The Best Films of 2011

Let’s talk about the films of 2011.

Below is my top ten list of the best films of the past year. What qualifies as a 2011 film? Any film that was released in South Africa in 2011, either cinematically or on DVD, or any film that rolled over from late 2010 into 2011 either cinematically or via a January DVD release. Also, any film that came out in cinemas internationally in 2010 and had DVD releases in 2011 but never got any sort of release in South Africa. It’s unsettling how many great movies never reach SA screens or stores, but I sort of understand the thinking: who’s going to watch a Thai spiritual meandering on the big screen? I have never understood why non-American reviewers use an American release table for their lists.   

Honourable mentions

Javier Bardem was quiet and sensitive in the downbeat Biutiful, a trying but rewarding Spanish film about death that could only be made by Inarritu. Juliette Binoche was luminous and vital in Kiarostami’s Certified Copy, a film that cleverly plays with itself and audiences as it complicates the relationship between its two central characters – or does it? I’m still not sure. 

David O. Russell’s The Fighter was far more than just another sports movie, with Christian Bale winning an Oscar and Amy Adams doing supporting work. I still think that the film was too condescending towards some of the female characters though. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II was the perfect finale to a great franchise, and Alan Rickman deserves special mention for what he does with the character of Snape. If Part I was all tension and build-up, Part II is a Helms Deep showdown featuring characters we’ve invested in for over ten years. The year’s best animated film is Sylvain Chomet’s heartfelt, almost dialogue free The Illusionist. It tells the story of a stage magician who is left behind by the world and its many new innovations and technologies, and his new friendship with a young woman who finds herself traveling along with him. It’s sad and beautifully animated – hand drawn.

The funniest film of the year was Brit Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop, a rollercoaster political satire of great sophistication. The British had a considerable Oscar presence in February, with Tom Hooper’s  delightful The King’s Speech taking Best Picture and Director, as well as Best Actor for Colin Firth. It’s the kind of film that the Brits make best: a character-focused period drama with a sure positive payoff.

I have fallen in love with South Korean cinema, and Boon Jong-ho’s Mother is one of the best, a gripping thriller about a mother (never named in the film) driven to prove her mentally challenged son’s innocence as he is arrested for the brutal murder of a young girl. The animated titular lizard of Rango starred in the year’s second-best animated feature; any film that so closely studies the conventions of the western and has time to reference Apocalypse Now and Hunter S. Thompson is worth the effort. Another type of animation featured in the rousing Rise of the Planet of the Apes, a better-than-it-should-have-been prequel to one of the most famous science fiction films. It features Andy Serkis as lead primate Caesar, and the great John Lithgow as a father struggling with Alzheimer's while his scientist son (James Franco) looks for a cure.

Finally, The Social Network is a near great film – a pity that the final third runs out of steam as it fails to maintain the energy that the first two thirds of the film showed. Fincher’s framing is, as always, worth seeing in itself. 

I do not have a “worst of” list, but surely the most disappointing film of 2011 considering the talent involved is Joe Wright’s Hanna, aka The Bourne Bore, aka I Was a Teenage Killer And Also I Can’t Blink.

And now, the best films of 2011 – that is, the best films I saw in 2011 that coexist on a list where their positions might change in a day or a year from now (with the exception of the top three, which will in all probability stay the top three in that specific order). The list below proves again, and it should come as no surprise, that the most fascinating films happen when the psychology and philosophy of characters and viewers are engaged.  Keep in mind that it is impossible to see every single film, and I have missed many, including such potential greats as Incendies and In a Better World. So be it.

          

10. CARLOS 

Edgar Ramirez is the star of Olivier Assayas’ film about the infamous international terrorist. The five-hour plus film does not glamourise its subject, nor does it pander to action or thriller conventions. 

9. SKOONHEID 

The best South African film in years, Oliver Hermanus’ drama about desire and repression is unsettling and thought provoking. I know of many people who do not like the film at all; I have a suspicion it’s more about these peoples’ feelings towards the film’s content than the film itself. Seek it out, but not for sensitive viewers.

8. THE CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH

Harrowing Chinese anti-war film about the Rape of Nanking; the black-and-white imagery is uncompromising, and the film not easily shaken. Again, not for sensitive viewers, but as with Skoonheid, nothing is sensationalised.   

7. DRIVE

A smooth, meticulous action thriller featuring the return of the mythological hero (Ryan Gosling). As usual, the hero’s trouble begins when he pursues a relationship with (literally) the girl next door (Carey Mulligan). One of the most beautifully shot films of the year, and with a fitting soundtrack. This bodes well for director Nicholas Windig Refn. The film's most memorable asset is Albert Brooks as the cold blooded Rose. May the Oscar come his way.

6. BLACK SWAN

Natalie Portman received a well-deserved Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of the steadily-losing-her-mind ballerina. This nightmarish and claustrophobic thriller demonstrates that Darren Aronofsky remains one of the most exciting contemporary American filmmakers.

