; she has gently
encouraged them to better decisions, wiser living, through love and listening.
The gentle counseling
that Lou offers his Christian friend in The Big Kahuna... that evangelizing
cannot happen effectively unless the evangelist takes to heart and respects the person he
is speaking to. If we don't recognize the baggage, the deep scars, the life of
experience in those with whom we share Christ, our words can easily be arrogant,
inappropriate, even accomplishing the opposite of what we hope.
In Dancer in the
Dark, Selma (Bjork) weeps over the attacker she has killed, then escapes into a
fantasy in which the dead man rises up, they apologize to each other, and they dance and
sing a song of reconciliation. It's just a dream, but a moment of heartbreaking in
an otherwise overbearing and excruciating film.
Sometimes the
smallest things can shout to me from the screen. In Traffic, I was
thunderstruck more by one visual image than by any of the film's hard-hitting points about
drug trafficking. One transitional shot of a helicopter, angled such that the craft
looks like a dark bird slowly falling to earth... It was unimportant to the story, but the
power of that slow-motion descent made me gasp. Sometimes the most ordinary things
come alive with beauty, reminding me of how the world around us is waiting for us to open
our eyes and see it in a new way. All the Pretty Horses is full of gorgeous
natural beauty in its landscapes and horses. In Small Time Crooks, Woody
Allen and Tracey Ullman shared a view of one of cinema's most gorgeous sunsets, from their
run down apartment in New York. Most vividly, The Lovers on the Bridge amazed
me when Juliette Binoche water-skied down a river at night underneath a fireworks display,
a sequence that roared with beauty.
GOOD NEWS FOR... MOTHS?
I must also mention in
closing that there should be a special award this year for Performance by an Insect.
That's right. The most stunning moment in You Can Count On Me came
when Terry (Mark Ruffalo) and Sammy (Laura Linney) are standing under the stars having an
intense discussion. Out of nowhere, a fluttering white moth lands on Sammy's coat.
Terry reaches out his hand to remove it, and the moth flies into his hand, pauses,
and then goes on its merry way. How did they do that?! That couldn't have been
planned. If it was animation, I will be astounded, because of the natural,
spontaneous grace of the moment.
Another Stellar
Performance By a Moth: In The Way of the Gun, a grouchy old con man sits on
a couch with a revolver to his head, playing Russian Roulette with himself. He
pauses for a moment, glances at the lamp beside him. A moth is suicidally hurling
itself at the light bulb of the lamp. The man looks away. Then the phone rings
and the man turns again, to answer a call that will probably prolong his life. The
moth, then, has quite probably saved his life! Was THAT planned? If so, kudos
to the bug trainer!
It takes "eyes to see" to find these
fleeting moments in movies, especially when so many movies are over-produced
and programmed to give us what we expect rather than what will surprise us.
I'm sure I've only scratched the surface here, and I look forward to
revisiting these films to plumb their depths further. Let's hope next
year holds a greater number of excellent films, and let's strive to look
even closer, training our eyes to become more and more discerning, so that
we can then turn that sharper gaze upon our own lives...and see the truth.
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