Christopher Long: Top movie picks of 2011

CHRIS’ TOP THEATRICAL RELEASES OF 2011

1. The Tree of Life (Terrence Malick)
2. Film Socialisme (Jean-Luc Godard)
3. Nostalgia for the Light (Patricio Guzman)
4. Meek’s Cutoff (Kelly Reichardt)
5. Project Nim (James Marsh)
6. Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall his Past Lives (Apichatpong Weerasethakul)
7. Melancholia (Lars von Trier)
8. Twenty Cigarettes (James Benning)
9. Tabloid (Errol Morris)
10. Cold Weather (Aaron Katz)

And Ten More:  The Time That Remains (Elia Sulemain), Certified Copy (Abbas Kiarostami), Le Quattro Volte (Michelangelo Frammartino), Le Havre (Aki Kaurismaki), Hot Coffee (Susan Saladoff), Terri (Azazel Jacobs), The Trip (Michael Winterbottom), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson), Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog), Coriolanus (Ralph Fiennes)

(NOTE: I have not seen “A Separation,” “Mysteries of Lisbon,” “Road to Nowhere,” “Senna,” and quite a few other movies, of course.  I also picked “The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu” as my #2 film last year and it would have made #3 this year.  “The Turin Horse,” “Once Upon a Time in Anatolia” and “The Kid With A Bike” are all 2012 releases meaning next year’s list is already stacked.)

When I initially reviewed “The Tree of Life,” I wrote, “I love this film.  I love every second of it.  And more.”  Six months later I will add, “And even more than that.”  I refer you back to my review because otherwise I won’t get to write about anything else.

A year which featured nothing other than “The Tree Of Life” would qualify as a great year in cinema, but Jean-Luc Godard (“Film Socialisme”) provided the most poignant “NO COMMENT” of several generations with his “bet ya can’t keep up” associative montage that critic Fernando Croce most aptly described as “a poker faced autopsy of communication.”  We’ve designed machines that can share information with each other perfectly, but still can’t make heads or tails of what the hell we’re saying to each other.  Still, listening is essential, and perhaps the most memorable movie sound of the year is the jangling whirr from the casino floor, slots all a-twitter, the universal cacophony that signals the spiraling of capital straight down the drain, and not just for all the passengers aboard the Good Ship Euro.  The final part of the film provides a digitized archive of images that spans much of recorded history and begs to be unpacked by more obsessive viewers.  Not that I would know about that.  NO COMMENT?  OK, one comment from Homer Simpson, "When are people going to learn? Democracy doesn't work!"

It’s probably no coincidence that my top two films are, in large or small part, about the limitations and burdens of language and memory (and also construct incredibly dense audio-visual fields), so it’s no surprise that number three joins the parade.  Patricio Guzman’s “Nostalgia for the Light” starts out as an abstract appreciation of the cosmos, and winds up focused on a very concrete array of names and faces, the victims of history that power wants us to forget.  The distant past is available to anyone who wants to look through a telescope or dig through the fossil record.  The recent past (and, by extension, the “truth” about the present) can only be preserved through collective resistance.  The story of that resistance is both heartbreaking and as beautiful as any cosmic wonder.

My favorite character of the year, without competition, is Nim Chimpsky, the star of James Marsh’s mostly-documentary “Project Nim.”  Nim was a chimpanzee raised in a human family (he was stolen as a baby from his tranquilized mother – the first in a series of structuring traumas) in order to measure his ability to learn language (here we go again), but his epic life journey turns into something so much vaster.  What it does not turn into is an advertisement for the human race, and I can think of no horror film that offers a moment as primally terrifying as the vision of Nim, previously seen in swaddling clothes and playing with babies and little kitties and asking for snacks, lying on a cold steel table waiting the next needle at the testing lab after he has ceased to be of scientific interest.  I don't recall whether Marsh even re-creates an actual image of this specific moment, but it's burned in my memory nonetheless.  Up up with people!

Time to move onto something more cheerful - like “Melancholia.”  When I initially watched Lars von Trier’s latest Best-Actress-in-a-Cannes vehicle, I was wowed by the first half, but disappointed by the kitschy second part.  I still think that apocalyptic imagery (Von Trier has a rogue planet crashing into Earth, which makes for a rotten day) has been so thoroughly co-opted by the industry machine (and dingbat prophets of dumb) that it’s hard to make it resonate on a personal level, but I find myself thinking more about what works in “Melancholia” and less about what doesn’t.  What works is Kirsten Dunst's vivid and authentic depiction of depression, and the film's canny portrayal of the process by which a thousand, thousand disappointing social interactions hollow out a soul and weigh down a body.  And then there’s the strange liberation experienced by a person who has ceased to expect anything good, “Just relax, today was going to suck anyway.”  As odd as it may sound, it’s all rather inspiring, though perhaps it just seems weird if you’re not a member of the club.