5. OF GODS AND MEN

Xavier Beauvois’ Cannes favourite is a moving, human tale of ethics, religion and politics set in an increasingly unstable Algeria in the 1990s. Some have criticised the film for what the characters do towards the end, but to do that denies the quiet force of one of the most visually impressive films of 2011. It is a film to revisit and cherish.

4. DOGTOOTH

Greek filmmaker Giorgios Lanthimos has made, I think, the definitive dysfunctional family drama. The less you know about the film beforehand the better, and with its themes of incest and the gross manipulation of others, it makes for selective viewing. Of all the films on my list, this one is the least likely to work for anyone. Watch at own risk. Whether you adore or detest it, you won't be able to forget it.

3. UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES

I gave Uncle Boonmee a negative review earlier this year, and the joke is on me, the egg on my face: it is, in fact, a masterpiece. It was my own lack of understanding and, I suppose, my mood at the time of the original viewing that lead to my initial negative write-up. I’m not going to re-review the film, or edit my original review, so I’ll say it here: I was wrong, and now I can see. Uncle Boonmee is deeply spiritual (mortality, reincarnation, the presence of the dead among the living) and as deeply concerned with an increasingly materialistic Thai society in general. From now on, I’m rooting for Team Apichatpong Weerasethakul.

2. TRUE GRIT

Can the Coen brothers do no wrong? No Country for Old Men, Burn After Reading (which gets even better the more you watch it), the existential hilarity of A Serious Man, and now this gripping remake of a John Wayne original. One the one hand True Grit is a well-crafted western with The Dude himself, Jeff Bridges, proving an unconventional and flawed heroic figure for young Hailee Steinnfeld’s spunky protagonist. On the other, True Grit is a typically Coen film in terms of quirkiness, characterisation and framing, which results in a genre film littered with moments of death and hilarity. It happens to have my favourite opening and closing scenes of all films on this list.

1. TREE OF LIFE 

Malick’s autobiographical-cosmological family drama is the most divisive film since Antichrist. Either people loved it, and loved it deeply, or they hated it, and hated it with much passion. I’m not going into the debate here except for saying that I understand where and how the film loses so many people, and that they all have my sympathy. An ambitious, life-affirming masterpiece by a master filmmaker. 

             

Guess who came to dinner?

At Cannes 2010, Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s “Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives” won the Palmde d’Or. The director, who instructed critics to simply call him Joe, gained acclaim earlier in his career for, amongst other titles, “Tropical Malady”. I haven’t seen Joe’s earlier work, but if it’s anything like “Boonmee”, at least I’ll be prepared for the Meaningfulness of it all. “Boonmee” is at times beautiful to behold, at others frustratingly tedious; overall, the film is so intent on presenting fascinating images and odd characters that it completely exhausted me. Seldom did I have to work so hard at interpreting what I think I’m seeing. 

Uncle Boonmee is dying. As part of the process of letting go of the earthly, he retires to rural Thailand to live out his last days in peace and quiet. While there, he is visited by figures from his past who become very much part of the present – a deceased wife; a long lost son – and the film has moments where it seems to leave its main plot (as much as there is a plot) to arrive at differences moments in time and space that somehow (we aren’t guided as to how, exactly) link to Boonmee. By the time the woman by the waterfall discussed fate and life with the talking fish, I’d abandoned hope that somewhere, Joe will make it all make sense. 

Maybe I seem unfair to “Uncle Boonmee”. I understand and agree that cinema can and should challenge viewers to engage with narrative models and structures that are vastly different to the Hollywood model. Often, it’s these films that are labelled “visionary” and “transcendental”. Consider David Lynch’s highly stimulating films on psyche and fantasy. His films differ greatly from how we’ve been trained to read movies, yet they’re quite accessible while remaining open to various interpretations. Lynch has had his failures – “Wild at Heart” – much like another visionary, Terrence Malick, who made “The Thin Red Line” into one of the best films I have ever seen, and who took the story of Pocahontas in “The New World” and made it into a self-indulgent bore. 

If Lynch and Malick’s best work make the directors seem like professors of their craft who base their work on solid philosophical ideas and cultural currents, “Boonmee” makes Joe look like the interesting humanities student who has something to say but cannot get his audience (me; I don’t speak for those who fell head over heels for this film) to decode his message in anything other than broad thematic strokes. So, “Boonmee” is about Life and the Meaning of it all. The characters (and their character) mean little. 

I may be being a bit deliberate, as I’m framing the film as self-conscious Art, and it is, but it is certainly not without merit. As Arty as it is, it provides some food for thought. Admittedly, most of that thought came from me, not from the movie. “Uncle Boonmee” is quite a sensory experience, even immersive at times. There are stunning scenes, such as in the latter part of the film when the fading protagonist and his family venture into a cave that becomes a galaxy. And at the beginning, there’s a moving, entirely convincing dinner conversation between the living, the dead and the animalistic. Towards the end, the film even manages to insert itself powerfully into Thai politics. It’s the overlong in-between that weighs the film down. 

All in all, I’m growing weary of art as the Great Metaphysical Indecipherable. 

And the fish? He eventually does something far more interesting than talk, I can tell you that. Just don’t ask me what it Means.