Film Essay: Top Ten Lists Reflections: Part 2: Missed Movies
The Movies I Missed
Every year, there are a handful of films that I simply miss in theaters and/or on screener. It is impossible even for paid critics (something that is unfortunately becoming a rare phenomenon) to see all 300-400 films released in theaters every year. Making it even harder, growing up in San Jose, CA where a number of films are never released. San Jose thankfully had a handful of art theaters when I was growing up: the Towne (one of the strangest theater experiences that seemed to focus on foreign films), the camera one (a single theater screen which was small, but a great theater), and the camera three (with multiple smaller screens). Unfortunately, most of those theaters have closed; but, even with those screening, there were simply movies that never came to San Jose or would open after December 31st, meaning they missed my Top Ten of the previous year, and then, were somehow were forgotten by the time I began creating the next year’s list.
Below are a number of films that would have made my Top Ten lists had I seen them in theaters that year. Of course, this is not an exhaustive list, as there are so many, but a few that stand out in my memory as major misses.
Seen too late!
Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)
The most glaring absence on my top ten list is, without a doubt, Pan’s Labyrinth. I happen to see Pan’s Labyrinth following New Years and the publication of my Top Ten list in 2006. Somehow, by the time the 2007 list rolled around, I had completely forgotten the movie as it had appeared on most critics’ 2006 list.
Guillermo Del Toro is a visionary director. With Pan’s Labyrinth, he created his second film in his Spanish Civil War trilogy, following The Devil’s Backbone (I’m still eagerly waiting for the third movie). Pan’s Labyrinth is a masterful film that transcends the genre of fantasy and becomes both one of the best anti-war films and a heartbreaking tragedy. Few films have ever captured the horror of war as well. But the film goes beyond that to see how a child uses their imagination to escape the horrors around them, only to in turn, have those horrific events alter their imagination. Finally, the film can be read as a fantasy where a long lost princess returns home. Being able to balance all three of these interpretations in the same film is nothing short of miraculous.
Pan’s Labyrinth would have not only my choice for the best film of 2006 (sorry Half Nelson), but also one of the best of the decade and one of the great films of all time.
Too Young to Understand
Happiness (1998)
Okay… not seeing Happiness in 1998 may have been a blessing rather than a miss. I am unsure if my 8th grade psyche could have taken this film, let alone understood it. Todd Solondz is a truly experimental director. I had an extremely hard time watching Storytelling (2001) when it aired and am still troubled in aspects of the film… were the shocking images manipulative and just for shock value sake or was he powerfully making a point?
Happiness involves a series of people who are in many ways kindred spirits to Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver. Like him, they all want a true human connection and are incapable of creating one. Philip Seymour Hoffman is heartbreaking in a performance of a man who wants so desperately to tell his neighbor he finds her attractive, but cannot, leading to his dangerous stalker behavior. Dylan Baker is magnificent in a horrific role of a pedophile including praying on his son’s friends. In the end, the film asks us not forgive these desperate and horrible people, but to understand their pain and their inept, and at times criminal behavior. This is a difficult, but brilliant film.
Purposefully Avoided, my mistake
Cache (2005)
Having seen the original Funny Games (1997), Michael Haneke’s skinner box film experiment, which I despise as one of the worst films ever created (perhaps only topped by his English remake in 2007), I had no interest in seeing Cache even though it had insanely positive press coming out of Cannes Film Festival. I think I may have caught up to this film a year after it came out? And to put it as bluntly as possible: I was wrong to avoid it.
Roger Ebert famously hated many of David Lynch’s works especially Blue Velvet. When Mulholland Drive came out, he said that he forgives David his previous transgressions as every film he has made has led up to the creation of Mulholland Drive. I feel the same way about Cache. Michael’s psychology background lends his movies to being more intellectual experiments than effective movies in my mind, but in Cache, Haneke has created a riveting thriller about a couple who begin receiving video tapes of themselves. These anonymously delivered tapes frighten the protagonists who begin to see villains in every corner. The paranoia in this film is real and the surreal like atmosphere adds to those feelings. In the end, Haneke questions our obsession with voyeurism, which Hitchcock claimed all films are voyeuristic experiences.