“Twenty Cigarettes” is the second most self-descriptive title on my list (see below).  James Benning turns the camera on twenty subjects as they each smoke a cigarette, the length of the shot usually determined by the duration of the cigarette.  Usually, but not always, as Benning finds tremendous variation within a deceptively simple and restrictive structure.  I don’t want to write too much about it without seeing it again, but I remember it as not just beautiful portraiture (though these are some of the great movie faces of the year) but also as an enigmatic and occasionally funny study in performance that might make a nifty double bill with “Certified Copy.”  It’s also a wispy tour through cinema history, at least of a sort.   “Hugo” and “The Artist” were dubbed the “love letters to cinema” of the year, but their nostalgia-drenched perspectives don’t jibe with my brand of cinephilia nearly as much as Benning’s wonderful movie.

As for the rest: “Meek’s Cutoff” has the most evocative sound design since “Sweetgrass” and “Limits of Control” and an ending that I haven’t made up my mind about yet, but which afforded me the pleasure of listening to a fellow audience member literally shout “What the fu…?” (that’s an actual quote, he stopped himself), so it’s got that going for it.  “Tabloid” establishes Joyce McKinney as one of the finest actresses of her generation (perhaps we’ll be seeing her perform in court now that she’s filed suit against Mr. Morris), and “Uncle Boonmee” still has the best catfish sex ever (the last two Cannes winners make my Top Ten –meanwhile, I remember that the Academy picked a really good movie once a long time ago, but I forget which one.)  Aaron Katz’s “Cold Weather” was the last film I watched in 2011, and I may be overrating this sub-Dude comic take on the slacker detective story, but any movie in which the characters crack a (really stupid) code by flipping through The Baseball Encyclopedia has me at David Aardsma (at least one of you knows what I mean, right?)

SPECIAL JURY PRIZE or NUMBERS 21-100,000: Jon Counts to 100,000 (Jon)

Jon counts to 100,000.  Hooray for Jon.  He begs for Oscar glory from time to time with his hammier readings, especially when he hits the thousand markers, but Jon is a true soldier of cinema.  It takes a while to load up this 70+ hour video, but once you do you can just slide to anywhere in the timeline and let it roll.  And this has the most sincerely earned climax of the year.  Party on, Jon!  Jon will be counting to 1,000,000 in the sequel.  If he does it in a single take, I promise him the #1 spot on my next Top Ten List.

TOP TEN DVDs/BLU-RAYs OF 2011 (in no particular order)

• The Music Room (Criterion)
• The Great Dictator (Criterion)
• The Tree of Life (Fox)
• The Complete Jean Vigo (Criterion)
• Buster Keaton: The Short Films Collections (Kino)
• Kiss Me Deadly (Criterion)
• Araya (Milestone)
• Blue Velvet (MGM/UA)
• Citizen Kane: Ultimate Collector’s Edition (Warner Bros.)
• Histoire(s) du Cinema (Olive Films)

I don’t actually have the Olive Films release of “Histoire(s) du cinema” but just knowing that Godard’s exegesis is available in Region 1 is enough to put it on the list.  Thank goodness Satyajit Ray’s “The Music Room” is finally available on a quality release as well – I had only previously watched a fading VHS copy long ago and Criterion’s new high-def version was a revelation.  Milestone's "Araya" is, like virtually every Milestone release, a true labor of love, and I do mean labor because they left no stone unturned in their exhaustive tribute to director Margot Benacerraf.

Everyone is eager to proclaim the death of the physical format, but just ask Netflix shareholders how well Reed Hastings’ attempt to cram streaming down everyone’s throats went.  Fun, right?  Yes, DVDs will eventually die.  So will the sun.  What we should legitimately be worried about is the likelihood that we’ve just passed the peak in terms of the widest availability of cinema for home viewing, in any format.  Netflix won’t be maintaining their home rental library as much anymore and they’ve already gotten lazy about picking up smaller titles (I have over 50 titles on my “Saved” queue that have already been released in the past few years, but which Netflix simply doesn’t care to stock anymore) and streaming (from all sources) is nowhere close to being ready to pick up the slack, and won’t be for years.  It’s all downhill from here, or at the very least, we’re looking at a situation like the stock market where we might need 10 or 15 years to return to the prior peak.  Maybe sooner, but it’s going to be a highly fractured field – no more one stop shopping.  Oh well, enjoy what you’ve got. I remember the days when I felt lucky to get that fading VHS copy of “The Music Room.