Never opened near me
The Grey Zone (2001)
I knew Tim Blake Nelson as an actor, not as a filmmaker or writer. His most memorable performance up to 2001 came in O Brother Where Art Thou, the Coen Brothers’ attempt to adapt The Odyssey to the Great Depression. The film while not a significant Coen film is a fun and entertaining movie. One of the reasons is Tim Blake Nelson who played the “idiot” of the three protagonists who believes that their friend has been transformed into a toad. Tim Blake Nelson nailed the role and was so good that I admit I was surprised when I discovered he was a well known playwright.
The Grey Zone simply never opened near where I lived. It may be the best film ever made about the Holocaust. Yes, that includes Schindler’s List. While I generally believe Schindler’s List to be a masterpiece, I do struggle at times with how visually beautiful the film is… should the Holocaust, in of itself, be beautiful? I wish I had an answer. I know that we could try to say something like… there was beauty amidst the horror, but… was there really?
The Grey Zone is one of the ugliest films I’ve ever seen. The color palette for the movie is grey and brown. It is the right choice. The film also reveals the true evil of the Holocaust. It wasn’t simply the murder on a scale never imagined before, nor the torture or treatment of the Jews, gays, and gypsies, but, it was that the Nazi’s created a system in which people were forced to turn against themselves.
The Sonderkommandos were a group of Jewish people who agreed to operate the gas chambers at Auschwitz in exchange for a few extra months of life. This is the evil of Nazism, to force people to make such decisions like in Sophie’s Choice where a mother in a split second had to decide which of her children would die. In terms of the choice forced upon the Sonderkommandos, we all want to believe that we would refuse to agree to such an offer, but… when whispers of the Americans landing at Normandy and the collapse of the Eastern front begin to become rumor… a few months of life, may mean life… Tim’s story is based on the real life event of the rebellion of the Sonderkommandos and the destruction of the crematorium at Auschwitz. It is a masterpiece.
Only made the Festival Circuit
George Washington (2000)
I remember watching Roger Ebert discuss George Washington on his show “Ebert and Roeper at the Movies” and hearing him talk about how the film was not only one of the best of the year, but was the discovery a new American talent. This is the example of a very small independent film that goes the route of the Film Festival circuit and ends up finally getting released. Again, I didn’t see it until after I saw David Gordon Green’s All the Real Girls in 2003. George Washington was criterion-ized quickly after it came out. It is indeed the first movie in an important American artist’s career.
The film evokes a sense of time and place. By being specific in a culture and place that are unfamiliar to most of us, it actually becomes universal. The story involves a group of young boys who experience a tragedy and then lie about it, but the lie and their guilt take on a life of their own while they are attempting to understand what it means to grow up. A great American work.
Thought I didn’t like Documentaries
Waltz with Bashir (2008)
Waltz with Bashir in most years would have been my number 1 film of the year. Not in 2008 even if I had seen it. Sorry, but, Synecdoche, New York may be the best film of this century so far; that being said, Waltz with Bashir would have at the least made my list.
I think school did me a disservice by showing horrible documentaries in classes, especially history and science classes. As a result, I still have a resistance to documentaries despite seeing so many great documentaries. Whether they are the ever changing and incredibly inventive documentaries of Errol Morris, or Ken Burns sprawling epics, or Michael Moore’s progressive rants, I still have an initial resistance. Do I really want to spend my time watching a nonfiction work? Unfortunately, Waltz with Bashir slipped through my watching as a result.
This is one of the most personal films ever made. It reminds me now of 5 Broken Cameras and the power of that documentary. But, Waltz with Bashir also brings in animation as a means of showing the main character’s memories and imagination. It is a striking portrayal of someone still haunted by what they saw and did during war.
